Can there be any doubt now of the meaning of the promised BRANCH in Jewish prophecy? In chapters vii. viii. (fourth year and ninth month of Darius), in reply to an inquiry whether the fasts of the captivity should still be kept, the prophet, true to the constant tone of prophetic morality, declares that the practice of virtue is the true fast to the Lord, and in a poem of great beauty, he enforces the appeal, with the promise of unexampled national prosperity. "The fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth, And the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth, And cheerful festivals. But love ye the truth and peace! Thus saith the LORD of hosts: It shall yet come to pass that many nations shall come, And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, And to seek the LORD of hosts I will go also.' Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come To seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem And to pray before the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men shall take hold, Out of all languages of the nations, Even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, Saying, 'We will go with you, For we have heard that God is with you."" (viii. 19-23.) This ends the eighth chapter of Zechariah. *The siege of Jerusalem was begun in the tenth month and ended in the fourth of the next year (Jerem. lii. 4—7); the fast of the fifth month was in sad remembrance of the destruction of Jerusalem, and that of the seventh for the murder of Gedaliah (2 Kings xxv. 8-10, 25, 26). Ꮓ attentive reader, to carry him back to a much earlier period of Jewish history. We have already considered it as the work of an Elder Zechariah. MALACHI. (About B. C. 440.) THERE is no date affixed to Malachi's prophecy; but the concurrent belief of the ancients places him in the time of Nehemiah; and there are two points of comparison between his book and the incidents of Nehemiah's administration which confirm this opinion. Nehemiah (xiii. 10) found that the Levites were neglected; and Malachi (with many severe words for the carelessness of the priests) complains of the Jews having "robbed God in tithes and offerings" (iii. 8). Again, Nehemiah (xiii. 23-27) complains of some of the people having married heathen wives; and Malachi (ii. 11) alludes to the practice with great indignation. His burdens are chiefly of a general kind, exhorting to virtue, recounting the goodness and forbearance of God towards his loved people, but threatening His judgments upon disobedience, and still anticipating with unabated confidence the still delayed approach of the ideal age: "From the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; And in every place shall incense be brought unto my name, And a pure offering; For my name shall be great among the heathen, Saith the LORD of hosts." (i. 11.) Judgment may come when they are least prepared for it: "Ye have wearied the LORD with your words; Or, 'Where is the God of judgment?' Behold, I will send my Messenger, And he shall prepare the way And the LORD whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his And the Messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in. But who may abide the day of his coming?" &c. (ii. 17—iii. 6.) The book of Malachi concludes thus, in words which involuntarily recurred to the religious thoughts of the nation 470 years afterwards, when "all men mused in their hearts, of John the Baptist, whether he were the Christ or not:" "Unto you there shall arise, that fear my name, The Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings; For they shall be as ashes under the soles of your feet, Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD; Lest I come and smite the land with a curse." * Hence the Jewish impression in our Lord's time, that "when Messiah cometh, no man knoweth whence he is ;" and the temptation to cast himself down from the wing of the temple and appear suddenly. DANIEL. THIS book seems to be in the same kind of position as the book of Jonah (see p. 404); its contents being ascribed to one period, while its authorship seems to belong to a much later time. The critic can have little hesitation in ascribing the composition of the book of Daniel to a much later period than his own life. It is a book about Daniel, but not by him. He lived during the captivity, being carried away, when a youth, among the first of Nebuchadnezzar's captives, about B. C. 607, and surviving to the third year of Cyrus at least, or B. C. 533. (See i. 1 and x. 1.) This gives a period of 74 years; to which must be added 13 or 14, at the very least, as his age when carried to Babylon, making him 87 when his last recorded vision was seen. Suspicion is apt to arise as to the correctness of this extreme prophetic longevity; and some points of chronology are difficult to reconcile. Whether the book was really written by Daniel, has been questioned from the time of Porphyry downwards (that is, from the second century of the Christian era); chiefly because the description of the events announced is far more minute than is usual in the other books of Hebrew prophecy. It is no answer to this doubt to say, that things might be so prophesied. The observation suggesting the doubt is the fact that other Hebrew prophecies are universally not in this style. The book of Daniel is indeed more like a rapid emblematical history of the world's great empires as connected with the fate of Palestine, from the Babylonish captivity to the times of the Maccabees, than a foreshadowing of these events. This suggestion would date the production of the book about B. C. 165. At any rate, it is far less confusing to the mind to read the description of the Macedonian and Syro-Grecian kingdoms after the period of Jewish affairs to which Malachi has brought us down, than amidst those Jewish prophets who speak chiefly, if not solely, of the restoration under Cyrus and its more immediate consequences. Daniel, whether historical or predictive, carries the scene forward far beyond the point we have reached in Nehemiah and Malachi. This was not the case with Jonah, whose book, if written after his own times, is not occupied with the events of subsequent ages. We therefore took that book in the order of the prophet's personal history. But the question of authorship must be fairly looked into. The book now before us does not actually profess to be written by Daniel; but it does profess to give an account of his times and a collection of his prophecies. It is remarked that it is full of Chaldeisms; which do not, however, necessarily prove any later period than that of the captivity itself, though Jeremiah and Ezekiel are free from them. But it has Greek words also, which cannot be accounted for on any other supposition than that of a much later authorship, when, as a result of Alexander's conquests, Greek had infused itself into the thought and language of the Jews. The doctrine of angels, or watchers severally presiding over the different countries of the world (x. 13-21, &c.), appears in this book for the first time in Jewish literature; and the Jewish angels Gabriel and Michael appear by name here, and here alone. These are strong signs of the late origin of the book. Then some of its contents, it must be confessed, have a very legendary air, unlike contemporary records; such as the atrocity of the burning furnace, if not also the lions' den; and the versatility with which the Babylonian and Persian despots are represented as decreeing the worship of "the God of |