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Prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD come. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

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NOTES

It will be observed that only in exceptional cases have I given comments upon particular passages, cited by the pages on which they occur. For the most part what explanation I offer takes the form of analysis of discourses, or other divisions of prophecy; this analytic comment is distinguished to the eye by indenting, and as a rule what stands between two dashes represents a paragraph of the text.

DANIEL

Before a literary work can be correctly described it is necessary to grasp it in its unity. A difficulty in regard to this attaches to the Book of Daniel, from the fact that two distinct structures underlie the surface of the work, which need explaining and, as far as may be, harmonising. (1) On the one hand, the book contains, first, a series of six prophetic stories, presenting Daniel and his comrades as faithful to their religion amid Babylonian surroundings, while Daniel himself is described as miraculously endowed with power to read mysteries supernaturally manifested to others. This part of the work is told in the third person, and seems to be brought to a conclusion in the words: So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Then follows, as a seventh section, an apocalypse or revelation, in which alike the supernatural manifestations and their interpretations are given to Daniel himself from without; throughout this revelation Daniel speaks in the first person. (2) On the other hand, it is to be noted that the commencement and the latter part of the book are in Hebrew, while the middle is in the Aramaic dialect. (See pages 6, 31.) The Aramaic portion commences just where (in the second story) certain Chaldeans are described as speaking in the Syrian language; the dialect continues, however, long past the speech

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