The Golden Age.—A century later (c. 75o B.c.) the Golden Age of Hebrew prophecy, wherein the universal aspects of religious truth were perceived as the real significance of Israel's national faith in Jehovah, began with the oracles of Amos and Hosea in Northern Israel, to be continued in Judah, especially by Isaiah, Micah and Jeremiah. For Amos there is but one God of the whole earth, controller of other nations as well as Israel, whose favour everywhere is determined solely by such concern for moral con duct that not even the wrongs of a slave go unheeded by Him. Amos is styled the "Prophet of the Justice of God," but the phrase is wholly inadequate. Positive goodness, forbearance, mercy, kindness are the inexorable divine demand. Between Jehovah and Israel a special relation exists; but the implication is not (as the people imagine) favouritism, but responsibility : "to whom much is given, of them shall much be required" (Am. iii. 2). Faced by the iniquities of their times, earlier prophets had assailed the dynasty at whatever risk to the national fortunes ; but Amos, appalled by corruptions that rotted society from top to bottom, uttered logically a judgment almost incomprehensible to the ancient mind—God will bring overwhelming ruin upon the nation itself (Am. vi.–ix. passim). Lastly, Amos marks a new era for religion by his special declaration that the immemorial forms of worship —sacrifices, fasts and feasts—are sheer futility: God is to be sought not through material offerings, but spiritually in upright and generous conduct (Am. v. 5, 14, 21-24). Here is the enunciation practically, if not also theoretically, of ethical mono theism. The profundity of these beliefs, which thenceforth became the gospel of the higher prophets, needs no emphasising. Not unjustly Amos has been called the forerunner of Kant.
To Hosea love seemed fundamental in the attitude of God to Israel. Deeper than the necessity for moral retribution lay the divine love. It has been observed that Amos and Hosea sig nificantly complement one another; they "form a pair—law and love" (S. A. Cook).
Taught, it would seem, by some poignant personal experience, Hosea agonized with the dilemma : God must shatter the sinful nation, yet to do so would seem to end his gracious purpose in defeat (Ho. xi. 8, 9). What if the disaster, which is sure, be after all a means to an end—R-6.0et A6.0os? Out of the ashes of Retribution, Hope must rise (Ho. ii. 15). Far more deeply than Amos, Hosea probed the problem of sin. The cultus was not merely futile; it was a prime source of iniquity, and must be abolished. He pities the masses ; they sin indeed, but it is for lack of knowledge (Ho. ii. 8). Thus was prophecy released from pessimism. However near and overwhelming the "day of the Lord" in judgment, the prophet must exhort men to penitence and belief in an ultimate divine salvation.
The view (Gressmann, Gunkel) that Amos and his successors inherited a cut-and-dry eschatological expectation of woe followed by bliss—whether derived from native Israelite sources (Sellin) or influenced by Egyptian (Ed. Meyer) or Babylonian literature—
rests on inadequate or misinterpreted evidence. The message of doom announced by Amos was startling to his hearers, and it would seem that the higher prophets' anticipation of some im pending judgment catastrophic yet congruous with an undefeated divine purpose was radically the unaided product of their own reflection on the righteousness, power and goodness of God. In Hosea and Isaiah the element of hope beyond catastrophe is prominent. Whether it was conceived very vaguely, or more definitely (Messianic) depends on the dubious authenticity of certain passages (see APOCALYPSE, MESSIAH). For the achieve ment of an order of perfect righteousness apocalyptic cataclysm is, in reality, irrelevant; since love cannot be compelled. In their passionate pleading for reform the prophets were feeling their way to a deeper comprehension, which at last was attained when Jeremiah based his hope of a divine consummation simply on faith in God's effecting the moral regeneration of the human heart (Jer. xxxi. Isaiah and Jeremiah.—The task which lay before the great prophets of Judah (c. 740-586 B.c.)—who, in contrast to the facile optimism of the ordinary prophets "healing lightly the hurt of the daughter of Zion," continued convinced that the ruin of the State was at hand—was to discover how faith in Jehovah could survive the political destruction. In effecting this infinitely diffi cult task it was their sublime achievement "to liberate the eternal truths of religion from their temporary national embodiment, and disclose their true foundation in the immutable character of God and the essential nature of Man" (Skinner).
To Isaiah is due the conception of an Israel within Israel, a believing nucleus; a "Church of God." Convinced that he knew the mind and power of the living God ("Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts," Is. vi. 5), he reasserted on a higher level the earlier prophetic claim to control the national policy. Thorough social reform must accompany quiet trust in God, and in Him alone, for the fate of the nation (cf. Is. xxx. f5). Assyria is resistless, not in virtue of its vaunted might but because it is the weapon in Yahweh's hand against his sinful people (Is. x.). Whatever sufferings it inflicts in invading Judah will be the discipline of divine wisdom, and will leave behind a purified remnant of the faithful in Zion, through whom God's purpose shall be fulfilled (cf. Is. x. 20-23, xxviii. 16). Rejected by king and people, apparently he gave substance to his hopes by seeking disciples who accepted his principles (Is. viii. 16). At the crisis of the Assyrian invasion (7or B.c.?), he foretold the inviolability of Zion and this momentary form of his teaching was preserved in popular memory superstitiously apart from its spirit and the moral conditions on which his doctrine of Faith (Trust) rested (cf. Jer. vii. 1-15).