in the old Babylonian tradition of the creation, had overcome Satan and the fallen angels.  Israel’s messianic hopes were also shaped and broadened by the teachings of the great ethical prophets.  A growing realization of the imperfections of the existing order led them to look ever more expectantly to the time when the prophetic ideals of justice and mercy would be realized in society, as well as in the character of the individual.  These different expectations regarding the future are broadly designated as messianic prophecies.  The word “messianic,” like its counterpart “Messiah” (Greek, “Christ"), comes from the Hebrew word meaning to smear or to anoint.  It designated in ancient times the weapons consecrated for battle or the king chosen and thus symbolically set aside to lead the people as Jehovah’s representative, or a priest called to represent the people in the ceremonial worship.  The common underlying idea in the word is that of consecration to a divine purpose.  In its narrower application it describes simply the agent who is to realize God’s purpose in history, but in its broader and prevailing usage it designates all prophecies that described the ideal which Jehovah is seeking to perfect in the life of Israel and of humanity, and the agents or agencies, whether individual or national, material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, by which he is to realize that ideal.

II.  The Kingly, Nationalistic Type of Messianic Hope.  The messianic prophecies of the Old Testament seem only confusing and contradictory until the three distinct types are recognized.  These different types of messianic prophecy naturally shade into each other, and yet they are fundamentally distinct and were represented throughout Israel’s history by different classes of thinkers.  The first is the kingly, nationalistic type of hope.  It came into existence as soon as Israel became a nation, and may be traced in the Balaam oracles in Numbers 24:17-19, where the seer is represented as beholding Israel’s victorious king smiting its foes, the Moabites and Edomites, and ruling gloriously over a triumphant people.  It is echoed in ii Samuel 7:10-16 in the promise that the house of David should rule peacefully and uninterruptedly through succeeding generations.  Ezekiel, in his picture of the restored nation in 37:21-28, declares in the name of Jehovah that “my servant David shall be king over them and they shall dwell in the land that I have given to my servant Jacob wherein their fathers dwelt, and they shall dwell therein, they and their sons forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever.”  In such passages as Isaiah 9 and 11 the Davidic ruler is represented as reigning not despotically or selfishly, but in accordance with the principles of justice and mercy, bringing peace to all his subjects.  As has already been noted, in the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah and in connection with the rebuilding of the second temple Israel’s kingly, nationalistic hope reached