: reapply the Prophet's language so far only as the older and newer circumstances correspond, or as kindred sentiments recur for expression. Suppose that in such a spirit our authorities, so long misled, were to unroll the truth of the sacred volume. Our right of calumniating the Jews would vanish but in turn their objections would be diminished. We should not have petty predictions of such fleshly or earthly circumstances as, according to St. Paul, concern no man's salvation; but a profound harmony would make itself more deeply felt as pervading the simple Patriarch's trust in God, the lawgiver's elaborate ceremonial, the righteous indignation of the Prophet, and that clear vision of the Father of our spirits in Christ, to which the others were but as helps to growth, lisping utterances to thought, means to ends. The polemical scholasticism of our faith might in some cases be innocently explained, and in others filtered away, until an unity of spirit and feeling, if not of formal definition, embraced all who would have had faith to prefer Abraham's guiltless sacrifice to one of blood; who would have shared with Moses the affliction of his countrymen (even with reproach from them) rather than be son of Pharaoh's daughter; who would have taken part with the Priests against profaneness, yet with the Prophets against formalism; who would have welcomed the long dormant spirit awakening in the Baptist, coming to perfection in the spiritual Christ; and who still think it natural (even if the testimony be remote and varying) for the Son of God, approved by the answer of the Spirit in men's consciences, to have entered into His Father's glory. To all such persons, though differing (as good men have differed, and may now more differ), in the degrees of certainty with which they know historical incidents, or are persuaded of external convincements, there would appear an unity in Scripture, different from what is usually taught, but such as St. Paul suggests, an unity of the spirit of freedom; a testimony of belonging to Jesus would remain in the spirit of Prophecy which spake of old and speaks for ever. Opportunities will offer elsewhere for touching other passages, which have been supposed to predict Jesus as the Messiah. Here let the reader notice, that as it did not enter into St. Paul's Gospel to know Jesus after the flesh, so Prophecies of fleshly circumstances, birth at Bethlehem, or genealogies supposed Davidical, are somewhat disparaged by him in comparison of the spiritual affinities, the principles once veiled in precepts, the predestination of mankind lurking under that of Israel, and the transfer of the law from tablets of stone to the conscience, which he traces veiled in the Old Testament, unveiled in the New. Of course Micah the Morasthite, teaching in the reign of Hezekiah, is a different person from the son of Imlah who warned Hezekiah's remote ancestor Jehoshaphat; though the forms Micah and Micaiah are variations of one name, Who is like Jah? (Jerome's derivation from 'to afflict,' being mere word-play.) Yet an editor, if not the writer, of the third book of Kings (1 Kings xxii. 28,) appears to have confused the earlier Prophet with his famous namesake, since he quotes as a speech of the former the first verse of the latter, Hear, O Races, all of them. A remark sometimes made, that the formula in either place is a simple and natural commencement, betrays a curious unconsciousness, that a poetical invocation of Israel's tribes, or of the world's nations, would hardly be addressed to a particular crowd; but our Authorized Version conceals the mistake. Beyond what Micah's own book discloses, there seems nothing trustworthy written of him, except the fresh tradition in Jeremiah (xxvi. 18, 19), that his prophecy of destruction against Jerusalem was not fulfilled, because the king and people shewed repentance, "and Jehovah re"pented him of the evil which He had pronounced against "them." This notice is extremely instructive, as shewing the conditional character of the warnings of the Prophets in general, and as authorising the view which I have ventured to take above, that this particular threat against Jerusalem, being contingent on the success of the contrary Prophets, is followed by brighter anticipations in the event of good counsels prevailing; so the unity of the book, or of the four chapters most confidently thought genuine, is preserved. The thoughtful reader, who might shrink from such a construction, however evidently suggested by the book itself, if it had no collateral justification, may feel re-assured by a comparison of the chapter in Jeremiah. Critics in general magnify the style of Micah for its beauty and sublimity. Yet it may be observed that the two passages on which this estimate is chiefly founded, are not original; the grand vision of the Latter Days being a fragment which the Prophet has adopted, and the creed of natural piety ascribed to Balaam being quoted as a traditional song. There is no reason to doubt that Micah wrote the description of the Divine outcoming with which the Prophecy opens; but the conception embodied in it is common to the order of the Prophets, and must have been repeated in the schools as frequently as Homeric fragments among the Epic poets. On viewing more closely what is peculiar to Micah, we may find less to admire than in poets of less fame. He has neither the flowing sublimity of Joel, (except in the piece thought to have been borrowed from him,) nor the grand simplicity of Amos, nor the rude tenderness and yearning of Hosca. He has not so much the stamp of a free individuality, as a certain tone of self-assertion. The word-play of the first chapter, though shared by Isaiah, as by other Prophets, is carried to an unusual excess. It may suggest, like the Psalms whose verses follow the order of the alphabet, doubt as to that theory which makes inspiration a direct infusion from Omniscience, though the lively naturalness of many Hebrew ideas gives it some countenance. If the Poem could be proved to have originally ended where the 4th chapter ends, it would be a striking instance of the limited range and baffled anticipations of Prophecy. Passing on, as it does, to a sublimer moral strain, and finding, as Christ teaches us to find, amidst baffled hopes consolation from trust in God, we willingly accept it as a true reflexion of life, the record of a patriot singer, in whom a higher spirit kept devotion alive, yet one of like passions and limits with ourselves. If a searching examination of the whole brings loss to veneration on the side of credulity, this may be compensated by gain in a more intelligent sympathy, and in the knowledge which in many a sore trial may comfort us, that the men of God of old sorrowed and prayed as we do, seeing, as we do, as through a glass darkly. We may even find a pleasure, which if not severely logical, is yet not altogether mystical, in turning memory into hope, and in saying to ourselves, though God did not see fit to build up the kingdom of Hezekiah, as Micah expected, He has given that hope a glorious transfiguration, by building up a spiritual dominion of One who was the Son of David in figure and poetry-whether in flesh, we hardly know. Though the twelve tribes have not found a reunion, which, as a thing local and national, would not affect any spiritual faith, the hearts of men in distant nations may be knit together by the free Spirit which once spoke narrower, and now speakes wider, hopes. The Holy Land is wherever God The Prophets are wherever free men worship in truth. is. MICAH. THE WORD of the ETERNAL which was to Micah the Morasthite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw upon Samaria and Jerusalem. 1. Hear, Races, all of you;1 hearken, earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord, the ETERNAL, be witness against you, the Lord from the temple of his holiness. 2. For behold the ETERNAL coming forth out of his place, that he cometh down and trampleth on the high places of the earth; 3. So that the mountains are molten under him, and 'All of you. Heb. all of them. Races. Or, tribes. 2 That he cometh down. Or, And cometh down. An inscription by some ancient Rabbi, mentions the guess which the book suggested to him about its author's life and times. See a truer account in Jeremiah xxvi. 18, 19. 1. The Prophet Micah being about to describe the sorrows which he had seen brought upon Samaria, and parts of Judæa by Assyrian invaders, begins by invoking attention to such events as judgments from God. Hear, he says, All races, that is, all tribes of Israel, or less probably, remoter nations also. Take these troubles as pleadings with you by the Invisible Wielder of the World. Place |