the Scythian invasions, we cannot say; but, as with the later chapters of Isaiah, announcing the return from Babylon, so here the prophecy needs yet a more distant and more wide-reaching fulfilment, and we may well believe that, whatever the prophet himself saw in it, his words look on to the Great Deliverance wrought by Christ.

HAGGAI

The book of Haggai consists of five short prophecies delivered in the second year of Darius Hystaspis, 520 B.C. The history of a few preceding years needs to be borne in mind, if we are to realise the drift of Haggai's words. In 536 B. C. a body of Jewish exiles were allowed by the edict of Cyrus to return to Palestine and rebuild their Temple. In the seventh month of that year the altar was set up and the Feast of the Tabernacles kept (Ezra iii. I f.). In the second month of the next year the foundations of the Temple were laid (v. 8 f.). At this stage, however, the opposition of the adversaries became so vehement, that all the work came to a standstill till the accession of Darius in 521 B.C. Hoping, perhaps, for favourable treatment from the new monarch, the Jews, urged on by Haggai and Zechariah, once more began to build. Tatnai, the governor, while disputing their right, did not stop them, but appealed to the king for orders; and, after search made, the edict of Cyrus was found in the palace at Ecbatana in Media. Hereupon, Darius not only sanctioned the work, but ordered that all the requirements of the Jews were to be provided them, and in the sixth year of his reign (516 B.C.) the building was finished.

Haggai's first prophecy (i. I-II), on the 1st day of the sixth month, is an indignant taunt at the selfishness and indolence which allowed the temple to lie waste, while men's own houses were well cared for. Not a word is said as to the opposition being such that all attempts must have been hopeless. The second utterance was on the 24th day of the same month. It is simply a promise of God's assistance to them in the work now in hand. On the 24th day of the seventh month came a message of warm encouragement, a promise that to the second Temple there should be a greater glory than the first had had. Then came a break of two months; but on the 24th day of the ninth month, under the type of holy and of unclean things, it was shown how the neglect of Israel to rebuild the Temple had defiled the land. Yet at the end came the promise, 'from this day I will bless you.' On the same day came the last prophecy, the personal promise to Zerubbabel, who is assured of God's protection and favour.

ZECHARIAH

Although Zechariah delivered his first prophecy in the same year with Haggai, between his earlier and latter utterances, his manner of coping with the trials and difficulties of the time is totally different. Haggai began with invective and remonstrance; in Zechariah, after a short earnest appeal to repentance, we have a series of eight visions, all, it would seem, borne in upon the prophet's soul in one night, that of the 24th day of the eleventh month of the second year of

Darius (520 B. C.). Yet one aim is plainly to be seen in them all, the encouragement and bracing up of the Jews in a very anxious and troublous time, the promise that in due course heathenism should be destroyed, and God's kingdom triumph. Under the figure of the Branch is set forth the coming rule of Messiah, Priest and King. The last thought is driven home by the symbolical crowning of Joshua, the high priest, type of Him Who was to come.

A gap of nearly two years ensues after this, when the silence is broken by a question put to the prophet as to fasts other than those enjoined by the Law of Moses. Like Isaiah long before (chap. Iviii.), Zechariah sets forth the idea of a true fast : judgment and mercy are what God requires. In a subsequent discourse he teaches that the fasts shall become 'joy and gladness and cheerful feasts,' and that the nations shall be gathered in.

The remaining six chapters involve a grave literary difficulty. Many hold that we have here writings of two earlier prophets, one (chaps. ix.-xi.) who wrote before the fall of the Northern Kingdom, and the other (chaps. xii.-xiv.) who wrote between the death of Josiah and the fall of Jerusalem.

There are several quotations from Zechariah in the Gospels : of the King Who comes 'lowly and riding upon an ass' (ix. 9), of the price of our Lord's betrayal (xi. 13), the prophecy 'they shall look on Him Whom they have pierced' (xii. 10). Our Lord Himself, foreseeing His desertion on that last night, cried, 'I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered' (xiii. 7).

MALACHI

With Malachi the long line of Israelite prophets comes to an end. Of him personally we know nothing; even his very name is matter for doubt. It occurs in i. I, and no where else in Scripture; it may be a shortened form of a name, meaning 'messenger of Jehovah,' or it may simply be the Hebrew word, 'my messenger,' wrongly taken to be a proper name.

The conditions of the time when the prophecy was uttered are plain. The Temple has long been rebuilt, the priests are grown mercenary, the people's zeal has quite faded out. There are no exhortations here such as those with which Haggai urged on the work. Long years had passed by, and the nature of Malachi's protests gives us a clue as to the time. Israelites are divorcing their Israelite wives to contract marriages with foreigners, and this and the neglect of tithes and offerings is the burden of the charge. But these two things were what specially moved the wrath of Nehemiah in his second governorship (xiii. 1 f., 23 f.). We may with some confidence therefore assign the prophecy of Malachi to a period either during or, perhaps rather, just preceding this time (circa 432 B.C.). The absence of any reference to Nehemiah's rule favours the latter view.

The book falls into three divisions. In the first (i. 1-ii. 9) is the thought of God as the loving father of His people, evil as was the return; the second (ii. 10-16) is mainly devoted to the protest against the unlawful marriages, with divorced Israelite wives weeping at the altar; and the third dwells on the coming of the Messiah as 'the Sun of Righteousness,' and the judgment of the wicked. With the announcement of the coming of the great Forerunner, O.T. prophecy ends.

IN

Daniel

N the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of The Age Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon of the unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord Exile gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he 5 carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god.

And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the 10 children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes; children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king's meat, and of the wine which he drank so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king.

* The beginning of each Chapter of the Authorised Version is indicated by an asterisk.

15

20