Judah. Adjacent to this last, and extending, like the allotments of each tribe, across the whole breadth of the country, was to be a space affording room for the sanctuary (which was to occupy the centre); for the patrimony of the priests and Levites (which latter were to have no right to "exchange or transfer the firstfruits of the land, for it is holy to Jehovah "); for the city and its suburbs; for the habitation of persons who were to "serve the city out of all the tribes of Israel"; and for the royal residence, which, as well as the temple, was to stand without, and apart from, the city. The city and its suburbs were to be exact quadrangles, the latter being much the smaller. Their dimensions, as well as those of the other divisions of territory mentioned in connection with them, are precisely defined, and so much on the east and west borders of the great division immediately south of Judah as was not exhausted by the several appropriations expressly mentioned, it is said, "shall belong to the prince." † The remaining tribes were to occupy the residue of the country, arranged in the following order from north to south; viz. Benjamin, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulon, and Gad. The city was to have twelve gates, three towards each of the four cardinal points, to be named after the tribes respectively, Joseph and Levi each giving its name to one gate.‡ "The name of the city, from that day, shall be, Jehovah is there."

In the compositions which have been transmitted to us under the name of Ezekiel, we find specimens of

* Ezek. xlvii. 13-xlviii. 7.

† xlviii. 8-22.

No reason is given for the arrangement of the triplets of tribes respectively in the names given to the gates. It is not the same as that in the four camps in the wilderness; comp. Vol. I. pp. 314 et seq.

§ xlviii. 23-35.

style so entirely different and unlike, as to make it difficult to believe that they all proceeded from the same author. We have passages of plain, sound, ethical good sense, as in the eighteenth and thirty-third chapters. There are others, as at the close of the book, indicating the genius of an administrative formalist. There are yet others in a high style of poetry, as in chapters thirty-one and thirty-two; and others still, as those at the beginning of the book, which appear to be no better than mere inane rhapsody. As to these last, however, we must not forget to make allowance for our judging them at a disadvantage, in consequence of the poetical forms being strange to us, and the language but imperfectly known.

Ezekiel is never once quoted by the New Testament writers, and there is no evidence that they held his writings in any consideration, except that the author of the Apocalypse appears in a number of instances to have borrowed his imagery.

In Hengstenberg's "Christology" several passages of this prophet are specified as containing predictions of the future Messiah. I will not encumber the page with any thing more than a reference to them.* The sober student of Scripture will easily decide whether there is any thing in their language to indicate that their writer possessed a particle of supernatural foreknowledge concerning the person, mission, character, and offices of Jesus of Nazareth.

* Viz. Ezek. xi. 17 et seq.; xvii. 22-24; xxiv. 22-30; xxxxvi. 25 et seq.; xxxvii. 21-28; xl. - xlviii.

LECTURE LIII.

JONAH, HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, AND MALACHI.

JONAH AN HISTORICAL CHARACTER. IDIOMS AND DATE OF THE BOOK CALLED BY HIS NAME. DIFFICULTY OF INTERPRETING IT

GAI.

AS HIS

TORY. OUTLINE OF THE NARRATION. - INAPPROPRIATE PRAYER, CONSISTING OF SENTENCES FROM THE PSALMS.-FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE AMONG THE JEWS. NATURE OF THE PARABLE. — INTENDED MORAL OF THE STORY OF JONAH. REFERENCE TO IT IN A DISCOURSE OF JESUS. NOT QUOTED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. — TIME OF HAG- DIVISION OF HIS BOOK INTO FOUR PARTS, CONTAINING THREE EXHORTATIONS IN RELATION TO THE REBUILDING OF THE Temple, and A PROMISE OF THE FAVOR OF JEHOVAH TO ZERUBBABEL. -QUOTATION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. — AUTHENTICITY AND CONTENTS OF THE FIRST EIGHT CHAPTERS OF ZECHARIAH. - EXHORTATION TO REPENTANCE. - VISIONS, - OF HORSES, OF SMITHS, OF A MAN WITH A MEASURING-Line,· OF THE HIGH-PRIEST, THE ANGEL, AND THE ADVERSARY, -OF A CANDLESTICK AND OLIVE-TREES, OF A FLYING ROLL, OF A WOMAN AND AN EPHAH MEASURE, —AND OF FOUR CHARIOTS. PREPARATION OF A CROWN FOR THE HIGH-PRIEST. — NATURE AND REWARDS OF ACCEPTABLE OBEDIENCE.-TIME OF THE COMPOSITION OF THE LAST SIX CHAPTERS. THEIR SUBJECT, ANTICI PATIONS OF FUTURE NATIONAL CALAMITIES, REPENTANCE, AND EXALTATION. QUOTATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. SUPPOSED PREDICTIONS OF JESUS. - AGE OF MALACHI. CONTENTS OF HIS BOOK. REBUKES OF POPULAR DISCONTENTS, OF PROFANATION OF SACRED RITES, -OF ILLEGAL MARRIAGES. APPROACHING CHASTISEMENT, REFORMATION, AND RESTORED PROSPERITY. — APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF A RIGHTEOUS RETRIBUTION. QUOTATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. SUPPOSED PREDICTIONS OF JESUS.

THE Book of Jonah consists of forty-eight verses only, being exceeded in length by several of the Psalms. Though reckoned among the Minor Proph ets, it has no resemblance to the rest of the books in that collection. It contains a narrative of certain

extraordinary transactions, into which is incorporated a poem said to have been uttered by Jonah as a prayer. Jonah is an historical character. We read that Jeroboam the Second "restored the coast of Israel, from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher."* The book is called by his name because his adventures make its subject, and not by way of intimating that he was its author. It contains numerous Chaldaisms, indicating an origin as late as the time of the captivity; and the extracts from the Psalms, composing the hymn in the second chapter, are partly from Psalms themselves probably belonging to that period.†

The extreme difficulties of interpreting this narrative as real history are obvious, and need not be enlarged upon. The plan of Jonah "to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah," from whom he had received a commission as his prophet; his being swal

* 2 Kings xiv. 25. Nowhere else, out of the book which bears his name, is Jonah mentioned in the canonical Old Testament. There was a Rabbinical conceit that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath raised by Elijah from the dead (comp. 1 Kings xvii. 24). But it appears to have had no better foundation than the derivation of , Amittai, the name of Jonah's father, from л, Truth, coupled with the fact of the widow's saying to Elijah, "By this I know . . . . that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth." Zarephath was not Gath-hepher, nor was it so much as a Jewish town; and the times of Elijah and Jeroboam the Second were a century apart. Gath-hepher was a town of Zebulon. Comp. Josh. xix.

13.

66

† I do not lay stress, with Jahn, on the expression (iii. 3), “ Nineveh was a great city," as indicating an origin of the work as late as the last quarter of the seventh century B. C., when Nineveh was taken and sacked. (See above, p. 151.) It is true that the verb must be translated as in the past sense, but I think there would be nothing unnatural in using that sense in such a connection, even though the city were still standing, in all its glory

lowed by a fish, and remaining alive in the fish's entrails for three days; his prayer there uttered, having no suitableness whatever to the situation; the suddenness and extraordinary demonstration of the repentance of the king and people of Nineveh at his preaching; his absurd resentment at that result, and the growth and withering of the gourd beneath which he sheltered himself from the sun; - such are some of those features of the story which make its general reception in the character of an account of actual occurrences one of the riddles of the human mind.

The narrative is as follows:- Jehovah directed Jonah to go to Nineveh, and rebuke it for its wickedness. Disobeying the direction, "he went down to Joppa," the well-known Mediterranean sea-port, " and found a ship going to Tarshish, and paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah." Jehovah sent a furious storm, which threatened to overwhelm the vessel. The mariners threw overboard the cargo to lighten it, "and cried every man to his god." Unconscious of the tumult and the danger, Jonah "lay and was fast asleep." The master came and woke him, and bade him invoke his god like the rest. Having ascertained by casting lots that it was on Jonah's account that the evil had befallen them, the sailors learned from him that he was a Hebrew, and a worshipper of Jehovah, from whose presence he had fled, and that the way for them to provide for their own safety was to cast him into the sea. Reluctant to do this, "the men rowed hard to bring the ship to the land, but they could not.” So, having prayed to Jehovah not to lay innocent blood to their charge, they did as Jonah advised. "And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared Jehovah exceedingly, and offered sacrifice to