To Samuel and Nathan, whose work was done in the pre-literary times, fell a large share of that personal asElijah and cendancy which, as we have seen,1 was the Elisha natural inspiration and support of the people before the age of books. After the literary awaking under Solomon personal ascendancy does not seem to have counted for so much in the southern kingdom, its place being increasingly taken by the ideas embodied in the songs and proverbs which the psalmists and sages so readily made into an educative agency. In the northern kingdom, however, away from the literary centers, the era of undiffused thought lasted longer, and the need of personal guidance and ascendancy was correspondingly protracted. It was in this kingdom of Israel that most of the early prophetic work was done, and that by the itinerant and personal method which the career of Samuel has made familiar: Among the men who thus worked for the welfare of the northern kingdom, two names stand out preeminent, the names Elijah and Elisha. The stories dealing with them, which begin with the seventeenth chapter of 1 Kings and extend to the thirteenth chapter of 2 Kings, are told in the familiar folk's style, quite differently from the prevailing annalistic accounts in which they are embedded; and probably were derived not from documents but from the oral traditions of the prophetic schools which as we know were a feature of the times.

Each of the two great prophets, whose characters were in quite marked contrast, fitted providentially into his time and mission. Elijah, the stern ascetic, through his services in committing the northern realm at a time of great peril to the exclusive worship of Jehovah, and through his championship of the plain people against the king's arbitrary despotism, became the traditional type of the prophet, Jehovah's

1 Compare what is said about personal ascendancy, its good, and the lack it leaves; see above, pp. 72-76.

spokesman and herald, later reproduced in John the Baptist (cf. Mal. iv, 5; Matt. xi, 14). Elisha, more a man of the people and less austere, dwelling among them as a person to be consulted by king and common man alike, was a politician-prophet who, though mainly true to high ideals, was not without a certain shiftiness and subtlety in the affairs of state, and indeed was the contriver of the bloody revolution under Jehu which in the end cost the kingdom dear. Of both these prophets miracles are reported; a fact which betokens a relatively raw and unreflective state of society, into which spiritual ideas had found small entrance.

In the Hebrew idiom a disciple or follower is called a son. The sons of the prophets were such disciples. The Sons of They seem to have acted as servants or agents the Prophets of the greater prophets (cf. 2 Kings ix, 1-3); not giving original prophecies on their own account, but learning the mind of the great seers and propagating their religious and patriotic warnings among the people. We first hear of companies of prophets in the time of Samuel, when they seem to have been connected with the sanctuaries, and to have been in some way under the direction of Samuel (1 Sam. x, 5, 10). The first use of the term sons of the prophets" occurs in the time of King Ahab (1 Kings xx, 35-43), when a certain one of their number by symbolic act reproved the king for his clemency in sparing his enemy the king of Syria. At that time they seem to have been a recognized class or guild (cf. 2 Kings ii, 3, 5), like itinerant or cloistered friars, who subsisted probably by the people's alms. We hear most about them in the time of Elisha; when they seem to have lived together in communities of their own (cf. 2 Kings vi, 1–7), to have worn a distinctive badge or mark (cf. 1 Kings xx, 38, 41), or perhaps a monkish costume (cf. Zech. xiii, 4), and to have been cognizant of the great prophets' movements. Wives of such sons of the prophets are mentioned

(cf. 2 Kings iv, 1); so they were not required to be celibates. They were not highly rated by the upper classes (cf. 2 Kings ix, II); and their primitive ways of inducing the prophetic frenzy fell into disrepute as prophecy took on more the sanity of ordered literary utterance (Jer. xxix, 26; Hos. ix, 7). In the times before prophecy became literary, however, and especially among uncultivated people, the order of the sons of the prophets doubtless served a useful purpose.

WITH

CHAPTER IV

THE STRESS OF PROPHECY

[The eighth century till 701 B.C.]

the coming of the literary prophets, of whom the earliest that can be dated was Amos (about 754 B.C.), the unique Hebrew institution of prophecy came to its most distinctive mission, and through a period of about two and a half centuries ran a very significant course in history. The first half century of this time, until 701 B.C., for reasons which will appear, may be regarded as a period of stress, in which prophetic insight and foresight is approaching, for both kingdoms, a great crisis, the crisis of national dissolution and exile. During this period the northern kingdom went under (in 722 B.C.); while Judah, the southern kingdom, was for a time delivered, its exile not coming until 586 B.C., more than a century later. The surviving kingdom, however, did not go unscathed. By the Assyrian encroachments and invasions until 701 it passed through an experience of menace and suspense second only to actual overthrow. It was by a miraculous deliverance that Judah was temporarily relieved and the faith of prophecy vindicated; and the sudden event by which this was brought about ranks as one of the most notable epochs in the nation's history.

This period of prophetic stress we may regard, in the large, as a time during which the strenuous business of the prophets was to prepare both kingdoms for their doom, and for their worthy survival of it. The prophets mainly concerned in this were: Amos and Hosea for the northern kingdom, and Micah and Isaiah for the southern.

I. THE IMPENDING CRISIS

Up to the death of Elisha the activities of the prophets, though concerned with the nation rather than with the individual, were directed mainly to its domestic affairs with its succession of kings, as in the case of Samuel, Nathan, Ahijah, and others; with, the purity of its worship, as in the case of Elijah; and with its relations to the neighboring kingdom of Syria, as in the case of Elisha. It will be noted, too, that prophetic activity, when once the kingdom was split in two, was confined to the northern kingdom. The reason for this seems to be that the northern kingdom, being less fixed and organized in its religious and moral ideals, had correspondingly more need of the personal influence of the prophets, giving it warnings and directions as it were from hand to mouth; while in Judah the temple, with its priests, psalmists, and scholars, was far more committed to the steadying and enlightening influence of law and literature, making personal labors to a degree superfluous.1 Prophets were men. for crises and emergencies; and with these junctures, so long as they remained domestic, the southern kingdom, having a more deeply founded civil, social, and religious organization, was better fitted by its inherent resources to cope.

A great crisis was impending, however, which would draw the nation out of its parish and provincial ideas; which soon after the death of Elisha began to attract the attention of thoughtful statesmen; and which called forth the utmost of prophetic insight and foresight, in both kingdoms, to cope with. Israel, hitherto a secluded and self-centered nation, must henceforth reckon with the great powers of the world. To understand this, and the scope of it, we must consider the momentous world movement that the nation was destined to encounter.

1 Cf. above, p. 130.