It is the poignant grief as of personal calamity that broods over its literature. desolation. The Hebrew word for the Captivity,' unlike the Greek word, expresses a bitter sense of bereavement: Guloth' -stripped bare.'' They were stripped bare of their Their country and of their sanctuary; almost, it would seem, of their God. The Psalms of the time answer to the groans of Ezekiel, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, as deep to deep. No human sorrow has ever found so loud, so plaintive, so long-protracted a wail. We hear the dirge over the curse of perpetual desolation 2 which lies on the ruins of Jerusalem. We catch the 'Last Sigh' of the exiles as they are carried away beyond the ridge of Hermon.3 We see the groups of fugitive stragglers in the desert, cut off by the sword of robbers, or attacked by the beasts of prey, or perishing of disease in cavern 4 or solitary fortress. We see them in the places of their final settlement, often lodged in dungeons with insufficient food, loaded with contumely; their faces spat upon; their hair torn off; their backs torn with the lash. We see them in that anguish, so difficult for Western nations to conceive, but still made intelligible by the horror of a Brahmin suddenly confronted with objects polluting to his caste, or a Mussulman inadvertently touching swine's flesh; when they were brought into an enforced contact with the unaccustomed food or cookery of the Gentile nations, which was as repugnant as the most loathsome filth or refuse of common life, and preferred the most insipid nourishment rather than incur the possible defilement of a sumptuous feast. We hear the songs which went up from their harps, whenever Isa. xli. 14; xlii. 22; xlvii. 6; 1. 6; li. 13-21; liii. Jer. 1. 7-17. Psalm cxxix. 3; cxxiii. 4; cxxiv. 7 (Ewald, v. 7). 6 The same word as in Golan, Gaulanitis. 2 Isa. xliii. 28; xlix. 16-19; li. 17-19; lii. 9; lviii. 12; lxii. 6 (Ewald, v. 6). Psalm xlii. 6; see Lecture XL. • Ezek. iv. 12-15 (ib. 6). Dan. i. 5-16. The Psalms of the the foreigner was not present, blending tender reminiscences of their lost country with fierce imprecations on those cruel kinsmen who had joined in her downfall; with fond anticipations that their wrongs would at last be avenged.' We catch the passionate cry which went up 'out' of the 'depths,' in which the soul of the people threw itself on Captivity. the Divine forgiveness, and waited for deliverance with that eager longing with which the sentinels on the Temple wall were wont of old time to watch and watch again for the first rays of the eastern dawn. No other known period3 is so likely to have produced that prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed and poureth forth his com'plaint' before the Divine Comforter, when the nation, or at least its most oppressed citizens, could compare themselves only to the slowly-dying brand on the deserted hearth, or to the pelican standing by the desert pool, pensively leaning its bill against its breast, or to the moping owl haunting some desolate ruin, or to the solitary thrush, pouring forth its melancholy note on the housetop, apart from its fellows, or to the ever-lengthening shadow of the evening, or to the blade of grass withered by the scorching sun. There were the insults of the oppressors, there were the bitter tears which dropped into their daily beverage, the ashes which mingled with their daily bread; there was the tenacious remembrance which clung to the very stones and dust of their native city; there was the hope that, even before that generation was past, her restoration would be accomplished, but, if not, there remained the one consolation that, even if their own eyes failed to see the day, it would be brought about in the eternity of that Wisdom which remained whilst all outward things were changed as the fashion of a vesture. And, again, there are more ancient songs, sometimes of scornful derision, sometimes of penitence, sometimes of bitter recrimination, which would seem to have been seized by the captives of Babylon and applied to their own condition, and incorporated into it, by adding the burden never absent from their thoughts. Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.' 'Oh, that sal'vation would come out of Zion! when God bringeth back the 'captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall 'be glad.' God will save Zion, and will build the cities of 'Judah: that they may dwell there, and have it in possession.' It is this feeling which renders the history of the Exile or Captivity capable of such wide application. It is, if one may so say, the expression of the Divine condescension to all those feelings of loneliness, of desolation, of craving after sympathy, which are the peculiar and perpetual lot of some, but to which all are liable from time to time. The Psalms which express, the Prophecies which console, the history which records, these sorrows of the exiled Israelites are the portions of the Hebrew Bible which, if only as the echo of our own thoughts, have always sounded gratefully to the weary heart. When the English residents in Lucknow were reduced to the last extremity of want and of despair during their long siege, the one word of comfort which broke in upon their misery was a page containing a fragment of the consolations with which the Evangelical Prophet strove to cheer the captives of Babylon. Want of friendly companionship, the bitter pain of eating the bread of strangers, the separation from familiar and well-known objects, here are woven into the very heart of the Sacred Books. Prosperity,' says Lord Bacon, is the blessing of the Old Testament, and adversity 'is the promise of the New.' 'Yet,' as the wise man adds, 1 Psalms, li. 18, 19; xiv. and liii. 6; lxix. 35, 36. Isa. li. 11-14. See the story in 6 Kaye's History of the Indian Mutiny, iii. 483. The Man of Sorrows. ' even in the Old Testament you shall hear as many hearselike airs as carols.' It is now that this sacredness of adversity first clearly appears. The tragic fates of Jeremiah and Ezekiel in its opening scene were living examples of the truth that virtue could be revered and honoured in the depths of national disaster and personal sorrow no less than from the height of victory and of splendour. The figure under which, in the most striking prophecy of this period, the Anointed, the Chosen of the Eternal, appears is of a Servant or Slave deeply afflicted,' smitten of God, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The Messiah of glory had long been looked for, but now began to fade away. It is from this epoch that the Jewish people could first distinctly conceive an Ideal of humiliation and suffering. Judæa seated, not beneath her native palm, but beneath the Euphratean willow or poplar is the first exemplification of that sad vision which reached its highest consummation in those scenes of sacred suffering, that 'Divine depth of sorrow' when the first Evangelist saw its accomplishment in the tender sympathy with the various forms of sickness 2 and sorrow on the hills of Galilee; when Philip pointed out to the Ethiopian Chamberlain3 its resemblance to the majestic silence and the untimely death which had lately been enacted at Jerusalem; when Peter comforted the slaves of the hard Roman taskmasters by reminding them of Him whose flesh was torn by stripes as cruel as those to which they were daily exposed. The more vividly that delineation of the afflicted Servant resembles the Prophet or Prophets of the Captivity, the Israel within an Israel in that sorrowful time, the more clearly will it be made manifest that the application of it in the ultimate stage of the story of Israel to the Prophet of Prophets-suf 1 Isa. liii. 3, 4, 5. 2 Matt. viii. 17. Acts viii. 32, 33. 4 1 Pet. ii. 24. fering with and for his people,-is no arbitrary fancy, but the fulfilment of the same moral law, which, as Butler has well pointed out, pervades the whole nature and history of man.' 'The soft answer which restores good humour in a casual 'conversation; the forbearance with which the statesman 'meets the ignorances and prejudices, the censures and the 'slanders, of those to whom he only sues for leave to do them 'good; are but instances of an universal law of man's 'constitution, discoverable in all human relationships, and 'which enacts that men can, and do, endure the evil doings ' of their brethren, in such sort that, through that endurance on the part of the innocent, the guilty are freed from the 'power of their ill deeds. There is hardly anyone but has 'known some household in which, year after year, selfishness ' and worldliness, and want of family affection, have been ap'parent enough; and yet, instead of the moral shipwreck 'which might have been expected, and the final moral ruin of 'the various members, the original bond of union has held to'gether: there has plainly been some counteracting, redeem'ing, power at work. And when we look to see what is that 'redeeming power, ever at work for those who know and 'care nothing about it, we always find that there is some 'member of that family-oftenest the wife or mother-who 'is silently bearing all things, believing all things, hoping 'all things, for them, but for her or himself expecting little 'or nothing in this world, but the rest of the grave. Such 'a one is really bearing the sins of that household: it is 'no forensic phrase transferred by way of illustration from 1.Men by their follies run themselves into extreme distress, which would be fatal to them, were it not for the interposition and assistance of others. God commands by the law of Nature that we afford them this assistance in many cases where we cannot do it without very great pains, and labour, and suffering to our selves.' (Analogy, c. v.) This is the modern equivalent of the Hebrew expression, It pleased the Eternal to bruise him he was wounded for our transgression.' In this sense the historical meaning of Isa. liii. 1-10 is the best explanation of its application to the sufferings of Christ. Compare Col. i. 15. |