or less to the satisfaction of the modern Christian reader. Minute verbal critics tell us,-and it is quite true (as it is also essentially true of the Song of Solomon*),— that the name of GOD is not in the book of Esther. Whereupon another indignantly exclaims, "God not in the book of Esther! If not there, where is He? To our view, his glory-the glory of his goodness in caring for, and shielding from harm, his afflicted church-shines through every page." It is curious, certainly, that while the leading object of the book seems to be to record the providential deliverance of the Jews from impending massacre, no direct religious acknowledgment should appear in it. in it. We may see Providence, it is true, in the history; but the historian does not point it out to us, as Jewish historians, with this one exception, endeavour to do only too minutely. This is a remarkable characteristic of the book, it must be allowed. Probably it was written in the spirit in which it is valued by the Jews to this day, a spirit rather worldly than religious. The apocryphal additions to the book of Esther (which unwittingly date their own origin in the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra) endeavour to supply this palpable omission of the devotional element in the Hebrew book, both in the prayers and speeches of Esther and Mordecai, and in the reflections of the historian.

* In the Song of Solomon, indeed, our word-critic may find the name Jehovah used as a superlative idiom in ch. viii. 6, where jealousy has "a most vehement flame," which in the original is a flame of Jehovah.

PART III.

THE DEVOTIONAL AND DIDACTIC BOOKS.

ALL the preceding books of the Hebrew Scriptures have been prose compositions, with the occasional interspersion of poetry. All that now remain are prevailingly poems, with the occasional intermixture of prose, chiefly in the narrative parts.

It is in these, rather than in the former, that we find the true living portraiture of Judaism. They exhibit its practical, moral and devotional aspects. They clothe its historical principles with real flesh and blood, and shew it instinct with a spirit of life which we might hardly expect to find developed, if we have approached the study of the Jews' religion through the dreadful history of their wars, and the tiresome detail of their rites and ceremonies. Perhaps we ought rather to have begun the investigations proposed in these pages-as most of us in practice do as regards the Bible itself— with the devotional books; and then to have read back to its historical details and ceremonial usages. At any rate, the books now opening before us possess a vastly superior interest to most of those hitherto examined. We appreciate the human skeleton, only in its perceived relation to the living form and movement and function. And if we have seemed to anatomize Judaism with too

critical touch thus far, we the more gladly see in it henceforth the living and spiritual elements of its hightoned Theism, its didactic morals and practical wisdom, and its devotional thought and feeling, as displayed with ever-varied interest in the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

A few observations on the general characteristics of Hebrew poetry may be useful before proceeding further.

Every reader feels, whether he can describe it or not, that there is a striking difference in style between the books of Kings or Chronicles and the Psalms. Or, in reading the book of Job-which we are next to openevery one is sensible of a change of style from the narrative in the second chapter, where Job's friends come to condole with him, to the words of the patriarch in the third, where he "curseth his day." The transition is from plain narrative prose to impassioned dramatic poetry.

"Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great. After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.

And Job spake, and said,

Let the day perish wherein I was born,

And the night in which it was said, A man child is conceived.

Let that day be darkness!

Let not God regard it from above!

Neither let the light shine upon it!

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it!
Let a cloud dwell upon it!

Let the blackness of the day terrify it!

As for that night, let darkness seize upon it!
Let it not be joined unto the days of the year!
Let it not come into the number of the months!
Lo! let that night be solitary!

Let no joyful voice come therein !

Let them curse it that curse the day,

Who are ready to raise up their mourning!
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark!
Let it look for light, but have none,

Neither let it see the dawning of the day;

Because it shut not up the doors of the womb against me,
Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes."

Every reader feels at once that there is a transition, not simply from narrative to passion, but from the prose style which befits the former to a more condensed and measured style of expression, balanced and regulated by something like law, and giving evidence of something approaching to rhythm, even through the disguise of a translation in which rhythm is not attempted.

We may, indeed, translate any foreign poet (that is, a real poet) as literally as our own language will allow, retaining his division of verses and stanzas; and, though the effect may be strange to the English ear and feeling, and far from doing justice to the foreign author, yet the character of poetry is felt to attach to the composition. The order of thought and sentiment forbids us to call it prose. The want of the metrical verse of the original (and of rhyme too, if the original had rhyme), detracts greatly from the effect of such a translation, but does not obliterate the essential features of poetry.

As regards Hebrew poetry, this is especially the case. Its laws, as regards outward structure, are so simple,

that a literal translation generally preserves the character of the original to such a degree as no other poetry allows when translated into a foreign language.

In Hebrew poetry there is no rhyme; it is pure blank verse; so the translation loses nothing on that score. Then its versification does not seem to have been tied down to any very rigid rules as regards the number of feet and syllables in a verse; so the translation may, with ordinary skill, be made sufficiently to fulfil the requirements due on this score. The most characteristic marks of Hebrew poetry lie in the structure of the thought, and in the verbal expression as moulded accordingly. Short, sententious versicles, each expressing a complete idea, or else having distinct correspondence or contrast to other versicles, or successively adding completeness or intensity to the idea or feeling expressed in previous ones, mark the structure of Hebrew verse. The critics call this structure parallelism. The first two lines of Job's speech are parallel :

"Let the day perish wherein I was born,

And the night in which it was said, A man child is conceived."

The idea expressed in the former is virtually repeated in the second, with a variation of phraseology to include the night in the curse pronounced upon the day. The critics call this the synonymous parallelism.

Job proceeds to enlarge in what may be called the intensive or cumulative parallelism. First, as to "the day," in verses 4th and 5th:

"Let that day be darkness!

Let not God regard it from above!"

and so forth. And then as regards the night, in the next four verses: