THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF.CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
nf ^tti!mn0 in 
 tfotanunt 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR S. PEAKE, M.A. 
 
 Professor of Biblical Exegesis in the University of Manchester ; 
 
 Tutor in the Primitive Methodist College t and Lecturer in Lancashire 
 
 Independent College ; Sometime Fellow of Merton College, 
 
 and Lecturer in Mansfield College, Oxford. 
 
 Dieu, c'est le mot de 1'^nigme du monde : 
 Jesus-Christ, c'est le mot de 1'enigme de Dieu. 
 
 RAYMOND BRUCKER. 
 
 Xonbon : 
 
 ROBERT BRYANT, 48, 49 AND 50 ALDERSGATE ST., E.G. 
 
 C. H. KELLY, 2 CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, E.G. 
 
 1904 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 
 Jfrienfc anfc Heacber, 
 
 THE REV. A. M. FAIRBAIRN, D.D., LL.D., D.LITT., 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
 IN LOYE, REVERENCE, AND GRATITUDE. 
 
// 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 WHEN I accepted the invitation to deliver the 
 Hartley Lecture, I selected The Problem of 
 Suffering in the Old Testament as my subject, 
 for reasons that will be plain to all who read the 
 last chapter of this book. I am only one of many, 
 for whom the problem of pain constitutes the most 
 powerful objection to a Theism, adequate to our 
 deepest needs. I am well aware that to some I shall 
 seem to drug my doubt with the anodyne of the 
 Gospel. Yet I shall be more than content if by 
 my witness-bearing I help some souls, to whom the 
 world's misery is a nightmare, to escape beyond it 
 into untroubled peace. 
 
 I am only too conscious how far the book is from 
 what I had wished to make it. A serious operation, 
 in November, 1902, has dislocated all my work, and 
 the addition of new claims and duties to an already 
 crowded life has made some of my plans impracticable. 
 I had intended to give a full summary of the dis- 
 cussions in Germany and elsewhere, that for the last 
 thirteen years have raged about the figure of the 
 Servant of Yahweh ; to compile a critical bibliography ; 
 to complete rny commentary on Job ; to deal much 
 more thoroughly with the subjects treated in the 
 last chapter. But half the book had to be written in 
 a month, with College and Review work, Committees 
 and Meetings, absorbing most of my time and strength. 
 I trust, however, that I have said the essential things, 
 
vi preface, 
 
 and though I might have read more, had leisure been 
 granted me, I do not think the views I have formed 
 would have undergone any substantial modification. 
 
 Perhaps I owe some explanation to my old pupils 
 of the change in my views with reference to the 
 Servant of Yahweh. I have never wavered in my 
 belief that the Servant should be identified with Israel, 
 and have not suffered myself to be fascinated by 
 Duhm's powerful plea for an individual identification. 
 But in common with several scholars, the view that 
 the Servant is the historical Israel seemed to me 
 exposed to fatal objections, so I gave my adhesion 
 to the theory that the Servant is the ideal Israel, as 
 it has been expounded, among others, especially by 
 Professor Skinner in his valuable commentary on 
 Isaiah 40 66 in the Cambridge Bible. But I was 
 all the while acutely conscious of its difficulties, and 
 held it only for want of a better. The most natural 
 view seemed to be that the historical Israel was 
 intended throughout, and I was fully prepared to move 
 to this more consistent position, if the objections to it 
 could be taken out of the way. It is to Giesebrecht 
 above all that I owe the removal of these difficulties, 
 though in this connexion I have also to mention 
 Budde and Marti. 
 
 The critical problems of Habakkuk cost me a great 
 deal of trouble, which led to an unexpected result. 
 I have for several years hoped that a solution might 
 be reached, if not in the form proposed by Budde, at 
 any rate along his lines. But repeated study has 
 driven me to the conclusion that neither Budde's 
 solution, nor those of G. A. Smith, Peiser, or Betteridge 
 are really tenable, and I had perforce to accept, with 
 
preface* vii 
 
 Wellhausen and Nowack, the view first propounded 
 by Giesebrecht. Not a little to my surprise I have 
 also had to desert the usual view of the date, and 
 place the prophecy in the exile. I much regret that 
 the second part of Marti's commentary on the Minor 
 Prophets has not yet been published, so that I have 
 not been able to avail myself of his discussion of this 
 and some other dark problems of the prophetic 
 literature. 
 
 Many may be astonished that I should have thought 
 it necessary to include a summary of the proofs that 
 Isaiah 40 66 is not the work of the prophet 
 Isaiah. I need hardly explain that this was due to 
 no feeling that the question was any longer in dispute. 
 But we need to remind ourselves how slowly the most 
 certain results make their way, and I anticipate that 
 I may have many readers to whom the tritest common- 
 places of criticism will come with freshness. It is 
 also striking that those who get hold of results, often 
 get hold of them so imperfectly, so that we still hear 
 people speaking of " two Isaiahs," unaware that if 
 the book is not a unity, it must be highly complex 
 in its structure. I have referred very little to literature 
 earlier than 1892, when the publication of Duhm's 
 Commentary on Isaiah opened a new era in the 
 criticism and interpretation of the book. 
 
 I regret that it has been necessary to add so many 
 footnotes. But for the most part they touch questions 
 of textual criticism, and since the text seemed so 
 often to need emendation, a detailed statement of 
 reasons was necessary. Those who are alive to the 
 difficulties of the received text will not, I believe, 
 charge me with wanton criticism. While we ought 
 
via preface. 
 
 to be done with superstitious illusions as to the 
 soundness of the Massoretic text, the textual critic 
 always needs to be on his guard against subjectivity, 
 arbitrariness and violence. And lest any one should 
 imagine that emendations are put forward as any- 
 thing more than tentative suggestions as to what the 
 author may have written, it may be said explicitly 
 that though in many cases it may be tolerably plain 
 that the text is corrupt, it is only a few corrections 
 that are fairly certain, while all degrees of probability, 
 or plausibility, attach to the rest. 
 
 My debt to other scholars will be evident to those 
 who are familiar with the subject. But I wish specially 
 to acknowledge the kindness of two friends. My 
 colleague, Professor Hope W. Hogg, Professor of 
 Semitic Languages and Literature in the University 
 of Manchester, has made time, amid a pressure of other 
 work, that doubles my obligation, to read my proofs. 
 He is in no way responsible for what I have written, 
 but it has reassured me to have my work read by 
 so competent and accurate a scholar. My friend, 
 Miss Mabel Frith, has read my proofs and made 
 suggestions which I have been glad to adopt. I have 
 to thank her not only for this and for the keen interest 
 she has taken in the book, but for the quotation 
 from Raymond Brucker, that I have placed on the 
 title page. 
 
 ARTHUR S. PEAKE. 
 
 MANCHESTER, 
 
 May 28th , 1904. 
 
Contents. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE RISE OF THE PROBLEM. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Ancient Hebrews saw in suffering a proof of Divine anger . I 
 Josiah's Reformation meant that Judah was righteous, and so must 
 
 be prosperous 2 
 
 This was contradicted by a series of tragedies culminating in the 
 
 destruction of Jerusalem ....... 3 
 
 Critical Questions in Habakkuk -4 
 
 Habakkuk's Problem : Why is Yahweh so indifferent to the 
 
 suffering of the righteous, and the triumph of the godless 
 
 oppressor? 5 
 
 The tyrant shall be overthrown for his violence and pride, while 
 
 the righteous shall live by his faithfulness .... 7 
 Was Habakkuk too optimistic in his estimate of Judah ? . . 9 
 The misery of Judah no problem to Jeremiah . . . .n 
 But God's dealings with him were a dark riddle . . .n 
 
 Driven to God, he found fellowship with Him becoming the 
 
 essence of his religious life ; an experience which created his 
 
 doctrine of the New Covenant . . . . . 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Even after the captivity of Jehoiachin, the Jews refused to believe 
 
 that Jerusalem could fall . . . . . 17 
 
 Results of disillusion . . 18 
 
 Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones, designed to lift the 
 
 exiles from their despondency . . . . . .19 
 
 The popular belief that the children were suffering for the sins of 
 
 their fathers ... 21 
 
x Contents. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Ezekiel's temperament, and his conception of God ... 22 
 
 He denies solidarity and vicarious punishment, and asserts 
 
 individual responsibility ....... 23 
 
 Though one-sided, his doctrine liberated men from the guilt of 
 earlier generations or their own past, while it kept life at 
 a high ethical pitch *24 
 
 The prophet becomes a pastor 26 
 
 Ezekiel's doctrine of personal responsibility not borrowed from 
 Jeremiah's doctrine of personal religion, but elicited by 
 criticism of God's righteousness 27 
 
 It is remarkable that with his individual ism, Ezekiel should see in 
 the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah a punishment for 
 their whole past history of unfaithfulness . . . -27 
 
 Nation and city have a life of their own, independent of the life of 
 
 the units who compose the nation 29 
 
 Yahweh's all-sufficient motive an absorbing regard for His Holy 
 
 Name 30 
 
 Ezekiel's doctrine very difficult for a Christian to appreciate, but 
 
 the legalism he created saved the religion of Israel . . 32 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE SERVANT OF YAHWEH. 
 
 The rise of Cyrus ......... 34 
 
 The Second Isaiah 35 
 
 The Restoration of Israel and of Zion 36 
 
 The universalism and particularism of the Second Isaiah . . 37 
 
 Israel's mission to the heathen ....... 38 
 
 The -four Servant Passages 39 
 
 Translation of the Servant Passages 
 
 I. Isaiah, 42 M 44 
 
 II. Isaiah, 49 M 45 
 
 III. Isaiah, 50 48 
 
 IV. Isaiah, 52 13 -53 12 51 
 
 The Servant's proclamation of the true God to the Gentiles . 59 
 The meaning of the Servant's suffering and death . . .61 
 
 Estimate of the Prophet's teaching about the Servant ... 63 
 
Contents. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Prophet intended Israel and not Jesus of Nazareth by the 
 Servant. But a nation was inadequate to the functions 
 assigned to the Servant, which were completely realised by 
 Jesus, Who concentrated in Himself the essential Israel . 65 
 The Twenty-second Psalm uttered by Israel, the Suffering Servant 66 
 The sufferer in the last extremities triumphs by faith . . .71 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 A CENTURY OF DISILLUSION. 
 
 The disappointment and chilled enthusiasm of the returned exiles 73 
 Haggai and Zechariah ........ 74 
 
 Bright hopes for Zerubbabel 74 
 
 The Satan urges the misery of the people as evidence of their 
 guilt, but Yahweh rebukes him, and cleanses their represen- 
 tative from sin 75 
 
 Deep scepticism in the time of Malachi touching the moral 
 
 government of the world ; despondency of the pious . 78 
 
 Critical Problems of Isaiah 56-66 79 
 
 In spite of discouragement, these prophecies proclaim the future 
 
 splendour of Zion 80 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE PROBLEM IN JOB. 
 
 The poet concerned, not with the nation, but with the individual 83 
 
 Job smitten to justify the Satan's cynical estimate of his piety . 84 
 The conflict between Job's consciousness of integrity, and his 
 
 belief in God's goodness 85 
 
 The friends sacrifice their friend to their theology, but do so as 
 
 kindly as they can 87 
 
 Their platitudes fill him with scorn and anger, their unkindness 
 
 wounds him to the quick ....... 89 
 
 The main interest of the poem lies in Job's debate with God . 89 
 
 He accuses God of being his enemy ...... 89 
 
 God's omnipotence makes His immorality the more terrible . 90 
 
 Job's own misery sharpens his insight into the misery of the world 91 
 
xii Contents, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Yet it is God's treatment of himself that pre-occupies him . . 91 
 He feels that God, though He knows him to be innocent, is bent 
 on putting him in the wrong, and all-wise and all-powerful 
 will easily effect His purpose ...... 92 
 
 He has no magnanimity, is a petty malevolent spy ... 92 
 Job is certain of his own integrity ...... 93 
 
 Yet while he accuses God of cruelty and meanness, the memory 
 o! God's former goodness causes him to turn to Him with 
 
 remonstrance or pitiful appeal 93 
 
 He appeals from God his persecutor to God his vindicator . . 94 
 This schism in God reflects the schism in Job's experience . . 95 
 When God appears to answer Job He does not accept Job's 
 conditions, but leaves him in torture and terrifies him with 
 the whirlwind. He offers him no comfort or explanation, 
 but overwhelms him with what seems brutal mockery . . 97 
 Yet His speeches are not irrelevant irony, but take the self- 
 centred sufferer out of himself, and convict him of his 
 
 limitations 97 
 
 _The universe is a mighty organism, man only one of the many 
 
 objects of God's concern . 99 
 
 [ob needs no explanation of his suffering, the vision of God 
 assures him that all is well. He trusts God with every 
 reason for distrusting Him, save his inward certainty of 
 
 Him 100 
 
 Yet God placed Himself on His trial by His treatment of Job, 
 the Epilogue was therefore necessary, not for Job's sake, but 
 
 for God's 101 
 
 The lessons of the Book : (a) We must face resolutely the facts 
 of life ; (b) suffering does not pre-suppose sin ; (/) suffering 
 may test the reality of piety ; (d) man is not the sole object 
 of God's regard ; (e) man cannot from his limited knowledge 
 judge God's government of ;he universe ; (/) the chief lesson 
 is that no speculative solution is possible, but peace may be 
 attained through our knowledge of God ; (g ) the poet 
 probably meant to suggest that a life after death might be 
 
 possible 102 
 
 The poem while later than the Servant poems makes no use of 
 the thought of vicarious suffering, since it is concerned with 
 the individual, not with Israel ...... 103 
 
Contents. * 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SONGS IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Numerous references in the Psalms to suffering, and appeals to 
 
 God for deliverance . . . . 104 
 
 Various causes assigned : the sin of ancestors ; the anger of God 
 for some unknown reason ; the indifference of God ; the 
 hostility of the Elohim . . . . . . .105 
 
 Three Psalms deal specifically with our problem : Psalms 37, 49, 
 
 73 . . 107 
 
 Psalm 37 counsels patience, and announces the destruction of the 
 wicked, and the prosperity of the righteous. It does not 
 advance the solution .107 
 
 Psalm 49 solves the problem by appealing to the difference in the 
 
 fate of the wicked and the righteous after death . . .108 
 
 Psalm 73 shows the writer baffled by the prosperity of the wicked, 
 and asserting the service of God to be vain, till he was 
 initiated into God's holy secrets, and discovered the destiny 
 of the godless after death. How different his own lot ! In 
 the consciousness of unbroken fellowship with God, he knows 
 that Death itself cannot separate him from His love . .no 
 
 Translation of the seventy- third Psalm . . . . .112 
 
 This Psalm the deepest expression of the religious consciousness 
 
 that we find in the Old Testament 117 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE APOCALYPTIST AND THE PESSIMIST. 
 
 The sorrows of the present sent many for comfort to the future, 
 
 and thus created apocalyptic . . . . . . 118 
 
 General features of apocalyptic . . . . . . .119 
 
 Joel from Judah's terrible suffering infers its sinfulness . .120 
 The apocalypse, Isaiah 24-27, of interest for its reference to the 
 punishment of the angelic guardians of the nations ; to the 
 annihilation of Death ; and to a resurrection of pious Israelites 
 to re-people the depleted land . . . . . .121 
 
 Daniel interesting for our problem in attributing the miseries of 
 earth to the angelic powers, and in its prediction of the 
 resurrection of the martyrs to honour, and of the apostates 
 to abhorrence .123 
 
xir Contents, 
 
 PA-Gtt 
 
 Ecclesiastes, when relieved of interpolations designed to break the 
 point of the author's words, presents in the main a consistent 
 view of life. This is that life is meaningless, a closed circle, 
 and that progress is impossible . . . . . 1 25 
 
 Man cannot identify himself with the main stream of things, for 
 though God has implanted the instinct for this, He has 
 deliberately withheld knowledge of the law of events . 127 
 
 This conclusion that life is an unsatisfying mockery has been 
 reached by exhaustive experiment. Wisdom and pleasure 
 alike brought disenchantment 129 
 
 Observation discloses the universal reign of misery' . . .129 
 
 The author remains a Theist, but his Theism has lost its religious 
 
 value . ... . . . . . . 131 
 
 While life is bad, man does well to make the best of it, and 
 palliate its wretchedness by a moderate enjoyment of such 
 pleasures as it offers, especially since old age is coming, when 
 the zest for pleasure will be gone, and in Sheol no pleasure 
 will be possible any more 132 
 
 Ecclesiastes is the negation of all that makes the Gospel dear. It 
 is therefore of great value, since it puts with tremendous 
 force the logic of a non-Christian position, and shows us 
 how necessary was God's revelation in Christ . . -134 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 SOLUTION OR ESCAPE? 
 
 Pain a more baffling mystery than sin or death. For sin is largely 
 accounted for by man's freedom, and the animal ancestry 
 from which he has emerged 137 
 
 And death is rather a boon than an evil, tragic in its circumstances 
 
 and not in itself 138 
 
 Suffering serves valuable ends, yet these do not meet the appalling 
 
 difficulties of our problem . . . . . . .140 
 
 The Old Testament yields many helpful suggestions, but they are 
 
 too crude, too insecure, too dubious ..... 143 
 
 Most valuable is its inner certainty of God, by which rare spirits 
 
 escaped the problem 144 
 
Contents, 
 
 All that the Old Testament said gets a much deeper significance 
 in Christianity, especially the thought of vicarious suffering, 
 and the conviction of immortality 145 
 
 Yet suffering will always be a largely unsolved mystery . . 146 
 
 We need an assurance of God's love that will triumph over the 
 facts which deny it ........ 147 
 
 This comes with the doctrine that God is love, made possible by 
 God's existence as a Trinity, and proved by God's sacrifice 
 of His Son. The Incarnation replaces hearsay knowledge by 
 the vision of God 147 
 
 But this rests on the truth of Christianity. If we surrender the 
 divinity of Christ it is hard to retain a faith in God's goodness. 
 We are saved from pessimism by the Cross of Christ . .148 
 
 Jesus also helps us by His unshaken faith in God in face of the 
 
 world's misery, and His own unparalleled agony . . .148 
 
 The Cross is either the key to the riddle of the universe, or it 
 
 darkens its mystery . . . . . . . .149 
 
 If we believe in Jesus, then we may dare to believe in God, and 
 enter into His perfect peace, content not to know the answer, 
 but sure of His love . . . . . . . -149 
 
 Appendix A. Recent Criticism of Habakkuk . . . .150 
 Appendix B. Critical Problems of Isaiah 40-66 . . .172 
 Appendix C. The Servant of Yahweh 180 
 
THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ZTbe IRfse of tbe problem, 
 
 IT was not till a comparatively late period in the 
 history of Israel that the problem of suffering 
 engaged the attention of her thinkers. The 
 ancient Hebrews, like kindred peoples, looked on 
 their disasters as a token of the Divine anger. This 
 anger might be kindled by national sin, or it might 
 be the mysterious expression of a fitful mood. The 
 latter view could not, of course, be seriously enter- 
 tained alongside of a worthier conception of God, 
 so we find the Biblical writers for the most part 
 tracing the wrath of God to the disobedience of His 
 people. The historians tell us how the Israelites 
 forsook Yahweh and were sold to other nations, till 
 they returned to their God, and He gave them their 
 desire upon their enemies. To this conviction of the 
 close connexion between sin and suffering, the 
 prophets again and again appealed. Thus Isaiah 
 speaking to his countrymen, when Judah had been 
 
2 Ebe problem of Suffering 
 
 scourged by Sennacherib, till from head to foot it was 
 one festering sore, chides the infatuation which 
 blinds them to the truth and sternly utters Yahweh's 
 ultimatum : ' ' Come now, and let us reason together, 
 saith Yahweh : if your sins are as scarlet, shall they 
 be as white as snow ? if they be red like crimson, 
 shall they be as wool ? If ye be willing and obedient, 
 ye shall eat the good of the land : but if ye refuse and 
 rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword : for the 
 mouth of Yahweh hath spoken it." 
 
 Under Manasseh, religion and morality went from 
 bad to worse. The prophetic party was bitterly 
 persecuted, old abuses were revived, and strange 
 forms of worship were introduced. His reign seemed 
 to a later generation the adequate cause for the 
 misery soon to fall on Judah. With the accession 
 of Josiah in 639 B.C. new hope dawned for the higher 
 religion of Israel. The prophets, who had been 
 driven to work underground, now found the times 
 propitious, and laboured with such success that when 
 in 621 B.C. the Deuteronomic Law was discovered, 
 the seed fell on a soil not wholly uncongenial. Terror- 
 struck at its threats against disobedience, Josiah 
 carried through a drastic reformation. Since the 
 Law had set before the people a blessing or a curse, 
 conditional on obedience or disobedience to its com- 
 mands, the prompt and whole-hearted execution of 
 the reforms it demanded, seemed to promise that the 
 nation's long warfare had drawn to its close. Judah 
 was at last a righteous people, then it must be pros- 
 
IRtee of tbe problem. 3 
 
 perous, for law and prophets had combined to declare 
 that it should be well with the righteous. 
 
 But this bright illusion was soon shattered by a 
 series of disasters. Josiah, unwilling to exchange 
 his almost unfettered freedom, under the suzerainty 
 of a decadent Assyria, for servitude to Pharaoh- 
 necoh, the Egyptian king, fought the latter at 
 Megiddo 1 and was killed on the field (608 B.C.) And 
 now the unhappy country sank more and more deeply 
 in misfortune. Jehoahaz was deposed after a three 
 months* reign and taken to die as a captive in Egypt. 
 He was succeeded by his elder brother Jehoiakim. 
 The Assyrian empire fell about 607 B.C., and in 
 605 B.C., Babylon conquered Egypt at Carchemish, 
 and entered on the period of its supremacy. 
 Jehoiakim became the vassal of Nebuchadnezzar, 
 and some years later rebelled. 2 He died before punish- 
 ment fell on Judah, and it was reserved for his son 
 Jehoiachin to be carried captive to Babylon with the 
 flower of the nation in 597 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar 
 placed a brother of Jehoiakim on the throne, and 
 gave him the name Zedekiah. The new monarch was 
 weak rather than ill-disposed, and he is less to be 
 blamed for the reckless violation of his solemn oath 
 
 J So the present Hebrew text. Possibly it was further South, in 
 Josiah's own territory. Herodotus (ii. 159) speaks of a defeat of the 
 Syrians at Magdolos. If he is referring to the same event, the name 
 meant would be Migdal, perhaps the Migdal-gad mentioned Josh. 1 5 37 . 
 (See H. P. Smith's Old Testament History, pp. 279, 280). 
 
 2 The chronology is difficult. The "three years" of our present 
 Hebrew text (2 Kings 24 1 ) seems too short. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 vibe problem of Suffering 
 
 of loyalty than those who forced his hand. Un- 
 taught by experience and in defiance of Jeremiah's 
 warning, the turbulent nation, trusting, such was 
 its madness, in the promises of Egypt, threw off 
 the Babylonian yoke. This time there was no 
 reprieve, and the blow already steadfastly foretold 
 by Jeremiah for more than thirty years, fell in 586 
 B.C. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, and 
 the nation went into exile in Babylon. 
 
 It is generally believed that, before the last act of 
 this tragedy was played, a voice had already been 
 raised in pain and perplexity. Unhappily the 
 critical and historical difficulties of the book of 
 Habakkuk are so serious that we cannot be at all 
 sure what the conditions were that created his 
 problem. Numerous solutions have been proposed, 
 each of them with its own attractions, each exposed 
 to grave objections. 3 The following conclusions 
 seem to the present writer to be probable, (a) The 
 subject of the complaint in i a ~ 4 is the same as in 
 i ia ~ 17 , in both passages the problem rises from the 
 oppression of righteous Judah by a heathen tyrant. 
 (b) Since in these two passages the rule of the tyrant 
 has been long established, i 6 " 11 cannot spring out of 
 the same situation, unless in i a ~ 4t la ~ 17 another heathen 
 power than the Chaldeans is intended, (c) Every 
 form of the theory that the Chaldeans are raised 
 up as instruments of judgment on another heathen 
 power, is beset by difficulties of too serious a 
 
 See Appendix A : "Recent Criticism of the Book of Habakkuk." 
 
IRisc of tbe problem. 5 
 
 character to permit us to accept it. (d) The only 
 alternative that remains is to regard i 6 " 11 as an older 
 oracle, which is out of place in the present prophecy. 
 (e) After i 6 " 11 has been eliminated, substantially 
 the whole of the first two chapters is the composition 
 of Habakkuk, and probably dates from the exile. 
 If, however, the usual view that the prophet wrote 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem be correct, more 
 of 2 9 ~~ i might plausibly be assigned to a later writer. 
 (/) The third chapter is a post-exilic Psalm, which 
 owes its present position to the title it bore in the 
 collection of Psalms from which it was taken. 
 
 Although I prefer to regard the prophecy as exilic, 
 yet in deference to the general opinion of scholars, I 
 will speak of it at this point. It makes compara- 
 tively little difference to our estimate. If Habakkuk 
 saw his vision in the gloomy period before the fall 
 of Jerusalem, his problem arises because he feels so 
 keenly the strange contrast between the fair promise 
 of the happiness that should follow on reform, and 
 the dark fulfilment now that reform has come. If 
 it was during the exile, then the destruction of the 
 Jewish State and the captivity are responsible for 
 much of the prophet's perplexity, and the Reforma- 
 tion falls into the background. But though in view 
 of the uncertainties we cannot state problem or 
 solution with precision, yet they may be stated with 
 sufficient accuracy for our purpose. Speaking 
 generally, his problem rises out of the oppression 
 of the righteous, and the prosperity of the violent 
 
6 Cbe problem of Suffering 
 
 oppressor, while the answer he receives is that 
 retribution is certainly coming, and the righteous 
 shall live by his firm fidelity to Yahweh. He begins 
 with a complaint of Yahweh's apparent indifference. 
 Strange that he should cry and find Yahweh deaf 
 so long ! for if he feels it intolerable to look on these 
 scenes of outrage, how can Yahweh endure them, 
 whose eyes are too pure to behold evil ? Yet the 
 treacherous nation still pursues its course of im- 
 moral conquest. Like a fisherman, skilled in his 
 craft, the tyrant sweeps the nations into his net, 4 and 
 annexes them to his bloated empire. In 2 5 ~ 30 other 
 traits are added to the portrait his insatiable greed, his 
 vain ambition to lift himself beyond the reach of evil, 5 
 his savage gloating over the shame and agony of his 
 victims. Is then his career of evil to go on un- 
 checked, " shall he not spare to slay the nations 
 continually ? " 
 
 As he broods over his problem, the prophetic 
 ecstasy begins to fall upon him. In spirit he climbs 
 the watch-tower,' 5 whence he may search the secrets 
 of heaven, and see the forces that shape the destinies 
 of earth. The response he wins from God seems at 
 first to be meagre, and the answer one that might 
 have been divined from the facts already before him. 
 He is bidden wait in confidence for the fulfilment of 
 the vision, which will surely come in spite of delay. 
 
 4 For Budde's inference from the angling metaphor see Appendix A. 
 4 Ihis reminds us of the story of the tower of Babel (Gen. n 1 -*). 
 Cf. ISA. 2i-. 
 
tTbc IRise of tbe problem. 7 
 
 The soul of the oppressor is puffed up, it is not 
 upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith- 
 fulness. If the heathen tyrant was what he had 
 been described to be, and if God Who ruled the 
 universe was of too pure eyes to behold evil, the 
 collision of these facts could have but one issue. In 
 a world ruled by such a God, the triumph of wicked- 
 ness was an anomaly, and anomalies cannot be 
 permanent in the moral order. It was not merely 
 that the conqueror's cruelty and violence filled 
 the prophet's soul with indignation, but his pride 
 was ominous of ruin. In his denunciation of the 
 former, the prophet stands in the succession of 
 Amos, who uttered Yahweh's sentence on the heathen 
 for outrages on our common humanity, and of Nahum 
 with his passionate execration of Nineveh and 
 exultation over her downfall. The feeling that 
 pride went before destruction was widespread in 
 antiquity. Men, to whom the jealousy of the gods 
 was a real and ever present peril, were not tempted 
 to flaunt their happiness in tjie face of heaven. To 
 walk softly and humbly was their safety ; pride 
 was an uncanny temper, that would soon draw the 
 lightning from the clouds. The thought that 
 because Yahweh is high and lifted up, there is to be 
 a Day of Yahweh, when all that is high and lifted 
 up on earth shall be abased, is very prominent in 
 Isaiah. But he has transformed the vindictive 
 jealousy of the gods into a lofty doctrine in harmony 
 with his conception of Yahweh not simply as 
 
8 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 the exalted, but as the holy God. Habakkuk 
 stands in the line of this thought and finds in the 
 pride of the oppressor the presage of his downfall. 
 He deifies his own strength and skill as the givers of 
 success, just as Assyria had done according to 
 Isaiah (lo 5 " 15 ). The latter prophet had spoken of 
 Assyria as the rod of Yahweh's anger, with which 
 He smote the nations, but which, when it had served 
 its purpose, would be snapped asunder for its 
 insolence, and cast away. This combination does 
 not occur in Habakkuk, if we are right in rejecting 
 the common, but very difficult view that the 
 Chaldeans were raised up to be the instruments of 
 Yahweh's vengeance on the sinners of Judah, and 
 were then for their arrogance to be destroyed. 
 
 The prophet's mind is fixed on the certainty of 
 the tyrant's overthrow, even though delay may seem 
 to justify despair. Retribution lay in the nature of 
 things. His empire was based on brutality, so he 
 should perish in the blood that he had spilt. His 
 exploits filled him with an impious arrogance, so 
 Heaven must crush him and vindicate its outraged 
 majesty. In the methods of swelling his empire, 
 and the temper with which success inspired him, 
 lurked the secret of his ruin. All this is a very 
 impressive moral lesson, that does not quickly grow 
 out of date, but it adds nothing essentially new. 
 The prosperity of the wicked is not explained, we 
 are simply told that it cannot last. 
 
 Similarly, no explanation is given of the suffer- 
 
Gbe IRiae of tbe problem. 9 
 
 ings of the righteous, although the prophet demands 
 one, and expects to receive it on his watch- 
 tower. What is given him is an assurance that they 
 will soon be ended, and that by his fidelity the 
 righteous shall save his life. The righteous one is 
 Judah. 7 It is true that in this estimate of the nation's 
 character the prophet is sharply divided from his 
 predecessors. This is usually explained by the fact 
 that in the meantime the Deuteronomic Refor- 
 mation had taken place. Still, on any theory, 
 which places the prophecy before the fall of Jeru- 
 salem, there is difficulty. If it is the Chaldean 
 oppression which vexes the prophet's soul, that did 
 not begin till the reign of Jehoiakim had lasted 
 for some years, and under that worthless monarch 
 the Reformation had been undone, so that Judah could 
 seem righteous only to a very optimistic gaze. If 
 Budde is right in identifying the oppressor with 
 Assyria, and fixing the date about 615 B.C., then it 
 is true that Josiah was on the throne and the 
 Reformation policy was still in force. Judah was 
 
 7 The singular suggests to a modern reader that the individual is 
 intended, every righteous one shall live by his fidelity, all the more so 
 as the use of the passage in Hebrews, and especially in Paul's famous 
 watchword, so far removed from the thought of the prophet, " But he 
 that is righteous by faith shall live" (i,e., he shall live who is justified 
 by faith), concentrates attention on the individual. It is, of course, 
 possible that the reference here is individual. But it is not likely. The 
 singular in the former part of the verse refers to the oppressing nation, 
 and so in I 10 " 17 , 2 5 - 20 . This makes it probable that the just is righteous 
 Judah. On Peiser's view of the prophecy, it would apparently be the 
 prophet himself. 
 
io Gbe problem of Suffering 
 
 a righteous people, externally, at any rate ; but its 
 condition was prosperous. Assyria was decrepit, its 
 rule altogether relaxed ; why should the prophet com- 
 plain of its career of unchecked conquest, or why 
 cry out so bitterly of his country's suffering ? The 
 difficulty presents itself in this way. Habakkuk's 
 problem is the prosperity of the wicked and the 
 suffering of the righteous nation ; but, in his time, 
 on the usual view of his date, when the nation was 
 righteous, it was for the most part prosperous, and 
 during its period of wickedness its fortunes went from 
 bad to worse. 
 
 Moreover, the question might be raised, whether at 
 any point in this period, even the best, Judah could 
 be described as really righteous. Jeremiah's judg- 
 ment seems to have been throughout unfavourable. 
 The Reformation had not gone below the surface, 
 there had been no essential change in the situation, 
 from Jeremiah's point of view the problem why 
 righteous Judah suffered did not exist. Now if 
 they were contemporaries, we cannot deny that 
 Jeremiah saw more deeply than Habakkuk, and was 
 not betrayed by glittering illusions into uncon- 
 sciousness of the rottenness at the nation's heart. 
 But tfiis need not blind us to the merits of Habak- 
 kuk. There was room for the recognition of a relative 
 righteousness in Judah, as contrasted with the sin 
 of the heathen, and in this he does not stand alone. 
 Nahum is distinguished from his predecessors by 
 his omission of all reference to the sin of his country, 
 
1Rtee of tbe problem, n 
 
 and by the concentration of his wrath on Assyria. 
 And especially of the Second Isaiah, is it true that 
 while he insists on its sin, he yet regards Israel as 
 righteous in comparison with the heathen. The 
 difficulty is materially lightened if we place Habakkuk 
 in the exile. In any case he is not the mere victim of 
 a false optimism in his estimate of Judah ; there 
 was a problem, though all he could do in face of it 
 was to counsel patience, and no hint of a solution 
 was revealed to him. 
 
 While Jeremiah felt upon him no preisur of 
 mystery in the sad fate of Judah, lacerated though 
 he was in his tenderest feelings by it, yet his own lot 
 may well have led him to ponder on the dark riddle 
 of God's ways. For more than thirty years he 
 watched his country move blindly to its doom, 
 incredulous of his warnings and intolerant of his 
 appeals. Secure in the possession of the Temple, and 
 resting on Isaiah's once splendidly vindicated, but 
 now antiquated, doctrine of the indestructibility of 
 Zion, the Jews mocked the message of their Cassandra, 
 and shot the rapids into unlooked-for ruin. Through 
 all this period the lot of this greatest of the prophets 
 was harder than we can well imagine. Filled with 
 a passionate love for his country, how could he be 
 other than broken-hearted, as he sat long years by 
 the death-bed of his nation, well knowing that there 
 was no longer room for hope ? ' ' The harvest is 
 past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. 
 
12 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 .... Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes 
 a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and 
 night for the slain of the daughter of my people." 
 But there was not wanting to the bitterness of his 
 trouble the conviction that all its woes were the fruit 
 of its own ill-doing. And now to the anguish for 
 his people's suffering, and the deeper anguish for its 
 sin, there was added that which sprang from the 
 tragedy of his own career. He was forced, in loyalty 
 to his vocation, to set himself against the cherished 
 illusions of his countrymen, in vain attempt to stem 
 the torrent, which bore them like a mill race to their 
 doom. He denounces their sins, idolatry, violence, 
 oppression, fraud, theft, and murder, their trust in 
 the temple of Yahweh as a fetish assuring their 
 safety, unmindful of the fate that had blotted out 
 Shiloh, their schemes of rebellion, their desperate 
 warfare against inexorable facts. He bids the exiles 
 in Babylon reconcile themselves to captivity, he 
 warns the remmant in Jerusalem to submit while 
 there is yet time. Thus in spite of his pure and lofty 
 patriotism he seemed a faint-hearted traitor, who 
 stole the people's courage by his gloomy fore- 
 bodings. Again and again he risked death at the 
 hands of his infuriated countrymen. Had he been 
 of that temperament which seeks its joy in conflict 
 and rebukes transgression with a stern delight, 
 he had been a happier man. But sensitive and 
 high-strung, with unplumbed depths of tender- 
 ness and yearning affection, his life of contention 
 
IRtee of tbe problem, 13 
 
 was an intolerable burden. He pines for a lodge in 
 the wilderness away from the strife of tongues, 
 away from the treachery and deceit that have 
 poisoned all the relations of life. He curses the day 
 of his birth to see labour and sorrow. He laments 
 that his pain is perpetual and his wound refuses to be 
 healed. He has become a laughing-stock to the 
 people, and his message meets always with derision. 
 Terror is all about him, dark and sinister schemes are 
 plotted for his destruction. Fain would he yield to 
 the forces which would drive him from his post, fain 
 abandon the unequal struggle into which he has 
 suffered Yahweh to entice him. Yet Yahweh will 
 not let him escape, but bends His reluctant servant to 
 His will by the intolerable compulsion of His word. 
 4 * And if I say, I will not make mention of Him, nor 
 speak any more in His name, then there is in mine 
 heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones 
 and I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot 
 contain" A lonely man, forbidden the sweet solace 
 of wife and children, mocked and misunderstood by 
 those whom he longed to save, when the sharp agony 
 broke down his self-restraint and forced him out of 
 himself, to whom could he turn for sympathy but to 
 God ? In a strange tumult his soul goes out to God, 
 mingling bitter reproach for the pain and scorn He 
 has made him suffer, with prayers for vengeance on 
 his enemies, exultation at God's presence with him, 
 and gladness in the fellowship which he enjoys with 
 God. Yet his pleadings do not make God swerve 
 
H Gbe problem ot Suffering 
 
 from His purpose. He gains the assurance that his 
 enemies shall not prevail against him. But even 
 before his birth Yahweh had chosen him to fulfil 
 His great design. Therefore he cannot receive 
 discharge from his warfare. Nay, he may look to 
 a yet severer conflict. When he pleads the incon- 
 sistency between the righteousness of God and the 
 prosperity of the wicked, the baffled prophet receives 
 the reply, * ' If thou hast run with the footmen and 
 they have wearied thee, then how canst thou con- 
 tend with horses ? and if in a land of peace thou 
 flees t, how wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan ? " 8 It 
 was then, with no light on his suffering, save that 
 it was incident to the work God had appointed for 
 him, that Jeremiah had to set his face like a flint and 
 go wearily forward with a task more bitter Uian 
 death. 
 
 It lies beyond my scope to discuss the function of 
 suffering as a medium of revelation. Yet at this 
 point I may be suffered so far to transgress my limits, 
 as to indicate the part it played in transforming the 
 conception of religion. It was this life of unceasing 
 sorrow, this isolation and misunderstanding, that 
 forced the prophet from man to God. To Him he 
 lays bare his troubles, refers his tangled perplexities, 
 utters his keen reproaches or exulting confidence. 
 Beyond other men he is driven into intimate fellow- 
 ship with God, till it becomes a necessity of his 
 
 Duhrn regards I2 1 - 8 as the work f a later writer. I read bbreach for 
 boteach with Hitzig, Comill, and Duhm. 
 
IRise of tbe problem. 15 
 
 religious life. Thus he came to understand religion 
 as a personal relation between himself and God ; 
 thus the individual, not the State, became the 
 religious unit. Hence while his greatest doctrine, 
 that of the New Covenant, still speaks of a covenant 
 made with the nation, yet its fulfilment on Israel's 
 part is guaranteed by the fact that God puts His law 
 in their inward parts, and writes it on their heart, so 
 that for himself each individual knows Him. 9 It was 
 ample reward for all his sufferings to have this great 
 experience and to enshrine it in a doctrine in which 
 Christ and the Apostles recognised a fit expression of 
 Christianity. 10 
 
 In the first edition of his Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte (1893) 
 Smend argued strongly that the New Covenant passage (Jer. 318184) 
 originated in the post-exilic period (pp. 239 241). His argument 
 rested largely on his conclusion that Jer. 30, 31 reflected the conditions 
 of the post -exilic period. I think that his arguments carry conviction 
 for considerable sections of these two chapters. But I do not think 
 that the recognition of a large post-exilic element in them requires us 
 to pass this judgment on the prediction of a New Covenant. I had 
 independently reached this view of Smend's arguments a good while 
 before I found that Giesebrecht adopts the same position in his com- 
 mentary on Jeremiah. I am not convinced that the prophecy of a New 
 Covenant pre-supposes, as Smend argues, that the Old Covenant had 
 been already abrogated by the destruction of Jerusalem. For many 
 years before it happened, that catastrophe had been a prophetic certainty 
 to Jeremiah ; is it incredible that he had meditated on the future 
 relations of Yahweh and Israel ? And if the Old Covenant had failed, 
 what more likely than that he should anticipate a New Covenant ? The 
 form which this should take was naturally determined largely by his 
 own religious ideal. This, as we see from other passages, was inward 
 rather than external, and his experience had driven him to seek his own 
 religious satisfaction in personal fellowship with God. This, in spite 
 
16 Cbe problem of Suffering* 
 
 of Smend's denial, is, I think, the essential meaning of the passage. 
 I believe the doctrine of the New Covenant to be Jeremiah's, on the 
 ground of its harmony with his teaching, of the fact that he elsewhere 
 expresses the same thought, though less definitely, of the possibility of 
 explaining it out of his personal experience, and its remarkable relevance 
 to the historical situation. I may add that Marti, in his Geschichte der 
 israelitischen Religion (1897, p. 120), maintained the authenticity of the 
 passage, similarly Cheyne in his Jewish Religious Life after the Exile 
 (1898, p. 253). In the second edition of the work already mentioned 
 (1899) Smend reaffirms his position, and says that he has not been 
 convinced by Giesebrecht's arguments. In his article Covenant, in the 
 Encyclopaedia Biblica, Prof. Schmidt, of Cornell, treats the passage as 
 post-exilic, and repeats this view in his very radical article on Jeremiah. 
 Duhm adopts the same position in his recent commentary on Jeremiah 
 (1901). This is the most significant fact on that side of the controversy. 
 It is true that Duhm's treatment of the book is radical, but Duhm the 
 critic is not the measure of Duhm the interpreter of ideas, and least of 
 all in this case. He has a genuine enthusiasm for Jeremiah, and it is 
 with much reluctance that he has felt himself unable to escape the force 
 of Smend's arguments. Perhaps we might see in this a Nemesis on his 
 general critical theory of the book. 
 
 10 1 Cor. II 25 , cf. Mark 14*, Matt. 26 s8 ; 2 Cor. 3 6 . The passage 
 underlies much of the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE problem of suffering did not become acute 
 till Jerusalem had fallen. Even after 
 Jehoiachin and the best of the nation had 
 gone into captivity in 597 B.C., the buoyant optimism 
 of the people still scorned the solid ground of facts. 
 The prophets fed their fantastic hopes with brilliant 
 predictions, the offspring of a dogma estranged 
 from ethics and out of touch with , reality. In 
 two years, so Hananiah prophesied early in 
 Zedekiah's reign, the yoke of Babylon should be 
 broken, and the vessels of the Lord's house, the 
 king and the captives should return to Jerusalem 
 (Jer. 28). In Babylon also the prophets fervently 
 proclaimed the speedy end of the exile and denounced 
 Jeremiah for his warning that the captivity would 
 be long (Jer. 29). Many in Jerusalem, indeed, 
 entertained the strange delusion that they were 
 far better than those who had gone to Babylon, 
 and that while the exiles were abandoned of God, 
 the fact that they were spared was a guarantee of 
 
 c 
 
1 8 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 Yahweh's favour. But apart from some, who 
 despairing of Yahweh, had resorted to primitive 
 superstitions, or other forms of idolatry (Ezek. 8), 
 one and all, in Jerusalem and in Babylon, despising 
 the admonitions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, held firmly 
 to the conviction that Jerusalem could not be 
 destroyed. 
 
 When these glittering bubbles broke against the 
 brutal realities of a city in flames and a nation in 
 captivity, the problem of suffering became the 
 burning question for the people. It was solved in 
 various ways. Many held that the cause of their 
 trouble was to be found in the weakness or indiffer- 
 ence of Yahweh, and some had yielded to this 
 feeling even before the fall of the city (Ezek. 8 la 
 9). It was only to be expected that a people 
 which spurned the teaching of Jeremiah, and had 
 not absorbed the spiritual side of prophetic doctrine, 
 should readily see in the national disasters the 
 defeat of the nation's God. Or they said that 
 Yahweh had forgotten them, or that He had 
 forsaken His land. Some even went so far as to 
 ascribe their misfortunes to their exclusive worship 
 of Yahweh. In the very instructive narrative in 
 Jer. 44, we read that the fugitives in Egypt met 
 Jeremiah's rebuke of their idolatry and prophecy 
 of extermination with a resolute refusal to abandon 
 their ways. Rather they would continue to burn 
 incense to the Queen of Heaven, for while they still 
 served her they had lived in abundance and seen 
 
19 
 
 no evil. But since they had ceased to serve her, 
 they tell the prophet, " we have wanted all things, 
 and have been consumed by the sword and the 
 famine." There was, indeed, much plausibility 
 in their argument. With Josiah's Reformation 
 there had not come the permanent good fortune 
 that had been anticipated. Less than quarter of 
 a century had seen the death of Josiah, the Egyptian 
 and then the Chaldean oppression with the first 
 captivity. In eleven years more temple and city 
 were a smoking ruin. And now the unhappy 
 remnant, left behind in Judah, had fled to Egypt, 
 dreading the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar for 
 Ishmael's treacherous murder of Gedaliah, the 
 governor. From their standpoint something was 
 to be said for the belief that the source of their 
 misery was unfaithfulness to the Queen of Heaven. 
 No doubt, they were typical of many more in 
 Babylon. They have no significance for later 
 history, since they would quickly lose their racial 
 identity and be merged with the heathen among 
 whom they dwelt. The religious future lay with 
 those who held fast to Yahweh. 
 
 The temper of these was one of deep discourage- 
 ment, mingled with resentment against their God. 
 Their despair found expression in the popular 
 saying, " Our bones are dried up, and our hope is 
 lost ; we are clean cut off " (Ezek. 37 n ). To 
 uproot this settled conviction of the nation's 
 extinction, Ezekiel narrates his wonderful vision 
 
 C 2 
 
problem of Suffering. 
 
 of the valley of dry bones. In the spirit he is taken 
 to Jerusalem, and there he sees the valley filled 
 with a vast number of bones. And as he is led to 
 walk tenderly about them, not crushing them with 
 his feet, he scans them more closely and sees that 
 they are very dry. The flesh has rotted away or 
 birds and beasts have picked the skeletons clean, 
 and then the skeletons have fallen to pieces, and all 
 that is left is a mass of isolated bones. And these 
 have lost all sap of vitality, so that had it not been 
 Yahweh Who put it, the question " Son of man, 
 can these dry bones live ? " would have seemed 
 a mere mockery. The prophet can only answer 
 reverently, " Lord Yahweh, Thou knowest." 
 Then he is bidden prophesy over the bones. The 
 prophetic word has within it an inherent energy, 
 which works on to its own fulfilment (Isa. 55 "). 
 So, as he prophesies over them, bone seeks its mate 
 till skeletons are complete, then these are clothed 
 with sinews, flesh, and skin. Still they are only 
 dead bodies, so the prophet has once more to 
 prophesy for the breath to come from the four winds 
 and breathe into the dead that they may live. And 
 as this is accomplished they stand on their feet an 
 exceeding great army. 
 
 This vision seems at first to bear only indirectly 
 on our subject. But it shows in a very striking way 
 how profound was the hopelessness of the people. 
 The nation was as dead as the dry bones that Ezekiel 
 saw bleaching in the valley. Moreover, this 
 
21 
 
 metaphor of death, in the sense of national dis- 
 solution, will meet us again in a very important 
 connexion. It is true, however, that EzekiePs 
 message that Yahweh will cause the people to come 
 up out of their graves, has little relevance to the 
 problem of Israel's suffering. 
 
 But mingled with the people's despondency was 
 a feeling of resentment against their God ; and this 
 is important alike for the view of the Israelites and of 
 Ezekiel. It found expression in the proverb which 
 Jeremiah and Ezekiel tell us was current among their 
 contemporaries : " The fathers have eat en sour grapes, 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge " (Jer. 31 M ; 
 Ezek. i8 2 ). 
 
 This was a very natural explanation of their 
 misfortunes. It rested on the ancient belief in 
 solidarity, which went back to a very primitive 
 social condition, but which was now provoking 
 ethical criticism. That the sins of the fathers 
 were visited on the children to the third and fourth 
 generation was a principle expressed in the Decalogue. 
 We must not forget, of course, that this solidarity 
 did not work for evil only. While penalty passes 
 on to the third and fourth generation, mercy is 
 shown to thousands who belong to those who 
 love God. This feeling of unity in the life of a 
 people through all the stages of its history, this 
 sense of mutual responsibility and the punishment 
 of one generation for the sins of its predecessors, 
 was deeply wrought into the consciousness of 
 
22 $be problem ot Suffering, 
 
 Israel. And the principle of retribution, expressed 
 in the proverb about the sour grapes, is definitely 
 applied by the author of the Book of Kings to the 
 exile of Judah. Several times he asserts that this 
 and the other misfortunes of Judah were due to 
 the sin of Manasseh (2 Kings 21 n ~~ 15 ; 23 20 ' 27 ; 24 8>4 , 
 The same thought is found also in Jer. 15 4 . 
 The Jews in exile did not deny the principle, 
 they firmly believed it to be the explanation of 
 their own sufferings but they complained that 
 it outraged their sense of justice. God was not 
 treating them fairly ; Manasseh sinned and they 
 had to suffer : " The ways of Yahweh are not equal." 
 A large section of Ezekiel's teaching was called forth 
 as a protest against this accusation. 
 
 This prophet, who had gone into exile with 
 Jehoiachin in 597 B.C., held a position of high 
 responsibility. When Jerusalem fell in 586, 
 Jeremiah's life work was all but done. But Ezekiel 
 whose call came to him in 592, had the task laid 
 upon him, not simply of delivering the message of 
 judgment before the final stroke fell on the " rebel- 
 lious house," but of confronting the new conditions 
 and preparing for the restoration. His prophetic 
 career was controlled by the fundamental conception 
 of jthe glory of Yahweh, which had been stamped 
 into his soul by the vision which made him a prophet. 
 We might almost call him the Calvin of the Old 
 Testament. His temperament was very different 
 from Jeremiah's. He lacked his tenderness, his 
 
33 
 
 sympathy, his deep love, his passionate longing to 
 be loved ; he stood in the succession of Amos, and 
 Isaiah, and Micah, rather than in the succession of 
 Hosea and Jeremiah. His severity made the word 
 of judgment congenial to him, while Jeremiah's keen 
 denunciations, like Hosea's, quiver with his pain. 
 Nor is there any trace in his relations with God of 
 that intimate communion, which is so characteristic 
 of Jeremiah. He falls prostrate before the blinding 
 brightness of His glory, and knows himself to be but 
 a frail child of man in contrast with the all-powerful 
 and all-holy God. As he gazes upon Him, he is 
 crushed, like Isaiah, by the sense of his own un- 
 worthiness, and realises the hideous uncleanness of his 
 people. He thinks of Yahweh as seeking in all things 
 His own glory, keenly resenting all encroachment on 
 His honour and jealously guarding His holy Name 
 from all that would profane it. His own problem is 
 therefore not to reconcile with justice the hard fate 
 of Israel, but to clear the fair fame of Yahweh from 
 the aspersions cast upon it. If he seeks to justify 
 the ways of God to man, it is rather that God may 
 be vindicated, than that man's heart may be at 
 peace. He never felt the pressure of the mystery 
 of suffering ; where Yahweh governed, to recognise 
 a problem was to challenge the equity of His rule. 
 Nevertheless the problem existed for others, if not 
 for himself, and so it came about that he had to 
 discuss it. 
 With remarkable courage he repudiates the earlier 
 
24 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 conception of solidarity. It is wholly untrue to say 
 that the Jews are suffering for the sins of their 
 fathers. There is no such thing as vicarious punish- 
 ment, or vicarious reward. The father cannot suffer 
 for the sin of the son, nor the son for the sin of his 
 father. It is not true that the soul that sins shall 
 escape, and another perish in his stead. The soul 
 that sins, it and no other shall die. " The righteous- 
 ness of the righteous shall be put down to his own 
 account, and the wickedness of the wicked to his own 
 account " (i8 <2 ). The misfortunes of the people 
 were therefore not, as they, in agreement with 
 their own historian, urged, a penalty for the sins 
 of Manasseh, but the just reward of their own. 
 
 This doctrine of individual responsibility created 
 a revolution in religious thought and life. It is easy 
 to criticise it, and show that the doctrine of solidarity 
 expressed a truth deeply rooted in experience. The 
 old saying is true that the sins of the fathers are 
 visited on the children. We are members one of 
 another, no man lives to himself, our character and 
 conduct alike are largely determined, for good or ill, 
 by forces in whose release we had no share. It is 
 not by denying patent facts that we shall vindicate 
 the order under which we live . Yet EzekiePs doctrine 
 of individual responsibility is not on that account to 
 be brushed aside as illegitimate. Not only does it 
 express a great truth, but a truth that needed just 
 then to be asserted, even in an exaggerated form. 
 To the man, who bore on his conscience the load of 
 
25 
 
 a guilt not his own, the prophet spoke a liberating 
 word : a man has to answer only for sins he has 
 himself committed. To those, who thought that 
 the righteousness of the fathers availed to make good 
 deficiencies of their own, the stern law is proclaimed 
 that none can be saved by the good deeds of another, 
 even of the best. There is no transfer of merit, 
 there is, indeed, no superfluous merit to be trans- 
 ferred. " Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, 
 and Job were in it, they should deliver but their own 
 souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord Yahweh " 
 (14"). But the prophet carries the thought a stage 
 further. In the exercise of his freedom a man may 
 change his whole course of life, the wicked may turn 
 from his wickedness, or the righteous from his 
 righteousness. Habit does not bind him in shackles 
 that he cannot burst. And just as the sin or goodness 
 of others does not involve him in any consequences, 
 so little does the sin or goodness of his own past 
 life. The prophet looks forward to the great 
 impending judgment, which is to fall on Israel. 
 When this takes place, the righteous will survive 
 and the wicked be slain. The fate of each individual 
 is determined by the accident of his condition at the 
 moment when judgment is executed. If he has a 
 long past of sin behind him, but has repented of his 
 wickedness, then he shall be spared, and all his 
 former evil life shall not be remembered against 
 him. If on the other hand he has lived for many 
 years in righteousness, but has been betrayed into 
 
26 abe problem ot Suffering. 
 
 sin, and he is in a state of sin when judgment eomes, 
 then all his long career of goodness counts for 
 nothing in his favour, but he shall die in his sin. 
 Thus judgment selects its victims, not in virtue of 
 the general drift of a man's life, not in accordance 
 with his intrinsic character, or by balancing his good 
 against his evil deeds, but on what seems the merely 
 arbitrary principle that all may be determined by the 
 sheer accident of time. If judgment came a day 
 sooner or a day later, in how many cases fate would 
 be reversed. Yet even for this there is a relative 
 justification. With what encouragement comes the 
 message to the man who is fettered by habit and 
 crushed by accumulated sins, if a voice bids him 
 snap his chain, since he has the power, and assures 
 him that, if he repent, not all the transgressions of 
 a lifetime will affect his standing with God. And, 
 once more, how salutary the warning that no man 
 must presume on his past, so far as to be slack in his 
 efforts, or judge that his many righteous deeds can 
 secure him, if he lapses into sin. Thus hope comes 
 to the despairing sinner, while the righteous is 
 warned to relax none of his vigilance. Any moment 
 may be the moment of destiny, life must always be 
 strung to the highest ethical pitch. Since life and 
 death thus hung in the balance, and this act or that 
 might embody the fateful choice, the prophet's 
 mission is no longer simply to the nation, but to the 
 individual. He is responsible for uttering the 
 warning to the righteous that he abide in his right- 
 
27 
 
 eousness, lest he be cut off in his sin, and to the 
 wicked that he turn from his evil way and live. 
 He becomes a pastor, who is bound to watch for souls 
 as one that must give account. If, when the 
 catastrophe comes, any man be found in sin, whom 
 the prophet had failed to warn, he must die, but God 
 will require his blood at the prophet's hand. 
 
 It would probably be a mistake to suppose that 
 Ezekiel learnt his individualism from Jeremiah. 
 It is by no means certain that Jeremiah had for- 
 mulated his doctrine so early. There is also a wide 
 difference between the two doctrines. The emphasis 
 with Jeremiah is on personal religion, with Ezekiel 
 on personal responsibility. It was rather due 
 to the criticism passed on God's action that 
 Ezekiel proclaimed so uncompromising a doctrine. 
 Once he had said one generation cannot suffer for 
 the sin of another, it was only a step further to say 
 that one individual cannot suffer for the sin of 
 another. 
 
 With all this emphasis on the correspondence 
 between the fate of the individual and the condition 
 in which he happens to be at the moment when the 
 storm of judgment breaks, it is remarkable to find 
 Ezekiel so much concerned with the past. If the 
 children's teeth are set on edge because they have 
 themselves eaten sour grapes, if they suffer for their 
 own sins and not for the sins of their fathers, why 
 does the prophet dilate at such length on the sin of 
 the chosen people through all its history ? While 
 
28 abe jproblem or Suffering. 
 
 other prophets had spoken of the early purity of 
 Israel when Yahweh rescued her from bondage, wooed 
 her in the wilderness and won her for His bride, 
 Ezekiel sees nothing in all the stages of her career 
 but a series of gross acts of infidelity. With a 
 naked realism that strikes strangely on our finer 
 taste, he pictures her loathsome and insatiable 
 passion (chaps. 16 and 23). All the kindness 
 of Yahweh had been wasted upon her. She had 
 been idolatrous in Egypt, and He was minded 
 to cut her off, but in tender regard for His holy 
 Name, that it might not be profaned in the sight 
 of the heathen, He spared her and brought her into 
 the wilderness. But there again she provoked Him 
 by disobedience, and once more He lifted His hand 
 to smite, but lest His honour should be impugned 
 did not make a full end of her. Then He brought 
 her into the fair land of Palestine, but her change 
 of home brought no change of disposition. She 
 adopted the heathen sanctuaries of Canaan, and 
 ranged abroad to Assyria and Babylon to gratify 
 her idolatrous lust. Samaria had been destroyed, 
 yet Jerusalem took no warning by her sister's fate, 
 but plunged deeper in the mire of her unfaithfulness. 
 True daughter of her Hittite mother, her history did 
 not belie her origin. Born, only to be cast with 
 abhorrence into the open field, she moved Yahweh 
 to pity as He saw her lie uncared-for and weltering in 
 her blood, and He saved her from death. Then as she 
 grew to maidenhood, untended and forlorn, He 
 
29 
 
 plighted His troth to her and set His majesty upon 
 her, so that she prospered unto royal estate, and 
 gained renown among the nations for the perfection 
 of her beauty. But she perverted to the basest ends 
 the gifts wherewith His love had endowed her, 
 and became worse even than Sodom or Samaria. 
 Now at length the fury which has so long tormented 
 Him will burst its restraints, and He will be quiet 
 and rest, no longer fretted by her abominations. 
 
 This seems to represent a point of view incon- 
 sistent with the prophet's strenuous repudiation of 
 vicarious punishment. If from his own generation 
 is required the penalty for Israel's appalling career 
 of wickedness, were the ways of Yahweh equal after 
 all ? Does not the prophet's concern for Yahweh's 
 honour lead to conflicting results ? At one time 
 Yahweh remits the punishment, that His name may 
 not be profaned among the heathen, but at another 
 time concern for His purity causes Him to react with 
 a drastic vengeance against its violation. In one place 
 Ezekiel argues that the equity of Yahweh forbids 
 that one generation should suffer for another, 
 while elsewhere he seems to represent Yahweh's 
 honour as vindicated by visiting on the prophet's 
 contemporaries the accumulated transgressions of 
 Israel's sinful history. We should probably solve 
 the difficulty by recognising a distinction between 
 the nation and the individuals who compose it. 
 Nation and city have, so to speak, an independent 
 existence of their own, a continuous life, which 
 
30 ZTbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 stretches from the days of Egyptian bondage to the 
 prophet's own time. He sees that Israel is about 
 to plunge into ruin, and the city is to be destroyed. 
 He stands to plead for Yahweh and make plain the 
 righteousness of His dealings. Thus he comes to 
 draw his great indictment against the nation. He 
 looks away wholly from the individuals who constitute 
 it. Yahweh and Israel, these two and the relations 
 between them, engage his thought. The grace of 
 Yahweh met by Israel's ingratitude, His honour 
 compromised by her infidelities, His anger once and 
 again restrained through pity for His holy Name, 
 such was the tragic story of Yahweh and of her 
 whom in pity He had taken for His bride. That 
 Israel's existence as a nation should be ended, and 
 that Jerusalem and its temple should be destroyed, 
 created a problem for those who believed in the 
 election of Israel and saw in the temple Yahweh's 
 peculiar home. Ezekiel solved it by painting this 
 unrelieved picture of Israel's sordid career of vice, 
 which at last provoked Yahweh to the decisive act, 
 that, for His own sake rather than for hers, He had 
 so long deferred. There is thus no dark mystery in 
 Israel's suffering, her sin has merited it long ago. 
 The only cause for wonder is that Yahweh has 
 spared her so often. It has not been through any 
 compassion for Israel, but lest His reputation 
 among the heathen should be lowered by His 
 apparent inability to protect the people whom He 
 had chosen for His own. This motive had now 
 
31 
 
 ceased to operate as a restraint, for not only 
 had Israel's sin at length become intolerable, 
 but it was injuring His fame among the heathen. 
 Whether He punished or whether He forbore, 
 His reputation must suffer. Accordingly He 
 must first punish Israel for profaning His holy 
 Name before the nations; then He must restore 
 Israel to prove that the exile was not due to His 
 weakness, but was a penalty decreed by His anger. 
 Since the exultation of the heathen over Israel's 
 woes wounded the honour of Israel's God, punish- 
 ment must be inflicted on them. So determined, in 
 fact, is Yahweh to leave nothing undone, which 
 would enhance His glory, that when Israel is in its 
 own land, He fulfils the old prophecies on the 
 Scythians by dangling the def encelessness of His people 
 as a bait to lure Gog from the land of Magog to 
 attack Israel, to his own ruin. For Yahweh works to 
 magnify His own great Name by a complete 
 destruction of Gog's innumerable hordes, while 
 Israel lifts no finger save to bury the slain and burn 
 their armour and weapons. Thus Yahweh magnifies 
 Himself and sanctifies Himself, and makes Himself 
 known in the eyes of many nations. But while 
 the nations are exterminated that Yahweh may be 
 glorified, Israel's sufferings have become a thing of 
 the past. Not that this nation has deserved better 
 treatment than the others. But neither was it restored 
 mainly because it was Yahweh's favourite. " Not 
 for your sake do I this, saith the Lord Yahweh, 
 
32 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 be it known unto you : be ashamed and confounded 
 for your ways, O house of Israel" (Ezek. 36 w ). 
 Here, as everywhere, the all-sufficient motive for 
 His action is a jealous regard for His own holy Name, 
 and a desire to get Himself honour in the sight of 
 the nations. 
 
 To our Christian sentiment, Ezekiel seems in many 
 ways so alien, that it is with difficulty that we can 
 bring ourselves to do him justice. Awed by the 
 majesty of Yahweh, crushed by the consciousness 
 of human frailty, he knows nothing of the glad 
 freedom of the children of God, of rapturous com- 
 munion or unspeakable peace. He seems to set 
 on the throne of the universe a self-centred egoist, 
 Who bends the whole course of history to magnify 
 His own holy Name. We also think that God has 
 made us for Himself, yet not for His own sake, 
 since there is no self-seeking in Him, but because 
 He knows that He is Himself our highest good. 
 While the very loftiness of our conception of God's 
 love makes all the darker the mystery of the world's 
 pain, it is clear that from Ezekiel's standpoint this 
 problem could hardly arise. Man has no case to 
 plead against God. Yet it is well to be cautious in 
 judging the prophet. To say that his teaching 
 must be pronounced very inadequate from a 
 Christian standpoint is a mere truism. How could 
 it be anything else ? Even the sharp exaggeration 
 and one-sidedness in his doctrine of God and of 
 individual responsibility do not warrant us in 
 
33 
 
 passing a censure. For revelation is often not so 
 much the expression of absolute truth, as of the 
 truth specially adapted to the needs of those who 
 received it. A one-sided emphasis may have been 
 needed to correct exaggeration in the opposite 
 direction. Whatever defect we may recognise 
 from the Christian point of view, it must be admitted 
 that what saved the religion of Israel from dis- 
 solution by the subtle penetrating atmosphere of 
 Greek thought and life, was the hard legalistic 
 rind that protected it, which it owed to Ezekiel 
 more than to any other man. 
 
 D 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ube Servant of 
 
 AN interval of about a quarter of a century 
 elapsed between the time when we lose sight of 
 Ezekiel, and the time when the Second Isaiah 
 began his work. Although the exiles seem to have 
 been granted considerable freedom, yet it is clear from 
 the passionate hate of Babylon, which animates the 
 prophecies of her downfall, even more than from the 
 specific allusions to oppression, that they suffered no 
 little from their heathen masters. They had sunk 
 into a dull acquiescence, dismayed by the might of 
 Babylon, overwhelmed by the magnificence of her 
 gods. Yahweh had forgotten His city and His 
 people, and left them naked to the scorn of their 
 enemies. Prophets had foretold the rise of their 
 avenger, and the speedy downfall of their oppressor. 
 Yet they had not lifted them from their listlessness, 
 or succeeded in quickening the hope that had died 
 in their breast. But now their words seemed to find 
 a justification in the march of events. Cyrus had 
 begun his career of conquest, and though as yet the 
 
Servant of Uabweb. 35 
 
 exiles could not believe that the great empire 
 which held them as its thralls was destined to its 
 swift destruction, a few prescient souls divined that 
 in Cyrus the word, which cannot return to Yahweh 
 void, was effecting its own fulfilment. 
 
 Among these was the author, to whom we owe 
 Isa. 40-55, one of Israel's greatest prophets, one of 
 the world's chief masters in literature. The Second 
 Isaiah, for so he is usually called, since his name is 
 unknown, bids his people rouse themselves from their 
 despondency. He strikes the keynote of his prophecy 
 in its lovely opening, the music of which still echoes 
 in the English translation : * ' Comfort ye, comfort 
 ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the heart 
 of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is 
 accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned : that 
 she hath received at Yahweh's hand double for all her 
 sins " (Isa. 40 1( 2 ). It is not necessary for me to 
 linger over some of his great doctrines : his mag- 
 nificent vindication of Yahweh as the only God, proved 
 by His power to predict, and therefore to control the 
 future, the lofty descriptions of His government in 
 Nature and History, His graciousness in pardon, 
 His tenderness to the weak. All these thoughts 
 are set forth with a wonderful combination of 
 sweetness and force. But these are not the 
 deepest, as they are not the original element in his 
 prophecy. That is to be found in his treatment of 
 the hard problem of Israel's suffering, and his great 
 conception of the Servant of Yahweh. The keenest 
 
 D 2, 
 
36 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 controversy of recent times in the interpretation of 
 the Old Testament has raged now for several years 
 about the figure of the Servant. The view here 
 adopted is that the Servant of Yahweh is not an 
 individual but the Israelitish nation. It is desirable 
 to reserve the discussion of the views, which have 
 been recently put forward, and the defence of the 
 view here adopted for the Appendix, and to assume 
 here the results, which I shall there seek to make good. 
 I assume, further, as probable, though not demon- 
 strated, that the four so-called " Servant of Yahweh 
 poems" (42 1 - 4 , 49 1 ~ 8 , 50 4 ~ 9 , 52 13 53 12 ) were inserted 
 in their present position by the Second Isaiah him- 
 self, and were his own composition, though written 
 perhaps somewhat earlier. 
 
 The prophet accepts the sin of Israel as a partial 
 explanation of its suffering (40 2 , 42**', 43 aa ~ ae , 5O 1 ) 
 and attributes its punishment to Yahweh's wrath 
 (42 25 , 47 6 , 5I 17 " 28 , 54 6 ~ 9 ). He even reminds us of 
 Ezekiel in the assertion that it is for the sake of His 
 Name that Yahweh does not execute the extreme 
 penalty upon His people (48 9 ~ n ). Yet his thought 
 dwells far more on Yahweh's love and His pardoning 
 grace, displayed in the redemption of Israel from 
 Babylon. In language of great beauty he again 
 and again thrills his readers with the outpourings of 
 Yahweh's affection for Zion and for Israel. Zion 
 may say " Yahweh has forgotten me," and Israel 
 may utter the hopeless lament " My way is hid from 
 the Lord and my judgment is passed away from my 
 
Servant of UJalnveb. 37 
 
 God." But though a mother may forget her child, 
 He cannot forget Zion. She is graven on the palms 
 of His hands and her walls are ever before Him. 
 Tempest-tossed and disconsolate, Jerusalem shall 
 yet arise from the dust, and put on her beautiful 
 array, shall be established in righteousness, and her 
 walls shall flash with the fire of precious stones. Other 
 nations shall be the ransom price for Israel, the 
 divorced wife shall return to her husband, the 
 bereaved mother see with glad amazement a multi- 
 tude of children. The old transgressions shall be 
 cancelled, and Israel shall be saved with an ever- 
 lasting salvation. Far from all oppression and terror, 
 upheld and comforted by Yahweh, she is to be 
 gathered with great mercies, and with everlasting 
 kindness He will have compassion on her. 
 
 Along with all the splendid assertions of mono- 
 theism, which have given such lustre to the prophecy, 
 the reader finds other elements logically incompatible 
 with monotheism, but characteristic of a religion 
 which sank from its loftiest flights of universalism into 
 a narrow nationalism. Paul's deduction of univer- 
 salism from the unity of God, that if God is one, He 
 must be the God of Gentile as well as Jew (Rom. 
 3' 29 ' 80 ), was not indeed foreign to this prophet's 
 thought. But he had not grasped all that was 
 involved in it, that there is no respect of nations with 
 God, that He can have no favourite people. Hence 
 his doctrine that Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba, were 
 to be given as a ransom for Israel, that their labours 
 
38 be problem of Suffering, 
 
 and merchandise should become its possession, that 
 the nations should bring back the exiles, that kings 
 should be their nursing fathers and queens their 
 nursing mothers, that they should bow down to Israel 
 with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of its 
 feet. Yet when we remember how deeply ingrained 
 in the Jewish people was the misinterpretation of its 
 election, as an end in itself rather than as a means to 
 the world's highest good, we shall wonder less at his 
 assertion of Yahweh's favouritism to His chosen 
 Servant, than at the large-hearted conception of 
 Israel's mission to the Gentiles. 
 
 While it is in the Servant passages already men- 
 tioned, that this thought of Israel's relation to the 
 heathen is most prominent, at once the explanation 
 of its undeserved suffering, and the motive for its 
 restoration, yet in the rest of Isa. 40-55, whether the 
 author be the author of the Servant passages or not, 
 Israel's mission to the heathen is a leading idea. 
 Yahweh bids all the ends of the earth look unto Him 
 and be saved, and declares that to Him every knee 
 shall bow, every tongue shall swear. This is to be 
 accomplished through the glorious restoration of 
 Israel, at which kings and princes shall arise and 
 worship. Thus Israel becomes a light to the Gentiles, 
 Yahweh's witness to the peoples. " Behold thou 
 shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and a 
 nation that knew not thee shall run unto thee, 
 because of Yahweh thy God, and for the Holy One 
 of Israel ; for He hath glorified thee " (55*). 4t Lo, 
 
Gbe Servant of HJabweb. 39 
 
 these shall come from far : and lo, these from the 
 North and from the West ; and these from the land 
 of Sinim " (49 12 ). In Wellhausen's words : " There 
 is no God but Yahweh, and Israel is His prophet." 
 
 It is in the light of this mission to the heathen that 
 Israel's election to be Yahweh's Servant must be 
 interpreted. Ten or twelve times, apart from the 
 four Servant passages, Israel is described as Yahweh's 
 Servant, 1 and often we have some such phrase as 
 *' Thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have 
 chosen." In the far-off past, Yahweh had laid hold 
 of the nation and called it from the ends of the earth. 
 The nation has not always been faithful to its voca- 
 tion, it has been as unobservant of Yahweh's doing 
 as if it had been blind, as inattentive to His voice as 
 if it had been deaf. But now Yahweh has pardoned 
 the sin of His people, and for its redemption has 
 raised up Cyrus, through whom its glorious restora- 
 tion is to be accomplished. 
 
 Our special problem, however, emerges only very 
 slightly in the main portion of Isa. 40-55, whereas 
 the four Servant passages contain some of the 
 weightiest contributions in the Old Testament 
 toward its solution. It is very unfortunate that the 
 latter part of chapter 53 is so deeply corrupt, that 
 we cannot feel at all sure what the original text 
 
 ^i 8 - 9 , 42 19 , 43 10 , 44 1 - 2 - *, 45 4 , 48=, 50. The last of these is doubtful, 
 as there are strong reasons for regarding 5O 10 > u as a later appendix to 
 the third Servant passage. The Servant in 5O 10 seems, in fact, to be 
 an individual prophet. 
 
40 3be problem ot Suffering. 
 
 was. At the same time the leading ideas are still 
 sufficiently clear. 
 
 In the first of these passages 42 *~ 4 Yahweh is 
 the speaker. He introduces the Servant as one 
 whom He holds firmly in His hand, as His chosen in 
 whom He takes delight. Then we learn how he has 
 been prepared for his work. Yahweh has put His 
 Spirit upon him, and what the mission entrusted to 
 him is, to bring to the heathen a knowledge of the 
 true religion. Yahweh next describes the quiet 
 methods he adopts in his teaching ; unlike the older 
 prophets, he will not loudly proclaim his message in 
 the public ways. And he will be gentle in his treat- 
 ment of the faintest spark of good or truth in the 
 heathen. He will go steadfastly forward with his 
 mission, until he has established the true religion 
 among the heathen, who are already waiting for 
 his instruction. 
 
 In the second passage 49 1-6 the Servant is himself 
 the speaker. He bids the distant heathen nations 
 hearken, and tells them how Yahweh has chosen 
 him from his birth, prepared him for his prophetic 
 work, kept him in His protection, till the time was 
 ripe, and announced to him his call to be His servant, 
 through whom He would win Himself glory. Look- 
 ing back over his career, the Servant confesses his 
 failure, nevertheless expresses his confidence in God. 
 Now Yahweh, Who called him from his birth to be 
 His servant, has told him, that to bring back Israel 
 from exile is too slight a work for Him to accomplish, 
 
Scavant of Uabweb. 41 
 
 so He will make the Servant a light of the nations, 
 that His salvation may be to the ends of the earth. 
 
 In the third passage, 50 4 ~ 9 , the Servant is again the 
 speaker. It is true that the Servant is not named, 
 but the poem must belong to the cycle of Servant 
 passages, on account of its close affinities with the 
 other members of the group. It is needed, in fact, 
 to form the transition from the two earlier poems, in' 
 which the Servant is simply the teacher of the nations, 
 to the last passage 52 13 -53 12 , in which the martyrdom 
 and exaltation of the Servant are the main theme. 
 The Servant begins his soliloquy with a description 
 of his close relation to Yahweh, Who has given him 
 " the tongue of disciples," that is the faculty of 
 trained speech, by which he can utter the needful 
 word. Yahweh Himself is his instructor, and every 
 morning reveals His message to him, not in night 
 visions, but in his waking hours. This message he 
 has loyally accepted, though it has brought him 
 cruel indignity and punishment, which he has 
 patiently endured ; not flinching from the task 
 appointed to him. For Yahweh is his helper, there- 
 fore he felt no shame, and set his face resolutely like 
 a flint, to accomplish his work. Strong in the 
 assurance that God is his vindicator, he boldly 
 challenges any adversary to contend with him. 
 Since Yahweh has become his helper, he confidently 
 anticipates the destruction of his foes. 
 
 The fourth passage 52 13 ~53 12 is by far the most 
 important, but also the most difficult. The text is 
 
42 IXbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 in places very corrupt, so much so in the latter part 
 of 53, that it is impossible to restore it with any con- 
 fidence. It is also unfortunate that the division of 
 chapters, perhaps never so disastrous as here, has 
 been so effected as to conceal from the ordinary 
 reader that the poem begins with 52 13 not with 53 1 . 
 The unique place, that the passage holds in the 
 affections of Christendom, has tended to emphasise 
 the view that 53 is complete in itself. It should also 
 be added that the current Christian interpretation, 
 however just may be the application of the chapter 
 to Christ, has disguised the fact from the vast 
 majority of readers, that this was not the application 
 in the mind of the writer, who meant Israel by the 
 Servant. 
 
 The passage opens with Yahweh's prediction of 
 His Servant's approaching exaltation. Just as many 
 had turned with abhorrence from his countenance, 
 disfigured so as to seem no longer human, so many 
 nations will be startled and kings dumb with amaze- 
 ment at this unexpected elevation. By a fine 
 transition the prophet introduces a confession by 
 the nations, heightening the effect by leaving the 
 identity of the speakers to be inferred. Amazed at 
 the wondrous tidings of the Servant's exaltation 
 they burst into speech with the question : " Who 
 could have believed that which we have heard ? " 
 But how were they to know that this glorious destiny 
 was reserved for Israel, since Yahweh's wonder- 
 working power had not before been revealed to them? 
 
Servant of l^abweb. 43 
 
 And while they had received no intimation of this 
 splendid reverse of fortune that awaited him, the 
 previous career of the Servant amply excused their 
 failure to forecast his future. His origin was poor 
 and contemptible, he grew up before his fellow- 
 nations like a dwarfed plant in a barren soil. Men 
 found nothing attractive in him, but rather despised 
 and forsook him, for he was smitten with a disease, 
 whose ravages made his appearance so repulsive, 
 that men turned in loathing from him. Now the 
 nations confess how utterly they had misconceived 
 the truth. While they looked on the Servant as 
 proved by his sufferings to be an exceptional victim 
 of Divine wrath, it was their own pain and sickness 
 that he was enduring. Their rebellion caused his 
 suffering, his chastisement procured their peace and 
 wrought out their healing. They had gone astray , 
 in self-will, and Yahweh had inflicted on him the < 
 penalty of their sin. With lamb-like meekness he / 
 endured oppression, and was taken away without 
 justice, while none pondered on his fate, that he was 
 smitten to death for the sin of the nations. After his 
 death he was buried in a dishonoured grave, though 
 he was innocent of violence or deceit. So men had 
 judged, but Yahweh judged otherwise. He justi- 
 fied His Servant and delivered him from trouble, 
 satisfied him with a long-lived posterity. In the 
 eyes of the nations the Servant shall be justified, 
 since he has borne their sins. Thus springing out 
 of his career of sacrifice and vicarious atonement, 
 
44 {The problem of Suffering. 
 
 though that career seemed to close in ignominy and 
 death, will come the Servant's exaltation, when 
 restored to life he becomes the equal of the great 
 rulers of the world. 
 
 The following translation is offered as representing 
 something like the original Hebrew text of the four 
 passages, though in some cases we are reduced to 
 quite uncertain restoration. 
 
 I. Isa. 42 !~ 4 . 
 
 Lo ! my Servant, 2 whom I hold fast, 3 
 
 My chosen, in whom my soul hath pleasure ; 
 
 I have put my spirit upon him, 
 
 Judgment 4 will he bring forth to the nations. 
 
 He will not cry nor lift up, 5 
 
 And he will not make his voice heard in the street. 
 
 2 The LXX. reads here, "Jacob, my Servant," and in the next 
 line "Israel, my chosen." This is correct as an interpretation, but is 
 probably an insertion under the influence of 44', 45 4 , cf. 41 s , where the 
 names occur in an inverse order. The insertion here disturbs the 
 rhythm. 
 
 3 Cf. 41 lo , where Israel is similarly described. 
 
 ^Judgment means here the whole complex of religious ordinances, 
 hence like the similar use of the Arabic </irt t as the commentators remind 
 us, is equivalent to the true religion. 
 
 s "Lift up,'' i.e., lift up his voice. Some read yisA'ag "will roar" 
 instead of yissct, but, as Giesebrecht objects, the word seems too strong. 
 The contrast is often supposed to be with the more demonstrative 
 character of earlier prophecy. This suits an individual better than 
 a national interpretation, and we should probably think of Israel as 
 fulfilling its vocation for the world by quiet missionary activity, not by 
 participation in the politics of great empires. The Servant, as Maiti 
 says, follows the method of his Lord, whose working is beautifully 
 compared by Isaiah to "the waters of Shiloah that go softly" (7). 
 
Gbe Servant of UJabweb. 45 
 
 A bruised reed he will not break, 
 
 And a glimmering wick he will not quench. 6 
 
 To the peoples 7 he will bring forth judgment, 
 
 He will not glimmer nor be crushed, 8 
 
 Till he set judgment in the earth, 
 
 And for his teaching the far lands wait. 9 
 
 II. Isa. 49 ^ 
 
 Hearken ye far lands to me, 
 And listen ye distant peoples : 
 Yahweh hath called me from my birth, 
 From my mother's womb hath He made mention of 
 my name. 
 
 Nevertheless, since the author conceived of Israel as Yahweh's prophet 
 to the world, there seems to be no reason why the form of his description 
 may not have been determined by a tacit contrast to the shrill utterances 
 of the prophets in the crowded streets. 
 
 6 Since the Servant has no function to fulfil except for the heathen, the 
 meaning is that he will cherish and strengthen the faint sparks of truth 
 which are to be found among them ; there is no reference to any efforts 
 to rekindle the smouldering flame of truth or goodness in Israel. 
 
 7 The pointed text reads tiemeth, which should probably be translated 
 " in accordance with truth." But it is better to alter the pointing with 
 Giesebrecht, and read l e ummbth "to the peoples." We thus get 
 a correspondence with verse i, "Judgment will he bring forth to the 
 nations." 
 
 s oryaruts we should with Ewald and many others, following the 
 Codex Babylonicus, read^wAr (Imperfect niphal of ratsats). 
 
 9 The last line is not a continuation of the preceding, dependent on 
 "till." It is an independent sentence asserting that the heathen are 
 already eagerly desiring the truth, which the Servant is to bring them, 
 a thought for which the preceding verse prepares us. For this 
 wonderfully liberal estimate of the heathen we may compare Mai. I n , 
 and the beautiful description of their willingness to receive the truth, 
 given in the Book of Jonah. 
 
4 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 And He made my mouth like a keen blade, 
 
 In the shadow of His hand He hid me, 
 
 And He made me a polished arrow, 10 
 
 In His quiver He concealed me. 
 
 And He said to me " Thou art my servant, 
 
 Israel, 11 in whom I will get myself glory." 
 
 But I said " In vain have I toiled, 
 
 Idly and to no purpose have I exhausted my strength : 
 
 Nevertheless my right is with Yahweh, 
 
 And my reward with my God." 
 
 And now saith Yahweh, 
 
 Who formed me from the womb to be His Servant, 
 
 To bring back Jacob to Himself, 
 
 And that Israel might be gathered to Him, 12 
 
 And I was honoured in the eyes of Yahweh, 
 
 And my God was my strength 
 
 10 This is the usual translation, but Buhl (Gesenius-Buhl sub voce) 
 thinks it means " sharpened arrow " 
 
 H Duhm, of course, strikes out ; * Israel" as an incorrect gloss. 
 Even some of those, who accept the identification of the Servant with 
 Israel, admit that this is possible even if not probable (so Skinner, 
 Marti and Giesebrecht, the last of these thinking that there may be an 
 intentional mystery hanging over the identification of the Servant). 
 There is no solid reason whatever for assuming it to be a gloss, unless 
 we adopt the view that the Servant is an individual. The balance of 
 clauses is disturbed by its removal. All the versions read it, and it is 
 omitted only in one Hebrew MS. (Kennicott 96). Giesebrecht thinks 
 the whole of verse 3 may be an insertion. His reasons are not conclu- 
 sive, they are stated in a footnote on p. 49 of his Der Knecht Jahves. 
 
 12 49 8 ' 6 has been a stronghold of those who hold that the Servant 
 cannot be identified with the empirical Israel, since in these verses they 
 seem to be expressly distinguished, and it seems to be affirmed that 
 part of the Servant's mission is to restore Israel from exile. There are 
 weighty antecedent objections to this, which are stated in the Appendix 
 (pp. 1 88, 189). Yet the passage does not demand this interpretation, 
 
Gbe Servant of H?abweb* 47 
 
 " Too slight a thing is it to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 13 
 
 And to bring back the preserved of Israel, 
 
 So I make thee a light of the nations, 
 
 That My salvation may be to the ends of the earth." 
 
 though the immediate impression it makes perhaps favours it. Yet Duhm, 
 in spite of his vigorous rejection of the national theory, thinks that there 
 is no reference here to a restoration of Israel by the Servant. Unfor- 
 tunately the text of 49 5 is uncertain. It is not necessary to discuss the 
 text here, since the general sense is plain that the passage speaks of 
 a bringing back of Israel to Yahweh The crucial question is Who 
 brings Israel back ? Usually it is said that it is the Servant, in which 
 case a distinction between Israel and the Servant would seem to be 
 made out. Some scholars, however, including Duhm, insist that it is 
 Yahweh. This harmonises much better with the general language of 
 the prophet, since nowhere else have we the faintest hint that this 
 function is entrusted to the Servant. We could accordingly freely 
 translate That he might bring back Jacob to Himself. The reference 
 is apparently to the return from Babylon to Yahweh's land, though 
 Budde ingeniously refers it to the Exodus translating ' ' In that he 
 brought Jacob again (out of Egypt) to him, and drew Israel to him 
 (into the desert)" (American Journal of Theology iii., p. 520 = Ebed- 
 Jahwe Lieder, pp. 22, 23), This connects very well with the mention 
 of Israel's call in the preceding verse, but it is improbable since the 
 reference is surely to the same event as in verse 6, t'.e., the restoration 
 from exile. In any case there is no need to think of the Servant as 
 restoring Israel, the contradiction and other difficulties thus created 
 outweighing the impression which the words themselves most naturally 
 give. Giesebrecht, however, argues at length and very forcibly that 
 the two lines translated above, "To bring back Jacob to Himself and 
 that Israel might be gathered," should be struck out as a gloss, 
 occasioned by the gloss in verse 6 (Der Knecht Jahves, pp. 40 46). 
 I think that he may quite probably be right, and certainly the present 
 text is very awkward ; but it is rather drastic treatment, and for our 
 purpose we may well be content with the result that Yahweh and not 
 the Servant is represented as restoring Israel. 
 
 13 The present Hebrew text was, before Dillmann, explained as in 
 the translation of the Revised Version : "It is too light a thing that 
 thou shouldest be my Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to 
 
48 ttbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 III. Isa. so*-. 
 
 The Lord Yahweh hath given me 
 
 A disciples' tongue, 
 That I might know to answer the godless 
 
 With upright words. 14 
 
 restore the preserved of Israel." This clearly means that part of the 
 Servant's function is to restore Israel from exile. But Dillmann 
 pointed out in his note on the passage that if the prophet had meant 
 what earlier commentators had supposed him to mean, the Hebrew 
 would have been different. We must accordingly translate the present 
 text with Dillmann : " Too light a thing for thy being my Servant is it 
 to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel." 
 This may be explained in two ways (a) It is not worthy of the Servant's 
 position that he should simply restore Israel from exile, (b) It is not 
 worthy of the Servant's position that Yahweh should restore Israel 
 from exile. But the Hebrew, as thus correctly interpreted, is very 
 clumsy. Duhm drew what seems to be the necessary inference that the 
 words, "for thy being my Servant," are a gloss. In this he has been 
 followed by Cheyne, Marti, and Giesebrecht. When these words are 
 struck out, and we translate as above, the passage most naturally means 
 that Yahweh considers the restoration of Israel from exile too light 
 a thins for Him to accomplish, so He will make Israel a light to the 
 nations. The line is virtually equivalent to "Too slight a thing is it 
 for Me to raise up the tribes of Jacob." The gloss probably originated 
 through a marginal note, intended to explain in what respect the 
 restoration of Israel was "too slight a thing." It was too slight for 
 the Servant's position as Servant of Yahweh. When the gloss is 
 omitted there remains no reason for distinguishing between the Servant 
 and Israel and supposing that the former has a task to accomplish for 
 the latter. 
 
 "The present text is translated in the R.V., "That I should know 
 how to sustain with words him that is weary." This is open to serious 
 objections. We have no other occurrence of a verb *fith in Hebrew. 
 If it is correctly read here its meaning can only be conjectured, 
 "sustain" or "refresh" suits the mention of "the weary." The 
 general drift of the passage, however, suggests rather that a mention of 
 the Servant's adversaries should come here instead of the weary. 
 
Sbe Servant of l^abweb. 49 
 
 In the morning He awakeneth mine ear 
 
 To hear like disciples. 
 The Lord Yahweh hath opened 
 
 For me the ear ; 15 
 And I was not rebellious, 
 
 I turned not backward. 10 
 
 Further dabfir should hardly mean "with words," for this we expect 
 a preposition to be prefixed. The following words are also suspicious 
 (as the insertion of Paseq suggests). They are ya'lr babboqer babboqer 
 yd'lr, "he wakeneth in the morning in the morning he wakeneth." 
 At first sight Duhm's suggestion, accepted by Marti and Cheyne 
 (Sacred Books of the Old Testament}, that "he wakeneth in the 
 morning " should be struck out as incorrect dittography of the following 
 words, seems the best solution. We should, on the whole, however, 
 have expected the words in that case to have been repeated in the same 
 order. It seems plain that the repetition of babboqer " in the morning" 
 has arisen through dittography, so it may be struck out. We have 
 then to emend the preceding words. For la 1 tit h it is simplest to 
 read with Graetz, followed by Duhm and Giesebrecht (Der Knecht 
 Jahves, p. 54), la'anolh "to answer," which involves an extremely 
 slight alteration of the Hebrew. For ya'eph, " the weary," I have 
 adopted Duhm's suggestion chUneph^ "the godless." There remains 
 dnbar yi'Jr. We can change ya'lr into ydshar^ "an upright word,' 
 or we can read dibre yosher^ " words of uprightness " assuming that the 
 yod at the end of the first word has fallen out because the next word 
 began with it. This is the emendation adopted above. 
 
 15 Duhm, followed by Cheyne and Marti, omits this couplet as 
 a variant oi the clause " in the morning he wakeneth mine ear " in the 
 preceding verse. Perhaps the connexion is improved by the omission, 
 but there is no decisive reason for it. 
 
 16 The Servant asserts his loyal acceptance of Yahweh's message. It 
 is quite possible that the author of the Book of Jonah had this passage 
 in his mind when he represented Israel as refusing the mission, to which 
 God had called her through the Second Isaiah, to proclaim to the 
 heathen the knowledge of the true God. 
 
 E 
 
50 be ptoblem of 
 
 My back I gave to smiters, 17 
 
 And my cheeks to those who plucked out the hair, 
 My face I hid not 
 
 From shame and spittle. 
 But the Lord Yahweh helpeth me, 
 
 Therefore I was not ashamed ; 
 Therefore I made my face like flint, 18 
 
 And knew that I should not be ashamed. 
 Near is He that Justine th 19 me, who will strive with me ? 
 
 Let us stand forth together ! 
 Who is mine adversary ? 
 
 Let him draw near to me ! 
 Lo ! the Lord Yahweh helpeth me, 
 
 Who is he that shall condemn me ? 
 Lo ! all of them shall be worn out as a garment, 
 
 The moth will devour them. 20 
 
 17 See the very striking parallel, Psalm 129', "The plowers plowed 
 upon my back; They made long their furrows." The sufferer who 
 speaks in this Psalm is definitely said to be Israel, and the afflictions 
 are those suffered by the nation from its youth. This shows that the 
 whole of the description of persecution in this verse may have a refer- 
 ence to the sufferings of Israel, culminating in the exile. It is clear 
 why the Servant says in the previous verse that he had not been 
 rebellious. He had been exposed to persecution, but he had not 
 quailed before it. 
 
 18 For the metaphor cf. Etek. 3 8 - 8 ; for the thought Jer. 
 
 19 To justify is to pronounce in the right. 
 Cf. Isa. 1*-*. 
 
Gbe Servant or JJabweb. 51 
 
 IV. Isa. 52 13 53 12 - 
 
 Lo ! my servant Israel 21 shall be exalted, 
 He shall be lifted up and be very high. 
 Even as many were appalled at him, 22 
 
 31 The Hebrew text reads yaskll. The R.V. renders the word in its 
 usual sense "shall deal prudently," but the context requires the sense 
 given in the margin, " shall prosper." Duhm strikes out the word, on 
 account of its unsuitability, in its usual sense, to the context. It is 
 possible to translate as in R.V. margin, and this would be better than 
 simply striking it out. Cheyne now gets the same sense by reading 
 yatsllach (Critica Biblica, p. 45). But the accumulation of four, largely 
 synonymous, verbs is not what we should expect, and it seems much 
 better to accept Budde's brilliant emendation yisr'ael " Israel." It is 
 not difficult, and is supported by 49 3 . Marti adopts it. Giesebrecht 
 thinks it rather arbitrary (see also the note on " Israel " in 49 3 p. 46), 
 and retains the present text, translating "shall prosper." 
 
 22 The text of verse 14 certainly needs considerable emendation. It 
 is clear in the first place that for "at thee" we should, with the 
 Peshitta and Targum, read "at him," the change to the second person 
 being very awkward. Next, the present text creates a very serious 
 difficulty by inserting a parenthesis introduced by "so" after a protasis 
 beginning with "as." In this way the reader is misled into thinking at 
 first that this " so " introduces the apodosis, but, as he reads on, 
 discovers that he is mistaken, and that the apodosis is really 
 introduced only with verse 15. The writer is hardly likely to be 
 responsible for a confused sentence of this kind. The objection is 
 disguised from the English reader by removing " so " from the 
 beginning of the clause, and by marking it as a parenthesis. We 
 might mitigate the difficulty by assuming with Duhm that a line has 
 fallen out after "even as many were appalled at him," containing the 
 apodosis. Duhm suggests, "so shall he shine forth before many;" 
 Cheyne (Sacred Books of the Old Testament), "so will many in him 
 take delight." This proceeds from the probably correct feeling that 
 a line is required to complete the parallelism. But, apart from the 
 parenthesis, the connexion with verse 15 remains difficult. Marti 
 suggested a more drastic remedy. He transferred the parenthesis to 
 the end of 53 3 , and thus brought protasis and apodosis together. He 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Cbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 [And princes shuddered at him], 
 
 (For marred so as not to be human was his visage, 
 
 And his form so as not to be that of the sons of men), 
 
 So shall he startle 23 many nations, 
 
 At him kings shall shut their mouths, 
 
 For what was not told them they see, 
 
 And what they did not hear they consider. 
 
 agreed with Duhm that a line has been lost, hut thought that it 
 contained a parallel to the preceding line and not its apodosis. In 
 this way he got two parallel lines in the protasis corresponding to the 
 two in the apodosis. Since in verse 15 kings is parallel to "many 
 nations," he suggested for the missing line, " And princes shuddered 
 at him," -ufsarim scfaru 'alayw. The reference to "princes" is 
 supported by 49", and the assonance may also commend this recon- 
 struction. I have inserted the clause in square brackets above, to 
 indicate that something of this kind originally stood in the text. 
 Giesebrecht is convinced that a line has been lost, but does not attempt 
 to restore it. I have not followed Marti, however, in removing the 
 parenthesis. Giesebrecht's objection that it is much too strong to be 
 appropriate after 53 2 seems to me to be sound The real objection to 
 it is not that it is a parenthesis, but that it is introduced by "so." 
 Giesebrecht removes this by the very simple remedy of changing ken 
 "so" into kl "for," and I have followed him in my translation. 
 
 - 3 This is a famous crux. The word yazzch is Hiphil of nazflh. It 
 1 elsewhere only in the sense of sprinkling A liquid in ceremonial 
 acts. It is not used like the English "sprinkle," with an acci. 
 of the person on whom the liquid is sprinkled . \Ve cannot, therefore, 
 translate "so shall he sprinkle many nations." The on'. 
 could impose on the word, if the meaning "sprinkle" is retained, 
 would be that the Servant should scatter nations, as water i 
 when it is sprinkled. It is generally agreed that this sense is impv il U- 
 here, straining the language, and out of harmony with the relations 
 between the Servant and the nations as elsewhere descrii-ed. The 
 view now usually taken is that it means " to cause to spring up," 
 "to startle," this sense being derived from the Arabic word nn-,<i t " t<> 
 leap." I have adopted this in the translation, though with some 
 
Cbe Servant of l^abweb. 53 
 
 "Who could have believed that which we have heard ? 24 
 But to whom was the arm of Yahweh revealed ? 
 
 misgivings. Cheyne objects that the word is rare in Arabic classical 
 literature, and that Hebrew has so many words for "leap" that it is 
 unnecessary to have recourse to Arabic. Followed by Marti, he has 
 suggested yishtachn-wii^ which occurs in the parallel 49?, "So shall 
 many nations bow down before him," Moore, followed by Duhm, 
 reads yirgizu "shall be moved." 
 
 24 At this point the prophet introduces a confession by speakers, who 
 are left unnamed. This is in accordance with his custom elsewhere, 
 each of the Servant passages opens without any mention of the speaker. 
 It is here assumed that the heathen are the speakers, the reasons for this 
 conclusion are given in the Appendix (pp. 185-187). For the translation 
 " Who could have believed ? " see Giesebrecht Beitrage, p. 159. Budde 
 Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder, p. 14, n. 2, aptly compares ml millet, " who would 
 have said?" Gen. 2i 7 . The expression is probably borrowed from 
 colloquial speech, and is like our phrase "Who would have thought 
 it ?" The translation " our report " is very unfortunate. The nations 
 ask : Who could have believed the tidings we have now heard ? In 
 the shock of surprise caused by the Servant's exaltation, to which 
 reference has just been made, the "many nations" break forth into 
 this expression of their astonishment. There is no real contradiction 
 between this and the statement that "kings shall shut their mouths." 
 Both convey the same thought, the extreme amazement of the heathen. 
 A poet may in one sentence represent them as dumb with astonishment, 
 and in the next as uttering that astonishment in speech, without exposing 
 himself to any charge of inconsistency, except from very prosaic readers. 
 Nor is the objection, urged by Prof. Skinner, conclusive, that the nations 
 "are surprised by the Servant's exaltation because they had not pre- 
 viously heard of it ; those who now speak confess a deeper fault, they 
 have heard but did not believe." The whole tone of what follows 
 appears to show that the speakers, while confessing their misconception, 
 urge that there was abundant excuse for it. The second line of 53' 
 accordingly seems to mean that their former attitude to the Servant was 
 not to be wondered at, since none of them had received any revelation 
 f the great act Yahweh was about to accomplish. 
 
54 abe problem ot Suffering. 
 
 For he grew up as a sapling before us, 25 
 
 And as a root out of a dry ground, 
 
 He had no form that we should look upon him, 
 
 No visage that we should desire him, 26 
 
 Despised and forsaken of men, 27 
 
 A man of pains and familiar with sickness, 
 
 And as one from whom men hide the face, 
 
 Despised, and we regarded him not. 
 
 But it was our sickness, that he bore, 
 
 And our pains, he carried them, 
 
 While we regarded him as stricken, 28 
 
 Smitten of God and afflicted. 
 
 25 With Evvald and several others, it is better to read I'phdncynu 
 "before us" than l e phdndyw "before him," though Duhm, Skinner, 
 and Budde still retain the latter. Marti suggests fphdnlm " aforetime." 
 
 26 Duhm and Cheyne omit w e nirehu (translated in R.V. " and when 
 we see him") as due to dittography of mai'eh "visage." But this 
 destroys the parallelism. It is much better to retain the word and, 
 disregarding the accents, connect it with the preceding words, as in 
 R.V. margin. We thus gain a parallelism of the two lines. In that 
 case, since the former of the two lines contains two substantives as 
 against one in the second line, Bertholet's suggestion that we should 
 delete vutlo hdddr ' ' nor comeliness " is very plausible. 
 
 27 Cheyne, followed by Marti, suspects -wachadal iskim " forsaken of 
 men." The form Ishlm as the plural of isA occurs in Psa. 141* Prov. 8 4 , 
 but it is unusual, and coming immediately before Ish is surprising. 
 Suspicion is strengthened by the fact that the word after isA begins with 
 m, so that is Aim might have arisen through dittography of what follows. 
 On the other hand, the present text is fine, and supported by the 
 context. 
 
 28 By "stricken" we are probably to understand a leper, the word 
 was used specially in this sense, the leper being regarded as suffering 
 in an eminent degree from a stroke of God. The loathsome appear- 
 ance and exclusion from society suggest the same view. It is an 
 interesting coincidence that Manetho asserted that the Hebrews partly 
 sprang from the lepers of Egypt. 
 
Cbe Servant of IPabweb. 55 
 
 But he was pierced 29 through our rebellions, 
 
 Crushed through our sins, 
 
 The chastisement to win our peace was upon him, 
 
 And by his stripes was healing wrought for us. 
 
 We had all gone astray like sheep, 30 
 
 We had turned each his own way, 
 
 And Yahweh made to light on him 
 
 The sin of us all. 
 
 He was oppressed, yet he humbled himself 
 
 And opened not his mouth, 
 
 As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, 
 
 And as a sheep before its shearers is dumb. 31 
 
 Excluded from judgment he was taken away, 32 
 
 29 M e choldl is usually regarded as a Poal participle of chdlal, and 
 translated "pierced." Cheyne considers this to be questionable, and 
 points m e ckulldl, which he translates " dishonoured." 
 
 30 The reference is probably to the idolatry of the heathen. 
 
 81 The words " and he opened not his mouth " at the close of verse 7 
 are probably an incorrect repetition from the previous part of the veise. 
 It disturbs the parallelism, 
 
 32 At this point both text and interpretation begin to be uncertain. 
 The first line is very variously translated. The R.V. translation gives 
 to min the sense " by" ; the meaning is then that although his death 
 was the result of a judicial process, it was nevertheless an act of 
 unjustifiable oppression. The R.V. margin translates min by "from," 
 and the meaning is, in that case, that he was released from his life of 
 oppression. This gives a good general sense, but " judgment " is not 
 very clear. Others translate " Without hindrance and without right he 
 was taken away," which means that no one interfered to prevent his 
 death, which took place without regard to right. Marti suggests a very 
 easy emendation 'dtsur mimmishpdt " excluded from judgment." This 
 involves little more than a transposition of consonants. This is adopted 
 above. I would suggest as an alternative to the explanation he gives 
 of the corruption that the first letter of the verse may have arisen 
 through dittography of the two preceding letters. 
 
56 Cbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 And his fate 88 who considered it, 
 
 That he was cut off out of the land of the living, 
 
 That for our rebellions 34 he was smitten to death ? 35 
 
 present text doro is a well-known crux. The word means, 
 according to its usual significance, " his generation." The translation 
 " who shall declare his generation ? " is out of the question. The R.V. 
 translation ' ' and as for his generation who among (hem considered " is 
 quite admissible, but not at all the obvious rendering of the Hebrew. 
 It is possible to follow Knobel and translate "his dwelling-place" as 
 in Isa. 38 12 . Duhm accepts this translation, and takes the meaning to 
 be, who asks after his dwelling-place with God ? Skinner prefers to 
 think of his earthly dwelling-place, no one cares to ask about it, he has 
 vanished from the thoughts of men. The word in this sense, however, 
 is very rare, and borrowed from Aramaic. It is simplest, though as 
 Duhm says not necessary, to read with Cheyne, who is followed by 
 Marti, dark'o " his way," i.e., " his fate'' (cf. Psa. 37', Isa. 4O 2 ?). 
 
 ^The text reads "for the rebellion of my people." This seems to 
 constitute an insuperable objection to the identification of the Servant 
 with Israel, since here the Servant is said to be smitten for Israel's 
 rebellion. Since, however, according to our results elsewhere, the 
 national interpretation is a fixed point for us, we must rather seek to 
 bring this passage into harmony with that view. "My people" is 
 strange in this context. If the first person refers to Yahweh this creates 
 difficulties, for both before and after in this context (verses I, 6, 10), 
 Yahweh is spoken of in the third person, He does not Himself resume 
 His speech till verse n. It is also unlikely that the prophet should 
 here refer to himself. Elsewhere he keeps his own personality in the 
 background, why should he intrude it here ? The first person is used 
 in 53 1 ~ c , but it is the first person plural. If the prophet includes 
 himself among those who speak in 53 1 ~ c , why should he all at once 
 iom the plural to the singular, and now speak as though he were 
 not included among those for whom the Servant suffered ? More- 
 over, when we remember that the text of the latter pajt of the 
 chapter i.-, very corrupt, and it is generally agreed that the two following 
 
 emended, we are perfectly justified in suspect! i 
 
 H nindness here. Of the emendations proposed I think Budde's, adopted 
 I.) Marii, mipfsha''fnu t "for our rebellions," in place of mippcsha* 
 am ml is best. The present text has arisen partly from dittography of 
 
Servant of HJabvveb. 57 
 
 And his grave was made with the wicked, 
 And with workers of evil his tomb, 86 
 Although he had done no violence, 
 And deceit was not in his mouth. 
 
 the Ayin. The emendation 'animim, "peoples," for t ammi is very 
 unlikely. Giesebrecht proposed in his Bcitr'dge (p. 170) to read 
 mippish'am jfnugga', "for their transgressions he was smitten." This 
 is transcriptionally easier than Budde's suggestion, and in his most 
 recent discussion he still prefers it. In that case the prophet is speaking, 
 and the speech of the heathen nations has closed with verse 7. In spite 
 of this, I adopt Budde's view, and think that the heathen are still 
 speaking. At what point the speech of the heathen ends is not clear. 
 Since according to the present text Yahweh begins to speak in verse n, 
 it would perhaps be best to assume that the speech of the heathen 
 continues to the line translated above, " A posterity that prolonged its 
 life." It should be pointed out, however, that if in verse 12 we follow 
 the LXX. reading " he shall inherit " instead of " I will divide," the only 
 thing that points to Yahweh as the speaker is the first person suffix in 
 l abdl, "my servant." We can feel no certainty that the original text 
 was not 'abdo, " his servant," the confusion of the two consonants being 
 not uncommon. 
 
 36 The Hebrew text reads nfgcf lamo. It is possible to translate this, 
 "a stroke was upon him," but the words would naturally be translated, 
 "a stroke was upon them." But this is not in place here, so we might 
 translate as in R.V. margin, "to whom the stroke was due" But this 
 is not very natural. The LXX. reads "he was led to death." It is 
 generally agreed that we should read nugga* /ammdweth, "he was 
 smitten to death." This involves simply the addition of a single 
 consonant. 
 
 36 After his death the Servant was buried in a dishonoured grave. 
 The present text, "And with the rich in his deaths," can hardly be 
 right. We need a synonym for "wicked," and though the poor and 
 godly are identified, we cannot assert the converse of this. It is 
 generally agreed that instead of 'fisfilr, "rich," we should read some 
 such word as 'dshoq, " the oppressor, " or 'osera* "workers of evil." 
 The word fcmothayw, "in his deaths," is also difficult. The plural 
 seems to have no point, but even if we correct into the singular with 
 the LXX., " in his death " is unsatisfactory, since he was, of course, dead 
 
58 Gbe problem of Suffering* 
 
 But 37 Yahweh was pleased to justify him, 
 And rescued his soul from trouble, 
 Caused him to see light and be satisfied, 
 A posterity that prolonged its life." 
 
 when he was buried. It is better to read with some MSS. bdmdtho. 
 Elsewhere bdmdh is used only in the sense " high-place." If bdmdtho is 
 read here, it must be interpreted as " his sepulchral mound," which 
 gives an excellent parallel to "his grave" in the preceding line. 
 Giesebrecht suggested matstsabto, "his obelisk," in his Beitragt, p. 171, 
 but though he refers to this in his Der Knecht /ahves, p. 109, he trans- 
 lates " his mound," regarding bdmdtho as possible in this sense, though 
 not certain. Cheyne's objection to "his obelisk," that it implies too 
 much honour for the despised subject of the passage, seems to be sound. 
 His own reading g^dlsho or gidsho, "his tomb," adopted by Marti, 
 seems to be too difficult, still more so the very radical emendations in 
 his Addenda (Sacred Books of the Old Testament, p. 201). Buhl, in 
 the last edition of Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon, suggests beth motho, " his 
 house of death." 
 
 37 The tenth and eleventh verses are justly regarded by many scholars 
 as almost incurably corrupt. It will be noticed that the translation 
 given above is much shorter than that in the English Version. This 
 rests on the conclusion, which is quite uncertain, but when all is so 
 obscure, perhaps the best, that Marti has considerable ground for his 
 contention that we seem to have several variants preserved. We have 
 Yahweh chdphets and chephets Yahweh ; tdslm and ^ashdm ; naphsho 
 yir'eh occurring twice ; hecheli and yitslach. The removal of the 
 variants or repetitions, and the emendation of the text that remains, 
 produces in his hands something like the text translated above. I have, 
 however, in preference to his emendation, " Yahweh was pleased with 
 His Servant," which may, of course, be right (cf. 42 1 ), adopted 
 Giesebrecht's " Yahweh was pleased to justify him," chdphets hatsdlqo 
 for chdpets dakkJo (the scribe wrote to the first ts and in returning to 
 the text before him started again from the second). This is supported 
 by 50*. "Yahweh was pleased to crush him " gives a sense quite alien 
 to the passage, and in itself very unlikely. Duhm rightly says that the 
 general sense required is, While men judged the Servant in the way 
 described, Yahweh judged otherwise. He translates, with the LXX. 
 
Servant ot labweb. 59 
 
 Righteous shall My Servant appear to many, 
 Since he bears their iniquities ; 
 Therefore shall he inherit 38 amongst the many, 
 And with the strong he shall divide the spoil. 
 Inasmuch as he poured out his soul unto death, 
 And was numbered with the rebellious, 
 Though he bore the sin of many, 
 And interceded for the rebellious. 
 
 It is out of the nation's exile that this wonderful 
 series of poems springs. The prophet ponders deeply 
 the significance of this dark experience for the nation's 
 task. What place is he to give it in his theory 
 of Israel's mission ? He sets out from the conviction 
 that such a mission has been assigned by Yahweh to 
 His Servant. What else could be the purpose of 
 its choice before it had even begun to be ? If it was 
 Israel that was thus called to be Yahweh's Servant 
 the mission committed to it could be only a mission 
 to the world. And we can see how the writer rose 
 to the great thought that Israel was destined to be 
 Yahweh's prophet to the Gentiles. In Babylon he 
 confronted a splendid idolatry, and as he saw the 
 
 "Yahweh was pleased to purify him," which can be got out of the 
 present text. It is perhaps not worth while going through the passage 
 in detail, with a view to emending it. The reconstructions by Duhm, 
 Cheyne and Giesebrecht differ much from that here given and from 
 each other. 
 
 LXX. reads, "he shall inherit," instead of "I will divide." 
 With Duhm, Cheyne and Marti I have adopted this, since the change 
 from the third person is unlikely, as is also the repetition of the same 
 verb in the first and second lines. 
 
60 abe problem of Suffering, 
 
 people of Yahweh crushed by the heel of the heathen, 
 the iron entered into his soul. Hence the contest 
 between Yahweh and the false gods derived much 
 of its interest for him. He knows that Yahweh is 
 the true God, since He alone predicts, and therefore 
 alone shapes the future. To Him the nations must 
 look, forsaking their senseless idolatry. Since Israel, 
 and no other people, possesses the knowledge of 
 Yahweh, what can its mission be but to make Him 
 known to the world ? Nor are the heathen wholly 
 unprepared. Beneath the loud devotion to their 
 own deities, the prophet's ear has caught the low 
 undertone of a worthier aspiration. Their souls are 
 stirred with a vague disquiet, a dim sense of higher 
 truth, a longing for the " authentic voice " to change 
 the soaring wish to a luminous certainty. " For his 
 teaching the far lands do wait." Not only, however, 
 has Israel been selected for this vocation, but 
 Yahweh is training His Servant to fulfil it. Equipped 
 with His Spirit, and taught by His own intimate 
 revelations, he knows how to give the right answer, 
 and has learnt a tender respect for the faintest gleams 
 of light that struggle to exist in heathenism. But all 
 this preparation, which has made Israel as fit for 
 its work as a keen blade for battle, seemed now to 
 have been stultified. The nation had been bitterly 
 persecuted, and had lost its life. Ezekiel had 
 already depicted the destruction of Israel's national 
 existence by the exile as a death, and had prophesied 
 that it would be undone in the restoration. The 
 
Sbe Servant of Cobweb. 61 
 
 same metaphor is used here to express the same idea. 
 Why then should this strange fate have befallen the 
 Servant ? A partial answer lay ready to hand. 
 The suffering of the Servant was a martyrdom, 
 endured because he was faithful to his task. It was 
 no strange thing for a Hebrew prophet to meet with 
 persecution at the hands of his countrymen, whose 
 vices he had rebuked, or whose cherished prejudices 
 he had outraged. That Israel as Yahweh's prophet 
 to the heathen, should suffer and be slain, lay quite 
 in the line of a too common experience. The 
 Servant loyally accepted the work assigned to him, 
 and resolutely hardened himself against ill-treatment 
 from the nations. But while the individual prophet 
 could suffer and die for the cause, and his place be 
 filled by successors, this was not possible in the case 
 of the nation. The ancient choice, the long training, 
 could not be nullified by its extinction. The death of 
 Israel meant no more than that the nation had ceased 
 to exist as such. But still all its constituent 
 elements survived, with a racial consciousness and 
 the memory of its past, so that resurrection meant 
 simply a return to Palestine and a renewed corporate 
 life. It was therefore involved in the election of 
 Israel that national death should be followed 
 by national resurrection. The nations that had 
 watched with contempt the puny people come into 
 existence, and had turned with abhorrence from it, 
 so ghastly was it, covered with wounds and smitten 
 with loathsome disease, will see with amazement its 
 
62 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 exaltation and learn how deeply they had mis- 
 conceived the long tragedy that had culminated in 
 its death. And as they confess their misconception, 
 the question presses upon them, how is this tragedy 
 to be explained ? The explanation they had formerly 
 given is now seen to be untrue. The sufferings 
 of Israel are not a signal proof of Divine dis- 
 favour; that is suggested, if not proved, by their 
 glorious sequel. But it is not difficult to see how 
 the nations came to understand what deep significance 
 lay in Israel's martyrdom. Israel was Yahweh's 
 people, it alone knew the true God, and resolutely 
 held firmly to Him. They on the other hand, had 
 gone astray into self-willed idolatry. But now how 
 strangely fate had dealt out its awards. The 
 innocent Israel had suffered and been slain, while 
 the guilty nations had lived. There had been 
 a reversal of parts, the innocent had suffered, the 
 guilty had escaped. Filled with contrition for their 
 sin, and recognising that through Israel has come 
 their knowledge of the true God, as their mind dwells 
 on the guiltless sufferer, what thought could rise in 
 their breast but this* : Israel has suffered the penalty 
 which we deserved ? Not only is he Yahweh's 
 prophet, but he is the vicarious sufferer for our sin. 
 But there worked within his suffering a regenerative 
 power. Not only did his long martyrdom expiate 
 the idolatry of the heathen. It was the means to 
 their healing ; the chastisement that won their peace. 
 They gain a true insight into the deep things of the 
 
Gbe Servant of tfabweb. 63 
 
 Spirit, of which no proof is so striking as the fact, 
 that the prophet makes this confession spring out of 
 the overwhelming impression they receive from the 
 suffering and glory of the Servant, a confession pro- 
 found and penetrating to the core of things, as but 
 few passages in the Old Testament. 
 
 That the prophet rightly regarded it as Israel's 
 mission to teach the heathen the true religion will 
 hardly be denied. That the Jews accepted rather 
 the ideals of Ezekiel, and on their return to Palestine, 
 shrank from the task to which the great prophet of 
 the exile had called them, became hard, narrow and 
 exclusive, must not lead us too hastily to condemn 
 them. Probably it was inevitable that the ideals of 
 the Second Isaiah, like those of Jeremiah, should wait 
 till their time was ripe. Spiritual religion was as yet 
 too weak for Judaism to take such soaring flights. 
 First of all, it must make its own position secure, 
 then attempt the conquest of the world. The truths, 
 which Jeremiah and the Second Isaiah had taught, 
 lay hidden within that hard shell, and had they not 
 been so protected might have been lost to the world 
 Yet it can only be with pain that we think how 
 long-continued the exclusiveness of Judaism has 
 been. The author of the Book of Jonah, perhaps next 
 to Jeremiah the greatest of the Hebrew Prophets, 
 urged his countrymen to accept the mission to the 
 heathen, and sought to convince them how ready 
 they were for the truth. But his noble protest fell 
 on deaf ears ; his generous estimate of the Gentiles 
 
64 Cbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 found no echo in the Jewish heart. So when the 
 time came for Judaism frankly to throw off its racial 
 limitations and become a universal religion, it made 
 the great refusal, and Christianity had to develop in 
 almost entire independence of it. Yet it would be 
 unworthy to forget how vast is the debt we owe to 
 Jewish teachers, and how amply the promise that 
 Israel should be a light of the Gentiles has been 
 redeemed. 
 
 It is less easy for us to sympathise with the 
 prophet's doctrine that Israel had been the vicarious 
 sufferer for the world's sin. It seems at first sight so 
 out of touch with reality, so calm in its defiance of 
 patent facts. The objection can, indeed, be dealt 
 with only in the light of wider applications of the 
 principle involved in it. It is, however, plain that 
 here the prophet assigned a function to Israel, to 
 which, in the nature of things, a nation is inadequate. 
 It would, I believe, be mistaken to infer from this that 
 he had in mind simply the pious kernel of the 
 nation or the ideal Israel. Each of these is exposed 
 to grave difficulties of an exegetical kind, while they 
 cut the prophecy away from its historical root. 
 Nevertheless while the Servant is the actual nation, 
 and the exile is the death in which its afflictions have 
 culminated, it is that nation looked at from the 
 point of view of function. Israel is in a measure 
 idealised, since in his absolute \\.iy of stating his 
 doctrine, the prophet looks away from the imperfect 
 realisation of the function assigned to it, and speaks 
 
tlbe Servant of $abweb 65 
 
 as if it had completely achieved the ideal which God 
 had set before it. 
 
 From the first, Christianity has seen in the 
 description of the Suffering Servant a prediction 
 of Jesus of Nazareth. It is, however, a firmly 
 established result of exegesis that this was not at 
 all in the prophet's mind. He does not intend by 
 the Servant of Yahweh a figure that is to come 
 centuries later than his own time. This Servant 
 has already lived and died, and the prophet utters 
 his oracle after the death, but before the resurrection 
 of the Servant. Moreover, in common with many 
 interpreters, I am convinced that he intends by the 
 Servant, not an individual at all but the Israelitish 
 nation, though several scholars do not accept this 
 view. Are we, then, to say that the Church has 
 been wrong in its interpretation ? I have already 
 said that a nation could not be adequate to the 
 functions here assigned to the Servant . We may solve 
 the difficulty if we can identify Jesus with Israel. 
 Now, as we have already seen, while the author no 
 doubt thinks of the empirical Israel, yet Israel's 
 significance as the Servant of Yahweh consists 
 essentially in the fact that it is the revealer of Yahweh 
 to the nations, and the vicarious sufferer for their sin. 
 If then the qualities, which constituted for the 
 prophet Israel's essential meaning, its place in 
 universal history, were qualities which existed in a 
 very mixed and imperfect form in the nation, but were 
 embodied and perfectly realized in an individual, 
 
 F 
 
66 abe problem of Suffering 
 
 we may speak of that individual as concentrating 
 within Himself the essential Israel. Now we believe 
 that this is precisely the place Jesus fills in history, 
 and that the functions, only partially fulfilled by 
 Israel, were completely discharged by Him. In Him 
 the long revelation of God in Israel attained its 
 climax and reached its goal. It lay in the nature of 
 things that no collective body could perfectly reveal 
 God. For truth about God is no complete revelation 
 for us, who need God Himself. It was only by the 
 Incarnation of God's Son that God's nature and love 
 could be fully manifested. But this revealer of 
 God came through Israel, and summed up Israel in 
 Himself. He was also the sufferer for the world's 
 sin, and thus achieved the other great purpose, which 
 the prophet finds in the election of Israel. So God, 
 Whose thoughts and ways are far above the thoughts 
 and ways of man, brought to pass a grander and 
 more satisfying fulfilment of this prophecy than the 
 prophet himself had divined. We may still read 
 these marvellous poems and feel that they have 
 been realised and more than realised in Jesus of 
 Nazareth. 
 
 The thoughts in this cycle of poems were so pro- 
 found that they exercised much less influence than 
 we should have anticipated on the later literature. 
 The Servant of Yahweh is, however, probably the 
 speaker in some of the Psalms, and this seems to be 
 the case with the twenty-second Psalm, which may 
 most conveniently be mentioned at this point. In 
 
Servant ot Uabweb. 67 
 
 spite of the individualistic phraseology, we have 
 probably to do with a collective body, that is, with 
 Israel . There are several reminiscences of the Servant 
 of Yahweh poems, and the thought of the conversion 
 of the heathen is expressed, and apparently connected 
 with the sufferer's deliverance. As nothing is said of 
 sin as the cause of his suffering, it is remarkable that 
 it should be treated as an inexplicable mystery and 
 no reference be made to its vicarious character. 
 It is possible that Cheyne (Jewish Religious Life 
 p. 93. Christian Use of the Psalms p. 95) and Duhm 
 are right in thinking that verses 22-31 are a late 
 addition, but, on the whole, in spite of the change of 
 tone and circumstances I incline to reject this view. 
 The decision depends to some extent on the view we 
 take of verse 21. If, as I think, the present text gives 
 a finer sense, and is therefore more likely to be right, 
 than the emendations which would restore a strict 
 parallelism, then the transition from the deepest 
 dejection and keenest pain is not altogether unme- 
 diated, since in verse 21 faith that God will 
 deliver him gains the victory over the sufferer's 
 despair. 
 
 The poem opens with an exceeding bitter cry. 
 The uttermost evil has come on the sufferer. To 
 suffer in the strength of God, with the assurance of 
 His approval, is not to have touched the depths. 
 That comes with the experience of desertion. And 
 Israel is now treading that ninth circle of the Saint's 
 Inferno. Yahweh has abandoned him, He is far 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Gbe problem of Suffering, 
 
 from his cry 39 and the words of his roaring. Yet 
 Israel still cleaves fast to Him, and begins the 
 invocation with the pathetic repetition " My God, 
 my God." He cries by day and receives no answer, 
 by night and obtains no relief. How strange that 
 he should need to cry " Why hast Thou forsaken 
 me ? " that he should appeal for help in his extremity 
 in vain ! For Yahweh is the Holy One, pledged by 
 His holiness to save His people. Nay, more, He is 
 enthroned on the praises of Israel 40 , so that if these 
 are silenced through Israel's destruction, Yahweh's 
 exaltation by men comes to an end. Individuals 
 may perish, and Yahweh's praise still go on as before, 
 but if the nation dies, His service can no longer be 
 maintained. The fathers trusted in Him, and He 
 did not disappoint their trust, but when they cried 
 
 text reads, "from my salvation," tn'ishu'dtht. The versions 
 translated the line "far from my salvation are the words of my 
 roaring," and among modern scholars this is adopted by Baethgen. 
 The meaning would be that the sufferer's cries are far from his Saviour, 
 i.e., Yahweh. The expression is rather unnatural, and the translation, 
 " Being far from my salvation and the words of my roaring," yields 
 a better sense. The Hebrew, however, is hardly what we should have 
 expected, and it is better with Hitzig and several other scholars to make 
 a very slight change in the text and read, mishshaw^dthi, " from my 
 cry." Bickell, Cheyne and Duhm emend more radically. 
 
 40 A beautiful transformation of the older thought of God as enthroned 
 on the cherubim. I think the meaning of the passage which springs 
 from its position in the context is that indicated above. But I must 
 give myself the pleasure of quoting Prof. Cheyne's exquisite paraphrase 
 in the Introduction to his Commentary : " These Spirit-taught utter- 
 ances of the heart can like the ' throne-bearing ' cherubim at any moment 
 bring Him nigh." 
 
Servant of H?abweb. 69 
 
 to Him they were delivered. But now how 
 different is the lot of their descendants. Israel is 
 a mere worm, 41 the by-word of the heathen, exposed 
 to their contempt. 42 Jeeringly the heathen say 
 " Yahweh is his redeemer, 43 let Him rescue him ; let 
 Him deliver him, for He has pleasure in him." Yet 
 from his earliest infancy 44 Yahweh had been his 
 confidence and sustainer ; let Him draw near, for 
 
 41 The reference is to Isa. 41 14 , " Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye 
 men of Israel ; I will help thee, saith Yahweh, and thy redeemer is the 
 Holy One of Israel." There are other echoes of this passage in the 
 Psalm. 
 
 42 Cf. Isa. S3 3 , 49 7 . 
 
 43 The text reads got 'el Yahweh " roll unto Yahweh." The meaning 
 is thought to be Roll thy care on Yahweh. It is much better to accept 
 Hale'vy's suggestion, which is adopted by Cheyne, go 1 alb Yahweh " his 
 redeemer is Yahweh.'' The alteration is slight and the sense much 
 improved. The point of the taunt is much sharper if the heathen are 
 quoting Israel's own words, or the words of Yahweh about Israel, and 
 it is common in the Second Isaiah to find Yahweh thus spoken of as 
 Israel's go 1 el. So in 4i 14 , the passage already mentioned, but also 43 14 , 
 44' M , 47 4 , 48 17 , 49 7 ' % , 54 5 > 8 . We should also not forget the famous 
 passage in Job, " I know that my go' el liveth." The reference to the 
 Servant in Isa. 40-55 is further emphasised by the closing words of the 
 sentence, " He has pleasure in Him," which reminds us of Isa. 42 1 , and, 
 if Marti's reading in 53 10 is correct, " But Yahweh had pleasure in His 
 Servant," of that passage also. 
 
 44 Here again there are references to the Servant in the Second Isaiah, 
 46 3 , 44 2> 24 , 49 1 - 5 . If, as some think, there is a reference to the custom 
 of laying the new-born child before the father, that he might acknow- 
 ledge it by taking it on his knees, or disown it by leaving it to lie, 
 Duhm's suggestion that for 'e/l " my God " we should read 'abl " my 
 father " deserves consideration. Israel's sonship and Yahweh's fostering 
 care in the infancy of the nation is a familiar thought in the Old 
 Testament. 
 
70 3be problem of Suffering. 
 
 he is in peril and there is none to help. The sufferer 
 now describes the attack of the heathen nations. 
 They have hemmed him in like wild beasts, the dogs 
 tear gaping wounds in his hands and feet. 45 His 
 vital powers ebb away, his bones are wrenched out of 
 joint, his heart fails him, his palate 46 is parched. He 
 is drawing near to death, and it is Yahweh, Who is 
 bringing him down to the dust of death. Behind 
 the instrument He stands as the efficient cause. 
 The victim is worn to a skeleton, his enemies gaze 
 with delight on his suffering, and are so sure of his 
 death, that they do not wait for it before they appor- 
 tion his garments among them. Once more he urges 
 
 ^Wellhausen's rearrangement, by which verse 16 follows on verse 12, 
 seems a distinct improvement. The line translated in the E.V., " They 
 pierced my hands and my feet," is in the Hebrew, as pointed, " Like 
 a lion my hands and my feet." This is unintelligible, and even if we 
 supply some *uch word as " they tore," it is not clear why hands and 
 feet should be mentioned, as a lion does not select these for attack. 
 The LXX., Vulgate and Syriac, read ka'arii "they dug" instead of 
 kcturl " like a lion." The passage should then be explained as above. 
 The translation " they pierced " is unjustifiable. It is probably a case 
 of fitting Old Testament language to what was supposed to be New 
 Testament fulfilment. But the passage is not quoted in the New 
 Testament, which does not, in fact, speak of the feet of Jesus as pierced, 
 though such a reference is possible in Luke 24 39 . The best translation 
 is " they have dug into my hands and feet." This is not quite natural, 
 and possibly the text is corrupt. Wellhausen translates " my hands 
 and feet like a lion," and thinks the line has no intelligible meaning 
 here, and has come in by pure accident. If not original, verse 13 may 
 be partly responsible for its insertion. 
 
 *The text reads kochl " my strength," but we should, with many 
 scholars, read chikti "my palate," as much more suitable to the 
 context. 
 
Gbe Servant ot H?ab\veb. 7 
 
 Yahweh to come to his help, to deliver his life from 
 the sword ; already he is in the lion's jaws, and prays 
 to be delivered. He continues his prayer, " And 
 from the horns of the wild oxen," but just as he is 
 about to complete it, in a sudden inspiration of faith 
 he soars into the triumphant assurance that God has 
 heard him, and breaks off with the exclamation 
 " Thou hast answered me." 47 It is now fitting that he 
 should burst into praise for his deliverance, and this 
 follows in the closing portion of the Psalm. The 
 text is unfortunately not certain in some places, but 
 for our purpose it is not necessary to follow the Psalm 
 further in detail. The most important feature is 
 that the deliverance of Israel has for its issue the 
 conversion of the heathen. 
 
 The Psalm contributes nothing towards a solution 
 of the problem. It has no hint to give, which would 
 explain the mystery of Israel's dark experience. 
 But it has its own value, in that it is a cry out 
 of the depths, uttered by a people that in the 
 bitterest trouble holds fast to God, even when the 
 extreme pain befalls it of the hiding of God's face. 
 
 47 We should have expected the couplet to be completed, " And from 
 the horns of the wild-oxen do thou deliver me." The change from 
 this to the unexpected assertion of deliverance, in our present text, is 
 very fine and effective. Some, however, are not satisfied with it. 
 Wellhausen, adopting a suggestion of Thrupp's, corrects *ariitharii 
 "thou hast answered me" into 'anlyathi, which he translates "my 
 miserable life." He thus gets as in 25 16 a parallel to " my only one," 
 which occurs in the last line of the preceding couplet. Duhm reads 
 " help me." 
 
72 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 From this deep despondency springs an expression 
 of thanksgiving for deliverance. It is not that 
 deliverance has already come, but that faith has 
 triumphed over the certainties of the world, and the 
 apparent indifference of God. And in that marvel- 
 lous assurance the sufferer, still ringed with relentless 
 foes, with his life-blood ebbing away, and God 
 seeming deaf to his cry, wins that serene confidence, 
 which lifts him above his pain, above the certainty 
 of impending death, and fills him with the sublime 
 conviction that he shall yet live and declare the 
 wonderful works of God. And with his faith there 
 is joined a noble charity, too rare in the utterance of 
 oppressed Psalmists. These heathen nations, that 
 have well-nigh brought Israel to its death, stir within 
 him no unholy passion for revenge. They are on the 
 contrary to receive the lofty privilege of becoming 
 Yahweh's worshippers. " All the ends of the earth 
 shall remember and turn unto Yahweh ; and all the 
 kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 H Centura of HHstllusfcm* 
 
 THE Second Isaiah had painted in glowing 
 colours the release of the Jews from cap- 
 tivity, their happy return to Palestine, with 
 the privations of the march miraculously removed, 
 the splendours of Zion, the brilliant future of the 
 restored community. But the Jews did not respond 
 to the privilege accorded them by Cyrus in 536 B.C., 
 and but few abandoned their homes in the land, 
 where they had so deeply struck their roots, to face 
 the perils of the forgotten and desolate land of their 
 fathers. - The return to Palestine was never, indeed, 
 within measurable distance of being accomplished, 
 and prophets long cherished the ideal of a complete 
 gathering to Canaan of all the Jews in the Dispersion. 
 Those who returned soon found that the enchanting 
 prospects which had lured them to Zion, gave place 
 to cruel disillusion. Bad harvests, drought, and 
 the general wretchedness of their conditions quickly 
 chilled their enthusiasm. They had come intending 
 
74 Gbe problem ot Suffering, 
 
 to rebuild the temple. But they delayed, feeling 
 that in their misery the time was not auspicious. 
 The prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, urged them 
 to the work, promising a happy change of fortune 
 if they let Yahweh's house lie waste no longer. 
 They traced their accumulated misfortunes to their 
 neglect of Yahweh and preference of their own 
 interests. When the prophets had secured the 
 obedience of the community, and it was disheartened 
 with the inferiority of the new temple to the old, 
 they took up the promises of the second Isaiah, 
 and predicted a splendid future. For soon Yahweh 
 will convulse the earth, and in the crash of empires 
 the Messianic age shall dawn, and the desirable 
 things of the nations shall stream into Jerusalem. 
 Thus the glory of the latter housjs shall be greater 
 than the glory of the former. And for Zerubbabel 
 an illustrious destiny is reserved : "In that day, 
 saith Yahweh of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel 
 my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith Yahweh, and 
 will make thee as a signet : for I have chosen thee 
 saith Yahweh of hosts " (Hag. 2 M ). It is probable 
 that in the original text of Zech. 6 s " 15 , the 
 prophet spoke of a command he had received to 
 crown Zerubbabel. 
 
 The crash of the Persian empire was not, however, 
 to come as yet. Its fall seemed not improbable, 
 for in the year before Haggai and Zechariah came 
 forward, almost the whole empire, though not 
 Syria or Asia Minor, was in revolt. The insurrections 
 
B Century ot Disillusion. 75 
 
 were suppressed, and the empire lasted for nearly 
 two hundred years longer. It is an interesting 
 question whether Zerubbabel was tempted to par- 
 ticipate in a Messianic revolt, and lost his position 
 or even his life in consequence. That his later 
 history is quite unknown to us suggests that he 
 may have fallen into disfavour at the Persian court, 
 though even his deposition and still more his execu- 
 tion, perhaps by crucifixion, remains at best a 
 conjecture. Its interest for us lies partly in the 
 deepening of the gloom in Judah and the reaction 
 from the Messianic hopes which the contemporary 
 prophets had so brightly portrayed, partly in 
 the suggestion that Zerubbabel is the suffering 
 servant of Isa. 52 13 53 12 which has been recently 
 revived by Sellin and Kittel, though the former of 
 these has still more recently withdrawn his name in 
 favour of Jehoiachin. It is unnecessary for me to 
 discuss it, since the view is excluded if I am right in 
 thinking that the Servant is not an individual but 
 the nation. 
 
 Before leaving Zechariah, I must refer to the 
 remarkable passage with which the third chapter 
 of his prophecy opens. Joshua the high priest is 
 standing before Yahweh in filthy garments, and at his 
 right hand stands the Satan to contest his plea. 
 The thought is probably that the high priest's filthy 
 garments symbolise the sin of the community of 
 which he is the representative ; though not sin 
 which still remains to be atoned for, since otherwise 
 
76 ZTbe problem ot Suffering, 
 
 Yahweh could hardly have implied by His rebuke 
 to the Satan that the accusation he was urging 
 against Joshua was unjust. In the fact of its 
 misery the Satan, who here expresses the judgment 
 of the traditional theology, sees an evidence of its 
 guilt, and thus disputes the standing of its repre- 
 sentative before God. This is a reflection of the 
 view that the people must have taken of their 
 misfortunes. They argued, we are wretched, there- 
 fore Yahweh is angry with us for our sin. They 
 doubted whether God would renew His favour, or, 
 as the prophet would say, whether the Satan would 
 establish his case against them before God. The 
 vision corrects this misgiving. Had the Satan won 
 his case, the miseries of Judah would have continued. 
 But Yahweh decides against him and rebukes him. 
 He has plucked Jerusalem as a brand from the 
 burning. In other words, He considers that Jeru- 
 salem has been in the fires of affliction long enough, 
 and therefore has Himself intervened to snatch it 
 from the flames. Since its punishment is sufficient, 
 it will not be afflicted any more. This is symbolised 
 by the removal of Joshua's filthy clothing, that is 
 the sin of the people, and the clothing of him in 
 rich apparel. 
 
 There is here no advance on the traditional view 
 in the solution of the problem. Suffering is still 
 regarded as the punishment of sin. All that the 
 prophet urges in correction of popular misapprehen- 
 sion is that present suffering does not prove Yahweh's 
 
B Century of Dieillusion. 77 
 
 present anger. The wrath may have really passed 
 away, and grace be on the point of bursting from 
 behind the clouds. The emergence in this passage 
 of the figure of the Satan is interesting both in itself 
 and on account of his re-appearance in Job. It is 
 thought by some that Zechariah is responsible for 
 his introduction into Jewish thought. But this is 
 dubious ; quite apart from all questions touching 
 the literary origin of the Prologue of Job, and its 
 dependence on popular tradition, we should have 
 expected a much fuller description, if Zechariah had 
 first created the figure. He seems to assume that 
 his readers will know quite well of whom he is speak- 
 ing. It is unfortunate that both here and in Job the 
 later employment of the word as a proper name of 
 the devil, should have led to the strange thought 
 that the devil was intended in these passages. The 
 Satan is one of the sons of God, in other words, 
 belongs to the order of Elohim, is the zealous servant 
 who exists to do Yahweh's will. His function, apart 
 from which he has no significance, is to oppose man's 
 claim to righteousness before God, by dragging all 
 his sin to the light. It is not his duty to find any 
 good in man, presumably that function was exercised 
 by another member of his order. His duty was to 
 detect whatever evil lurked secretly or in subtle 
 disguise in man's heart or life, and with this evidence 
 withstand man's claims to Divine acceptance. The 
 whole-hearted zeal, with which he flung himself into 
 his work, naturally gave an unfavourable impression 
 
7 Cbe problem of Suffering 
 
 of his character, which prepared the way for the 
 later associations of the name. The cold-blooded 
 cruelty from which he does not shrink, that he 
 may make good his case, is one of the most striking 
 features foreshadowing the subsequent development. 
 So far as our special subject is concerned he has 
 much less importance in Zechariah than in Job. 
 He represents one side of God's dealings with men, 
 that of strict and exacting severity, and lays himself 
 open to God's rebuke, because he can occupy that 
 point of view alone, and allows nothing for the 
 modification of justice by grace. As a specialist he 
 naturally exaggerates the worth of his criteria. In 
 another respect he has an interest for our problem, 
 so far as the doctrine anticipates later solutions 
 which assigned some share in man's misery to hostile 
 supernatural powers. 
 
 The bright hopes of independence, of national 
 prosperity and a Davidic king were not to be fulfilled. 
 The history of the community for the next sixty years 
 is unknown to us. But we may infer that matters 
 had not much improved. In the prophecy of 
 Malachi, which we may perhaps best date about 
 460 B.C., we are confronted with serious moral and 
 religious disorders. The old days of oppression 
 seemed to have returned, and an attitude was 
 assumed to the problem of suffering similar to what 
 we find in Job, though, of course, in a much more 
 superficial form. There was a deep scepticism as 
 to Yahweh's moral government. The prophet 
 
B Century of 2>i0iUusfoti. 79 
 
 quotes a current saying : " Every one that doeth 
 evil is good in the sight of Yahweh, and He delight eth 
 in them " (2 17 ). Even the pious had given way to 
 despondency : "It is in vain to serve God, and what 
 profit is it that we have kept His charge, and that 
 we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of 
 Hosts ? And now we call the proud happy ; yea, 
 they that work wickedness are built up ; yea, they 
 tempt God and are delivered." There is no solution, 
 but simply a reproof for wearying God and uttering 
 stout words against Him, and a prediction that the 
 day of Yahweh is soon coming, when the wicked will 
 be punished and the God-fearing will be spared, and 
 the difference will be clearly seen between the 
 righteous and the evil-doers. 
 
 A few years later, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, 
 we may place the greater part of Isa. 56-66. It is 
 hard to believe that Duhm and Marti are right in 
 assigning the whole of these eleven chapters to a single 
 hand. It is a strain on our natural disinclination to 
 analysis when we find the levels in its various parts 
 so different. Can the author of 60-62 have written 
 anything else in these chapters ? Moreover, 63 T -64 12 
 surely cannot in the face of 64 11 have been written in 
 the age of Nehemiah, when a temple was actually in 
 existence ; Duhm's reply, that this temple is passed 
 over as unworthy of mention in comparison with 
 Solomon's, being very unsatisfactory. It would be 
 simplest to date it during the exile, while the first 
 temple lay in ashes, and the second had not risen on 
 
8o abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 its site, were it not for the words, " Thy holy people 
 possessed it but a little while." If we could con- 
 fidently accept Robertson Smith's theory that the 
 Elohistic Psalms, usually supposed to spring from 
 the darkest period of the persecution by Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, really belonged to the time of Artaxerxes 
 Ochus, about the middle of the fourth century, it 
 would be natural to follow Cheyne in assigning this 
 section to the same time. If, in the silence of 
 history, this be thought too precarious, we should 
 do better to revert to an exilic date, rather than 
 bring it down to the Maccabean period. With this 
 exception, however, it is probable that the whole of 
 Isa. 56-66 belongs to the age of Nehemiah. But 
 while these chapters cast a welcome light on the 
 material welfare of the people and their religious, 
 moral, and social condition, they say little that is 
 of value for our purpose. But they confirm the 
 impression, already derived from Malachi, of the 
 disillusion that prevailed towards the end of a 
 century, which opened with such dazzling prospects. 
 The community, whose glorious destiny the Second 
 Isaiah had foretold with such rapturous eloquence, 
 was as far from attaining it as could well be imagined. 
 All the evils which the old prophets had denounced 
 seemed to fester in it, and fully explained the 
 misfortunes by which it was overwhelmed. The 
 rulers are greedy and drunken. There is a zealous 
 religionism, which finds expression in fasting, but 
 which is unavailing in God's sight. For while they 
 
B Centurg of 2>f0Uluaton. 81 
 
 sit in sackcloth and ashes with bowed heads, they 
 fast for strife and to smite with the fist of wickedness, 
 and oppress their labourers. They wonder that 
 Yahweh is so indifferent to their ascetic exercises in 
 His honour. Why do they suffer, seeing that they 
 are so religious ? " Wherefore have we fasted and 
 Thou seest not ? afflicted our soul and Thou takest 
 no knowledge ? " In noble indignation the prophet 
 bids them loose the bonds of wickedness, let the 
 oppressed go free, break every yoke, feed the hungry, 
 clothe the naked, and shelter the poor. Such is the 
 fast in which Yahweh delights ; this will make their 
 voice heard on high, and cause their light to shine 
 forth gloriously. Judah's misery presents no inex- 
 plicable problem. It is not because Yahweh's arm 
 is shortened so that He cannot save His people, or 
 His ear heavy so that He cannot hear their cry. 
 But their sins of lying, maladministration of justice, 
 and bloodshed have separated Him from them. 
 
 Yet in spite of disenchanting failure, these pro- 
 phets do not let themselves be discouraged. 
 Especially in the magnificent chapters 60-62 do we 
 find a wealth of gorgeous detail setting forth the 
 splendour of the Zion that is to be. The exiles will 
 return from the Dispersion, the nations will be 
 drawn to Jerusalem by the supernatural light that 
 streams from it and do menial service for Israel. 
 They will send their wealth to adorn the temple and 
 their flocks to smoke on its altar. Yet while the 
 prophet cannot hold his peace, and bids the angel 
 
 G 
 
82 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 watchers give Yahweh no rest till He make Jeru- 
 salem a praise in the earth, and while he proclaims 
 the certainty of Zion's salvation, he is conscious that 
 this bright day may dawn less soon than he hopes : 
 "I, Yahweh, will hasten it in its time." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 problem in 
 
 IT was perhaps as the fifth century was slipping 
 into the past that the poet, whose genius made 
 him the peer of the most gifted of our race, wrote 
 his mighty work. But while it may take some of its 
 colour from the dark experience of its time, it really 
 contributes little to our understanding of it to 
 connect it closely with any set of historical con- 
 ditions. It is not with the nation that the poet is 
 concerned, but with the individual, not with Israel 
 but with man, not with God's discipline of His 
 
 1 For a statement of the grounds on which my critical conclusions, 
 which are substantially those generally accepted, rest, I must refer 
 to my forthcoming Commentary on Job in The Century Biblel Here 
 I merely summarise the conclusions. The original work consisted 
 of the Prologue, the dialogue between Job and his friends, the speeches 
 of Yahweh and the Epilogue. The Prologue and the Epilogue may 
 have been borrowed in whole or part from an earlier work, but are not 
 later additions to the poem. 27 7 ~ 28 may be a later addition, but is in 
 any case not part of Job's speech, and if retained must be largely 
 assigned to one of the friends. The speeches of Elihu, ch. 28, and the 
 descriptions of behemoth and leviathan, are later additions. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Gbe problem of Suffering 
 
 people, but with His government of the world. Of 
 the author we know nothing save what we can 
 glean from the work. He had passed through the 
 most agonising doubts, had faced without flinching 
 the suffering of mankind, and had fought his way 
 to peace. 
 
 He takes for his subject an old popular story, 
 which may have existed already in literary form. 
 His hero is a man eminent for his wealth and still 
 more so for his piety. All men see in him the favourite 
 of heaven, and he himself lives in the conscious- 
 ness of unbroken communion with God. Now the 
 Satan, whose function was to detect the evil that 
 lurked beneath the show of virtue, has in the 
 zealous discharge of his duty found that apparent 
 virtue is so often the disguise of vice, that he has 
 become the victim of a cynicism too hardened to 
 admit that any man can really be virtuous unless 
 God makes it worth his while. To turn His zealous 
 servant from so unjust an estimate, Yaliweh 
 challenges his cynicism with the case of Job. The 
 Satan is ready with his reply. He had left no stone 
 unturned to unmask piety so conspicuous, and had 
 been forced to admit the genuineness of Job's 
 virtue. But, granted that Job is no hypocrite, 
 is his virtue worth anything after all ? Who woukl 
 not be virtuous, when virtue paid so well ? So the 
 Satan meets Yahweh's challenge with another. 
 Strip Job of his wealth and bereave him of his 
 children, and he will fawn on Yahweh no longer, 
 
problem in $ob. 85 
 
 but curse Him to His face. So, with Yahweh's 
 permission, Job by a series of appalling catastrophes 
 is robbed in one day of property and children. 
 Yet he disappoints his adversary by submitting in 
 beautiful resignation to the will of heaven, which 
 as it gives, so also can take away. Foiled in his first 
 attempt, the Satan is at no loss for a reason. With 
 the colloquial freedom of an old servant, he tells 
 Yahweh that a man's own skin is his main concern, 
 if possessions and family go, he may reckon himself 
 not so badly off, if he keeps his own skin whole. 
 Once more with Yahweh's permission, the untiring 
 sceptic seeks to force curses from Job's lips by rack- 
 ing him with an intolerable disease. But nobly 
 patient, the sufferer meets his wife's suggestion of 
 revolt with one of the classical utterances of resigna- 
 tion : " Good shall we receive at the hand of 
 God, and evil shall we not receive ? " So Job 
 comes triumphantly out of his trials, and Yahweh's 
 confidence in his Servant's goodness is magnificently 
 vindicated. 
 
 Yet while he holds by his piety and utters from 
 his heart the language of resignation, the calamity 
 that crushed him was an inexplicable mystery. The 
 teaching of his day regarded great misfortune as 
 a sign of great sin, and an evidence of the anger of 
 God. Yet he was so conscious of his own uprightness, 
 so sure moreover of God's favour, that he could not 
 all at once apply his theology to his own tragic 
 change of fortune. It is clear that as the logic of 
 
86 Gbe problem ot Suffering. 
 
 the situation developed, it would be more likely to 
 shake his faith in God than in his own integrity. 
 For the latter was certified to him by his own 
 immediate consciousness, whereas the former was 
 guaranteed only by the traditional orthodoxy, and 
 his past experience. And this past experience did 
 not prove God's goodness, it suggested it, indeed, 
 but, after all, the happiness he had enjoyed might 
 only have masked some sinister design. What if 
 God had planned the catastrophe from the first, 
 and to make it the more bitter had set him for long 
 years serenely on the pinnacle of bliss, caressed by 
 His sunshine and confident in His smile ? As he 
 brooded, till the weeks stretched into months, on 
 the strange fate that had surprised him, the doubt 
 of God's goodness must have stolen into his mind. 
 Though he would banish it as blasphemy, it must 
 have forced its way back as often as he repelled it. 
 For, on the facts before him, what other solution 
 could present itself to one trained to regard great 
 suffering as branding its victim with the curse of 
 God ? Sure of his own innocence, what can he say 
 but this, that the God who smites the innocent with 
 His curse, must Himself be immoral ? This, then, 
 is Job's problem, and with its emergence the centre 
 of interest shifts from the trial to which the Satan 
 has exposed him, to the conflict within his own soul. 
 It is just the deep piety of Job that makes the 
 struggle so intense, nay so terrific. A man, fitted 
 beyond most to find his happiness in the love 
 
problem in 3ob. 87 
 
 of God, feeling that his confidence in God's right- 
 eousness is shattered, we see him driven on till he 
 defies God because he must be true to himself. 
 Such is the sublime spectacle the poet has dared to 
 show us: a weak_man, strong in the justice of 
 his cause, rebuking the Almighty to His face for 
 His immoral government of the world. It is all the 
 more sublime that Job is no Stoic. He does not 
 proudly despise his pain, nor in haughty self-esteem 
 count himself the equal of the gods. A driven leaf, 
 a .fleeting shadow, quailing before God's majesty, 
 quivering in agony at the touch of pain, how lofty 
 the moral courage that impels him to confront God, 
 with nothing but his own rectitude and his burning 
 hatred of wrong, to dare a sharper torture, if he may 
 but assert ttu truth. 
 
 Job maintains his calm dignity till three of his 
 friends come to console him. After uttering their 
 lamentations over the sufferer, they sit in silence for 
 seven days with him, for when grief is so crushing 
 what can sympathy do but be silent ? Unmanned 
 at last, Job breaks the stillness with a bitter complaint, 
 cursing the day of his birth, and longing that he 
 jna.Y_die. ^This leads on to a dialogue~T>eTwe"en 
 himself and the friends. They firmly hold that 
 great suffering is to be explained by great sinfulness, 
 and since Job's consciousness of integrity is incom- 
 municable, it is natural that they should sacrifice 
 their friend to their theology. They deal gently with 
 him at the first, but with each cycle of speeches the 
 
88 Ebe problem of Suffering. 
 
 debate grows more and more embittered. The 
 
 speeches of the friends have little significance for 
 
 \ our problem. They start frorn_the assumption that 
 
 'omnipotence- must be rightejQU^__Perishable man 
 
 jcanL just before_GodL Not only is He the 
 
 Almighty Creator, in whose sight the loftiest creatures 
 are unclean, but He is the All- Wise, whose ways 
 baffle the keenest scrutiny of man. What He does 
 must be right ; the Almighty cannot pervert justice. 
 Why, indeed, should He ? since He is too great for 
 man's righteousness to be any pleasure or gain to 
 Him. Much of the friend's speeches consists of 
 descriptions of God's judgments oa the wicked. 
 To Job himself they try to be considerate, though 
 as the debate proceeds the strain on their forbearance 
 becomes increasingly severe. Eliphaz comforts Job 
 by reminding him how blessed is the man whom 
 God chastens. Yet all are convinced th&Lthe facts 
 point tn Job's sin as thp caijaft of his suffering, hence 
 they urge him to turn to God, and generally bring 
 their speeches to an end with a glowing picture of 
 the happiness that will then round off his days. 
 And while they also dwell on the fate of the godless, 
 to make good their argument and point a moral for 
 Job, yet their treatment of him, though it varies 
 with different speakers, is as tender as we could 
 have expected, with their theological presuppositions. 
 Essentially the standpoint in the speeches of Elihu is 
 identical with that of the friends. These speeches 
 do not belong to the original work. 
 
problem in Job, 89 
 
 It is not their accusations that provoke the anger : 
 of Job so much as their vacant platitudes, their 
 superficial maxims, their sorry attempts to solve 
 new proJblams^by . obsolete,, jnelkods^.. their... -blind 
 pedantic orthodoxy. Surely, were they not bemused 
 with a theology out of touch with life, they would 
 catch the ring of sincerity in his voice, and brush 
 aside the unworthy thought of secret sin adequate 
 to so terrible a punishment. Their arguments fill 
 him with scorn and irritation, but their unkindness 
 wounds him to the quick. He had counted on their 
 sympathy, but had been disappointed, as caravans 
 perish from thirst, since the streams they had 
 reckoned on are dry. At times he even appeals 
 to their pity : " Have pity upon me, have pity 
 upon me, O ye my friends ; For the hand of God 
 hath touched me." But more often he crumples 
 them with his scorn, and renews his contention 
 with God. 
 
 It is in his debate with God that the interest of 
 Job's speeches is most intense. He charges God, 
 sometimes in language of tremendous realism, with 
 inflicting his intolerable pains. His are the poisoned 
 arrows that have consumed his strength. It is God 
 Who assails him like a giant, and dashes him in pieces, 
 God Who cruelly persecutes him, breaks him with a 
 tempest and dissolves him in the storm. It is God's 
 terrors that dismay him, His presence that troubles 
 him, the horrible dreams which He sends that 
 affright him. So with the Almighty for his enemy, 
 
90 <Ibe problem of Suffering, 
 
 he is driven to bay, and turns on God with the 
 plain speech of the desperate : 
 
 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth ; 
 I will speak in the anguish of my spirit ; 
 I will complain in the bitterness of my soul, (y 11 ) 
 
 My soul is weary of my life ; 
 
 I will give free course to my complaint ; 
 
 I will speak in the bitterness of my soul (lo 1 ) 
 
 Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, 
 
 And let come on me what will. (I3 11 ). 
 
 The friends have made eloquent speeches about 
 the might and majesty of God, His inscrutable 
 wisdom and the mystery of His ways. But Job is 
 well aware of it all, nay he himself does not lag 
 behind the friends in his descriptions of it. But 
 this only makes matters worse. There can be no 
 immorality like that of omnipotence and omniscience 
 uncontrolled by goodness. Such Job feels to be the 
 Immorality Who governs the universe. 
 
 Perfect and wicked He destroys. 
 
 If the scourge slay suddenly 
 
 At the trial of the innocent He mocks. 
 
 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked, 
 
 The faces of its judges He covereth ; 
 
 If not, then who is it ? (i3 23 ~ 24 ). 
 
 Of the prosperity of the wicked Job cites abund- 
 
ttbe problem in Sob. 91 
 
 ance of proofs. Sometimes he speaks as if God 
 were simply indifferent to moral distinctions, slaying 
 good and bad without discrimination. At other 
 times he speaks as if God directly favoured the 
 wicked. The difference is largely one of mood and 
 expression, the thought he means to utter is that 
 the government of the world is radically immoral. 
 No destiny controls God's actions, He is free with 
 a sovereign freedom in the colossal wrongs He 
 permits Himself to do. His actions are arbitrary, 
 and it is just the incalculable waywardness of His 
 dealings with man that strikes such terror into the 
 heart. 
 
 Not observation, but his own calamity, revealed 
 to Job the profound injustice of God. Maddened 
 by his pain, goaded by the cruel judgment of his 
 friends, the hostility of God, at first so perplexing 
 to him, comes at last to seem only too characteristic. 
 His own misery sharpens his insight into the misery 
 of the world. Yet he is preoccupied far more 
 with the issues between himself and God, than 
 with God's relations to mankind. From the 
 first he had been predestined in God's secret 
 counsel to his cruel fate. His long and prosperous 
 career had all been part of God's sinister design. 
 With fiendish malignity He had lulled his Servant 
 into security and a sense of His loving care, that He 
 might dash him into a misery, made unspeakably 
 more wretched by its contrast with his happiness, 
 and by the stripping of the mask of love from God's 
 
92 be problem of Suffering. 
 
 hate. And now his Adversary is determined to 
 establish his guilt. He knows that Job is innocent, 
 yet He is the Almighty, Who can easily put him in 
 the wrong. What chance has a frail ignorant man 
 against a Deity, Who can entrap him so easily by his 
 subtle questions into self-condemnation, or Who by 
 the sheer terror of His majesty can strike him dumb 
 or force him into confession of sin ? He skulks behind 
 the veil ; will neither listen nor reply. If He respects 
 so far the decencies of justice that He justifies His 
 action by real sins of Job, He can do it only by raking 
 up the long dead past, and dragging to light the sins 
 of his youth, when passion was unchecked by 
 mature experience and judgment. But He has no 
 magnanimity. He spies on man's minutest actions, 
 will not for a moment release him from His madden- 
 ing watchfulness. How petty must be His character, 
 since He follows frail man with persecution so 
 untiring. 
 
 What is man that Thou magnifiest him, 
 
 And settest Thy heart upon him ; 
 
 And visitest him every morning, 
 
 And every moment dost test him ? (7 17 1(S ). 
 
 Even granted that he had sinned, his sin cannot 
 hurt the Almighty. Is a puny man so formidable 
 that God dare not relax His vigilance ? If Job 
 were the tossing tumultuous sea, conquered by God 
 in primaeval times, but still chafing against the 
 
problem in Job. 
 
 restraints He imposed upon it, and flinging upward 
 its heaven-assaulting waves, then he might be a 
 menace to God. How fitly matched with that 
 mighty conquest of the chaos monster, is the miracle 
 which has subdued a weak mortal man ! 
 
 In all the surging turmoil of Job's soul one thing 
 stands fast,, the certainty of his own integrity. He 
 affirms it again and, again r he is a just, a blameless 
 man, jhere is no violence in his handstand his prayer 
 is pure, He is sure that God knows that he is not 
 wicked, and though He has determined to slay him, 
 he will maintain his ways before Him. His right- 
 eousness he holds fast and will not let it go. This 
 consciousness finds its noblest expression in Job's 
 great defence of his past life, which perhaps touches 
 the loftiest point of Old Testament ethics. Sure of 
 himself and the justice of his cause, he brings his 
 self- vindication to its close, with a challenge to 
 Yahweh that He should answer him, and the proud 
 declaration that as prince he would draw near to 
 God, bearing the indictment which his adversary 
 had written. 
 
 Yet the poet has wonderfully shown us the clashing 
 currents in Job's breast by the strange incoherence 
 of his language about God. He is torn between the 
 bitter present, and the happy memory, between the 
 God Who is torturing him, and the God, of Whose 
 goodness he had drunk so deeply in the past. And 
 side by side with all his incisive complaints of God's 
 cruelty, and scorn of His malignant/ pettiness, side^by 
 
I 
 
 problem of SufTerfna. 
 
 side even with the firm assertion of His immorality, 
 stand other utterances which recognise His righteous- 
 ness. He bases the confidence he expresses in one 
 of his less gloomy moments, on the conviction that 
 i shall not come before Him. He warns 
 
 the friends that God will not suffer Himself to be 
 flattered by lies. It is therefore natural that 
 appeal should alternate with invective. The appeal 
 is in some cases, indeed, rather remonstrance. Why 
 had God suffered him to be born ? Why does He 
 contend with him, why hide His face ? What are 
 the sins God has to bring against him ? Is it good 
 for Him to despise His own work, or, when He has 
 lavished so much care on fashioning His servant, 
 wantonly to destroy him ? But the tone of remon- 
 strance is softened into the tone of pathetic appeal. 
 Would that he knew where he might find Him, that 
 he might lay bare his case or utter his supplication. 
 From the injustice of man he turns to God, in the 
 moving words : " My friends scorn m^ hnt my pyp 
 pours out tears unto God." If he could only come 
 face to face with God, He would not contend with 
 him in the greatness of His power, but would give 
 heed to his plea. He appeals to God to relax His 
 incessant watchfulness, and give him a respite from 
 his pain. Would that He might hide him in Sheol, 
 keep him in secret till His wrath were past. Here 
 the poet advances to one of his deepest thoughts. 
 Not only does Job appeal from man to God, but he 
 appeals from God to God. There seems to be an 
 
ilbe problem in 5ob. 95 
 
 irrational element in his thought. Job asks God to 
 save him from God's wrath, to place him out of its 
 reach, till it has spent itself. He appeals to God 
 against God, as iLGod had a high^r_an4.ajo.wer^self. 
 Behind the wrathful he catches a glimpse of the 
 gracious God. There is no umpire between them, 
 but would not God Himself give security to God for 
 Job ? So he wins, if he cannot hold fast, the con- 
 viction, that his witness is in heaven, and He that 
 vouches for him is on high. This reaches its climax 
 in the famous passage ig 25 " 27 , in which Job expresses 
 his conviction that his vindicator lives, and that his 
 innocence will at last be established. And though 
 he does not look forward to a vindication in his 
 lifetime, yet he believes that he will be permitted 
 to know that his character is cleared. Not that he 
 anticipates a happy immortality, or escape from 
 Sheol's dismal gloom. He prizes his honour and fair 
 fame above his happiness, and with the vision of God 
 as his avenger he will be content. 
 
 The schism in God, which seems so strange, is 
 a reflection of the schism in Job's experience. His 
 mind swings to and fro between the memory of 
 blessed fellowship and the pang of his present curse. 
 When his pain is hard to bear, or he is stung by the 
 calm injustice of his friends, he can think of God only 
 as his unrelenting foe. But as the thought of his 
 former life in God's favour fills his soul, he turns 
 back with yearning and tenderness to those happy 
 days, when God watched over him in love, and he 
 
9* Gbe problem of Suffering 
 
 walked through the darkness in His light, when he 
 called upon Him and He answered him. Still his 
 own heart goes out to God, how gladly he would 
 renew the old communion. And though the anger 
 of God now hotly pursues him, he feels that it will 
 not last. It is only a temporary aberration that 
 has seized Him, not, as Job elsewhere affirms, a long 
 cherished and subtly framed design to which He is 
 giving effect. If He would only hide him in Sheol, 
 forget him till His anger had burned out, and then 
 remember him, how gladly he would wait the full time 
 in that dreary home, so that he might at last renew 
 the happy intercourse, forgetting God's wayward 
 mood. But this hope he sadly sets aside. There 
 can be few things more pathetic in all literature than 
 his appeal to God to be gracious to him before it is too 
 late. Soon he must die, and when God's inexplicable 
 wrath has spent itself, He will think remorsefully 
 of His servant whose loyal love He has so cruelly 
 spurned. And He will think on him in love, and 
 long for the familiar intercourse. But His vain 
 regrets will come too late, Job will have passed 
 beyond recall : 
 
 " For now I shall lie down in the dust, 
 
 And Thou shalt seek me diligently and I shall not be." (; 21 ) 
 
 Again and again Job had challenged God to 
 appear and defend His action. He had implored 
 
Gbe problem in Job. 97 
 
 Him to fulfil two conditions, to suspend the per- 
 secution from which he is suffering and not to over- 
 whelm him with the dread of His presence : 
 
 " Only do not two things unto me, 
 Then will I not hide myself from Thy face : 
 Withdraw Thine hand far from me ; 
 And let not Thy terror make me afraid. 
 Then call Thou, and I will answer ; 
 Or let me speak and answer Thou me." (I3 20 - 22 c f . 
 
 But God fulfils neither of Job's conditions. When 
 He appears, He does not take His rod from the 
 sufferer, and He speaks out of the whirlwind. More- 
 over, not only does He leave Job on the rack and 
 appal him with the storm, but He deigns to give no 
 reply to Job's questions, no defence of His own 
 conduct. Rather He speaks roughly to the sufferer, 
 pressing him with questions, which convict him of 
 his ignorance. The reader is at first distracted 
 between his wonder at the poet's genius and his 
 disappointment and even resentment at the character 
 of Yahweh's reply. Surely, he thinks, God will 
 now make clear the mystery, but no word is said to 
 explain to Job why he suffers. There is no comfort 
 offered him, but what seems like a brutal mockery. 
 Yet if we look more closely we shall see that the 
 speeches of Yahweh are not mere irrelevant irony. 
 Job has taken on himself to criticise the government 
 
 H 
 
98 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 of the universe. But has he ever realised what the 
 universe is, or how complex the problem of its 
 control ? So God brings before him its wonderful 
 phenomena in language of surpassing beauty. 
 The mighty work of its creation, the curbing of the 
 rebellious sea, the land of the dead, the home of 
 light and of darkness, the ordered march of the 
 constellations, the treasuries of snow and hail, which 
 God has stored to overwhelm His enemies ; the frost 
 that binds the streams, or the rain that quenches the 
 desert's thirst, all pass before Job's mind and all are 
 too vast, too obscure, for him to comprehend. Then 
 God sketches a series of swift pictures of His animal 
 creation, of whose secrets Job is profoundly ignorant. 
 Thus He brings home to him the limitation of his 
 outlook, thus Job comes to learn the wide range of 
 God's interests. And as we reflect more deeply we 
 see a relevance in the Divine speeches that at first 
 we are apt to miss. Job's language had not stopped 
 short of blasphemy, and though he pleaded that his 
 friends must not take too seriously the words of a 
 desperate man, yet he deserved a sharp lesson to 
 cure his presumption. True, he had freely con- 
 fessed God's might and wisdom, he had beforehand 
 said that God would not contend with him in the 
 greatness of His power. But he needed to have the 
 detail bitten into his imagination, that the vague 
 generality might become vivid and concrete. For 
 much of the mischief with Job lay in his self-absorp- 
 tion. He dwells on God's immoral control of the 
 
Sbe problem in $ob. 99 
 
 lot of man, but even more specially on God's immoral 
 treatment of himself. God bids the self-centred 
 sufferer look away at the wide universe, then he will 
 come to a juster estimate of man's place. But even 
 if he looks at the sentient life of the world, he will 
 realise that man is only one among many of the 
 objects of God's concern. All those glorious pictures 
 of the animal creation that God flashes before his 
 eyes, are meant to show him that man's importance 
 may easily be overrated. Especially is this the case 
 with those unsubdued denizens of the wilderness, 
 who live their life wholly independent of man. 
 There, too, God sends the fertilising shower, causing 
 it "to rain on a land where no man is." 
 
 When Job confesses that he has sinned in speaking 
 of things too wonderful for him, and with self- 
 abhorrence repents in dust and ashes, the question 
 arises whether we are to see in this a verification of 
 his dread that the terror of God's majesty and His 
 insoluble questions would force him into self- 
 condemnation. It would be to miss the deepest 
 teaching the poet has to give us, were we to think 
 so. By confronting him with Nature, God has taken 
 him out of himself, and convinced him of his relative 
 insignificance. Yet even that is not the chief thing. 
 It is no accident that the poet refrains from putting 
 in God's mouth any explanation of Job's sufferings. 
 To men oppressed by the mystery of their own or 
 the world's pain, the explanation of an individual 
 case is of little worth, unless it admits of wider 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo Gbe problem of Suffering* 
 
 application. And for Job himself the explanation 
 is unneeded. He has received a new experience : 
 
 " I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear ; 
 But now mine eye seeth Thee, 
 Wherefor I abhor myself, and repent 
 In dust and ashes." (42 5 - n ). 
 
 It is the vision of God, which has released him 
 from his problem.* His suffering is as mysterious as 
 ever, but plain or mysterious, why should it vex him 
 any longer ? He has seen God, and has entered 
 into rest. The only answer we can get to the 
 problem of pain, is, the poet would tell us, this 
 answer. The soul's certainty is the soul's secret. 
 The spirit has escaped its difficulties by soaring 
 above them. If we know God, no other knowledge 
 matters. For ourselves we have won our way to 
 unspeakable peace. As we dwell in the secret place 
 of the Most High and abide under the shadow of the 
 Almighty, we see the universe from a new point of 
 view. We can give no answer to its questions, no 
 solution of its baffling riddle's! But since we know 
 God we can trust Him to the uttermost ; we know, 
 incredible though it may seem, that the world's 
 misery does not contradict the love of God. It was 
 therefore with deliberate intent that the poet put in 
 God's lips no hint of the- reason of Job's suffering. 
 To trust God when we understand Him would be 
 but a sorry triumph for religion. To trust God, 
 
problem in 3ob. 101 
 
 when we have every reason for distrusting Him, 
 save our inward certainty of Him, is the supreme 
 victory of religion. This is the victory which Job 
 achieves. But he can achieve it only as God takes 
 the initiative and gives him the revelation of Himself. 
 Yet God by the very action He took at the Satan's 
 instigation, placed not Job only, but Himself on His 
 trial. If the Satan is to be convinced that Job's 
 piety is disinterested, it must be through the tests 
 that he imposes. For God to accept the challenge 
 meant that He accepted a grave responsibility. Job 
 has to be the involuntary subject of this experiment, 
 he must suffer that God's confidence may be justified. 
 To some at any rate this will not seem a complete 
 vindication of God's action, it, too, must go with 
 other partially-solved mysteries. The difficulty 
 would probably be less to a Semite than to ourselves. 
 Yet the author felt it, and for that reason added or 
 retained the Epilogue. It is not that Job needed 
 his restoration, in order to regain his confidence in 
 God. Had he been doomed to end his days in pain, 
 he could walk through the valley in the memory of 
 the vision of God. But then the reader would have 
 been very unfavourably impressed by God's treat- 
 ment of him. Now he feels that God has made 
 amends to His loyal servant for the pain He has 
 made him endure. To estimate the Epilogue aright 
 we must not forget that the author had to keep the 
 treatment of his subject within the limits of the 
 earthly life, and could not work with the conception 
 
102 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 of a happy immortality. And we must remember 
 that the compensation given to Job is to clear God's 
 character, not in any way to re-affirm the old theory 
 that the righteous must be fortunate. 
 
 What lessons then has the book for ourselves ? 
 (T) It bids us in the first place he resolute in faring tfrp 
 facts. To flatter God by timidly denying their 
 existence, is to do Him no service, but only to draw 
 down His anger (i3 7 ~ n , 42 7 ' 8 ). To smother them is 
 to leave doubt lurking unquietly in the heart, to 
 recognise them may be the path to peace. The 
 nextjesson is that we cannot argue for the invariable 
 connexion of sin and suffer ing t or of righteousness 
 and prosperity^ We ought, on the contrary, to be 
 prepared to find in many cases that the wicked 
 prosper, wjijle the righteous are doomed to pain. 
 
 O EnrfViAr^jffpring. may Kg c^t f^ tSt thp. JgalJljLCl 
 
 our piety, and its freedom from the vice of self- 
 interest. Once more we are bidden to remember 
 that man is not the exclusive object of God's regard, 
 and that he is just one member of a very complex 
 organism." It is given him to see only a small sect ion 
 of the universe, he cannot pass judgment on the 
 whole from his knowledge of so. tiny a part. The 
 most important lesson is that even though no specu- 
 lative solution be possible to us, we may so know 
 Gofl^ag tn he surfi of Kin love , and be rnntpnt to 
 suffer without understanding or caring to under- 
 stand the reason. Such an attitude is not one of 
 resignation or acquiescence, but of glad acceptance, 
 
problem in Job. 103 
 
 because we are assured of the love that sends the 
 sorrow. There is, moreover, one very important 
 contribution which the poet does not make, but 
 which I am inclined to think, he meant to suggest. 
 nnt work n*ir|pntl with the 
 
 of Jimmortality^. But he was clearly tempted by it, 
 and seems to look for light from it. Let it be noticed 
 in what gloomy colours he paints Sheol. From it 
 there is no return, it is a land of darkness and the 
 shadow of death, of darkness so dense that its very 
 light is as darkness. While the tree may be cut down 
 and yet bud at the scent of water,man is never 
 
 J t*&*rT- ----- , | n 
 
 wakened .from .the ^leep^oi xieath.^ Job's words are 
 so strong that it is hard to suppress the feelingtlaat 
 the poet intended to force a revulsion. ^ Aiotfle 
 thought of a return to life is definitely before him. 
 Probably he can do no more than turn wistfully 
 towards it, feeling it almost too good to be true. It 
 may seem strange that no reference is made to the 
 vicarious character of suffering, if, as I have assumed, 
 the poem is later than the Servant passages in the 
 Book of Isaiah. Probably we should account for 
 this by the fact that the author of the latter was 
 dealing with the suffering of the nation, whereas the 
 author of Job was concerned with the problem of 
 individual suffering. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Songs in tbe ttfgbt 
 
 IT is no part of my plan to discuss those passages in 
 the Old Testament, that connect the suffering, of 
 which they speak, with the sin of the sufferer. 
 Under this head a large number of passages in the 
 Psalter falls. Yet there are many which treat the 
 suffering endured by the community, the godly, or 
 the individual Psalmist as a mystery. They are cries 
 out of the depths, their constant burden is " How 
 long ? " It is not necessary, however, to do much 
 more than give a brief summary, since for the most 
 part the writers do not get beyond complaint, and 
 the prayer for deliverance. Little short of half the 
 Psalms contain mournful appeals to God for salvation 
 from pain or oppression. It is often far from clear 
 whether it is an individual or the community that 
 is speaking, and the historical conditions which the 
 Psalms presuppose are frequently known to us only 
 in the most general way. In some cases it is a 
 heathen enemy, which is trampling on Israel, in other 
 cases it is the lax, irreligious Jews who oppress their 
 pious countrymen, in others the individual writer 
 
Songs in tbe fftidbt. 105 
 
 who suffers at the hands of some enemy. With the 
 despair and self-pity there are mingled bitter curses 
 on the oppressor. We may palliate them by the 
 consideration that the Psalmists identified their cause 
 withjihe cause of God, and by assuming that often 
 the community and not an individual is the sufferer. 
 But it is one of the numerous signs in the religion of 
 Israel, ^how^much there was needed the coming of 
 One who should pray " Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do." The causes of their 
 affliction, apart from their own sin, are variously 
 enumerated. It may be the sins of their forefathers, 
 as 4n_Psa. 79 8 , " Remember not against us the 
 sins of our ancestors." It may be Yahweh's anger, 
 for which no motive can be assigned, the anger itself 
 being simply inferred from the consequences it has 
 involved. Or again, it may be Yahweh's indiffer- 
 ence. He has cast off His people. Thus in the dark 
 days of dishonour and defeat, when God no longer 
 went forth with the Jewish hosts, and made His 
 people a derision to the heathen, it is not in their 
 own sin that they find the reason, for they have not 
 forgotten God, or dealt falsely in His covenant. 
 So far from that, it is their very loyalty to God, 
 which has brought disaster upon them : 
 
 " Nay, but for Thy sake are we killed all the day long, 
 We are counted as sheep for the slaughter." (Psa. 44 22 ) 
 
 It can only be that God has lapsed into forget- 
 
io6 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 fulness of His people. He is as one who sleeps, 
 unconscious of the tragedy that He ought to stay. 
 Hence the Psalmist seeks to stir Him from His 
 sluggish indolence with the impassioned cry : 
 
 " Rouse thyself ! Why sleepest thou, O Lord ? 
 Awake, cast us not off for ever." 
 
 In Psa. 92 , we have an interesting passage, 
 probably referring to some recent event, in which it 
 is said to be a mystery unknown to the senseless, 
 that it is part of God's plan, for the wicked to 
 flourish in order that they might be destroyed. 
 Twice we have remarkable references to " the gods" 
 as responsible for the wrongs that are rampant on 
 earth. To these " Elohim " Yahweh, according to 
 Deut. 32 8 , had allotted the heathen nations, while 
 He retained Israel as His own portion. They are 
 identical with " the host of the high ones on high " 
 of whom we read in Isa. 24 21 , and with the angel 
 princes in the Book of Daniel. Like the angels of the 
 churches in the Revelation, they are held responsible 
 for the actions of those committed to them. 
 The situation in Pss. 58, 82, is one of misery for 
 Israel caused by the violence of the heathen. For 
 this violence the heavenly patrons are held guilty, so 
 when, as in Job, they come to present themselves 
 before Yahweh, He reproves them for the injustice 
 of their rule, and threatens them with the punish- 
 ment of death : 
 
Songs in tbc "Wigbt. 107 
 
 " I said, Ye are gods ; 
 And all of you sons of the Most High. 
 Howbeit, ye shall die like men, 
 And fall like one of the princes " (Psa. 82 a ). 
 
 There are three Psalms which deal specifically 
 with our problem, Pss. 37, 49, 73. The first of 
 these is an alphabetical Psalm, and we are there- 
 fore prepared to find considerable repetition, and no 
 strict development of the thought. The author 
 rebukes complaints against God on account of the 
 prosperity of the wicked, and bids his readers be not 
 envious of them. Rather let them wait patiently on 
 Yahweh, for if they delight in Him, He will give 
 them their heart's desire, and make their righteous- 
 ness go forth as the light. Vexation at the success 
 of the godless, leads only to evil doing. Why indeed 
 should they nourish vexation ? The wicked plot 
 the death of the righteous, but Yahweh mocks, for 
 it is their own death that is coming. Soon the 
 judgment is to burst, when they will be rooted out 
 of the land, and vanish like smoke. Those that are 
 cursed of Him shall be cut off. But the humble, 
 who wait on Yahweh, shall inherit the land for ever, 
 and have delight in abundance of peace. Better 
 then to have little like the righteous rather than the 
 wealth of the wicked. And even under present 
 conditions, the righteous man and his children do not 
 come to want. Moreover, even before the judg- 
 ment on the wicked comes, examples are to be seen 
 
problem of Sufferlnfl. 
 
 of the unrighteous flourishing like the cedars of 
 Lebanon, but suddenly cut off. Probably there is 
 no reference to the after life in verses 37, 38, though 
 it is uncertain whether the meaning is that there is 
 a posterity or a future to the man of peace, but not 
 to^the wicked. The Psalm would have been in 
 place in the Book of Proverbs, it is deservedly 
 a favourite for devotional reading, but it does not 
 advance the solution of the problem. 
 
 Psa. 49 is much more striking. The author 
 propounds the question why he should fear in time 
 of calamity, when the wealthy seek to overthrow 
 him. No man can ransom himself 1 from Sheol, 
 or secure for himself an earthly immortality. Wise 
 and fool die alike. The grave 2 is their house for ever 
 and man perishes like the beasts. Death drives the 
 self-confident down to Sheol, as a shepherd drives 
 his flock, while the upright rule over them in the 
 morning 3 . But the Psalmist expresses the confidence 
 that God will ransom him from Sheol and take him. 
 Therefore there is no need for fear, when a man 
 
 1 The text reads, " No man can by any means ransom a brother." 
 But " ransom himself" is the sense required. The word for " brother " 
 rich is also placed in a strange position at the beginning of the sentence. 
 We should read ak " surely," or " but." 
 
 The text reads qirbam "their inward part." But this yields no 
 proper sense, "their inward part their houses for ever." We should 
 read with the LXX., Syriac, Vulgate and Targum qibmm "their 
 grave," or perhaps better still point q'banm " graves." 
 
 8 The sense is not at all clear. " In the morning " rather takes us 
 into Apocalyptic ; when the great world -judgment breaks, then the 
 upright will rule over the wicked. But it scarcely seems suitable here, 
 
Songs in tbc IRfgbt. 109 
 
 grows rich, for at death he must leave' his riches 
 behind him. 
 
 Here the author does not appeal, as the author of 
 Psa. 37, to an imminent catastrophe, but to 
 life's normal issue. All die, and no man will ever 
 be so rich as to bribe God to release him from the 
 universal fate. But is a commonplace of this 
 kind worthy of the introduction, in which the author 
 invites all nations to listen to his wise utterances ? 
 Hardly, even if we emphasize the fact, that the 
 possession of wealth makes death harder than it is 
 for those who have little or nothing to leave. It is 
 therefore probable that we should seek the wisdom 
 he is uttering in ver. 15. There he expresses the 
 confidence that God will ransom him from the hand 
 of Sheol, " for He will take me." Frequently this 
 is thought to mean no more than that Yahweh will 
 deliver him from premature death. The hand of 
 Sheol is ready to clutch him as its prey, but Yahweh 
 plucks him out of its reach. In that case the mean- 
 
 for the author does not operate with this conception, and he is speaking 
 of what happens to the wicked after death. Wellhausen strikes out the 
 clause " and the upright rule over them." He says it " is an interpola- 
 tion which is extremely inappropriate in this passage. It shows, 
 however, most characteristically the longing of the Jews for Messianic 
 rule." He retains the word translated "in the morning" babboqer, 
 but translates " soon " connecting with the next clause. Klostermann 
 retains the consonants, but points and divides differently, reading 
 itfyer e du fcmeysharim " and they go down smoothly " or " by level 
 ways." This connects very well with the preceding words, though 
 whether it is quite what would have been expected is more dubious. 
 Duhm accepts it. 
 
no abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 ing would be that while he has to die in due course, 
 he is saved from imminent death. But the context 
 shows that here we ought to have a contrast between 
 the fate of the Psalmist and that of the ungodly 
 rich. We should have a contrast if the latter were 
 said to die prematurely. But this is not the case. 
 They die in the normal course of things in spite of 
 their wealth. The contrast lies between what the 
 wicked cannot buy from God, and what the Psalmist 
 receives from God as an act of grace. Such a con- 
 trast would be given if the writer said that while the 
 wicked died, he lived on upon earth. But that is not 
 the contrast he has in mind. All must die, he as 
 well as the rest. But while the wicked are driven 
 down to the dim under- world, God saves him, when 
 he dies, from this fate, and takes him to live with 
 Himself. The phraseology recalls the story of Enoch, 
 and we must reckon the Psalm as one of the im- 
 mortality Psalms. This new doctrine it is which 
 is regarded by the author as a wise saying, worthy 
 the world's attention. 
 
 The Seventy-third Psalm strikes a still deeper note. 
 It opens with a confession of God's goodness to the 
 pure in heart, which springs from the experience the 
 Psalmist is going to describe. For this conviction had 
 not been reached without a hard struggle, in which 
 his faith had all but failed him. His own life had been 
 lived in purity, yet he had suffered without respite. 
 And in glaring contrast to his own lot was the pros- 
 perity of the wicked. They were free from pangs, 
 
Scm00 In tbe Hfgbt m 
 
 lived in perfect health, and were untroubled by the 
 miseries that oppress the rest of mankind. So they 
 became haughty and violent, their ill-deeds sprang 
 from an unfeeling heart, their imagination led them 
 to utter perverse and lofty speeches, as if they were 
 no mere mortals but denizens of heaven. The people 
 flocked to them, and judging by their prosperity, 
 pronounced them free from fault, and spake lightly of 
 God's omniscience. As he considered their fortunate 
 lot, he felt that his own efforts for purity had been mis- 
 spent, for he had been exposed to the const ant buffeting 
 of fate. As he thought, so also he spoke, and Israelite 
 though he was, became faithless to his people. Yet 
 though he uttered this traitorous conclusion, the 
 problem still vexed his mind. And as he pondered 
 it, he was initiated into God's sacred mysteries, and 
 saw the dark destiny prepared for the godless. The 
 veil that hides the future which awaits men after death 
 was lifted for him. There in the other world he saw 
 how God dashed them down to ruin in a moment, 
 how they were dragged into the depths, appalled 
 with nameless terrors. How foolish then to be 
 perplexed at their prosperity, so grievous to him 
 in the dream of his ignorance, so contemptible 
 now he has awakened to a true knowledge of the 
 future ! Penitently he confesses his error, his pre- 
 vious pain had been due to his brute-like ignorance. 
 In contrast to their fleeting happiness and the 
 shuddering horrors that will meet them on the 
 other side, how blessed his own lot. He lives in 
 
ii2 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 unbroken fellowship with God, feeling the warm 
 clasp of His hand, and guided through life by His 
 counsel. Strong in the assurance of God's presence 
 faith triumphs over death. Already he knows that 
 his communion with God is so close, so intimate, 
 that nothing can destroy it. Death must come, but 
 not death itself can separate him from the love of 
 God. He will be taken to that glory in which God 
 dwells. What then have heaven or earth to offer 
 him, since God is the sole possession in which he takes 
 delight ? His powers may fail him, his body waste 
 away, but for evermore it is God, Who is his strength 
 and portion. While they who wander far from Him 
 will perish, his own blessedness lies in his soul's 
 nearness to Him. 
 
 The text of the Psalm is not well preserved, and 
 there are numerous difficulties in its interpretation. 
 The following translation is offered as an approxima- 
 tion to its original meaning : 
 
 Surely God is good to Israel, 4 
 
 To the pure in heart. 
 
 But as for me, my feet had all but swerved, 
 
 My steps had well-nigh slipped. 
 
 4 The parallelism suggests that in the first line we should have a word 
 expressing moral excellence corresponding to "pure in heart." We 
 gain this, if with Duhm we read the consonants translated " Israel ' 
 not as one word but as two, reading layyashar 'cf, and translating the 
 first line "Surely God is good to the upright." In that case 'elohim 
 belongs to the next line, which is at present too short, and may be 
 translated, "even God to the pure in heart." The rather awkward 
 
Songs fn tbe Ylfgbt. 113 
 
 For I was envious at the boasters, 
 When I saw the success of the wicked. 
 For they have no pangs, 5 
 Sound and fat is their body. 
 In the misery of mortals they have no part, 
 And with other men they are not stricken. 
 Therefore pride is their necklace, 
 A garment of violence covers them. 
 Their iniquity 6 comes forth out of fatness, 
 The imaginations of their heart overflow. 
 They mock and speak in wickedness, 
 Perversity 7 they speak from on high. 
 They have set their mouth in the heavens, 
 And their tongue walks in the earth, 
 Therefore the people return to them, 
 And they find no blemish in them ; 8 
 
 conjunction of W and 'elokim is due to the Elohistic reviser, who 
 substituted the latter for Yahweh. I have not given effect to the 
 suggestion in my translation, though it may very well be correct. That 
 the plural in the second line is balanced by a singular in the first need 
 occasion no difficulty. 
 
 5 Instead of l e motham "at their death" we should no doubt, dividing 
 the consonants, read lamo tarn. The former word means "to them " 
 ("there are no pangs to them"), the latter word is that translated 
 "sound." 
 
 6 Reading with the LXX. and most commentators ( aw ondmo instead 
 of the text ''eynemo "their eye." The meaning is that their iniquity 
 comes "out ot a gross, unfeeling heart." (Driver, Parallel Psalter, 
 p. 208). 
 
 7 So, rather than as " oppression," Buhl in the last edition of Gesenius' 
 Hebrew Lexicon, and Duhm. 
 
 8 The Hebrew margin reads " Therefore his people return hither, and 
 waters of fulness are drained by them," and this is supported by the 
 versions against the Kethib "he bringeth back his people hither." 
 The text is suspicious. Wellhausen, improving on Lagarde's emenda- 
 
 I 
 
H4 Gbe problem of Suffering, 
 
 And they say, 9 " How does God know, 
 
 And is their knowledge in the Most High ? " 
 
 See, these are the wicked, 
 
 And, at ease for ever, they increase their power. 
 
 " Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart, 
 
 And washed in innocency my hands ; 
 
 Yet I was stricken all the day, 
 
 And my reproof came every morning." 
 
 I said, " Thus will I speak ; " 10 
 
 Lo, to the generation of thy sons was I traitor. 
 
 And I pondered how to know this, 
 
 Misery was in it in mine eyes, 
 
 Till I penetrated into God's holy secrets, 11 
 
 Considered their destiny. 
 
 tion, reads for the first line " Therefore arc they satisfied with bread," 
 which involves little alteration, and gives an excellent parallel to the 
 second line. Baethgen feels that bread and water is not what we 
 should expect in a description of the fortunes of the wealthy oppressor 
 He thinks with several that the reference to water is figurative for 
 the false teaching of the wicked, which is drunk in by their fellow- 
 countrymen. Accordingly he does not emend the text. The translation 
 given above follows Duhm's reading, 'am 'aleyhem in the first line, and 
 mum lo yimts^u in the second, which is little more than afresh division 
 of the consonants. The meaning is that the people judge from the 
 prosperity of the wicked that they have chosen the better part. 
 
 9 Apparently it is the people mentioned in the previous verse, who 
 are the speakers. Opinions differ as to where their speech ends. 
 I think, on the whole, it is best to make it embrace this verse only, 
 the poet himself resuming with " See these are the wicked." 
 
 10 The present text is incomplete " If I said I will tell like," we need 
 to complete it with " this," or " these things." I follow Baethgen in 
 striking out " if," which may have arisen through dittography of the 
 next two letters. The poet had spoken in this way. 
 
 "The line is commonly translated " Until I went into the sanctuary 
 of God." Had he then been staying away all the time his trouble was 
 
Songs in tbe THt^bt 115 
 
 Surely thou settest them in slippery places, 
 
 Castest them down into ruins. 
 
 How are they become a desolation in a moment, 
 
 Hurried away, ended by terrors. 
 
 As a dream after waking shall they be, 12 
 
 When thou art aroused, thou shalt despise their semblance. 
 
 When my heart was soured, 
 
 And I felt a stab in my reins, 
 
 Then I was a brute and knew not, 
 
 vexing him ? The word is plural, "sanctuaries," and it yields a much 
 finer thought if, with Hitzig and some other scholars, we take the word 
 to mean God's sacred mysteries. There is no need to infer with Duhm 
 that the poet was actually initiated into mysteries, which gave instruction 
 on the life after death . At the same time I agree with him in thinking 
 that in what fallows we have a description of the fate of the oppressor 
 a ter death. Experience would have contradicted, for so profound 
 a thinker, any such view of their fate as happening in this life. 
 
 12 The present text suggests that when God awakes lie will despise 
 their semblance, as a man despises his dream when he wakes from it 
 to realities. The thought, however, that God is at present asleep and 
 the victim of an illusion which He will despise when He awakes cannot 
 have been in the Psalmist's mind. We shall accordingly be obliged to 
 fall back on the interpretation that when God rouses Himself to judg- 
 ment He despises their semblance, just as a man despises His dream 
 when He wakes from it. This, however, is not the immediate impres- 
 sion of the simile. Wellhausen strikes out 'adonay, " O Lord." He 
 gives no reason, but it may be supposed was influenced by some such 
 consideration as that mentioned above. The sense we want seems to be 
 that when a man is wakened from the ignorance in which he now 
 slumbers, he will see things as they are, and despise the phantoms 
 which now seem such solid realities. This is the sense given in the 
 translation above. Instead of striking out ^ddondy we may suppose 
 with Duhm that it is substituted for Yahweh, as it was usually substituted 
 in reading. If we further correct Yahweh into yihfyu we get the sense, 
 " shall they be." We have a similar case probably in the famous 
 passage, Psalm 45', where 'etbhim should probably be yih e yeh> "Thy 
 throne shall be for ever and ever." 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 Gbe problem of Suffering* 
 
 A very beast 13 I became towards Thee. 
 
 But I am continually with Thee, 
 
 Thou boldest my right hand, 
 
 With Thy counsel Thou wilt guide me, 
 
 And afterwards to glory Thou wilt take me. 14 
 
 Whom have I in heaven ? 
 
 And possessing Thee I delight in nought upon earth. 
 
 Though my flesh and my heart fail away, 
 
 God is for ever the rock of my heart and my portion. 
 
 For, lo, they that go far from Thee shall perish, 
 
 Thou dost cut off every one that goes wantonly astray 
 
 from Thee. 
 
 But as for me, nearness to God is my good, 
 I have made my refuge in the Lord Yahweh, 
 To recount all Thy works. 15 
 
 If the Psalm has been correctly interpreted, the 
 solution of the problem is attained by reference to 
 the state after death. In this it differs from Psa. 
 
 13 So Driver translates, taking behemoth as an intensive plural. Some 
 think behemoth is intended, as in Job. Duhm reads the singular. 
 
 14 1 take achar as an adverb meaning afterwards, and kabbd &$> accusa- 
 tive expressing direction, "to glory." We might also translate "with 
 glory." The Hebrew is no doubt peculiar, Wellhausen thinks it 
 indefensible and reads ach&reyka b f y&d, "And takest me by the hand 
 after Thee " (see also Smend Ailtestamentliche Religionsgeschichtf, 
 1st ed. p. 453). The alteration yields a fine thought, but it is one 
 already substantially expressed, and one not nearly so deep as that given 
 by the present text. If accepted, it would l>e better to read Ifyadi. 
 Cheyne (Jewish Religious Life, p. 240) reads, " And make known to 
 me the path of glory." 
 
 "Duhm may be right in thinking thai this line is a later addition- 
 The impression of the Psalm is not strengthened by it, and its regularity 
 is disturbed since the line has no parallel. 
 
in tbe UMgbt. 117 
 
 37, which also solves the difficulty by escha- 
 tology, but simply with a reference to the judgment 
 in which the wicked are to be slain, while the righteous 
 survive and inherit the land. It moves essentially 
 on the same lines as that of Psa. 49, but it heightens 
 the contrast, and is incomparably richer and deeper 
 in expression. How striking is the difference 
 between the bloodless description of the one and the 
 lurid terrors of the other ! And how tame the utter- 
 ance of hope for a happy future compared with the 
 wonderful picture of the soul in deep, untroubled 
 fellowship with God, so deep that Death cannot sever 
 it, so perfect that heaven itself can add nothing to it ! 
 Here also the writer has really reached a point 
 where his problem sinks into insignificance. He lives 
 in God and in that rapture the pains of earth sting 
 him no longer. Since God is his portion, the 
 sufferings of this life do not disturb his peace. And 
 even the glory, to which he knows that he will be 
 taken, means essentially nothing more than he has 
 already in his possession of God. Nowhere else in 
 the Old Testament is the essence of religion set forth 
 with such power and such beauty, no passage makes 
 so deep an appeal to our inmost heart. It ranks 
 with Jeremiah's prophecy of the New Covenant, with 
 the Second Isaiah's description of the suffering 
 Servant, with the fourth chapter of the Book of 
 Jonah, those most marvellous monuments of the 
 religious genius of Israel. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 Ubc Bpocalsptist an& tbe pessimist 
 
 THE miseries, which filled the century after the 
 Return, lived on through long stretches of the 
 centuries that followed, relieved by happier 
 intervals, and culminating in the horrors and 
 splendours of the Maccabean age. Our Psalter 
 reflects the condition of things during the post- 
 exilic period, though it may include some poems of 
 an earlier time. But other currents were set in 
 motion or accelerated by the sufferings of Judah, 
 which demand some notice before the discussion 
 draws to its close. 
 
 The sorrows of the present sent many for comfort 
 to the future. It must be, so the pious thought in 
 many an agonising moment, when ground by the 
 heel of the foreign tyrant or of their own apostate 
 countrymen, it must surely be that day cannot but 
 dawn after darkness so intense. How could life 
 otherwise be tolerable, if when endurance was 
 strained to snapping point, the hope of imminent 
 deliverance did not lift them above their despair ? 
 
apocalgpttst an& tbc pessimist. 119 
 
 So they fed their courage with the illusion that they 
 were living at the thrilling hour of crisis. As they 
 flagged in the dreary march, they said to each other, 
 God's kingdom will break on our sight at the next 
 turn of the road. They studied the ancient prophets, 
 combined their pictures of the glorious future into 
 a systematic whole, and sought from their scattered 
 hints to formulate a prophetic chronology. Loss of 
 political independence led to the expectation of 
 deliverance by catastrophe rather than by an evolu- 
 tion from the existing political situation. As the 
 drama reaches its climax, God strikes in and crushes 
 the heathen oppressor. In an instant, without 
 preparation, the transition is effected from dense 
 gloom to the radiant light. The strange symbolism 
 and elaborate allegories are a development of 
 features found in the prophets, the later prophets 
 especially, and perhaps were also fostered by the 
 need for caution in perilous times. The seer 
 wrapped up in an allegory what it was unsafe to 
 utter without disguise. These apocalypses were as 
 a rule represented as revelations to some ancient 
 seer. They often sketch the history from the 
 assumed author's date to the time of the real author, 
 events that have already happened being described 
 with great circumstantiality, which gives place to 
 vague generalities when history in the guise of 
 prediction passes into prediction proper. There is 
 usually a more or less elaborate angelology. 
 
 Of apocalypses in the strict sense of the term we 
 
120 be problem of Suffering. 
 
 have only one in the Old Testament, the Book of 
 Daniel. But some earlier prophecies have a strong 
 apocalyptic colouring. Zephaniah, though in a mild 
 degree, is perhaps our earliest example, but in Ezekiel 
 it is very marked. Zechariah, Joel, and especially 
 Isa. 24-27 also show us prophecy moving towards 
 apocalyptic. 
 
 Joel, whose date may most plausibly be fixed in 
 the fourth century B.C., speaks in a time of great 
 distress, caused partly by drought, which has dried 
 up the streams and given rise to bush and forest fires, 
 but chiefly by an exceptionally severe plague of 
 locusts. The description of the locusts is that of 
 a poet, not of a naturalist, and any exaggeration 
 must be thus explained. The locusts are not a 
 metaphor for soldiers, nor are they supernatural, 
 demoniacal locusts, like those in the Book of Revela- 
 tion. They are ordinary locusts, but since the 
 prophet sees in them the harbingers of the Day of 
 Yahweh, an eschatological hue is reflected back 
 upon them. So terrible has been the devastation, 
 that the daily meal and drink offering at the Temple 
 have had to be suspended, an ominous portent to the 
 feeling of antiquity, since it seemed to snap the link 
 which bound Yahweh to His people. The prophet 
 calls for a fast and for mourning, bids his countrymen 
 rend their hearts and not their garments and turn to 
 Yahweh. Yet, unlike the early prophets, he com- 
 plains of no specific sins, so that we may reasonably 
 conclude that he inferred from Judah's calamity its 
 
BpocalEpttet an& tbe peeeimtst. 121 
 
 sinfulness in God's sight. And this is confirmed by 
 the fact that the trouble was healed by a solemn 
 assembly, not by moral reformation and the for- 
 saking of definite sins. In that case our problem is 
 conceived really on conventional lines. The severe 
 suffering of Judah is due to its sin, though what this 
 sin may be is not known, and its existence is a mere 
 inference from the extreme distress under which the 
 country is labouring. 
 
 It is not necessary for our purpose to discuss at 
 length the apocalypse which we now read in Isa. 
 24-27. Although Duhm's argument accepted by 
 Cheyne, Marti, and apparently Skinner, for its 
 composite character, and his analysis, seem to me in 
 the main convincing, I cannot accept the 2nd and ist 
 century dates, which he assigns to it. The period from 
 Artaxerxes Ochus to Alexander the Great appears to 
 offer the most suitable occasion, and most worthily 
 to explain the language employed. The problem of 
 Judah's suffering emerges only slightly, though it 
 lies behind much that the writers say. The main 
 apocalypse describes a universal judgment on the 
 nations for bloodshed and oppression. The chief 
 insertion is 26 1 " 19 , which begins with praise for God's 
 mercies, and passes into desire for complete deliver- 
 ance, ending with the anticipation of a resurrection 
 to fill the depleted land. Perhaps zf~ u is another 
 insertion, a passage unhappily very obscure, but 
 apparently tracing Judah's present evil condition to 
 its sin, finding encouragement in the mildness of 
 
122 cbe problem ot Suffering. 
 
 God's earlier judgments, and promising pardon 
 upon repentance. The points that specially demand 
 attention are the reference to " the host of the height 
 on high " (24 21 ), and the prediction of the annihilation 
 of death (25 8 ), and of a resurrection (26 19 ). The first 
 of these touches a point already mentioned. The 
 author glancing over the blood-stained history of 
 the great empires, and foretelling their punishment 
 through the mighty political convulsions that are 
 about to desolate the world, includes not simply the 
 earthly, but also the heavenly rulers of the nations, 
 in the punishment Yahweh is about to inflict. Here 
 we have the same thought as in Pss. 58, 82, that the 
 miseries of the world are largely to be accounted for 
 by the misgovernment of the angelic guardians of 
 the nations, who are here represented as in Psa. 82, as 
 doomed to punishment, though the form of the 
 penalty differs. The reference to the annihilation 
 of death does not arise in connection with our 
 problem, and I refer to it here simply for its relation 
 to eschatological questions which do arise at some 
 points of our enquiry. The prediction of a resur- 
 rection is important, since it is the earliest instance 
 of the transference to the individual of the hope that 
 had previously been expressed for the nation. It is 
 quite easy to see how this took place. The writer is 
 troubled that the land is so thinly peopled, and rises 
 to the great conviction that God's life-giving dew 
 shall fall on those who sleep in the dust, and cause 
 them to arise, so that the land may once more be 
 
tlbe Bpocalgptfst an& tbc ipesetmist. 123 
 
 thickly inhabited. It is only of pious Israelites 
 (" thy dead ") that the author is thinking. 
 
 It would be hard to overrate the influence of the 
 Book of Daniel on later religious thought. It was 
 issued about 165 B.C. to encourage the Jews in 
 the terrible persecution they were suffering from 
 Antiochus Epiphanes for loyalty to their religion. 
 Much of it has no direct bearing on our problem, 
 except in so far as it is designed to assure the faithful 
 Jews that the oppressor shall soon be broken and the 
 reign of the saints begin. Two special points must 
 be noticed since they do bear on the special question 
 before us. Both are developments of what we have 
 found in Isa. 24-27. One is the place assigned 
 to the angelic princes. The angel who appears to 
 Daniel in the tenth chapter explains the delay in his 
 arrival by saying that for twenty-one days the prince 
 of Persia had withstood him, but " Michael, one of 
 the chief princes," came to help him. He informs 
 him further that as soon as he has revealed the 
 message, he must return to fight with the prince of 
 Persia, and afterwards with the prince of Greece. 
 In this conflict " there is none that strengthened 
 himself with me against these, except Michael your 
 prince." Towards the close of the vision it is said 
 that when Antiochus falls : " Michael shall stand up, 
 the great prince who stands for the children of thy 
 people " (I2 1 ). There is to be an unprecedented 
 tribulation, but all who are written in the book, i.e., 
 the book of life, shall be delivered. Here, onee more, 
 
124 be problem of Suffering. 
 
 the miseries of earth are due to the angelic powers. 
 The conflicts of earth have first been fought in 
 heaven between the patron angels of the nations. 
 While in Deuteronomy the other nations have each 
 its angel, but Israel has Yahweh, in Daniel Israel 
 has Michael for its angel. This development is 
 largely due to the overwhelming sense of the 
 transcendence of God. 
 
 The second point is the prediction of a resurrec- 
 tion. " And many that sleep in the dust of the earth 
 shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to 
 reproaches and everlasting abhorrence. And they 
 that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
 firmament, and they that turn many to righteous- 
 ness as the stars for ever and ever " (i2 2 ' 8 ). The 
 passage springs out of the historical circumstances. 
 The hope of a life with God in heaven had already 
 found expression, and a physical resurrection had 
 been predicted as the remedy for the depopulation 
 of the land. But what works specially on our 
 author's mind is the heroic constancy to God, 
 displayed by the martyrs. When Israel triumphs, 
 and God's kingdom is set up on earth, they must be 
 raised from the dead to share in its glories. The 
 wise, who turn many to righteousness, are apparently 
 distinguished from the rank and file of the risen ones. 
 But the passage reflects also the internal conflicts 
 in the contemporary Judaism. The apostates who 
 have renounced the faith of their people are not to 
 remain in Sheol. They are brought back to life, 
 
Cbe Spocalppttet an& tbe pessimist 125 
 
 that there in the Messianic kingdom they may for 
 ever hear the reproaches and endure the loathing of 
 those whom they have betrayed. 
 
 Not all Jews could take refuge from the miseries 
 of the present, in glowing pictures of an imminent 
 golden age. Where faith has lost its spring, the 
 earnest soul, that is keenly sensitive to the miseries 
 of mankind, drifts easily towards pessimism. Such 
 was the case of him to whom we owe the Book of 
 Ecclesiastes. 1 Its date is not certain, but we may 
 with most probability assign it to the close of the 
 third or the opening of the second century B.C., 
 though the possibility of a Hasmonean or even of 
 a Herodian date is not excluded. The author's 
 meaning is not always clear, and two causes have 
 combined to conceal it still more from the general 
 reader. One is that Solomon has been regarded as 
 the author, and in direct antithesis to the main 
 current of its thought has been imagined to have 
 
 1 For a statement of the critical conclusions that are here pre- 
 supposed, I may refer to my article Ecclesiastes in Hastings' 
 Dictionary of the Bible. Since that was written other theories have 
 been advanced. The most important is perhaps Siegfried's in his com- 
 mentary on the work in Nowack's Hand-Kommentar (1898). It reminds 
 one to some extent of his treatment of Job in The Sacred Books of the 
 Old Testament. The original author was a pessimist, who had broken 
 with Judaism, and was mainly influenced by Stoicism. His work was 
 glossed by four writers representing Epicurean Sadduceeism, Jewish 
 wisdom, Jewish piety, and a prudential view of life. After a first redactor 
 had compiled the work and added I2 8 as a closing formula, I2 9>1 was 
 added, then I2 11 - 12 , and I2 13 - 14 by the final redactor. The English 
 reader may see an outline of the theory and a brief sketch of the 
 contents of the book from this point of view in Siegfried's article 
 
ia6 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 written it in a penitent old age. The other is that 
 it has been interpolated in an orthodox interest, 
 to break the point of much that the author says. 
 Yet we need not push this just conclusion to the 
 extreme of finding as many writers as there are 
 tendencies in the book, for the author was a man 
 whose thought was not rigidly consistent, and whose 
 expression varied with his mood. Tn the main he 
 has a definite view of life. This is that all is vanity. 
 As he looks back on his own career and sums up its 
 impression, this is the verdict he deliberately passes 
 on it. Life is meaningless and a mockery, since 
 man's powers crave a sphere of action, and their 
 exercise achieves no abiding result. The fundamen- 
 tal law of existence is that life is a closed circle from 
 which man cannot get away. All things move in 
 a cycle, what is now, has been before, and will 
 be again, and there is no new thing under the 
 sun. Hence there can be no progress. There is no 
 
 Wisdom in Hastings' Dictionary oj the Bible, Its value lies in its 
 forcing into prominence the different tendencies that are present in the 
 book ; but I think more of them could be combined in a single 
 personality than Siegfried admits. His theory is accepted l.y 
 II. P. Smith, Old Testament History, p. 439, but is adversely criticised 
 by Lane in a monograph entitled Das Buch Koheleth und die Inter- 
 polationshypothese Siegfried's (Wittenberg, 1900). Other discussions 
 are to be found in Cheyne, Jewish Reliincus Life, pp. 183 208 
 (Herodian date, interpolation in orthodox interest, omission of objection- 
 able passages, deliberate dislocation of order to destroy the connexion). 
 Davidson's article in the Encyclopaedia Biblica reaches practically the 
 same results as the article in Hastings' Dictionary. Cheyne 
 a useful series of notes on recent discussions. 
 
BpocalgptiBt anfc tbe fpeaefmtet 127 
 
 profit in our toil ; we are climbing a treadmill, not 
 a stairway to heights yet unreached. All things are 
 fixed in their order by God, and occur regardless of 
 our endeavours to help or thwart them. What God 
 does is for ever, no human effort can increase or 
 lessen the sum total of things. Hence all efforts for 
 reform are hopeless, the wheel of fate spins round, 
 and man, himself lashed to it, can neither accelerate 
 nor retard its motion. If we imagine that anything 
 is new, that is an error. For generations ago it was 
 known, and it is only the fact, that those who knew 
 it have died and their very memory is forgotten, 
 which makes it possible for it to be thought a novelty. 
 As the author thinks of this dreary grind, his soul is 
 filled with loathing for its unspeakable weariness : 
 " All things are full of weariness ; man cannot utter 
 it ; the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear 
 with hearing." (i. 8 ) 
 
 Now the thought that there is a reign of law, a 
 fixed cycle in which history moves, might bring 
 inspiration to a man. If he could discover the law, 
 then he might work with it and make himself one 
 with the main stream of the universe ; even though 
 his work ended in nothing permanent, he still might 
 win a large satisfaction for his own brief life. But 
 this is just what he cannot do. God has planned 
 minutely the whole order of things, nay, He has 
 implanted within men the instincts and impulses 
 that move them to busy themselves with the things 
 He has ordained. But it is^man's misery that God 
 
128 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 has deliberately withheld knowledge, while He has 
 imparted impulse. Hence man is driven to seek 
 his satisfaction in the world, but he seeks it blindfold. 
 Careful foresight may just as well lead him wrong as 
 right. The man gifted with wisdom may think he 
 has detected the law of events. But this is self- 
 deception, " though a wise man think to know it, yet 
 he shall not be able to find it." Thus man's iitmost 
 avails him nothing. He does not know his time, 
 hence he may ruin everything by excessive zeal or 
 a too prudent caution. Qualifications and ability do 
 not serve him : " The race is not to the swift, nor 
 the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the 
 wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet 
 favour to men of skill ; but time and chance happen- 
 eth to them all " (Q 11 ). Hence, while to the eye of 
 God everything comes in its order and all things are 
 beautiful in their season, man who has no clue to 
 the maze, can see in the world's happenings no 
 harmonious order, but only the reign of caprice. It 
 is mere chance whether he hits or misses the moment 
 of fate, whether the plans, he has laid so carefully, 
 coincide or not with the plans of God. Moreover, 
 God has freely chosen to make man's life thus 
 unmeaning. He guards His secret, resolute that 
 men shall not divine it. He wills to humble their 
 proud conceit, that they may know themselves to be 
 no better than the beasts. Thus they are snared in 
 an evil net, since the knowledge is withheld that 
 would enable them to escape its meshes. 
 
Ebe Bpocalgpttet an& tbe pessimist 129 
 
 This hopeless view of life is not merely asserted, 
 the author seeks to prove it. He has reached it as 
 the result of exhaustive experiment. He had tried 
 the roads, which lead, as men think, to satisfaction. 
 But always his search had ended in disenchantment. 
 Wisdom he found to be vain. The very impulse to 
 seek it involved him in sore labour, and in much 
 wisdom he discovered much sorrow, and increase of 
 knowledge he learnt to be increase of pain. Some 
 advantage, it is true, wisdom has over folly. Yet 
 it all ends in death and utter oblivion, and in the 
 long run the wise is no better than the fool. But if 
 wisdom does not satisfy, may not happiness be 
 attained through pleasure ? Clothing his experiences 
 here, as in the previous case, in the form of experiences 
 of Solomon, the writer tells us that he sought satis- 
 faction in the delights of the senses, in vast riches, in 
 works of building and husbandry. He was not a 
 sensualist for the sake of wallowing in debauchery. 
 His wisdom remained with him, in other words he 
 investigated pleasure as a scientific experimentalist 
 bent on discovering the answer to a problem. And 
 here, too, he reached an unfavourable result, and 
 felt that he hated life for its ineffectiveness. 
 
 In the course of his book he communicates more 
 of his observations. The labour of life is vain, since 
 the wise man may have a fool for his heir. Moreover, 
 if he accumulates wealth, it means the burden of 
 a larger household ; it implies incessant toil by day, 
 and anxious, sleepless nights ; he may lose it all and 
 
 K 
 
130 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 be plunged into poverty ; or he may lose the capacity 
 to enjoy the pleasures and comforts it might procure 
 him ; and in any case he has at last to die and 
 relinquish it. Once more, wherever we look abroad 
 in the world we see misery. Government is an 
 organised system of oppression. We need not 
 wonder, for those who oppress the subject, are 
 themselves the victims of the rapacity of their 
 superiors, and the latter similarly suffer from those 
 above them. Thus on the hapless subjects of a 
 province weighs the accumulated oppression of rank 
 above rank of civil servants. And as the author, 
 tender-hearted but despairing, considers the tears of 
 the wronged and how they have no comforter, he 
 exclaims, far better the fate of those long dead, than 
 of those who suffer these intolerable pains, but best 
 of all is it never to have been born. He had seen the 
 enthusiasm of the people when the reign of an old 
 king, too old to mend his ways or take counsel, 
 had given place to the reign of a new monarch. But 
 he knew that here too, disillusion was bound to come. 
 He had seen the inversion of social distinctions, 
 slaves on horseback and princes trudging on foot, 
 fools in positions of dignity. He had marked, 
 perhaps he had suffered from, the ubiquity of spies, 
 and learnt how necessary it was to avoid all criticism 
 of the ruling powers. He had known great benefits 
 repaid with ungrateful forget fulness, and he had 
 noticed how the wisdom of the poor was despised. He 
 is especially bitter about women, wherein there is no 
 
3be HpocalgptiBt anfc tbe ipeastmtet. 131 
 
 doubt disclosed a singularly unfortunate experience : 
 "One .man out of a thousand have I found, but 
 a woman among all these I have not found." 
 
 The misgovernment of the world by man is all in 
 a line with the government of God. On this, how- 
 ever, the author speaks with different voices. He 
 refers to the divine judgment, and says that it shall 
 be well with those who fear God. Yet he tells us 
 that a righteous man perishes in his righteousness, 
 and a wicked man prolongs his life in evil doing. All 
 have the same fate. " All things come alike to all : 
 there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked ; 
 to the good and to the evil ; to the clean and to the 
 unclean ; to him that sacrificeth, and him that 
 sacrificeth not : as is the good so is the sinner ; and 
 he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. This 
 is an evil, in all that is done under the sun, that 
 there is one event to all" (9 2 ' 8 ). The author 
 has not abandoned a belief in God, but the belief has 
 been practically emptied of religious content. He 
 knows no rapture of sweet familiar intercourse, but 
 thinks of God as the austere ruler, who is to be 
 dreaded and on whose forbearance it would be 
 perilous to presume. Into His presence man should 
 enter with caution, and remembering that God is in 
 heaven, while he is on earth, he should not be too 
 glib in his religious exercises, but should see that his 
 words are few. Especially he should beware lest he 
 suffer himself to be carried away by religious 
 enthusiasm and undertake pledges, which he will not 
 
 K 2 
 
i32 Sbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 wish to carry out in cold blood. " When thou 
 vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it ; for He 
 has no pleasure in fools " (5 4 ). 
 
 The author's maxims for the conduct of life are of 
 singular interest. At the best, life is wretched. It 
 is better to go to the house of mourning than the 
 house of feasting, and the day of death is better than 
 the day of birth. It is well for man to be patient 
 and resigned, to accept the inevitable and recognise 
 that it is impossible to straighten what God has 
 made crooked. While all enterprise is made uncer- 
 tain by man's ignorance of God's design, yet it is 
 best to work on, disregarding this fact. Do not, he 
 says, wait timidly till opportunity seems more 
 favourable, but boldly venture. Do not relax your 
 efforts, for one may fail and another succeed, indeed, 
 both alike may chance to prosper. Withal, it is 
 well to be prudent and to prepare for possible mis- 
 chances. A special form that prudence may wisely 
 take is benevolence, distributed over a wide 
 area, for calamity may come, and possibly some 
 who have been helped, may be willing to repay 
 their debt. 
 
 There is no remedy for the ills of life, but there is 
 some mitigation. " A man has no better thing 
 under the sun than to eat and drink and enjoy 
 himself " (8 15 ). " There is nothing better for a man 
 than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul 
 enjoy good in his labour " (2 24 ). This is the gift of 
 God to be taken and used, without anxious fear 
 
Bpocalgpttst anD tbe pessimist, 133 
 
 whether it is right or wrong. " Go thy way, eat 
 thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry 
 heart ; for God has already accepted thy works " 
 (9 7 , cf. 2 24 , 3 13 , 5 1 *-'*, 8 15 ). The author does not recom- 
 mend a debased sensualism ; he speaks with bitter- 
 ness of " the woman whose heart is snares and nets, 
 and her hands as bands " (f 6 ). It is rather a mod- 
 erate enjoyment of the good things of life, its simple 
 pleasures, food and drink, and wedded life. The 
 extremes alike of indulgence and restraint should be 
 avoided : "Be not righteous over much ; neither 
 make thyself overwise : why shouldest thou destroy 
 thyself ? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou 
 foolish : why shouldest thou die before thy time ? " 
 (7'-"). 
 
 The exhortations to snatch from life what pleasure 
 one may, gain much of their significance from the 
 author's old-fashioned view of the future. He flatly 
 denies the doctrine of a future life in any worthy 
 sense of the term. Men, he says outright, are beasts; 
 the lot of one is the lot of the other ; in the dim 
 underworld, whither man is going, " there is no 
 work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom " 
 (9 10 ). " The dead know not anything, neither have 
 they any more a reward ; for the memory of them 
 is forgotten " (g 5 ). So if a man seek any relief from 
 his misery, let him seize the fleeting moment, mindful 
 that in Sheol no pleasure will be possible to him any 
 more. " If a man lives many years, let him rejoice 
 in them all ; but let him remember the days of dark- 
 
134 be problem of Suffering. 
 
 ness, for they shall be many " (n 8 ). Especially he 
 should rejoice in his youth, remembering the evil 
 days of old age, when with the failure of all his 
 bodily powers, his zest for pleasure will pass away 
 
 (II 9 -I2 7 ). 
 
 To some it may seem strange, that God should 
 have suffered such a book to be included in the Old 
 Testament Canon. And if we sought to find every- 
 where in the Old Testament a word of God, which 
 should speak the Divine message to us, we should be 
 justly mystified with a book that affirmed the 
 doctrines it contains. That all life is vanity and 
 striving after wind ; that God has deliberately 
 withheld from men the knowledge by which they 
 might successfully order their lives ; that progress is 
 impossible ; that a moderate enjoyment of the good 
 things of the world is the chief thing to be pursued, 
 and pursued as the best anodyne for the radical 
 disease of life ; that man perishes like the beasts, 
 and after death can look forward only to the inter- 
 minable gloom of Sheol : all these would amply 
 suffice to exclude the book from the Old Testament, 
 if the view I have mentioned were correct. It is 
 not an imperfect Christianity that we find in it, but 
 rather the negation of all that makes the Gospel dear. 
 Yet if we are content to look at the question from 
 a historical point of view, we shall see good reason to 
 rejoice that it was included in the Canon. The 
 edifying additions, which turned it into a more pious 
 work, helped to check the mischief it might otherwise 
 
Bpocalgptlst anD tbe pesaimlst. 135 
 
 have done to those with a mechanical and unhistor- 
 ical conception of revelation. But, for a sounder 
 view, these additions are not needful to justify its 
 presence in Scripture. For we see in the Old 
 Testament a preparation for Christ. Such a prepara- 
 tion was not simply along the line of anticipation 
 and approach. Rightly to appraise Christianity we 
 required an object lesson, which should convince us 
 how much the world needed it. The moral bank- 
 ruptcy of Greece and Rome present us with an 
 impressive example of what we are seeking. But 
 Judaism, was it not competent to carry through 
 the world's reformation ? We cannot forget the 
 close approximations to Christianity , which at its best, 
 the religion of Israel achieved. But we do well to 
 ponder also the darker side. Its legalism, its tedious 
 casuistry, its danger of self-righteousness, its narrow 
 exclusiveness, its bitter vindictiveness, all these 
 must be taken into account ; while we must never 
 forget how needful it is for us to cleanse our own 
 religion from these faults by strenuous fidelity to the 
 spirit and temper of the Gospel. And I think that 
 Ecclesiastes is here peculiarly instructive. It puts the 
 logic of a non-Christian position with tremendous 
 force, to all who feel keenly the misery of the world. 
 More vividly than anything else in the Old Testa- 
 ment, it shows us how imperious was the necessity 
 for the revelation of God in Christ. There is much 
 in the Old Testament from which a Christian 
 instinctively recoils. It constitutes the dark back- 
 
136 tTbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 ground against which God has set the radiant figure 
 of His Son, and it drives home to us with quite 
 peculiar power, how much the world needed the 
 authentic voice, to redress the balance and assure 
 us that all is well. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Solution or Escape? 
 
 THE problem of pain is of all problems the most 
 baffling to many who wish to accept a theistic 
 view of the universe. Even sin and death 
 are mysteries less oppressive and impenetrable. If 
 sin is a darker evil, pain is the more obscure. The 
 freedom to choose the better, which confers all its 
 moral worth on obedience to the Divine will, involves 
 the freedom to choose the worse. It is, moreover, the 
 natural impulse of every creature to seek its own 
 ends, and seek them along its own lines. With 
 inexperience and the inability to take long views, 
 with the overwhelming pressure of the physical and 
 external, with all the inherited passion derived from 
 untold ages of brute ancestry, we need not marvel 
 that man seeks the immediate pleasure, and that his 
 will should clash with the holy will of God. But does 
 not this merely thrust the difficulty a stage further 
 
is 8 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 back, and prove God at fault for so constituting man 
 that sin was inevitable ? No doubt God must accept 
 responsibility for His act, but how else was He to 
 proceed ? The struggle must be real, if man's 
 victory was to be of worth ; the dice must not be 
 loaded in his favour. Was it not also more fit that 
 man should have come to be by the slow escape from 
 the brute's wholly finite and non-moral life into 
 consciousness of a moral order and sense of the Divine, 
 than that the continuity of life should be ruptured, 
 and those elements in his nature which have made his 
 trial so severe have found no place in a creature fresh 
 from the hand of God ? For thus the conditions 
 in which he is to receive his moral discipline are 
 natural and not artificial. 
 
 And still less can death be called an evil. This is 
 obviously true as it affects the race. No death 
 would soon mean no birth ; those in possession would 
 prevent new comers from trenching on their domain. 
 Thus life with its blessings would be confined to the 
 few, instead of being distributed to many swiftly 
 succeeding generations. In such a world progress 
 would be inconceivably difficult, the dead weight of 
 custom would crush all aspirations to reform. 
 Even if fresh lives came into it, what could they do, 
 pitted against the tyranny of tradition backed by 
 power and the timidity of experience ? Far better 
 that death should remove the men callous to abuse 
 and hostile to reform, and that men of warmer 
 impulses, higher ideals, more generous enthusiasm 
 
Solution or Escape ? 139 
 
 should fill their place. The treasures of the past 
 are not therefore lost, but made the solid basis for 
 future progress. And, even for the individual, 
 death is in itself no unhappy fate. It may be un- 
 timely, it may be tragic, because it cuts short a career 
 full of promise, or robs the world of the fruits of 
 genius, or the harvest of long labour and research. 
 Or in other ways it may be invested through its 
 circumstances with evil in this form or that. But in 
 itself death should be a welcome guest. Immor- 
 tality of any kind would be no boon, were not 
 infinite resources available to satisfy each new 
 craving as it arose. But physical immortality 
 might well be intolerable, the captive spirit for ever 
 beating its bars in vain, or the body weary of its 
 burden and unable to lay it down. Even if death 
 meant complete extinction of being, there is in that 
 nothing terrible. Nature, no doubt, secures the 
 preservation of the species by the instinctive clinging 
 to life which she has implanted in the individual. 
 But the recoil from extinction, which springs from 
 this instinct, gains all its force through an illusion, an 
 unconscious contradiction. The pathos with which 
 it is invested is due simply to this that the individual 
 unconsciously thinks himself back into existence to 
 contemplate his own non-existence, he projects the 
 feeling of revulsion that he experiences before the 
 event, into the future when all power of contempla- 
 tion and feeling has passed away. But in spite of 
 our imagination the extinct person has no con- 
 
HO be problem of Suffering. 
 
 sciousness, and is not aware, as the sentimentalist 
 tricks himself into fancying, of the misery of his 
 condition. How many tired workers, worn out with 
 the unceasing strain on strength and brain and nerve, 
 would sink gladly into a rest that should never again 
 be disturbed by the call to labour or to pastime ! 
 How many, whose days and nights stretch them on 
 the rack of anguish, would hail the sleep that knows 
 no waking, whether to pleasure or pain! They 
 are past caring for happiness, all that they crave is 
 rest. It is the bereaved for whom death is a tragedy, 
 but this aspect demands consideration rather as 
 a form of suffering. 
 
 It is true that the mystery of suffering has its 
 palliatives. Pain teaches us a tenderness and 
 sympathy for those who suffer. It gives new care 
 and watchfulness to our love, stimulates us to self- 
 forgetfulness and helpful service. And if the con- 
 templation of pain be thus beneficent, so too may be 
 its endurance. Leaving aside the part it plays as 
 a danger signal, pointing to mischief in the physical 
 organism, that might do irreparable damage, if its 
 insidious movement were not thus rudely detected, 
 we know full well what noble spiritual ends it often 
 serves. It disciplines our waywardness, convinces 
 us by its stern retribution how stringent a demand 
 the order under which we live makes upon us, it 
 sweetens the temper, softens and refines the character 
 and braces the will. Even the shock of bereavement 
 has in it some element of good. The knowledge 
 
Solution or Escape? 141 
 
 that it may come checks the hasty and irretrievable 
 word that may so soon torture us with vain regrets, 
 it bids us love and serve our friends, ere they pass 
 beyond our reach. And when they have left us, 
 with what new sacredness and solemnity we cherish 
 their memory. Death has disclosed to us their ideal 
 significance, it has disengaged the essential spirit 
 from earth's poor expression, the trivial and transient 
 have fallen from them. The separations life has 
 made, death has often healed. 
 
 But when all these things have been freely 
 admitted, it is plain that they are quite inadequate 
 to meet the appalling difficulties of the problem. 
 Even to the palliatives mentioned there is another 
 side. In some the contemplation of pain rouses 
 irritation and disgust, while the endurance of it only 
 exasperates and embitters them. The thought of 
 possible bereavement darkens our lives with fore- 
 boding ; the experience, even if remorse be absent, 
 bruises us where we are most sensitive, and often 
 means the permanent impoverishment of our life. 
 And 'when we turn our gaze to the world's actual 
 misery, little as we know of it, we are overwhelmed 
 by it, so innumerable, intolerable, inexcusable seem 
 the pains of the sentient universe. The wrongs of 
 the lower creation at the hands of Nature or of man, 
 even though they are not intensified by suspense or 
 magnified by anticipation and the faculty of con- 
 nected thought, constitute in themselves a grave 
 indictment against the morality of the order under 
 
142 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 which we live, all the more that, so far as we see, 
 they serve few of the useful ends fulfilled by human 
 pain. And who can number the wrongs of man ? 
 Even in our softer and humaner age and country 
 we are confronted by evils which strike horror into 
 our hearts. And when we widen our outlook to 
 take in those other lands, less happy even than our 
 own, or peer into the past and scan the ages when 
 brutal ferocity or malignant and ingenious cruelty 
 reigned unchecked, we shudder and are dumb before 
 the insolent cynicism which tramples so ruthlessly 
 on its victims. The fiendish horrors in Armenia or 
 Macedonia, or on the Congo ; the callous infliction 
 of extreme pain by the highly civilised on the negro 
 defrauded of human rights ; the nameless atrocities 
 decreed by Persia to the followers of the Bab, all 
 remind us with what slowness progress drags the 
 reluctant nations in its train. Yet ghastly as 
 are these deeds, that stain humanity with indelible 
 shame, they are but a small fraction of the woes, 
 which through long ages have gnawed at the vitals 
 of our hapless race. Think of the victims of super- 
 stition and blind terror in savage lands, of the tortures 
 that, in the ages of judicial darkness and malignant 
 bigotry, were made to serve the cause of justice or 
 religion, think how the barbarities of an Assyrian 
 emperor in honour of Asshur,were more than matched 
 by the Inquisitor's nicely adjusted and elaborate 
 refinements of cruelty to the glory of God, and then 
 ask if we can still believe in a Heavenly Father, 
 
Solution or Escape ? 143 
 
 when these things are calmly allowed to be. And 
 the fact of our own happier lot, or of the gradual 
 mitigation of man's brutality, and the growth of 
 gentleness and pity, really helps us but little. For if 
 any one wished to deny these favourable signs, there 
 is only too much to support his contention, and even 
 if they be granted, the excruciating agony of the past 
 and the present remains a difficulty wholly unrelieved. 
 The question " Is life worth living ? " is not a question 
 touching our own personal life. We may find our 
 life so full of interest that it seems abundantly worth 
 living, and yet we may feel that for many the balance 
 of evil so largely preponderates, that we would 
 gladly surrender our happy existence if they might 
 be released from the misery of theirs. 
 
 The Old Testament has placed at our disposal 
 many helpful suggestions. Not least I reckon to be 
 the encouragement to face the problem with moral 
 courage and intellectual honesty. Here we must see 
 to it that our righteousness exceeds the righteous- 
 ness of self-deluding optimists. Of positive con- 
 tributions to the answer, apart from the cases 
 where sin is directly punished by the suffering of 
 the sinner, the thought of suffering as a cleansing 
 discipline, as a test of the genuineness of our piety, 
 as endured vicariously for the benefit of others, all 
 have real and permanent value. Helpful also is 
 the reminder of our limitations, which do not permit 
 us to grasp the whole complex order, in which we 
 
144 tlbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 live. Moreover, the thought of a happy future 
 life, which is just dawning in the Old Testament, 
 relieves the mystery by the prospect of another 
 existence, in which the miseries of the present may 
 be redressed, and the same may be said of the hope 
 of a resurrection, at least as presented in the Book 
 of Daniel. The fact is clear, however, that what 
 the Old Testament has to tell us does not suffice 
 for a complete solution. The suffering of the 
 non-human sentient creation, itself no light 
 burden on our faith, seems to be but little if 
 at all relieved by these considerations. And, 
 as affirmed in the Old Testament, the ideas are 
 too crude, too insecurely based to serve our need. 
 The doctrine of the vicarious character of suffer- 
 ing, as developed in the Fourth Servant Poem, 
 not merely stands quite by itself, but has only 
 a national significance. The doctrine of immor- 
 tality is found in very few passages, and many 
 scholars have denied that it is really present in 
 these, so vague and undefined is the language, in 
 which it is expressed. 
 
 The most valuable thing the Old Testament 
 has to offer us is not a speculative solution. 
 It is the inner certainty of God, which springs 
 out of fellowship with Him, and, defying all 
 the crushing proofs that the government of the 
 world is unrighteous, holds its faith in Him fast. 
 But it was only the rarest spirits, that could 
 feel so intensely the horror of the facts, and 
 
Solution or Bscape ? 145 
 
 yet could escape into a region where it haunted them 
 no longer. 
 
 We need more than the Old Testament has to give 
 us. Do we find it in Christianity ? The inter- 
 pretation of suffering as punitive or disciplinary, 
 or educative, remains as valid as before. The 
 thought of the vicarious suffering of the innocent for 
 the guilty gets a far deeper significance. Christianity 
 throws great stress on the conception of human 
 solidarity. We are all members one of another, each 
 shares in the suffering of all, all share in the suffering 
 of each. We see in the more ordinary experiences 
 of life the results of sin fall on the innocent rather 
 than on the guilty, we are sometimes permitted to 
 see that in its measure, such suffering has its redeem- 
 ing power. But the Gospel bids us recognise the 
 supreme example of this in the Cross of Christ. 
 As we meditate on it, what words so well as the 
 familiar ones express our contrite thought ? 
 
 He was pierced through our rebellions, 
 
 Crushed through our sins, 
 
 The chastisement to win our peace was upon Him, 
 
 And by His stripes was healing wrought for us. 
 
 We had all gone astray like sheep, 
 
 We had turned each his own way ; 
 
 And Yahweh made to light on Him 
 
 The sin of us all. 
 
 Yet if He bears the punishment of our sins, why 
 
 L 
 
146 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 do we suffer ? It is because He is one with the race ; 
 because the pain He suffers is not merely the pain 
 He endured on Calvary, but the pains of that race 
 thus united to Himself. In this thought, which is 
 to the natural man foolishness, we may find a helpful 
 illumination, that will mitigate our resentment 
 because our pain is so meaningless. A worthy 
 meaning is imparted to it, once we feel that Christ 
 has made it His own. 
 
 And the hope of immortality, which was in the 
 Old Testament at best a daring venture, has for 
 Christianity become an axiom. The Christian lives 
 in the constant thought of it, comforts himself in 
 bereavement by it, fortifies himself with it against 
 despondency, counts his sufferings light in com- 
 parison with the glory its realization is to bring him. 
 He shapes his course in the world, as one who is a 
 stranger and pilgrim, content to remain, while it is 
 God's will, in the country to which he is an alien, but 
 with his heart dwelling in that heaven which he 
 deems his true fatherland. Thus he is not confined 
 to earth for the solution of our problem, but may 
 console himself with the thought that what he cannot 
 know now, he may know hereafter ; that the life of 
 earth is but a small section of his existence. Yet 
 even this does not give us what we seek. For while 
 it is precious, I cannot myself feel that it removes by 
 any means all of our difficulties. Suffering will 
 always remain a largely unsolved mystery. Now 
 I have said already that the Old Testament is most 
 
Solutton or Escape ? 147 
 
 helpful in that it points out to us, not so much a 
 satisfactory speculative explanation, but a path which 
 leads us to peace, though no solution be reached. 
 But from the Old Testament premises it was possible 
 for only the most religiously gifted to attain this. 
 What we need is something that will assure us of 
 God's love, so that we may no longer be fretted by 
 the facts that seem to deny it. It is Christianity 
 alone that gives us this assurance. Its doctrine of 
 the Trinity secures the possibility of ethical relations 
 in God's own being. If it teaches that God's moral 
 nature is love, it shows how this can be, since the circle 
 of the Godhead includes the lover and the loved. 
 Love therefore was never a mere potentiality 
 in God, sleeping till it woke to shed its benefi- 
 cence on an object other than Himself, but always 
 in that ineffable and unthinkable life, where His 
 Unity as God is not impaired by its inclusion of 
 subject and object, there is the blessed communion 
 of Father, Son, and Spirit. And this love, since it 
 is love, seeks to create new objects, for it does not 
 selfishly desire to restrict its boons, but rather to 
 bring within the reach of its activities all that it 
 may. This love is proved to us by a stupendous 
 sacrifice, in that God gave us the eternal Son. With 
 this assurance we can be at rest. For like Job we 
 feel that our knowledge of God is that which 
 we have heard " by the hearing of the ear." 
 Nature and History alike speak to us with an 
 ambiguous voice. With this hearsay knowledge 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 of God we can reach no confident foothold. But 
 to know Jesus is to know God ; when we see 
 Him we can say to God " Now mine eye seeth 
 Thee." The Vision of God in Jesus brings us 
 peace. All is well, we cannot say how, but we are 
 certain of the fact. 
 
 But all this is true, only if Christianity is true, and 
 if Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. It is not 
 given to me to stand where many stand, to surrender 
 a bejief in His Divinity, and yet to hold fast a faith 
 in God's goodness. The longer I ponder the world's 
 pain in itself, the more it seems to deny a moral 
 government of the world, and the more I feel drawn 
 to the conviction that on this, the greatest of all 
 questions, Ecclesiastes has said the last word. And 
 if I do not yield to this temptation, it is because 
 I ponder it also in the light of the Cross, on which 
 the Son of God manifested the eternal love. When 
 thus it is granted us to believe in Jesus, we take 
 courage to believe in God. But Jesus helps us in 
 our need, not only as the manifestation of God's love, 
 but by His own unshaken faith. He knew the 
 sharp anguish of our lot, faced in all its gloom an* I 
 i nor our deepest sorrow, made Himself one with us 
 in our bitterest suffering, endured, without flinH 
 desertion, betrayal, torture and death. Even in 
 that darker agony, so awful, so solitary, so mysteri- 
 ous, that we turn di//,y as we gaze into its depths, 
 He called God His Father, and said " Thy will b<> 
 done!" If He, Who knew God, as no ol!i i has 
 
Solution or Escape? 149 
 
 known Him, could still in His desperate extremity 
 maintain His firm trust in God's goodness, how 
 much this strengthens our own wavering faith. Yet 
 how can we believe with Jesus, unless we have come 
 to believe in Him ? If His Cross is not the key to 
 the riddle of the universe, it darkens the mystery, 
 and makes the travail of creation more unmeaning 
 than ever. But in the face of all our difficulties it 
 is no easy thing to believe in Jesus. We can 
 realise better now than in some ages how true 
 are the words " No man can say Jesus is Lord 
 but in the Holy Spirit." But when once by the 
 grace of God we have dared to make this great 
 affirmation, then we enter into His unspeakable 
 peace. The world's sorrows do not cease to be 
 terrible, and to wring our hearts, we feel them with 
 all the deeper sympathy, and inspired by Christ's 
 Spirit, long to relieve them. We understand them 
 but little better, nor can we reconcile them success- 
 fully with the love of God. Mystery still besets us 
 behind and before, and all we comprehend of God's 
 work in the universe is " but the outskirts of His 
 ways." Yet we know in Whom we have believed, 
 and if we know that, all our ignorance is insignificant. 
 That knowledge takes us to the centre, and we feel 
 the love that throbs at the heart of creation. We 
 leave our unravelled perplexities behind us ; they 
 have fallen from us, and can dismay us no longer. 
 We do not ask the answer, we are content not to 
 know. For no unriddling of the mystery can bring 
 
iso be problem of Suffering. 
 
 us a peace more unruffled, than that in which we 
 rest on the bosom of God, that strong Magician, Who, 
 with the wand of His love, has charmed into quiet 
 the doubts that once surged so tempestuously in 
 our breast. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 RECENT CRITICISM OF HABAKKUK. 
 
 WE may conveniently take the brief discussion 
 in Giesebrecht's Beitrdge zur Jesaiakritik, 
 published in 1891, as our point of departure for the 
 criticism of Hab. 1 1 -2 8 . This section had previously been 
 regarded as in its right order, and it had been commonly 
 thought that in 1 2 ~ 4 the prophet complains of the violence 
 of Jewish oppressors in Judah, in I 6 " 11 receives the 
 revelation that Yahweh is about to raise up the Chaldeans 
 to punish them, while in the rest of the section, Habakkuk 
 complains of the tyranny of the Chaldeans and receives 
 the assurance that the righteous shall live by his faith- 
 fulness, but the tyrant shall be overthrown by the 
 nations he has spoiled. This view, however, was open 
 to the serious, and probably fatal, objection, that it 
 identified ''the wicked" in i 2 " 4 with Jewish sinners, 
 whereas in 1 12 ~ 17 " the wicked " can only be the heathen 
 oppressor. Accordingly some scholars (e.g. Wellhausen 
 in 1873) had abandoned this double interpretation, and 
 argued that both in 1 2 ~ 4 and in 1 12 ~ 17 the prophet is com- 
 plaining that righteous Judah is suffering at the hands of 
 the heathen tyrant. This tyrant was on all hands 
 supposed to be the Chaldean power. But if we identify 
 
152 Gbe problem ot Suffering. 
 
 " the wicked " in 1 2 ~ 4 with those in 1 12 ~ 17 , and regard the 
 Chaldeans as intended in both, then 1 2 -2 3 cannot be 
 explained as it stands. For while 1 2 ~ 4> 12 ~ 17 represents 
 the oppression as long-established, I 5 ~ n represents the 
 Chal deans as just being raised up to do an incredible 
 work. It was the merit of Giesebrecht to draw the 
 inference that i*~ n could not be in its true context, 
 since it presupposed a situation altogether incompatible 
 with that reflected in I 2 " 4 ia ~". He assigned the section 
 1 1 -2 8 with the exception of 1 5 ~ u to the exile, and 1 5 ~ n he 
 assigned to an earlier period, when the Chaldeans were 
 beginning their career of conquest. In 1892 Wellhausen 
 accepted Giesebrecht 's conclusion that 1 6 ~ 11 was no part 
 of the original prophecy, as the necessary inference 
 from his own earlier position (Die Kleiiten Prophet en 
 note on Hab. i 6 " 11 ). But he thought that the section 
 ended with 2 4 , and as we may infer from his note on 2 16 ~ 17 , 
 regarded 1 2 ~ 4 ' u ~", 2 1-4 as pre-exilic. The prophecy, 
 as thus limited, seemed too meagre in its teaching to 
 have needed a revelation. 
 
 Meanwhile Budde had independently worked out 
 a wholly new theory, which he published in Studien und 
 Kritiken, 1893, pp. 383 ff. He also had observed that 
 i *- u is out of place where it stands, but did not on that 
 account eliminate it as a foreign element. I ts proper place 
 he argued was at the end of the section, after 2 4 . For in 
 this way we have the prediction of judgment following 
 the description of tyranny, a natural order. But, if so, 
 then the Chaldeans cannot be the oppressor, rather they 
 are raised up to take vengeance upon him. It followed 
 therefore that two heathen nations were referred to, one 
 in i *~ 4 1 12 -2 4 the oppressor, and the other in I *-" (or as 
 Budde held i~ u ), the Chaldean aveneer. Budde thus 
 
153 
 
 reached the completely new theory that the oppressor 
 was Judah's old tyrant Assyria, and that Habakkuk 
 about 615 B.C. predicted the overthrow of Assyria by the 
 nascent power of the Chaldeans. He has further 
 expounded his theory in the Expositor, May, 1895, and, 
 most recently in his article Habakk^tk in the Encyclo- 
 paedia Biblica. Cornill adopted it in the next edition of 
 his Introduction to the Old Testament (Einleitung in 
 das A.T*' 4 1896, pp. 194, 195), and his popular lectures 
 on Hebrew Prophecy (Das israelitsche Prophetismus 
 1894 pp. 79, 80 E. tr. The Prophets of Israel). It has, 
 however, been rejected by A. B. Davidson (Nahinn, 
 Habakkuk and Zephaniah in The Cambridge Bible, 1895, 
 pp. 50-55, 139), by Driver (Introduction to the Literature 
 of the Old Testament, 6th ed. 1897, p. 338 "too ingenious") 
 and by Nowack (Die Kleinen Propheten, 1897, pp. 248- 
 250, 259, 260). 
 
 In the third edition of his commentary on the Minor 
 Prophets (1898), Wellhausen abides by the view taken 
 in the first, and ignores Budde's theory. On the other 
 hand three scholars have accepted his view that the 
 Chaldeans are raised up to execute judgment on a 
 heathen oppressor. G. A. Smith (Book of the Twelve 
 Prophets, vol. ii., 1898, pp. 123, 124), feeling the 
 difficulties urged against the view that this oppressor 
 was Assyria, suggested that the prophet may have 
 intended Egypt, which for a few years ruled over Judah. 
 Quite recently Peiser, the well-known Assyriologist, has 
 made an entirely new suggestion (Der Prophet Habakuk 
 in Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft for 
 1903, No. i). Habakkuk criticism has, he thinks, 
 reached a deadlock, and, if progress towards a true 
 solution is to be made, new methods must be employed. 
 
154 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 He has been struck with parallelsjbetween the prophecy 
 and Assyrian and Babylonian literature, of a kind to 
 suggest that the prophet had some familiarity with this 
 literature and had studied it in the cuneiform script. 
 This would have been possible to a resident in Jerusalem, 
 but there is no reference to Judah, and naturally it is 
 more easily explicable in a writer who lived in Assyria or 
 Babylonia. And that the author was in a foreign land 
 he infers from the emended text of 3 16 . He assigns to 
 Habakkuk, against the usual critical view, the third 
 chapter, but agrees with Wellhausen that the original 
 poem does not go beyond ver. 16. In that case, he argues, 
 the prophecy cannot have ended with an indeterminate 
 'am ("people "), followed by an indeterminate relative 
 sentence. Accordingly for the final word in our present 
 text, yegudennu, which is a well-known crux, he substitutes 
 following the LXX and the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus, 
 m e guray, gaining the sense " which cometh up against 
 the people of my sojourning." If this was the original 
 text, the writer would at the time be in a foreign 
 land. In 3 13 the poet says, " Thouwentest forth for the 
 salvation of Thy people, For the salvation of Thine 
 anointed." Peiser thinks that by " Thine anointed" the 
 poet meant himself. He infers that he was a hostage at 
 Nineveh, a Jewish prince who, as Yahweh's anointed, 
 had a right to the Jewish throne. Perhaps he was a son 
 or grandson of Manasseh. He would be brought up in 
 the fashion usual at the court of Nineveh, and was 
 probably keenly interested in the library formed by 
 Assurbanipal. The prophecy is left by Peiser in its 
 present order. He agrees with Budde that the Chaldeans 
 are named as the instruments of Yahweh's judgment on 
 the Assyrians. But he regards the violence, of which the 
 
155 
 
 prophet complains, as violence in Nineveh, not in Judah 
 and he takes 1 5 ~ u to refer to a past attack of the Chaldeans 
 on Assyria, which from I 11 he infers to have been abortive. 
 The prophet looks forward to a second attack on Assyria, 
 which he expects to be successful. The former attack is 
 identified with the first onslaught of the Medes against 
 Nineveh, repulsed in 625 B.C. with the death of the 
 Median prince. The date of the prophecy is fixed about 
 609. Probably the news of Josiah's death excited this 
 outcry against the power which kept the author from 
 his rights. 
 
 A modification of Budde's theory has been proposed 
 by Prof. W. R. Betteridge, of Rochester Theological 
 Seminary, in the American Journal of Theology for Oct. 
 1903. He thinks that the Chaldeans are raised up to 
 execute Yahweh's vengeance on the Assyrians. But 
 he argues that Budde's date is impossible, and that we 
 must go back to a period when the hand of Assyria 
 pressed heavily on Judah. Since, however, Judah is 
 represented as at the time a righteous nation, we cannot 
 assign the prophecy to the reign of Manasseh or the early 
 years of Josiah, but must go back to the time of Hezekiah 
 and date it after his reform. He fixes on 701 B.C. when 
 Sennacherib was recalled from his invasion of Judah by 
 tidings of a revolt in Babylonia. He attributes the 
 whole book to Habakkuk, and retains the present order. 
 
 In estimating these theories, the point that seems to 
 be best established is that " the wicked " in 1 2 ~ 4 must be 
 identified with " the wicked " in 1 12 ~ 17 . In other words, 
 Habakkuk does not complain that wicked Jews oppress 
 their righteous countrymen, but that a heathen nation 
 oppresses righteous Judah. Although Davidson and 
 Driver do not admit this, they feel that the usual view 
 
1 56 Cbe problem of Suffering 
 
 is not altogether satisfactory, but adopt it because 
 it seems the best way to take the passage as it stands, 
 and Budde' s rearrangement is for various reasons unsatis- 
 factory. If, then, I venture to dissent from their conclusion 
 it is in deference to arguments, which they admit to 
 be cogent. If, further, mention is made of one heathen 
 power only in 1 2 ~ 17 , that power must be the Chaldean. 
 But the inference of Giesebrecht and Wellhausen 
 is then inevitable, that I 6 " 11 is an earlier prophecy, 
 which is out of place in this context. Such a solution 
 cuts the knot, instead of untying it, but if none of the 
 other solutions commend themselves, it is on it that 
 we are driven back. If the Chaldeans are the subject 
 of I 2 - 4 - 12 - 17 , then these passages reflect a situation 
 incompatible with that reflected in I 5 ~ n . Naturally, 
 however, this is a last resort, to be accepted only if 
 the ascription of 1 5 ~ 11 to Habakkuk should prove to be 
 untenable. 
 
 It is the merit of Budde's theory and the modifications 
 of it, that it permits us to regard 1 6 ~ u as an integral part 
 of the prophecy; but it cannot be denied that each form 
 of the theory is open to serious objections. Those of Budde 
 and G. A. Smith labour under the initial difficulty that they 
 postulate a dislocation of the original prophecy. This 
 is not at all a fatal objection. It is very probable that 
 originally Isa. 5 25 - 80 stood in connexion with Isa. 9 8 -io 4 . 
 Moreover Budde explains that in the present case the 
 dislocation was intentional. After the Chaldeans became 
 the oppressing power and had been overthrown, the 
 prediction of their rise was transferred from its original 
 position after 2 4 to its present position between i 4 and i 12 , 
 and thus in the fifth or fourth century the prophecy was 
 turned into an oracle against Babylon. I must confess 
 
Bppen&fj. 157 
 
 that this explanation would seem to me more credible, 
 if I could credit the ancient editor with the ingenious 
 subtlety of the distinguished modern critic. I should 
 prefer to assume that as in Isa. S 23 ' 30 , accident rather 
 than design had been at work. In the next place all 
 theories, that regard the Chaldeans as raised up to 
 punish another heathen nation, labour under the difficulty 
 that while the Chaldeans are named, the empire they are 
 to destroy is not. Budde, it is true, supposes that 
 Asshur stood originally in I n (instead of isf'ashem} : "Then 
 shall disappear like the wind, and pass away, Asshur 
 who has made his strength his god." The text of i 11 is 
 notoriously difficult, but although Budde's suggestion 
 deserves consideration, the objection remains that in 
 our present text, the oppressing empire is not named. 
 This, however, is not a very serious difficulty. On the 
 view of Peiser or Betteridge, the reference to Assyria 
 would be so clear that no need to mention it by name 
 would be felt. And even on Budde's theory there was 
 no such necessity ; who the oppressor was, would be 
 understood by the people as well as by the prophet. 
 Similar phenomena are not uncommon. Amos does not 
 name Assyria as the power which is to inflict judgment 
 on Israel, not does Isaiah in the great passage sj 36 - 80 . 
 It is still matter of dispute whether it was the Assyrian 
 army or the combined forces of Syria and Ephraim, 
 whose ravages are depicted in Isa. I. It is quite uncer- 
 tain on what nation judgment is predicted in Isa. 33. It 
 is true that the Chaldeans are named in Hab. 1 6 , but 
 that is natural, for while the oppressing empire was one, 
 there were several powers that might overthrow it, 
 the Medes, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans. 
 It is perhaps not a serious difficulty that the points of 
 
158 Gbe problem of Suffering, 
 
 contact between i s ~ u and 1 12 ~ 17 suggest that one nation is 
 in the prophet's mind. There was no reason why 
 Habakkuk should idealise the Chaldeans because 
 deliverance came through them ; they, as well as the 
 Assyrians " come all of them for violence." The parallel 
 between I n and i 1(i would be important if the text were 
 clear enough and the meaning plain enough for anything 
 to be built on it. But even if these preliminary objections 
 are set aside, we have still difficulties attaching to every 
 form of this view. 
 
 The most serious objection to Budde's view is that 
 about 615 B.C. the Assyrian empire was too enfeebled 
 for its suzerainty of Judah to have created so oppressive 
 a problem. In less than ten years it would be dead at 
 the heart, it had already begun to die at the extremities. 
 It is to be regretted that Budde does not deal directly 
 with this criticism in his article on Habakkuk in the 
 Encyclopaedia Biblica. Less important is the fact, 
 urged by Davidson, that the Chaldeans seem not to have 
 participated in the overthrow of Nineveh by the Medes, 
 for the prophet may have anticipated that they would 
 do so, and as Budde says, " If the Chaldeans took no 
 personal part in the final destruction of Nineveh, they 
 at least were in alliance with the Medes who did, and 
 they contributed all they could to the overthrow of the 
 Assyrian empire." Nowack urges further that the 
 command to write the vision on the tablets suggests that 
 only a brief oracle is intended such as we get in 2 4 , not 
 such as we have in 1 5 ~ 11 . It is not necessary, however, 
 to regard 1 6 ~ n as written on the tablets ; Budde, in fact, 
 does not do so. Another objection of Nowack's is more 
 forcible. It is that while 2 8>4 presuppose that there are 
 no definite circumstances on the horizon to suggest a 
 
Bppen&ij. 159 
 
 change of fortune, I ^ n is intelligible only if the Chaldeans 
 had already struck strongly into the main stream of 
 history. It is certainly not easy to harmonise the two 
 points of view. In 2 8 - 4 the prophet is evidently conscious 
 that appearances are against any relief being speedily 
 given ; whereas in 1 5 ~ 11 he points to the Chaldeans as 
 already pursuing their career of conquest. It may, 
 however, serve to mitigate though not to remove, this 
 difficulty, if we remember that this very account of the 
 rise of the Chaldeans is introduced in our present text by 
 a statement which indicates that the prediction of their 
 achievements will seem incredible to the prophet's 
 contemporaries : " He worketh a work in your days, 
 which ye will not believe though it be told you." Lastly, 
 on Budde's theory the prophet was surely singularly 
 impatient. Josiah's reformation took place in 621 B.C. 
 Budde holds that Habakkuk must have written at some 
 point between 621 and the death of Josiah in 609 ; " so 
 that, halving the difference, we may take 615 or (by 
 preference) a slightly earlier time to be the date of the 
 composition" (Enc. Bib. col. 1926). But is it likely 
 that within less than six years of the reformation 
 Habakkuk should have felt the problem of the suffering 
 of the righteous to be so acute ? It was hardly reason- 
 able to complain because matters were not righted all 
 at once. Probably Judah was not in a miserable condition 
 at all, but rather, with the relaxing grip of Assyria and 
 Josiah's virtual independence, the years in question were 
 among the happiest in the nation's history. 
 
 On the other hand, Budde's view has some advantages. 
 Wellhausen's feeling that the result reached in 2 4 is too 
 meagre to be worthy of a revelation has considerable 
 force ; we should have expected a prediction of judgment 
 
160 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 on the oppressor. This is met if we allow 1 6 ~ u to follow. 
 There is also something to be said for Budde's contention 
 that the methods of conquest described in i ia ~ 17 are those 
 adopted by Assyria rather than by the Chaldeans : " Not 
 all at once, but by numerous separate efforts spread over 
 three centuries, not merely by force of arms, but (as the 
 angling metaphor suggests) by policy and craft, were so 
 many petty principalities and more than one important 
 kingdom swept into the hands of these robbers (cf. Isa. 
 IO 5-11, 13 ^ Y^ Chaldean, on the other hand, far from 
 being the unresting persistent, grasping, amasser of 
 wealth, was simply the smiling heir " (Enc. Bib. col. 1923). 
 Prof. G. A. Smith escapes the worst difficulty of Budde's 
 view, inasmuch as the circumstances, out of which he 
 thinks the prophecy springs, were such as to create its 
 problem. The death of Josiah on the battlefield, the 
 loss of virtual independence, the captivity of Jehoahaz, 
 were all so many inexplicable mysteries on the deeply- 
 rooted belief that character and fortune closely corres- 
 ponded. The date would then have to lie between 609 
 and 605 B.C. It is in the earlier rather than in the later 
 part of this period that we should probably have to fix 
 it, before Jehoiakim had had time to display his evil 
 qualities, and before the Reformation had been undone, 
 while men were still stunned by the tragedy of Josiah's 
 death and the disasters that so quickly followed it. 
 But the objections to this view are weighty. Dr. Smith 
 himself suggests one: "But then does llu- drsnipimn 
 in chapt. i " ~ 17 suit Egypt so well as it does Assyria ? We 
 can hardly affirm this, until we know more of what Egypt 
 did in those days, but it is very probable " (p. 124). 
 This is very dubious, but, even if it be granted, there is 
 a further difficulty. The prophecy leaves a very strong 
 
Bppcnttr. 161 
 
 impression that the evil of which the prophet complains 
 is one of long standing. He begins with the question : 
 " How long, O Yahweh, shall I cry and Thou wilt not 
 hear ? " In i 17 he not only asks, " And shall He not 
 spare to slay the nations continually," but also, if with 
 Wellhausen, Nowack and G. A. Smith himself, we accept 
 an emendation of Giesebrecht (Beitrdge p. 197, n. i), 
 and read ha'olam for ha'al ken, " shall he for ever be 
 emptying his net ? " This surely points to a condition 
 of things that had been going on for a much longer 
 period than the four years, which is all that this view 
 permits. 
 
 Peiser's theory shares with Budde's the advantage 
 that it identifies the oppressor with the long-triumphant 
 power of Assyria, and escapes Budde's most formidable 
 difficulty by transferring the centre of interest from 
 Palestine to Nineveh. The lion was formidable in his 
 own lair (Nah. 2 11 " 18 ), after his distant dominion had 
 vanished. There can also on this theory be no difficulty 
 raised by i 2 " 4 , the violence of which the prophet complains 
 is not in Judah, but the tyranny practised in Nineveh by 
 the Assyrians. How far the arguments based on the 
 author's familiarity with Assyrian and Babylonian 
 literature are valid, is for cuneiform scholars to say, and 
 this applies also to the suggestion (p. 12), that Habakkuk 
 might well be an Assyrian pseudonym. Friedrich 
 Delitzsch had previously given the same derivation. 
 Naturally much depends on this for a decision on the 
 theory that the prophet wrote in Nineveh, and till 
 specialists have pronounced their opinion, judgment 
 must remain to some extent in suspense. The author, 
 however, does not himself affirm that familiarity with 
 the literature of Assyria and^Babylon in cuneiform script 
 
 M 
 
162 cbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 necessarily implies residence in one of these countries. 
 It would be consistent with residence in Jerusalem 
 (p. 10). Nevertheless, if it could be made out, the 
 opinion that he lived in Nineveh would gain in probability. 
 The other argument by which this is substantiated is 
 precarious. It rests on the assumption that the third 
 chapter is by Habakkuk, and this is denied by a large 
 number of scholars. A second assumption is that the 
 original poem ended at verse 16. It was suggested by 
 Wellhausen that the original conclusion was lost and 
 ^ 17-19 substituted for it. He is followed by Nowack 
 (p. 248), while Davidson, though thinking this quite 
 possible, pronounces no definite opinion. It is, however, 
 unfavourably regarded by Budde and rejected by G. A. 
 Smith. Peiser's interpretation of 3 16 has, of course, 
 independent support in the difficulty of the present text, 
 and the translation given by the LXX. It would be 
 strengthened, however, if 3 17 ~ 19 were a later addition. 
 Peiser differs from Wellhausen in holding that the poem 
 originally closed with verse 16, and that the original 
 ending has not been lost, verses 17-19 being simply an 
 addition not a substitution. If this could be proved, it 
 would be difficult to defend our present text. Even so, 
 it is unsafe to build a theory on an emendation, though 
 supported by the LXX. The reference of " Thine 
 anointed" in 3 13 to the prophet himself as the rightful 
 monarch is very dubious. The parallelism favours the 
 usual interpretation of the term as the people of Yahweh, 
 a usage which belongs to the period after the destruction 
 of the monarchy. Peiser's view of i*~" is also very 
 questionable. The passage does not make the impression 
 that it refers to an event now sixteen years old. Rather 
 it is some impending catastrophe that is to be brought 
 
appendix* 163 
 
 about by the rise of the Chaldeans. And if i 5 is to be 
 closely connected with what follows, this work which 
 Yahweh is to perform through the Chaldeans is declared 
 to be of an incredible character. It is not at all clear 
 how Peiser interprets 1 5 , except that he does not regard 
 it as part of the speech of Yahweh, announcing that the 
 Chaldeans are to be raised up. But it is plain why he 
 has reached the conclusion thati 6 " 11 refers to an event 
 in 625, though he does not explain it. He believes 
 that Habakkuk wrote about 609 B.C. But it would 
 be absurd for any one writing in Nineveh at that 
 time to speak of the Chaldeans as just being raised up. 
 Since Nabopolassar, the Chaldean monarch, had united 
 Babylonians and Chaldeans in 625, and had made good 
 his claims to the throne of Babylon, the Chaldeans had 
 been a standing menace to the Assyrian empire. That 
 the attack on Nineveh in 625 was a failure is inferred 
 from i u , a passage the meaning of which is so uncertain, 
 that nothing can safely be proved by it. What is strange 
 however, is that the prophet, if he had this attack in 
 mind, and had himself lived through it, should speak of 
 it as if it had been made by the Chaldeans. They may 
 have been in alliance with the Medes, but it was the 
 Medes who actually struck at Nineveh. If we are to 
 think of the prophecy as having been written in Nineveh, 
 it would seem to be much sounder to carry the matter 
 through to a more logical conclusion and date it shortly 
 before 625. 
 
 The view taken by Prof. Betteridge is at first sight 
 very attractive. It is not, as with Budde's theory, with 
 the numb grip of a decadent Assyria, but with Assyria in 
 full career of conquest that the prophet is confronted. 
 As he looks from the still uncap tured Jerusalem on a 
 
 M 2 
 
164 (Tbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 land laid waste and trampled by a brutal soldiery, its 
 towns and fortresses all taken, with innumerable captives 
 and an enormous spoil, the thought may well have risen 
 within him, Why does Yahweh abandon His people to 
 the heathen ? Hitherto it has been generally assumed 
 that the prophecy must be later than 621 B.C., because 
 only after Josiah's reformation could Judah have been 
 described as a righteous people. But why not equally 
 well after Hezekiah's reformation ? It is no objection 
 to this that the latter did not take place at the instigation 
 of a law. Even if the prophecy is post-Deuteronomic, 
 there is no need to suppose that tor ah in i 4 refers to the 
 Deuteronomic Code. The omission of the article and 
 the parallelism with misphat (judgment) suggests rather 
 that it is to be taken in a more general sense, and we may 
 translate " truth " with Wellhausen and Nowack, or 
 explain it with Betteridge to refer to moral and social 
 order. If the prophecy belongs to Hezekiah's reign, 
 then obviously tor ah no more means " law " here than 
 it does in the contemporary passage Isa. i 10 . Moreover, 
 the words " Behold I raise up the Chaldeans " get a fuller 
 significance on this view than on any other. The 
 Chaldeans, who are not to be identified with the Baby- 
 lonians, really became formidable towards the close of 
 the eighth century B.C. It was not so correct to speak 
 of them a century later as being raised up. For a 
 time the Chaldean Merodach-Baladan achieved remark- 
 able success. He was well-known in Judah, to which 
 he had sent ambassadors, no doubt with a view to 
 combined action against Assyria. At that time the 
 expectation may well have been formed that the Chaldeans 
 were designed to overthrow Assyria. In spite, however, of 
 these real advantages, it is very difficult to accept this 
 
Uppen&ti. 165 
 
 view at any rate in its present form. In the first place 
 Habakkuk is generally regarded as strongly influenced 
 by Isaiah. But we know what Isaiah thought of 
 Judah and its treatment at Assyria's hands in 701. We 
 find it in 22 1 ~ 14 and probably in i 2 " 28 . True, he held firm 
 to his belief in the indestructibility of Zion, which was 
 a corollary to his belief that Yahweh dwelt in it. And 
 he expected Assyria to be destroyed, not for its treatment 
 of Judah, but for its arrogance and its blasphemy 
 against Yahweh. This has its parallel in Hab. 2 4 and 
 perhaps i u But the suffering of Judah is no problem 
 to Isaiah ; she has richly deserved it all. And he does 
 not look for Assyria to be overthrown by human power. 
 He steadily discourages all foreign alliances for that 
 purpose, and anticipates that Assyria will be broken 
 on the mountains of Yahweh. It may, no doubt, be 
 urged that the difficulty created by the peculiar stand- 
 point of Habakkuk is just as great on any theory, since 
 Jeremiah as much as Isaiah regards the sorrows of Judah 
 as the due reward of her deeds. It would, however, be 
 very remarkable if in 701 Isaiah and a prophet so 
 influenced by him as Habakkuk spoke in such different 
 tones. Might it not be preferable to place it nearer the 
 reformation, when the glow of conscious virtue had not 
 been chilled by its disappointing sequel ? Moreover, 
 it is very difficult on historical grounds to believe that 
 the prophecy could have originated in 701. For it was 
 only in the previous year that Sennacherib had driven 
 Merodach-Baladan out of Babylon, and had punished 
 Chaldea with great severity. " Cities to the number of 
 seventy-five in Chaldea proper, with four hundred and 
 twenty neighbouring villages were taken and spoiled " 
 (M'Curdy, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments ii. 274). 
 
1 66 ftbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 Is it likely that just then any prophet in Judah should 
 have anticipated that the Chaldeans would overthrow 
 Assyria ? It is true that Sennacherib seems to have 
 been recalled from his campaign in Judah by news of 
 a revolt in Babylonia. We may accept this on the basis 
 of Isa. 37 7 , without committing ourselves to the theory, 
 now favoured by several scholars, that there was a 
 second invasion by Sennacherib some time between 
 690 and 681. " Hope springs eternal," and Judah may 
 have looked once more to the Chaldeans for deliverance. 
 If so, she was bitterly disappointed, for Sennacherib 
 attacked Bit Yakin in 700, when Merodach-Baladan fled 
 with all the gods of his land to Nagitu in the Fens, an 
 Elamite city, which was captured by Sennacherib, in 
 694 B.C. It would probably be an improvement on this 
 theory to place the prophecy earlier in Hezekiah's reign, 
 when negotiations with the Chaldeans gave promise of 
 the oppressor's downfall. All through the period from 
 735, when Ahaz took the fateful step of invoking the aid 
 of Tiglath Pileser to suppress the coalition of Syria and 
 Ephraim, the hand of Assyria pressed heavily on the 
 unhappy land. And, to say nothing of earlier Chaldean 
 success, from the time of Sargon's accession in 721 till 
 710 Merodach-Baladan held the throne of Babylon. 
 During those years he may well have seemed the destined 
 conqueror of Assyria. Or we might think of the second 
 occasion when he seized Babylon in 703 or 702, when 
 Hezekiah also was throwing off the Assyrian yoke. 
 There is, however, no suggestion in the prophecy that 
 Judah is planning to strike a blow for freedom, and i *~ u 
 does not make the impression that the Chaldeans had 
 only recently received a severe check. It might be urged 
 against a date in Hezekiah's reign that there are several 
 
Bppen&tj* 167 
 
 parallels with Jeremiah. But this is one of those 
 arguments of which we do well to be distrustful. It is 
 generally thought that the description of the Chaldeans 
 in 1 6 ~ 11 exhibits traits borrowed from the Scythians. If 
 it is as late as the reign of Josiah this is probable. 
 Winckler, indeed, supposes that it was an oracle referring 
 to the Scythians. But he takes the same view also of 
 Isa. 5 25 - 30 . The description might suit the Chaldeans 
 better in the 8th century than in the time of Nabopo- 
 lassar and Nebuchadnezzar. 
 
 Grave difficulties lie therefore against every form of 
 the view that the Chaldeans are raised up to inflict 
 Yahweh's judgment on another heathen power, though 
 it would be an advantage if we could seek for a solution 
 along this line, inasmuch as the prophecy gains a com- 
 pleteness which it does not possess if we simply eliminate 
 1 6 ~ u . Nor can we shut our eyes to the difficulties that 
 may be urged against the latter view. If the prophet 
 is complaining in 1 2 ~ 4 12 ~ 17> of Chaldean tyranny, we are 
 obliged to bring the prophecy well below 605 B.C., for 
 the prophet speaks out of no little experience of it. But 
 during the whole period from 605 to the fall of Jerusalem 
 in 586, it would be far less fitting to speak of Judah as 
 righteous than in the days of Josiah. Might we then 
 with Giesebrecht place its origin in the exile ? This 
 seems at first sight to be unlikely since there is no allusion 
 to the captivity, or to the destruction of city and temple. 
 It is not an insuperable objection. We have a parallel 
 in Isa. 13, though the author of this passage has very 
 little to say of the wrongs inflicted by Babylon, his 
 attention being almost wholly engrossed by the doom 
 in store for it. The possibility of an exilic date has been 
 very little discussed. Budde says the prophecy must be 
 
168 Cbe problem ot Suffering. 
 
 pre-exilic, but his reason is simply that i 2 ~ 4 presupposes 
 the existence of the kingdom of Judah. It is not easy 
 to see why. It might just as well refer to the oppressive 
 treatment of the Jews in exile. Baudissin makes a 
 similar objection. There is moreover a positive advan- 
 tage in an exilic date. The character of prophecy largely 
 changed with the destruction of Jerusalem. Before it 
 the prophets for the most part spoke of judgment on the 
 people of Yahweh, after it they were in the main messen- 
 gers of consolation to Judah and of judgment on the 
 heathen. Habakkuk belongs to the latter type. This 
 does not prove that he prophesied after the destruction 
 of Jerusalem. But we have already seen that every 
 pre-exilic date proposed is open to serious objections. 
 And we know that after the blow had fallen, Judah 
 developed a consciousness of her own righteousness, at 
 least a relative righteousness over against the heathen. 
 If we thought of the prophecy as written in exile, this 
 might account for the parallels with cuneiform literature 
 pointed out by Peiser. We might then with Lauterburg 
 (Theol. Z. aus d. Schweiz, 1896, pp. 24 ff.) read " Persians" 
 for " Chaldeans " in i 6 and retain 1 6 ~ n as a prediction 
 that judgment will be executed on the Chaldeans by the 
 Persians. But this is very improbable, for it is not easy 
 to see why any one should have changed " Persians " 
 into " Chaldeans," since such a change would have been 
 in the wrong direction. It is more probable, however, 
 that i 8 " 11 should be regarded as an independent prophecy 
 dating from the pre-exilic period, when the Chaldeans 
 were striking into the larger currents of history. For it 
 is difficult to regard it as belonging to the original 
 prophecy, inasmuch as in 2 s there are obviously no 
 circumstances in sight to suggest the speedy disappear- 
 
SppenOty. 169 
 
 ance of the oppressor, which is, as Wellhausen says, 
 " only a moral postulate." It reminds us of "I the 
 Lord will hasten it in its time " (Isa. 60 22 ). 
 
 If then, though with misgivings, we regard I 2 ~ 4 , i 12 -2 4 , 
 as originating in the exile, a suggestion may be made 
 with a view to determine more narrowly the limits of 
 date. The lower limit is given us by the fact, to which 
 allusion has just been made, that no definite circumstances 
 are on the prophet's horizon, pointing to the overthrow 
 of the Babylonian empire. Accordingly we cannot 
 place it much if any later than 546. On the other hand 
 the absence of allusion to the captivity and the sack of 
 Jerusalem is most easily accounted for if we suppose 
 that the prophet had not lived through them, or was too 
 young at the time to remember them. If he went as 
 a child to Babylonia with Jehoiachin in 597 or was born 
 in Babylonia soon after, as is more likely, he could very 
 well have seen his vision thirty or forty years later. If 
 we date the prophecy about 560-550, we shall not perhaps 
 be far from the mark. We cannot well place it in the 
 post-exilic period, for the problem is in a rudimentary 
 stage, and the author has hardly behind him the dis- 
 cussion of it in Isa. 40-55. 
 
 It will not be necessary to add much on the remaining 
 sections of the prophecy. Against the view of Stade and 
 Kuenen that the whole of 2 9 ~ ao is a post-exilic addition 
 the reader may consult the discussions of Davidson, 
 G. A. Smith, and Driver (Hastings D B), or the detailed 
 defence in Smend's AlUestamentliche Religionsgeschichte 
 (ist ed. 1893, pp. 229, 230. It is not repeated in the 
 second edition). Most of the scholars who have written 
 on the subject recently think that part at any rate of the 
 section comes from Habakkuk. Wellhausen thinks the 
 
170 <Tbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 whole of the woes were uttered against the Chaldeans, 
 but 12-14 have been put together from Mic. 3 10 , Jer. 5i 58 
 and Isa. n 9 , while 15-17 cannot well come from a prophet 
 who prophesied before the exile since it rests on Jer. 25. 
 On 2 18 ~ 20 he simply says that 19 should precede 18, and 
 that 20 clearly prepares the way for the Theophany in 
 chap. 3. This would involve our treating 20 as a later 
 addition, but no opinion is expressed on the authorship of 
 verses 19, 18. I suspect from the reference to Isa. 41 that 
 Wellhausen regards them as late exilic. Nowack regards 
 12-14, 18, 20 as later additions, 9-11, 15, 16, I7a as by 
 Habakkuk, 19 is viewed with suspense, though printed 
 as an addition in the translation. Budde thinks 
 12-14 and 18-20 are later additions. Cornill further 
 suspects 15-17 in its present form. G. A. Smith rejects 
 18-20, and is doubtful about 12-14. If, however, we 
 date Habakkuk's prophecy in the exile, there is no 
 reason why all the woes in the second chapter should not 
 have come from him, though 12-14 is possibly later. 
 On 20 Budde's judgment may be quoted, " It closes the 
 passage not unfittingly but perhaps was intended at the 
 same time to prepare for the theophany in chap. 3." 
 
 The third chapter is held by an increasing number of 
 critics to be post-exilic, though its authorship by 
 Habakkuk is defended by Kirkpatrick and Betteridge, 
 and, with the exception of 17-19, by Peiser. It is not 
 necessary for the present purpose to discuss the question. 
 Stade, Kuenen and Wellhausen have done most to 
 substantiate the view that it is a post-exilic Psalm. The 
 arguments for this conclusion, which is probably correct, 
 may be conveniently seen in Hastings D B or the 
 Encyclopaedia Biblica. 
 
 [I have felt it unnecessary to state or discuss Rothstein's 
 
BppenDij. 171 
 
 very ingenious theories of the first two chapters. I gave 
 an outline of them in my Guide to Biblical Study, p. 85. 
 A full statement and criticism may be found in Budde's 
 article in the Expositor for May, 1895. So far as I know, 
 they have met with no acceptance.] 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 CRITICAL PROBLEMS OF ISAIAH 40 66. 
 
 FOR the sake of those who are quite unfamiliar with 
 the modern criticism of the Book of Isaiah, it is 
 perhaps desirable to begin by justifying the view that 
 the last twenty-seven chapters of the book cannot be 
 assigned to Isaiah. Our present question is not whether 
 these chapters themselves form a unity, but whether 
 they can be ascribed to the main author of the earlier 
 portion of the book. It is almost conclusive as an 
 answer to this that the standpoint of the prophecy is 
 not that of Isaiah's time but that of the exile. And the 
 prophet does not give any hint that this standpoint is 
 assumed rather than real. There is no prediction of the 
 exile, it is described as having already for some time 
 continued. The frequently repeated statement that an 
 unbelief in the possibility of predictive prophecy under- 
 lies the denial of these chapters to Isaiah is therefore 
 both untrue and irrelevant. For we have nothing to do 
 with a prediction of the exile and return as still future, 
 as they were to Isaiah, but a statement that the Jews 
 are in exile and a prediction of their release. The 
 evidence on this point may be first summarized. The 
 prophecy opens with a message of comfort to the people 
 of God and to Jerusalem, on the ground that the latter 
 has received at the hands of Yahweh double punishment 
 
173 
 
 for all her sins. Jacob is saying despairingly that all his 
 ways are hid from Yahweh, 40 27 . Zion says Yahweh 
 has forgotten me 49 14 . Jerusalem is drunk with the cup 
 of His fury 5I 17 " 28 . She is a captive with bands 
 about her neck 52 2 . She has been forsaken and hated 
 and her land is desolate 60 15 , 62 4 , 49 19 . The holy people 
 have possessed their land but a little while, their adver- 
 saries have trodden down the sanctuary 63 18 . The holy 
 cities are become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. 
 The holy and beautiful house where their fathers praised 
 Yahweh is burned with fire 64 10 ~ u . The oppressing power 
 is Babylon, which has shown the people of God no mercy 
 47 6 . Israel is in exile in Babylon 48 20 , it is a people robbed 
 and spoiled, snared in holes and hid in prison houses, 
 42 22 . Such is the state of things described in the last 
 twenty-seven chapters as actually existing. But signs 
 are already present that it is quickly coming to an end. 
 A mighty conqueror has been raised up from the East 
 and the North, 41*' 8>35 , 46 n named Cyrus 44 28 , 45 *. The 
 writer seems to point to his rise as the fulfilment of 
 prophecies formerly given 42 9 , and in this fulfilment he 
 bids his readers recognise the proof of Yahweh' s power 
 to predict the future. He does not predict the raising 
 up of Cyrus as something that still lies in the future. 
 He has already begun his career of conquest, and 
 attracted attention. And if the view is right as it seems 
 to be, that the former prophecies now fulfilled related to 
 his rise, it is impossible to place the prophet's stand- 
 point elsewhere than towards the close of the exile, for 
 he could not appeal to events still in the future as proofs 
 that the prediction of them had been fulfilled. While 
 then the former prophecies have been fulfilled in that 
 Cyrus has begun his career of conquest, this prophet has 
 
174 Gbe problem ct Suffering. 
 
 new things to declare, that Cyrus will overthrow Babylon 
 and set the captives free, 43 14 , 47, 48 14 , 45 4> 18 . Following 
 this comes the return of the exiles. They are bidden go 
 forth from Babylon and flee from the Chaldeans 48 20 . 
 The ransomed of Yahweh are to return and come with 
 singing unto Zion 51 n . Cyrus will say that Jerusalem 
 shall be rebuilt and the foundation of the Temple be 
 laid 44 28 . The cities of Judah shall also be built and the 
 waste places restored 44 26 , 61 3 . 
 
 It is quite clear from this survey of the actual state- 
 ments of these chapters that they cannot be earlier than 
 towards the close of the exile and that some at least are 
 not later than the capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 538. 
 But there are other important arguments proving that 
 they cannot come from Isaiah. There are marked 
 differences in theological ideas. Isaiah is mainly a 
 prophet of judgment, while these chapters contain 
 chiefly messages of comfort and prophecies of restora- 
 tion. Isaiah's Messianic king disappears and the Servant 
 of Yahweh, the missionary to the heathen and the 
 martyr, a figure unknown to Isaiah, takes his place. 
 The thought of Yahweh's greatness as displayed in 
 creation is developed very fully but is absent from Isaiah. 
 Isaiah's attitude to the Sabbath i 13 is not such as we find 
 in 56 a ~ 6 , 58 13 . The idea of the remnant, while not com- 
 pletely absent, is very subordinate, whereas it holds 
 a leading place in Isaiah's thought. The style of the 
 later chapters is also very different from that of Isaiah, 
 being more diffuse, rhetorical and pathetic, nobly 
 eloquent it is true, but circling rather monotonously 
 around a few great thoughts. And the vocabulary, 
 apart from the common stock of words in which two 
 writers might easily coincide, presents very little that 
 
175 
 
 points to identity of authorship, and much that tells 
 strongly the other way. These arguments which are 
 much strengthened by detailed comparison of the two 
 sections of the book may suffice to prove that these 
 chapters are not from the hand of Isaiah. 
 
 The next question is whether Isa. 40-66 forms, apart 
 from slight interpolations, a substantial unity. It was 
 natural that for a long period this assumption should 
 pass unchallenged. Such scholars as Ewald and Bleek 
 had, however, pointed out signs of composite authorship, 
 and at a later period Cheyne opened the way to the 
 newer criticism by his important article on Isaiah in the 
 Encyclopedia Britannica (1881). Kuenen in his Intro- 
 duction to the Prophets (1889) took up a very advanced 
 position. The prophecy of Restoration he defined as 
 consistingof chap ters 40-49, 52 1 ~, with possibly 52 13 ~53 12 . 
 In 1891 Cheyne reached the conclusion that the work 
 of the second Isaiah consisted of two parts (a) 40-48, 
 (6) a broken collection composed of 49 1 ~52 12 , 52 13 ~53 12 
 (a later addition by the author) 54,55, 56 9 ~57 21 (beginning 
 with a long passage from an older prophet probably 
 worked up with a deutero-Isaianic fragment by the editor) 
 and 60-62. In other words the Second Isaiah's work 
 consisted of 40-55, 60-62, with part of 56 9 ~57 21 . The 
 question passed into a new stage with Duhm's commen- 
 tary in 1892. He attributed 40-55, with the omission of 
 the Servant passages, to the second Isaiah, and 56-66 to 
 a single author whom he called Trito- Isaiah. His 
 results were very widely accepted with the exception of 
 his view of the Servant passages. Cheyne in his 
 Introduction to the Book of Isaiah (1895), agreed that the 
 work of the second Isaiah did not extend beyond 55, 
 but he thought that the Servant passages were inserted 
 
176 Sbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 by the author and possibly were earlier compositions of 
 his own. He further refused to admit the unity of 56-66. 
 These chapters he regarded as containing ten indepen- 
 dent compositions, not necessarily by so many authors, 
 written in the age of Nehemiah, while 63 7 -64 12 he assigned 
 to the time of Artaxerxes Ochus. Marti agrees with 
 Duhm both as to the Second and Third Isaiah, except 
 that he considers the Servant passages to be an integral 
 part of the Second Isaiah's work. Since the publication 
 of his Introduction, Cheyne has modified his view of 
 40-55 in two respects. In agreement with Rosters he 
 considers that the Second Isaiah's work does not extend 
 beyond 48, a position to which Kuenen approximated 
 in his Introduction. 49-55 he regards as a post-exilic 
 appendix. Further, he now considers the Servant 
 passages to be post-exilic compositions. 
 
 The ground on which it is held that the last twenty- 
 seven chapters are not a unity are very cogent, though 
 it is not so clear where the line should be drawn between 
 the work of the Second Isaiah, and that of later supple- 
 menters. The case seems clearest against 65, 66, least 
 clear against 60-62. It is not possible to go through the 
 various sections in detail, but since it is now commonly 
 held that 56-66 are not by the Second Isaiah, it will be 
 most convenient to begin by exhibiting the arguments 
 that point to this conclusion. In the first place it would 
 seem that there had been a restoration of exiles already 
 56 8 . .Some had already been gathered, and it is promised 
 that others shall be gathered to these. This suits no 
 period except after the return under Cyrus. The 
 references to a return as still future in 6o 4iBit> , 66* do not 
 conflict with this, for the return under Cyrus, and, much 
 later, that under Ezra were comparatively small. The 
 
177 
 
 reference to all the nations in 66 20 shows that the author 
 is thinking of the Dispersion. This argument, however, 
 does not prove that 56 8 is not by the Second Isaiah. He 
 might quite well have returned in 536 and added pro- 
 phecies to those he had uttered in the exile. Such 
 a view would also be consistent with the fact that the 
 Temple seems from some passages to have been rebuilt. 
 The clearest instances are 65 ll and 66 6 , but it is also 
 probable that 56 5 ~~ 7 , 6o 7 , 62 , should be similarly inter- 
 preted. This brings us down to the year 515. The 
 references to idolatry in 57 8 ~ 14 and in the last two chapters 
 65 ^ " 12 , 66 8> 4> 17 , scarcely suit the exile. It was in fact 
 one of the arguments, by which conservative critics 
 defended the Isaianic authorship, that 57 5>6 could not 
 have been written in Babylon, where there are no 
 torrent-beds or terebinths, but must have been written 
 in Palestine. The rites described are also similar to 
 those familiar in Canaanite worship. On this ground 
 several critics supposed that 57 8 ~ 14 was a pre-exilic 
 passage inserted by the Second Isaiah. But it is far 
 from clear why he should have inserted it, and the tone 
 of the prophecy is not such as would be congenial to the 
 writer of the earlier part of 40-66. It is simpler then to 
 regard it as referring to customs practised after the 
 Return. In this case we can readily understand the 
 conditions to which he refers. A certain number of 
 Jews had been left behind in Judah after the captivities 
 to Babylon and the flight of Johanan and many more 
 into Egypt. This people of the land that was left 
 probably belonged to the most superstitious stratum of 
 Jewish society. It seems to have been further contami- 
 nated through connexion with the surrounding heathen 
 population. Further, in Samaria the remnant of 
 
 N 
 
178 Gbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 Israelites left after the downfall of the Northern Kingdom 
 had been reinforced by heathen settlers. These facts 
 amply explain the existence of gross heathen practices 
 among the Israelitish and Jewish peoples in Palestine. 
 It is also not unlikely that in 66 l we have a reference, 
 as Duhm has conjectured, to the Samaritan project of 
 building a Temple. It is quite clear that the prophet, 
 whether the Second Isaiah or a later writer, could not, in 
 view of numerous passages to the contrary, be depreciating 
 the Temple at Jerusalem. He might be attacking the 
 unspiritual worshippers who wished to erect a Temple, 
 assuring them that Yahweh desired no temple from such 
 as they were. But this hardly agrees with the language 
 used by the Second Isaiah, whether in 40-55 or in later 
 chapters, in which much stress is laid on the Temple. 
 The explanation which brings it into relation with the 
 Samaritan Temple meets the conditions fairly well. It 
 must be remembered that Haggai complains of the 
 character of the people and yet urges them to rebuild 
 the Temple. It is further significant that there is a 
 great contrast between the tone of 40-55 and that of 
 much of 56-66. This comes out in various ways. 
 While in the former we have the prophet exulting in 
 near deliverance, in the latter there are references to 
 delay. In the 59th chapter the prophet complains that 
 salvation is far from them (verses 9-11). He gives as the 
 reason for this that the iniquities of the people have 
 effected a separation between themselves and God. It 
 is not that Yahweh's hand is so shortened that He cannot 
 save, but that the people are themselves so steeped in 
 sin. The glowing prophecy of the splendours of Zion 
 in 60 ends with the words, " I the Lord will hasten it in 
 its time." Again stress is laid much more than by the 
 
Bppen&fj* 179 
 
 Second Isaiah on the externals of religion such as the 
 Temple service and keeping of the Sabbath. The 
 description of the social condition of the community 
 agrees better with the view that it consisted no longer 
 of exiles in Babylon, but of a people, who, without being 
 politically independent, yet possessed a large degree of 
 self-government. It is true that this is not decisive 
 because we know so little of the circumstances of the 
 exiles in Babylon. The general affinities are, however, 
 with the state of things reflected in the post- exilic 
 prophets, especially Malachi, and this applies not only 
 to social but also to religious conditions, especially to the 
 division into parties. And although there are close 
 similarities in language and idea between 56-66 and 
 40-55, the difference in tone and point of view is very 
 marked. The coincidence may readily be explained on 
 the theory of imitation. 
 
 On the question whether 56-66 is itself composite, no 
 more need be said than is said on pp. 79, 80. Nor is it 
 necessary to discuss the view that the work of the Second 
 Isaiah ended with 48. The two sections 40-48 and 
 49-55 are bolted together by the Servant passages. On 
 these see Appendix C. 
 
 N 2 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 THE SERVANT OF YAHWEH. 
 
 IT is unnecessary to linger over the passages in which 
 the Servant of Yahweh is unquestionably Israel. 
 But the four passages already mentioned (42 l ~' t 49 1-6 , 
 5o 4 " 9 , 52 13 ~53 12 ), which may for convenience be called the 
 Servant passages, have for the last twelve years aroused 
 keener discussion than perhaps any other Old Testament 
 problem. The questions at issue are both critical and 
 theological, and touch the authorship of the passages and 
 their interpretation. The question of authorship is to 
 some extent associated with that of interpretation. If 
 the passages are the work of the Second Isaiah, there is 
 a rather strong presumption that he means by the Servant 
 in them what he has meant in other parts of the prophecy 
 that is Israel. On the other hand, the converse of this 
 proposition would not be so probable, for if it were to be 
 determined that in these passages the Servant meant the 
 same as in the rest of Isa. 40-55, identity of authoisliip 
 could not be inferred from this, inasmuch as two writers 
 might speak of Israel as the Servant. Again, if difference 
 of meaning could be established, identity of author 
 would be improbable. But if difference of author were 
 established, nothing more would follow than that one of 
 
181 
 
 the reasons for accepting identity of interpretation would 
 disappear. Yet each of the four alternatives has its 
 representatives. The usual view has been that we have 
 identity of author and identity of meaning. Sellin, 
 however, has argued for identity of author with difference 
 of meaning. Wellhausen and Smend accept difference 
 of authorship with identity of meaning. Duhm and 
 several other scholars argue for difference of author and 
 difference of meaning. It may be urged that since the 
 Servant passages seem only loosely connected with their 
 context, it is likely that they were not inserted here by 
 the Second Isaiah himself. But it is still less likely 
 that an}' one else inserted them in an apparently quite 
 unsuitable context, whereas there may have been subtle 
 points of connexion in the author's mind, which do not 
 at all lie on the surface. Some scholars have argued 
 with considerable force that such points of contact may 
 be discovered. We may also leave open the possibility 
 that the Second Isaiah composed the Servant passages 
 at an earlier period, and worked them into the main 
 body of his prophecy, or even that he composed them 
 later and inserted them, though this is improbable. 
 
 It is better to attack the problem on the exegetical 
 than the critical side, and from an examination of the 
 passages themselves discover the significance assigned 
 in them to the figure of the Servant. The main question 
 is whether the Servant is an individual or Israel. It will 
 be convenient to discuss the individual interpretation 
 first. 
 
 The credit of establishing, to the satisfaction of many 
 recent scholars, that the Servant is to be regarded as an 
 individual, belongs to Duhm. In his commentary on 
 Isaiah published in 1892, he assigns the four Servant 
 
182 abe Problem ot Suffering. 
 
 passages to the age of Nehemiah, and accounted for 
 their present position by saying that they were inserted 
 where there happened to be room in the margin or 
 between sections of the prophecy, a wholly frivolous 
 explanation. The Servant was a contemporary of the 
 author of the poems. He was a teacher of the Law, and 
 a leper, despised and persecuted by his countrymen. 
 After his death from leprosy and burial in dishonour, his 
 disciples, of whom the author was one, expected him to 
 rise again and in his exaltation accomplish God's great 
 purpose. Kittel and Sellin revived an earlier view that 
 the Servant in Isa. 52 13 ~53 u was Zerubbabel, who was 
 supposed to have been put to death by the Persians for 
 revolt in connexion with a Messianic movement. Sellin's 
 view was combined with a very complicated literary 
 theory as to the composition of the Second Isaiah. He 
 has since withdrawn the identification with Zerubbabel, 
 and now fixes on Jehoiachin as the Servant. Bertholet 
 adopts a collective interpretation for the Servant passages 
 in general, but regards nearly the whole of Isa. 53 as an 
 insertion, written on the fate of Eleazar, a martyr in the 
 persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. In the first edition 
 of \i\sAlttestamentlicheReligionsgeschichte, Smend modified 
 Duhm's view in two respects. He regarded the Martyr 
 referred to as living and dying before the time of the 
 Second Isaiah, who incorporated the Servant passages in 
 his work, and he thought the Servant was not to be 
 interpreted in the same way in all of them. He adopted 
 the individual interpretation of 50 4 ~ 9 , 52 13 ~53 12 , but in 
 42 1 ~ 4 , 49 1 ~ 6 identified the Servant with Israel, since in the 
 latter passage the Servant before his resurrection speaks 
 as if he were still living, which does not suit the individual. 
 He also interpreted the resurrection of the martyr as 
 
183 
 
 metaphorical, the Servant does not rise from the dead, 
 but he lives again in the successors who carry on his 
 work. In his second edition (1899) he has withdrawn 
 this view and identifies the Servant in all four passages 
 with Israel. 
 
 The strength of the individual interpretation lies in 
 the fact that the language of some of the passages and 
 especially of 52 13 ~53 12 seems to point to some definite 
 individual as in the. prophet's mind. Probably some will 
 always find it impossible to believe that this language 
 can refer to anything but an individual. It is, however, 
 exposed to very grave objections. In the first place we 
 must reckon with the fact that the Servant passages are 
 at present found in a prophecy in which the Servant of 
 Yahweh is identified with Israel ; there is therefore a 
 presumption that in these passages this identification 
 should be maintained. In the next place this identifica- 
 tion is actually made in the present text of one of our 
 Servant passages, " Thou art My servant : Israel, in 
 whom I will be glorified" (49 3 ). Duhm has accord- 
 ingly to strike out the word " Israel," but there is no 
 real justification for this, apart from difficulties that may 
 be felt in the national interpretation. Smend retained 
 the word in his first edition, but, as already mentioned, 
 while he held that in the first two Servant passages the 
 Servant was Israel, he adopted an individual interpreta- 
 tion for the last two. This position, however, is very 
 difficult, the same view should be taken in all four passages. 
 A third difficulty is the idea, at this date, of a resurrection 
 of the Servant, since elsewhere we find the thought of 
 individual resurrection in much later passages. This 
 difficulty is not insuperable. If the Servant was an 
 individual, the impression he made was so great, that 
 
1 84 Hbe problem of Suffering. 
 
 a conviction that death could not hold him, would not 
 have been altogether unnatural. Fourthly, it is very 
 hard to believe that an Old Testament prophet could 
 have spoken of any contemporary in such language as 
 we find in 52 13 ~53 12 . This is not merely on account of 
 the representation of the Servant as suffering vicariously 
 for those who utter 53 4 ~ G , but on account of the world- 
 wide notice attracted by him and the world-wide 
 influence that he exerts. He will startle many nations 
 and kings shall be dumb with astonishment before him. 
 So in 49 l the Servant bids the far lands and the nations 
 listen, and in ver. 6 says that Yahweh has given him for 
 a light to the Gentiles, to be His salvation to the ends of 
 the earth. In the first passage 42 1 ~* he is to bring forth 
 judgment to the nations, he is to set judgment in the 
 earth and the far lands wait for his teaching. It is 
 highly improbable that the prophet should have formed 
 so exalted a conception of any contemporary as to have 
 believed that he would rise from his dishonoured grave 
 and undertake so successful a mission to the heathen 
 world. And how are we to suppose that whole nations 
 and their kings were startled by the transformation in 
 the fortunes of a despised and persecuted leper, of whom 
 during his lifetime they would never have heard ? There 
 is nothing to show that the Servant was a king or prince, 
 who might have attracted attention of this kind. 
 
 It seems, then, that the objections to an individual 
 interpretation are very cogent. The question therefore 
 arises whether in spite of the features which seem so 
 strongly to point to a person, we should not accept the 
 identification of the Servant in some sense with Israel. 
 This is supported by 49 3 and the LXX text of 42 l . It is 
 held in various forms, the Servant being regarded as the 
 
SppenDtj. 185 
 
 historical nation, or the righteous kernel of the nation,- 
 or the prophetic order, or the ideal Israel. The most 
 obvious explanation is that the historical Israel is meant. 
 The word is thus used in its strict sense, as we have 
 a right to expect, unless we are warned to the contrary, 
 and the Servant thus bears the same significance here 
 as in the rest of 2 Isaiah. This view has been defended 
 above all by Giesebrecht, but also by Budde and Marti, 
 and is accepted among others by Wellhausen, Smend, 
 Cornill, Siegfried and H. P. Smith. In spite of this 
 weighty array of supporters, many scholars regard it as 
 exposed to insuperable objections. In the first place it 
 is said that the description given of the Servant does not 
 correspond to the actual character and career of Israel. 
 The Servant is an innocent sufferer, but the prophets 
 represent Israel as suffering for its own sin, and the 
 Second Isaiah himself does so. It is best to consider 
 this with a second objection. If Israel suffers for the sins 
 of others, these can only be the heathen. Accordingly 
 we must regard the heathen as speaking in the former 
 part of chap. 53, as confessing their misconceptions of the 
 Servant and saying that he has suffered for their sins. 
 It is urged that this is incredible on the lips of the 
 heathen, and if the prophet had meant this he would 
 have said it explicitly. The former of these objections 
 is very precarious, the passage is of a very extraordinary 
 character in any case, and we cannot rule out an interpre- 
 tation because it expresses something very surprising to 
 us. As to the latter objection, we cannot demand that 
 the prophet should introduce the speakers explicitly. 
 The sudden burst into speech at the beginning of 53 is 
 fine and effective, and similar cases occur elsewhere. 
 Moreover we must not judge what the prophet may 
 
i86 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 have thought necessary for clearness by what his readers 
 may feel to be necessary. If he identified the Servant 
 with Israel in his own mind, then he would regard it as 
 self-evident that the speakers in the former part of 53 
 must be the heathen nations. All we could reasonably 
 expect would be that an intimation should be given in 
 the context. And this we have in the immediately 
 preceding verse 52 15 . The Servant is to startle many 
 nations, and kings are to be dumb with amazement before 
 him. It is therefore not far-fetched to suppose that 
 after this we have an expression of their astonishment. 
 This we get in 53 l which may quite well be translated 
 " Who would have believed that which we have heard ? 
 but to whom has Yahweh's working been revealed ? " 
 The meaning is that they have heard the wonderful 
 news of the Servant's exaltation, and their first thought 
 is, Who could ever have believed that this high destiny 
 was reserved for him ? They then go on to excuse their 
 blindness to his true character. He was like a dwarfed 
 and sickly plant with no beauty or promise, like a leper 
 cursed by God. Then they proceed to confess that the 
 curse which they thought rested upon him, was really 
 the punishment for their own sin. In this way we get 
 a perfectly connected line of thought. These deep truths 
 are not strange on the lips of the nations, for it is not the 
 nations in their heathen blindness who are speaking, 
 but the nations who have witnessed the exaltation of the 
 Servant and have come to recognise Yahweh as the true 
 God. The train of thought which leads up to their 
 conclusion is not hard to discover. They have seen 
 Israel enduring unparalleled suffering, and have explained 
 it to be due to its unparalleled sin. But now they find 
 from Israel's exaltation that Israel has been righteous. 
 
187 
 
 How then account for its suffering ? If it is not due to 
 its own sin, then may it not be due to theirs ? They 
 have gone astray into idolatry, Israel has clung to the 
 true God. But Israel has suffered, while they have 
 gone free. What they have deserved Israel has endured. 
 Its suffering has been vicarious. All this is a perfectly 
 natural explanation of the passage. But if it is the 
 heathen nations that speak in the former part of chap. 53, 
 much of the first objection is removed. This was that 
 the prophets, including the Second Isaiah, regarded 
 Israel as guilty and suffering for its own sin, while the 
 Servant is represented as innocent and suffering for the 
 sins of others. But some of the strongest expressions 
 of the latter thought occur in the former part of chap. 53. 
 If this contains the confession of the heathen, it must be 
 judged as spoken from their point of view. Naturally 
 in their revulsion of feeling, in their recognition of their 
 own sinfulness and the extreme suffering of Israel, they 
 look on Israel as innocent in comparison with themselves, 
 and therefore as suffering for the world's sin, not for its 
 own. Still, this does not entirely remove the difficulty. 
 The author of the Servant passages speaking in his own 
 person, expresses similar ideas about the Servant. It 
 may be he who speaks of him as righteous, says that he 
 had done no violence, neither was deceit in his mouth. 
 In 50 5 the Servant says, " I was not rebellious, neither 
 turned away backward." Yet these expressions are 
 quite compatible with a recognition of sin in the Servant ; 
 freedom from violence and deceit is by no means the 
 same thing as sinlessness. Moreover the Second Isaiah's 
 estimate of Israel was more favourable than that of the 
 earlier prophets, though he does speak strongly of 
 Israel's sin. It is also very important to observe that 
 
i88 abe problem of Suffering. 
 
 he considers Israel's punishment to have been excessive : 
 " She hath received at the Lord's hands double for all 
 her sin." If Israel has received double punishment, it 
 is not far from this to the thought that the suffering it 
 has not deserved, has been for the sin of other nations. 
 In comparison with these Israel might be regarded as 
 righteous. It is not of an absolute but of a relative 
 righteousness that the author is thinking. As confirming 
 the interpretation that Israel suffers for the sin of the 
 Gentile nations, it may be pointed out that in the first 
 two Servant passages, the mission of the Servant to the 
 Gentiles is emphasised, so that from the outset a close 
 connexion is affirmed between the Servant and the 
 Gentile world. 
 
 A third objection to the identification of the Servant 
 with the historical Israel is that the two are expressly 
 distinguished. This seems at first sight to be con- 
 clusive. In 53 8 the Servant seems to be regarded as 
 smitten for the sin of Israel. But the text should be 
 corrected and we should probably read " for our rebellions 
 he was smitten to death." (See pp. 56, 57, note 34.) 
 
 The other passage which is thought to affirm a dis- 
 tinction between Israel in the national sense and the 
 Servant is 49 6i c . The usual view is that here the Servant 
 has, as part of his mission, the function of restoring 
 Israel from exile. There are some general objections to 
 this. Nowhere else is this function assigned to the 
 Servant, or mentioned in the Servant passages. This is 
 very remarkable, whether we regard the passages as 
 written by the Second Isaiah or not. If they were 
 written by the Second Isaiah, it is very strange that he 
 should assign to the Servant what elsewhere he assigns 
 to Yah wen. It is also strange, considering that the 
 
BppenMg. 189 
 
 restoration of Israel is a main theme of his prophecy, 
 that it should here be introduced as affording insufficient 
 scope for the Servant's activity. But it is strangest of 
 all that the writer should speak of the Servant as restoring 
 Israel, when he has frequently identified the Servant 
 with Israel, and has in fact just done so in this very 
 passage. What meaning are we to put on the statement 
 that Israel restores Israel from exile ? Similarly, if the 
 Servant passages are not by the Second Isaiah, this 
 difficulty still lies against the view that the Servant 
 brings back Israel from exile, unless in 49 3 we quite 
 arbitrarily delete " Israel." Besides, it would be very 
 remarkable that the author should assume, as if it were 
 a well-known function of the Servant, that he should 
 raise up the tribes of Jacob, although this is nowhere else 
 mentioned, and announce as a still further achievement 
 the mission to the Gentiles which has already been 
 emphasised in the first Servant passage. Probably, 
 however, the usual view of 49 5 - 6 is incorrect, (see pp. 46, 
 47, note 12,) and no distinction between the Servant and 
 Israel can be based on this passage. 
 
 Fourthly, we have the fact, already mentioned, that 
 the language in some of the passages is so personal in its 
 character, as to suggest very strongly that an individual 
 and not the nation is in the prophet's mind. But we 
 must not forget that the personification of nations or 
 other collective bodies went very much further in Hebrew 
 than would be permissible in English, and that this fact 
 is often disguised from English readers of the Bible, 
 since the expression has been toned down into harmony 
 with English idiom.* Thus in Josh, g 7 the R.V. translates 
 
 * See a good note in Gray's Numbers, on The Personification of 
 Nations, pp. 265, 266. 
 
i9 be problem of Suffering. 
 
 " And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, Perad- 
 venture ye dwell among us," but the literal translation 
 is " And the man of Israel said unto the Hivite, Perad- 
 venture thou art dwelling in my midst." It is generally 
 admitted that in several of the Psalms the first person 
 singular stands for the nation, though the range of this 
 is greatly disputed. In Lamentations also the nation 
 speaks in the first person singular. A very striking 
 parallel to the description of the Servant is found in 
 Psa. 129 1 ~ 8 , where we read "Many a time have they 
 afflicted me from my youth up," and again " The plowers 
 plowed upon my back, they made long their furrows." 
 These expressions in themselves suggest that an individual 
 sufferer is speaking, but the passage definitely puts the 
 words in Israel's mouth. We need not therefore feel 
 obliged by the very marked character of the language to 
 see in the Servant an individual. The nation is person- 
 ified, though the personification is certainly remarkable. 
 The objections to the view that the Servant is the 
 Israelitish nation, which has suffered death in the exile 
 and is to experience a glorious resurrection in the restora- 
 tion, after which it will instruct the heathen in the true 
 religion, seem therefore to be inconclusive. It has the 
 great advantage that the Servant passages are thus 
 brought into line with the general conception formed by 
 the Second Isaiah of Israel's restoration and mission to 
 the Gentiles. This relationship to the heathen along 
 with the assertion that Israel has received a double 
 punishment for her sin, supply the basis for the doctrine 
 that Israel has suffered on account of the sins of the 
 heathen. It is better to understand by the Servant the 
 actual historical Israel than any section of Israel, such 
 as the righteous kernel of the nation. The speakers in 
 
191 
 
 the former part of 53 would in that case be the rest of 
 Israel. But as they had also suffered very heavily 
 for their sin they would hardly be inclined to see in the 
 spiritual Israel within Israel the vicarious sufferer for their 
 sin. Nor do the individualizing features of the prophecy 
 suit a number of persons in the nation so well as they 
 suit the whole nation. 
 
 Nor need we with Cheyne, Skinner and others interpret 
 the Servant to be the ideal as distinguished from the 
 historical Israel. There are certain advantages in this 
 view. The language used is not too elevated, and there 
 is not the difficulty that while Israel is regarded as sinful 
 the Servant is righteous, since on this view the Servant 
 is not the actual Israel. This interpretation helps to 
 account for the features transferred to it from the 
 history of Israel, or of the righteous remnant or even of 
 such individuals as Jeremiah and the other prophets. 
 These were so many realisations in fact of what existed 
 in the ideal. But this view labours under serious difficul- 
 ties. First there is the unquestionable fact that the 
 Second Isaiah speaks of the Servant in language inappli- 
 cable to the ideal Israel. If then he is the author 
 of the Servant passages, he uses the word in incompatible 
 senses. Further it is not quite natural for the Israelites 
 to regard the ideal Israel as suffering for their sins. 
 The thought might perhaps be of the persecutions 
 endured by those in whom the ideal Israel had found 
 its partial realisation, true prophets and other pious 
 Israelites. And where the more spiritual religion came 
 in conflict with the traditional, the adherents of the latter 
 would regard the sufferings which the former entailed as 
 manifest tokens of Divine displeasure, and thus we might 
 say that the ideal Israel had to endure the misjudgment 
 
i$2 Gbe problem of Suffering 
 
 of the Israelites, who attributed its afflictions in its 
 representatives to their adherence to what was false and 
 sinful. Thus Jeremiah's doctrine of the overthrow of 
 the nation and the destruction of the Temple contra- 
 dicted an intense religious feeling that existed in the 
 nation. This was a case in which the ideal Israel may 
 be said to have come into collision with the actual and 
 to have suffered at its hands. Yet while it is on these 
 lines that an explanation would have to be sought, if 
 there were no alternative to taking the Servant as the 
 ideal Israel, the thought that the ideal Israel suffers for 
 the sins of the Israelites is extremely artificial. Moreover, 
 if we distinguish between the Servant and the actual 
 Israel, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that the 
 Servant as a part of his mission has to restore Israel 
 from Babylon. But what are we to make of the thought 
 that the ideal Israel restores the actual Israel from exile ? 
 The best answer would perhaps be that the work assigned 
 to Israel in the Divine plan, required its restoration, and 
 since the actual was restored for the sake of the ideal, 
 the work of restoration may be ascribed to the Servant. 
 But there is plainly a difference between that for which 
 a thing is done and that by which it is done, and the 
 explanation reminds one too forcibly of some very risky 
 New Testament exegesis. Lastly, we are under the 
 disadvantage that we must omit the exile from the 
 sufferings of the Servant. By so doing we cut the 
 passages away from the most important fact in the 
 contemporary historical situation, and thus fail to find 
 in them the author's solution of the problem that pressed 
 most heavily on his contemporaries. This is all the 
 more arbitrary, since the author has said at the outset 
 that Jerusalem has suffered a double punishment for 
 
BppenMj* 193 
 
 all her sin. This is explained, it part of the punish- 
 ment has been vicarious. But if we identify the 
 Servant with the ideal Israel we reach the strange result 
 that while the actual Israel has received in the exile 
 twice as much punishment as it deserved, its sins are 
 nevertheless atoned for by the sufferings of the ideal 
 Israel, in which the exile is not included. It is not 
 probable that the Israelites who had suffered the penalty 
 of exile would utter the thought that the ideal Israel 
 had borne their sins. 
 
 For these reasons we must reject the identification 
 of the Servant with the ideal Israel, and accept the view 
 that the Servant is throughout the actual Israel, which 
 died in the exile and is to rise again in the restora- 
 tion. Nevertheless there is an element of truth which 
 must be recognised in the view that the Servant is the 
 ideal Israel. The nation is regarded in the light of its 
 purpose in the mind of God. The Servant is not an 
 ideal distinct from the nation, but the nation regarded 
 from an ideal point of view. This accounts for all the 
 phenomena, and introduces consistency into the repre- 
 sentation more successfully than any of the rival inter- 
 pretations, inasmuch as differences are due not to any 
 change in the identity of the Servant, but simply to 
 change in the aspect under which he is regarded. 
 
194 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ahaz, 1 66 
 
 Alexander the Great, 121 
 
 Allegory, 119 
 
 Amos, 7, 23, 157 
 
 Angels, 106, 119, 122 124 
 
 Anger of God, I, 29 31, 85, 
 
 95, 105 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 80, 123, 
 
 182 
 
 Apocalyptic 108, 118 125 
 Apostates, 124, 125 
 Artaxerxes Ochus, 80, 121, 176 
 Assurbanipal, 154 
 Assyria, 3, 8 11, 28, 153155. 
 
 157 161, 163 166 
 
 Babylon, 3, 4, 12, 17, 28, 34. 
 59. 156, 157, 163, 166, 167, 
 169, 173. 174, 177, 179 
 
 Baethgen, 68, 1 14 
 
 Baudissin, 168 
 
 Bertholet, 54, 182 
 
 Betteridge, 155, 157, 163, 164, 
 170 
 
 Bickell, 68 
 
 Bit Yakin, 166 
 
 Blek, 175 
 
 Book of Life, 123 
 
 Buddc, 6, 9, 47, 51, 53, 54, 56, 
 
 57,152-163,167,170,171, 
 185 
 
 Buhl, 46, 58, 113 
 Canon, 134 
 
 Carchemish, 3 
 
 Chaldeans, 4, 8, 9, 151160, 
 
 163 168, 170 
 Cheyne, 16, 48, 49, 51, 53 56, 
 
 57 59, 6769, 80, 1 1 6, 
 
 121, 126, 175, 176 
 Christ, 42, 65, 66, 145150 
 Christianity, 64, 65, 145150 
 Cornill, 14, 153, 170, 185 
 Covenant, 15, 16 
 Cross, 148, 149 
 
 Cyrus, 34, 35, 39, 73, I73> '74, 
 
 176 
 
 Daniel, 106, 120, 123125, 144 
 Davidson, 126, 153, 155, 158, 
 
 162, 169 
 
 Day of Yahweh, 7, 120 
 Death, no 112, 115 117, 122, 
 
 133, I37I4 
 Decalogue, 21 
 Delitzsch Fried., 161 
 Deuteronomy, 2, 124, 164 
 Dillmann, 47, 48 
 Driver, 113, 116, 153, 155, 169 
 Duhm, 14, 1 6, 4649, 5154, 
 
 56, 58, 59, 67-69, 71, 79, 
 
 109, 112116, 121, 175, 
 
 176, 181183 
 Ecclesiastes, 125136, 148 
 
 Egypt, 3,4, i8,i9, 37, 153, 57, 
 160, 176 
 
 Eleazar, 182 
 
 Election of Israel, 38, 39, 61, 65 
 
195 
 
 Eliphaz, 88 
 
 Elihu, 83, 88 
 
 Elohim, 77, 106 
 
 Encyclopaedia Biblica, 16, 153, 
 
 158 1 60, 170 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 175 
 Enoch, no 
 Ephraim, 166 
 Ethiopia, 37 
 Ewald, 45, 175 
 Exile, 4, 1722, 31, 34, 50, 
 
 59-62, 64, 172174, 190, 
 
 192, 193 
 
 Ezekiel, 18, 2233, 3 6 6> 6 3 
 
 Ezra, 79, 176 
 
 Fellowship with God, 13 15, 
 
 23, 32, 84, 95, 100, 112, 
 
 117, 131, 144, 150 
 Gedaliah, 19 
 Gentiles, 37, 38, 59, 63, 64, 188, 
 
 189 
 Giesebrecht, 15, 16, 44 49,51 
 
 S3, 5759, 151, I5 2 , !5 6 > 
 161, 167, 185 
 
 Gog, 31 
 
 Graetz, 49 
 
 Gray, 189 
 
 Habakkuk, 411, 151 171 
 
 Haggai, 74, 178 
 
 Halevy, 69 
 
 Hananiah, 17 
 
 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 
 125, 126, 169, 170 
 
 Heathen, 4, 10, n, 38 41, 
 4244, 55, 5965, 67, 72, 
 106, 177, 178, 184 190 
 
 Hebrews 1 , 54 
 
 Hebrews, Epistle to, 9, 16 
 
 Herodotus, 3 
 
 Hezekiah, 155, 164, 166 
 
 Hitzig, 14, 68, 115 
 
 Hosea, 23 
 
 Host of the height, 106, 122 
 Immortality, 95, 102, 103, 108, 
 
 no, 112, 116, 117, 133,134, 
 
 139, 144, 146 
 Incarnation, 66 
 Individualism, 15, 24 27 
 Isaiah, I, if, 23, 44, 165, 172 
 Isaiah, chs., 24 27, 121 123 
 Isaiah, chs., 40 66, 172 179 
 Isaiah, chs., 4055, see Second 
 
 Isaiah 
 Isaiah, chs., 56 66, 79 82, 
 
 175-179 
 Ishmael, 19 
 Israel, 15, 2832, 3639 
 
 See Servant of Yahweh 
 Jehoahaz, 3, 160 
 Jehoiachin, 3, 22, 169, 182 
 Jehoiakim, 3, 160 
 Jeremiah, 4, 10, n 16, 17, 18, 
 
 22, 23, 27, 63, 117, 165, 
 
 167, 191, 192 
 Jerusalem, 4, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 
 
 22, 30, 37, 75, 81, 82, 162, 
 
 163, 168, 169, 172174, 
 192 
 
 Job, 77, 78, 83103 
 
 Joel, 120, 121 
 
 Johanan, 177 
 
 Jonah, 45, 49, 65, 117 
 
 Joshua, 75, 76 
 
 Josiah, 2, 3, 9, 19, 155, 159, 160, 
 
 164, 167 
 
 Judah, 9, 10, u, 22, 75, 81, 
 120, 121, 151, 153155, 
 164168 
 
 Judaism, 63, 64, 135 
 Kings, Book of, 22 
 Kirkpatrick, 170 
 Kittel, 75, 182 
 Klostermann, 109 
 Knobel, 56 
 
196 
 
 Kosters, 176 
 
 Kuenen, 169, 170, 175, 176 
 
 Lagarde, 113 
 
 Lamentations, 190 
 
 Laue, 126 
 
 Lauterburg, 168 
 
 Leper, 54, 182, 184, 186 
 
 Locusts, 1 20 
 
 Maccabean Age, 118 
 
 Magdolos, 3 
 
 Malachi, 78, 79, 80, 179 
 
 Manasseh, 2, 22, 24, 154, 155 
 
 Manetho, 54 
 
 Marti, 16, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51 
 
 56, 58, 59> 69, 79, 121, 176, 
 
 i85 
 
 Martyrs, 124, 182 
 M 'Curdy, 165 
 Medes, 155, 157, 158, 163 
 Megiddo, 3 
 
 Merodach Baladan, 164 166 
 Messianic Hope, 74, 75, 182 
 Messianic King, 174 
 Micah, 23 
 Michael, 123, 124 
 Migdal, 3 
 Mission to the heathen, 38 41, 
 
 4447,49, 5965,67, 174, 
 
 184190 
 Monotheism, 37 
 Moore, 53 
 Mysteries, 115 
 Nabopolassar, 163, 167 
 Nagitu in the Fens, 166 
 Nahum, 7, 10 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 3, 19, 167 
 Nehemiah, 79, 80, 176, 182 
 New Covenant, 15, 16, 117 
 Nineveh, 7, 154, 155, 158, 161 
 
 163 
 
 Nowack, 153, 158, 161. 162, 
 
 164, 170 
 
 Origin of Man, 137, 138 
 Pain, 137, 140144 
 Paul, 9, 37 
 
 Peiser, 9, 153155, 157, 161 
 
 163, 168, 170 
 Personification of Nations, 189, 
 
 190 
 
 Pharaoh Necho, 3 
 Princes, Angel, 106, 123, 124 
 Psalms, 104 117, 118, 190 
 Psalm, The Twenty-second, 
 
 65-72 
 Psalm, The Thirty-seventh, 107, 
 
 108 
 
 Psalm, The Forty-ninth, 108 
 HO 
 
 Psalm, The Seventy-third, 1 10 
 
 117 
 
 Queen of Heaven, 18, 19 
 Reformation, 2, 5,9, 10, 19, 160, 
 
 164, 165 
 Remnant, 174 
 
 Restoration, 20, 21, 22, 31, 36 
 39,46-48,60,61,73,174, 
 176, 188190, 192, 193 
 
 Resurrection, 121 125, 144, 
 182184 
 
 Revelation, 33, 134136 
 
 Rothstein, 170, 171 
 
 Sabbath, 174 
 
 Samaria, 29, 30, 177 
 
 Sargon, 166 
 
 Satan, 75 78, 8486, 101 
 
 Scepticism, 78, 79 
 
 Schmidt, 16 
 
 Scythians, 31, 167 
 
 Seba, 37 
 
 Second Isaiah, n, 34, 35-65, 
 73,80, 117, 172179 
 
 Sellin, 7578, 181, 182 
 
Sennacherib, 2, 155, 165, 166 
 
 Servant of Yahweh, 35 72, 
 103, 117, 144, 174, !8o 
 193 
 
 Sheol, 9496, 103, 1 08 no, 
 in, 124, 133, 134 
 
 Shiloh, 12 
 
 Siegfried, 125, 126, 185 
 
 Sin, 137, 138 
 
 Skinner, 46, 53, 54, 56, 121 
 
 Smend, 15, 16, 116, 169, 181 
 
 183, 185 
 Smith G. A., 153, 156, 160 
 
 162, 169, 170 
 Smith H. P., 3, 126, 185 
 Smith, Robertson, 80 
 Sodom, 29 
 Solidarity, 21, 24 
 Solomon, 79, 125, 129 
 Sons of God, 77 
 Spies, 130 
 Stade, 169, 170 
 Suffering 
 Due to sin, i, 12, 30, 35, 36, 
 
 75) 8 5> 87, 104, 120, 121 
 Attributed to Yahweh's weak- 
 ness, 1 8 
 
 Attributed to Yahweh's forget- 
 fulness, 1 8, 105 
 
 Attributed to loyalty to Yah- 
 weh, 1 8, 19, 105 
 
 Due to sin of ancestors, 21, 
 22, 105 
 
 Due only to sin of sufferer, 24 
 
 197 
 
 Suffering- 
 Vicarious, 43, 62, 64, 65, 67, 
 103, 143146, 184, 187, 
 188, 191 
 
 Martyrdom 61, 62 
 Regenerative, 62, 143 
 Test of piety, 84, 85, 101, 
 102, 143 
 
 Syria, 1 66 
 
 Temple, 4, u, 12, 19, 30, 74, 79, 
 120, 173, 174, 177179, 
 192 
 
 Temple, Samaritan, 178 
 
 Thrupp, 71 
 
 Tiglath Pileser, 166 
 
 Trinity, 147 
 
 Trito-Isaiah, 175, 176 
 
 Universalism, 37 
 
 Valley of Dry Bones, 1921 
 
 Vicarious Punishment, 24 
 
 Vicarious Reward, 24 
 
 Vision of God, 100, 101 
 
 Wellhausen, 39, 70, 71, 109, 
 113, 115, 116, 151 154, 
 IS 6 , 159, 161, 162, 164, 
 169, 170, 181, 185 
 
 Winckler, 167 
 Word, 20, 35 
 Zechariah, 74 78, 120 
 Zedekiah, 3, 17 
 Zephaniah, 120 
 Zerubbabel, 74, 75, 182 
 Zion, u, 36, 37, 73, 81, 82, 
 165, 173, 174, 178 
 
the Same Hutbor. 
 
 " His temper and his matter taken together make him one of the 
 few men that all preachers ought to read." Christian World. 
 
 A GUIDE TO BIBLICAL STUDY. HODDER AND 
 STOUGHTON. Second edition. 1897. Price 35. 6d. 
 
 " Mr. Peake has earned a right to offer his guidance to younger 
 scholars, and the wisdom and knowledge exhibited in this volume 
 are self-authenticating. The digest of Paulinism is singularly lucid, 
 concatenated, and masterly ; a better it would be impossible to 
 point to anywhere. The bibliography is not intended to be 
 exhaustive, but is adapted to the actual wants of the student. "- 
 Expositor. 
 
 " Professor Peake has been most circumspect. We knew he 
 was accomplished. The book will certainly push the scientific 
 study of the Bible one step forward. And it is so capably, care- 
 fully written that it will be a landmark in the future." Expository 
 Times. 
 
 " Mr. Peake gives a digest of Paulinism which, however we 
 may differ from him on one or two matters of interpretation, can 
 only be characterised as consummately able. The familiarity 
 which he shows with the subject, revealed in the well-digested 
 statements he makes, and the lucidity and consistency with which 
 he constructs the theology of Paul and exhibits it as an organic 
 whole, must win the admiration of every reader and prompt 
 the wish that the same hand would elaborate that chapter into 
 a volume." DR. MARCUS DODS in The British Weekly. 
 
 " He has one of the finest expositions of Paul's conception 
 of the work of Christ for our salvation, one of the finest and most 
 convincing we have ever read, and it is all compressed into a page 
 or two .... The Bible student who has this book, and 
 an average amount of brains, is far better equipped than hundreds 
 who have sat under professors until grey hairs were here and there 
 upon them." Methodist Times. 
 
3Bg tbe Same Butbor. 199 
 
 "We recommend the book to all students in our Universities 
 and Theological Colleges, and to all who wish to know the best 
 and most recent sources of information concerning the Bible." 
 Church Bells. 
 
 HEBREWS in THE CENTURY BIBLE. T. C. & E. C. 
 JACK. Price 25. 6d. net. 
 
 " No more competent, authoritative, and illuminating com- 
 mentaries can be desired than such as are here given us by 
 Professor Peake on Hebrews, or by Mr. Vernon Bartlet on Acts. 
 They are almost certain to supersede in public favour the other 
 New Testament expositions which are available for the English 
 reader." British Weekly. 
 
 "This latest contribution to The Century Bible is an exquisite 
 piece of work, possessing a value out of all proportion to its 
 size." Baptist Magazine. 
 
 ' ' The Editor's remarks on the teaching of the Epistle appeal 
 to us most forcibly. They are characterised by remarkable insight 
 and picturesque presentation." New Age. 
 
 "Hebrews is a difficult book to deal with, but Prof. Peake 
 has grappled with it boldly, and written an introduction and 
 a commentary, which are models of sure-footed scholarship and 
 perspicuous explanation." Literary World. 
 
 " Mr. Peake has given us in short compass an admirable 
 handling of the difficult questions which are involved in the study 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews .... The notes on the 
 text are just what is wanted." Record. 
 
 "The introduction is written in masterly style, the style of 
 one who knows the authorities and at the same time has held it 
 necessary to form conclusions of his own." Methodist Times. 
 
 "Most helpful and invaluable notes, which for conciseness, 
 thoroughness, reverent treatment, and scrupulous fairness, cannot 
 be excelled." Freemason. 
 
 " Prof. Peake's introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 is a most valuable and scholarly piece of work ; giving evidence 
 of much original research, extensive reading and great independence 
 of mind." Aberdeen Journal. 
 
2oe & tbe Same Butbor. 
 
 JOB in THE CENTURY BIBLE. T. C. & E. C. JACK. 
 Price 2S. 6d. net. (In preparation). 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS in THE EX- 
 POSITOR'S GREEK TESTAMENT. Vol. II 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON. Price 28s. 
 
 1 ' The Editor reveals his discernment in entrusting such 
 a book to one whose spiritual insight is not less remarkable than 
 his ripe and accurate scholarship .... Professor Peake, 
 never satisfied with a mere grammar and dictionary exegesis of 
 the words after the example of Ellicott's and Vaughan's Com- 
 mentaries, dives into the difficulties of the thought, and wrestles 
 with the obscurities that too often beset the Apostle's ideas. This 
 he does in a style conspicuous for its lucidity and intellectual 
 honesty. Whether St. Paul is always clear or not, Professor 
 Peake never leaves us in doubt as to what he conceives the Apostle 
 to have meant, and always supports his judgment with a careful 
 statement of reasons. Principal W. F. Adeney. 
 
 "After Ephesians, naturally, we turn to Colossians to find, as 
 might be expected, that Professor A. S. Peake has also done 
 justice to a great task . . . . . Professor Peake's exposition 
 of the text of the Epistle is careful and complete, and when 
 one samples it at important points it does not disappoint one's 
 expectations. " Critical Review. 
 
 "Of the work of Professor Peake on the Colossians there is 
 nothing but good to be written. The notes are compact, useful, 
 and not seldom very happily expressed." Prof. A. S. Gede>i. 
 
 FLETCHER AND ON, LTD., PRINTERS, NORWICH. 
 
, 
 
 ', 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROW1D 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recalL 
 
 LD 
 
 DEC 19 1976 
 
 PECO OK PUT NOV 14 '74 
 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
KB 21601 
 
 M313842