CHAPTER 15 - Josiah, (Sixteenth) King of Judah

CHAPTER 16 - Josiah (Sixteenth), Jehoahaz (Seventeenth), Jehoiakim (Eighteenth), King of

CHAPTER 17 - Jehoiakim (Eighteenth), Jehoiachin (Nineteenth), Zedekiah, (Twentieth) King of

THE volume herewith introduced to the reader brings, according to the original plan of the series,

this Bible History to a close. This circumstance n aturally suggests a retrospect, however brief. In

the Prefaces to preceding volumes, the chief characteristics of each period were successively

sketched, and the questions indicated to which they gave rise, as well as the special points in

respect of which the treatment of one part of this History differed from another. The period over

which the present volume extends - that from the decline to the fall of the Kingdoms of Judah and

Israel - can scarcely be said to have any distinguishing features of its own . It is the natural

outcome and the logical conclusion of the history which had preceded. It means that this History,

as presented in Holy Scripture, is one and consistent in all its parts; or, to put it otherwise, that

what God had from the first said and done with reference to Israel was true. Thus, as always, even

the judgments of God point to His larger mercies.

In two respects, however, this period differs from the others, and its history required a somewhat

different treatment. It was the period during which most of the great prophets, whose utterances

are preserved in the books that bear their names, lived and wrought, and over which they exercised

a commanding influence. And never more clearly than in this period does it appear how the

prophet, as the messenger of God, combined the twofold function of preaching to his own and, in

a sense, to every future generation, and of intimating the wider purposes of God in the future.

There is not in the prophetic utterances recorded any one series of admonitions, warnings, or even

denunciations which does not lead up to an announcement of the happy prophetic future promised.

In this respect prophecy has the same fundamental characteristic as the Book of Psalms, in which,

whatever the groundnote, every hymn passes into the melody of thanksgiving and praise. This

similarity is due to the fact that, in their Scriptural aspect, the progress of outward teaching and the

experience of the inner life are ever in accordance. On the other hand, there is not in the prophetic

writings any utterance in regard to the future which has not its root, and, in a sense, its starting

point in the history of the time. The prophet, so to speak, translates the vernacular of the present

into the Divine language of the future, and he interprets the Divine sayings concerning the future

by the well -known language of the present. As between his teaching and his prediction, so

between the history of the present and that of the future there is not a gap: they are one, because

through both runs one unswerving purpose which gradually unfolds what from the first had been

enfolded. And so history and prophecy also are one, because God is one. And so also, if we would

rightly understand them, must we study not so much prophecies as isolated utterances, but as

prophecy in its grand harmonious historical unity.

But apart from the considerations now offered, it must be evident to the most superficial observer

how much and varied light the utterances of the contemporary prophets cast on the condition, the

circumstances, and the history of the time in which they lived. Indeed, from their writings we

obtain the most vivid account, not only of the moral and religious state of the people, and even of

their manners, but of the moving springs and the real his tory of events. On the other hand, it must

be equally evident how the history of the time illustrates not only the occasion but often the