Temple, the death of their nation, staggered the Jews and filled them with horror and despair. In spite of all prophetic warnings, not for one moment had they at heart believed that Jehovah ever could thus cast off His Israel. For 700 years, every Israelite had been born and bred in the conviction that Jehovah's union with Israel was closer than that of mother and child, husband and wife. The fall of Jerusalem and of the Temple, Jehovah's own City and House, stunned them one and all and threw them into the depths of hopelessness. Jehovah had done the impossible, cast off His people, cancelled His everlasting Covenant, smitten Israel to the dust in His divine anger. It was all over with the nation. Even if repentance was not now too late,-it clearly was,how could they possibly show their penitence, cut off as they were from all access to God? They were far away from Jehovah's land1 where He dwelt, away from His Holy City and His House where alone sacrifice and worship could be offered to Him (Deut. xii.). They were literally under a vast Interdict. In a strange and "unclean" heathen land, how could they possibly approach Jehovah or worship Him as required by His Book of the Law which they had sworn to obey? They could not celebrate any sacrifice, keep any holy Feast, hold any ritual services; by God's own order, these were absolutely tied down to the Holy City and its Temple. Hence the heart-cry of Ps. cxxxvii: "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion."

Then it was that a Jeremiah and an Ezekiel cheered them with bracing words of comfort and hope. Hitherto, their one theme had been denunciations and woes, the downfall of Jerusalem and nation. Now that God has set His seal to their words and made them true, they strike quite a new note. They

Ezek. xi. 15: Ye are "far from the Lord," say the inhabitants left in Jerusalem to the exiles.

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bend all their energies to brace the crushed and bleeding hearts of the people with the assurance of a new and glorious Israel soon to rise from the ashes of the old. Even a Jeremiah is optimistic now; but he is far away. Ezekiel is with them, and how they rally round him and treasure his comforting words in their hearts! A few years later, more welcome and inspiring than either is II. Isaiah with his "Away with sorrow, comfort ye My people. I shall deliver you, build up My Jerusalem, lay the foundations of My Temple. Can a woman forget her sucking child? Yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget thee, my Israel."

The fiery ordeal of 586 was terrific for Israel, and it sifted the chaff from the wheat. Voicing the popular creed of that day, some exclaimed: "Bel has beaten Jehovah," and apostatised. Others, equally puzzled and stunned by the paralysing shock, stopped short of apostasy, but murmured bitterly. Others, again, saw in it a punishment for sin, but their fathers', not their own: "Our fathers have sinned and are not, and as for us, we bear their iniquities," and they, too, murmured. Some cleaved to God through it all as never before. The more godly among them, "the righteous," "the poor and humbled ones," saw that a Righteous Jehovah could do no other than He had done. With shame and sorrow of heart, they turned to the God of their fathers, firmly resolved to cleave to Him and obey His law. Probably this "holy seed" of the future Israel formed but a remnant of the Jewish exiles, but they were in dead earnest.

Cut off from sacrificial services,-a deprivation as awful then as would be the total abolition of Holy Communion to-day,-all the more assiduously did pious Jews devote themselves to such religious duties as were still open to them, e.g. prayer, Bible-study, fasts, and penitence. Now it was, too, that Sabbath observance and the rite of circumcision acquired an exceptional importance as distinctive marks differ

entiating Jews from all others. The meetings for Bible-study, prayer, and mutual edification, out of which synagogue-services afterwards arose, also first came into vogue during this period. Possibly the books of the prophets,-so real to them now,—were read at the services; but the Book of the Law stood first and foremost by far. From Ezekiel's day onward, it was the bed-rock foundation of Israel's religion.

The most striking feature of the Exile is the vast stride in Israel's religious growth during these 70 years of trial and suspense. In religious thought and production it was a period of healthy and prolific activity. In 586 B.C. strange and crude was the medley of popular beliefs and superstitions prevalent among the exiles. Jeremiah and Ezekiel give us some notion of it. Stunned by Israel's Fall men asked: Is Jehovah beaten by Bel? Can Jehovah avail us in Bel's land? Whence God's awful wrath? Our fathers' sins or our own? If our own, why? Our ruin ran on the heels of our Reform; was it to blame? Were our fathers' high-places and many sacrifices more pleasing to Jehovah, and is He angry for our giving them up? Yet Moses' Book of the Law (Deut.) is God's own Word. Have we not obeyed it aright? Which have we neglected, its ritual or its moral laws?

Each of these divergent views had its advocates. We must remember how very recently these exiles had been weaned from their superstitious creeds and practices. Many were still wedded to them; most, if not all, viewed Jehovah as God only in His own. land. Such was the unpromising material that Israel's spiritual leaders had to cope with and correct. In 60 years, they stamped out these false ideas and gave Israel a more or less coherent creed. Fully coherent and consistent Judaism never was. As repeatedly stated, the organic sense is weak in Jews, and they constantly hang inconsistent pictures side by side. To the end Judaism, more concerned with heart than head, practice than knowledge, never had

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a logically systematic theology. Its creed was ever simple, childlike, many-sided, inconsistent; but for that very reason, it met admirably the equally simple. and incoherent needs of ordinary men; it proved itself a creed not only admirably suited to the everyday moralities of the common life of all sorts and conditions of men, but also capable of evoking heroic endurance and self-sacrifice. Its many-sidedness reflects the many-sidedness of the Bible on which it is wholly based. A pious Israelite of Ezra's day and after could mould his life on the Priestly Code, yes, and on prophetic Deuteronomy, and Genesis, and "the Prophets."

True, the Priestly Code had not been enacted in 580, but it was in practice even then all the same. Many of its rites and traditions were in use long before their codification, well-known and in constant practice. Since 621, Deuteronomy with its prophetic ideals was also the law of the land. During the Captivity, both these religious schools of thought, the priestly and the prophetic, were largely developed, and they gradually converged towards each other (e.g. Malachi), though they never actually formed one organic whole. Hence, from 586, a twofold character is stamped on Israel's religion and literature. We have a legal school, e.g. Ezek., Haggai, Zech., Priestly Code, Chron., and a prophetic (or ethical) school, e.g. Job, Eccl., Proverbs. The Psalter is their ideal blend.

The Captivity also produced scribes-originally priests, later not necessarily or generally priestsmen who devoted their lives to the preserving, copying, editing, and interpreting of the Scriptures, especially the Law. Ezra is the first scribe mentioned by name. The Priestly Code and Chronicles are their work, but there were prophetic or Deuteronomic scribes as well. After the Captivity, Israel's spiritual leaders were conservative and reflective, rather than creative. There is less "open vision," they rather drive home old truths.

EZEKIEL.

Ezekiel's prophetic career covers the years 592570 B.C. He was one of the Temple-priests who shared Jehoiachin's exile in 597. He is a particularly interesting figure, the link between prophet and priest, a blend of both. As prophet he is keenly alive to the power of the spoken Word for man's conversion and, even more than Jeremiah, sees in religion an inner relationship between God and the individual soul (xviii.). But if he is a preacher of righteousness, still more is he a priest. His real claim to greatness is as the creator of the Church-State with its Priestly Code. His ideal, embodied in his Vision (xl.-xlviii.), was the model on which the Jewish Church-State was formed. What Augustine's "City of God" was to the Catholic Church, that the "Vision" of Ezekiel was to postexilic Judaism.

Ezekiel's mission falls of itself into two distinct periods.1 From 592-586 B.C., he is the stern prophet, rebuking sin, predicting a Judah's Fall and Captivity, expected by none but Jeremiah and himself. From 586-570 he is the consoler and organiser; he becomes the exiles' "pastor," their comforter and teacher, bracing and inspiring them for the brighter era he foresees in store for God's people. In his Vision he has before his mind's eye the whole organisation of the new Church-State that is to be, even to minute details, and ardently looks forward to Israel's Return and its new Temple.

Hardly any other "man of God" is so hard to define as Ezekiel. The most divergent estimates have been formed of him, e.g. "a priest in prophet's clothing"; "a creative genius, the last of the prophets and one of the greatest"; "no prophet at all, merely a pastor exercising the cure of souls, a spiritual

These two periods sharply divide the book of Ezekiel. Up to Ezek. xxiv. he combats delusion; from xxxii. 21 he combats despair; in between comes the group of prophecies against foreign nations (xxv.−xxxii.).