LEVEL 2

HOPE HERALDED

d) Poetry and Wisdom Books

Psalms

In some Bibles, the 150 Psalms, or songs of devotion to God, are divided into five Books of unequal length.  The Psalms in the first Book are attributed to David as are some in each of the other four.  Psalms due to other writers occur later and come from later times.  David was called the "sweet psalmist of Israel" and he claims that the Spirit of the Lord spoke by him.  He knew that God had made an everlasting covenant with him which would apply to his descendants on his throne (2Sam 23:1,2,5).

It must be kept in mind that David's psalms express the thoughts of Israel's king, who led the army against their enemies and had to judge criminals.  This helps explain the severity of some of them.  His words often apply not only to himself but also to his successors and especially to the final King, the Messiah.  Here are a few of David's Psalms which describe the Messiah better than they do David himself:

1. The speaker cries out that he is forsaken by God, as wicked men pierce his hands and feet and divide his garments among them.  But God hears him and his sufferings cause God to be worshipped among all nations (Ps 22:1,16,18, 27, etc.).

2. In Psalm 110, David affirms that the Lord said to his Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool" and "You are a priest forever" (110:1,3).

3. In Psalm two, rulers who will not submit to the Christ, or Anointed one, are warned that he will finally dash his enemies in pieces like pottery.

4. Psalm 72 was written for Solomon, but Solomon sinned and could not fulfill it.  So it is Christ who will save the children of the needy, give peace as long as the moon endures, and have all nations to serve him, when crops will grow to the mountain tops.

Christ is pictured in some other psalms, not as an earthly king, but as God, coming to judge the world and gather his holy ones: Ps 50:3-5; 96:13; 98:9.

PROVERBS

The Book of Proverbs sets out the wisdom of Solomon and of others.  "Wisdom is the principal thing ...She will place on your head...  a crown of glory" (4:7,9).

Wisdom was the priority of Solomon when he responded to God's offer to give him whatever he desired, and it caused homage to be paid to him by the kings of the earth.  Wisdom was contained in the Law of Moses, which elevated Israel (Deut 4:5,6) and gave success to Joshua (Josh 1:8).  But the Law, without the gift of wisdom to apply it, would not have been sufficient to raise Israel to the pinnacle reached in Solomon's reign.  The commandments do not cover all the details of the diverse situations of life.  Wisdom also is needed, to know how to apply the principles of the Law.  In the Bible, wisdom is always held to be from God and to be ethical in nature (Prov 3:5-7; 1Chron 22:12; Jas 3:17).

Chapters 8 and 9 contain a personification of wisdom as a woman (The word "wisdom" is feminine in Hebrew).  Wisdom is more visible if exemplified in a person.  God sent His Son, who was Wisdom as a real person.  (In Luke 11:49 Jesus quotes His own words of Matthew 23:24 as what "Wisdom said").

ECCLESIASTES

Ecclesiastes seems to embody the conclusions of Solomon near the unsatisfactory end of his life.  It dwells on the grief, lack of meaning of life and dissatisfaction, which his great, but worldly and insufficient, wisdom brought.  Although his wisdom came from God, yet it produced its results by grappling with "all that is done under heaven".  It did not consist of new truths revealed from heaven, but it might be equated with the moral and scientific work of man as ruler and keeper of the earth (Eccl 1:12,13; Gen 1:28).  It did not meet man's greatest needs, nor answer his questions about the ultimate meaning and issues of life, nor did it bring satisfaction of heart.

There are three main complaints of Solomon: the finality of death, the facts of evil in the world and the frustrations of human wisdom.  There were so many problems that he concluded that wisdom was unattainable (7:23,24).  In that perspective, Ecclesiastes indicates that a further revelation was necessary.

THE SONG OF SOLOMON

Apparently, this Book was written when Solomon was still young since, in it, he was seen crowned by his mother as king of love when he was first engaged to be married (Song 3:11).  He was crowned as king twice by David, before the latter's death (1Chr 23:1; 29:22).  From his birth he had been especially loved by God (2Sam 12:24,25).  The only description of this Book which completely fits, is that it is a highly poetic and imaginative human love song in its original, intended meaning.

In view of the fact that Jahveh in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New figuratively have the role of husband of God's people (Ezek 16:8; Hos 1-3; Jn 3:29; Eph  5:25; Rev 19:7,8), the custom of seeing here the believer's relationship with his Lord seems legitimate, if not pushed too far. Conjugal love, including the aspect of physical admiration, is a holy thing, created by God (Gen 1:28,31).  God is only once mentioned in this Book, and that is to tell us that "love...  burns like a blazing fire, like the very flame of the Lord" (8:6 marginal reading).  Therefore pure conjugal love is from God.  This love letter is in the true Bible, transmitted to us by Israel (Rom 3:1,2).  It shows that marriage can be and should be holy (Heb 13:4).

THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH

This Book has here been grouped herein with the poetic Books instead of Job, which I have put with the historical books, to emphasis its factual background.  The Book has a very symmetrical structure.  In each of the five chapters, the first letters of all the verses in the Hebrew original follow the order of the Hebrew alphabet.  In the case of the third or middle chapter, the alphabet is repeated in that way three times.  There are twenty-two letters in that alphabet, so the number of verses in the chapters are successively, 22, 22, 66, 22, 22.

The Lamentations express the extreme suffering and sorrow of the prophet and of Jerusalem, after the sacking of the city by the Babylonians.  Lamentations 1:12 exhibits the unexampled sufferings of the people of Jerusalem, and calls on all who pass by to behold them.  Chapter 3, however, contains a ray of hope (verses 31-33).  In this study, each of our 4 groupings of 5 Books so far treated ends in failure.

e) Prophets during the Schism

AMOS

Amos, a shepherd and gatherer of sycamore fruit (7:14), went from Judah to preach in Israel, at Bethel, one of the idolatrous sanctuaries created by Jeroboam I.  The high priest of Bethel reported him to king Jeroboam II, and forbade him to preach there.  But Amos could not be intimidated (7:10-17).

He announced that God would judge the northern kingdom in a coming "day of the Lord" (5:18-20).  Only a small remnant of them would be saved, "as a shepherd saves from the lion's mouth only two leg bones or a piece of an ear" (3:12; 9:8).  Therefore Amos warned the people: "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" (4:11,12).  The day of the Lord would not be light for them, as they thought (5:18-20), but darkness, like fleeing a lion and meeting a bear.  God would "pass through" their midst, as He did through Egypt at the tenth plague (5:16,17; cf.4:10).  Later prophets, as well as the NT, speak of a final day of the Lord upon all the earth, when God will punish the wicked.

Amos foresaw God causing the "tent" of David to possess all the nations, "upon whom (God's) name is invoked" (9:7-12).  Much later James of Jerusalem quoted this promise to prove that God was now reclaiming non-Jews, as seen in their baptism (Acts 15:13-18).

JONAH

Living in the Northern Kingdom, Jonah once predicted that Jeroboam the second would save Israel from their enemies (2Kngs 14:25).  He knew the great mercy of God, revealed to Moses: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin" (Ex 34:6,7), but he would not admit that his mercy should be extended to a foreign nation.  Sent to preach to Nineveh, he suspected that God might spare the wicked city and thus discredit his warnings.  So he escaped by ship and had to be brought back to his mission by a great storm and a great fish.  His psalm of praise well summarises the main theme of the prophets of this period: "Salvation comes from the Lord" (2:9,10).  Jesus compared his own coming time in the tomb to Jonah's three days and nights in the great fish (Mt 12:40).

HOSEA

God asked Hosea to marry an adulteress in order to show his unspeakable mercy in wishing to be rejoined to unfaithful Israel.  The names given to two children she bore to the prophet, "Lo-Ruhamah" and "Lo-ammi", signified that God had rejected Israel.  The names were changed, for God promised he would later show them grace.  Restored Israel would become as numerous as the sand on the seashore (1:10).

The name of another child, "Jezreel", means "God sows".  In grace, God promised to sow Israel (2:22,23).  At the end of verse 11 we read that both Judah and Israel, reunited by one leader, "will come up out of the land".  The meaning of the verb here seems to me to be "to rise as up a flood", as in Amos 9:5.  They would expand from their land like a flood.  The next clause says: "...for great will be the day of 'God sows' (Jezreel)".  In other words, there is a great day coming when true Israelites will be sown by God beyond their own land.  Perhaps Jesus had this in mind in comparing his disciples to seed to be sown in the entire world (Mt chapter 13).

OBADIAH

It has been thought that Obadiah prophesied after the invasion of Judah by the Arabs in the reign of Jehoram (2Chron 21:16,17) and that he alludes to this calamity, accusing the Edomites of being cruel to Judah, then "while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates" (Ob 10,11).  They acted treacherously to the inhabitants of Judah, even though Jacob and Esau (Edom) were brothers.

Obadiah is a little Book but in 15-17 it  tells us  much about "the day of the Lord":

1. That day is presented as "near".  Men must always live so as to be ready to meet God.  (Second Peter 3:3-9 gives one reason why it seemingly has been delayed.)

2. Next we see that it is universal, it will come on "all nations" on earth.

3.  The punishment of the wicked will suit the wrong done and correspond to what God's people have suffered at their hands: "Just as you drank on my holy hill".  The NT too restates this equivalence of retribution (Mt 25:41-45; 2Thess 1:6; Rev 16:5,6).

4.  This punishment is described, even here in the OT, as everlasting in nature; "so shall all the nations drink continually".  (Cf. Rev 14:10,11).

5.  The scene and source of God's salvation is stated to be "mount Zion". Jesus said "salvation is from the Jews" (Jn 4:22).  Jesus had to be in Jerusalem to die and rise again, and the testimony of the Apostles had to begin there (Lk 24:47-49; Acts 4:4,8), but, after that, salvation had to go to the whole world.  The word "deliverance" is rendered in the Greek (LXX) by the same word used for "salvation" in the NT

6.  Finally, this salvation always leads to holiness, as is the case also in the N.T.  (2Thess 2:13), and it delivers from the great day of wrath of the Lord (1Thess 5:2,9; 2Thess  2:2,13; Rev 6:17; 7:10).

JOEL

The message of Joel is an expansion of that of Obadiah.  The Book may have been written when Jehoiada the priest ruled for the young king Joash (2Chr 24:1-14).

Judah then tasted its "day of the Lord", in the form of a plague of locusts (1:15).

Joel 2:28-32 is repeatedly quoted or alluded to in the NT, so much so that it might be called "the charter of the Church".  My book, Understanding the Unity of Prophecy, investigates in detail its application to us.  The words of verse 31, "before the great and terrible day", situate the application of this passage in the present age of grace.  It is before the day of God arrives that one must call upon the Lord for salvation.

Promises which now apply to us are found in this passage:

1.  The Spirit of God will be poured out on all types of people, "all flesh".  Included are sons and daughters, old men, young men, servants and handmaids.

2.  The Spirit will enable them to prophesy (speak for God), have dreams and visions.

3.  This salvation will come to "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord".  On the day of  Pentecost, in Jerusalem, the promise first came into effect, and the Apostle Peter explained that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised to the right hand of God to prove that he was "the Lord" whom we invoke, able to pour out God's own Spirit (Acts 2).

4.  There will be a remnant of humanity elsewhere who will be called to receive the salvation given at Jerusalem. "Jesus" is the saving name, given among men (Acts 4:12).

Chapter 3 of Joel describes the day of the Lord and events after it (cf. Mt. 25:31-47).

f) Other Prophets before the Babylonian Captivity

MICAH

The name Micah means "Who is like Jahveh".  Micah 7:18 says "Who is a God like you, who pardons ... transgression?" Both Micah and Isaiah were written when the Assyrian empire was expanding, and both foresaw God's deliverance of Jerusalem from it, which happened in the time of Hezekiah.  Both also tell about the circumstances of birth of the coming royal Messiah.

Micah contains three passages about God as a shepherd (2:12,13; 4:1-8; 7:14-20) in addition to one passage about a child to be born at Bethlehem to become Israel's Shepherd (Micah 5:2).  It does not clearly reveal that the divine and human shepherds are the same Person.  By the NT we can now understand this "mystery...of Christ" (Col 2:2).  But Micah 5:2 says that Messiah's going forth has been "from everlasting".

ISAIAH

The first verse of this Book situates Isaiah's ministry in the time of four kings of Judah, the last being Hezekiah.  Jewish tradition has it that Isaiah was sawn in two by Hezekiah's wicked son, Manasseh.  He was the greatest writing prophet, if it was he who wrote chapters 40 to 66, which  some doubt.

The birth and origin of Messiah, Son of David, are foreseen in 7:14; 9:6,7 and 11:1.  In these verses he is said to be Emmanuel (meaning God with us), born of a virgin, Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of Peace and a Branch from the root of (David's father) Jesse.  Many other Messianic prophecies are found in these early chapters.  Messiah is figuratively spoken of as a rock or a stone (8:14; 28:16).  A day is predicted in which Egypt and Assyria will be God's people equally with Israel (19:24.25).

Before four historical chapters (36 to 39), Isaiah also speaks of God Himself coming to judge (2:4,19; 26:21; 30:27,28; 31:4,5; 34:2,3,8; 35:4).  It is not yet stated in these passages that Jahveh who will finally come to judge is the Messiah.  Some of these verses refer primarily to God's coming to destroy the Assyrian army (Isa 37:35,36).

Chapters 40 to 66 of Isaiah contain some of the most wonderful passages in the Bible.  These 27 chapters also have a very special structure, like the New Testament in our last diagram.  The same words come after nine chapters and also conclude the next nine (48:22; 57:21).  In the exact centre of the 27 chapters is the description of the death for sinners of God's suffering Servant (Isa  52:13 to 53:15).

The use of the word "servant" evolves in this latter part of Isaiah.  In chapters 40 to 53 it has three separate applications.  First Israel is called God's servant (41:8,9), then God's model Servant appears (42:1-4) then the servant becomes a people which will bring Israel back to God (49:7,8).  Chapters 54-66 use the word "servant" only in the plural.  Only after God's righteous Servant, the Christ, has died as an offering for sin, may we be justified and become God's servants (Isa 53:10-12).  Thus all the sacrificial system of the OT finds its true prophetic meaning and fulfilment, and is forever abolished.  Messiah, speaking in 61:1-7, makes all his people priests and ministers.

NAHUM

The Book of Nahum was written after Hezekiah's death.  It gives closure to the career and cruel conquests of Nineveh, capital of the great Assyrian empire, which tyrannised the world toward the end of the period of the divided Hebrew kingdoms.  Although the Book is mainly concerned with the approaching fall and destruction of Nineveh it also has the general message that "the Lord will not at all acquit the wicked" and that "He knows those who trust in Him" (Nahum 1:3,7).

The depredations of the Assyrians covered a wide area of the ancient world: "Everyone who hears the news about you claps his hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?" (3:19).  Thus Nineveh's fall was actually Israel's salvation.  The city fell to the combined assault of the Medes, Babylonians and Scythians in 612 B.C.  "The city was left a heap of desolate ruins.”  (Nah.  3:7).  God could comfort Judah with the words in 1:15: "No more will the wicked invade you; they will be completely destroyed.”  However, as seen in Zephaniah, Judah too would be punished for its sins.

ZEPHANIAH

Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrian invasion, but Judah had been spared, through the piety of king Hezekiah.  Now Judah also, seduced permanently into idolatry by the wicked king Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, is warned of the imminent judgment of the Lord.  However, beyond their national calamity is seen the other, greater,  "day of the Lord" upon all nations (3:8).

The final, universal day will result in all the nations unitedly calling on the Lord with a pure language (3:9).  None who profess to be attached to the cause of God will any longer be proud and haughty but all will trust in the name of the Lord (3:11,12).  Nor will any of them do wrong, speak lies or be afraid (3:13).  The prophet calls on this future elect people to be glad and rejoice, not only because they will not be judged and will have no enemies, but also because the Lord Himself will dwell in the midst of them, mighty to save, rejoicing over them with joy, resting in His love and even joying over them with singing (3:15,17)!

HABAKKUK

By this prophecy, Babylon (Chaldea) is identified as the world power which was to destroy the kingdom of Judah.  Habakkuk had discovered, by personal experience, that Judah was still full of violence, destruction, injustice and contempt for God's law, despite their recent deliverances by the Lord.  Therefore he poured out his complaint before God, asking why he tolerated so much injustice (1:2-4).

God answered the prophet, giving him so drastic a solution to his problem that he could not accept it.  The Lord would raise up a new and dreaded foe, the Chaldeans, who would sweep over the earth destroying everything in their path, including Judah (1:5-11).  Habakkuk replied that the Jews were not as wicked as the Babylonians, so God in his righteousness should not permit them to destroy his people (1:12-17).

God again replied, with a call to faith.  "The righteous will live by his faith" (2:4).  God's plan would not be changed, it would surely come to fruition (2:2,3).  Babylon would be punished.  "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea" (2:14).  Habakkuk rejoiced in his faith, in adversity (3:17,18).

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