its culmination, but through the victories of Darius was rudely cast to the ground (Section XCV:vi).  For the next three centuries and a half, throughout the Persian and Greek periods, this type of Israel’s messianic hope was apparently silenced.  The Maccabean struggles and victories, however, and the oppressive rule of Rome stirred this smouldering hope into a flame and gave it wide currency among the people at the beginning of the Christian era.  Again the nation came to the forefront.  In the beautiful prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, 10, which apparently comes from the earlier part of the Maccabean era, is found the noble picture of a peasant king, humble yet victorious, establishing with the sword a world-wide kingdom.  Memories of the glorious achievements of the Maccabean leaders kindled the popular imagination.  When in 63 B.C.  Rome’s iron hand closed upon Palestine, the eyes of the Jews looked expectantly for the advent of a champion like David of old, who would crush the heathen, convict the sinful Jews, and gather the faithful people, ruling over them in justice and with tender care.  These hopes are most plainly expressed in the Psalms of Solomon, which were written near the beginning of the Roman period.  These expectations in their more material form inspired the party of the Zelots during the earlier part of the first Christian century repeatedly to unsheathe the sword in the vain effort to overthrow Rome and to establish at once the rule of the Messiah.  It was because this type of hope was so strong in the minds of the common people that the false messiahs who rose from time to time were able quickly to gather thousands about them in the vain expectation that the moment of deliverance had at last arrived.

III.  The Apocalyptic, Catastrophic Type of Messianic Hope.  Another class of thinkers in Israel looked not for a temporal but for a supernatural kingdom.  It is usually described in the symbolic language of the apocalypse.  The inauguration of this kingdom was not dependent upon man’s activity but solely upon the will of God.  The exact time and manner of its institution was clothed in mystery.  Traces of this belief are found in the references in Amos to the popular expectations regarding the day of Jehovah.  Evidently the Northern Israelites lived in anticipation of a great universal judgment day, in which their heathen foes would be suddenly destroyed and they themselves would be exalted.  It was a belief which Amos and the ethical prophets who followed him strongly combated, for they were fully aware of the fundamental weakness in the apocalyptic or catastrophic type of prophecy:  it took away from the nation and individual all personal responsibility.  Furthermore, its roots went back to the old Semitic mythology.  This type of hope, however, was too firmly fixed in the popular mind to be dispelled even by the preaching of Israel’s greatest prophets.  As a result of the calamities that gathered about the fall of the Hebrew state it was revived.  It is found in