2B8 



pnal appearance, or mode of life, or registry of or- 

 dinutiun. Hut iiirii might, of course, become second- 

 ary prophets by merely becoming followers of the 

 prophets whose gills wore recogni.- 



( rrtfiiii \<itHriilitt!e function* of the I'fophrU. Tliey 

 wen- prominent a- tlic public men of tlirir times. In 

 proof, note what is saiil BOMWUnf the career of Moaea 

 or Samiit 1. Hlijali. Klisha, I- u.ih. .Jeremiah. Tliey 

 wore the leailere of the party dial advocated u certain 

 religious polii-y on the part of the government, and of 

 the party that opposed foreign alliances in every direc- 

 tion. After tin- llahylonian conquest became an ac- 

 complished fact, such prophets as Jeremiah advocated 

 the political action that accepted it as a fact. As lone 

 as tlic separate kingdoms of Israel and Juduh existed, 

 the prophets were a bond of unity between the two 

 " kingdoms ; Judii'an jiroidiet.s like Amos and Isaiah 

 prophesied for the Northern kingdom, and northern 

 prophets. Klisha and Hosca. tor instance, for the 

 Southern kingdom (Am. i. 1 ; iii. 1, 12, etc. jHos. xi. 

 12, etc.; l! Kinirs iii. 14 ; Jer. xxx. 3, 4 ; xxxi. 1, 5, C, 

 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 27). In short, a biography of the 

 prophets would be a history of Israel 



Tliey were the reformers of their times. Besides re- 

 ligious questions, they discussed improper divorce, 

 licentiousness, usury, land monopoly, drunkenness and 

 dissipation, slavery, and like questions (Mai. ii. 10-16 ; 

 Jer. v. 7-9, etc. ; Neh. chap. v. ; Ezek. xviii. 8, etc. ; 

 Is*, v. 7-10, 11-22; Jer. xxxiv. 8-22, and the pro- 

 phetic books throughout). Further, they were evangel- 

 istic preachers and organizers. As a rule, the pro- 

 phetic books are homiletic. Still further, they were the 

 literary men of the nation. This is of course true of 

 the so-called literary prophets and their contempo- 

 raries, and among those who lived earlier the Hilile at- 

 tributes authorship to Kliiah, Jehu, Shemaiah, Jedo, 

 Ahijah, Solomon, David, Kthan. Heman, Asaph, Na- 

 than, God, Samuel, Joshua, Moses. So far as func- 

 tions of these kinds are concerned, the prophets of 

 Israel have their counterparts among two classes of 

 men, in all ages : first, among devout religious work- 

 ers, adherents of the true religion ; and, secondly, 

 among the especially gifted men whom God anywhere 

 rais< up for special purposes in the history of man- 

 kind. 



\\'>tn<l-r- Wnrlcinrj Iii/ the Prophet*. But in addition 

 to all such functions as have been mentioned, the Old 

 Testament attributes distinctly supernatural powers to 

 the prophets. I'nder the influence of the Spirit of 

 Jehovah, supplied to them for that purpose, they he 

 came workers of miracles. Familiar instances of this 

 aort are to be found in the accounts given of Klijah 

 and Klisha, Very prominent, among their miracles is 

 the supernatural discovering and revealing of secrets, 

 e. a., 2 Kings vi. Iii. or |)an. chap. ii. 



The I'l-njili'lt iu Predictor* of krrnh. In Christian 

 apologetics, the argument from fulfilled prediction has 

 o instituted one of the chief uses made of the proph- 

 ecies. Owing in part to this fact, many persons un- 

 questionably make the predictive element too promi- 

 nent in their ideas of prophecy. 1 'redid ion i.> tar from 

 being, as many imagine, the central and essential fac- 

 tor in prophecy. Nevertheless, the Old Toiaincnt 

 represents it as a real factor, and an especially impor- 

 tant ( Evidently a prediction might be one of the 



signs whose fulfilment would accredit the prophet who 

 tpeaks in Jehovah's name. pent, xviii. L'J : xiii. 1-5. 

 rullillcd predictions are prominently claimed as haying 

 this effect, e. </., Isa. xll. 22, 23, 26 ; xlii. U ; xliii. y, 

 12, 18, 19; Bcch. i. 4-6. 



Alrjuianic hatching by the Prnphft*. That which the 

 prophets make most prominent in their utterances is 

 tin- doctrine that Israel is Jehovah's peculiar peo- 

 ple, in viitm; of Jehovah s purpose, and his covenant 

 with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; that this covenant 

 promise and purpose h:i> liecn receiving fulfilment up 

 to the time when e.ich prophet lived, and is to have 

 yet larger fulfilment in the future, lu all the pro- 



i diet ic writings this doctrine, either expressed or implied, 

 lies at the basis of all counsel, all rebuke, all exhorta- 

 tion to re|K!ti(ance or ol*-dien,v, all encouragement, all 

 comfort, all direction tor private life, all patriotic ap- 

 peal, all religious teaching. The doctrine is central in 

 the discourses of the prophets, just as the. doctrine of 

 a crucified ami risen Christ is central in the discourses 

 of the apostles. A part of this doctrine is that Is- 

 rael's mission as Jehovah's peculiar people is not tor 

 himself alone, but for all the nations, flic passages 

 cited in the New Testament in support of the claims 

 of Jesus arc, with hardly an exception, those in which 

 the prophets teach this great central doctrine. The 

 New Testament claim is essentially that the promised 

 fulfilment of Jehovah's covenant purpose with Israel 

 mainly comes about through Israel's Christ, aud that 

 Jesus of Nazareth is that Chri.-t. 



If this view be correct, we have in the Old Testa- 

 mcnt not a great number of predictions concerning the 

 Messiah, but a single prediction, often repeated in a 

 great variety of forms and aspects. If we make a dis- 

 tinction between prediction and promise or doctrine, 

 the Messianic utterances of the Old Testament are of 

 the nature of promise and doctrine, rather than of pre- 

 diction, dwagfl this does not render them any the lo.s 

 genuinely predictive. With this view of the matter, 

 we need neither afiirui that the evangelists claim that 

 the propheis had in mind the person of Jesus, when 

 they wrote these passages, nor admit that the evan- 

 gelists used the. pa^-i-v- in an accommodated 

 From the point of view of the great covenant promise, 

 they regard the history of the Christ as the crowning 

 portion of the history of Israel, and they interpret ac- 

 cordingly what the prophets say of the future history 

 of Israel, as fulfilling the covenant pronn 



The l^rnphets and Jehovah's Law. The handling 

 of the Tiirah of Jehovah is, in the Old Testament, 

 attributed to both the priests and the propheU. It 

 does not follow that there were two different bodies of 

 Jehovah's law-^-a prophetic Tor.ih and a priestly 

 Torah. The difference seems rather to be that the 

 priests, in association with the magistrates, were the 

 custodians, teachers, and interpreters of such law :is 

 Jehovah had already given (Pent. xxxi. 9; xvii. S-I'J, 

 18, 19 ; 2 Chron. xv. 3 ; xvii. 9 ; Jer. ii. S ; Lev. x. 1 1 ; 

 Peut. xxxiii. 10; xxiv. 8 ; Mic. iii. II; 2 Kings xvii. L'7, 

 28, etc.). while the prophets not merely give instruc- 

 tion in tlie law, but bring the law from Jehovah (Isa. 

 viii. 16, 20 ; Neh. ix. 2(5 ; Jer. xxvi. 4, 5 ; Dan. ix. 10 ; 

 1 Sam. xii. 23, etc.). The representation everywhere 

 seems to be that through the prophets Jehovah re- 

 vealed the Torah, which it was the duty of the priests 

 merely to administer. 



The term "Torah," as thus used, seems to have 

 been applicable to any particular revelation made by 

 Jehovah to a prophet, especially if the revelation 

 wen- committed to writing, and again, to have been 

 applicable collectively to the whole body of such rev- 

 elation. It is more correct to say that h is often so 

 used as to include the sacred writings attributed to 

 Moses, than to say that it is currently used to denote, 

 those writings. Long before the Christian era, how- 

 ever, those writings had come to be regarded as the 

 Torah par KM //' MA . 



AfiK/'-x i if IHrliK' l!ii;liitinn to tin /';./!//. As we 

 have already seen, the inspiration of the prophets jg 

 represented to have lieen by the. Spirit of Jehovah. 

 The modes in which the Spirit is said to have commu- 

 nicated with them are commonly classified as I line, 

 namely, by dreams, by visions, and by direct revela- 

 tion. A better classification is that sui-ire-ii-d by the 

 terms employed to descrilx: the prophets, namely, 

 first, by dreams (Num. xii. fi ; Pent. xiii. 1 ; Pan. 

 i. 17), with the dreams of Joseph, Solomon, etc,., and 

 (he interpretations by Joseph. Panic], etc. ; second, 

 by sense-visions, the presenting of ohji-ci lessons, 

 thought of as visible to the eye, as in Xreh. i. 8-13, 

 IS- 21 ; ii. 1-5; iii., etc. ; third, by tin ophanies, Jcho- 



