ontrovertible, and where the writer likewise transfers
himself into the time of the [Pg 466] captivity, viz., the passage in
Hos. xiii. 9-11, which, in other respects also, shows a great
resemblance to the one under consideration: "This has destroyed thee, O
Israel, that thou wast against Me, against thine help. Where is now thy
king? Let him deliver thee in all thy cities. And where are thy judges?
Surely thou didst say: Give me kings and princes. And I gave thee a
king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath." It is quite
impossible to entertain, even for a moment, the thought that, in this
passage, Hosea speaks of the real past and present, inasmuch as he
prophesied before the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes.
Micah opens his representation just with the moment that Jerusalem is
captured by the enemies; and he announces to her that her sufferings
are not yet at an end,--that she must wander into exile. The progress
of the thought in the verse under consideration is this:--The prophet
sees Zion dissolved in grief and lamentation. Full of sympathy, he asks
of her the cause of this mourning,--whether, it may be, it was caused
by the loss of her king; and he himself answers this question in the
affirmative, because such a cause could alone account for such a grief.
Now, in order fully to realize the mourning of Zion over her king, we
must bear in mind that the visible head was a representative of the
invisible one,--the mediator of His mercies: that hence, his removal
was a token of divine anger, and an extinction of every hope of
salvation. Every other king is, indeed, likewise an anointed of the
Lord; but the king of Israel was so in a totally different sense. How
deeply, from this point of view, the loss of the king was felt, at the
time when that which is here merely the _ideal_ present became the
_real_ present, is seen from Lam. iv. 20: "The breath of our life, the
anointed of the Lord, is taken a prisoner in their pits, he of whom we
said. Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen." In Zech. iv.
the civil magistrates, along with the ecclesiastical authorities,
appear as the greatest gift of God's grace; henceforth these two shall
again be the medium through which the Lord communicates His gracious
gifts to the Congregation, just as they had been before the captivity.
It must further be borne in mind, that all the promises for the future
were bound up with the regal institution. With its extin