thee? and what is thy request, and it shall be performed, to half of the kingdom?" Then she flings herself at his feet, with all the pent-up anguish of her woman's heart: "My lord the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request, for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed utterly." The king, who has forgotten his careless gift of the Jewish people, the ring, the seal, and the decree, responds, "Who has dared to do this?" Then with flashing eye she turns on Haman. "The adversary's name is this wicked Haman." And the king in his wrath rises and goes out; and Haman flings himself on her couch to implore her mercy; and the king coming back and looking on him there cries, "Will he insult the queen in my very presence!" and the courtiers, who had been obsequious to Haman in his power, come in rejoicing in his fall, to hasten his doom. "He has erected just outside the gate a gallows for Mordecai," says one of them. "Hang him thereon," replies the king. So they hang Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. One would think that a decree should have gone out for the protection of the Jews. Whether the narrator thought it more dramatic to give a different ending, or whether it was really true that a decree once issued could not be recalled, I will not attempt to determine; but, according to the story, a new decree is issued that the Jews may defend themselves against their enemies, and in the battles that ensued seventy-five

thousand of the enemies of the Jews are slain; and so the story ends.

One has, it seems to me, but to read this story to feel the life of a romance in it.1 The contrasted characters the sensual monarch, the unscrupulous minister, the proud Puritan, the brave woman, brave with true womanly courage — are drawn in few lines, but with marvelous skill. The plot, with its play of character against character, its rapidity of movement, its dramatic incident, its plotting and counter-plotting, shows the highest constructive skill; and the moral inspiration of the story, inciting to hate of the sensuality of Xerxes and the crafty malice of Haman, to admiration for the courage of Mordecai, and a love that is more than admiration for the womanly bearing of the queen, is all the greater because the narrator does not formulate it; and the story is all the more religious in its spirit because it is so wholly free from the phraseology of religion in its language.2

He who regards the Book of Esther as scientific history must explain as best he can how the

1 This aspect of the book is recognized by commentators, who treat it rather as history than as fiction, e. g., J. W. Haley: "Much of the fascination of the book is due to the skillful arrangement of parts. There is all the effect which we are accustomed to ascribe to the elaborate weaving of a plot in drama, or in a work of fiction, and we find a well devised dénouement. Every thread and fibre is wrought into its place in the fabric, and there is nothing irrelevant." The Book of Esther. A New Translation with Notes, etc., by John W. Haley, M. A.

2 It is the only book in the Bible in which the name of God does not appear.

historian obtained his knowledge of the facts in the minute detail with which he records them. Who was present to hear the conference between Haman and Ahasuerus; the colloquy between the king and the queen in the first banquet; the conversation between Haman and his wife; the question of the king to the king's chamberlains; the conversation between Haman and the king; and the plea of Esther for the life of herself and her people?1 It is very probable, indeed almost certain, that the story has an historical basis, but it is equally certain from the very structure of the narrative itself that the story has been told with the freedom of the romancer, who was using the material for literary and moral effect, not for a scientific purpose.

A fifth type of fiction, Satirical Romance, is afforded by the Book of Jonah. Of this book there are three interpretations: first, that it is history, and all the events took place exactly as narrated; secondly, that it is allegory, that Jonah represents the Jewish people, the fish the heathen lands, the capture of Jonah by the fish the captivity, the vomiting of Jonah out upon the land again the return from captivity; third, that it is a satirical romance, written for the purpose of satirizing the narrowness of the Jewish religion, and teaching the wideness of God's love.2 This latter

1 Est. iii. 8-11; v. 6-8, 14; vi. 3, 7-10; vii. 3–6.

2 For the first or historical view, which is the more ancient and traditional, the student is referred to Dr. William Smith's Bible Dictionary, article Jonah, especially to the supplemental article

I believe to be the true interpretation, and the one which I assume to be true in telling and interpretby Dr. Calvin E. Stowe; to the Introduction to the Book of Jonah in the Commentary on the Minor Prophets, by Dr. E. B. Pusey; and to the Preface to the Book of Jonah in the Commentary on the Minor Prophets, by Dr. E. Henderson; and to a monograph in pamphlet, Light on the Story of Jonah, by Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull, 1894. This view, however, it must be recognized, has been questioned from the very earliest ages; thus Josephus prefaces and closes his account of the strange experiences of the prophet in a way clearly to indicate his doubt of its historicity: "I cannot," he says, "but think it necessary for me, who have promised to give an accurate account of our affairs, to describe the actions of this prophet so far as I have found them written down in the Hebrew books." Antiquities of the Jews, book ix., chapter x., § 2. For the second or parabolic view the reader is referred to The Book of the Twelve Prophets, by George Adam Smith, D. D. "Nor does this book," he says, "written so many centuries after Jonah had passed away, claim to be real history. On the contrary, it offers to us all the marks of the parable or allegory." After indicating what these marks are, he adds, "The purpose of the parable, and it is patent from first to last, is to illustrate the mission of prophecy to the Gentiles, God's care for them, and their susceptibility to his word. More correctly, it is to enforce all this truth upon a prejudiced and thrice reluctant mind. The writer had in view, not a Jewish party but Israel as a whole in their national reluctance to fulfill their Divine mission to the world. . . . Of such a people Jonah is the type. flees from the duty God has laid upon him. beyond his own land, cast for a set period into a like them rescued again only to exhibit once more upon his return an ill-will to believe that God had any fate for the heathen except destruction. According to this theory, then, Jonah's disappearance in the sea and the great fish, and his subsequent ejection upon dry land, symbolize the Exile of Israel and their restoration to Palestine." Pp. 498, 501, 502, 503. The third view, which regards the book as a romance, with a moral meaning, the view which differs in detail rather than in essence from the second, is thus stated by Ewald: "This much is apparent from the style and

...

Like them he Like them he is living death, and

ing the story here. Of the correctness of the interpretation the reader must form his own judgment on its bare presentation, without argument or defense.

In the outset, however, we are confronted by the claim that Jesus Christ has solved this question for us by his reference to the Book of Jonah. There are two accounts of this reference, one in Luke, one in Matthew. They are as follows:

MATTHEW xii. 39, 40, 41. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulter

LUKE xi. 29, 30, 32.

And when the people were gathered thick together, he be

character of the little book which now perpetuates the prophet's name, from the failing end of the story, and (which is the most decisive thing) from the true meaning of the whole book, namely, that the author beheld in the legendary material which was ready to his hand simply a given medium for presenting in an attractive form a prophetic truth which lived in his own heart.” He compares the story of the prophet's adventure to the stories in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, a common form of Oriental fiction, and implies that it is analogous to them in its literary form, but differs from them in its moral significance. "The course of ancient Hebrew literature," he says, "is distinguished from that of the other ancient literatures, not as regards its form, but only as regards its subject-matter and its higher prophetic tendencies." Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament, by Dr. Georg H. A. von Ewald, vol. v. pp. 90, 92. Analogous to Dr. Ewald's interpretation is that of Dr. Caverno, who says: "Whoever wrote Jonah meant satire on the prophets as Lowell meant satire on the politicians of the day of the Biglow Papers, only the strokes in Jonah are of lighter touch than even those of Lowell." A Narrow Ax in Biblical Criticism, by Rev. Charles Caverno, A. M., LL. D., p. 82. For a careful study of the Book of Jonah, and a careful consideration of its various aspects, see Jonah in Fact and Fancy, by the Rev. Edgar James Banks, M. A., Ph. D.