' gifts, which from the rising to the setting of the
sun are offered by the Gentiles, have Him, strictly speaking, for their object (Mal 1")—a remarkable witness to the far-reaching influence of Deutero- Isaiah’s teaching! There is no longer any need for a polemic against the folly of image and idol worship ; Is 57°*- is in all probability addressed to the half-heathen mixed population in and about Judah, and Jer 10'* to the exiles who are en- dangered by their heathen environment.
The supramundane character of Jahweh is not impaired by the frequent emphasis laid upon His accompanying the exiles, or His dwelling upon Zion (see below) ; for in the latter instance what is in view is, as in the conception of God in the pre- exilic period, the indwelling of His ‘glory’ (i.e. a manifestation-form of His person), which is not absolutely identical with His full being. The ‘angel of Jahweh,’ in olden times (see above, p. 638* ff.) a form of appearance of Jahweh Himself, is in Zec 1" (where he prays to Jahweh and is com- forted by Him) clearly distinguished as a serving angel from Jahweh. In Zec 3! ‘the Satan’ makes his appearance for the first time, not as a mere appellative=‘adversary’ (as in Nu 227% [of the angel of Jahweh], 1 K 11" eé al. [of enemies in war]), but as a definite angelic being, who comes forward as the accuser of Joshua the high priest ; but thisis no proof of the rise of a dualistic concep- tion of God. The Satan, who by the way cannot have been newly introduced by Zechariah, but is presupposed by him as long familiar to his readers, manifestly belongs (as he still does in Job 1%) to the category of serving angels, only that, in his zeal as Jahweh’s prosecutor, he goes too far. Rather may we find in Is 247 an allusion to angelic feuds corresponding to those among the peoples of earth. But even in this very late theo- logumenon, with which we shall meet again when
710 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
we come to speak of the Book of Daniel, the supremacy of Jahweh, who imprisons the rebellious ones, and only pardons them after a long interval, remains quite unaffected.
The consciousness that they lived in an age of epigont, as compared with the creative times of prophecy, betrays itself clearly in the repressed tone of the post-exilic prophets, and their very frequent use of the formula ‘thus saith Jahweh,’ as well as in Zechariah’s preference for the vision, the latter being no doubt in large measure simply to be regarded as a literary device. The same consciousness is manifested in the express appeals to earlier Prophetic oracles (Is 3416, JI 3° [2°?]), and no less by the announcement of a messenger who is to prepare the way of Jahweh prior to the dawn of the day of judgment (Mal 3'; in v.% [4°] the prophet Elijah is named as this forerunner). There were even yet required energetic instruments of God to bring about the great transformation. Finally, again, in Zec 137% the expectation is ex- pressed that in the Messianic age the prophets and the unclean spirit shall be removed from the land, and that any one who yet ventures to come for- ward asa prophet shall be put to death by his own ' parents. Here, of course, it is false prophets that are in view, but the whole form of expression shows that it is not considered possible that any others shall then be found.
Like the conception of God, the ethical demands of the exilic and post-exilic prophets correspond exactly with those of their pre-exilic predecessors. At least in theory the justice of these demands is generally acknowledged, although the practice of the people still continues to supply occasion for victer complaints (Is 569% 581% 5978), A. with Amos ana Isaiah, the urgent call is to do sight and justice and show pity to the poor, the widow, the orphan, and everv class of afilicted ones (Zec Tif. gist.) Ts 561 585, Mal 35% [this last passage denouncing, however, also: sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers]). Moreover, it cannot be contested that even in the early post-exilic périod a mechani- cal theory of retribution shows itself—the notion of a direct succession of sin and punishment, right conduct and outward blessing (Zee 3), Thus the scanty harvest is, according co Hag 15t 1%, the direct penalty for the people’s remissness in the work of rebuilding the temple ; according to 2™* all offerings presented before the temple is finished count as unclean, and consequently inefficacious, but after that event all the richer an era of bless- ing shall set in.
iv. THE CuLTus.—The few utterances about the cultus—we here leave out of account those that belong to the realm of eschatology—show again a certain falling away from the height of the true prophetical point of view (cf. above, p. 685°). The law-book of Hilkiah, although marked by the prophetic spirit, had at the same time laid down such definite rules for the cultus that it was inevitable that a tendency should arise to attach value to the merely external performance of these. In addition to this, Ezekiel’s conceptions, with his total rejection of the past and his sketch of a radically new constitution of the cultus, must have permeated all Jewish circles to such an extent that long before the introduction of the Priests’ Code there had been produced a positively painful attention to matters connected with the cultus. It is true that even yet evidences are not lacking of a truly prophetical appreciation of ritual services. The description of the proper kind of fasting contained in Is 58% might well have come from Isaiah ben-Amoz himself, while Joel’s (2) call, ‘Rend your heart and not your garments,’ recalls Jeremiah’s demand for a circum- cision of the heart. Similarly, the ideal of the