2. Failure to Realize the Ideal

But the actuality in the royal person and in his government never corresponded to the lofty ideal of the prophets. Even in the time of David this fact appears, and consequently the consummation of this kingdom was postponed to the future. Thus according to the "last words" of David (II Sam. xxiii. 1 sqq.), the full glory of this kingdom had as yet only dawned, although with great promise; but under Solomon there was brought about the destruction of those beginnings which had been so full of promise. Only a poor remnant of David's kingdom remained for his heirs; nevertheless, the kings of the divided kingdom held firmly to their Messianic relationship to Yahweh, as is shown by the royal psalms, and the spiritual inheritance from the time of David remained a nourishing soil, whence new hope in a greater future would arise spontaneously or could be evoked by the words of the prophets. Indeed, the less actual ities in the kingdom of Judah corresponded to the sublimity of the ideal, the more probable it ap peared that they would be fully and completely realized in the consummation of the kingdom of Yahweh. It is true that this consummation was to be preceded by the judgment of the Day of Yah weh (q.v.). This is the hope which is in a broader sense Messianic. The whole of God's activity in judgment and in mercy, to which the prophets bear witness, points toward such a consummation; but they do not always speak of such a personal Messiah in the language which later Judaism and the New Testament employed in describing the new king from the house of David, in whom the prophetic ideal of a divine and human king was to be fully realized. Some of the prophets are entirely silent regarding this organ of divine rule and speak only of Yahweh as the one to whom will belong universal dominion, while others describe as the Messiah the human bearer of the divine power and mediator of the divine mercy to his people. Indeed, some prophets recognize the Davidic king as the central point of the future kingdom of God, yet in other descriptions of the future speak solely of the coming of Yahweh and of his future residence in the midst of his people.

3. Early Prophetic Doctrine

It was the firm conviction of the prophets of the northern kingdom that the royal house of David, in spite of its political insignificance, had an indestructible support in God's settlement upon Zion and his covenant with David; and Amos and Hosea discerned there the point of crystallization for the future kingdom of Yahweh. Amps, however, alludes in more general terms to the re establishment of the tabernacle of David, whose rule is again to be extended over the lands promised to him (Amps ix. 11 sqq.). Hosea speaks more indi vidually of "the king, David" of the future (iii. 5) under whose rule the whole people will unite (i. 11) and around whom will gather those scattered and driven from the land by the judgment. In Hosea preparation is made for the portrayal of a Messiah in the later sense of the word, that is, of an ideal future king who will fully realize the sub lime assurances of grace because he will be entirely

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worthy of them. [The passages referred to above are thought by most recent interpreters to be additions by later hands. If so, they illustrate the stages described in the sequel.] Subsequent prophets have drawn the picture with great individuality, for example, Zech. ix. 9 sqq., where the Messiah is praised as a king of peace, bringing salvation and help to his city and people. Similarly Isaiah's expectations were founded upon the house of David. For this reason they revolve about a double center, Yahweh's seat in Zion and a particular king, who, endowed with all the gracious gifts of a ruler blessed by God, is to reestablish the throne of his father. This ruler appears vaguely to the prophet in Isa. vii.; he will be born in the deepest humiliation of the royal house of David, for Immanuel is not some undetermined child who was then to be born, but the future possessor of the land (viii. 8; cf. viii. 10 with ix. 6). From this time, the figure of the descendant of David becomes continually clearer and larger to the prophet. The superhuman attributes which are heaped upon this king in ix: 6-7 should not be taken as mere hyperbole, for nothing was farther from Isaiah's mind than excessive exaltation of human greatness. The prophet would have sternly rejected any mixture of human and divine honors. such as was habitual with Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians. The sublime predicates applied to the scion of David can be understood only as meaning that he recognized in this future ruler a wonderful in-dwelling of God, and this affords the answer to the question as to how the texts regarding the heir to Davidic dignity can agree with the sayings of the same prophet wherein there is no mention of this human king, but only of Yahweh's sublime self-manifestation in Zion. This rule of Yahweh in Zion is the essential and most intimate part of the divine plan for the future. The son of David is only the organ, though a pure and worthy organ, of the invisible ruler. Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, also described the coming son of David as a mysterious, sublime figure, full of the divine, ruling with infinite beatitude and peace. He, too, makes this ruler in his lofty majesty proceed from humble surroundings in David's ancestral home at Bethlehem. Micah, also, prophecies concerning Zion as God's seat, where Yahweh will reveal himself to all nations. In the prophecies of Isaiah regarding foreign nations there is again a remarkable confirmation of this universal rule of Yahweh from Zion as well as of the idealized human kingship there; Egypt and Ethiopia (Cush) and Tyre will do homage to the God of Israel, and the Moabites will seek protection and justice at the gracious throne of David.

The utterances of Obadiah and Joel (which are here placed before those of Amos and Hosea) belong to the prophecies which do not treat of the Messiah, but of the consummation of the rule of

4. Doctrine Yahweh over Israel and over the na of thetions; later come those of Nahum,

Later Habakkuk (cf., however, iii. 13) and

Prophets. Zephaniah. In Jeremiah and Ezekiel,

also, the promises which refer in general terms to God's kingdom are preponderant. The nearer the political rule of the house of David approached its fall, the more definitely did the prophets claim that to no one but to him would belong the rule over the earth, and that the remnant of his people would be distinguished before the whole world by his selfmanifestation in his holy dwelling-place. However, the hope of a vicegerent of God, who will procure salvation and blessings for his people, often appears as an accompanying factor of this expectation (cf. Jer. xxiii. 5-6 with xxxiii. 1 sqq., 15 sqq.; also, Jer. xxx. 9; Ezek. xvii. 22 sqq., xxxvii. 23-24; against the attacks of those who deny the existence of Messianic prophecies in the preexilie period, or are at most willing to admit them after the time of Josiah, cf. W. Moeller, Die. 7nessiani sche Erwartung der varexilischen Propheten, Gütersloh, 1906). In the "servant of Yahweh" of Deutero-Isaiah, instead of the Davidic king there appears another human figure as the medium of the consummation of the divine plan of salvation for Israel and for humanity. By his designation, he realizes fully and purely the ideal which should constitute the vocation of the whole people: to serve Yahweh in intelligent and willing obedience. Submission to the will of God is with him so complete and so thoroughly unselfish in contradistinction to the obstinacy of the people, that he endures without resistance the extreme of humiliation, the bitterest suffering and death, although he has in no wise deserved it. Precisely through such patient endurance of the unbearable does he fulfil his all-embracing mission and move onward to his exaltation. Whatever may be the difference between the appearance of this generally rejected and despised "servant of Yahweh" and the glorious king whose picture has been drawn in Isa. ix., xi.; Micah iv., etc., there exists an intimate relationship between them; Delitzsch, therefore, is quite right in calling this servant " the mediator of salvation as prophet, priest, and king in the same person." It is also true that there is no lack of testimony in favor of the external lowliness of the Godchosen prince in the earlier Messianic utterances. In Isa. xi. and elsewhere, the Messiah grows up in the lowliest surroundings. If Zech. xii.-xiv. was composed before the exile, not only was the synthesis between the royal and the prophetic vocation already completed, but the chastisement and the death of the trusted companion of God, of the true shepherd of his people, had also been predicted. It is the bitter sorrow over his death which brings the saving change of heart among the people. After the Babylonian exile Messianic prophecy revives both in a narrower and a broader sense. Haggai and Zechariah at first had in view the rebuilding of the temple as the place where Yahweh would reveal himself more sublimely than ever be- fore. But tW future revelation of tho inuiIihlt Gad can not be separated from the elevation of the house of David (Hag. ii. 20 sqq.), nor from the appearance of the "sprout" of this race, which, springing from such small beginnings, is to complete the divine structure on Zion and unite the royal with the priestly dignity for the blessing of his people (Zechariah). Malachi, without alluding to this personality, speaks of the coming "angel of Yahweh" who will sit in judgment on his people; and, as re.

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gards human instruments, he thinks only of an "Elias," who will prepare the way for him. Finally, in the book of Daniel, the kingdom of God appears and is to triumph over the successive empires through the "people of the saints," i.e., Israel, which has remained faithful. But this people is to have a human chief who is designated as the "son of Man," vii., 13. Here the Messiah acquires a universal designation which Jesus assumes in the New Testament.