HITZIG, Ferdinand (1807-1875), exegete and Biblical critic, was born at Hauingen, Baden, where his father was an evangelical pastor, on June 23, 1807, received his early education at the pädagogium of Lörrach and at the lyceum of Carlsruhe, and entered the university of Heidelberg as a student of theology in the autumn of 1824. There he remained for a year, attending the lectures in exegesis and church history of Paulus the famous “rationalist”; but in 1825 he removed to Halle where Gesenius first decided him to devote himself to Old Testament subjects. His next step was to Göttingen in 1828, where he had Ewald for his master, and where in 1829 he graduated, the subject of his thesis being De Cadyti Urbe Herodotea. Returning to Heidelberg shortly afterwards, he “qualified” as “privatdocent” in theology the same year, and in 1831 published his Begriff der Kritik am Alten Testamente praktisch erörtert, a treatise in which the critical principles of the grammatico-historical school were stated with great fulness, clearness, and cogency; also Des Propheten Jonas Orakel über Moab, an exposition of the 15th and 16th chapters of the book of Isaiah attributed by him, as by many subsequent critics, to the prophet Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25. His next literary performance was a commentary on Isaiah (Uebersetzung u. Auslegung des Propheten Jesajas'), the publication of which in 1833 was soon followed by a call to an ordinary professorship of theology in the university of Zurich. There he laboured for a period of twenty-eight years, during which, besides commentaries on The Psalms (1835-36; 2d ed., 1863-65), The Minor Prophets (1838; 3d ed., 1863), Jeremiah (1841; 2d ed., 1866), Ezekiel (1847), Daniel (1850), Ecclesiastes (1847), Canticles (1855), and ...