i8 7 o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 183 



that the prophets were men of the most varied character 

 and capacity. It lies simply in this that what they 

 spoke, they spoke as the word of Jahveh, the God of 

 Israel a name which the rebellious people might often 

 forget, but never dared to repudiate. We are not entitled 

 to assume that when the prophets and the people spoke of 

 Jahveh they had before their minds equally lofty or 

 equally ethical ideas ; but it is obvious, as Kuenen puts 

 it, that 



&quot; The whole preaching of the prophets would be 

 unintelligible if we may not assume that their funda 

 mental positions were generally conceded. The freedom 

 with which they stand forth in the name of Jahveh, 

 rebuking, approving, announcing punishment and reward, 

 is an enigma if they did not stand, with their hearers, on 

 the common ground of faith in the wholly peculiar relation 

 of Jahveh to Israel.&quot; l 



In a word, the historical circumstances of the eighth 

 century leave no doubt that in that age Jahveh was fully 

 acknowledged as the ancestral God of Israel a God whose 

 authority over His people was so supreme that His servants 

 and ambassadors stood high above the ministers of all 

 other gods. This conclusion may seem, perhaps, too 

 obvious to demand formal statement, yet the consequences 

 that flow from it are of the weightiest. It is not by a 

 slow, insensible process that one among many gods can 

 reach such a pre-eminence. A polytheistic nation has 

 often gradually chosen out one god for special veneration ; 

 but here we have one God so elevated above the rest that 

 the men who, in His name, denounced all other gods as 

 helpless idols were acknowledged by the idolaters them 

 selves to be speaking with a name and a power that they 

 dared not gainsay. Not an inward devotion of heart to 

 the peculiar tenets of Jahvism, which much rather were 

 impatiently borne and gladly cast aside, but the feeling 

 that, by infallible signs, Jahveh had shown Himself a 

 true God must have lain at the root of this reverence. 



1 Godsdienst, 77. 



