PROPHETS. 



2G9 



rah (usually in the character of "the angel of Jeho- 

 vah") taking visible form and appearing to the eye, 

 or attracting the eye by some visible manifestation 

 (the burning bush, for example), and then communi- 

 cating directly with the person thus aroused ;_ fourth, 

 by excited insipht, or other form of mental vision, as 

 distinguished from sense-vision. Among the most 

 familiar instances of theophauy are those Described in 

 Gen. xviii., Ex. iii., the events at Sinai, Jud. xiii. 

 Perhaps the instance in 2 Kings iii. 15 is an instance 

 of mental vision as distinguished from sense-vision. It 

 may be presumed that most of the instances described 

 by words of the stem ]JTI are instances of mental 

 vision, except as otherwise specified. Theophany, in 

 either form, is regarded as the highest form of divine 

 communication. 



Mi* lex af Utterance by the Prophets. Certain pecu- 

 liar modes of utterance by the prophets bear a close 

 analogy to the modes of revelation just considered. 

 For example, they use symbols, that is, physical ob- 

 jects or personal acts representing the truths they have 

 to utter, e. g., 1 Kings xi. 30, 31 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 15, seq. ; 

 Is;i. chap. xx. A higher class of symbols are those 

 called types. The subject of prophetic typology has 

 been voluminously discussed, with much difference in 

 definition and opinion. Perhaps the best definition of 

 what is properly to be called a " type " is that it is an 

 object or event used to present a great truth in such a 

 way that it becomes a foreshadowing example of a 

 greater presentation of the same truth. Thus Chris- 

 tian theology might hold that the Levitical sacrifices 

 were types of the sacrifice of Christ, or that each 

 member of the line of great Old Testament prophets 

 was a type of Christ in nis prophetic office. 



No utterances of Jehovah's prophets have a double 

 meaning in the sense of being equivocal in meaning. 

 In some cases which have been regarded as presenting 

 a double sense, the New Testament uses a prophetic. 

 passage simply for illustration. _ An instance of this 

 kind, doubtless, is that in which Matthew applies 

 Jeremiah's language concerning Kachel weeping for 

 her children to the case of the innocents slaughtered 

 by Herod, Matt. ii. 1$; Jer. xxxi. 15. But there is 

 a large class of instances in which a prophecy may 

 have a manifold application, or a manifold fulfilment, 

 without being equivocal in meaning. Types and anti- 

 types, for example, may occur in a series, so that the 

 foretelling of one event amounts to the foretelling of 

 all the future events in the series. Or a statement 

 made concerning some part of a complex event may 

 equally be true of the whole, or vice versti. Or a pre- 

 dio'ion may be capable of a successive or a progressive 

 fulfilment. Or the foretelling of a final event in a 

 historic process may imply that of many of the events 

 that lead up to the final event. It is evident that in 

 these and other ways a prophecy may be generic with- 

 out being ambiguous. And still further, when a 

 prophecy, whether properly predictive or not, enunci- 

 ates a principle on which Goa acts, its statement may 

 be made to apply to every case in history that comes 

 under the principle. 



IV. The Jewish tradition counts the Books of 

 Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as the four books 

 of the earlier prophets, and the Books of Isaiah, Jere- 

 niiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets as the 

 lour books of the later prophets. By one form of the 

 tradition a form which is corroborated by the arrange- 

 ment of the versions and by the phenomena in the 

 wise Ruth is counted as a part of the collection of 

 the earlier prophets, being regarded as one with 

 Judges, but our present Hebrew Bibles put Ruth in 

 the Hagiocnplta, They also put Lamentations in the 

 ll.i.'Miinqiha, though another form of the tmditinn 

 counts this book iilong with Jeremiah as prophetic. 

 Starting from the idea that prophecy is mainly predic- 

 tion, it is sometimes mentioned as remarkable that 

 l)aniel, the book more marked by prediction than any 

 other, is. uniformly reckoned among tlie HagtOfnptuL, , 



and not in the division called the Prophets ; but really, 

 the fact that the book is predictive, to the exclusion 

 of the homiletical element, constitutes a sharp differ- 

 ence between it and most of the books that are classed 

 as prophetic. Whatever may have been the reason 

 for classifying this list of books as " The Prophets," it 

 certainly does not indicate that the men who made the 

 classification regarded the Pentateuch and the Hagio- 

 srrapha as of non-prophetic authorship. It is beyond 

 dispute that they, whoever they were, regarded 

 Moses, David, Daniel, and others as prophets, and re- 

 garded all the Old Testament as written before the 

 disappearance of prophecy. See articles on BlBLE 

 and CANON. 



The records contained in the Books of Judges, 

 Samuel, and Kings, up to the times of Jeroboam II, 

 of Israel, doubtless consist largely of transcriptions 

 from writings of Samuel, Gad, Nathan, Ahijnh, She- 

 maiah, Jehu, and other prophets, who flourished be- 

 fore the times of Amos and the other earliest prophets 

 whose names are attached to our present prophetic 

 books. This fact, or even the traditional opinion that 

 this was the fact, affords a natural and plausible reason 

 why these books should be called the books of the 

 earlier prophets. See further in the articles JUDGES, 

 HUTU, SAMUEL, KINGS. 



The books commonly called the twelve Minor 

 Prophets seem to be arranged in what their collector 

 regarded as four chronological groups. The last three, 

 Malachi, ZedutriaA, and Hnggai, belong to the Per- 

 sian period. The two next preceding, jSejihaniah and 

 Habakink, belong with Ezeltid and Jeremiah, in the 

 Babylonian period. The next two preceding, A'ahum 

 and Alicah, belong with most of Isaiah in the later 

 Assyrian period the period of the Sargonidae. The 

 intention seems to have been to indicate that the first 

 five of the twelve books belong in a group together, 

 dated by the dates of Jlosea and Amos ag in the middle 

 Assyrian period the period to which Tiglath-pileser 

 gives character. Hosea is placed first, though it is not 

 the earliest. The Jewish traditions explain this by 

 the fact that it is the largest of the twelve books. The 

 earlier prophecies of Isaiah belong with these five 

 books to the middle Assyrian period, and the historical 

 situation of Zeeh. ix.-xiv. is that of the same period, 

 no matter when these chapters were written. Our 

 study of the books will be facilitated if we first make 

 a brief survey of the history of the period. 



On their face the Biblical numerals ^ive 175 years 

 for the interval between the accession of Jehu and the 

 destruction of Samaria. The chronology most com- 

 monly received io treats the numeral* as to reduce this 

 by a few years, and the chronology now accepted by 

 many Assyriologists and others rejects a part of the 

 statements of the Bible, and reduces the length of the 

 period by about fifty years. It is not a matter of in- 

 difference which chronological theory we accept, but 

 we need not now discuss the question, as the point 

 before ug does not depend upon it. In any case the 

 first decades of the interval belong to what may fairly 

 be called the earlier Assyrian period, that in which 

 Shalmaneser II. figures prominently. This monarch 

 mentions Samaria and nearly all the Palestinian coun- 

 tries except Judah as his tributaries, and says that 

 Hazael of Damascus, who came to the throne at about 

 the same time with Jehu, was conquered after some 

 resistance. According to the accounts in the Books of 

 Kings and Chronicles, Hazael's reign lasted some 

 forty-six years, his son Benhadad being a part of the 

 time associated with him in some capacity ; it covered 

 the reigns of Jehu and his son Jehoahaz in Israel, 

 and those of Athaliah and Joaxh in Judah. Hazael 

 was the enemy of Israel. We may assume that he 

 was checked by the power of Assyria, but before the 

 death of Jehu he had "cut Israel short" and gained 

 control of the country east of the Jordan. Later, he 

 and his son Benhadad utterly wasted the Northern 

 kingdom, and finally, in the last year of Joash of 



