The people they addressed could hardly have been in a position to defend themselves against the strictures of the prophets by even to this extent taking exception to their denunciations. With the decline of Israel, Jahvism had also declined, and the Israelites must have felt instinctively that the second phenomenon was the cause of the first, and that their own exceptional sinfulness had produced the national disasters. They might, indeed, so far as they knew the past history of their country, complain that the people of Israel had before transgressed as heavily without receiving such a severe punishment from Jahveh. But here the prophets met them fully on their own ground, by denouncing their past as well as their present wickedness, and by asserting that, his long-suffering patience having at length given way, Jahveh was then punishing them for the whole course of their national sins. Only once in the prophetical books is there any sign that the people ever ventured to question the premisses of the prophets. On one occasion they are said to have replied to Jeremiah’s denunciations by asserting that their misfortunes were really due to their having forsaken other gods for Jahveh, and by announcing that they would return to these divinities, the worship of whom had been accompanied by prosperity.[29] It was a dangerously strong argument to use against the prophets, and it naturally stirred Jeremiah to a fiercer fury of malediction. But, in general, the people could not have had either the critical power or the knowledge of their own history needed for the adoption of such a line of defence. The steady darkening of Israel’s prospects must have seemed to them grim confirmation of the prophetic statements. As prophet after prophet arose screaming against their wickedness, pointing to their misfortunes as the punishment inflicted by Jahveh, and announcing that worse calamities would come before the completion of it, they must have seen in every national disaster a proof that the prophets were divine envoys, and a chill of fear must have driven them to Jahveh’s feet.
Prophets and people stood on common ground in their patriotism. The attention of all the Israelites must have been absorbed in watching the national prospects. The prophets, necessarily including in their number the best and wisest minds, of course saw more clearly than the rest. Probably most of them had the acuteness to see how inevitable was the destruction of Israel. Once the group of small kingdoms fringing the eastern side of the Mediterranean was threatened by the vast power of inland Asia, it was not difficult to foresee the ultimate issue. Still the prophets, in their own way, did their best to avert their country’s ruin. Every prophetic declaration was a political pamphlet giving political advice. All their counsel was simply the development of a single precept—Rely on Jahveh only. In home matters this principle of action could do no harm, but it had a bad effect on foreign policy. When the great Assyrian empire was overshadowing Israel and all the kingdoms around, it did not require much wisdom to perceive the advantage of an alliance against the common danger. Nevertheless, the whole prophetic influence was used to prevent it; the states were separately attacked, and perished one by one. Egypt was far the most powerful of the countries near Palestine opposed to Assyria, and its protection would have been of enormous value to Israel. And yet at a time when both were threatened, Isaiah thundered against an alliance with Egypt;[30] and probably prophetic advice was the cause of the almost inconceivable folly of the religious Josiah’s attack on an Egyptian army actually invading Assyria.[31] So far as the prophets thus contributed to the political overthrow of Israel, they served the higher interests of their religion; but evidently a foolish fanaticism dictated their action, a belief that Jahveh would be dishonoured if his people allied themselves with strangers, and that, if they trusted to him alone, he would finally deliver them from their enemies.
As the national ruin of the surviving kingdom of Israel drew nearer, the prophets had to fight more fiercely on behalf of their religion. The people must have been as angry with Jahveh as he was said to be with them. The prophets met their anger with more savage denunciations of their wickedness, and more severe predictions of calamity. The division between prophets and people became then most strongly marked, and the struggle between them resembled a civil war. The life of Jeremiah, the most national of all the prophets, was one long battle. The evil doings of his countrymen he held to be the cause of all Israel’s misfortunes, and he hated them with a bitter hatred. This hatred they fully reciprocated; he was imprisoned and almost put to death. When the chief prophet of the religion of Jahveh received such treatment at the hands of the people, the religion itself must have been in terrible danger. If this period had been prolonged, perhaps Judaism would have preceded the kingdom of Judah in its fall.
But the destruction of the national polity of Israel came in time to save the national religion. When Judæa was merely a province of a great empire, the nationality of the Jews could survive only in the religion of which Jahveh was the head. The very manner in which the change took place was exceptionally favourable to Judaism. The captivity, the carrying away of the best families of the Jews into an inland district of the empire, was admirably calculated to destroy Jahveh’s rivals. The nucleus of the nation, placed in such close contact with foreign religions, by patriotism alone would have been made sincere worshippers of Jahveh. Far away from the local idolatries of Judæa, the exiles accepted the pure religion of the prophets. The most imaginative and the most spiritual of the greater prophets, Ezekiel and the second Isaiah, sprang from their ranks. And thus at last the prophetic became the popular religion, and Jahveh as God reigned over Israel. When the exiles returned to Judæa, they carried with them a pure and moral monotheism. The remainder of the people readily adopted their principles. Judaism from this time was the sole religion of the Jews, the expression of their national patriotism. Consolidated now finally into the rigid system of the law, with a multitude of minute observances that kept it constantly before their eyes, it was placed beyond reach of attack. Henceforth all Jahveh’s people worshipped Jahveh only, professed obedience to his precepts, and knew him as the one true God.[32]
Thus, in outward semblance, the prophets won their battle. They won it in consequence of the events they most bitterly deplored. With their religion the only security of their nationality, the Jews never afterwards wavered in their allegiance to it. Persecution made them cling to it more firmly; it inspired them in the noblest period of their history, the crisis which produced the Maccabees. Even when an empire greater than the Chaldean conquered them, and a severer sentence exiled them from Judæa, dispersed over the world, they held to their religion. The moral monotheism which Jahvism had developed was now unalterably settled. New doctrines were added to it, some of which became of the first importance, but its primary principles were fixed for ever. And yet, at the very moment at which Judaism was thus established, there was sown the seed of a new religion, destined ultimately to spring from it in defiance of its spirit of privilege. The nobler prophets sought to make their religion the national glory of Israel, a blessing to be taken by all the world meekly from Israel’s hands; and their efforts long afterwards produced a religion which ignored national distinctions. For at the time of the full development of Judaism the movement towards Christianity began.
The expectation of a Messiah was the most peculiar feature of the Jewish religion. It was a fundamental principle of the community of Israel, says Ewald, “that every real divine deliverance could be attained only by the instrumentality of a true prophet.”[33] The cause of this reliance on divine envoys was probably the rigid theocratic character of their Jahvist constitution, which discouraged general enterprise. The belief that a covenant had been originally concluded with Jahveh tended to produce dependence on him; his worshippers looked for help to him, and not to themselves. Any great man who felt himself impelled to lead the people in times of national peril, was sure to consider himself Jahveh’s representative, commissioned by him for the purpose; and, of course, all Jahvists would naturally be of the same opinion. In time this reliance on individuals became fixed, and gave the Messianic colour to the national hopes.
The hopes themselves were encouraged by the want of enterprise which invested them with their personal character. Hope is but a form of dreaming, and the worst men of action are the best dreamers. Jews who believed in the power of Jahveh were naturally hopeful. As the national fortunes sank lower and lower during the prophetic period, it was impossible for such a people not to expect an ultimate restoration of Israel’s greatness. The prophets, in particular, were impelled in this direction. Being men of imagination rather than action, whose intense patriotism was blended indissolubly with trust in Jahveh, they were strongly urged to hope for Messianic deliverance. Israel, after all, was Jahveh’s people, and Jahveh could never forsake his people, or allow them to be utterly destroyed. For their sins they were being punished, but the punishment could not last for ever. Jeremiah even expostulates with Jahveh for permitting his people to be so degraded, and “the vanities of the Gentiles” to seem superior to him.[34] Sooner or later Jahveh would assert his power, and vindicate his glory as ruler of the world. Though the prophets might predict immediate misfortunes, they all believed that ultimately the deliverer would be sent to Israel.
In the dreams of the prophets, the work to be accomplished by this inspired envoy of Jahveh had important variations. The first and most natural character he assumed was that of a king and conqueror, who should lead Israel to victory and restore the national empire. To the Israelites of the prophetic age who looked back on the history of their country, the period of David’s reign seemed the brightest it had known. Israel had then been united, internally at peace, and lord of the peoples around. These blessings were believed to have been obtained specially by the skill and power of David himself; and so, by a familiar process of thought, the Messiah became a second David, coming to do the work of the first by reviving the old prosperity.[35] With the earlier prophets this was almost the sole kind of Messianic dream. When the punishment of Israel should be complete, the Messiah was to come as a prince and warrior, and make the nation greater than it ever had previously been.[36]
After the overthrow of the northern kingdom, this national Messianic ideal naturally included the restoration of its scattered captives to their native land. The Samaritan captivity seemed to the prophets to be designed by Jahveh as a destruction of the fatal system of dualism which had undermined Israel’s strength. Henceforth the Israelites were to be one people, with Jerusalem as their centre and capital. When the kingdom of Judah, too, was conquered, and its chief classes also carried away into captivity, of course the restoration of exiles became the most important part of the Messiah’s mission. But even before this, the prophets of Judah, warned by the fate of Samaria, and aware of the customs of the Assyrian and Chaldean empires, foresaw and predicted the great captivity, and, in consequence, included a subsequent restoration in their Messianic dreams. Thus by nearly all the prophets the restoration of the captives to their country was regarded as the prelude to the events of the Messianic period, either to be accomplished by the Messiah personally, or to be immediately followed by his appearance. In so confidently predicting the restoration, the prophets were only giving expression to the national hopefulness, but they might have based their expectation on stronger grounds. The cohesive influence of their religion was sure to prevent the Jewish exiles from being lost in the peoples among whom they were placed; and if they managed to preserve their nationality, it was likely that, sooner or later, they would be restored to Judæa. The absence of this influence was probably the reason why no restoration followed the captivity of the kingdom of Samaria. The religion of Jahveh was never so strong in it as in the kingdom of Judah, and must have been then too weak to serve as a national support. When the second captivity occurred, Judaism was able to meet it and to save the nationality it was designed to destroy.