History of the Jewish Nation: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from History of the Jewish Nation: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day The history of no nation is so intimately connected with the welfare of the whole human race as that of the Jews. "Immanuel was a Jew, " and for this reason, if for no other, mankind would have an interest in tracing the narrative of the race to which that mighty Personage belonged. The Jews are the people of promise, to whom the Divine Word stands pledged, in a sense which is true of no other nationality. They stand nearer to God, in certain respects, than any other people. The Jews are the people of prophecy. The things foretold concerning them in one age are fulfilled in another. Prophecy and its fulfillment are in them joined closely together. History, within a certain limited range, exists and is written for their sakes. In their gradually developing history, the word of Jehovah stands, as it were, on trial, and the reverent mind takes the deepest interest in inquiring what is the issue of this test. Is the Divine word, in the gradual unfolding of the ages, fulfilled? And he who worthily sets forth the materials for the answering of this question, does a service to theology, to learning, to history, and to every curious inquirer. God made promises to the Hebrew nation from the days of Abraham till the close of the Old Testament Scripture. He threatened evil to them as the fruit of rebellion and sin. Have the good things promised, and has the evil threatened come to the nation in alternating succession, in proportion to their varying deserts? The Jews who lived in the times of the incarnation of Christ imprecated curses upon themselves and their children for the share they chose to take in compassing the death of the Son of God. Has the curse rested upon the people? Do they feel, in their present separation from the nations of the earth, in the lack of respect with which they are, as a general rule, regarded, in the cruel persecutions which have been visited upon them, and in their stubborn blindness to the light of the Gospel, the awful effect of Divine displeasure? These questions, as they are continuously solved by history, hold an important relation to the theology of the world. While the Divine omnipresence is a truth universally conceded, and which needs no argument, we find in the Jewish nation and its history, the most convincing illustration of that doctrine. In the Jewish history God stands forth before men, an acknowledged, a present God, - a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate him. If other histories are so written as to seem like events without a God, the Jewish history is a history with God everywhere embodied, and everywhere apparent. The history of the Jewish people is a commentary on the Divine faithfulness and veracity, and in it God brings himself very near to men. The history embraced in this volume extends from the commencement of the race of the Jews, as a separate people, in Abraham, through the entire narrative of the Old Testament, and the period intervening between the first and second dispensations, and traces them in their dispersion among the kingdoms of the earth, down to the present time. The original work has been carefully revised and condensed, needless phrases and statements stricken out, and everything of real value, including the engravings, retained. As now presented to the public, it forms a fitting and reliable chronicle of the Jewish race, prepared with earnest and pains-taking investigation, and is an admirable contribution to our historical literature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com