(6) The first of these is that nowhere in the pre- exilic prophets are angels * spoken of as beings mediating between God and man. For the seraphim in the vision of Isaiah (see above, p. 644%), which might readily occur to one’s mind, are really the retinue of Jahweh, not His messengers who are supposed to be at a distance from Him, and who perform His will. The latter notion is indeed contradictory of the idea of a living presence of God, and hence it is wanting in the prophets, however familiar they may be otherwise with the conception of angels.
(c) The other evidence of the spiritualizing of the notion of God is the unwearied polemic the prophets carry on against the images of Jahweh in both kingdoms. At one time it used to be assumed that this polemic was almost exclusively directed against the images of heathen gods, or, at most, against the golden bulls of the Northern kingdom, whose construction was viewed as a glaring viola- tion of the Second Commandment in the Decalogue. But we found (see above, p. 641°) that the making of images of Jahweh must have been regarded, down to the 8th cent., and that in the most widely separated circles, as quite unobjectionable, and hence there is the greatest difficulty in holding that the prohibition of images was an original feat- ure of the Decalogue. In the Elijah- and Elisha- narratives there is not atrace of any polemic against the bull worship of the Northern kingdom. AIL the more marked is the fashion in which the indignation of the writing prophets is roused when that God who in His majesty is exalted above
* On Hos 124% as an allusion to a manifestation of God, see above, p. 638».
680 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
everything earthly is brought down to the sphere of the visible and transitory—a process which only too readily leads also to a dishonouring of Him.*
The answer to the question whether Amos had already opened the polemic against the images of Jahweh, depends upon how we interpret Am 8".+ The ‘sin of Samaria’ may there refer to the golden bulls of Jeroboam 1.; but the text is probably corrupt. As to Hosea, it cannot be proved from Hos 34 that he expressly repudiated the ancestral representation of Jahweh in the form of the éphéd (see above, p. 641°) or the ¢éraphim (see above, p. 642°), for his primary object in this passage is simply to affirm that Israel in exile will have to do without everything which at present it regards as indispensable. On the other hand, there are other passages which leave no doubt that, to the mind of Hosea, the Divine images of gold and silver, the work of men’s hands, and the bull figures pre- eminently, were an abomination; cf. Hos 8* (especially yv.5 ‘thy bull, O Samaria, stinketh’) 10° 137 14°, The polemic of Jsaiah against the ny (prob. originally ‘gods,’ but also the equiva- lent of ‘nothings,’ and hence to the prophets a welcome occasion for a play upon words) applies not only to the idols of the heathen (Is 10! 19%) and the gods whom they represented (191), but to the images of Jahweh (2° 38-29 104), Even the latter are only men’s work, and on that account contemptible (28 17° [in the latter passage the ‘altars’ are to be struck out as an incorrect gloss] where the Divine images are called ‘the work of your hands’; in Jer 17° 258 32° ‘the work of their own hands’ may refer to images of Jahweh, but perhaps includes also, as it certainly does in 448, actual heathen idols). In Dt 41! the representa- tion of Jahweh by any figure is strictly forbidden, on the ground that Israel at Horeb saw nothing of this kind; while in 27" a curse is pronounced on the making of a carved or a molten image by the hands of an artist. Here, as in the Decalogue, the reference is to every species of Divine image, including those of Jahweh. The rigour of the Deuteronomist has all the less power to astonish us, seeing that he repudiates in express terms, not only the *dshérah, or sacred pole at places of sacri- fice, but also (Dt 12° 16%) the mazgzebah, which, in earlier times, were regarded as quite unobjection- able (see above, p. 620).
(2) What we have said about the character of Jahweh as God of heaven, and the sharp rejection of all pictorial representations of the Deity, may seem to have already answered another question, namely, as to the solity of Jahweh, as contrasted with the mere henotheism (see above, pp. 625», 635°) of earlier times. Now, it must indeed be re- marked that it is still customary to cite, as proofs of the absolute monotheism of the Prophetic period, a number of passages which in truth are intended only to emphasize Israel’s obligation to reverence Jahweh alone, and which thus amount simply to henotheism.t Such are, for instance, the very
* We see from Hos 13? that in Hosea’s time it was still custom- ary to kiss the bull-images, and thus to put them (like the images of Baal in Elijah’s time, 1K 1918) ona footing of equality with the God whom they were meant to represent. Also the expression 17° *35°ny abn (Ex 8241, 1 § 1312, and often, in sense of ‘ propitiate J: ahweh_’) originally means in all probability ‘stroke the face of [the Divine image],’ and points to a practice which must have been in vogue wherever images of Jahweh were worshipped.