he is the messenger of Jahveh of hosts." 1 The actual condition was very different: "You are turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble in the law; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi."2 Malachi's idea of righteousness is the observance of the ordinances.3 He does, indeed, say some wholesome things against divorce. But one of his great charges against the people is that they have robbed God by failing to pay their quota of tithes and offerings. Let the people bring the whole tithe into the sacred storehouse, that there may be food in the temple, and then God will make Judah a bountiful land. Still more has prophecy lost its true note in Joel, who was probably the latest of the canonical prophets. Joel was more priest than prophet, so that when famine swept over the land as a result of drought and vast swarms of locusts, the remedy proposed is to seek the favour of God by a great fast, at which the priests standing between the porch and the altar were to say this litany: "Spare Thy people, Jahveh, and give not Thy heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the peoples, Where is their God?" The blessings which God showered upon the land, by driving away the great army of locusts and by pouring the rain from heaven, are traced to this supplication of the priests. 1 Mal. ii. 7. 4 Mal. ii. 14 ff. 2 Mal. ii. 8. 8 Mal. iii. 7. 7 Joel ii. 17; cf. Psalm xlii. 3, 10. But Joel rises to a great height once, when he points out the coming day on which God's Spirit will be poured upon all flesh.1 The knowledge of God's will shall not be limited to priest and prophet, for the sons and daughters shall prophesy, the old men shall dream dreams, the young men shall see visions, and even upon the servants and handmaids will God's Spirit be poured. We see that the voice of prophecy was becoming faint as the sun sets on the long day of Israel's great religious fervour. The approach of the long night of legalism was at hand. There were no great prophets to avert the doom, and the Jewish Church sank into that deadly state from which Jesus sought in vain to arouse it. In The prophets never turned their back upon the Church; the Church turned its back upon them. They never separated from the Church, nor would they be driven out. They worked for the purification of the Church, but always from the inside. this they were followed by our Lord. He went to Jerusalem to keep the feast, and went out of the city only to go to Calvary. The Church finds much opposition from outside, but criticism is always more effective from inside. But those on the inside are so apt to become dead and blind like those lying prophets. The Church should be especially grateful for every voice for betterment which comes from within her bosom. If the time shall ever come-it has never yet been-when there shall be but one fold and one 1 1 Joel ii. 28 ff. Shepherd, there will not then necessarily be a perfect Church; but one great element in her power will be that all the forces which make for Christian progress and moral purity will come from within. In the contest between the prophets and the established religious order of their times, our sympathies are of course on the side of the prophets. They were right and the Church was wrong. But the lessons of all history warn us nevertheless to be charitable in our judgment. In this enlightened age the Church still occasionally lays violent hands upon a prophet. The Church has no desire to crush truth; she aims to conserve it. The trouble is always due to the inability to see what the truth actually is. Despite opposition and persecution, the Church was influenced by the prophets. The Church always in a way heeds the voices of those she martyrs. Jastrow thus gives a general estimate of that influence: "The prophetical movement gave an ethical flavour to the conception of the national deity. . . resulted in the creation of an elaborate legal code, in which all the rites of the religion and the functions of the priesthood are brought into accord with the principles of ethical monotheism as preached by the prophets." Though the Jewish Church fell far away from the prophetic ideal, it was at all events the better for the preaching of the prophets. In the long run the prophet is bound to find his audience and exert his influence. However hard people may try to stop their ears, the voice of truth slowly penetrates all obstructions. 1 The Study of Religion, p. 79. IN CHAPTER XIII THE PROPHET'S VISION N this closing chapter I propose to gather up some points of interest which have not found a place in the preceding discussion. To do this I use the term "vision" in no technical and limited sense, but to indicate rather the prophet's broad outlook upon the world, and also his conception of God. His vision really included both things. The prophet became a spokesman because he was first a man with a vision. The gloss in 1 Samuel ix. 91 is correct in one sense: it gives the true order of development. Nabi probably means speaker;2 roeh certainly means "one who sees." In the course of the development of prophecy there must have been men who saw before there were men who said. So with the individual: a man must be a seer before he can be a prophet. Isaiah must have his vision in the temple before he can face Ahaz at the conduit of the upper pool.3 The true prophet felt that his power to see was the "He that is now called the prophet was beforetime called the seer"; see further above, p. 30. 2 Opinion is divided whether nabi means a spokesman, as, e.g., Winckler maintains, or one who bubbles (under the influence of the Spirit), as, e.g., Kraetzschmar maintains. See additional note (14). 8 Isa. vii. 3. gift of God. His eyes saw, because Jahveh had opened them. His ears heard, because the Lord had quickened them. Hence it was that he stood by his vision even when it brought him persecution from Church or State. Hence also his isolation; for the prophets were, as a rule, men distrusted by their contemporaries. Rarely in all history has a great prophet had a general following in his lifetime. Jeremiah, Socrates, and Jesus Christ alike had the experience which belongs to the order of prophets. Man seems to dislike and distrust a vision keener than his own. The prophet was not only vouchsafed occasional glimpses into the mysteries of heaven, but he felt that he was accorded a full knowledge of the Divine purposes; in fact, his whole life seemed to be possessed of the Spirit of God, and directed whithersoever God would. The old writer shows the prophetic idea when he represents Jahveh as constrained to reveal to Abraham His purpose to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.1 So Amos states the broad principle: "Verily the Lord Jahveh will take no action except He disclose His purpose to His servants the prophets."2 The old seer Micaiah knew that the prophets who were predicting a successful campaign for Ahab were altogether wrong. He could not explain their error as we can, but was constrained to give an interpreta 1 Gen. xviii. 17 ff. The passage is assigned to J. (the Jahvist), the oldest of the Pentateuchal sources, and the one most endowed with the prophetic spirit. 2 Amos iii. 7. • This incident is fully treated on p. 52 ff. |