PREFACE.

THE present Commentary on the Old Testament, of which the First Volume is now placed before the reader, is based on the same principles, and designed for the same class of readers, as the companion Commentary on the New Testament.

In the Preface to that Work, the general aims and objects of the Commentary were set forth with some fulness. It was stated that the Commentary was designed for that large and increasing class of cultivated English readers who, believing the Holy Scriptures not only to contain God's Word, but to be God's Word, do earnestly desire to realise that Word, and to be assisted in applying it to their own spiritual needs, and to the general circumstances and context of daily life around them.

It was further stated that its object was also to meet some of the deep needs of the present time, especially of that large, and-as we fear it must again be said-increasing class of readers, who are conscious that chilling doubts have crept into the soul, and that modern criticism has seemed to them to make it doubtful whether Scripture is what it claims to be; not merely a truthful record of God's dealings with man, but a power to make man wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. For these, and for such as these, it was stated that much that would be put forward in the Notes, and especially the manner in which it would be put forward, would be found especially helpful. Difficulties would be fairly met; removed where they could be removed; left, simply and frankly, where it did not appear that God had yet vouchsafed to us the means of doing more than modifying them, or reducing their gravity and magnitude.

These were the two great objects of the Commentary on the New Testament-to bring home to the believing the life and power of God's Word, and to set forth the truth of that Word to those whose belief had become shaken or impaired. And these are the two great objects of the present Commentary; but, as the very nature of the subject-matter will necessitate, in somewhat altered aspects and proportions. First, for this obvious reason, that while we unhesitatingly maintain with Origen* that the whole of the Sacred Scriptures make up one perfectly adjusted "instrument of God," we nevertheless recognise with that great teacher that the perfect harmony of the blessed instrument is due to the accordant diversity of the sounds. Though the Old Testament and the New Testament are the Word of the same Spirit, though their general end and object are one, yet, as Hooker + clearly points out, there is this momentous difference, that the Old Testament did make wise by teaching salvation through Christ that should come, the New Testament by teaching that Christ the Saviour is come. Secondly, because the diffieulties connected with the Old Testament are much more serious than those connected with the New Testament, and must, by the nature of the case, occupy more of the special attention of the interpreter.

The main difficulties connected with the Old Testament may briefly be summed up as scientific, * Origen, Comment, in Matt. v. 9 (Fragm.), Vol. III. p. 241 (ed. Delarue).

+ Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I., chap. xiv. 4.

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historical, and moral-all of which, in their turn, are constantly presenting themselves to the interpreter, and, at the very least, demand of him something more than mere passing notice and recognition.

The scientific difficulties mostly connect themselves with the narrative of the emergence of the world and of the totality of things around us, and with the place which man holds in the order and system of nature of which we have more immediate cognisance. The origination of the human race, its antiquity, its dispersions, and its developments, are all subjects which are forced upon the attention of the candid interpreter, and which must be dealt with, even in the necessarily circumscribed limits of a commentary, with distinctness and candour. The day for the so-called reconciliations of Scripture and Science, or, in other words, for wide assumptions as to the statements of Scripture, and shallow and superficial answers to inferences drawn from real or supposed discoveries, has now passed away. The interpreter is now remanded to the simple and holy words into which tradition, or imperfect knowledge, may have imported a meaning which they never were intended to bear. He is reminded, ere he attempts either defence or reconciliation, that his duty is to set forth in clearness and truth that and that only which, by the ordinary principles of human thought and of human language, the words on which he is meditating really express; and when he has done this, he is bidden to remember that it is also his duty not to recognise as truths of science what as yet are no more than working hypotheses, nor to invest with the high character of established theories, brilliant generalisations which are still regarded by eminent men of science as, at best, only partially verified. The duty of the faithful interpreter is to set forth the apparent meaning of that which lies before him with all candour, breadth, and simplicity; to be severely truthful, and to wait. The disclosures of science are as yet only partial and fragmentary. Their drift and tendency, however, indisputably lead us to this conviction, that, with fuller knowledge, much that at present prevents our fully realising the harmony between the revelation of God in the book of Nature, and the revelation of God in His own inspired Word, will entirely pass away. We must, then, often be content to wait. He that has sent the dream will, in His own good time, send the interpretation thereof.

We do not disguise that there are difficulties; we do not deny that there are subjects, such, for instance, as the antiquity of the human race, in regard of which our first impressions derived from Scripture do not appear to be coincident with some of the results of modern discovery. These things we deny not. But this, on the other hand, we assert with unchanging confidence, that by very far the greater portion of the so-called opposition between Religion and Science is due to bias, preconception, and literalism, on one side, and, on the other side, to an elevation, often studiously antagonistic, of plausible hypothesis into the higher domain of universally received and established theory.

Scarcely less in magnitude and importance are the numerous historical difficulties which present themselves in the inspired narrative, whether as connected with supposed discrepancies with generally accepted secular history, or as presented by what are claimed to be ascertained facts as to the early origination of the human race, or as ipso facto forced upon the modern reader by the inherent improbabilities of the story. This last-mentioned class of difficulties is, it need hardly be said, always connected with the miraculous portions of the narrative, and more especially with the presence of miracles when appearing in what would seem to be ordinary human history. In the earlier books of Scripture, this form of difficulty is not felt to be so trying to the faith. In the youth of the world many things seem admissible, which at a later period seem startling and incongruous. The presence of the supernatural may be felt to be partially explicable in the case of the one portion of the narrative, but inexplicable in the case of the other. The age of the miraculous is assumed to have passed away, and its

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startling recurrence in the ordinary stream of human history, in the narratives of wars, or the annals of established kingdoms, often raises uneasy feelings in the minds of really earnest and religious readers-feelings which, at a time such as the present, may be entertained far more widely than we may, at first sight, be disposed to admit.

Difficulties such as these must, it is plain, often traverse the path of an interpreter; and it will be found by the readers of this Commentary that they have been neither evaded nor ignored. In regard of the first two forms of historical difficulty, it may be observed that the remarkable additions to the records of ancient history that have been disclosed within the present generation, and the still more remarkable documents that relate to what may not improperly be called a pre-historic period, will be found to have been used soberly and critically, wheresoever their testimony might be judged to be available. It will be found also that they are of the highest evidential importance. Not only do they supply the interpreter with hitherto undiscovered demonstrations of the faithfulness and truth of the inspired record, where it might otherwise have seemed most open to criticism, but even suggest inferences as to the early migrations and settlements of the great human family, which are shadowed forth in the brief and mainly genealogical notices of the opening chapters of Holy Scripture. Just as true science, apart from mere speculative inferences or unverified hypotheses, has of late been permitted, in many striking discoveries, to bear its testimony to the Divine truth of the earliest pages of the world's history, so has recent archæology been enabled to throw a light upon the pages that follow it. Nay, even in regard to the grave difficulty connected with the presence of the supernatural and miraculous in the current of what might be deemed ordinary national history, even in this respect recent historical research has indirectly ministered light and reassurance. It has shown that in numerous details the holy narrative is now proved to be in strict accordance with independent secular history; and in showing this, it suggests the important consideration that if Scriptural statements are thus to be relied on in one portion of the narrative, there is at least a presumption of a very high order that they deserve to be believed and relied upon in the other. And the more so, when it is borne in mind that the narrative of Holy Scripture is the record of the providential government of the world rather than of the events and issues of merely human history. These combined considerations will go far, in any candid mind, to alleviate the doubts that may have arisen from the presence of the miraculous, where experience might have seemed to suggest that it was due only to the misconceptions or credulity of the writer. The moral difficulties connected with the details of many events that come before us in the Old Testament are not lightly to be passed over. They can, however, only properly be dealt with in connection with the whole narrative of which they form a part. Still, this may be said generally, that while, on the one hand, each portion of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament presents to us, faithfully and truthfully, the morality and civilisation of the age to which that portion refers, there is, on the other hand, plainly to be traced a Divine working by which the standard is persistently raised both in the individual and in the nation. The præparatio evangelica was continuous and progressive; the passage from the days of comparative ignorance to those in which the blessed teaching of the Sermon on the Mount was proclaimed in the ears of men, was by steady gradation and providential advance. There was no period in which, whether in regard of spoken word or entailed consequence, God left Himself without a witness: but the testimony of each witness became fuller and clearer as the centuries rolled onward; and as the time drew nigh when the mystery of salvation was to be fully disclosed to the children of men, the light shone forth clearer and clearer even unto the perfect day.

This broad consideration, which will be illustrated in numerous instances in the Notes of the present volume, and of those that will follow it, will be found to go far to remove the greater

PREFACE.

part of the moral difficulties of the Old Testament. Individual cases, in which there may seem to have been a positive Divine command to do that which, on the principles of the New Testament, must be condemned and forbidden, will still remain, and must be dealt with in their proper places, and with all the circumstances of their true historical connection. Even, however, in regard of these, this general remark may rightly be made, that the command and the contemporary moral estimate of the act commanded can never be dissociated by any equitable thinker, and that the recognition of this simple fact will certainly modify, if it does not completely remove, some of the greater difficulties connected with the subject.*

Such are the three main classes of difficulties which from time to time present themselves to the earnest student of the Old Testament. They differ in many important particulars from the difficulties connected with the New Testament, and are, we fear, seriously felt by many who accept without any conscious hesitation the broader outlines of Christianity. Thus felt, and thus admitted into the general current of thought, they contribute to that silent and often unconscious depreciation of the Divine authority of the Old Testament, which is certainly disclosing itself in our own times, even among those who might claim to be considered religiously-minded readers and thinkers. To such as these-and their number, it is to be feared, is yearly increasing—this Commentary will be found to supply a help that is sorely needed, and that is likely, by the very manner in which that help is offered, to exercise a permanently good effect on those who may seek for it. As in the Commentary on the New Testament, difficulties are fairly met. Where a full answer to the questions that may arise can distinctly be given, it is given; where only such reasonable considerations can be urged as qualify the force of objections, and suggest, though they may not as yet completely supply, the true explanation, there the limited state of our present knowledge, and so of our power of wholly removing the difficulty, is placed clearly before the reader; where, as in the case of numerical statements and other and similar details, startling objections at once present themselves, there the possibility, and even likelihood, of transcriptional errors is pointed out, and the statement left as it has come down to us-still needing elucidation, but, as the whole aspect of recent discovery warrants us in believing, in due time fully to receive it.

But here, as was done in the case of the Commentary on the New Testament, it is proper to state with all distinctness, that though the truth is so dear to the writers of this Commentary that they have never allowed themselves to set forth explanations in which they themselves have not the fullest confidence, no one is, for one moment, to expect to find any traces of unfixed or vacillating opinions as to the true nature and authority of this portion of God's Holy Word. As was said in the Preface to the Commentary on the New Testament, so may it be said with equal force here, that each member of our present company knows on Whom and in What he has trusted, and is persuaded, with all that deep conviction which the study of this blessed Book ever bears to the humble and reverent, that heavenly truth is present in every part and portion, even though he himself may not be able to set it forth in all its brightness. This, it is plainly avowed, is the presumption and præjudicium under which the work of the interpreter has been done throughout this Commentary. That presumption, however, has never interfered with the most exact discharge of the duty of the faithful interpreter; nay-for truth will bear any investigation-it has even encouraged and enhanced it.

But it is far indeed from the sole aim of this Commentary to remove or attenuate the difficulties that are to be found in the Old Testament. No; as in the Notes on the New Testament, so here, it has been the main object of the writers to bring the blessed teaching of the Sacred Volume home to the heart and soul of the reader; to show how He that was to come * See Mozley, Lectures on the Old Testament, Lect. X., p. 236 seq.