CHAPTER II.
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL

The overthrow of the house of Omri had not raised the power of the kingdom of Israel. Jehu, it is true, sent tribute to Shalmanesar II. king of Assyria (842 B.C.). But in spite of this subjection to the great king on the Tigris, neither Jehu nor his son Jehoahaz was in a position to repel the attacks of the princes of Damascus, Hazael and Benhadad III.; the whole region to the East of the Jordan, the land of Gilead, had to be conceded to Damascus after the most cruel devastation of that district and of all Israel. It was the distress into which Bin-nirar III. of Asshur brought Damascus which first afforded respite to Israel in the last years of Jehoahaz, though tribute for this service also had to be paid to Assyria (803 B.C.). His successor, king Joash (798-790 B.C.) was now able to wrest from Damascus at least those cities which his father had lost, and the son of Joash, Jeroboam II. (790-749 B.C.), the fourth sovereign of the house of Jehu, succeeded in gaining the upper hand over Damascus, in completely reconquering the land of Gilead, and inflicting heavy blows on Hamath. The land which he conquered from Hamath he retained; the Books of Kings mention the brave deeds of Jeroboam II., how "he set up again the borders of Israel, from the land of Hamath to the sea of the plain." During his long and powerful reign – he sat on the throne for 41 years⁴⁰– agriculture was developed, trade became again active, and, as it seems, very lucrative. In Samaria, the metropolis, there were splendid houses, the inhabitants of which lived in magnificence and luxury.⁴¹

In Judah the reign of Joash, whom the high-priest Jehoiada placed on the throne in the year 837 B.C., again fully established the worship of Jehovah in opposition to the favour which his grandmother Athaliah had shown to the worship of Baal. Amaziah, the son of Joash, maintained his throne against the murderers of his father; his arms were successful against the Edomites, but failed against Israel. When he also was slain by conspirators, the people, in the year 792 B.C., raised his son Uzziah (Azariah) to the throne. Uzziah was only 16 years of age at the time of his accession, but young as he was he learned well how to rule, and the length of his reign allowed him to see the fruit of his labours. The Chronicles say of him: "He loved husbandry; he had husbandmen and vinedressers in the mountains, and dug many wells in the desert, for he had many cattle in the low country and in the plain."⁴² Uzziah was also a brave warrior. Against the Philistines he obtained greater successes than fell to the lot of any of his predecessors, including even Saul and David, greater than those won by any of his successors. He took Gath, the prince of which David had once served; he gained Jabneh and conquered Ashdod, and destroyed the walls of this city. The loss of Gath and Ashdod limited the league of the cities of the Philistines to Ekron, Ascalon, and Gaza; Uzziah built Jewish cities in the conquered districts,⁴³ he forced the Ammonites to pay tribute, he completed the subjugation of the Edomites which his father Amaziah had begun, and his fame reached even to Egypt.⁴⁴ He rebuilt the harbour-city of Elath on the Red Sea, which the rebellion of the Edomites against Judah had wrested from king Jehoram about the year 845 B.C. (II. 252), placed Jews there, and apparently restored the Ophir trade of Solomon.⁴⁵ "He was marvellously helped," say the Chronicles, "till he became strong." Amid such successes Uzziah did not forget that changes would occur, that other times would come. In the second half of his reign⁴⁶ he strengthened the walls of Jerusalem with towers at the corner-gate, i. e. at the north-west corner, of the city wall, at the valley gate, and at the corner, i. e. where the wall of the upper city advances to the west, and caused "engines invented by cunning men to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks of the walls, to throw arrows and great stones withal."⁴⁷ The levy of the people was put in order; the fighting men were entered on a register; Uzziah "prepared for the whole army shields and spears, coats of mail and helmets, bows and slinging stones."⁴⁸ "And Uzziah did what was right in the eyes of Jehovah as Amaziah his father had done, save that the people still sacrificed and offered incense on the high places" – so we are told in the Books of Kings. The Chronicles add that he sought God as long as the prophet Zachariah lived.⁴⁹ Afterwards he had a quarrel with the priests of the temple because he sacrificed with his own hands in the great space of the temple, the holy place (before the Holy of Holies), on the altar in that space intended for incense. David and Solomon had offered incense there before him; the priesthood intended therefore to make good their exclusive claim to every kind of sacrifice as against Uzziah.⁵⁰ Uzziah succeeded in raising Judah to the highest point of power and importance, which it reached after the defection of Israel.

Thus after severe tempests the reigns of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah brought to Israel and Judah the restoration of order, power and prosperity. The flourishing condition of agriculture and trade increased the well-being of the people, and produced profits which led the wealthy classes into a misuse of their wealth, into extravagance and luxury. This mode of life, which seldom, in the East especially, fails to accompany gains easily got, was attacked in both kingdoms by a merciless criticism. In Israel and in Judah a careless enjoyment of life was connected not unfrequently with a certain inclination towards the rites of the Syrians. From the time that the house of Jehu ruled in Israel, and Joash ascended the throne of Judah, the favourable feeling towards Syrian rites had ceased, from the throne downwards. With the restoration of more active relations towards the neighbouring nations their example operated with renewed force on the wealthier classes of Israel, and among them, and afterwards no doubt among the people, admission and recognition was thus gained for the religious observances of the Syrians. As the sensual elements in the forms of the gods and the cultus of the Syrians became more marked – as the worship of the deities of procreation and birth became more licentious and debauched, in connection with the increased population, and consequent luxury and dissoluteness in the Phenician cities (II. 276), as the prostitution became more general, the service of androgynous deities more zealous – as the number of sacred servants, of companions male and female, of eunuchs and men ready to make themselves eunuchs, became larger – as this worship of lust and mutilation grew more disgusting, and the flames on the altar of Moloch rose more frequently – so much the more vigorous, in the circles of the neighbouring nations, whose national and religious life was roused, must have been the aversion and opposition to such licentious practices, to rites of so different a nature, and so strongly at variance with their own faith.

Three centuries before this time, Israel by the foundation of a monarchy had gained rest and security against her nearest neighbours in the East and West, against Moab and Ammon, and the Philistines. After the division the powers of Israel and Judah had hardly sufficed at all times to protect them against their neighbours; and even, at last, against the Damascenes. Serious dangers threatened from a greater distance. Egypt, the country from which in Syria there was naturally the most to fear, had kept within her borders since the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan, as if to secure space and freedom for the development of Israel. Only once in the course of five centuries was this rest broken by the campaign of the Pharaoh Shishak, and then in a very transitory manner. But half a century after this campaign another opponent arose far to the East on the banks of the Tigris, who now had secured a firm footing on the Euphrates, whose armies first trod the north of Syria, and tried their strength in repeated campaigns against Damascus. Ahab of Israel in league with Damascus and other princes of the Syrians succeeded in beating off the first attack; but after him Jehu and Jehoahaz of Israel paid tribute to the kings of Asshur, and though the successors of Bin-nirar III. had to fight in Arrapachitis and Gauzanitis, they repeatedly led their armies against Northern Syria, against Arpad and Hadrach.

However secure men might feel in Israel and Judah in the possession of the position recently obtained under Jeroboam and Uzziah, it could not escape a keener eye that a power had forced its way to the Euphrates, and every moment threatened a renewed attack on Syria which Israel and Judah were not in a position to resist, even in the favourable position in which for a moment they were situated. Even if Israel and Judah united their forces, which for the moment were excellently arranged, it was scarcely conceivable that they could make any stand against the supremacy of Assyria, if this were expressly directed against Syria. Only in the event of a hearty combination of all the states and tribes of Syria, the Philistines and the Phenicians, Hamath and Damascus, Israel and Judah; only by the union of all Syria under one power, could a sufficient counterpoise be provided to the Assyrian power. But the feeling and tendencies of these states were different, as also was the state of civilisation and religious life; and the thought of such an union never arose among them. Even if it had it could hardly be realised here, or elsewhere in the East, in any other way than by establishing one despotic monarch. Such a form of union would at any rate have required that Israel should give the best she had. Instead of a political impulse which would have united Israel and Judah with Damascus and Hamath, the Phenicians and Philistines, the internal circumstances of Israel and Judah, the opposition to the renewed encroachments of the Canaanitish worship, combined with the threatening position of Assyria, gave a new, peculiar, and lofty flight to the religious development of the Israelites.

In its struggles against the house of Omri the prophetic power was inwardly ripened and strengthened. With the relaxation of persecution the intensity and ecstacy of the prophets must have been relaxed. In the place of the passionate strife came a more peaceful tone, greater calmness, more earnest introspection. Yet the prophetic power was not merely purified, it was also deepened. By degrees, elements which had been developed in other spheres exercised an influence on the prophetic work, on the reflection on the nature and will of Jehovah, and the effort to be absorbed in him. The expression and outlet which religious feeling had found in religious songs, in invocations, and hymns of thanksgiving, praise and penitence, supplied to the prophetic feeling a fuller, broader and more variable background. To the oldest account of the fortunes of Israel, which arose in priestly circles, and of the covenant which his God had once made with him, to the collection and establishment of the law which formed the contents of this covenant, was soon added the second text, which described in a more lively manner the manifestations of the tribal God, his guidance of the patriarchs and forefathers of the nation, and, like the older text, it was for a long time in the hands of the prophets. Even before Joel, at the time when the high-priest Jehoiada was regent for king Joash in Judah (II. 259), urged the nation to repentance and introspection, the hand of a prophet had united those two texts. Penetrated by their contents, he had, as might be expected from his point of view, laid the main stress on the promises and prophecies, on the relation of man to God, on the nature of man, and his duty in life. In this form the books of the fortunes of the patriarchs, of the covenant of Jehovah and Israel, of the promise of protection and blessing in return for the observation of this covenant, must have exercised an especial influence on the circle of the prophets; they showed them the past in the closest relation to the present; they strengthened their conviction that the external relation was insufficient, that the essential point was the internal relation of man to his God.

As a fact the people of Israel had experienced a peculiar fortune. Of the same origin as a part of the Arabian and Syrian tribes and closely allied to them, the Israelites had not followed the same path of development. Branching off from those nearest, and then from their older tribesmen, with whom they had previously pastured their flocks, they grew up into a nation on the borders of Egypt and under Egyptian supremacy; a nation in which nomadic simplicity met with certain influences due to Egyptian culture. Forced back upon their feeling of national independence by the oppression of the Egyptians, the children of Jacob had emancipated themselves from Egyptian dominion, and had embraced with renewed vigour the worship of their tribal God, and at length had won by force of arms an abode among the kindred tribes, to which they now stood opposed as enemies. The tribes of Syria were far before them in culture of every kind, in wealth and adornment of life; the tribes of the desert, the closely related neighbours on the east of the Jordan, did not cease to attack and plunder the cantons of the Israelites; their neighbours on the south coast sought with persistence to subjugate them. Thus the national contrast remained in force, and the fixity of it was favoured by the nature of the mountain country, the seclusion of many valleys and heights possessed by the Israelites, while these same natural conditions rendered impossible such a thorough entrance into the life of the maritime cities, and the life of Damascus and Hamath, as could lead to the dissolution of the nationality. The fact that Israel, at the time of David and Solomon, obtained the preponderance over their neighbours, tended, together with the national pride, to strengthen the contrast instead of weakening it, and maintained the consciousness of nationality as a great memory. Even from this point of view, starting from the national feeling and consciousness, the prophets could not but oppose the Syrian tribes and their rites, and in this opposition they found the more ready acceptance in Israel, the more thoroughly the consciousness was aroused that the land had been won and maintained in conflict with the tribes to whom this worship belonged. But the conception of the nature of the national deity was far more powerful in the prophets than the sense of nationality. In contrast to the lascivious worship of the powers of nature, the God of Israel was originally conceived as a deity who was alien and opposed to the creative powers of nature. In the sense of this contrast Jehovah was regarded as an exalted and terrible deity, to look on whom brought death; in this feeling the simple conception, which cannot forego the sensuous element, saw Jehovah's manifestation in flame, in the destroying but purifying glow of fire. The aversion to all sensuous nature now rises to its fullest power in the mind of the prophets in opposition to the Syrian rites; their supernatural point of view, forced onward by the struggle and the contrast, disrobed the idea of God of every material element which still adhered to it. How could this supra-terrestrial power, before which all that is earthly is dust and mire, dwell in a frail image made by human hands? The temple at Jerusalem had no image, the greater part of the old places of sacrifice were without any, and among the Hebrews it was well known that the worship of Jehovah without images was the traditional mode of worship. Neither the bull-images of Jehovah, which had been set up at the time of the division of the kingdom in Israel, in contrast to the images of the Syrian gods, though tolerated by the prophets at the time of Ahab and Jehoram, nor any other image of the god, ought to be worshipped. If the divine power is not only supernatural but also purely spiritual, beyond nature and ruling over it; if it is without manifestation in the world of sense; there can be no question of the worship or deification of elementary powers, or the personification of physical processes; the worship of these is nothing but deception and senseless rites. Moreover, the power before which all nature quakes can be but one. Thus, to the prophetic mind, Jehovah from being the tribal God of Israel, beside whom other gods defended their nations, though not so mighty as he, becomes the one and only God. And to them this God is no longer merely the power which rules over nature, no longer merely the jealous and severe God of his nation from whom the first-born must be purchased, who must be worshipped with many sacrifices, and pleasant odours – to the inward emotion, the inward certainty, and conscience of the prophets he is at the same time the highest ethical power. Whatever they in their enlightenment and in their hearts felt to be the just, the good, the highest, is Jehovah's nature. In him were concentrated the moral elements as conceived by the prophets, and nature is no more than the footstool under his feet. He is now the one supernatural, spiritual and moral power, which rules the world, before which earth and mankind disappear. He is pure, holy and sublime; he hates injustice, violence, exaction, avarice, deceit, and oppression of kindred, and looks not on wickedness with favour. His will is just, he will requite every one according to his actions, and will not forget the evil of the evil-doer. What can the holy and just Lord in heaven care for offerings of food, frankincense, and drink? The lips and the heart must be elevated to his greatness, his commands must be kept, and men must make themselves holy as he is holy. The only service of the holy God is a holy and righteous life. Sacrifice is not required, but recognition of God, simplicity, chastity, and moderation.