Even Elisha, the greatest prophet of the 9th century, had remained within these national limitations which characterized the popular conceptions of Yahweh. Yahweh was Israel's wargod. His power was asserted in and from Canaanite soil. If Naaman was to be healed, it could only be in a Palestinian river, and two mules' load of earth would be the only permanent guarantee of Yahweh's effective blessing on the Syrian general in his Syrian home.

We see that the prophet had now definitely emerged from the old position of "seer." Prophetic personality now moved in a larger sphere than that of divination, important though that function be in the social life of the ancient state' as instrumental in declaring the will of the deity when any enterprise was on foot. For the prophet's function became in an increasing degree a function of mind, and not merely of traditional routine or mechanical technique, like that of the diviner with his arrows or his lots which he cast in the presence of the ephod or plated Yahweh image. The new name nabhi' became necessary to express this function of more exalted significance, in which human personality played its larger rôle. Even as early as the time of David it would seem that Nathan assumed this more developed function as interpreter of Yahweh's righteous will to David. But both in 2 Sam. xii. 1-15 as well as in 2 Sam. vii. we have sections which are evidently coloured by the conceptions of a later time. We stand on safer ground when we come to Elijah's bold intervention on behalf of righteousness when he declared in the name of Yahweh the divine judgment on Ahab and his house for the judicial murder of Naboth. We here observe a great advance in the vocation of the prophet. He becomes the interpreter and vindicator of divine justice, the vocal exponent of a nation's conscience. For Elijah was in this case obviously no originator or innovator. He represents the old ethical Mosaism, which had not disappeared from the national consciousness, but still remained as the moral pre-supposition on which the prophets of the following century based their appeals and denunciations. It is highly significant that Elijah, when driven from the northern kingdom by the threats of the Tyrian Jezebel, retreats to the old sanctuary at Horeb, whence Moses derived his inspiration and his Torah.

We have hitherto dealt with isolated examples of prophetism and its rare and distinguished personalities. The ordinary Hebrew nabhi' still remained not the reflective visionary, stirred at times by music into strange raptures (2 Kings iii. 15), but the ecstatic and orgiastic dervish who was meshuggah or "frenzied," a term which was constantly applied to him from the days of Elisha to those of Jeremiah (2 Kings ix. 11; in Hos. ix. 7 and Jer. xxix. 26 it is regarded as a term of reproach). It is only in rare instances that some exalted personality is raised to a higher level. Of this we have an interesting example in the vivid episode that preceded the battle of Ramoth-Gilead described in 1 Kings xxii., when Micaiah appears as the true prophet of Yahweh, who in his rare independence stands in sharp contrast with the conventional court prophets, who prophesied then, as their descendants prophesied more than two centuries later, smooth things.

It is not, however, till the 8th century that prophecy attained its highest level as the interpreter of God's ways to men. This is due to the fact that it for the first time unfolded the true character of Yahweh, implicit in the old Mosaic religion and submerged in the subsequent centuries of Israel's life in Canaan, but now at length made clear and explicit to the mind of the 1 In Isa. iii. 2 the soothsayer is placed on a level with the judge, prophet and elder.

That larger conceptions prevailed in some of the loftier minds of Israel, and may be held to have existed even as far back as the age of Moses, is a fact which the Yahwistic cosmogony in Gen. ii. 4b-9 (which may have been composed in the 9th century B.C.) clearly suggests, and it is strongly sustained by the overwhelming evidence of the powerful influence of Babylonian culture in the Palestinian region during the centuries 20001400 B.C. Probably in our modern construction of ancient Hebrew history sufficient consideration has not been given to the inevitable coexistence of different types and planes of thought, each evolved from earlier and more primordial forms. In other words we have to deal not with one evolution but with evolutions.

The existence of the purer and larger conception of Yahweh's character and power before the advent of Amos indicates that the transition from the past was not so sudden as Wellhausen's graphic portrayal in the 9th edition of this Encyclopaedia (art. ISRAEL) would have led us to suppose. There were pre-existent ideas upon which that prophet's epoch-making message was based. Yet this consideration should in no way obscure the fact that the prophet lived and worked in the all-pervading atmosphere of the popular syncretic Yahweh religion, intensely national and local in its character. In Wellhausen's words, each petty state "revolved on its own axis" of social-religious life till the armies of Tiglath-Pileser III. broke up the security within the Canaanite borders. According to the dominating popular conception, the destruction of the national power by a foreign army meant the overthrow of the prestige of the national deity by the foreign nation's god. If Assyria finally overthrew Israel and carried off Yahweh's shrine, Assur (Ašur), the tutelary deity of Assyria, was mightier than Yahweh. This was precisely what was happening among the northern states, and Amos foresaw that this might eventually be Israel's doom. Rabshakeh's appeal to the besieged inhabitants of Jerusalem was based on these same considerations. He argued from past history that

Kautzsch, in his profoundly learned article on the "Religion of Israel," to which frequent reference has been made, exhibits (pp. 669-671) an excess of scepticism, in our opinion, towards the views the intimate connexion between the early Hebrew cosmogonic ideas propounded by Gunkel in 1895 (Schöpfung und Chaos) respecting and those of Babylonia. Stade indeed (Z.A.T.W., 1903, pp. 176178) maintained that the conception of Yahweh as creator of the world could not have arisen till after the middle of the 8th century as the result of prophetic teaching, and that it was not till the time of Ezekiel that Babylonian conceptions entered the world of Hebrew thought in any fulness. Such a theory appears to ignore the remarkable results of archaeology since 1887. At that time Stade's position might have appeared reasonable. It was the conclusion to which Wellhausen's brilliant literary analysis, when not supplemented by the discoveries at Tell el-Amarna and Tell el-Hesi, appeared to many scholars (by no means all) inevitably to conduct us. But the years 1887 to 1891 opened many eyes to the fact that the Hebrews fived their life on the great highways of intercourse between Egypt on the one hand, and Babylonia, Assyria and the N. Palestinian states on the other, and that they could scarcely have escaped the all-pervading Babylonian influences of 2000-1400 B.C. It is now becoming clearer every day, especially since the discovery of the laws of Khammurabi, that, if we are to think sanely about Hebrew history before as well as after the exile, we can only think of Israel as part of the great complex of Semitic and especially Canaanite humanity that lived its life in western Asia between 2000 and 600 B.C.; and that while the Hebrew race maintained by the aid of prophetism its own individual and exalted place, it was not less susceptible then, than it has been since, to the moulding influences of great adjacent civilizations and ideas. CI. C. H. W. Johns in Interpreter, pp. 300-304 (in April 1906), on prophetism in Babylonia.

Yahweh would be powerless in the presence of Ashur (2 Kings | xviii. 33-35).

This problem of religion was solved by Amos and by the prophets who succeeded him through a more exalted conception of Yahweh and His sphere of working, which tended to detach Him from His limited realm as a national deity. Amos exhibited Him to his countrymen as lord of the universe, who made the seven stars and Orion and turns the deep midnight darkness into morning. He calls to the waters of the sea and pours them on the earth's surface (chap. v. 8). Such a universal God of the world would hardly make Israel His exclusive concern. Thus He not only brought the Israelites out of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir (ix. 7). But Amos went beyond this. Yahweh was not only the lord of the universe and possessed of sovereign power. The prophet also emphasized with passionate earnestness that Yahweh was a God whose character was righteous, and God's demand upon His people Israel was not for sacrifices but for righteous conduct. Sacrifice, as this prophet, like his successor Jeremiah, insisted (Amos v. 25; cf. Jer. vii. 22) played no part in Mosaic religion. In words which evidently impressed his younger contemporary Isaiah (cf. esp. Is. chap. i. 11-17), Amos denounced the nonethical ceremonial formalism of his countrymen which then prevailed (chap. v. 21 foll.):

"I hate, I contemn your festivals and in your feasts I delight not; for when you offer me your burnt-offerings and gifts, I do not regard them with favour and your fatted peace-offerings I will not look at. Take away from me the clamour of your songs; and the music cf your viols I will not hear. But let judgment roll down like waters and justice like a perennial brook."

In the younger contemporary prophet of Ephraim, Hosea, the stress is laid on the relation of love (hesed) between Yahweh, the divine husband, and Israel, the faithless spouse. Israel's faithlessness is shown in idolatry and the prevailing corruption of the high places in which the old Canaanite Baal was worshipped instead of Yahweh. It is shown, moreover, in foreign alliances. Compacts with a powerful foreign state, under whose acgis Israel was glad to shelter, involved covenants sealed by sacrificial rites in which the deity or deities of the foreign state were involved as well as Yahweh, the god of the weaker vassal-state. And so Yahweh's honour was compromised. While these aspects of Israel's relation to Yahweh are emphasized by the Ephraimite prophet, the larger conceptions of Yahweh's character as universal Lord and the God of righteousness, whose government of the world is ethical, emphasized by the prophet of Tekoah, are scarcely presented.

single out those loftier spiritual and ethical elements which lay implicit in Mosaism and to lift them into their due place of prominence. National sacra and the ceremonial requirements were made to assume a secondary rôle or were even ignored.1 The centre of gravity in Hebrew religion was shifted from ceremonial observance and local sacra to righteous conduct. Religion and righteousness were henceforth welded into an indissoluble whole. The religion of Yahweh was no longer to rest upon the narrow perishable basis of locality and national sacra, but on the broad adamantine foundations of a universal divine sovereignty over all mankind and of righteousness as the essential element in the character of Yahweh and in his claims on man. This was the "corner-stone of precious solid foundation ": "I will make judgment the measuring-line and righteousness the plummet ” (Isa. xxviii. 16, 17). The religion of the Hebrew race-properly the Jews-now enters on a new stage, for it should be observed that it was Amos, Isaiah and Micah-prophets of Judah—who laid the actual foundations. The latter half of the 8th century, which witnessed a rapid succession of reigns in the northern kingdom accompanied by dismemberment of its territory and final overthrow, witnessed also the humiliating vassalage and religious decline of the kingdom of Judah. Unlike Amos and Micah, Isaiah was not only the prophet of denunciation but also the prophet of hope. Though Yahweh's chastisements on Ephraim and Judah would continue to fall till scarcely a remnant was left (Isa. vi. 13, LXX.), yet all was not to be lost. A remnant of the people was to return, i.e. be converted to Yahweh. The name given to an infant childImmanuel-was to become the mystic symbol of a growing hope. God's presence was to abide in Jerusalem, and, as the century drew near its close, "Immanuel " became the watchword and talisman of a strong faith that God would never permit Jerusalem to be captured by the Assyrians. In fact it is not improbable that the words of consolation uttered by the prophet (Isa. viii. 9-10) in the dark days of Ahaz (735-734 B.C.) were among the oracles which God commanded Isaiah "to seal up among his disciples" (verse 16), and that they were quoted once more with effect as the armies of Sennacherib closed around Jerusalem. The talismanic name Immanuel became the nucleus out of which the later Messianic prophecies of Isaiah grew. To this age alone can we probably assign Isa. ix. 1-7, xi. 1-9, xxxii. 1-3. The hopes expressed in the word Immanuel," God with us," were to become embodied in a personality of the royal seed of David, an ideal righteous ruler who was to bring peace to the war-distraught realm. Thus Isaiah became in that troubled age the true founder of Messianic prophecy. The strange contrast between the succession of dynasties and kings cut off by assassination in the northern kingdom, ending in the tragic overthrow of 721 B.C., and the

on the throne of Jerusalem, as well as the marvellous escape of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. from the fate of Samaria, must have invested the seed of David in the eyes of all thoughtful observers with a mysterious and divine significance. The Messianic prophecies of Isaiah, the prophet of faith and deliverance, were destined to reverberate through all subsequent centuries. We hear the echoes in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and lastly in Haggai in ever feebler tones, and they were destined to reawaken in the Psalter (Pss. ii. and lxxii.), in the psalms of Solomon and in the days of Christ. See MESSIAH (and also the article "Messiah” in Hastings's Dict. of Christ and the Gospels).

And so the old limitations of Israel's popular religion,-the same limitations that encumbered also the religions of all the neighbouring races that succumbed in turn to Assyria's invincible progress,-now began to disappear. Therefore, while every other religion which was purely national was extinguished

in the nation's overthrow, the religion of Israel survived even amid exile and dispersion. For Amos and Isaiah were able to

receive ampler and more splendid exposition than in the great lyrical passages of chap. xl. It marks the highest point to which the Hebrew race attained in its progress from henotheism to monotheism. Here again we see the wholesome influences of the exile. The Jew had passed from the narrow confines of his homeland into a wider world, and this larger vision of human life reacted on the prophet's theology. This closes the evolution of Hebrew prophetism. What immediately follows is on a descending slope with some striking exceptions, e.g. the book of Job and the book of Jonah.

The strong impress of Hebrew prophecy is to be found in the deeply marked ethical spirit of the Deuteronomic legislation. Love to God and love to man is stamped on a large number of its provisions. Love to God is emphasized in Deut. vi. 5, while love to man meets us in the constant reference to the | fatherless and the widow (cf. especially Deut. xvi.). This note of philanthropy is frequently found as a mitigating element (e.g. in the laws respecting slavery and war)' that subdues or even removes the harshness of earlier laws or usages. It should be noted, however, that the spirit of brotherly love was confined within national barriers. It did not operate as a rule beyond the limits of race.

7. Deuteronomic Legalism.-The book of Deuteronomy was the product of prophetic teaching operating on traditional custom, which was represented in its essential features by the two codes of legislation contained in Ex. xx. 24-xxiii. 19 (E) and Ex. xxxiv. 10-26 (J), but had also become tainted and corrupted by centuries of Canaanite influence and practice which especially infected the cult of the high places. The existence of "high places" is presupposed in those two ancient codes and is also presumed in the narratives of the documents E and J which contain them. But the prevalence of the worship of "other gods " and of graven images in these "high places," and the moral debasement of life which accompanied these cults, made it clear that the high places" were sources of grave injury to Israel's social life. In all probability the reformation instituted in the reign of Hezekiah, to which 2 Kings xviii. 4 (cf. verse 22) refers, was only partial. It is hardly possible that all the high places were suppressed. The idolatrous reaction in the reign of Manassch appears to have restored all the evils of the past and added to them. Another and more drastic reform than that which had been previously initiated (probably at the instigation of Isaiah and Micah) now became necessary to save the state. It is universally held by critics that our present book of Deuteronomy (certainly chaps. xii.-xxvi.) is closely connected with the reformation in the reign of Josiah. It is quite clear that many provisions in the old codes of J and E expanded lie at the basis of the book of Deuteronomy. But new features were added. We note for the first time definite regulations respecting Passover and the close union of that celebration with Massoth or unleavened bread." We note the laws respecting the clean and unclean animals (certainly based on ancient custom). Moreover, the prohibitions are strengthened and multiplied. In addition to the bare interdict of the sorceress (Ex. xxii. 18), of stone pillars to the Canaanite Baal, of the Asherah-pole, molten images and the worship of other gods than Yahweh (Ex. xxxiv. 13-17), we now have the strict prohibition of any employment whatever of the stonesymbol (Maşşebhah), and of all forms of sorcery, soothsaying and necromancy (Deut. xviii. 10, 11. Respecting the stonepillar see xvi. 22). But of much more far-reaching importance was the law of the central sanctuary which constantly meets us in Deuteronomy in the reference to "the place (i.c. Jerusalem) which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there" (xii. 5, xvi. 5, 11, 16, xxvi. 2). There alone all offerings of any kind were to be presented (xii. 6, 7, xvi. 7). By this positive enactment all the high places outside the one sanctuary in Jerusalem became illegitimate. A further consequence directly followed from the limitation as to sanctuary, viz. limitation as to the officiating ministers of the sanctuary. In the "book of the covenant" (Ex. xx. 22-xxii. 19), as we have already seen, and in the general practice of the regal period, there was no limitation as to the priesthood, but a definite order of priesthood, viz. Levites, existed, to whom a higher professional prestige belonged. As it was impossible to find a place for the officiating priests of the high places, non-levitical as well as levitical, in the single sanctuary, it became necessary to restrict the functions of sacrifice to the Levites only as well as to the existing official priesthood of the Jerusalem temple

(see PRIEST). Doubtless such a reform met with strong resistance from the disestablished and vested interests, but it was firmly supported by royal influence and by the Jerusalem priesthood as well as by the true prophets of Yahweh who had protested against the idolatrous usages and corruptions of the high places.

The book of Deuteronomy, in conjunction with the reformation of Josiah's reign (which synchronizes with the rapid decline of Assyria and the reviving prestige of Yahweh), appeared to mark the triumph of the great prophetic movement. It became at once a codified standard of purer religious life and ultimately served as a beacon of light for the future. But there was shadow as well as light. We note (a) that though the book of Deuteronomy bears the prophetic impress, the priestly impress is perhaps more marked. The writer "evinces a warm regard for the priestly tribe; he guards its privileges (xviii. 1-8), demands obedience for its decisions (xxiv. 8; cf. xvii. 10-12) and earnestly commends its members to the Israelites' benevolence (xii. 18-19, xiv. 27-29, &c.)."2 (b) In many passages Jewish particularism is painfully manifest. Yahweh's care for other peoples does not appear. The flesh of a dead (unslaughtered) beast is not to be eaten, but it may be given to the stranger within the gates"! (Deut. xiv. 21). (c) Prophetic religion was a religion of the spirit which came to the messenger (Isa. lxi. 1) and expressed itself as a word of instruction of Yahweh (tōrah); see Isa. i. 10. Now when the Hebrew religion was reduced to written form it began to be a book-religion, and since the book consisted of fixed rules and enactments, religion began to acquire a stereotyped character. It will be seen in the sequel that this was destined to be the growing tendency of Jewish religious life-to conform itself to prescribed rules, in other words, it became legalism. (d) Lastly, the old genial life of the high places, in which the new moon or Sabbath or the annual festival was a sacrificial feast of communion, in which the members of the local community or clan enjoyed fellowship with one another-all this picturesque life ceased to be. And though there was positive gain in the removal of idolatrous and corrupt modes of worship, there was also positive loss in the disappearance of this old genial phase of Hebrew social life and worship. It involved a vast difference to many a Judaean village when the festival pilgrimage was no longer made to the familiar local sanctuary with its hoary associations of ancient heroic or patriarchal story, but to a distant and comparatively unfamiliar city with its stately shrine and priesthood.

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8. Ezekiel's System.-Ezekiel was the successor of Jeremiah and inherited his conceptions. But though the younger prophet adopted the ideas respecting personal religion and individual responsibility from the elder, the characters of the two men were very different. Jeremiah, when he foretold the destruction of the external state and temple ritual, found no resource save in a reconstruction that was internal and spiritual. In this he was true to his prophetic impulse and genius. But Ezekiel was, as Wellhausen well describes him, " a priest in prophet's mantle." While Jeremiah's tendency was spiritual and ideal, Ezekiel's was constructive and practical. He was the first to foretell with clearness the return of his people from captivity foreshadowed by Jeremiah, and he set himself the task even in 1 Thus in comparison with the "book of the covenant," Deuteronomy adds the stipulation in reference to the release of the slave; that his master was to provide him liberally from his flocks, his corn and his wine (Deut. xv. 13, 14). See Hastings's D.B., arts. vant,' "Slave," p. 464, where other examples may be found. In war fruit-trees are to be spared (Deut. xx. 19 foll.), whereas the old universal practice is the barbarous custom Elisha commended (2 Kings iii. 19) of ruthlessly destroying them. Driver, Internat. Commentary on Deuteronomy, Introd. p. xxx. * It should be noted that in P(Code of Holiness) Lev. xvii. 15 foll. the resident alien (ger) is placed on an equality with the Jew.

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