Privilege. The prophets did not abandon the old idea of Israel as a nation privileged of God ; but they transfigured it by the contention that privilege is responsibility, election a call to service. And prophecy itself culminated in the vocation of Jeremiah to a life of sorrow and suffering, heroically accepted for a nation that hated him; and secondly, in the Servant-Songs of II. Isaiah (see ISAIAH) where the function of Israel is con ceived as a self -sacrificial consecration, through unparalleled trials, for the redemption of mankind.
Knowledge of God. There were very many prophets in Israel. How came it that the few advanced towards a rational faith, and the many—equally convinced that their "Word" was from the Lord —failed? To whom, and why, is revelation given? Here again Jeremiah is illuminating. No outward criteria, he felt, avail to discern the true from the false prophets. Ultimately he saw that they were not sensitive, as he was, to the moral obliquity around them, or alive to the evil in their own heart ; and he rested at last on the faith that if he surrendered himself absolutely to God's service, accepting whatever loneliness, pains or even death it might entail, God would speak truly through him (Jer. xv. i 9). But this attitude had been the basic fact regarding all the great prophets; diverse in many ways, they were men of absolute sin cerity and self-surrender. The example of their character is the last and greatest gift of the prophets to mankind, for it is the clue to sound religious experience everywhere : "the pure in heart shall see God." The Prophetic Consciousness.—Until as late as the i 7th century A.D., interest in the prophetic writings was almost ex clusively concentrated on the predictive element.
As to this aspect, it should be noted that there are indeed instances of fulfilled presentiments (e.g., Ez. xxxiii. 21, 22), and close correspondences of events with prophetic anticipations ; but the prophets are wronged when, as is still sometimes main tained, the validity of their inspiration is felt to depend crucially on fulfilment of predictions, instead of broadly on the rightness of their interpretation of Life as ethical duty, dependent on the real ity of the living God. The Suffering Servant anticipates Jesus Christ because the prophet was inspired by the vision of a life of absolute self-sacrifice, and Jesus accepted the conditions of that life and endured its issues. After the Reformation recognition of
the poetical form of the prophetic literature led to the necessary analysis of the Books bearing the prophets' names. Criticism in the r 9th century was marked by enthusiasm for the prophets as preachers of social righteousness ; but present research, psycho logical and historical, reveals them primarily as men of religious genius, who must be studied in intimate connection with their Eastern environment. Recently it is urged (especially Holscher) that the inner experiences, and outward behaviour, of the great prophets were closely akin to the ecstasies of the early Nebi'im. Certainly the subconscious is a highly important consideration in studying Hebrew prophecy, but the theory has been pushed to extremes and is sometimes maintained by grotesque forcing of the evidence. There ought to be more careful discrimination of terms, and "ecstasy" reserved for conditions in which the subject has lost all control of mind and body. Stress, inducing at times trance, with audition and vision, is exemplified in the great prophets (especially the "Call" experiences, cf. Is. vi.) ; but to argue that these men virtually never felt conviction break on them at any less intense level of the infinite gradations of emo tion, never saw an illuminating parable in nature, never employed a symbolic action, unless in a state of uncontrolled ecstasy, is to go too far. There are indications that they distrusted increasingly the fervours of their opponents (so A. B. Davidson). Whatever resemblances they had to the ordinary prophets, it is the profound differences that will repay study. The extreme forms of the theory are ruled out by the grand consistency of the great prophets : the coherence of their teaching is the supreme psycho logical fact ; and either the oracles we possess are the record of passionate but conscious reflection, or in these men conditions existed which caused the subconscious to produce the rational and the relevant to an unparalleled extent. In any event, an Amos or an Isaiah is infinitely better understood by the analogy of Paul, with his vision on the Damascus road and his en thusiastic yet controlled temperament, than of the ecstatic seer or frenzied Nebi'im. It is true that the Hebrew prophet says, never "I saw," "I know," but "The Lord skewed me," "Thus saith Jehovah." Explanation is found in the psychological ideas which he shared with his contemporaries. H. Wheeler Robinson rightly emphasizes that Man was regarded as intimately depend ent on God in his psychical as well as his physical properties; his "breath-soul" open to the invasion of spirits divine and demonic. Hence not only in the trance-experience, but under any intense emotional stress the Hebrew felt that he had "become another man," the "spirit of the Lord had laid hold upon him"; so that it is easy to realize sympathetically why the prophet was con vinced that he spake never of himself but as "the messenger of Him that sent me." The Prophetic Succession.—Hebrew prophecy possesses the unity of a single movement, having origin, development and climax. It ended not in exhaustion, but in the liberation of energy, manifested in personal piety, in efforts to systematize the great ideas (Judaism), and in inextinguishable Hope of a divine purpose in the world (Apocalypse). Hebrew Prophecy recurs not, but "true" prophets—called by many names, Saint, Preacher, Re former, Scholar—have not ceased to be ; for it was part of the work of prophecy to reveal that "all the Lord's people should be prophets," and that the prophet is he for whom God is the living God. Whenever discernment of truth in new aspects is imperative, the interpreting prophetic personality is prominent, and is ever the vitalizing element in religion. Amidst the turmoil at the close of the last century B.C. and the first A.D., it is easy to see why individuals appeared who were manifestly prophetic in type—John the Baptist, Jesus Christ (though the term be inade quate for Him), Paul, Johanan ben Zakkai.