or a 'chosen people' privileged and loved by God above all others. Their ideal became isolation instead of fellowship. Priests, statesmen, and historians combined to work out and to strengthen this view of Israel's career and mission; while the prophetic element grew fainter and fainter and proved powerless in resisting the aggressive forces that were arrayed against it, and the most formidable of which was the unwilling people itself.

III. THE BABYLONIAN AND PERSIAN PERIODS.

THE sad catastrophe came and the remnants of the Hebrews were deprived of their land and their liberty; but in their weary exile, patriots dreamt of return and restoration. They pondered over the sins which had brought such disaster over the elected people, and they were compelled to confess that one of those offences was heartless tyranny against the stranger. 'Behold,' exclaimed Ezekiel in addressing Jerusalem, 'every one of the princes of Israel in thee is intent according to his power to shed blood; they despise father and mother; in thy midst they oppress the stranger; in thee they vex the fatherless and the widow'.a Nor were these iniquities practised by the princes alone, but were shared by the spiritual guides likewise, by priests and false prophets.b However, in the new kingdom all this was to be changed; the stranger was to be regarded and treated as a brother; he was to take firm root in the country; and when Ezekiel, on the borders of the river Chebar, planned the expected re-distribution of the Hebrew territory, he did not forget the heathen. The land, he declared in the name of God, was to be alloted both to the Israelites and those strangers who, by marrying among them, proved that they considered Canaan their permanent abode; such Gentiles were to be 'like the natives among the children of

Israel'a and, as far as landed property was concerned, were to be reckoned as members of the Hebrew tribes among which they established their homes.b

But the stranger was to deserve this high privilege of belonging to the chosen nation by the same strict renouncement of every religious and moral perversity, which was enjoined upon the Hebrew. To the one no less than to the other applied the admonition, 'Draw away from your idols and turn your faces from all your abominations; and the one as well as the other was threatened that, if they forsook God and righteousness in their hearts, they would kindle His holy wrath-'I will set My face against that man... and will cut him off from the midst of My people, and you shall know that I am Jahveh,' the God alike of the Israelite and the Gentile. It seems hardly possible to imagine a more complete amalgamation: the stranger was commanded to keep aloof from idol worship, not, as before, out of regard for the religious purity of the Hebrews, but for his own sake, because he also was to be counted as a citizen of the theocratic community, provided only he acknowledged God and led a virtuous life.

с

The same magnanimous principles were proclaimed by that great prophet through whose beautiful and sublime utterances the concluding years of the Babylonian exile have for ever been made glorious. Not only did he, in general strains, predict a distant time when Israel, as the mediator of the Covenant, would bring to all lands and all isles truth and light and spiritual liberty, and

a

.כאזרח בבני ישראל

b Ezek. xlvii. 21-23. A similar sentiment had not long before that time been expressed by Jeremiah (xii. 14-17), who protested that Hebrew and Gentile would alike be expelled from the land if they persisted in their transgressions,

but that if the pagans learnt to swear by the name of Jahveh as they had before sworn, and had seduced the Israelites to swear, by the name

of Baal, they would be 'built up' and receive an inheritance among God's people.

c Ezek. xiv. 6-8.

turn the hearts of all nations to Jahveh, the Holy One, as the sole Rock and Deliverer in whom there is salvation; nor did he merely declare in lofty terms bearing a Messianic character that 'the son of the foreigner'a who joined the Hebrews would no longer say, 'Jahveh has separated me from His people;' but he held out to the stranger the distinct promise that, if he but loved God's name, he should be admitted to the holy mountain, where his sacrifices would be graciously accepted, because Jahveh's House was destined to be called 'a House of prayer for all nations.' He proved the earnestness of his longing to see affection for the stranger practically carried out in his own time, by hailing and praising Cyrus the Persian as 'the servant of Jahveh' and 'His anointed' ordained to perform His decrees not only upon the heathen but also upon His chosen nation; and he—or a like-minded contemporary-regarded it as a most auspicious feature in Israel's impending redemption, that many strangers, accompanying them into Canaan, would 'cling to the house of Jacob.'d

When the yearned-for event at last took place (B. C. 538), it came in a form so modest that it hardly realised the patriots' ardent anticipations. As Palestine was but scantily and sparsely populated, the Hebrews were prompted by many reasons to make the strangers useful and welldisposed. But they were unable to lay aside their mischievous habits; they persevered in idolatry and every kind of evil deed, and even before the new Temple was completed, the prophet Zechariah (B. C. 520) found it necessary to preach, like the earlier teachers: 'Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion every one to his brother, and oppress not the widow and the fatherless, the stranger and the poor.'e But the later prophet lost heart as little

a

as his greater predecessors. Amidst the desolation which surrounded him, he bid the people of Jerusalem rejoice because God was sure to dwell among them as before; he cheered their courage by the promise that 'many nations would be joined to Jahveh and be His people;' nay, embracing all mankind, he exclaimed: 'Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord, for He cometh forth from His holy habitation."

When, in spite of many obstacles and jealousies, the humble Temple was at length finished and dedicated to its solemn purposes (B. C. 516), the prayer of consecration was enriched by a clause shedding eternal honour on the time and its leaders-that clause in which God is entreated that, if a foreigner (7) not belonging to the people of Israel appeared within the sacred precincts to pray and pour out his heart, He might hear him from His Divine abode and grant his supplication; that all the nations of the earth might know His name and worship Him like His people Israel.d

If we survey the prophetic writings from the time of Ezekiel up to this point, and consider the sentiments they embody with respect to the stranger, we breathe an atmosphere of toleration and religious freedom well calculated to rouse our admiration and to call forth the brightest hopes for the progress of the Hebrews and of all races. But alas! those hopes were doomed to be destroyed at the very juncture when they seemed nearest their realisation. The great men in Israel had expected to win over the Hebrew people to so firm and fervid a faith in Jahveh, that the surrounding nations would be

a

b Comp. vii. 7. Zechar. ii. 1417. c Comp. Ezra iii. 12; Hagg. ii. 3; Tob. xiv. 5.

d 1 Ki. viii. 41-43; comp. 2 Chr. vi. 32, 33. That the prayer attributed to Solomon at the dedication of the first Temple was com

piled or enlarged after the exile, and in many respects harmonises better with the circumstances of Zerubbabel's age, is clear from intrinsic evidences, and has frequently been acknowledged (comp. 1 Ki. 34, 46-48; also ix. 7-9).

drawn into the same circle of a refined religion and an elevated morality by the power of truth manifesting itself in a holy enthusiasm and in nobleness of conduct. But the Hebrew people evinced neither the capacity nor the zeal necessary for so great a mission. On the contrary, instead of spiritually governing the pagans, they were in danger of being governed by pagan example and influence. This peril had been great in the earlier commonwealth, but it was infinitely more menacing in these later times, when the heathen population formed an overwhelming majority, while the Hebrews were weak, unorganised, and poor. Indomitable firmness was required to direct the people's destinies at so critical an epoch. Men equal to the momentous emergency were not wanting, and Ezra and Nehemiah performed the arduous task in a certain sense with an ability and a success which saved and consolidated the Hebrew nation—but created Judaism in the place of the old and freer Hebraism; for they merged the state in their religion. Despairing of the preservation of their countrymen from constant apostasy, or rather from utter absorption by the heathen, as long as their mutual intercourse was unrestricted, they endeavoured, like their fellow-workers in the next generations, to separate Jews and Gentiles with the utmost rigour; and for this purpose they deemed two measures especially effective—the unconditional interdiction of foreign marriages, and the solemn appointment of circumcision as 'a sign of the Covenant.'

In that time—exactly a thousand years after their supposed and most emphatic prohibition by Moses-intermarriages with strangers prevailed to an incredible extent. When Ezra arrived in Palestine (B. C. 458), he learnt that 'the people of Israel and the priests and Levites' had not kept aloof from the abominations of their heathen neighbours-the Canaanites, the Ammonites and Moa

a Comp. Ezra ix. 7—9, etc.