676 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
and, above all, the difference in their subject- matter.
But, further, the visions present themselves to us in such multiplicity that we can readily understand how attempts have been made to dis- tinguish between genuine vision and the purely literary garb given to prophetic ideas—not to speak of the attempt to reduce ad/ visions to a mere literary device. To refute the latter notion, it is necessary only to point to (a) the single vision recorded by Isaiah (in ch. 6). It is inconceivable that he should have invented this incident, to which his solemn call to the prophetic office is attached, merely in order to present in this form certain thoughts of his own about the nature and the prospects of his prophetic callmg. For any such purpose the labour spent on the description would be too great, and everything favours the assumption that the prophet on this one occasion actually beheld the supra-earthly pictures which he describes, experienced the atoning influence (v.7), and heard te Divine commission given him. And, in truth, the pictures are of sublime sim- plicity, while the succession of the incidents is clear and impressive (just as in the vision of Micaiah ben-Imlah, 1 K 22!°*-)—both indications of a real inward experience.
(6) It is much more difficult to gain a harmonious conception of the first two visions of Amos (7). In the third of them (v.7) it is to one object alone, the plumbline, that the Divine oracle attaches itself ; while the object of the fourth, the basket of harvest fruits, serves merely as a sym- bol of the harvest which is to be sent to the people. The fifth vision (9!) is the first to offer, although described with extreme brevity, an ana- logy to that of Isaiah. But, in the opinion of the present writer, it is possible to regard the others also, in spite of their peculiarities, as something more than merely the literary garb of prophetic ideas. This latter device makes its appearance only after the prophetic vision has had a consider- able history, and the public ministry of the prophets has had to yield more and more to the activity of the pen. Moreover, the testimony to visions on the part of pre-exilic prophets is confined, apart from those of Amos and Isaiah, to those recounted in Jer 12-18, In both of the last two a single object (an almond-tree and a seething-pot) seen by the prophet furnishes the motive (and that in connexion with the immediately subsequent call of the prophet) for a prophetic announcement.
(c) In Ezekiel, on the other hand, the vision makes its appearance in a highly detailed and somewhat complicated form. As in the case of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the first vision (Ezk 1") ushers in the call of the prophet. Ezekiel relates at the outset how, after the heavens were opened (i.e. after he had received the faculty of beholding even the supra-earthly), he saw visions produced by God. Yet itis not from heaven, but from the north, that the theophany comes, in a storm-driven fiery cloud. This conceals the very minutely de- scribed cherubim (see above, p. 644°), and it is only at the close (v.**#) that we learn that they bear the platform on which the throne of God stands, with God seated upon it. The merely allusive way in which the prophet speaks of the form of Him who is thus enthroned is in accord- ance with the reverential reserve which we note also in Ex 24% andIs6. But-the extraordinary circum- stantiality of the preceding description, notwith- standing which it is impossible to form a clear conception of the objects, justifies the conclusion —not that the prophet simply coined the vision (whose exact date is given) but—that literary skill played a very considerable part in his descrip- tion of 1t. The same remark applies to the ex-
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
planation attached (2°) to his eating of the book- roll which was inscribed with sighs and lamenta- tions. Of course the eating of the roll, which is a materializing of the purely spiritual inspiration thought of elsewhere, likewise belongs to the realm of vision, for it is not till 3° that the prophet hears behind him the noise of the cherubim- chariot which bears away again ‘the glory’ of Jahweh. On the appended description (3'**) of the physical condition of the prophet, cf. above, p. 673.. When the same theophany recurs in 3°" the prophet contents himself with a simple mention of it. On the other hand, there is a very detailed account (8) of the idolatrous horrors which he saw in the precincts of the temple, when he was carried by the spirit to Jerusalem. Then follow, in the same locality, the visions (chs. 9-11) which present to his view the destruction of the city and the temple, together with the threatening address to the heads of the people. From this point the vision does not recur till ch. 37—the reanimating of the dead bones, which symbolize Israel dead, as it were, in the Exile. Here, as in chs. 8-11, there is no reason to doubt that the prophet really saw what he asserts; but the individual descriptions and, in quite a special sense, the detailed inter- pretations and practical applications must cer- tainly be once more set down to the account of a literary performance. The same is true in quite a peculiar measure of the great vision in the last part of the book (chs. 40-48), where the prophet sketches the future form of the temple and its cultus and of the land. Here the details are so multiplied and involved that it has been plausibly suggested that the prophet worked out his descrip- tion with the aid of maps and plans. It is evident that the matter which could suggest such a method does not belong to the contents of the vision. Elsewhere the transition from the sphere of the vision to that of literature is’ betrayed by the elaborate justification of prescriptions which are to come into force only in the future ; so, especi- ally, the new regulation about the priesthood (44°#), and the distribution of the tribes (ch. 48). These prescriptions and much else are fitted into the framework of the vision only by being put in the mouth of the prophet’s guide (cf. 40°"), or even of Jahweh Himself.