Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/17

this lengthened period God revealed Himself as the covenant God and the monarch in His kingdom, partly by the special protection which He afforded to His people, so long as they were faithful to Him, or when they returned to Him after a time of apostasy and sought His aid, either by raising up warlike heroes to combat the powers of the world, or by miraculous displays of His own omnipotence, and partly by the mission of prophets endowed with the might of His own Spirit, who kept His law and testimony before the minds of the people, denounced judgment upon an apostate race, and foretold to the righteous the Messiah’s salvation, attesting their divine mission, wherever it was necessary, by the performance of miraculous deeds. In the first centuries after Moses there was a predominance of the direct acts of God to establish His kingdom in Canaan, and exalt it to power and distinction in comparison with the nations round about. But after it had attained its highest earthly power, and when the separation of the ten tribes from the house of David had been followed by the apostasy of the nation from the Lord, and the kingdom of God was hurrying rapidly to destruction, God increased the number of prophets, and thus prepared the way by the word of prophecy for the full revelation of His salvation in the establishment of a new covenant.
Thus did the works of God go hand in hand with His revelation in the words of promise, of law, and of prophecy, in the economy of the Old Covenant, not merely as preparing the way for the introduction of the salvation announced in the law and in prophecy, but as essential factors of the plan of God for the redemption of man, as acts which regulated and determined the whole course of the world, and contained in the germ the consummation of all things;— the law, as a “schoolmaster to bring to Christ,” by training Israel to welcome the Saviour; and prophecy, as proclaiming His advent with growing clearness, and even shedding upon the dark and deadly shades of a world at enmity against God, the first rays of the dawn of that coming day of salvation, in which the Sun of Righteousness would rise upon the nations with healing beneath His wings.
As the revelation of the first covenant may be thus divided into three progressive stages, so the documents containing this revelation, the sacred books of the Old Testament, have also been divided into three classes — the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa of