The sixteen prophets may be divided into four groups : the Prophets of the Northern Kingdom — Hosea, Amos, Joel, Jonah ; the Prophets of the Southern Kingdom — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah; the Prophets of the Captivity — Ezekiel and Daniel ; the Prophets of the Return— Haggai, Zech- ariah, Malachi. In this great period of prophetism there is no longer any chronological development of Messian- ic prophecy, as in the earlier period previous to Solo- mon. Each prophet adds a feature, one more, another less clearly : combine the features, and we have the por- trait; but it does not grow gradually and perceptibly under the hands of the several artists. Here, therefore, the task of tracing the chronological progress of the revelation of the Messiah comes to an end: its culmi- nating point is found in the prophecy contained in Isa. Iii, 13-15, and liii. We here read that there should be a Servant of God. lowly and despised, full of grief and suffering, oppressed, condemned as a malefactor, and put to death. But his sufferings, it is said, are not for his own sake, for he had never been guilty of fraud or violence : they are spontaneously taken, patiently borne, vicarious in their character; and, by God's appoint- ment, they have an atoning, reconciling, and justifying efficacy. The result of his sacrificial offering is to be his exaltation and triumph. By the path of humilia- tion and expiatory suffering, he is to reach that state of glory foreshown by David and Solomon. The pro- phetic character of the Messiah is drawn out by Isaiah in other parts of his book as the atoning work here. By the time of Hezekiah therefore (for Hengstenberg, ( hristology, vol. ii, has satisfactorily disproved the the- ory of a Deutero-Isaiah of the days of the captivity) the portrait of the Beai'SpioTroc — at once King, Priest, Prophet, and Redeemer — was drawn in all its essential features. The contemporary and later prophets (comp.
PROPHET
052
PROPHET
Mir. v. 2; Dail. vii. 9; Zech. vi, L3; Mai. iv. 2) added Borne particulars and details, and bo the conception was left to awail its realization after an interval of some 400 years from the date of the lasl Hebrew prophet
The modern Jews, in opposition to their ancient ex- position, have been driven to a non-Messianic interpre- tation oflsa. liii. Among Christians the i -Messian- ic interpretation commenced with Grotius, He ap- tiapter to Jeremiah. According to Doderlein, Schuster, Stephani, Eichhorn, Roseumuller, Hitzie;, Handewerk, Roster (after the Jewish expositors Jar- chi, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Abarbanel, Lipmann i, the sub- jecl of the prophecy is the tsraelitish people. Accord- ing tn Eckermann, Ewald, Bleek, it is the ideal [srael- iiish people. According to Paulus, Ammon, Maurer, Thenius, Knobel, ii is the godly portion of the tsrael- itish people. According to De Wette, Gesenius, Schen- kel, Umbreit, Hofmann, it is the prophetical body. Au- gust i refers it to king Uzziah; Konynenburg and Bahrdl to Hi :ekiah; Staudlin to Isaiah himself ; Bolten to the house of David. Ewald thinks thai no historical person was intended, bul thai the ainh.ii- of the chapter has misled his readers by inserting a passage from an older book, in which a martyr was spoken of. "This," he says, "quite spontaneously suggested itself, ami has impressed itself mi my mind more and more;" ami he thinks that "controversy on ch. liii will never cease until this truth is acknowledged" (Propheten, voL ii. p. 407). Hengstenberg gives the following list of German commentators who have maintained the Messianic ex- planation: Dathe, Hensler, Kocher, Koppe, Michaelis, Schmieder, Storr, Hansi, KrUger, Jahn, Steudel, Sack, I tei nkc, Thiil nek, 1 1 avcri lick. St icr. Hengstenberg's own exposition, and criticism of the expositions of others, is well worth consultation (Christohgy, vol. ii). Kiehm lias given a very good outline of these prophecies in their origin, historical character, and relation to New- Test fulfilment in the Studien undKritiken for 1865 ami 1869 (transl. by Jefferson, Messianic Prophecy, Edinb. 1876, l2mo). Drummond's work on The Jen-is/i Mes- siah is a semi -rationalistic view drawn chiefly from apocrypha] literature (Lond. 1x77. 8vo). Prebendary l.'nw has shown (Bampton Lecture for 1*77. p. 234 sq.) the insufficiency of the Messianic elements of the old Test as aii ideal model fir the delineation of the Christ of the New Test See Mi ssiah.
X. Prophets of thi New Testament. So far as their
predictive powers are i cerned. the ( lid-Test, prophets
find their New-Test, counterpart in the writer of the Apocah pse; hut in their general character, as specially illumined revealers of God's will, their counterpart will rather be found, first in the Great Prophet ot i he Church, and his forerunner John the Baptist, ami next in all those persons who were endowed witli the extraor- dinary -ills of the Spirit in the apostolic age, the speak- ers with tongues anil the interpreters of tongues, the
prophets and the discerners of spirits, the teachers and workers of miracles (I Cor. xii. 10, 28). The connect- ing link between the < tld-Test prophet ami the speaker with tongues is the state of ecstasy in « hich the former at times received his visions and iii which the latter uttered his words. The <)]d-Test. prophet, however, was his own interpreter: he did not speak in the stale i't ecstasy: he saw Ids visions in the ecstatic, and de- clared them in the ordinary stale. The New- IV-l. dis- cerner of spirits has his prototype in such as Micaiah. the Mm nl Imlah ( 1 Kings xxii. '-'•-, l. the worker of mir- acles in Elijah ami Elisha, the teacher in each and all of the prophets. The prophets of the New rest repre- sented their namesakes of the Old Test as being ex- pounders nf divine truth and interpreters of the divine will to their auditors