CHAPTER III.

The Divine and Human Side of Prophecy.

S 13.

The Prophet as a Holy Man.

The prophet is called in an official sense a man of God 1 Sam. IX, 6-9, compare Deut. XXXIII, 1), and a servant of Jehovah ( 2 Kings IX, 7, compare Deut. XXXIV, 5), but this official character rests upon the general character of personal union with God, and upon piety. According to the Wisdom of Solomon VII, 27 the heavenly wisdom, in the course of human history, raises up friends of God and prophets by her entrance into holy souls (κατὰ γενεὰς εἰς ψυχὰς ὁσίας μεταβαίνουσα φίλους θεοῦ καὶ προφήτας κατασκευάζει). This ethical condition is of great importance for the proper appreciation of the spiritual and miraculous, and yet unmagical character of all true prophecy.

Rem. I. An excellent dissertation, bearing upon this subject, which rightly divides the divine and the human in prophecy is Düsterdieck's De Rei Propheticae in Vetere Testamento cum Universae, tum Messianae Natura Ethica, Göttingen 1852, in which he carries out the idea, that the intercourse of the prophets with God, which the religious and moral nature of man and especially the covenant relation of God to Israel brings with it, is the ethical ground from which the prophecy worked by God goes forth. He says: Nullus in vocato ac misso homine animi motus sine Deo est, neque vero ullus, qui contra propriam hominis naturam efficiatur a Deo, “When a man is called and sent there is no movement of the mind without God, nor indeed is any, which is contrary to the true nature of man, effected by God."

Rem. 2. The New Testament names those whom God deems worthy to be receivers and mediums of his revelation, holy men (2 Peter I, 21), and calls those who have been thus honored the holy prophets (2 Peter III, 2, compare Rev. XXII, 6 according to the reading: tõv áɣíшv πpopytov).

S 14.

Character of the Prophets' Intercourse with God.

The prophets according to this hold intercourse with God by means of prayer. They question God, as the book of Habakkuk shows, and he answers; but they do not receive the divine disclosures until they have first occupied an attitude of waiting (Hab.

Their

II, 1) and praying (Jer. XXXIII, 3, compare Acts X, 9). intercourse with God is a being and living in God and God in them. Therefore the prophet speaks throughout the Old Testament prophetic books after a peculiar communicatio idiomatum at one time as though he were Jehovah (Deut. XI, 13—15), at another as though Jehovah were the prophet (Is. VII, 10-11). They speak like the angel of God, as if they were God, their instrumental ego and the absolute ego changing places abruptly.

$ 15.

Prophecy as belonging to the Realm of Grace.

Prophecy is an arrangement and an effect of God the Redeemer. It does not proceed from God the Creator as such, concerning whom Paul said to the Athenians (Acts XVII, 28): "For in him we live and move and have our being"; nor does it lie in the same domain as the conscience, of which the philosopher Seneca says (Epist. XLI): sacer intra nos spiritus sedet. It belongs indeed as a means of salvation to this world (1 Cor. XIII, 8), but it descends from above, and serves the world of the future (Is. LXV, 17, compare LI, 16). Whoever approaches the prophetic writings with the modern view of the world, which disputes the supernatural realm of the cosmical and psychological miracle, will explain the distant glimpses of the prophets, either through a natural series of representations, which they experience, whether as inferences or phantasies, or he will stamp them as prophecies after the event (vaticinia post eventum). But those that prophesy out of their own hearts (8)

Ezek. XIII, 12. 13, compare Jer. XIV, 14; XXIII, 16. 26), who follow the impulses of their own spirit, are according to the Scriptures false prophets.

$ 16.

Spontaneous and Transcendental Elements in Prophecy.

If now the election and preparation of a man as a prophet is based upon the presupposition of personal piety, so also his reception, as well as his proclamation of the divine revelations, is accomplished in the sphere of human freedom. From Ezek. II, 8; Jer. XX, 7 it is evident, that the prophet has first bowed himself in the obedience of faith to the word for which he demands obedience; and from Is. VIII, 11; Ezek. VIII, 1 that the prophet is taken

possession of by the working of the divine power not without connection with the free disposition and endeavor of his inner being. It is the prophet's self-conscious, and self-determining inner life which God makes the place and the means of his own self-attestation in word and symbol. But since the prediction of the prophet is not a product of his natural will, it is also according to 2 Peter I, 20 not a matter of his own unriddling. There remains in the prophecy something transcending the understanding of the prophet, and first the history of the fulfilment furnishes the full understanding.

Remark. The proposition which Riehm, Messianische Weissagung, Gotha 1875, (p. 6), sets forth: "That what we can first recognize in the time of the accomplishment of prophecy is precisely not the content of the prophecy itself" needs limitation. Undoubtedly the mind of the Spirit, that is that which the Spirit of prophecy has in view, should not be made the intention of the prophet, or what is the same should not be made the historical purport of that which is prophesied. But Riehm himself admits (p. 8), that to the purport of prophecy not only the purport belongs, to which the prophet gives a clear, conscious, full expression, but also that which is higher and deeper, which lies for himself in the twilight of presentiment. He also grants that this does not belong less to the historical intent, but only in the entire indefiniteness of presentement.

$ 17.

No Magic Element in Prophecy.

Even the mercenary Balaam was certain from the very beginning that only in the power of Jehovah could he do anything against Israel (Num. XXII, 18; XXIII, 3), and he surrendered himself to the direction of God, and to the word which he put in his mouth (Num. XXIII, 4-6). He, who was originally no prophet, but a soothsayer, becomes the submissive organ of the divine Spirit, but not before he has allowed himself to be inwardly overcome by Him. Saul, as described in 1 Sam. X, 1-13 followed the direction of Samuel, and it is in the person of his better self, that even as a persecutor of David (1 Sam. XIX, 23) he is not able to withdraw from the power of the prophetic Spirit.

Remark. Those who are mentioned in Matt. VII, 22, are such as allowed themselves through their prophetic gifts to be overcome with spiritual pride, from which they inwardly died. The ominous word of Caiphas (John XI, 49–52) is not derived from a gift of prophecy which he possessed, but absolutely from a providential causal connection.

CHAPTER IV.

Difference between the Prophecy of Redemptive History and Heathen Mantic.

$ 18.

The opposition between Prophecy and Mantic.

Even Balaam, who allowed himself to be hired to curse Israel, but overpowered by the Spirit of the God of Israel became a prophet of blessing, confesses Num. XXIII, 23: "There is no divination (i) in Jacob and no soothsaying (p) in Israel; at the fixed time it will be said to Jacob and to Israel, what God works"; according to which Israel derives his knowledge respecting the future absolutely from the voluntary, and prevenient testimony of God. Hence the Tora forbids all kinds of witchcraft, both that which violently interferes with the present, as well as that which explores the future (Deut. XVIII, 10-12; Lev. XX, 27; XIX, 31). The judgment of condemnation which is pronounced upon it is conditioned through the connection in which the heathen mantic stands to idolatry, and also through the untruth of the utterances by which the questioner allows himself to be deceived. But this condemnatory judgment is pronounced for a third reason, where those already cited do not avail. The Jewish maid of Philippi (Acts XVI) testifies to the truth and yet Paul considers her as physically diseased, and regards her prophetic spirit (veuμa údшvos) as evil demon, which he expels. The mantic is considered in the Scriptures, even on account of the manner of its performance, as a denial of God and as sacrilege.

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Remark. Among the kinds of witchcraft which the Scriptures reject, is also that of necromancy, which cites the dead and questions them respecting the future of that which is doubtful. The prophet's words (Is. VIII, 19): God's people shall not question the dead, but the living God who conditions all things, hold good with reference to Spiritualism.

$ 19.

Resemblance and Difference between Mantic and Prophecy.

The heathen mantic was divided into a scientific and an un

scientific species (τεχνικόν and ἄτεχνον γένος Plutarch, Vita Homeri S 212), an artificial and a natural kind of divination (duo genera divinandi, unum artificiosum, alterum naturale, Cicero, De Divinatione, Lib. I, 18; II, 11). The artificial prophesies through the explanation of signs, and the natural through inspiration. The mantic has a similar origin with prophecy in the religious and moral nature of man. It is based upon man's need of intercourse with God, or of knowledge about His will and counsel. Also the mode of appearance and the actual means which the mantic employs, in order to seek the will of deity and of the future have many points of similarity with the prophecy of redemptive history, and yet the Holy Scriptures presuppose a specific difference between both, from which difference they derive their moral demands.

Remark. Even in the Holy Scriptures the Urim and Thummim of the high priest's ephod, and the lot (e. g. in the choice of kings and an apostle) are employed as actual means of ascertaining the divine will, and music is also used at least for the sake of producing a prophetic frame of mind (2 Kings III, 15, compare 1 Sam. X, 5).

$ 20.

The forced self-excitement of the Mantic.

As, for the heathen, the knowledge of one absolute Elohim has been resolved into the representation of many Elohims, which have no supernatural reality, but rather a demoniacal background (1 Cor. X, 20); so within heathenism the requisite inspiration for the knowledge of future events became a self-made inspiration under the use of intoxicating stimulants, and the divine words and visions. which the seer perceived and reported, as for example the Pythian oracles, were for the most part nothing else than illusory expressions and images wrung from a diseased and excited subjectivity. But since such a self-excitation cannot be a constant, but only an occasional one, other means were invented for penetrating the future, and hence there arose by the side of the prophetic mantic the profession of the astrologers (Is. XLVII, 13), of the augurs (augur =aviger, as auspex = avispex), and of the aruspex (haruspex hira, entrails).

from haru =