The Prophets' Approach to God

Extract

Every nation worthy of the name produces its prophets, and by prophets I mean men who claim to speak to their fellow countrymen in the divine name and with divine authority. For that is the true essence of the prophetical character: not merely the ability to foretell future events, but the claim to speak as an ambassador of God. Miracles and predictions are chiefly the confirmatory signs of the validity of that claim. Of course there are prophets and prophets, false claimants and true, and there have been many who claimed unjustifiably to speak in God’s name.

But if every nation has had its prophets, no nation has ever produced any that can compare even remotely with the prophets of Israel, of whom Dr Allen writes with so much understanding and sympathy in his Prophet and Nation, a book that deserves to be classed with W. R. Smith’s great Prophets of Israel, published half a century ago. He begins with a chapter on the distinction between those who have come down to us approved as genuine prophets and the now-forgotten throng of their fellow Israelites who belonged to the prophetical caste. Many of the latter were temple officials or hangers-on at the royal court, men who were venal and prepared, like the fortune-tellers of all ages, to adapt their utterances to their income’. The former were outstanding exceptions, few in number, always unpopular in their day, often in prison and generally dying a violent death.