4, Now, it is quite true that in opposition to this it has been maintained (so, in great detail, by A. Klostermann in SK, 1877, p. 391 ff., and_ again recently by Duhm in his Commentary on Isaiah, p. 129) that, at least in the case of Ezekiel, by the prophet’s own confession, cataleptic conditions, namely, temporary loss of the power of motion and speech, must be assumed, although this morbid condition did not exclude an exact recollection of thé hallucinations of sight and hearing that were experienced during the catalepsy. In point of fact, Ezekiel tells us that, after his vision of the cherubim-chariot, he went in bitterness (7) in the heat of his spirit, and that he then sat stunned with astonishment (ov) in the midst of his people for seven days (3%). He speaks, further
* This simple fact refutes the ancient orthodox theories, such as that which goes back to Philo, that human_reason left the prophet, to make room for the Divine spirit. Equally futile are all attempts to reduce the prophets to mere instru- ments of the Divine spirit, devoid of will, and re ple to a flute in the hand of the player or a pen in the hand of the scribe. Such attempts suffer shipwreck on the rock of what is an undeniable fact, that the individuality of the different prophets is very clearly revealed in their style and their manner of speech. Isaiah writes quite differently from Jeremiah, and the latter, again, quite differently from Ezekiel. Of course all this does not exclude the possibility of a heightening of the natural gifts and powers of the prophets by the influence of the Divine spirit. Such a process is evident, for instance, in the manner of speech of the herdsman Amos, which is as forcible as it is clear. Jerome’s opinion regarding the ‘rustic style’ of Amos must be pronounced quite unproved and in- correct.
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(v.°%), of a dumbness which God sends upon him, which can indeed be interrupted when it is the Divine will that he make prophetic announce-
‘ments, but whose entire removal does not take
place till the evening before the news comes of the capture of Jerusalem. All these phenomena agree remarkably with those observed in cataleptics. Duhm is inclined to reckon especially the vision in 8-114 among the cases ‘in which the body lies seemingly dead and the phantom (that has left it) represents the Ego.’ On the other hand, Zecha- riah, with his ‘angel that spake with me,’ is in- cluded by Duhm among the instances ‘in which consciousness remains in the body, and the phantom that comes forth is apparently unconscious.’ But however much the assumption of cataleptic con- ditions on the part of Ezekiel may have in its favour, this does not yet amount to evidence of a relapse to the old form of mantic. Above all, there are two points not to be overlooked. In the first place, Ezekiel represents his bitterness of spirit and stunned condition, those alleged cata- leptic phenomena (3), as the reswlé of the vision of the cherubim-chariot ; whereas he describes the vision itself with a preciseness which does not look like that of a man whose mental balance has been disturbed. Secondly, before and after the story of his being carried to Jerusalem (8!) and the lengthy account of his visions there, he says not a word about cataleptic conditions, and we have no right simply on the ground of 3" to pos- tulate them here also. But, above all, the whole nature and contents of the great vision in chapters 40-48 are very hard to reconcile with any notion of a morbid condition on the part of the prophet. Everything here breathes such an air of delibera- tion and purpose that only a small share in the inception of this lengthy programme for the future can be set down to the account of vision (see below, p. 676>). Again, as to the ‘ double conscious- ness’ of Zechariah, it is really only in 4! that there is any indication of an abnormal condition of the prophet ; and this is very far from justifying the assumption of actual cataleptic conditions. For, when we read that the angel who talked with him reawakened him as a man that is wakened out of his sleep, this means merely that the prophet, exhausted by the preceding visions, had pulled into a kind of sleep, and had now to be made capable of experiencing a new vision. But here, again, in the case of Zechariah, it will be found that his night-visions in their present form are to be in large measure set down to the account of the littérateur and not of the visionary.
5. Taking everything into account, the vision did not, upon the whole, play such a large réle in prophetism as there has been a disposition to attribute to it. As for the classical examples, so to speak, of visions which we find on the part of Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the descriptions are almost all extremely meagre; nay, in some in- stances they contain nothing more than names of objects with which the utterance of religious truths and exhortations is connected. The more detailed the description (as, for instance, in Ezk 14f-), the more it contains not only framework and motive but exhibits deliberate purpose, the more is it deficient in specifically religious con- tents. In every instance the word spoken in the course of the vision or for the purpose of explain- ing it, is by far the most important part of the revelation communicated to the prophet.