rse, for example, of Isaiah, ch. 4, is immediately connected in sense
with the threatenings against "the daughters of Zion" contained in the
close of the preceding chapter In the beginning of ch. 11 of the same
book, the words: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of
Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots," contrast the Branch of
the Messiah with the Assyrian bough, the lopping off of which has just
been foretold; chap. 10:33, 34. The last three verses, again, of Isaiah,
ch. 52, evidently belong to the following chapter. The connections of
the sacred text, therefore, must be determined independently of these
human distinctions.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ORIGINAL TEXT AND ITS HISTORY.

1. The original language of the Old Testament is _Hebrew_, with the
exception of certain portions of Ezra and Daniel and a single verse of
Jeremiah, (Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4, from the middle of the
verse to end of chap. 7; Jer. 10:11,) which are written in the cognate
_Chaldee_ language. The Hebrew belongs to a stock of related languages
commonly called _Shemitic_, because spoken mainly by the descendants of
Shem. Its main divisions are: (1,) the _Arabic_, having its original
seat in the southeastern part of the Shemitic territory, and of which
the AEthiopic is a branch; (2,) the _Aramaean_ in the north and northeast,
comprising the eastern Aramaean or _Chaldee_, and the western or
_Syriac_; (3,) the _Hebrew_, occupying a middle place between the two.
The _Samaritan_ is essentially Aramaean, but with an intermixture of
Hebrew forms; the _Phoenician_, or _Punic_, on the other hand, is most
closely allied to the Hebrew. All these languages, with the exception of
the AEthiopic, are written from right to left, and exhibit many
peculiarities of orthography and grammatical forms and structure.

2. The Hebrew characters in present use, called the _Assyrian_, or
_square writing_, are not those originally employed. The earlier form is
undoubtedly represented by the inscriptions on the coins struck by the
Maccabees, of which the letters bear a strong resemblance to the
Samaritan and Phoenician characters. The Jewish tradition is that the
present square character was introduced by Ezra, and that it was of
Assyrian origin. The question of the correctness of this tradition has
been much discussed. Some wholly reject it, and hold that the present
square writing came by a gradual process of change from a more ancient
t