The Great Messianic Prophecy [pp. 419-438]

424 Thie Great Messianic Prophecy. [July,
What mean the fearful execrations of many of the Psalms?
"Let his days be few, and let another take his office;
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow;
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg! "
What mean the eulogies of treachery, and of hospitality
desecrated by perjury and assassination?
" Blessed be Jael above women!
She stretched out her hand to the tent pin,
And her right hand to the hammer of the workmen.
She hammered Sisera, she smote his head;
She beat him, she struck through his temples
Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay;
Where he bowed, there he fell down slaughtered!
So perish all thine enemies, O Jehovah! "I
It is no part of our purpose to propose any theory of these
frightful utterances of vindictive passion which abound in Jewish prophecy and poetry. All theories admit this one fact,
that they are true and imperishable records of human opinion.
Like the pillar of salt overlooking the plains of Sodom and
Gomorrah, these bleak, rugged shafts of vengeance stand sentinels by the shores of the buried past, defending from doubt
the deep resentment of the human mind, and pre-eminently of
the Jewish mind, for oppression. From this natural infirmity
no Israelite was exempt. David, the sweet Psalmist of Zion,
was the most fervent curser of them all. Jeremiah never suppresses his sobs but to breathe out vengeance. Isaiah exhausts
ridicule and malediction upon his idolatrous foes. Where in
all the wide wanderings of these kinsmen of the fierce Bedouin,.
who never forgives; where in the eventful history of this
strange people, whom hatred for others has held together when
love for one another had lost its cohesive power, are we to
look for a class of men who humble themselves when they are
oppressed, who open not the mouth when they are led like
sheep to the shearers, like lambs to the slaughter? This
theory of a righteous and submissive class of sufferers in
Israel is one of the Ferversions of history which nothing but
the credulity of modern rationalism can tolerate.
But, after all, we might have dismissed both these theories
summarily, by remarking what is evident to the Ethiopian,
* Ps. Iog9: 8-IO.
t Judges v: 24-27.