will I raise up thy seed after thee [prolem tuam post te], which shall proceed out of thy bowels and I will establish his kingdom."

The idea contained in is general and individual. There is nothing decisive in the twelfth verse against the general signification, but ver. 13 is individual in its application:

"He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever (-)."

The expression - however carries us beyond the individual limits, for the reign of Solomon, which lasted forty years, is only a part of the illimitable course of time which is intended. That which follows does not apply to this or that Davidic ruler, but to the Davidic rulers as such (vs. 14-16):

"I will be his father, and he shall be my son, whom, if he commit iniquity, I will chastige with the rod of men and with stripes of the children of men" [virga humana et plagis humanis, i. e. modicis, not peremptorily, but in a fatherly way]. And my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thy house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee [as an endless line extending from thee into the remotest future]. Thy throne shall be settled forever." The promises: "Confirmabo solium regni ejus in aeternum”, and, "ego ero illi in patrem et ipse erit mihi in filium, must be fulfilled in the highest sense (sensu eminentissimo) in the Messiah of the house of David. But also the promise: is aedificabit domum nomini meo, which Solomon applied to himself (1 Kings V, 19; VIII, 17-20) and David applied to Solomon (1 Chron. XXII, 7-10; XXVIII, 10; XXIX, 1), even this promise according to Zech. VI, 12 awaits its final fulfilment in the Messiah.

Rem. 2. David responds to the divine promise with a prayer of thanksgiving (2 Sam. VII, 18 etc.; 1 Chron. XVII, 16 etc.). In the former passage (vs. 18b. 19) he speaks as follows:

"Who am I, O Lord Jehovah? and what (") is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet small in thine eyes, O Lord Jehovah; but thou hast spoken also of thy servant's house from afar, and indeed after the manner of men, O Lord Jehovah."

The expression, which probably signifies as we have translated, "and indeed after the manner of men", means: Since thou hast entered with me and my posterity into the relation of a father to his children. Hence the words praise God's deep condescension, for which we find in 1 Chron. XVII, 17: “And thou hast regarded me after the manner of a man of exalted station (7 in

.(27 ,I Chron. XV השר הַמַּשָׂא ad modum hominis excelsi, compare הַמַּעֲלָה

Hence the words are so modified, that not the Divine condescension, but the elevation of the seed of David to God's immediate neighborhood is praised.

S 22.

David's View of the Messiah as distinct from himself.

After David in the midst of the Ammonitic and Syrian war, when he found himself on the summit of external glory, had fallen

into the twofold sin of adultery and murder, it was natural that his Messianic view of himself should receive a terrible shock. His typicoprophetic psalms, such as XVI and XXII, were all composed before this period. But in Ps. CX, which was written afterwards, and which alludes to the conquest of the Ammonitic capital, he bows, as if he had descended from his throne, before the Christ of God as his Lord. The image of the Messiah here appears separated from David's person. Even the beginning (8) shows that we have to do not merely with the utterance of the typical personage prophetically elevated by the Spirit (see § 20), but with an immediate prophecy.

Remark. The phrase, with which the psalm opens rarely stands, as in this case, at the beginning of a sentence, and hence is all the more emphatic (Is. LV, 8, compare I, 24; 1 Sam. II, 30); even, where genitives other than the divine name follow, it has almost an oracular meaning. If this is the case it is evident that it is not the people which speak in this psalm but David, ́ for an oracle which has been received is never reported with D, but always introduces something which is perceived at the time by the speaker. Hence the psalm not only bears at the very beginning the stamp of prophecy, but also afterwards; for how could it be possible that the people should be the subject speaking in ver. 4?

"The Lord has sworn and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."

Where then had such a declaration been uttered concerning David, to which the people could refer? Whoever is priest after the order of Melchizedek, is priest and king in one person; and he who possesses these dignities forever is the possessor of a royal priesthood which suffers no abridgment through death, but continues abiding in his person always. The Old Testament here stands in contradiction with itself, that is, it points to a future which contradicts the form of the present. This is evident from the interpretation which the prophet Zechariah (VI, 12 etc.) has put upon this psalm. That which follows in the psalm (vs. 5-10) does not unfold this divine declaration concerning the priest after the order of Melchizedek. It remains isolated, and has only retrospectively a connection with what is said in ver. 3, that the army of this king is clothed in the beauty of holiness. It is therefore a priestly army, and this introduces what is said in ver. 4 of the unique priesthood of its leader.

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The last Words of David.

דִּבְרֵי דָוִד הָאַהֲרֹנִים) In like manner the last words of David

2 Sam. XXIII, 1—7) indicate their prophetic character even by their beginning, which reminds us of the oracles of Balaam (Num. XXIV, 3 etc., 15 etc.). David must have been more clearly conscious than

ever of the contrast between the reality and the ideal of the divinely anointed One, as he lay upon his death-bed. Once more all the glory with which God had blessed him comes before his soul. He the highly favored one, who had considered himself immortal (Ps. XVI) must now die! He therefore grasps the pillars of the promise, ceases to connect the Messianic hopes with himself, and as a prophet beholds the future of his seed. His sun goes down that it may rise all the more gloriously. The idea of the Messiah is yet to be realized in his house. The picture of the future (3-4) is nothing else than the image of the Messiah, which now has been entirely separated from his subjectivity, and which stands before him as purely objective. Remark. We translate the passage (2 Sam. XXIII, 1—7) as follows: "And these are the last words of David. The utterance of David, the son of Jesse, and the utterance of the man who was raised up on high altum as accusative of the direction, like Hosea VII, 16], of the anointed of the God of Jacob, and of the sweet Psalmist of Israel. The Spirit of the Lord hath spoken in me, and his word was upon my tongue. The God of Israel hath spoken, the Rock of Israel hath discoursed to me: A ruler of men, a righteous, a ruler in the fear of God, and as the light of the morning when the sun rises, a cloudless morning, [when] from sunshine [and] from rain green [springs] from the earth. to be explained after the analogy of Job. IX, 35, compare Num. XIII, 34; Is. LI, 6] is my house with God, but he hath set an eternal covenant for me, ordered in all things, and kept, for all my salvation and all grace should he not cause it to spring? [ is to be pronounced interrogatively as equivalent to. And that which is nothing worth like detested thorns are they all together, because they are not taken with the hand; but the man who will touch them arms himself with iron and a shaft [i. e. with a long spear], and they shall be utterly burned with fire in destruction

is לֹא־כן] For not small

.(to cease, here to cease to be שבת from the verbe בַּשֶׁבֶת)

$24.

The Psalm of Solomon.

In connection with what has gone before, we need not be at all surprised, when Solomon, in the seventy-second psalm, makes the image of the Messiah, as a precious legacy, which God had placed before the soul of his dying father, and which indeed contains nothing superhuman, his own ideal. The character of this psalm is preeminently optative. It was first composed by Solomon as a public prayer for himself as the new king. It is not directly, but indirectly prophetic, since the wish is expressed that that may be fulfilled in Solomon which is prophesied of the Messiah.

Remark. In ver. 1: "Elohim, thy judgments give to the king, and thy righteousness to the king's son", the article is wanting both times in accordance with the peculiarity of the poetic style. In the words of ver. 6: "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as powerful showers, upon the earth”, we recognize an echo of 2 Sam. XXIII, 4. In the closing words (ver. 17): "His name endure forever; so long as the sun shines shall his name bud, they shall bless themselves in him all nations shall call him blessed [LXX: zai ebλoryθήσονται ἐν αὐτῷ πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς, πάντα τὰ ἔθνη μακαριοῦσιν αὐτόν] it is evident that the wishes and hopes are directed to a king in whom that is realized which was promised to Abraham and his seed. But even here the Messianic image of the king is entirely human and corresponds in the three emblematical gifts of the Magi only to the gold, for gold indicates the king, frankincense the heavenly, and myrrh the suffering and dying One (aurum regem, thus caelestem, mori notat unctio).

$ 25.

Messianic Glimpses in the Chokma-Literature.

We cannot expect a directly prophetic psalm from Solomon. David had the gift (zápisua) of prophecy, Solomon that of wisdom (1 Kings III, 12 and 28, Matt. XII, 42). The age of David is that of struggling faith (not), the age of Solomon is that of self-confident knowledge (vots). The Proverbs and the Canticles of Solomon, as well as the book of Job, which probably were written in the time of Solomon, belong to the Chokma-Literature (70). The book of Proverbs is occupied with the manifold relations of life, and assigns for them rules which are grounded in the fear of God. The book of Job, in the dramatized history of a righteous man, who was not an Israelite, discusses the question respecting the divine motives and purposes in the sufferings of the righteous; and the Song of Songs celebrates the love of man and wife, as Solomon experienced it in its monogamous ideality, in the person of Shulamith, the beloved of his youth. It is not a prophetic book, Solomon is therein. only unconsciously a type of Christ, and Shulamith the Galilean a type of the church raised by Him from a humble position to loving communion with Him. It stands in the canon as a typical picture upon a basis which is no less ethical than erotic, without demanding an allegorical interpretation. On the other hand the forty-fifth psalm requires an allegorical interpretation. It views the king, whose marriage it celebrates, in the light of Messianic elevation and destiny, and removed from its historical occasion, demands the translation of all

sensuous features into the supersensuous, according to the spiritual character of the Antitype.

Rem. 1. The Redeemer (5 Job XIX, 23—27) is God himself; but the interpreting angel (272 angelus internuntius) in Elihu's address, Job XXXIII, 23 etc., is a prefiguration of the divine and human Redeemer, for the angelic form is the most ancient, which the hope of a mediator of salvation took on. The angel of the covenant of prophecy (Mal. III, 1) is the realization of the mediatorial angel postulated by the Chokma.

Rem. 2. According to the traditional interpretation of the Synagogue Shulamith is an image of the congregation of Israel. Solomon however is not an image of the Messiah, but an anthropomorphic representation of Jehovah himself. In this sense every of Solomon's Song with the exception of VIII, 11 is considered as that is as an indirect designation (5) of the God of peace.

Rem. 3. The forty-fifth psalm which has been adopted by the church is no longer a poem celebrating a special occasion, but an advent hymn, in which the future Messiah is greeted and celebrated. In this connection it is worthy of remark that the psalms, as hymns of the church, have received a deeper and a higher meaning than that which they had in their historical origin. Schultz in his Alttestamentliche Theologie has an entire chapter on this subject (p. 828-831), which he entitles: "The secondary Meaning of Scripture" (der zweite Schriftsinn). From the position of this chapter at the very end of Schultz's book, it might appear, as if this change in the application of the psalms was first effected in the consciousness and worship of the post-exilic congregation, but the expression "to the musical director" (2), which occurs in the superscription of many psalms is pre-exilic. And even in the literature of the period before the exile there are traces of psalms, which had received a different meaning and application.

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Gad's Relation to Redemptive History.

The most celebrated representatives of official prophecy in David's period, were Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer. As Nathan connected Messianic prophecy forever with the house of David, so Gad was instrumental in moulding the history of salvation even till the period of the New Testament, since by directing David to build an altar on the threshingplace of Araunah, the Jebusite, he laid the foundation of the temple upon mount Moriah, in which Israel by prayer and sacrifice honored his God for more than a thousand years. A long pause however now enters in the further extension of the Messianic prophecy. We are acquainted with not a few prophets of the first epoch of the royal period after the division of the kingdom (975-915 B. C.), belonging to both kingdoms, but they are exclusively occupied with the internal affairs of