In the O. T., Jehovah is the Redeemer of his people. He works through judges, prophets, kings, but he himself remains the Savior; “it is only the Divine in them that saves”; “Salvation is of Jehovah”_ (Jonah 2:9)_. Jehovah is manifested in the Davidic King under the monarchy; in Israel, the Servant of the Lord, during the exile; and in the Messiah, or Anointed One, in the post-exilian period. Because of its conscious identification with Jehovah, Israel is always a forward-looking people. Each new judge, king, prophet is regarded as heralding the coming reign of righteousness and peace. These earthly deliverers are saluted with rapturous expectation; the prophets express this expectation in terms that transcend the possibilities of the present; and, when this expectation fails to be fully realized, the Messianic hope is simply transferred to a larger future. Each separate prophecy has its drapery furnished by the prophet’s immediate surroundings, and finds its occasion in some event of contemporaneous history. But by degrees it becomes evident that only an ideal and perfect King and Savior can fill out the requirements of prophecy. Only when Christ appears, does the real meaning of the various Old Testament predictions become manifest. Only then are men able to combine the seemingly inconsistent prophecies of a priest who is also a king (_Psalm 110_), and of a royal but at the same time a suffering Messiah (_Isaiah 53_). It is not enough for us to ask what the prophet himself meant, or what his earliest hearers understood, by his prophecy. This is to regard prophecy as having only a single, and that a human, author. With the spirit of man coöperated the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit (_1 Pet. 1:11—_“the Spirit of Christ which was in them”; _2 Pet. 1:21—_“no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”). All prophecy has a twofold authorship, human and divine; the same Christ who spoke through the prophets brought about the fulfilment of their words.