[509] Amos i. 11. See Vol. I., p. 129.
[510] John Hyrcanus, about 130 B.C.
[511] Irby and Mangles’ _Travels_: cf. Burckhardt’s _Travels in Syria_, and Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_, I.
[512] Obadiah 3.
[513] Amos i.: cf. Ezek. xxxv. 5.
[514] Obadiah 10.
[515] _C. I. S._, II. i. 183 ff.
[516] Obadiah 6.
[517] Verse 6.
[518] See the details in Vol. I., pp. 129 f.
[519] Heb. xii. 16.
[520] We even know the names of some of these deities from the theophorous names of Edomites: _e.g._ Baal-chanan (Gen. xxxvi. 38), Hadad (_ib._ 35; 1 Kings xi. 14 ff.); Malikram, Ḳausmalaka, Ḳausgabri (on Assyrian inscriptions: Schrader, _K.A.T._² 150, 613); Κοσαδαρος, Κοσβανος, Κοσγηρος, Κοσνατανος (_Rev. archéol._ 1870, I. pp. 109 ff., 170 ff.), Κοστοβαρος (Jos., XV. _Ant._ vii. 9). See Baethgen, _Beiträge zur Semit. Rel. Gesch._, pp. 10 ff.
[521] Obadiah 8: cf. Jer. xlix. 7.
[522] Obadiah 11, 12: cf. Ezek. xxxv. 12 f.
[523] 1-5 or 6. See above, pp. 167, 171 f.
[524] Verse 7.
[525] See above, p. 171.
“The exiles returned from Babylon to found not a kingdom but a church.”
“Israel is no longer a kingdom, but a colony” (p. 189).
The next group of the Twelve Prophets—Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and perhaps Joel—fall within the period of the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire was founded on the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 B.C., and it fell in the defeat of Darius III. by Alexander the Great at the battle of Gaugamela, or Arbela, in 331. The period is thus one of a little more than two centuries.
During all this time Israel were the subjects of the Persian monarchs, and bound to them and their civilisation by the closest of ties. They owed them their liberty and revival as a separate community upon its own land. The Jewish State—if we may give that title to what is perhaps more truly described as a Congregation or Commune—was part of an empire which stretched from the Ægean to the Indus, and the provinces of which were held in close intercourse by the first system of roads and posts that ever brought different races together. Jews were scattered almost everywhere across this empire. A vast number still remained in Babylon, and there were many at Susa and Ecbatana, two of the royal capitals. Most of these were subject to the full influence of Aryan manners and religion; some were even members of the Persian Court and had access to the Royal Presence. In the Delta of Egypt there were Jewish settlements, and Jews were found also throughout Syria and along the coasts, at least, of Asia Minor. Here they touched another civilisation, destined to impress them in the future even more deeply than the Persian. It is the period of the struggle between Asia and Europe, between Persia and Greece: the period of Marathon and Thermopylæ, of Salamis and Platæa, of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. Greek fleets occupied Cyprus and visited the Delta. Greek armies—in the pay of Persia—trod for the first time the soil of Syria.[526]
In such a world, dominated for the first time by the Aryan, Jews returned from exile, rebuilt their Temple and resumed its ritual, revived Prophecy and codified the Law: in short, restored and organised Israel as the people of God, and developed their religion to those ultimate forms in which it has accomplished its supreme service to the world.
In this period Prophecy does not maintain that lofty position which it has hitherto held in the life of Israel, and the reasons for its decline are obvious. To begin with, the national life, from which it springs, is of a far poorer quality. Israel is no longer a kingdom, but a colony. The state is not independent: there is virtually no state. The community is poor and feeble, cut off from all the habit and prestige of their past, and beginning the rudiments of life again in hard struggle with nature and hostile tribes. To this level Prophecy has to descend, and occupy itself with these rudiments. We miss the civic atmosphere, the great spaces of public life, the large ethical issues. Instead we have tearful questions, raised by a grudging soil and bad seasons, with all the petty selfishness of hunger-bitten peasants. The religious duties of the colony are mainly ecclesiastical: the building of a temple, the arrangement of ritual, and the ceremonial discipline of the people in separation from their heathen neighbours. We miss, too, the clear outlook of the earlier prophets upon the history of the world, and their calm, rational grasp of its forces. The world is still seen, and even to further distances than before. The people abate no whit of their ideal to be the teachers of mankind. But it is all through another medium. The lurid air of Apocalypse envelops the future, and in their weakness to grapple either politically or philosophically with the problems which history offers, the prophets resort to the expectation of physical catastrophes and of the intervention of supernatural armies. Such an atmosphere is not the native air of Prophecy, and Prophecy yields its supreme office in Israel to other forms of religious development. On one side the ecclesiastic comes to the front—the legalist, the organiser of ritual, the priest; on another, the teacher, the moralist, the thinker and the speculator. At the same time personal religion is perhaps more deeply cultivated than at any other stage of the people’s history. A large number of lyrical pieces bear proof to the existence of a very genuine and beautiful piety throughout the period.