The chief and most salient characteristic of the worship of the high places was geniality. The sacrifice was a feast of social communion between the deity and his worshippers, and knit both deity and clan-members together in Geniality of Worship. the bonds of a close fellowship. This genial aspect of Hebrew worship is nowhere depicted more graphically than in the old narrative (a J section = Budde’s G) 1 Sam. ix. 19-24, where a day of sacrifice in the high place is described. Saul and his attendant are invited by the seer-priest Samuel into the banqueting chamber (lishkah) where thirty persons partake of the sacrificial meal. It was the ’āsīph or festival of ingathering, when the agricultural operations were brought to a close, which exhibited these genial features of Canaanite-Hebrew life most vividly. References to them abound in pre-exilian literature: Judges xxi. 21 (cf. ix. 27); Amos viii. 1 foll.; Hos. ix. 1 foll., Jer. xxxi. 4; Isa. xvi. 10 (Jer. xlviii. 33). These festivals formed the veins and arteries of ancient Hebrew clan and tribal life.[18] Wellhausen’s characterization of the Arabian hajj[19] applies with equal force to the Hebrew hagg (festival): “They formed the rendezvous of ancient life. Here came under the protection of the peace of God the tribes and clans which otherwise lived apart from one another and only knew peace and security within their own frontiers.” 1 Sam. xx. 28 foll. indicates the strong claims on personal attendance exercised on each individual member by the local clan festival at Bethlehem-Judah.
It is easy to discern from varied allusions in the Old Testament that the Canaanite impress of sensuous life clung to the autumnal vintage festivals. They became orgiastic in character and scenes of drunkenness, cf. Judges ix. 27; 1 Sam. 14-16; Isa. xxviii. 7, 8. Against this tendency the Nazirite order and tradition was a protest. Cf. Amos ii. 11 foll.; Judges xiii. 7, 14. As certain sanctuaries, Shiloh, Shechem, Bethel, &c., grew in importance, the priesthoods that officiated at them would acquire special prestige. Eli, the head priest at Shiloh in the early youth of Samuel, held an important position in what was then the chief religious and political centre of Ephraim; and the office passed by inheritance to the sons in ordinary cases. In the regal period the royal residence gave the priesthood of that place an exceptional position. Thus Zadok, who obtained the priestly office at Jerusalem in the reign of Solomon and was succeeded by his sons, was regarded in later days as the founder of the true and legitimate succession of the priesthood descended from Levi (Ezek. xl. 46, xliii. 19, xliv. 15; cf. 1 Kings ii. 27, 35). His descent, however, from Eleazar, the elder brother of Aaron, can only be regarded as the later artificial construction of the post-exilian chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 4-15, 50-53, xxiv. 1 foll.), who was controlled by the traditions which prevailed in the 4th century B.C. and after.
6. The Prophets.—The rise of the order of prophets, who gradually emerged out of and became distinct from the old Hebrew “seer” or augur (1 Sam. ix. 9),[20] marks a new epoch in the religious development of the Hebrews. Over the successive stages of this growth we pass lightly (see [Prophet]). The life-and-death struggle between Israel and the Philistines in the reign of Saul called forth under Samuel’s leadership a new order of “men of God,” who were called “prophets” or divinely inspired speakers.[21] These men were distributed in various settlements, and their exercises were usually of an ecstatic character. The closest modern analogy would be the orders of dervishes in Islām. Probably there was little externally to distinguish the prophet of Yahweh in the days of Samuel from the Canaanite-Phoenician prophets of Baal and Ashērah (1 Kings xviii. 19, 26, 28), for the practices of both were ecstatic and orgiastic (cf. 1 Sam. x. 5 foll., xviii. 10, xix. 23 foll.). The special quality which distinguished these prophetic gilds or companies was an intense patriotism combined with enthusiastic devotion to the cause of Yahweh. This necessarily involved in that primitive age an extreme jealousy of foreign importations or innovations in ritual. It is obvious from numerous passages that these prophetic gilds recognized the superior position and leadership of Samuel, or of any other distinguished prophet such as Elijah or Elisha. Thus 1 Sam. xix. 20, 23 et seq. show that Samuel was regarded as head of the prophetic settlement at Naiōth. With reference to Elijah and Elisha, see 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 15, iv. 1, 38 et seq., vi. 1 et seq. There cannot be any doubt that such enthusiastic devotees of Yahweh, in days when religion meant patriotism, did much to keep alive the flame of Israel’s hope and courage in the dark period of national disaster. It is significant that Saul in his last unavailing struggle against the overwhelming forces of the Philistines sought through the medium of a sorceress for an interview with the deceased prophet Samuel. It was the advice of Elisha that rescued the armies of Jehoram and Jehoshaphat in their war against Moab when they were involved in the waterless wastes that surrounded them (2 Kings iii. 14 foll.). We again find Elisha intervening with effect on behalf of Israel in the wars against Syria, so that his fame spread to Syria itself (2 Kings v.-viii. 7 foll.). Lastly it was the fiery counsels of the dying prophet, accompanied by the acted magic of the arrow shot through the open window, and also of the thrice smitten floor, that gave nerve and courage to Joash, king of Israel, when the armies of Syria pressed heavily on the northern kingdom (2 Kings xiii. 14-19).
We see that the prophet had now definitely emerged from the old position of “seer.” Prophetic personality now moved in a larger sphere than that of divination, important though that function be in the social life of the ancient state[22] as instrumental in declaring the will of the deity when any enterprise was on foot. For the prophet’s function became in an increasing degree a function of mind, and not merely of traditional routine or mechanical technique, like that of the diviner with his arrows or his lots which he cast in the presence of the ephod or plated Yahweh image. The new name nabhi’ became necessary to express this function of more exalted significance, in which human personality played its larger rôle. Even as early as the time of David it would seem that Nathan assumed this more developed function as interpreter of Yahweh’s righteous will to David. But both in 2 Sam. xii. 1-15 as well as in 2 Sam. vii. we have sections which are evidently coloured by the conceptions of a later time. We stand on safer ground when we come to Elijah’s bold intervention on behalf of righteousness when he declared in the name of Yahweh the divine judgment on Ahab and his house for the judicial murder of Naboth. We here observe a great advance in the vocation of the prophet. He becomes the interpreter and vindicator of divine justice, the vocal exponent of a nation’s conscience. For Elijah was in this case obviously no originator or innovator. He represents the old ethical Mosaism, which had not disappeared from the national consciousness, but still remained as the moral pre-supposition on which the prophets of the following century based their appeals and denunciations. It is highly significant that Elijah, when driven from the northern kingdom by the threats of the Tyrian Jezebel, retreats to the old sanctuary at Horeb, whence Moses derived his inspiration and his Tōrah.
We have hitherto dealt with isolated examples of prophetism and its rare and distinguished personalities. The ordinary Hebrew nabhi’ still remained not the reflective visionary, stirred at times by music into strange raptures (2 Kings iii. 15), but the ecstatic and orgiastic dervish who was meshuggah or “frenzied,” a term which was constantly applied to him from the days of Elisha to those of Jeremiah (2 Kings ix. 11; in Hos. ix. 7 and Jer. xxix. 26 it is regarded as a term of reproach). It is only in rare instances that some exalted personality is raised to a higher level. Of this we have an interesting example in the vivid episode that preceded the battle of Ramoth-Gilead described in 1 Kings xxii., when Micaiah appears as the true prophet of Yahweh, who in his rare independence stands in sharp contrast with the conventional court prophets, who prophesied then, as their descendants prophesied more than two centuries later, smooth things.
It is not, however, till the 8th century that prophecy attained its highest level as the interpreter of God’s ways to men. This is due to the fact that it for the first time unfolded the true character of Yahweh, implicit in the old Mosaic religion and submerged in the subsequent centuries of Israel’s life in Canaan, but now at length made clear and explicit to the mind of the nation. It became now detached from the limitations of nationalism and local association with which it had been hitherto circumscribed.
Even Elisha, the greatest prophet of the 9th century, had remained within these national limitations which characterized the popular conceptions of Yahweh. Yahweh was Israel’s war-god. His power was asserted in and from Canaanite soil. If Naaman was to be healed, it could only be in a Palestinian river, and two mules’ load of earth would be the only permanent guarantee of Yahweh’s effective blessing on the Syrian general in his Syrian home.
That larger conceptions prevailed in some of the loftier minds of Israel, and may be held to have existed even as far back as the age of Moses, is a fact which the Yahwistic cosmogony in Gen. ii. 4b-9 (which may have been composed in the 9th century B.C.) clearly suggests, and it is strongly sustained by the overwhelming evidence of the powerful influence of Babylonian culture in the Palestinian region during the centuries 2000-1400 B.C.[23] Probably in our modern construction of ancient Hebrew history sufficient consideration has not been given to the inevitable coexistence of different types and planes of thought, each evolved from earlier and more primordial forms. In other words we have to deal not with one evolution but with evolutions.
The existence of the purer and larger conception of Yahweh’s character and power before the advent of Amos indicates that the transition from the past was not so sudden as Wellhausen’s graphic portrayal in the 9th edition of this Encyclopaedia (art. [Israel]) would have led us to suppose. There were pre-existent ideas upon which that prophet’s epoch-making message was based. Yet this consideration should in no way obscure the fact that the prophet lived and worked in the all-pervading atmosphere of the popular syncretic Yahweh religion, intensely national and local in its character. In Wellhausen’s words, each petty state “revolved on its own axis” of social-religious life till the armies of Tiglath-Pileser III. broke up the security within the Canaanite borders. According to the dominating popular conception, the destruction of the national power by a foreign army meant the overthrow of the prestige of the national deity by the foreign nation’s god. If Assyria finally overthrew Israel and carried off Yahweh’s shrine, Assur (Ašur), the tutelary deity of Assyria, was mightier than Yahweh. This was precisely what was happening among the northern states, and Amos foresaw that this might eventually be Israel’s doom. Rabshakeh’s appeal to the besieged inhabitants of Jerusalem was based on these same considerations. He argued from past history that Yahweh would be powerless in the presence of Ashur (2 Kings xviii. 33-35).
This problem of religion was solved by Amos and by the prophets who succeeded him through a more exalted conception of Yahweh and His sphere of working, which tended to detach Him from His limited realm as a national deity. Amos exhibited Him to his countrymen as lord of the universe, who made the seven stars and Orion and turns the deep midnight darkness into morning. He calls to the waters of the sea and pours them on the earth’s surface (chap. v. 8). Such a universal God of the world would hardly make Israel His exclusive concern. Thus He not only brought the Israelites out of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir (ix. 7). But Amos went beyond this. Yahweh was not only the lord of the universe and possessed of sovereign power. The prophet also emphasized with passionate earnestness that Yahweh was a God whose character was righteous, and God’s demand upon His people Israel was not for sacrifices but for righteous conduct. Sacrifice, as this prophet, like his successor Jeremiah, insisted (Amos v. 25; cf. Jer. vii. 22) played no part in Mosaic religion. In words which evidently impressed his younger contemporary Isaiah (cf. esp. Is. chap. i. 11-17), Amos denounced the non-ethical ceremonial formalism of his countrymen which then prevailed (chap. v. 21 foll.):—