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PREFACE
THE volume herewith introduced to the reader brings, according to the original plan of
the series, this Bible History to a close. This circumstance naturally 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,
(^)