Malachi to Christ
MALACHI

Close of Persian Period (480-400 B.C.)
Last of the Prophets
The age of Ezra (last pure glow of the Old Testament seers) produced one more prophetic work – the brief composition of Malachi. With its clear insight into the real wants of the time, its stern reproof of the priests themselves and its bold exposition of eternal truths and of a last judgment, this book closes the series of prophetic writings in a manner worthy of such lofty predecessors. It is important that the setting sun of the Old Testament days should be reflected in a true prophet – that the fair days of Ezra and Nehemiah should in him be glorified.

Malachi was last of the Prophets. The prophets and prophetesses appearing since the time of Haggai and Zechariah (Neh. 6:7, 12, 14) were weak and inferior. He alone represents the genuine spirit of ancient oracular order (Macc. 4:46; 9:27; 14:41; Dan. 3:38 [LXX]; Ps. 74:9; Eccl. 36:15), till the final and transcendent burst of Evangelical and Apostolical prophecy opened a new era on the world. The approximate time of the work can be fixed by its allusions to the surrounding circumstances, which are of the same kind as those which form the Ezra and Nehemiah scene. To them he must have stood in the same relation as Isaiah to Hezekiah or Haggai to Zerubbabel; and although there is no probability in the tradition which identifies him with Ezra, it is true that he represents the prophetic aspect of the epoch of which the two great Reformers were the scholastic and secular representatives.

There is the same close union as then between the office of Priest and Scribe. There is the same demoralization of the Priesthood as then in the questionable associations of the house of the High Priest Eliashib – the Eli of those later days – the gross and audacious plundering of Hophni and Phineas repeated on the paltry scale of meaner and more miserly pilfering. As in Ezra's time, there are the faithless husbands, deserting their Jewish wives for some foreign alliance, who bathe the altar with their tears. As in the days of Nehemiah, there are the wealthy nobles who grind down the poor by their exactions. Against all these the Prophet raises up his voice in the true spirit of Amos or Joel. There is also the passionate denunciation of Edom, which runs like a red thread through all the prophetic strains of this epoch, from Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah, through Obadiah and the Babylonian Psalmist, down to this last and fiercest expression which goes as far as to enhance the Divine love for Jacob by contrasting it with Divine hatred for Esau. But there are three ideas peculiar, if not in substance yet in form, to Malachi – significantly marking the point from which, as it were, he looks over the silent waste of years that is to follow him, unbroken by any distinct prophetic utterance, yet still responding in various faint echoes to the voice of this last of the long succession of seers that had never ceased since the days of Samuel.

The Messenger
We look first at the chief idea embroidered into the structure of his work and being. The expectation of an Anointed King of the House of David has ceased. Since the death of Zerubbabel, neither in Ezra, Nehemiah, Malachi, nor in any contemporary books, is there any trace of such a hope. It is another form in which vision of the future shaped itself, and which was peculiarly characteristic of the time. The prominent figure is now the Messenger (the avant courier – to use the Greek word; the Malachi using the Hebrew word, i.e., "the Angel")of the Eternal. No doubt such a figure had been used before.

In the Patriarchal age, and at times in the Monarchy, there had been heavenly Messengers who brought Divine Word to the listening nation – once by Israel, the Great Prophet of the Captivity (himself termed the Angel or the Messenger, Is. 42:19); In Haggai (1:13), himself "the Angel of the Eternal." In Zechariah (1:11, 12; 3:1; 4:1) the same expression (was it the aged Haggai of whom he spoke, or the unseen Presence which Haggai represented?) describes the mysterious guide that led him through the myrtle groves and through the court of the High Priest's trial. But now the word pervades the whole prophetic Book. The very name of the Prophet is taken from it; whether he bore the title of Malachi (1:1), as indicating the idea with which the age was full, or whether it was transferred to a Prophet without a name (possibly as the title of Abdadonai, "the servant of the Lord," may have been given to the Great Unnamed of the Captivity), from the subject of his prophecy.

In like manner, the ideal Priest whom Malachi describes (2:7) is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts. The eventful consummation to which he looks is not the arrival of the Warrior‑king or Invisible Majesty of Heaven, but of the Messenger who should enforce (3:1) the treaty which had been made of old time between God and His people, which had of late been renewed by Nehemiah. This was to be the moment of the unexpected (3:2, 3) sifting and dividing of the essential from the unessential, the worthless from the valuable. It was to be like the furnace in which precious metals were cleansed; it was to be like the tank in which the fullers beat and washed out the clothes of Jerusalem's inhabitants; it was to be like the glorious yet terrible uprising of the Eastern sun (Mal. 4:2, 3) which should wither to the very roots the insolence and injustice of mankind; which should by its healing and invigorating influences call forth the good from their obscurity, prancing and bounding like the young cattle in the burst of spring and treading down under their feet the dust and ashes of iniquitous dealing. Yet, for this day of mingled splendor and gloom a Prelude, a Preparation was needed; and in forecasting the forms which it would take, two colossal figures rose out of the past.

One was Moses (4:5), to whom on Horeb had been given the Law, which now through Ezra had been revived, expounded, and brought within their reach. The Pentateuch was to live in their remembrance. The memory of their past history, the fulfillment of those ruling principles of "conduct which are three‑fourths of human life," was their guide for the perilous future. And for the enforcement of these there was needed yet another spirit of the mighty dead. It was the great (4:5) representative of the whole Prophetic order, now, as it were, by the last of his race, evoked from the invisible world.

Already there had sprung up round the mysterious figure of Elijah that belief which reached its highest pitch in the Muslim world, where he is "the Immortal one," who in the greenness of perpetual youth is always appearing to set right the wrong – and which in the Jewish nation has expected him to revive in each new crisis of their fate, and to solve all the riddles of their destiny. But for Malachi the chief mission of the returning Elijah was to be that of the Forerunner of the final crisis: who should arrest (Mal. 3:6) in their diverging courses the hearts both of the older and younger generation, and who should enable (if we thus far venture to unfold the thought which is not expressed in the Prophecy, but lies deep in the history of that as of all like ages) the fathers to recognize the new needs and powers of the children, and the children to recognize the value of institutions and traditions which they inherit from the fathers.

Such an insistence regarding the necessity of patient preparation on the importance of working out the old and homely truths of justice and truthfulness as the best means of meeting the coming conflict – received its full point and meaning when such a rough Precursor, such an Angel (Mark 1:2) of moral reformation, did arise and recall, even in outward garb and form, the ancient Tishbite (1 Kin. 17:1, 1 Kin. 21:17-28, 2 Kin. 1:3-8, 2 Kin. 9:36 – can be reworded as "Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead"), who had last been seen in the same valley of the Jordan. But the principle of the necessity of a Messenger or Angel in the place or in anticipation of that which is still to come; of the opening of the way by the Great for the Greatest; of the announcement of pure morality, which commends itself to the many, leading toward the spiritual religion which chiefly commends itself to the few – this is the main idea of Malachi's teaching, which shall now be expanded and explained by the corresponding events and ideas of his time.

Awe of the Divine Name
It branches into two parts. The sense of the need of this intermediary dispensation, if it is not directly connected, at any rate coincides with the awe which shrinks from familiar contact with the Divine Name and Presence, with the reverence which fears, the irreverence which despises the mention of the Supreme Unseen Cause. The change is complete in the book which probably approaches most nearly to the time of Malachi. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, there is no name but Elohim – "God" – and the whole book is penetrated with a reserve and self‑control expressed in words which have a significant import when within sound of the multitude of theological phrases and devotional iteration by which, both in East and West, the religious world often has sought to approach its Maker: "God is in Heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few" (Eccles. 5:2). And it is summed up in the brief conclusion of the whole matter, after contemplating the many proverbs, the words of the wise, the endless making of many books, which had already begun to characterize the nation: "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." The name of "Jehovah" and then of "Jehovah Sabaoth," became the national name of the Divine Ruler of Israel.

We have now arrived at the moment when this great title is to disappear. In the parallel passages of duplicate poetry or duplicate history the simpler "Elohim" began to take the place of the more sacred "Jehovah."

Adoption of "Adonai" for Jehovah
In accordance with these isolated indications was the general practice (we cannot ascertain the exact beginning) by which the special name of the God of Israel was now withdrawn, and, as far as the Hebrew race was concerned, forever withdrawn from the speech and even the writings of the nation. Already at the time of the Samaritan secession (in the days of Nehemiah) the change began to operate. In their usages, instead of the word "Jehovah" was substituted Shemeh ("the Name"); but in their own copies of the Law they still retained the word unaltered. But in place of the ancient name, the Jews of Jerusalem substituted the word Adonai ("Lord or Master"), first by pronunciation and then by changing points of the vowels throughout the sacred writings – the same word that appears for the Phoenician deity whom the Syrian maidens mourned on Lebanon. By the time that the Greek translators of the Hebrew Scriptures undertook their task they found that this conventional phrase had become completely established, and therefore, whenever the word Jehovahoccurs in the Hebrew, they wrongly rendered it "Master", and following the Greek the Latin translators wrongly rendered it "Dominus". With a few rare exceptions, the Protestant versions wrongly rendered it "Lord."

Thus it came to pass that the most expressive title of the Eternal and Self‑existent, which in the time of Moses and Samuel and of Elijah and Isaiah, it would have been deemed a sin to keep silent, it became in these later ages a sin to pronounce. On the misconstruction which had thus been dictated by superfluous reverence were engrafted all manner of fancies and exaggerations. Arguments, solid in themselves, even in the New Testament, were based on this manifestly erroneous version. The most extravagant superstitions were attached to this rejection of the sacred phrase, as confidently as in earlier times they would have been attached to its assertion. The Greek translators even went the length of altering or retaining the alteration of a text in Leviticus (which condemns to death anyone who blasphemed the name of Jehovah) into the condemnation of anyone who pronounces it (Nicolas, 166-170). The name itself lingered only in the mouth of the High Priest, who uttered it only on the ten occasions which required it, on the Day of Atonement; and after the time of Simon the just, even this was in a whisper (Edersheim's Temple). If anyone else gained possession of it, it was a talisman by which if he was bold enough to utter its mysterious sound, miracles could be worked and magical arts exercised. "The Ineffable Name," the "Tetragrammaton," became a charm analogous to those secret, sacred names on which the heathen writers had already prided themselves.

These were the strange results of a sentiment in its origin springing from that natural, we may almost say, philosophical caution, which shrinks abashed before the inscrutable mystery of the Great Cause of all. When in our later days any have been scandalized by the reserve of skeptical inquirers, or by the adoption of other forms and phrases, than those in common use, they may be comforted by the reflection that such reticence or such deviations have a precedent in that silent revolution which affected the whole theology of the Jewish Church from the period of the book of Malachi downwards, and which has left its mark on almost every translation of the Bible throughout the world.

In itself this awe expressed the well‑known difficulty of defining the Immeasurable or exploring the primal origin of existence. Some of the forms of belief to which it gave rise will appear more clearly as we proceed. But at the moment which we are now considering it took shape, or fostered the growth of a doctrine which, though never altogether absent from the Jewish mind, now leaped into unusual prominence. The necessity, the craving for "messengers," intermediate spirits, earthly or celestial, to break, as it were, the chasm between the Infinite and the finite has already been indicated in the Book of Malachi (3:1) – "Who may abide the day of His coming?" The same tendency which in our century clothes itself in the phraseology of "Nature," "the Reign of Law," "the forces of Nature," caused the Oriental mind of the fourth century before our era to adopt the nomenclature of a hierarchy of unknown ministering spirits, who as "Messengers" or "watchers" guarded the fortunes of nations and individuals and directed movements of the universe.

In the Greek version of the earlier books this belief appears in the constant substitution of "Angels" in passages where the original Hebrew contained only the name of God. In the Psalms (148:2) immediately following the Return, they stand at the head of the works of Creation. Already, in the visions of Ezekiel and Zechariah (Ezek. 8:11; Zech. 4:2, 10; Tobit 12:15; Rev. 3:1; 4:5, 6; 8:2), their innermost circle was dimly arranged in the mystic number of seven. In the Book of Daniel, whether Babylonian or Syrian, we find for the first time two names assigned – Michael (Dan. 12:1; 10:13, 21; Jude 9; Rev. 12:7) the champion of Israel, with the challenge "Who is like God?" to reappear as the guardian of the High Places of Christendom and as the Protector of the kingdom of France; Gabriel (Dan. 8:1; 10:21; Luke 1:11, 19, 26, 35), "the hero of God," the harbinger of the Divine purposes. In the Book of Tobit a third is added – Raphael (Tobit 3:17; 12:15; Enoch 11:8), the "sociable spirit" of healing, the "Divine Healer." The others are not yet named. But the fourth, Uriel, "the Light of God," the regent of the sun, follows next. And then, with doubtful splendor, we faintly hear of Phaniel, Raguel, and Zarakiel, or else of Zaphkiel, Zadkiel, and Gamaliel, or else of Salathiel, Jehudial, and Berachiah, or else of Jeremial, Sariel and Azael.

The contradictory and wavering nomenclature reminds us how uncertain the ground on which we tread is. And when we further inquire for the traces of those doctrines which have left so deep an impress on the theology and poetry of Christendom, the creation and fall of the Angels (note: the only passages which appear to indicate this are 2 Pet. 2:4 and Jude 6 and these manifestly refer to Gen. 6:4) or yet again for the warrant of those splendid winged forms with which Guido and Fra Angelico have made us familiar in the realm of art (note: the six-winged seraphs of Is. 6:2 and the double-winged cherubs of 1 Kin. 6:24 are not "messengers" or "angels" at all. The expression in Dan. 9:21, "flying swiftly", should be either "coming swiftly" or "greatly fatigued". The first indication of the wings of "angels" is in Rev. 14:6), it must be confessed that not even in these later books, still less in the earlier visions of the prophets of Israel, is there the least foundation.

Still, the general and pervasive belief in the intervention of these unearthly messengers; combining with the earthly but not less Divine Messenger of the prophecy of Malachi, dates from this epoch. However overgrown with fantastic legend, there is a lofty truth in the vision of a long vista of celestial beauty, power, and goodness through which the soul looks upwards to the Throne of the Unseen; and from the age of Malachi this truth has become firmly enshrined in the poetic side of Hebrew and Christian no less than of Persian and Arabian theology. Out of the slight and often coarse materials that the Books of the Captivity and Return provide, have been evolved not only the prodigious extravagances (See Kalisch's Commentary) of the Talmud, but also the noblest strains of Spenser and Milton, the image of the angelic character as distinct even from the saintly or virtuous never to depart from mankind – the conviction that there is a fulfilment of the Divine Will more perfectly carried out in the ideal heaven than on the actual earth.

Contrast Between the Read and Ideal
The second doctrine which pervades the Book of Malachi is one which, though never absent altogether from the Prophetic mind, is brought out here with a point which cannot be evaded. It is the contrast – so vital to any true conception of religion in every age, but so frequently forgotten – between the real and ideal in religious institutions. By the side of selfish and untruthful hierarchy, who were the main causes of the unbelief which prevailed around them, there rose the vision of perfect truthfulness and fairness (Mal. 2:5, 6), the unswerving fear of the Eternal name as conceived in the original idea of the Priesthood. And, again, within the innermost pale of the Church, behind the cynical questionings of some and superficial devotions of others, the Prophet saw the almost invisible (Matt. 4:16, 17) circle of those whose reverence for the Eternal remained unshaken; who kept the sacred treasure of truth intact; of whom the names are, for the most part, unknown in the long, vacant history of the coming four centuries, but who may be traced in a true Divine succession which runs through this obscure period and of which from time to time the links appear – Simon the Just, Jesus the son of Sirach, Judas Maccabaeus, the martyred Onias, the high-minded, Mariamne, the large-minded Hillel, Zachariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, Joseph and Mary. To recover these lost jewels, to disentangle the dross of society from the ore of gold and silver which lies in the worst rubbish of superstition and moral degradation is the hope of the Prophet amid the despairing sense of failure and dejection, which, if less clamorous than the Lamentations of Jeremiah, or the invectives of Isaiah, implies a deeper conviction of the weight of evil against which the cause of uprightness has to contend.

In harmony with this inquiring, perhaps melancholy, vein of thought is the mournful tone of the contemporary book of Ecclesiastes, whose lessons derive a profounder significance if taken as expressing the same dark view of the world as breathes through the almost equally misanthropic cries of Malachi (Eccles. 1:13-15; 3:16; 4:1; 6:2). The Asiatic world seemed to be sick of crime and folly. The weary soul tossed to and fro in the effort to distract and sustain its upward tendencies.

Doctrine of the Evil Spirit
In the midst of this perplexity it is not surprising that for the first time we begin to trace a keener sense of an obstinate, inveterate principle of evil – the consciousness of a more determined obstruction against good than the Hebrew Scriptures had yet exhibited. Faintly, very faintly, in the Book of Job (1:6; also 1 Kin. 12:21) and in the vision of Micaiah the son of Imlah, there was disclosed in the Courts of Heaven a spirit rendering its account with the other ministers of the Divine Will, yet with something of a malicious pleasure in the mischief produced by the calamities it caused. Perhaps, in the vision of Zechariah, the same spirit, as had appeared in the opening of the poem of Job, returns as the adversary of the innocent (Zech. 3:1).

Certainly, in the Book of Chronicles it appears in the place which the earlier Prophetic books assigned to the Eternal Himself (Comp. 2 Sam. 14:1 and 1 Chron. 21:1), as tempting David to number Israel. Certainly, in the Book of Tobit (3:8), a demon plays the malignant part which in the Greek or Teutonic world is assigned to the evil deities or wicked fairies of their mythology. In the Book of Wisdom (2:3) is the first mention of the envy of the "envy of the Devil" in connection with the entrance of death into the world. In Maccabaean history (I Macc. 1:36) the obnoxious fort which overhung the temple is described almost in modern phrase, as a living creature, "a wicked fiend or devil". Such are the fragmentary notices of an incipient personification out of which has gradually sprung up the doctrine of a hierarchy of evil spirits, corresponding to the hosts of Angels – which has in its turn passed through every shape and form from the Talmud to the Fathers, from the grotesque Satyr of the Middle Ages to the splendor of the ruined Archangel of Milton's Paradise Lost, the scoffing cynicism of Goethe's Mephistopheles and the ill-nature of the Little Master of La Motte Fouqué. That peculiar sense of the depth and subtlety of the evil principle which manifested itself in the various figures of a malignant power – now single, now multiplied, now shadowy, now distinct, now ridiculous, and now sublime – had its root in the dark and solemn view of the perplexities in the moral government of the world, of which the first germs are seen in Malachi and Ecclesiastes.

This Hebrew conception of the evil and devilish element in man and nature is twofold. It is either of the accusing spirit that seizes on the dark and the trivial side of even the greatest and best, or else of the "hostile" obstruction that stands in the way of progress and goodness. Round these two central ideas – one prevailing in the Hellenic and Latin (The Accuser, Slanderer, Diabolus, Devil), the other in the Semitic and Teutonic forms of speech (The Enemy, Satan, Fiend) – have congregated all the various doctrines, legends, truths, and fictions which play a part in the theology and poetry of Judaism, Islam, and Christendom. The antagonism which had prevailed in the earlier books of the Old Testament between Jehovah and gods of the heathen world disappeared as the idea of Divine Nature became more elevated and more comprehensive, and in its place came the antagonism between God as the Supreme Good and evil as His only true enemy and rival – an antagonism, which, however much it may have been at times degraded and exaggerated, yet is in itself the legitimate product of that nobler idea of Deity.

A profound detestation of moral evil, the abhorrence of those more malignant forms of it to which the language of Christian Europe gave the name of diabolical, devilish or fiendish, is the dark shadow which precedes or accompanies the bright admiration of virtue – the indispensable condition of the intense worship of Divine Goodness.

Universality of God
This leads us to a third doctrine of the Prophet Malachi, which serves as a starting-point for the questions which this particular epoch suggests for our consideration. It is the assertion (not new in itself, but new from the force and precision with which the truth is driven home) of the absolute equality in the Divine judgment of all genuine and sincere worship throughout the world. In rejecting the half-hearted and petty offerings of the Jewish Church, the prophet reminds his readers not only that their sacrifices are not needed by God, but that from the furthest East where the sun rises above the earth to where it sinks beneath the remotest western horizon, the Eternal name, under whatever form, is great; that among the innumerable races outside the Jewish pale or region (not only in Jerusalem, but in every place over that wide circumference), the cloud of incense that goes up from altars of whatever temple, is, if faithfully rendered, a pure, unpolluted offering to that Divine Presence throughout all the nations of mankind (Mal. 1:2). It is a truth, as we shall see, which met with a partial exemplification in connection with the great religious systems which, in the vacant space we are now entering, pressed upon the Jewish creed and ritual. It is a truth which was raised to the first order of religious doctrine by Him who declared that "many should come from East and West, and sit down in the kingdom" (Matt. 8:2), and by the disciples who repeated it after Him almost in the words of Malachi, though without a figure, that: "In every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him" (Acts 10:34, 35); and that "not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law, who have not the law, shall be justified" (Rom. 2:13, 14). It is a truth which, after a long period of neglect, and even of bitter condemnation, has in our days become the basis of comparative theology, and has slowly re-entered the circle of practical and religious thought.

Story of Bagoses
In the entire vacancy occupying the annals of the Jewish nation after the times of Nehemiah there is one single incident recorded which coincides with the contrast Malachi draws between the degenerate Priesthood of his day and the purer elements of the Gentile world. In that corrupt family of Eliashib, which occupied the High Priesthood, there was one deed at this time, darker and more dreadful than any that had preceded it; more than any which had been known among the civilized or uncivilized nations outside the Jewish pale. His two sons both aimed at their father's office, which then as often before and afterwards, was the gift of the foreign Governor residing at Jerusalem. John was in possession. But Bagoses, the Governor, favored Joshua. The two brothers met in the Temple and the elder, stung by jealousy, murdered the younger on the floor of the sanctuary. The Governor, filled with just anger, descended from his fortress-tower and burst into the Temple. As he advanced reproaching them for the crime, the sacerdotal guardians endeavored to resist the sacrilegious intruder. But he thrust them aside and penetrated, it would seem, into the sacred edifice itself where the corpse lay stretched upon the Temple pavement. "What", he exclaimed, "am I not cleaner than the dead carcass of him whom ye have murdered?" The words of Bagoses lived in the recollection of those who heard them. They expressed the universal but unwelcome truth, "Is not a good Persian better than a bad Jew?" Or, to turn it into the form of the indignant question of the theologian Milman, "Who would not meet the judgment of the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of Nestorius rather than with the crimes of Cyril?"

Relations to the Gentile World
It is in the light of this principle, clearly foreshadowed by the Evangelical Prophet of the Captivity that before we leave this period of the Jewish history we ask the question which naturally forces itself upon us: "What traces were left upon it by the circumstances of the new sphere which had opened upon them through the connection of Israel with the Persian Empire?" We know what elements in the development of the national religion were due to their stay in Babylon. We now ask what elements, if any, were added by other forces brought into contact with them in the Eastern or Western world.

The Persian Empire
In retrospect of this period the first influence to be considered is the general effect of the Persian Monarchy on the manners and imagination of the Jewish race. If, with all the alienation of exiles, almost of rebels, there had yet been an attraction for them in the magnificent power of the Babylonian Empire, there could not have been less in the forms, hardly less august and more friendly, that surrounded the successors of their benefactor Cyrus. We have seen how closely they clung to that protection; how intimate their relations with the Persian Governor who resided almost within the Temple precincts; with control over their most sacred functionaries (Neh. 13:4-9); his letters and decrees placed almost on the level of their sacred books.

The Book of Esther
These relations are especially brought out in one writing of this period. Even more than the Book of Job is Idumaean and the Book of Daniel is Babylonian, is the Book of Ester Persian. It is the one example in the sacred volume of which the whole scenery and imagery breathes the atmosphere of an Oriental Court as completely and almost as exclusively as the Arabian Nights. We are in the Palace at Susa. We are in that splendid hall of Darius, of which no vestige now remains, but which can be represented to our sight by the still existing ruins of the contemporary hall at Persepolis, that edifice of which it has been said that no interior of any building, ancient or modern, not Egyptian Karnac, not Cologne Cathedral, could rival it in space and beauty. The only feature found at Persepolis which was lacking at Susa was the splendid staircase, which Fergusson says is the "noblest example of a flight of stairs to be found in any part of the world."

Its Local Interest
All else was in Shushan, the Palace fortress – the colossal bulls at the entrance; the vast sixty feet high pillars along its nave; the pavement of colored marbles, as the author of the Book of Esther repeats, as if recalling color after color that had feasted his eyes – "red, and blue, and white, and black" – and the curtains, four hanging from pillar to pillar, "white and green and purple", fastened with cords of "white and purple."

It was there, overlooking the plains of the Ulai from the terraced heights on which the hall was built, that in the third year of his reign Ahasuerus gave a half-year's festival. It seems to be implied in Esther 1:5 that the banquet was held in the gardens within the palace on the slope of the palatial hill. Round the Great King, as he sat on his golden throne, with the fans waving over his head, were the seven Princes of Persia and Media who saw the King's face when others saw it not, and the first in the kingdom – the sacred number seven which pervaded the whole Court. There took place the succession of violent scenes, so thoroughly characteristic of Oriental despotism, but to which the Hebrew historian was so familiarized that they appear to fill him rather with admiration than astonishment and horror, the order for the Queen to unveil herself before the assembled Court, contrary to the immemorial usage of Persia, and therefore the sure sign of the King's omnipotence – the rage of the King at her refusal, her instantaneous divorce, the universal decree founded on this single case, the strange procession of maidens for the selection of the new Queen. Of like kind are all the incidents which follow – the long conversations in the harem; the jealousy between the two foreign courtiers; the King's gate – the large square tower, still in part remaining, where the Jewish favorite sat, as in his place of honor – and the reckless violence of the royal command to enjoin the massacre of the whole Jewish race. Then come the various scenes of the catastrophe, every one of which is full of the local genius of the Empire, as we know it through accounts of the earliest Grecian travelers and the latest investigators.

The same chronicles in which, as Xerxes (Esth. 6:1, 2) sat on the rocky brow "that looks o'er sea-born Salamis," he had ordered to be recorded the valiant acts of any who did the State good service are brought before him at Shushan to soothe his sleepless nights. We are made to feel the inaccessibility of the King to any but the seven Councilors, the awe with which his presence was surrounded, which required all persons introduced to fall on their faces before him, and on pain of death to cover their hands in the folds of their sleeves, the executioners standing round with their axes, ready instantly to behead any rash intruder. It is this that makes the turning-point of Esther's danger, from which she is only spared by the mark of royal absolution in the extension of the golden scepter; it is this which brings about the sudden extinction of Haman's whole family, falling, as Oriental households fell in the ruin of their head (a dark shawl thrown over the face of a condemned person). We are led to understand the fantastic consequences of the investment of the king with the attribute of personal infallibility, making it impossible for him to even offer to repeal any of his own decrees (Dan. 6:15; Esth. 7:20), which, immediately on their utterance, pass into the sacred recesses of the laws of Medes and Persians that no power can alter. Hence results the difficulty of revoking the atrocious decree against the Jewish settlers, and therefore the necessity (as in the well-known modern parallel of the Roman pontiffs) of minimizing its effect by issuing orders in theory acknowledging, in practice contradicting it. And, finally, we come across the world-renowned institution of the Persian posts; established by Darius throughout the Empire, the relays of horses along the plains, mules on the mountain districts, camels and dromedaries on the arid table-lands; the couriers succeeding each other with a rapidity that could only be compared to the flight of birds. This enabled the victims of the intended massacre to receive the royal permission for their own self-defense to the last extremity against the executioners of the King's own orders.

Even the names which closely connect the story with the history of Israel are not Hebrew, but Chaldaean or Persian. Mordecai is the worshipper of Merodach, the War-God of Babylon. Esther is the star of the planet Venus. The Purim, from which the Festival of Deliverance took its name, is the Persian word for "lot", and has even been supposed to be the name for an ancient Persian solemnity.

Its Religious Interest
There is a singular antiquarian value attaching to this the most vivid picture that we possess of the inner life of the Persian seraglio. But beneath this external show there is a genuine strain of national and human interest, which secured for the little narrative, worldly as it might seem to be, a welcome into the sacred books of the Jews, and drew round it, like the writings of Daniel and Ezra, a fringe of amplifications and additions, i.e., supposed deficiencies, by which theological susceptibilities of later times sought to correct.

The treatment of the book has varied considerably in Jewish and Christian Churches.

The Book of the Dispersion
The immediate claim of the story to a place in the Holy Books was the consecration which it gave to the Jews of the dispersion. Of all the Books of the Old Testament it alone contains no reference to the Holy Land. When Haman is asked to describe the objects of his hostility he replies in words which every Israelite through all the hundred and twenty satrapies, from India to Ethiopia, must have personally applied. "There is a certain people scattered and dispersed in all the provinces of thy kingdom and their laws are diverse from all people" (Esth. 3:8).

Along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, already renowned for their schools of learning (high up in the mountains of Kurdistan where their descendants perhaps still linger) all the dispersed settlers were included in those words, which might stand as the motto of the larger part of the Jewish race ever since – which might have been said of them by Tacitus in the Roman Empire, or by the Arabian or English chroniclers of the Middle Ages. The line of beacon-lights kindled from hill to hill along the whole route from Jerusalem to Babylon, from Olivet to Sartaba, from Sartaba to Grophinah, from Grophinah to Haveran, from Haveran to Beth Baltin, waving the torches up and down till the whole country of the Captivity appeared a blazing fire was an apt emblem of the sympathetic links which bound all these settlements together. Of this vast race, for whom so great a destiny was reserved when the nation should fail, the Book of Esther recognized the future importance. Throughout the world every Jew felt persecution with Mordecai as he raised in the city his loud and bitter cry and stood wrapped in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes before the Royal Gate – they have felt the persecution many times since. Every Jewess felt, and may have felt ever since, with Esther as she prepared herself for the dreadful venture.

It was this which gave a significance to the long succession of idle coincidences, as it seemed, on the failure of any one on whom the catastrophe would have taken place; culminating in the fortunate chance that when the enemy of their race, after the manner of the East, cast lots to secure a propitious day for the vast enterprise of extermination, he was compelled, beginning with the first month of the year, by the failure of the lots, to go on day after day and month after month, until he was driven to the 13th day of the very last month as the only auspicious time for the commencement of the massacre. Thus, between issuing of the decree and arrival of that fatal day, eight months were left for the King's warrant to be posted throughout the Empire, and for every Jewish settlement in every village, however remote and defenseless, to stand at bay against the hunters of their lives. The Feast of the Lots became the Passover of the Dispersion. It preceded the Paschal Feast by only a month, and, to make the parallel complete, was celebrated not on the predestined and triumphant day (the 13th), but on the 14th and 15th of Adar, corresponding to the 14th and 15th of Nisan (the Paschal month).

The Feast of Purim
The continuance of that bitter animosity in the Jewish nation renders the Feast of Purim the least pleasing of their festivals. It was long retained in all its intensity as the natural vent of hatred to their heathen or Christian oppressors in each succeeding age. On that day, at every mention of Haman's name in the worship of the synagogue, it was long the custom to hiss, stamp and shake the clenched fist and say: "Let his name be blotted out, Let the name of the wicked perish." The boys who were present with a loud clatter rubbed out the detested name, which they wrote for the purpose on pieces of wood or stone. The names of Haman's ten sons were read in one breath, to express the exulting thought that they all died in one instant. They were written in three perpendicular lines in the Book of Esther to signify that they were hanged on three parallel cords. It was added that his seventy surviving sons fled, and, according to the curse of the 109th Psalm, begged their bread from door to door. At the conclusion, the whole congregation exclaimed: "Cursed be Haman, blessed be Mordecai; cursed be Zeresh, blessed be Esther; cursed be all idolaters, blessed be all Israelites; and blessed be Harbonah, who hanged Haman."

Such a spirit inevitably reminds one of the union of fear and cruelty felt by those, not only of Jewish descent, who find themselves in foreign lands exposed to the attacks of hostile populations.

The Book of Esther
It was natural that a book like this, bound up with one of the strongest sentiments of the Hebrew race, should be raised to a high place in their sacred volume. Late as its introduction was, it mounted up at once, if not to the first rank, yet to be the first among the second. It was believed that except the Pentateuch it would outlast all the Hebrew Scriptures. It was more precious than Prophets, Proverbs, or Psalms. Among the five Hagiographical rolls (Megilloth) it was emphatically "the roll," the Megillah. In the Christian Church its fate has been just the reverse. Of all the Canonical Books of the Old Testament it is the one which lingered longest on the outskirts, and has provoked the most uneasy suspicion. Melito of Sardis, Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius of Alexandria hesitated to permit its reception. Even if Luther did not, as was once commonly believed, "Toss the Book of Esther into the Elbe," yet he wished that "it did not exist, for it hath too much of Judaism, and a great deal of heathenish naughtiness."

These two expressions well describe the natural objection to the Book of Esther and the Feast of Purim. The exclusive spirit which breathes through them, the wild passion of Esther's revenge in the impalement of Haman's innocent family are too closely allied to the fierce temper of Jael or of Jezebel, or of the cruel Queen of Xerxes, whose name Amestris is perilously like that of Esther, to win the favor of the modern Jewish reader, still less the modern Christian reader. And, yet further, it is so entirely confined to an earthly horizon that, alone from all the sacred books, from first to last it never names the name of God. Whether this absence arose from that increasing scruple against using the Divine Name, or from the instinctive adoption of Persian Court fashion, this abstinence from any religious expressions was so startling that the Greek translators thrust into the narrative long additions containing the sacred phrases which in the original narrative were wanting. But there is a sense in which these peculiarities of the Book of Esther are most instructive. Within that Judaic hardness of heart, behind that heathenish naughtiness, burn a lofty independence, a genuine patriotism, which are not the less to be admired because Mordecai and Esther spoke and acted without a single appeal by name or profession to the Supreme Source of that moral strength in which they dared the wrath of the Great King and labored for the preservation of their countrymen. It is necessary for us that in the rest of the sacred volume the name of God should constantly be brought before us, to show that He is all in all to our moral perfection.

But it is expedient that there should be one book which omits it altogether, to prevent us from attaching to the mere name a reverence which belongs only to the reality. In the mind of the sacred writer the mere accidents, as they might seem, of the quarrel of Ahasuerus, the sleepless night, the delay of the lot, worked out the Divine Will as completely as the parting of the Red Sea or the thunders of Sinai. The story of Esther not only affords material for the noblest and gentlest of meditations, but is a token that in daily events, i.e., the unforeseen chances of life, in little unremembered acts, in the fall of a sparrow, in the earth bringing forth fruit of herself, God is surely present. The name of God is not there, but the work of God is. Those who most eagerly cling to the recognition of the Biblical authority of the book ought to be the most readily warned by it not to make a man an offender for a word or for the omission of a word. When Esther nerved herself to enter the presence of Ahasuerus at the risk of her life ("I will go in unto the King, and if I perish I perish", when her patriotic feeling vented itself in that noble cry, "How can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? or can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?") she expressed, although she never named the name of God, a religious devotion as acceptable to Him as that of Moses and David, who, no less sincerely, had the sacred name always on their lips.

In this sense, Esther is the Cordelia of the Bible.

The Influence of Zoroaster
It remains for us to ask the perplexed and perplexing question whether behind the splendor of the Persian Court and struggle of the Dispersion for existence we can trace any higher influence of the Persian dominion on the Jewish nation.

There is one great religious name which, even in the less instructed days of Christendom, was always acknowledged with a reverential awe, as bound up with the beginnings of sacred philosophy. In Raffaelle's School of Athens the only Eastern sage admitted is Zoroaster the Persian. By the theological inquirers of the seventeenth century, the likeness of this theology to that of the Old Testament was so fully acknowledged as to drive them to the theory that he must have been the pupil of Daniel. The research of modern times has dispelled this hypothesis by the allegation that he and his career preceded even the earliest date of Daniel by centuries, but it has not dissolved the connection between Judaism and the Zendavesta.

Consider the eloquent words from Bunsen's God in History: "Let us picture to ourselves one of the holy hills dedicated to the worship of fire, in the neighborhood of the primeval city of marvels in Central Asia – Baktra 'the glorious'; now called Balkh, 'the mother of Cities'. From this height we look down in imagination over the elevated plateau, which lies nearly 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, and sloping downwards towards the north, and ending in a sandy desert which does not even allow the streams of Bactria to reach the neighboring Oxus. On the southern horizon the last spurs of the Indian Caucasus rear their lofty peaks of 5,000 feet high. Out of those hills, the Parapomisus, or Hindu-kush, springs the chief river of the country, the Bactrus or Delias, which divides into hundreds of canals, making the face of the country one blooming garden of richest fruits. To this point converge the caravans, which travel across the mountains to the land of marvels, or bring treasures from thence. Thither, fifteen centuries before the Babylonian Captivity, on occasion of the peaceful sacrifice by fire, from whose ascending flame auguries were drawn, perhaps also with the customary interrogation of the earth-oracle by means of the sacred bull, Zoroaster or Zarathustra had convened the nobles of the land that he might perform a great public religious act. Arrived there, at the head of his disciples, the seers and preachers, he summons the Princes to draw nigh and to choose between faith and superstition."

He was willing to retain those outward symbols of adoration, but only as signs of the worship of the true God, who is the God of the good and truth-loving, and strictly speaking, can be honored only by truthfulness in thought, word, and deed – by purity of motive and a strictly veracious life. Accounted by his contemporaries a blasphemer, atheist, and firebrand worthy of death; after some centuries regarded even by his own adherents as the founder of magic, by others as a sorcerer and deceiver, he was nevertheless already recognized by the earliest Greek philosophers as a spiritual leader of the primeval ages of mankind.

This identification of Truth with the Supreme Being is, as it would seem, the fundamental article of the Zoroastrian creed; dimly indicated in the veneration of fire and the sun as the emblem of Divinity; practically enforced in the summary of the moral education of the Persian youth to speak the truth; reflected in the Jewish apologue of Zerubbabel's speech in the Court of Persia, that truth is great and shall prevail. That this creed should at once have drawn the conqueror Cyrus near to his Jewish subjects was inevitable.

Revival of Zoroastrianism (521 B.C.)
Then comes the confused story of its admixture with the Magian system, and of its temporary subversion under the domination of that system in the reign of the usurper Smerdis. Nor can it altogether be accidental that when Darius Hystaspis overthrew the Magians and re-established, as he himself records, the true Zoroastrian worship, the favor to the Jewish race which had been suspended during the Magian supremacy was once more restored. And thus, although it may be that Zoroaster himself lived long before, he rose, as it were, with renewed force in this middle period of the Persian dominion; but yet with elements which, if not foreign to his original creed, were strengthened by the Magian influence that henceforth colored it – and of which the Jewish, as well as all the surrounding religions felt the effect. Magic – of which the very name dates from this epoch (that is, the belief in the use of natural and material objects to control or supersede moral acts) entered from henceforth deeply into the vitals, if not of Jewish faith, yet certainly of Jewish practice.

Connection with Judaism
The veneration for the holy fire, which was kindled from the sacred naphtha fountains of Persia by the Caspian Sea, penetrated into the Jewish traditions in the story that, when Nehemiah rekindled the consecrated fire of the Temple from the altar stones he called it napthar, giving it a Hebrew meaning, "a cleansing", though many call it nephi (II Macc. 1:36). Although the returning Jews were not influenced by the Persian repugnance to temples and strictly maintained the exclusive sanctity for sacrificial worship of the sanctuary at Jerusalem, yet it was in accordance and probably through contact with the Persian system of allowing sacrifice to be performed in all places and on every holy hill that sprang up, side by side with the Temple service of Jerusalem, the more spiritual worship of the synagogue. The Persian doctrine of the Unity and the Invisibility of the Divinity, of a celestial and infernal hierarchy, which so to speak had never before received sanction of the Imperial Powers of earth, was substantially the counterpart to the corresponding elements of Hebrew faith.

Therefore, the conclusion is that while these doctrines and practices indigenously sprang up in the Israel of this period, from reasons adequate to account for their growth at this particular juncture, yet, in all probability they must have received an immense stimulus from the consciousness that the whole atmosphere of the vast neighboring and surrounding Empire was impregnated with the same ideas. If they were not exempt altogether from the weakness and strength of human motives, the small band of exiles must have felt that their confident trust in the Unity of the Divine Will, their belief in the multiplied subordinate ministers of that Will, their intense horror and gradual personification of the principle of Moral Evil, had acquired new form, bone and substance by the sympathy of an older, vaster frame of worship, inspiring and encouraging ideas which they themselves had been led to foster with a new and exclusive zeal. Even in detail it is not possible to avoid the conviction that the mystical number of seven lamps and seven watchers before the throne of God were derived directly from the seven Amshaspands ("the unsleeping ones"), who, like the seven Counsellors of the Persian King, encircled the presence of Ormuzd; and the name of the demon Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit is unquestionably the Persian "Aeshma-Deva", the spirit of concupiscence who at times rose to the rank of Prince of Demons.

But here we must pause. Not only is there no trace of Ahriman by name, but the idea of the separate co-equal existence of Evil with the Good Spirit is unknown to the Judaic creed, and even at the very moment of the first contact between the two systems the Prophet of the Captivity meets the doctrine of an eternal Dualism of Good and Evil (so natural in itself and so deeply rooted in the Zoroastrian theology) by the announcement, as if in express antithesis: "I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Eternal do all these things" (Is. 45:1-7). And not only are "watchers" the good and evil spirits of the Books of Daniel, Tobit, and Enoch (with the single exception of Asmodeus), called by Hebrew not by Persian names, but their functions are different. The beneficent "messengers" are far more closely bound up with human joys and sorrows than the hierarchy which fills the vacant space of the Persian heaven, and the malevolent accusers far more completely subordinate to the over-ruling power of the same Divine Master, to whom both good and evil are as ministers.

In short, there seems to be a close affinity between the forms which the two religions assumed, but with the exception of a few details it is rather the affinity of a common atmosphere of lofty truths, of a simultaneous sympathy in their view of earthly and heavenly things, than the affinity of direct lineage and discipleship. However, it is a kinship which did not cease with this period of Jewish history. One great doctrine which, though mainly fostered from another quarter, was to be held in unison by the ancient followers of Zoroaster and the later followers of Moses and Isaiah, is yet to be noticed, i.e., the immortality of the soul. One vast influence the Persian religion was still to exercise, if not over the Jewish Church itself then over that which sprang from its bosom, through the subtle invasion of Manicheism which in the early centuries of Christendom was partly as an ally, partly as a foe, to color the growth of its ritual and creed. But this is far in the future. However explained, the connection of Judaism with the faith of Zoroaster is not without instruction. Whatever there is of permanent truth in the substance of any of these beliefs will not lose value if allied or even traced to a religion as pure and venerable as that of the Zendavesta. Whatever there is of transitory or excessive in the forms of any of these may be the more contentedly dropped if it can be shown to be derived from a faith which, however once powerful, now lingers only in the small sect of the Fire-worshippers of Bombay, who alone carry on the once formidable name of "Parsee" or "Persian".

Influence of China
If the influence even of Zoroaster and Cyrus on Judaism be open to question, it will not be expected that any direct connection with remoter Eastern regions can be discovered. Only once in the Hebrew records do we catch a doubtful glimpse of that strange race which has been eloquently described to be at the eastern extremity of Asia what Judaea is at the western – "a people dwelling alone and not reckoned among the nations". When the Evangelical Prophet calls the scattered exiles to return from the uttermost parts of the earth, he extends his cry even to those that "come from the land of Sinim" (Is. 49:12; Ewald doubts, Gesenius affirms, the identification of Sinimwith China). In that solitary word the Empire of China rises on the religious horizon of the historic world. Not a vestige of its influence can be traced on the outer circumference of the theatre on which the movement of mankind was advancing. Yet, having in view the ultimate scope of that movement, it is impossible not to be struck by the coincidence that in the period which was close within the ken of the Prophet of the Captivity, in the very years in which Ezra was preparing for his mission to Palestine, there drew to its close the career of one whose impression on his own nation was deeper than that of the mighty Scribe on the Jewish race.

Death of Confucius (478 B.C.)
Confucius, the Ezra rather than Moses of his race, died in the year 478; "the transmitter, not the maker of belief, born not in possession of knowledge, but loving antiquity, and in it seeking knowledge – for 2000 years the supreme and undisputed teacher of this most populous land", leaving a memory of himself which is still perpetuated even in the manners, gestures, and dress of the Chinese of our day; leaving maxims which, though stamped with homely and pedestrian character belonging to the whole religion of his race, yet still securing for him a place among the permanent teachers of mankind. The superior man is catholic and no partisan – the common man is a partisan and not catholic. It is only the truly virtuous man who can love or hate others. Virtue is not left alone. He who practices it will have neighbors. To be able to judge others by what is in you may be called the Art of Virtue. When you are laboring for others, labor with the same zeal as if it were for yourself. The man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established, seeks to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks to enlarge others. Is there one word which may serve as a rule for one's whole life? Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you wish not to be done to yourself, do not to others.

In those words we cannot doubt that an incense of pure offering went up, as Malachi proclaimed to the Eternal God, even from the rising of the sun. To ask how and why the religion, empire, morality of China have not reached as far as and beyond the level from which they sprang, would lead us too far away from this period.

Influence of India
In that vast country, there was another career yet wider and nobler than that of Confucius, unknown to him and to Ezra and Malachi, which is now for a moment and for the first time also distinctly brought within the view of the Jewish world, although its products had penetrated even to the reign of Solomon. From "India even to Ethiopia" (Esth. 1:1; 8:9) – this was the extreme verge of the dominion of the Persian King, as it appears in the Book of Esther, in describing the struggles of the Persian Court, almost in the very year in which, following close upon the death of the great sage of China, there passed away the greater sage of India, Sakya Muni, more commonly known as Buddha, "the Buddha", "the Enlightened". That extraordinary personage, whose very existence was doubted, whose history was wrapped in uncertainty, was suddenly received as among the foremost characters of the world.  In his book, Bouddha, St. Hilaire wrote, "I hesitate not to say that, with the single exception of Christ, there is, amongst the founders of Religions, no figure purer or more affecting than that of Buddha. His life is blameless. His constant heroism equals his conviction; and if the theory which he announces is false, the personal example that he gives is irreproachable. He is the finished model of all the virtues that he preaches; his self-denial, his charity, his unchangeable sweetness, do not betray him for a single moment. He abandons at the age of twenty-nine the court of his aged father to make himself an ascetic, a beggar. He prepares in silence for his doctrine by six years of retreat and meditation; he propagates it, by the sole power of argument and persuasion, for more than half a century; and when he dies, in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage, who has done good all his life, and who has the assurance of having found the truth."

Wonderful as the appearance of so sacred a person on the scene is, it must be confessed that even in the East, widely as his doctrines and institutions have been spread, the impress of his own character, compared with other founders of religious systems, has been slight and certainly with that One to whom, without irreverence, he has been more than once likened; and outside the sphere of his own wide communion his influence, direct or indirect, is almost nothing. One single Buddhist is known to have travelled westward in ancient times – he who in the reign of Augustus burned himself alive at Athens. It is true that Buddha has been canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, under the name of St. Josaphat; but this singular deviation from the exclusive rules of that Church was the result of one of those inadvertencies into which the Church of Rome has so often fallen in directing the faith of its members. Still, it is difficult for those who believe the permanent elements of the Jewish and Christian religion to be universal and Divine not to hail these corresponding forms of truth or goodness elsewhere, or to recognize that the mere appearance of such saint-like or godlike characters in other parts of the earth, if not directly preparing the way for a greater manifestation, illustrates that manifestation by showing how mighty has been the witness borne to its value, even under the most adverse discouragement and with strangely inadequate effects.

The Influence of Greece
In the ensuing struggles of the Jewish nation, the history that opens before us compels us to take into account another sphere of intellectual and moral influence, which, unlike those prodigious appearances in the far East, has worked with direct and potent energy on Judaism and Christianity and has been incorporated in some form or other into the essence of both.

We have seen the results of the contact of the Jewish race with the Persian monarchy and Persian religion; we have also seen the rise of the greatest teachers of China and India who yet stand apart from the stream of historic movement of which Judaism was the center. We are about to enter on a blank consisting of three centuries, of which in Palestine we know almost nothing. We have looked toward "the rising of the sun" and gathered what we can of the true incense, of the pure offering which went up from thence. Is there any similar or greater accession of new forces such as the Prophet anticipated to appear from the going down of the sun? Hardly, with the exception of those two or three prophetic utterances which have already been quoted, and which were literally before their time, was any eye of Judean Priest or Teacher turned in that direction.

If an Israelite or Syrian looked over the Mediterranean Sea from the heights of Lebanon, to him the whole Western world seemed summed up in the one object within his ken, i.e., the distant range of the island of Cyprus or Chittim. It may be that Phoenician traders had brought back a few Ionian slaves from that complex medley of seagirt coasts and promontories, known as the "isles of the sea" from whom the name of Ion or Javan became familiar to Hebrew ears. It may be that a few Jewish seamen from Joppa or Accho had served in the army of the Great King and shared the struggle in the Bay of Salamis. But no voice yet reaches us from those distant regions. Of the first twelve years of the reign of Xerxes, so teeming with interest for the entire world that lay beyond the Hellespont, the Jewish account contains not a word to indicate aught that should ruffle the splendor and frivolity of the Court of Susa. Yet, none the less had come the hour when an influence more penetrating than any that we have yet touched is about to burst upon the Jewish Church development. Already, at the opening of this period, contemporaneous with Confucius and Buddha in China and India, had arisen the first fathers of Greek Philosophy, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Solon. Already the Jews must have heard the first accents of that Grecian tongue which was soon to take its place as the language of their own sacred books, side by side with their native Hebrew (earliest Greek words in Hebrew Scriptures are the names of musical instruments in Dan. 3:7). And now, at the very same date as the last of the Judean Prophets, arose, if not the earliest yet the most enduring name among the Prophets of the European world.

Not by Eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow – how slowly!
But Westward look – the land is bright.
(Clough)

Authorities:
Malachi
Esther (Hebrew and Greek)
Hartwig Derenbourg, Histoire de la Palestine
Henry Hart Milman, History of Latin Christianity
James Fergusson, [on Susa in his] Dictionary of the Bible
George Rawlinson, Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World
M. Edgar Quinet, Génie des Religions
Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches on Palestine
James Legge, The Life of Confucius
John Lightfoot, edition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians
Max Muller, Chips from a German Workshop
Titus Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews
Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life
Alfred Edersheim, The Temple
Morris Jacob Raphall, Post-Biblical History of the Jews
Adriaan Reland, Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrate
Arthur H. Clough, Poems

---

    

Copyright © StudyJesus.com