_THE PROPHET IN EARLY ISRAEL_
Our "Twelve Prophets" will carry us, as we have seen, across the
whole extent of the Prophetical period--the period when prophecy
became literature, assuming the form and rising to the intensity of
an imperishable influence on the world. The earliest of the Twelve,
Amos and Hosea, were the inaugurators of this period. They were not
only the first (so far as we know) to commit prophecy to writing, but
we find in them the germs of all its subsequent development. Yet Amos
and Hosea were not unfathered. Behind them lay an older dispensation,
and their own was partly a product of this, and partly a revolt
against it. Amos says of himself: _The Lord hath spoken, who can but
prophesy?_--but again: _No prophet I, nor prophet's son_! Who were
those earlier prophets, whose office Amos assumed while repudiating
their spirit--whose name he abjured, yet could not escape from it? And,
while we are about the matter, what do we mean by "prophet" in general?
In vulgar use the name "prophet" has degenerated to the meaning of
"one who foretells the future." Of this meaning it is, perhaps, the
first duty of every student of prophecy earnestly and stubbornly
to rid himself. In its native Greek tongue "prophet" meant not
"one who speaks before," but "one who speaks for, or on behalf of,
another." At the Delphic oracle "The Prophētēs" was the title of
the official, who received the utterances of the frenzied Pythoness
and expounded them to the people;[17] but Plato says that this is a
misuse of the word, and that the true prophet is the inspired person
himself, he who is in communication with the Deity and who speaks
directly for the Deity.[18] So Tiresias, the seer, is called by
Pindar the "prophet" or "interpreter of Zeus,"[19] and Plato even
styles poets "the prophets of the Muses."[20] It is in this sense
that we must think of the "prophet" of the Old Testament. He is a
speaker for God. The sharer of God's counsels, as Amos calls him,
he becomes the bearer and preacher of God's Word. Prediction of the
future is only a part, and often a subordinate and accidental part,
of an office whose full function is to declare the character and the
will of God. But the prophet does this in no systematic or abstract
form. He brings his revelation point by point, and in connection
with some occasion in the history of his people, or some phase of
their character. He is not a philosopher nor a theologian with a
system of doctrine (at least before Ezekiel), but the messenger and
herald of God at some crisis in the life or conduct of His people.
His message is never out of touch with events. These form either
the subject-matter or the proof or the execution of every oracle he
utters. It is, therefore, God not merely as Truth, but far more as
Providence, whom the prophet reveals. And although that Providence
includes the full destiny of Israel and mankind, the prophet brings
the news of it, for the most part, piece by piece, with reference
to some present sin or duty, or some impending crisis or calamity.
Yet he does all this, not merely because the word needed for the
day has been committed to him by itself, and as if he were only its
mechanical vehicle; but because he has come under the overwhelming
conviction of God's presence and of His character, a conviction often
so strong that God's word breaks through him and God speaks in the
first person to the people.
1. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TILL SAMUEL.
There was no ancient people but believed in the power of certain
personages to consult the Deity and to reveal His will. Every man could
sacrifice; but not every man could render in return the oracle of God.
This pertained to select individuals or orders. So the prophet seems
to have been an older specialist than the priest, though in every tribe
he frequently combined the latter's functions with his own.[21]
The matters on which ancient man consulted God were as wide as life.
But naturally at first, in a rude state of society and at a low stage
of mental development, it was in regard to the material defence
and necessities of life, the bare law and order, that men almost
exclusively sought the Divine will. And the whole history of prophecy
is just the effort to substitute for these elementary provisions a
more personal standard of the moral law, and more spiritual ideals of
the Divine Grace.
By the Semitic race--to which we may now confine ourselves, since
Israel belonged to it--Deity was worshipped, in the main, as the god
of a tribe. Every Semitic tribe had its own god; it would appear
that there was no god without a tribe:[22] the traces of belief in
a supreme and abstract Deity are few and ineffectual. The tribe
was the medium by which the god made himself known, and became an
effective power on earth: the god was the patron of the tribe, the
supreme magistrate and the leader in war. The piety he demanded was
little more than loyalty to ritual; the morality he enforced was
only a matter of police. He took no cognisance of the character or
inner thoughts of the individual. But the tribe believed him to
stand in very close connection with all the practical interests of
their common life. They asked of him the detection of criminals, the
discovery of lost property, the settlement of civil suits, sometimes
when the crops should be sown, and always when war should be waged
and by what tactics.
The means by which the prophet consulted the Deity on these subjects
were for the most part primitive and rude. They may be summed up
under two kinds: Visions either through falling into ecstasy or by
dreaming in sleep, and Signs or Omens. Both kinds are instanced in
Balaam.[23] Of the signs some were natural, like the whisper of
trees, the flight of birds, the passage of clouds, the movements of
stars. Others were artificial, like the casting or drawing of lots.
Others were between these, like the shape assumed by the entrails of
the sacrificed animals when thrown on the ground. Again, the prophet
was often obliged to do something wonderful in the people's sight,
in order to convince them of his authority. In Biblical language he
had to work a miracle or give a sign. One instance throws a flood of
light on this habitual expectancy of the Semitic mind. There was once
an Arab chief, who wished to consult a distant soothsayer as to the
guilt of a daughter. But before he would trust the seer to give him
the right answer to such a question, he made him discover a grain
of corn which he had concealed about his horse.[24] He required the
physical sign before he would accept the moral judgment.
Now, to us the crudeness of the means employed, the opportunities
of fraud, the inadequacy of the tests for spiritual ends, are very
obvious. But do not let us, therefore, miss the numerous moral
opportunities which lay before the prophet even at that early
stage of his evolution. He was trusted to speak in the name of
Deity. Through him men believed in God and in the possibility of a
revelation. They sought from him the discrimination of evil from
good. The highest possibilities of social ministry lay open to him:
the tribal existence often hung on his word for peace or war; he
was the mouth of justice, the rebuke of evil, the champion of the
wronged. Where such opportunities were present, can we imagine the
Spirit of God to have been absent--the Spirit Who seeks men more than
they seek Him, and as He condescends to use their poor language for
religion must also have stooped to the picture language, to the rude
instruments, symbols and sacraments, of their early faith?
In an office of such mingled possibilities everything depended--as
we shall find it depend to the very end of prophecy--on the moral
insight and character of the prophet himself, on his conception
of God and whether he was so true to this as to overcome his
professional temptations to fraud and avarice, malice towards
individuals, subservience to the powerful, or, worst snares of all,
the slothfulness and insincerity of routine. We see this moral issue
put very clearly in such a story as that of Balaam, or in such a
career as that of Mohammed.
So much for the Semitic soothsayer in general. Now let us turn to
Israel.
Among the Hebrews the _man of God_,[25] to use his widest designation,
is at first called _Seer_,[26] or _Gazer_,[27] the word which Balaam
uses of himself. In consulting the Divine will he employs the same
external means, he offers the people for their evidence the same signs,
as do the seers or soothsayers of other Semitic tribes. He gains
influence by the miracles, _the wonderful things_, which he does.[28]
Moses himself is represented after this fashion. He meets the magicians
of Egypt on their own level. His use of _rods_; the holding up of
his hands that Israel may prevail against Amaleq; Joshua's casting
of lots to discover a criminal; Samuel's dream in the sanctuary; his
discovery for a fee of the lost asses of Saul; David and the images
in his house, the ephod he consulted; the sign to go to battle _what
time thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry
trees_; Solomon's inducement of dreams by sleeping in the sanctuary at
Gibeah,--these are a few of the many proofs, that early prophecy in
Israel employed not only the methods but even much of the furniture of
the kindred Semitic religions. But then those tools and methods were at
the same time accompanied by the noble opportunities of the prophetic
office to which I have just alluded--opportunities of religious and
social ministry--and, still more, these opportunities were at the
disposal of moral influences which, it is a matter of history, were not
found in any other Semitic religion than Israel's. However you will
explain it, that Divine Spirit, which we have felt unable to conceive
as absent from any Semitic prophet who truly sought after God, that
Light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world, was present
to an unparalleled degree with the early prophets of Israel. He came to
individuals, and to the nation as a whole, in events and in influences
which may be summed up as the impression of the character of their
national God, Jehovah: to use Biblical language, as _Jehovah's spirit_
and _power_. It is true that in many ways the Jehovah of early Israel
reminds us of other Semitic deities. Like some of them He appears
with thunder and lightning; like all of them He is the God of one
tribe who are His peculiar people. He bears the same titles--Melek,
Adon, Baal (_King_, _Lord_, _Possessor_). He is propitiated by the
same offerings. To choose one striking instance, captives and spoil
of war are sacrificed to Him with the same relentlessness, and by a
process which has even the same names given to it, as in the votive
inscriptions of Israel's heathen neighbours.[29] Yet, notwithstanding
all these elements, the religion of Jehovah from the very first
evinced, by the confession of all critics, an ethical force shared by
no other Semitic creed. From the first there was in it the promise and
the potency of that sublime monotheism, which in the period of our
"Twelve" it afterwards reached.[30] Its earliest effects of course
were chiefly political: it welded the twelve tribes into the unity
of a nation; it preserved them as one amid the many temptations to
scatter along those divergent lines of culture and of faith, which the
geography of their country placed so attractively before them.[31] It
taught them to prefer religious loyalty to material advantage, and so
inspired them with high motives for self-sacrifice and every other
duty of patriotism. But it did even better than thus teach them to
bear one another's burdens. It inspired them to care for one another's
sins. The last chapters of the Book of Judges prove how strong a
national conscience there was in early Israel. Even then Israel was
a moral, as well as a political, unity. Gradually there grew up, but
still unwritten, a body of Torah, or revealed law, which, though its
framework was the common custom of the Semitic race, was inspired by
ideals of humanity and justice not elsewhere in that race discernible
by us.
When we analyse this ethical distinction of early Israel, this
indubitable progress which the nation were making while the rest
of their world was morally stagnant, we find it to be due to their
impressions of the character of their God. This character did not
affect them as Righteousness only. At first it was even a more
wonderful Grace. Jehovah had chosen them when they were no people,
had redeemed them from servitude, had brought them to their land; had
borne with their stubbornness, and had forgiven their infidelities.
Such a Character was partly manifest in the great events of
their history, and partly communicated itself to their finest
personalities--as the Spirit of God does communicate with the spirit
of man made in His image. Those personalities were the early prophets
from Moses to Samuel. They inspired the nation to believe in God's
purposes for itself; they rallied it to war for the common faith, and
war was then the pitch of self-sacrifice; they gave justice to it in
God's name, and rebuked its sinfulness without sparing. Criticism has
proved that we do not know nearly so much about those first prophets,
as perhaps we thought we did. But under their God they made Israel.
Out of their work grew the monotheism of their successors, whom we
are now to study, and later the Christianity of the New Testament.
For myself I cannot but believe, that in the influence of Jehovah
which Israel owned in those early times, there was the authentic
revelation of a real Being.
2. FROM SAMUEL TO ELISHA.
Of the oldest order of Hebrew prophecy, Samuel was the last
representative. Till his time, we are told, the prophet in Israel was
known as the Seer,[32] but now, with other tempers and other habits,
a new order appears, whose name--and that means to a certain extent
their spirit--is to displace the older name and the older spirit.
When Samuel anointed Saul he bade him, for a sign that he was chosen
of the Lord, go forth to meet _a company of prophets_--Nebi'îm, the
singular is Nabi'--coming down from the high place or sanctuary with
viols, drums and pipes, and _prophesying_. _There_, he added, _the
spirit of Jehovah shall come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with
them, and shalt be turned into another man_. So it happened; and the
people _said one to another, What is this that is come to the son of
Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?_[33] Another story, probably
from another source, tells us that later, when Saul sent troops
of messengers to the sanctuary at Ramah to take David, they saw
_the company of prophets prophesying and Samuel standing appointed
over them, and the spirit of God fell_ upon one after another of
the troops; as upon Saul himself when he followed them up. _And he
stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like
manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore
they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?_[34]
All this is very different from the habits of the Seer, who had
hitherto represented prophecy. He was solitary, but these went
about in bands. They were filled with an infectious enthusiasm, by
which they excited each other and all sensitive persons whom they
touched. They stirred up this enthusiasm by singing, playing upon
instruments, and dancing: its results were frenzy, the tearing of
their clothes, and prostration. The same phenomena have appeared
in every religion--in Paganism often, and several times within
Christianity. They may be watched to-day among the dervishes of
Islam, who by singing (as one has seen them in Cairo), by swaying
of their bodies, by repeating the Divine Name, and dwelling on the
love and ineffable power of God, work themselves into an excitement
which ends in prostration and often in insensibility.[35] The whole
process is due to an overpowering sense of the Deity--crude and
unintelligent if you will, but sincere and authentic--which seems
to haunt the early stages of all religions, and to linger to the
end with the stagnant and unprogressive. The appearance of this
prophecy in Israel has given rise to a controversy as to whether it
was purely a native product, or was induced by infection from the
Canaanite tribes around. Such questions are of little interest in
face of these facts: that the ecstasy sprang up in Israel at a time
when the spirit of the people was stirred against the Philistines,
and patriotism and religion were equally excited; that it is
represented as due to the Spirit of Jehovah; and that the last of
the old order of Jehovah's prophets recognised its harmony with his
own dispensation, presided over it, and gave Israel's first king
as one of his signs, that he should come under its power. These
things being so, it is surprising that a recent critic[36] should
have seen in the dancing prophets nothing but eccentrics into whose
company it was shame for so good a man as Saul to fall. He reaches
this conclusion only by supposing that the reflexive verb used for
their _prophesying_--_hithnabbē'_--had at this time that equivalence
to mere madness to which it was reduced by the excesses of later
generations of prophets. With Samuel we feel that the word had no
reproach: the Nebi'îm were recognised by him as standing in the
prophetical succession. They sprang up in sympathy with a national
movement. The king who joined himself to them was the same who
sternly banished from Israel all the baser forms of soothsaying and
traffic with the dead. But, indeed, we need no other proof than
this: the name Nebi'îm so establishes itself in the popular regard
that it displaces the older names of Seer and Gazer, and becomes the
classical term for the whole body of prophets from Moses to Malachi.
There was one very remarkable change effected by this new order of
prophets, probably the very greatest relief which prophecy experienced
in the course of its evolution. This was separation from the ritual
and from the implements of soothsaying. Samuel had been both priest
and prophet. But after him the names and the duties were specialised,
though the specialising was incomplete. While the new Nebi'îm remained
in connection with the ancient centres of religion, they do not appear
to have exercised any part of the ritual. The priests, on the other
hand, did not confine themselves to sacrifice and other forms of public
worship, but exercised many of the so-called prophetic functions. They
also, as Hosea tells us, were expected to give Tôrôth--revelations
of the Divine will on points of conduct and order. There remained
with them the ancient forms of oracle--the Ephod, or plated image,
the Teraphim, the lot, and the Urim and Thummim,[37] all of these
apparently still regarded as indispensable elements of religion.[38]
From such rude forms of ascertaining the Divine Will, prophecy in its
new order was absolutely free. And it was free of the ritual of the
sanctuaries. As has been justly remarked, the ritual of Israel always
remained a peril to the people, the peril of relapsing into Paganism.
Not only did it materialise faith and engross affections in the
worshipper which were meant for moral objects, but very many of its
forms were actually the same as those of the other Semitic religions,
and it tempted its devotees to the confusion of their God with the gods
of the heathen. Prophecy was now wholly independent of it, and we may
see in such independence the possibility of all the subsequent career
of prophecy along moral and spiritual lines. Amos absolutely condemns
the ritual, and Hosea brings the message from God, _I will have mercy
and not sacrifice_. This is the distinctive glory of prophecy in that
era in which we are to study it. But do not let us forget that it
became possible through the ecstatic Nebi'îm of Samuel's time, and
through their separation from the national ritual and the material
forms of soothsaying. It is the way of Providence to prepare for the
revelation of great moral truths, by the enfranchisement, sometimes
centuries before, of an order or a nation of men from political or
professional interests which would have rendered it impossible for
their descendants to appreciate those truths without prejudice or
compromise.
We may conceive then of these Nebi'îm, these prophets, as enthusiasts
for Jehovah and for Israel. For Jehovah--if to-day we see men cast
by the adoration of the despot-deity of Islam into transports so
excessive that they lose all consciousness of earthly things and fall
into a trance, can we not imagine a like effect produced on the same
sensitive natures of the East by the contemplation of such a God as
Jehovah, so mighty in earth and heaven, so faithful to His people, so
full of grace? Was not such an ecstasy of worship most likely to be
born of the individual's ardent devotion in the hour of the nation's
despair?[39] Of course there would be swept up by such a movement all
the more volatile and unbalanced minds of the day--as these always
have been swept up by any powerful religious excitement--but that is
not to discredit the sincerity of the main volume of the feeling nor
its authenticity as a work of the Spirit of God, as the impression of
the character and power of Jehovah.
But these ecstatics were also enthusiasts for Israel; and this saved
the movement from morbidness. They worshipped God neither out of
sheer physical sympathy with nature, like the Phœnician devotees of
Adonis or the Greek Bacchantes; nor out of terror at the approaching
end of all things, like some of the ecstatic sects of the Middle
Ages; nor out of a selfish passion for their own salvation, like so
many a modern Christian fanatic; but in sympathy with their nation's
aspirations for freedom and her whole political life. They were
enthusiasts for their people. The ecstatic prophet was not confined
to his body nor to nature for the impulses of Deity. Israel was his
body, his atmosphere, his universe. Through it all he felt the thrill
of Deity. Confine religion to the personal, it grows rancid, morbid.
Wed it to patriotism, it lives in the open air and its blood is pure.
So in days of national danger the Nebi'îm would be inspired like Saul
to battle for their country's freedom; in more settled times they
would be lifted to the responsibilities of educating the people,
counselling the governors, and preserving the national traditions.
This is what actually took place. After the critical period of Saul's
time has passed, the prophets still remain enthusiasts; but they are
enthusiasts for affairs. They counsel and they rebuke David.[40] They
warn Rehoboam, and they excite Northern Israel to revolt.[41] They
overthrow and they set up dynasties.[42] They offer the king advice
on campaigns.[43] Like Elijah, they take up against the throne the
cause of the oppressed;[44] like Elisha, they stand by the throne
its most trusted counsellors in peace and war.[45] That all this is
no new order of prophecy in Israel, but the developed form of the
ecstasy of Samuel's day, is plain from the continuance of the name
Nebi'îm and from these two facts besides: that the ecstasy survives
and that the prophets still live in communities. The greatest figures
of the period, Elijah and Elisha, have upon them _the hand of the
Lord_, as the influence is now called: Elijah when he runs before
Ahab's chariot across Esdraelon, Elisha when by music he induces
upon himself the prophetic mood.[46] Another ecstatic figure is
the prophet who was sent to anoint Jehu; he swept in and he swept
out again, and the soldiers called him _that mad fellow_.[47] But
the roving bands had settled down into more or less stationary
communities, who partly lived by agriculture and partly by the alms
of the people or the endowments of the crown.[48] Their centres were
either the centres of national worship, like Bethel and Gilgal, or
the centres of government, like Samaria, where the dynasty of Omri
supported prophets both of Baal and of Jehovah.[49] They were called
prophets, but also _sons of the prophets_, the latter name not
because their office was hereditary, but by the Oriental fashion of
designating every member of a guild as the son of the guild. In many
cases the son may have succeeded his father; but the ranks could be
recruited from outside, as we see in the case of the young farmer
Elisha, whom Elijah anointed at the plough. They probably all wore
the mantle which is distinctive of some of them, the mantle of hair,
or skin of a beast.[50]
The risks of degeneration, to which this order of prophecy was
liable, arose both from its ecstatic temper and from its connection
with public affairs.
Religious ecstasy is always dangerous to the moral and intellectual
interests of religion. The largest prophetic figures of the period,
though they feel the ecstasy, attain their greatness by rising
superior to it. Elijah's raptures are impressive; but nobler are
his defence of Naboth and his denunciation of Ahab. And so Elisha's
inducement of the prophetic mood by music is the least attractive
element in his career: his greatness lies in his combination of the
care of souls with political insight and vigilance for the national
interests. Doubtless there were many of the sons of the prophets
who with smaller abilities cultivated a religion as rational and
moral. But for the herd ecstasy would be everything. It was so
easily induced or imitated that much of it cannot have been genuine.
Even where the feeling was at first sincere we can understand how
readily it became morbid; how fatally it might fall into sympathy
with that drunkenness from wine and that sexual passion which Israel
saw already cultivated as worship by the surrounding Canaanites. We
must feel these dangers of ecstasy if we would understand why Amos
cut himself off from the Nebi'îm, and why Hosea laid such emphasis
on the moral and intellectual sides of religion: _My people perish
for lack of knowledge_. Hosea indeed considered the degeneracy of
ecstasy as a judgment: _the prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit
is mad--for the multitude of thine iniquity_.[51] A later age derided
the ecstatics, and took one of the forms of the verb _to prophesy_ as
equivalent to the verb _to be mad_.[52]
But temptations as gross beset the prophet from that which should have
been the discipline of his ecstasy--his connection with public affairs.
Only some prophets were brave rebukers of the king and the people.
The herd which fed at the royal table--four hundred under Ahab--were
flatterers, who could not tell the truth, who said Peace, peace, when
there was no peace. These were false prophets. Yet it is curious that
the very early narrative which describes them[53] does not impute
their falsehood to any base motives of their own, but to the direct
inspiration of God, who sent forth a lying spirit upon them. So great
was the reverence still for the _man of the spirit_! Rather than doubt
his inspiration, they held his very lies to be inspired. One does not
of course mean that these consenting prophets were conscious liars;
but that their dependence on the king, their servile habits of speech,
disabled them from seeing the truth. Subserviency to the powerful was
their great temptation. In the story of Balaam we see confessed the
base instinct that he who paid the prophet should have the word of the
prophet in his favour. In Israel prophecy went through exactly the same
struggle between the claims of its God and the claims of its patrons.
Nor were those patrons always the rich. The bulk of the prophets were
dependent on the charitable gifts of the common people, and in this we
may find reason for that subjection of so many of them to the vulgar
ideals of the national destiny, to signs of which we are pointed by
Amos. The priest at Bethel only reflects public opinion when he takes
for granted that the prophet is a thoroughly mercenary character:
_Seer, get thee gone to the land of Judah; eat there thy bread, and
play the prophet there!_[54] No wonder Amos separates himself from such
hireling craftsmen!
* * * * *
Such was the course of prophecy up to Elisha, and the borders of
the eighth century. We have seen how even for the ancient prophet,
mere soothsayer though we might regard him in respect of the rude
instruments of his office, there were present moral opportunities of
the highest kind, from which, if he only proved true to them, we cannot
conceive the Spirit of God to have been absent. In early Israel we are
sure that the Spirit did meet such strong and pure characters, from
Moses to Samuel, creating by their means the nation of Israel, welding
it to a unity, which was not only political but moral--and moral to a
degree not elsewhere realised in the Semitic world. We saw how a new
race of prophets arose under Samuel, separate from the older forms
of prophecy by lot and oracle, separate, too, from the ritual as a
whole; and therefore free for a moral and spiritual advance of which
the priesthood, still bound to images and the ancient rites, proved
themselves incapable. But this new order of prophecy, besides its moral
opportunities, had also its moral perils: its ecstasy was dangerous,
its connection with public affairs was dangerous too. Again, the test
was the personal character of the prophet himself. And so once more we
see raised above the herd great personalities, who carry forward the
work of their predecessors. The results are, besides the discipline
of the monarchy and the defence of justice and the poor, the firm
establishment of Jehovah as the one and only God of Israel, and the
impression on Israel both of His omnipotent guidance of them in the
past, and of a worldwide destiny, still vague but brilliant, which He
had prepared for them in the future.
This brings us to Elisha, and from Elisha there are but forty years
to Amos. During those forty years, however, there arose within Israel
a new civilisation; beyond her there opened up a new world; and with
Assyria there entered the resources of Providence, a new power. It
was these three facts--the New Civilisation, the New World and the
New Power--which made the difference between Elisha and Amos, and
raised prophecy from a national to a universal religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Herodotus, viii. 36, 37.
[18] _Timæus_, 71, 72. The whole passage is worth transcribing:--
"No man, when in his senses, attains prophetic truth and inspiration;
but when he receives the inspired word either his intelligence
is enthralled by sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or
possession. And he who would understand what he remembers to have
been said, whether in dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic
and enthusiastic nature, or what he has seen, must recover his
senses; and then he will be able to explain rationally what all such
words and apparitions mean, and what indications they afford, to this
man or that, of past, present, or future, good and evil. But, while
he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees
or the words which he utters; the ancient saying is very true that
'only a man in his senses can act or judge about himself and his own
affairs.' And for this reason it is customary to appoint diviners or
interpreters as discerners of the oracles of the gods. Some persons
call them prophets; they do not know that they are only repeaters of
dark sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all,
but only interpreters of prophecy."--Jowett's _Translation_.
[19] _Nik._, i. 91.
[20] _Phædrus_, 262 D.
[21] It is still a controversy whether the original meaning of the
Semitic root KHN is prophet, as in the Arabic KâHiN, or priest, as in
the Hebrew KôHeN.
[22] Cf. Jer. ii. 10: _For pass over to the isles of Chittim, and
see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently; and see if there
be such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods?_ From the isles of
Chittim unto Kedar--the limits of the Semitic world.
[23] Numbers xxiv. 4, _falling but having his eyes open_. Ver. 1,
_enchantments_ ought to be _omens_.
[24] Instanced by Wellhausen, _Skizzen u. Vorarb._, No. v.
[25] אלהים איש
[26] רֹאֶה
[27] חזֶה
[28] Deut. xiii. 1 ff. admits that heathen seers were able to work
miracles and give signs, as well as the prophets of Jehovah.
[29] Cf. Mesha's account of himself and Chemosh on the Moabite Stone,
with the narrative of the taking of Ai in the Book of Joshua.
[30] Cf. Kuenen: _Gesammelte Alhandlungen_ (trans. by Budde), p. 461.
[31] So in Deborah's Song.
[32] 1 Sam. ix. 9.
[33] 1 Sam. x. 1-16, xi. 1-11, 15. Chap. x. 17-27, xi. 12-14, belong
to other and later documents. Cf. Robertson Smith, _Old Testament in
the Jewish Church_, 135 ff.
[34] 1 Sam. xix. 20-24.
[35] What seemed most to induce the frenzy of the dervishes whom I
watched was the fixing of their attention upon, the yearning of their
minds after, the love of God. "Ya habeebi!"--"O my beloved!"--they
cried.
[36] Cornill, in the first of his lectures on _Der Israelitische
Prophetismus_, one of the very best popular studies of prophecy, by a
master on the subject. See p. 73 _n_.
[37] It is now past doubt that these were two sacred stones used for
decision in the case of an alternative issue. This is plain from the
amended reading of Saul's prayer in 1 Sam. xiv. 41, 42 (after the
LXX.): _O Jehovah God of Israel, wherefore hast Thou not answered Thy
servant this day? If the iniquity be in me or in Jonathan my son, O
Jehovah God of Israel, give Urim: and if it be in Thy people Israel,
give, I pray Thee, Thummim._
[38] Hosea iii. 4. See next chapter, p. 38.
[39] Cf. Deut. xxviii. 34.
[40] 2 Sam. xii. 1 ff.
[41] 1 Kings xi. 29; xii. 22.
[42] 1 Kings xiv. 2, 7-11; xix. 15 f.; 2 Kings ix. 3 ff.
[43] 1 Kings xxii. 5 ff.; 2 Kings iii. 11 ff.
[44] 1 Kings xxi. 1 ff.
[45] 2 Kings vi.-viii., etc.
[46] 1 Kings xviii. 46; 2 Kings iii. 15.
[47] 3 Kings ix. 11. _Mad fellow_, not necessarily a term of reproach.
[48] 1 Kings xviii. 4, cf. 19; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5; iv. 38-44; v. 20
ff.; vi. 1 ff.; viii. 8 f., etc.
[49] 1 Kings xviii. 19; xxii. 6.
[50] So Elijah, 2 Kings i. 8: cf. John the Baptist, Matt. iii. 4.
[51] Hosea ix. 7.
[52] Jer. xxix. 26: _Every man that is mad, and worketh himself into
prophecy_ (מתנבא, the same form as is used without moral reproach in
1 Sam. x. 10 ff.).
[53] 1 Kings xxii.
[54] Amos vii. 12.