+ The emphasis we lay on the word writing in this title is not intended to deny that there were true prophets of Jahweh in Israel besides these (cf. what was said above, p. 6568, about Micaiah ben-Imiah, and what is said in Jer 2620f. of Uriah ben-Shemaiah); but we can judge only of those about whose messages we have written evidence.
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for in Mic 37 the ‘seers’ (coupled with ‘sooth- sayers’) mean false prophets ; in Is 29 «the pro- phets’ and ‘the seers’ are wrong explanatory glosses; and, finally, in Am 7” the term ‘ seer (hézeh), with which Amaziah the priest addresses Amos, has a flavour of contempt about it. But the reply of Amos (v."*4) must not be misunder- stood, as if he absolutely repudiated any claim to be a ‘prophet’ (ndabi’), because the word nabit had questionable associations to him coming down from those nébi’im of the time of Saul and of Ahab. This is quite impossible simply on the ground of Am 2" and 3’, where Amos himself speaks of the 1€b7’¢m in the most honourable sense. Moreover, we read in 7° that God charged him to ‘go as a prophet’ to His people Israel. The meaning of Amos in 7 can only be, then, that he disclaims being a professional prophet, in the sense familiar to Amaziah, or a member of a prophetic guild. On the contrary, the call to be a prophet surprised him in the midst of occupations of a wholly different kind: Jahweh took him from the herd.*
2..Here we have already a very essential differ- ence between the prophets of early times and the writing prophets. The latter are conscious of an express calli, at a definite moment, by Jahweh to their office. We have not an actual account of this in the case of all of them; but its preciseness in the case of five justifies our assuming that from the time of Amos onwards a similar call was experienced by all true prophets of Jahweh. We have already spoken of Amos’ own witness to his call. According to Hos 1%, the commencement of Hosea’s prophetic ministry was contemporaneous with his recognition that Jahweh intended even the prophet’s unhappy experiences in his married life to be a reflexion of Israel’s relation to Him- self. Isaiah records a vision he had in the year that king Uzziah died, when the Divine commis- sion was given him to drive the people by his message into ever-increasing obduracy. Attempts have been made to explain this vision—the only one in Isaiah—as simply the literary garbinvented for inward reflexions and conflicts, so that the prophet’s own determination would take the place of an express Divine call. But all such attempts are shattered by the earnest terms of the narra- tive, which will not permit us to think but of a real occurrence. The very same is the impression we receive from Jeremiah’s record of his call in the 13th year of Josiah. Quite remarkable here is the emphasis laid (1°) on the choice and con- secration of Jeremiah to the prophetic office even before his birth. How could any one invent a thing of this kind and proclaim it as a word addressed to him by God? But as little could he have added the supplementary invention that he tried to evade the Divine commission (v.7) by pers want of skill in speaking, and youth.
ather must we see here again an experience the prophet once had, which left an ineffaceable im- pression upon his memory. In the case of Hzekiel, his exact dating of his first vision (1%) by year, month, and day, is the pledge that he too is conscious that his call to be a prophet (27) was a definite occurrence.
As it is not in man’s power of his own initiative to effect the call to be a prophet, or to complete it by his own determination, so, on the other hand, he has no power to evade it. Nay, as even the boldest will tremble involuntarily when the roar of a lion is heard in the neighbourhood, so the man to whom the word of Jahweh has come must prophesy (Am 3°). The most striking testimony to this is found in Jer 20%. With an impatience
* The meaning of Amos becomes still clearer if, with Riedel (SK, 1908, p. 163f.), we render ‘I was no prophet,’ etc.
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bordering close on blasphemy, the prophet here reproaches Jahweh with having enticed him (by the call to be a prophet) and prevailed upon him, so that he has become a laughing-stock and an object of ridicule. But, he goes on, ‘when I thought, I will not make mention of him nor speak any more in his name, then there was in mine heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, I wearied myself with holding out, but I was unable.’ It would be no easy task to weaken the convincing power and force of this testimony to the unique character of Hebrew prophetism, by pointing to any analogous phenomena elsewhere.
3. A characteristic of the nédi?’tm in the old sense was a condition of ecstasy, occasionally rising to rapture and holy frenzy; and the first of these, namely ecstasy, we find witnessed to also in the case of the writing prophets. For, even apart from the vision, which likewise implies a condition of trance, there is repeated mention of ‘the hand of Jahweh’ being strong upon the prophet (Is 81, Ezk 34), or coming upon him (Ezk 1° 3” 37! 401), or falling upon him (8'), or being over him (33, here with the more precise note that it was ‘at evening’), and on account of which he sits solitary (Jer 15!”). In all these passages ‘the hand’ is an expression for the Divine influence which lays irresistible hold upon the prophet, being almost the equivalent of ‘the spirit of Jahweh,’ which likewise ‘falls’ upon the prophet (Ezk 11°), and imparts to him special revelations from God. In the case of Ezekiel, the effect of the hand of Jahweh is almost always to induce a vision. Nevertheless, there is plainly a consider- able difference between this kind of ecstasy and that of the ancient nébi’im. It is true that under all forms the extraordinary influence of the spirit of God presents an unfathomable mystery. But on the part of the writing prophets we find no trace of their being plunged by this influence into a condition of amentia or unconscious rapture. They always retain a clear consciousness and a distinct recollection of what they saw in spirit and of what was said to them.* Otherwise it would be impossible for them to describe the vision or to announce the word of God that came to them in their ecstasy. ’ =