poverty and disfavor, it would seem, the custom had grown of putting away the native Hebrew wives, probably in order to marry into families of greater wealth and distinction among the more prosperous people of the surrounding provinces. But this was more than family unfaithfulness; it bred wholesale falseness and wrong in a people that should be neighbors and kindred. So when the Lord came as a refiner's fire to His Temple, His judgment would be against a sad accumulation of evils. "And I will be a swift witness," is the oracle, "against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the sojourner from his right, and fear not me, saith Jehovah of hosts" (iii, 5). The torpid conscience has much to answer for, among people as among priests. It has let in evils that have poisoned the whole tissue of society. The people in general, too, come in for their share in the prophet's censure, and it reduces to much the same cause. Their religion has ceased to be a religion of faith. They seem to have regarded the service of Jehovah as a kind of barter, wherein they are no longer getting the worth of their money, and they do not scruple to rob God of the tithes and offerings that are His due (iii, 8), disposed as they are to count the paying values of life in terms of sheer worldliness. The prophet's summary of the matter is, "Ye have said, 'It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his charge, and that we have walked mournfully before Jehovah of hosts? and now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are built up; yea, they tempt God, and escape'" (iii, 14, 15). So near to a reversal of their spiritual allegiance the prophet has found his people. Yet if they are minded to buy their blessings, he assures them of the right and rewarding way, namely, to prove Jehovah with an honest tithe (iii, 10-12). But he turns intrepidly, as the prophets have done before, as the supplementary, Zechariah has done (cf. Zech. xiii, 9), to the little-heeded nucleus, sole faithful among the faithless. It is as if the chosen people were reduced again to a small remnant. But to them the promise is still strong and unfailing. "Then they that feared Jehovah," it is written as of an accomplished fact, "spake one with another; and Jehovah hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon his name" (iii, 16). A new note is here struck. The former remnant was the pledge and germ of redemption, a pledge which the Second Isaiah saw fulfilled. Here the note is of fellowship, one to another." One of the sweetest tributes of all prophecy is reserved for such fellowship and mutual understanding in steadfast loyalty (iii, 17); it defines the principle out of which is to come the regeneration of society. We have called Malachi the prophet of Jehovah's messenger, the messenger that the priests of the reorganized com The monwealth ought to have been (cf. ii, 7) but failed to be. With their insincere and perfunctory ministrations, the mark of a torpid conscience, they were doing nothing to prepare Jehovah's way before Him. The messenger's power and function, on the other hand, must be prophetic, charged with all the vital spirit of prophecy. Yet his function is not executive but preparatory (iii, 1). Elijah the prophet, who is identified with him, is sent to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and 'the heart of the children to their fathers" (iv, 6), that is, to induce such unity of idea and sympathy as shall be the fitting preparedness for "the day that I make" (or, "that I do this. that I do this" cf. iii, 17; iv, 3). We know how some four hundred and seventy-five years afterward this prophecy of "my messenger" was on Jesus' own authority interpreted of John the Baptist, whom for the work he did Jesus held to be "a prophet, and much more than a prophet" (see Matt. xi, 7-15; xvii, 10-13). Thus the last word of Old Testament prophecy joins with the first word of the New Testament prophecy, a word wherein prediction passes into fulfillment. All is in the same line of preparation for the greatest event of history, and prophecy subsides only to bide its time until its next word shall be final. As compared, however, with the searching sequel for which it is a preparation, this function of the messenger is only preliminary and prelusive, as befits the last brave potency of an old spiritual order. Its significance centers in what it introduces. Along with "the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire" is One greater; "the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his temple" (iii, 1). It will not do to cramp this prediction to literalism by referring it to Jesus' entry into the Temple and his expulsion of the traders and money-changers (John ii, 13-17), though this belongs to the advent of the same momentous order. The prophet's vision, while it comports with this, is much more farreaching. And here a new prophetic symbolism controls the vision, one hitherto only touched upon (cf. Isa. xlviii, 10; Zech. xiii, 9), the symbol of the refiner's fire. We will recall how the Second Isaiah's ruling symbolism of coming blessing was that of water, with its connotation of refreshing, fertility, and cleansing (Isa. xli, 17–19; xliii, 20; xliv, 3; xlix, 10; lv, 1). Ezekiel too, from his priestly and ritual sense of things, promises a like purifying by water (Ezek. xxxvi, 25). Here the sense goes deeper than outward prosperity and enlivening to the inner centers of regenerate character, and its radical results correspond (iii, 3-6). The prophet's further description of the day of fire presents a very significant contrast. To the wicked it figures as a consuming furnace, working complete destruction of their proud and base ambitions. To those that fear Jehovah's name, on the other hand, "shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings" (iv, 2), — like the fire of opulent and orderly nature, in which is joy and growth and strength. In the New Testament use of this symbolism, the transition from the old to the new order is definitely made in terms of water and fire; the former being adopted by John the Baptist as the meaning of his preparatory mission (Matt. iii, 11), the latter recognized by Jesus as the meaning of his own ministry (Luke xii, 49, 50) and passed on to literal fulfillment in the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts i, 5; ii, 1-4). Thus prophecy subsides, to make room for something better. CHAPTER VII THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE [From 458 B. C. onwards] IN THE foregoing chapter, dealing with the literary fruits Retrospect and New Foothold of most timely and characteristic product, beyond the limits of the return, to the time of Ezra the scribe, about eighty years after the recolonizing of the Holy Land. Here it reaches a point where we can glance back at the mighty prophetic movement as a whole.1 Rising at the menace of Israel's political doom, in the times of Joel, Amos, and Hosea, that movement has kept pace with the whole period of Israel's peril, suspense, break-up, and eventual restoration; faithfully interpreting it all as in the unfolding will and purpose of God, keeping the people's mind true to its duties and destinies; reaching its nodes of greatest stress and immediacy with Isaiah of Jerusalem, Jeremiah, and the Second Isaiah; forging onward in fervor and certitude toward a large Messianic future; then, after the return, gradually subsiding as the people's enthusiasm became chilled and disillusioned; going out finally in spasms of occasional warning and broken gleams of an apocalyptic new order. One can imagine that the Book of Malachi, sternly severe as it was, got little response in his generation, except from the handful of devout-minded souls (cf. Mal. iii, 16-18) in whom the spirit of a nobler order was still alive. That prophet was indeed sensible that his word was a final 1 For the general map of the prophetic movement, sketched from its beginning forward, see above, pp. 133-137. |