24lf-) we meet with a representative of it in the
remarkable personality of Nathan. Nowhere, in- deed, do we read of his special endowment with the spirit of Jahweh. After David’s sin in the matter of Uriah, we read in 28 12 simply: ‘ And Jahweh sent Nathan to David.’ But the combination of skill and courage in the way in which Nathan
awakens the conscience of the king and pronounces
the judgment of Jahweh upon him, and then follows this up by announcing the forgiveness of his sin, reminds us of the way in which Isaiah
afterwards faced Ahaz (Is 7) and Hezekiah (389).
It is nowhere stated that Nathan held any official and the usual comparison with a court The
1 K 1 in the palace intrigue, in favour of Solomon
and against Adonijah, is sufficiently explained by
the position he had held as the tutor of Solomon
(28 12%), Besides, it may be questioned (as in the case of Gad) whether the title nab? as applied to Nathan is as early as the time of David (which would contradict 18 9°, where this signification of the word is plainly reserved for a much later date), or whether it is due to a readily intelligible expansion at a redactor’s hand. In 7 it may
belong to the Deuteronomic revision of the older
narrative. Strangely enough, however, it is want- ing in 12!in the MT on the occasion of the first
mention of his name in the early source, and
throughout the whole of this narrative. Inl Kl the title is almost always attached to the name, yet there are certain indications * that make it at least possible that its presence is due to a late insertion. If it is original, we must conclude that it stands for an official position, that indeed of a ‘seer’ like Gad, and in the interposition of Nathan in 28 12 we should have to see an unusual evi- dence of that position. ; The same difficulty recurs in the case of Ahijah of Shiloh (1 K 11°" 14-18, but not 15”), Ahijah’s symbolical action in tearing his mantle to pieces and giving ten of these to Jeroboam, as well as his conduct towards Jeroboam’s wife and his utterances in the name of Jahweh, place him quite in line with the Jahweh prophets of the 8th cent. ; but the question remains whether the title nab? ig not. to be set down to the account of the Deuteronom. recension, in which the original story about Ahijah is unquestionably now presented to us. The same remark applies to Jehu, the son *In y.10 the MT but not Luc. has the addition, In v.#4 the LXxX has certainly preserved the original text (‘and anoint him,’ etc., without any subjects following); in the MT there has been inserted from v.% first ‘Zadok the priest’ (hence ‘shall [sing.] anoint him,’ etc.), and then, further, ‘ Nathan the prophet.’ In _v.4 Luc. still betrays the original text ‘and there anointed [sing.] him the priest Zadok’; yet here too, as we see in MT and LXX (both ‘ and there anointed’ {plur.] etc.), there was inserted after ‘ Zadok,’ although this in contradiction of v.34, ‘ Nathan the prophet.’
654 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
of Hanani, who announced an oracle of Jahweh against Baasha, king of Israel (1 K 161).
But, even if in all the above instances nab?’ should be an anachronism, the important fact remains that at no period were there wanting in Israel suitable organs for giving expression at the Divine command to the pleasure and, in a remarkable degree, the displeasure of Jahweh. We are reminded of the old naive seership of a Samuel, when the wife of Jeroboam I. goes to consult Ahijah about the illness of her son, and proposes to recompense him with ten loaves and cakes and a jar of honey (1 K 14%). But, just as Samuel was informed beforehand of the coming of Saul (1 8 9%), the approach of Jeroboam’s wife is made known to the blind Ahijah. This serves also to authenticate him as an instrument of Jahweh; and the importance of his message to the whole Northern kingdom raises him (and Jehu) far above a ‘seer’ of the olden time, and gives him the appearance of a worthy forerunner of the true Jahweh prophets.
5. Of ecstatics such as meet us in 1 § 10° 1918#-. we have encountered none since the time of Samuel; of ‘seers’ in the ancient sense only a few names have come under our notice. All the more is our interest aroused by the manifold and strong evidences of the presence of prophetism in the Northern kingdom in the 9th cent., from the time of Ahab (c. 876 ff.) down to the death of Elisha under king Joash (2 K 134), For the copious stream of tradition regarding this period we are indebted to the circumstance that the compiler of the present Books of Kings has largely incor- porated in his work the special (written) accounts of Elijah and Elisha, the so-called ‘ Mirror of the Prophets’ (1 K 17-19. 211-2 27-29, 2 K 2-8! 91-18 131), It is true that even here we must be on our guard against understanding the narrative absolutely from the standpoint of a later age. Elijah and Elisha, like the nédi?’tm who sur- round them, are not to be summarily identified with the Jahweh prophets of the following cen- tury. These nébv?’im, on the contrary, remind us in many respects of the nébi’im of the time of Saul, except that their zeal for Jahweh is directed against a different foe.