The last chapter of Jeremiah is purely historical, and, like the historical portions of Isaiah, need not be considered under the prophets; but it must be noted that chaps. l. and li. are not by Jeremiah, being the work of a much later writer, who lived in Palestine, and who composed them to show that the words of the genuine Jeremiah were fulfilled in the destruction of Babylon by the Medes, which was taking place at this time (P. A. B., vol. iii. p. 140 ff.). The small Book of Lamentations over the unhappy fate of Jerusalem, ascribed to Jeremiah, is an artistic attempt to embody the grief of the writer in a song of which each verse begins with a new letter, in alphabetical order.
We pass now to the prophet Ezekiel, a Jew who was taken into captivity with Jehoiachin, and lived at a small town of Mesopotamia. He felt the first prophetic impulses in the fifth year of the Captivity (Ib., vol. ii. p. 322 ff.). At this time the heavens were opened; he saw visions, and the word of the Lord came expressly to him. Such was the nature of his consecration. The first section of Ezekiel extends from chap. i. to xxiv., and contains utterances about Israel before the destruction of Jerusalem. The second section (chap. xxv.-xxxii.) deals with foreign nations, and the third (chap. xxxiii.-xlviii.) holds out promises of restoration.
Ezekiel is very inferior to his great predecessors, Isaiah and Jeremiah. He has neither the fervid, manly oratory of the first nor the pathetic, though rather soft and feminine flow of the second. He takes pleasure in rather coarse images, such as that of the bread baked with human dung (Ezek. iv), that of Jehovah with his two concubines, who bore him sons and vexed him with their licentious conduct (Ezek. xxiii), or that of the child whose navel was not cut, who grew up into a woman, over whom Jehovah spread his skirt and covered her nakedness (Ezek. xvi. 8). And in general, Ezekiel is particularly prone to teaching by means of similes and illustrations. Sometimes he sees visions in which God explains his meaning; at other times he acts in a manner which is designed to be typical of coming events. Thus, on one occasion, he openly brings out his furniture for removal, as a sign to the rebellious house of Israel (Ezek. xii. 1-7).
As in Jeremiah, so in Ezekiel we find traces of hostility towards rival prophets, whom he denounces in no measured terms. It is interesting, too, to observe that there were female prophets in his day, who prophesied out of their own hearts. To them also he conveys the reprobation of the Almighty (Ezek. xiii). The form in which he looks forward to the restoration of Israel and Judah to their homes, is somewhat different from that in which it was expected by his predecessors. In a very singular vision, he relates that his God took him into a valley which was full of bones, and told him that these were the bones of the whole house of Israel. Ezekiel is then informed that God will open the graves of the dead, and cause these bones to live again, and will bring them to the land of Israel. Afterwards, he is told to join two sticks into one, this junction representing the future union of Ephraim and Judah, who are to be gathered from among the heathen, and are to form one nation governed by one king. That king is to be David, who will be their prince forever. God will make an everlasting covenant of peace with them, and put his sanctuary in their midst for evermore. Here the resurrection of the dead, and the return of David, instead of the appearance of a new king, are peculiar features.
An anonymous prophet is supposed to have written Isaiah xxi. 1-10, and another Isaiah xiii. 2-xiv. 23, the latter referring to Babylon, and containing the imaginary exultation of the restored Israelites over the fallen Babylonians. After these fragments we have the work of one who is perhaps the greatest of all the prophets, but who also is unknown to us by name. As the most fitting description we may perhaps call him the anonymous prophet. The whole of the latter portion of Isaiah, from chap. xl. to the end, is his work. The anonymous prophet lived in Egypt. His peculiar conception was that Israel was the servant of the Lord for the peace and the salvation of nations, as Kyros was his servant in war (P. A. B., vol. iii. p. 20 ff.). Alike in beauty of language and sublimity of thought he is supreme among the writers of the Hebrew Bible. He is the prophet of sorrow: yet also the prophet of consolation. Whether by a curious accident, or whether by virtue of a tendency (not uncommon among truly great writers) to withdraw his personality from observation and confine himself wholly to the message he had to deliver, he tells us nothing of himself. Hence he has for centuries been hidden behind the figure of Isaiah, whom nevertheless he surpasses in the purity of his ideal. To him we owe the beautiful passage beginning "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," with the description afterwards applied by Jesus Christ to John the Baptist. From him also we have the most exalted conceptions of the Messiah, the moral element in his character being raised as compared with the element of material power, to a height hitherto unexampled in prophetic vision. Take, for instance, this description of his mildness combined with indomitable perseverance:—
"He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for his law" (Is. xlii. 2-4).
It is the anonymous prophet, too, who has given us the familiar passage, "He is despised and rejected of men;" a passage describing the career of a great man whose teachings involved him in persecution and ultimately in martyrdom, but nowise applicable to the Messiah. That a historical incident, known to the writer, is alluded to in this touching account of suffering goodness, admits of no reasonable doubt.
The anonymous prophet is preëminently the prophet of consolation. Living in the days of Kyros and of the restoration of the Temple, he had the elements of soothing speech ready to his hand; and as his predecessors had prophesied destruction and woe, occasionally varied with strains of hope, so he prophesies in strains of hope, occasionally varied with sterner language. It is his especial mission to heal the wounds that have been made in the spirit of Judah. God had indeed forsaken her for a while; but he will now take her back as a deserted wife, who had suffered her punishment. He had hidden his face in a little wrath for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will he now have mercy upon her (Is. liv. 5-7). The concluding chapter of the anonymous prophet contains a magnificent description of the ultimate gathering of all nations and tongues, when Jerusalem will be the central point of human worship, and the glory of God will be seen by all. The picture is not indeed unmingled with darker shades, for great numbers are to be destroyed by Jehovah in his indignation. On the other hand, there is a trait exhibiting the superiority of this prophet to his predecessors in toleration for the Gentiles: namely, the remarkable prediction that some of them also are to be priests and Levites (Is. lxvi. 12-24). The man who could utter this sentiment had made a signal advance upon the ordinary narrow and exclusive notions of the prerogatives of the Jewish race.
It was mentioned that the fiftieth and fifty-first chapters of Jeremiah were added by a later hand. The same hand (in Ewald's opinion) composed the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth chapters of Isaiah, of which the second describes in very eloquent terms the coming glory, when "the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away" (Is. xxxv. 10). Another unknown writer (Isaiah xxiv.-xxvii.) predicts in the first place the desolation which the Lord is about to effect, and then the happiness of the Jews who will be brought to their own land again, to worship Jehovah in the holy mount at Jerusalem. One of his expressions, "He will swallow up death in victory," has been adopted by St. Paul; another, "The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces," by the author of the Apocalypse.
The interest of Haggai's prophecy is purely special: it refers to the building of the temple at Jerusalem in the reign of Darius. It was the unexpected obstacles by which the building was hindered that kindled his zeal; he made his five speeches in three months of the same year. Probably he had not seen the first temple, and he left his prophetic work to his younger contemporary Zechariah (P. A. B., vol. iii. p. 177 ff.).