Then there was Oppression. Excessive luxury in the upper classes is usually accompanied with misery among those at the opposite end of the social scale; because the rich in such a state of society are heartless, and not only neglect the poor, but oppress them. The prophets are full of the wrongs inflicted on the weak by the powerful. The wealthy landowners took advantage of the difficulties of their less prosperous neighbours to rob them of their holdings and remove the ancient landmarks; and the courts of law were so corrupt that those who could not bribe the occupants of the chair of justice had no chance of redress. The spirit of the constitution was so far violated that the rich held their own fellow-countrymen in slavery, and did not even give them the advantage of the year of jubilee. Many a page of the writings of the prophets looks like a programme for the reform of abuses with which we are too familiar in our own civilisation. "Woe," says Jeremiah, "to him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's services without wages and giveth him not for his work."
Last of all there was Hypocrisy. In spite of these sins, crying to Heaven, there was seldom any lack of religiosity or the outward forms of religion. Religion was divorced from morality, and ritual was substituted for righteousness. There is no commoner or weightier burden in the prophets than this. It is on this subject that Isaiah lets loose the whole force of his prophetic soul in his very first chapter, where there is a truly appalling picture of the combination of religious rites the most multiplied with moral abuses the most clamant: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of rams or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hands, to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth; they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them. And, when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you; make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow."
Thus did these watchmen search out the moral and religious condition of the people to the very bottom and, in the most expressive language, bring home to their fellow-countrymen how they stood in the eyes of God.
2. A second large mass of the prophetic writings is occupied with Denunciation, or the prediction of calamities about to come as the punishment of sin. As sure as the prophets were that the God of the universe was a righteous God, so certain were they that the public sins which they exposed would bring down the wrath of Heaven; for "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished."
The instruments of punishment were not far to seek. Israel was surrounded by nations which entertained towards her feelings of bitter hostility and needed only the slightest provocation to attack her. Such were Edom and Moab, Philistia and Syria. But, above all, she was hemmed in on both sides by great and warlike powers--Egypt on the one hand and Assyria or Babylonia on the other. These were incessantly watching each other, and, in doing so, they had to look across Israel. She lay in the way which the one had to take in order to get at the other. The secular historian would say that she could not but fall sooner or later into the hands of the one or the other, and that she would probably pass frequently from hand to hand. But to the prophets these warlike powers were the scourges in God's hand to punish the sins of His people; and, looking outwards from their watch-tower, after exposing the sins within the state, they announced that the storm-cloud of calamity was rising from this quarter or that long before any suspicion of it had dawned on the citizens themselves. Jehovah turns the hearts of kings and peoples as the rivers of water, and He stirred up these hostile nations when His people were in need of chastisement; He could wield their power as the axe which assails a tree is wielded by the woodman; He could call the mightiest conqueror to serve His secret purposes, as a man calls a dog to his foot.[17] They did not know that they were being thus used. They had their own designs, and their hatred and cruelty towards God's people were real enough. They were even, after doing God's work on His people, to be punished in turn for the animosity and violence with which they performed it. But in the meantime the will of Jehovah was accomplished, and the discipline of His providence wreaked on the sins of the nation.