Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/427

I S E A E L 411 From this point of view, so thoroughly Israelitish, he pro nounces Israel s condemnation. He starts from premisses generally conceded, but he accentuates them differently and draws from them divergent conclusions. Amos was the founder, and the purest type, of a new phase of prophecy. The impending conflict of Asshur . ^^ j e i lova k ant | Israel, the ultimate downfall of Israel, is its theme. Until that date there had subsisted in Palestine and Syria a number of petty kingdoms and nationalities, which had their friendships and enmities with one another, but paid no heed to anything outside their own immediate environment, and revulved, each on its own axis, careless of the outside world, until suddenly the Assyrians burst in upon them. These commenced the work which was carried on by the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, and completed by the Romans. They in troduced a new factor, the conception of the world, the world of coarse in the historical sense of that expression. In presence of that conception the petty nationalities lost their centre of gravity, brute fact dispelled their illusions, they flung their gods to the moles and to the bats (Isa. il). Th3 prophets of Israel alone did not allow themselves to be taken by surprise by what had occurred, or to be plunged in despair ; they solved by anticipation the grim problem which history set before them. They absorbed into their religion that conception of the world which was destroying the religions of the nations, even before it had been fully grasped by the secular consciousness. "Where others saw only the rain of everything that is holiest, they saw the triumph of Jehovah over delusion and error. Whatever else might ba overthrows, the really worthy remained unshaken. They recognized ideal powers only, right and wrong, truth and falsehood ; second causes were matters of in.liiforeace to them, they were no practical politicians. But they watjhed the course of events attentively, nay, with passionate interest. The present, which was passing before them, becams to them as it were the plot of a divine drama which they watched with an intelligence that anti cipated th-e denouement. Everywhere the same goal of the development, everywhere the same laws. The nations are the dramatis j^ersoiiss, Israel the hero, Jehovah the poefe of the tragedy. 1 Not The canonical prophets, the series of whom begins with "patri- Amos, were separated by an essential distinction from the otic." class which had preceded thorn and which still continued to be the type of the common prophet. They did not seek to kindle either the enthusiasm or the fanaticism of the multitude ; they swam not with but against the stream. They were not patriotic, at least in the ordinary acceptation of that word ; they prophesied not good but evil for their people (Jer. xxviii. 8). Until their time the nation had sprung up out of the conception of Jehovah; now the conception of Jehovah was casting the nation into the shade. The natural bond between the two was severed, and the relation was henceforward viewed as conditional. As God of the righteousness which is the law of the whole universe, Jehovah could be Israel s God only in so far as in Israel the right was recognized and followed. The ethical element destroyed the national character of the old religion. It still addressed itself, to be sure, more to the nation and to society at large than to the individual ; it insisted less upon a pure heart than upon righteous institu tions ; but nevertheless the first step towards universalism had been accomplished, towards at once the general diffusion and the individualization of religion. Thus, although the prophets were far from originating a new conception of God, they none the less were the founders of what has 1 In rery much the same way the threatened and actual political annihilation of Ionia led to the rise of Greek philosophy (Xenophanes, Heraclitus). been called "ethical monotheism." But with them this ethical monotheism was no product of the " self-evolution, of dogma," but a progressive step which had been called forth simply by the course of events. The providence of God brought it about that this call came at an opportune period, and not too suddenly. The downfall of the nation did not take place until the truths and precepts of religion were already strong enough to be able to live on alone ; to the prophets belongs the merit of having recognized the independence of these, and of having secured perpetuity to Israel by refusing to allow the conception of Jehovah to be involved in the ruin of the kingdom. They saved faith by destroying illusion. The event which Amos had foreseen was not long in The coming. The Israelites flew spontaneously, like " silly Assyrians doves/ " into the net of the Assyrians. Zechariah ben ca Jeroboam was overthrown after a short reign, Shallum his murderer and successor was also unable to hold his own, and was followed after the horrors of a civil war by Menaliem ben Gadi (745 B.C.). But Menuhem, in the presence of domestic (and perhaps also foreign) assailants, 2 had no other resort than to purchase by paymsnt of a great tribute the assistance of King Tiglath-pileser II., who at that time was giving new force to the Assyrian predominance in these regions. By such means he succeeded in attaining his immediate end, but the further consequence was that the rival party in the state turned for support to Egypt, find Palestine now became the arena of conflict between the two great world-powers. Menahem transmitted his kingdom to Pekahiaa ; Pekahiah was murdered about 735 B.C. by Pekah, and Pekali himself shortly afterwards was overthrown. All this happened within a few years. It woull have been possible to conjecture the state of the country in these circumstances, even if we had not been informed of it by means of the prophetical book of Hosea, which dates from the time when the Assyrians had begun indeed to tamper with the country, but hud not yet shown their full de.sign. After the death of Jeroboam II. there had been wild out bursts of partisan war ; none of tire kings who in quick succession appeared and disappeared had reul power, none established order. It was as if the danger from without, which was only too obviously threataning the existence of the kingdom, had already dissolved all internal bonds ; every one was at war with his neighbour. Assyrians and Egyptians were called in to support this or that govern ment ; by such expedients the internal confusion was, naturally, only increased. Was there any other quarter in which help could yet be sought] The people, led by the priests, turned to the altars of Jehovah, and outdid itself in pious works, as if by any such illusory means, out of all relation to the practical problem in hand, the gangrene of anarchy could possibly be healed. Still more zealous than Amos against the cultus was Hosea, not merely on the Hosea. ground that it had the absurd motive of forcing Jehovah s 2 It is not inconceivable that the wars carried on by Tiglath-pileser II. against Hamath had some connexion with his interventions in favour of Menahem. The kingdom of Hamath, which may have^been threatened by Jeroboam II., may have availed itself of the state of matters which followed his death to secure its own aggrandizement at Israel s expense ; in correspondence with this attack from the northern side another by Judah in concert with Hamath may well have been made from the south. In this way, though not without the aid of pure hypothesis, it might be possible to fit into the general histoiical connexion the fragmentary Assyrian notices about Azariah of Judah and his relations to Hamath ; the explanations suggested by the Assyrio- logists have hitherto been total failures. But in that case it would cer tainly be necessary to assume that the Assyrians were badly informed as to the nature of the relations between Hamath and Judah, and also as to the individual who at that time held the throne of Judah. Uzziali ( = Azariah), who in his old age had become a leper, could only nominally at best have been king of Judah then.