bringing what was expected, the Messianic expectations did not cease. The Babylonian Isaiah, the so-called unknown or evangelical prophet, whose sayings have been appended to the Book of Isaiah,' regards himself as the descendant of David promised by Isaiah, on whom the Spirit of God would rest. This writer designates himself as one who has been anointed by the Spirit of God, a title which belonged only to high priests, or to a king anointed by them, and which in no single case has been bestowed on a prophet. This Israelite, writing from Babylon, we hold to be the high priest Joshua, who, like Zerubabel, may have been of royal descent, seeing that the 10th Psalm with greater probability refers to the consecration of Joshua than to David. It

2

of Nebukadnezar, ruled in Babylon. On this doubtful supposition "Darius the Mede" would refer to Hystaspes. According to Tiele, Belshazzar, not Nabonidos, was by Cyrus sent to Karmania. It may be assumed that Israelites opened to Cyrus the gates of Babylon, as their ancestors had opened the gates of Avaris to the Hyksos. Nabonidos died eight days after the entry of Cyrus. (See Sir Henry Rawlinson, Journ. As. Soc., 1880; Pinches, Tr. Soc. Bib. Arch., vii. 1; Sayce, Cont. Rev., July 1883, and Hibbert Lecture, 1887.)

1 Isa. xl.-xlvi., with parts of xiii., xiv. ; and xxi. 24-27, as also 34-36.

No prophet, not even Samuel, was a priest.

Joshua probably belonged to the strangers in Israel, the Rechabites. To the Lord of the Rechabites, to Jonadab, Jeremiah had promised in the name of God an uninterrupted high priesthood. The Psalmist could say that the Lord had said to Joshua's Lord, "Sit thou on my right hand" as "priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek " (Jer. xxxv. 6-19). About the line of Ithamar and strangers in the sanctuary (Ezech. xliv. 7-9, 15, 16; xl. 46; xlviii. 11), see l. c., i. 258-261.

is Joshua who calls his contemporary Cyrus the Anointed or Messiah.

"The Spirit of the Lord rests upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me, to bring glad tidings to those in misery, hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and redemption to them that are bound, to proclaim a year of grace from the Lord, and a day of vengeance from our God; to comfort all that mourn, to put on the mourners of Zion and to give unto them ornament instead of ashes, oil of delight instead of mourning, garment of glory instead of the desponding spirit that they may be called oaks of blessing, a planting of the Lord to his glorification." This high priest, anointed by God with his Spirit, we assert to be Joshua, who lived in the time of Cyrus and Ezechiel, and who composed the glorious proclamation to Israel, recorded in the 40th chapter of Isaiah: "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her servitude is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

For Israel's high priest the deep importance of the commandment in the year B.C. 586, which went forth from the God-anointed Cyrus, was found in that it marked the end of the servitude of the children of Israel, whom God had cast out among the Gentiles, which servitude had begun exactly 390 years ago, in the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign, B.C. 928, with Shishak's siege of Jerusalem. This siege formed the beginning of the celebrated

vision of the prophet Ezechiel, recorded in the 4th chapter, which probably he saw shortly before the Edict of Cyrus, and which vision has hitherto been referred to an undefinable future event. "The iniquity of the house of Israel" he was to bear 390 days, symbolizing 390 years, during which Jehovah had cast out the children of Israel among the Gentiles. In the time of Rehoboam no prophet had foretold the duration of this servitude, but the initiated in the mysteries of tradition knew that from the siege of Jerusalem by Shishak to the permission of return by Cyrus exactly 390 years had elapsed. As after the 400 years of Israel's servitude in Egypt the time commenced for the return to the land promised to Abraham, so the high priest Joshua and the prophet Ezechiel could hope that, with the permission to return, the “iniquity" of this city was "pardoned."1 As at the time of Joshua the son of Nun, so in the time of the high priest Joshua, a desert lay between the house of bondage and the Land of Promise. The voice of the God-anointed Joshua was the voice of "a preacher' who cried: "In the wilderness prepare ye way to the Lord, make straight [level] in the desert a highway for our God., . . For the glory of the Lord shall

1 Isa. lxi. 1-3; xl. 1-5; Ezech. iv. 1-13; see on Israel in Egypt, l. c., i. chap. xii. The forty years of the same vision against Judah may perhaps be referred to the time from the eighth year of Solomon to the fifth of Rehoboam, from B.C. 968-928. For it is possible that in his eighth regnal year Solomon began to build a house for his queen, the daughter of Pharaoh, in which he introduced Egyptian symbols and rites, and to this the iniquity of Judah might be referred.

be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, that the mouth of the Lord speaketh."

It is Joshua who proclaims: "I will make mention of the loving-kindness of the Lord and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which he hath bestowed on them, according to his mercies and according to the multitude of his loving-kindnesses. For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not deal falsely; so he was their Saviour. In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them, and he bare them and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit, therefore he became their enemy, he himself fought against them. Then his people remembered the ancient days of Moses: where is he that brought them up out of the sea [through] the shepherd of his flock; where is he that gave his Spirit among them, who raised his glorious arm at the right hand of Moses, that divided the waters before them to make himself an everlasting name—that led them through the floods? Like horses on the plain, who stumble nct, like the flock descending into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord brought them to rest: so didst thou lead thy people to make thyself a glorious

name."

The second Zechariah, from the time of Jeremiah,

probably in connection with Joel's vision of a fountain issuing forth from the temple, sees "living water" go forth from Jerusalem, and the Lord as King over the whole earth. Ezechiel, who likewise has in view the prophecy of Joel without referring to it, speaks of the Messianic times as the commencement of which he may have regarded the return to the land of Judah. He connects the Messianic times with the thereby symbolized resurrection of the Jewish nation from the grave. As before him Amos and his contemporary Hosea had foretold the setting up again of the fallen-down tabernacle of David, and the King David of the returning Israelites, so Ezechiel describes the Lord's servant David as the prince who with Israel goes in and out in the sanctuary. This princely Messiah seems to have been designated by Ezechiel as the first of seven men, who was clothed in linen, with a writer's inkhorn at his side, a priest and a scribe, to whom God spoke from above the Cherubim, that is, by his glory or Spirit, as he spoke to Moses. This priestly scribe is to mark "the sign of Tau," the cross, on the foreheads of those inhabitants of Jerusalem that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof." We shall farther on connect this sign of Tau in the Hebrew text, as with the pre-Christian cross of all nations, so with the Tau-formed cross or "yoke," the sign of spiritual enlightenment, which Jesus urged his followers to take upon themselves and to follow him.

Haggai, from the second year of Darius (B.C. 520),