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the Lord. For though Cyrus appears indeed as a Divine instrument for the deliverance of Israel, and gives glory, as a heathen, to the name of Jehovah, he is not brought forward as one who is to carry on unto perfection the kingdom of God upon earth. In Zechariah, on the contrary, the Messiah distinctly appears as the future Redeemer of the people, and indeed as their atoning High Priest. This is the case first in ch. iii. (comp. §200), where the people are comforted by the statement that God will graciously accept the priesthood over which he presides, while in ver. 8 sq. it is further declared that the true time of grace is still future. The perfect High Priest to whom the present priesthood typically refers is the Branch, the Son of David (comp. § 231). Hence allusion is now made, vi. 9-15, by the symbolical action of crowning the high priest Joshua with the double crown, to the union of the priestly and royal dignities in the person of Messiah. For in this so often incorrectly understood passage the Branch can alone be the subject of, ver. 13, and two persons are not there spoken of.

The Messiah here appears as an atoning Priest; but another special feature is added, xii. 10-13. The prophet declares that the future restoration of the communion of the covenant people with the Lord will be effected on His part by the outpouring of the spirit of grace and supplication, and on that of the people by contrition and repentance: "I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only sop, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo." Thus much is clear in this much-misused passage, that the piercing of one, in whose person the Lord is as it were Himself pierced, is spoken of. The assassination of a prophet, as Hitzig supposes, is very

far from being intended. The pierced one must be one who may be likened to King Josiah, with whom, when he was mortally wounded in the valley of Megiddo, the last hope of the nation fell (§ 184). And who else can this be than that Shepherd and fellow of Jehovah, who, according to xiii. 7, fell by the sword, after the last effort of deliverance which God made through him had proved vain, nay, had been shamefully requited, xi. 4-14. Justice was so far done to the Messianic interpretation by older Jewish theology, that since the acknowledgment of a suffering and dying son of David could not from its standpoint be conceded, it invented for this passage a second Messiah, "the Messiah, the son of Joseph," who was to fall in the conflict with Gog and Magog. Lastly, with respect to the passage Dan. ix. 24 sqq., the T, who suffers the death which involves Jerusalem in destruction, is indeed understood by one set of interpreters of the Messiah (3). This is, however, opposed by the reference of the whole passage to the Maccabean period, as the connection certainly requires. The

who perishes is then regarded as the assassinated high priest Onias III., in which case, however, the passage would still have a typical reference to the Messiah (4).

(1) It cannot be disputed that the point of view which generally occupies the foreground in the description of the servant is not the consummation of the kingdom, but the fulfilment of Israel's national vocation. So also, in the description of the church's future glory, Isa. Ix. sq., the kingdom is no longer mentioned.

(2) Isa. lv. 3 sqq. is now mostly explained so as to make it transfer the office of the race of David to the people. But it is also possible that he in whom David is to be a witness, leader, and commander to the people is the Messiah.

(3) See Hengstenberg, Christologie, 2d ed. iii. 1, p. 64 sqq. (4) On the Messianic doctrine of extra-canonical Judaism, see the article quoted, 422 sq. On the history of Messianic interpretation in the Christian church, comp. the treatise of Hengstenberg, id. iii. 2, p. 121 sqq.

PART III.

OLD TESTAMENT WISDOM (1).

$235.

General Preliminary Remarks.

THE Old Testament wisdom () forms, with the law and prophecy (though in co-operation with the latter), a special province of knowledge, to which three of the canonical books of the Old Testament, viz. Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and, in virtue of their matter, many of the psalms also, pre-eminently belong. The law gives the commandments and claims of Jehovah. Prophecy proclaims the word of the Lord, which reveals His counsels, explains and passes judgment upon the time then present in its light, and discloses the object of God's mode of government. The Khochmah does not in an equal manner refer its matter to direct Divine causation. It is true that a wise and understanding heart is the gift of God (comp. such passages as 1 Kings iii. 12, Eccles. ii. 26), the spirit of man, the candle of the Lord (Prov. xx. 27) (2); but the proverb () of the wise is the produce of his own experience and thought, as it is so frequently expressed, and not a word of God in the stricter sense of the term (3). The position of wisdom with respect to revelation is rather as follows. Upon the soil already formed by the facts of Divine revelation and the theocratic ordinances (4), springs up not merely a practical piety, but an impulse for knowledge. The Israelite mind, reflecting upon the view of the world presented by revelation,

431

and the life-task prescribed thereby, follows up such thoughts to their consequences, and thus seeks to acquaint itself with those subjects also which are not directly determined in revelation, striving especially to obtain light concerning those enigmas and contradictions of life which are at all times obtruding themselves. Thus arises what the Old Testament calls. The original signification of the root on being, as appears from the Arabic, to make fast, to hold fast (5), the word Khochmah implies that amidst phenomena man attains to something fixed and stable, which becomes a standard for his judgment. The Old Testament Khochmah has been already designated as the philosophy of the Hebrews. And undoubtedly that portion of the Old Testament Scriptures which belongs to it is akin to the philosophy of other nations; for it does not concern itself with the ordinances and history of the theocracy, but takes as its subject, on the one hand, cosmical arrangements and natural life, and, on the other, the moral relations of man. Hence these two provinces of the Khochmah may be further compared with the physics and ethics of the Greeks; while, on the other hand, nothing analogous to logic is found in the Old Testament, nor even in the post-canonical Jewish wisdom (Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom), and first appears comparatively in the Talmud. Old Testament wisdom is nevertheless essentially different from other philosophy. Is is based, indeed, upon the observation of nature and of human affairs, and especially in the latter respect upon experience as handed down by the ancients; comp. how the sources of knowledge are described, Job xii. 7-12, v. 27, viii. 8 sq. (Isa. xl. 21, 28). To such investigations of nature and human life, however, it is placed under a regulator which Greek wisdom does not possess; it starts from a supernaturalistic assumption which is wanting to the latter. For Hellenistic philosophy seeks within the world the ultimate reasons and purposes of existence; but the knowledge of a living God transcending the world, of the almighty