But there was an age when certain men, in the
wildest corner of the universe, founded, in poems, dis-
courses, and frightful imprecations, something new,
something unknown to either Greek or Roman civilisa-
tion, something that will in turn be called Judaism, then
Christianity, then, in a general word, Religion, and that
will, in the days when evolution reaches its limit, become
Socialism. Whether we bless or curse that age, let us
recognise its greatness; it is the age of the prophets.

Judaism may now spread throughout the world. We
have seen it radiate from Jerusalem across Judaea, then
through the whole of Palestine; from there it has
infiltrated into cognate and neighbouring lands, Moab,
Edom, Ammon, and Syria; then colonies have gone out
and settled in Asia Minor: in Egypt, in the islands of the
Mediterranean, even on Greek soil. The Jews take with
them everywhere the words of their prophets, consoling
them in their weakness, their humiliations, promising
them the victory in an assured time. They can bear
distress and oppression, mockery and insults; they have
with them this viaticum of enduring hopes and intimate
certainties that Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the two Isaiahs
have given them. The survival of Judaism amid so
many causes of ruin could not be explained without the
work of these writers of genius.

In the west, meantime, the power of Rome is growing;
Carthage, its great enemy, is vanquished. Presently
 206 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

Greece will become a Roman province; for the moment she
wears herself out in intestine war. Her political agony
will not, indeed, lessen her intellectual domination;
intellectual Greece will triumph, in proportion as the
policy of Rome triumphs. The third century is the
time of the great philosophic schools that take their rise
in Plato, Aristotle, and the time of the first Scipios. But
amid these mountains of Judaea, of which the scholars of
Greece and the Senate of Rome hardly know the name,
there are men who have prepared the revolution that will
one day destroy the Graeco-Roman world.
 PART THIRD

THE APOCALYPSES

Chapter I.

HYMNS IN THE SYNAGOGUES

The prophecies of the Second Isaiah date from about the
year 200; the apocalypse of Daniel from about the year
164. The Second Isaiah closes the century of the
prophets; Daniel inaugurates the era of the apocalypses.
There is no breach of continuity between them. The
apocalypse follows the prophets logically no less than
historically. The last of the minor prophets, especially
Zechariah, the most significant of them, are witnesses of
the filiation. Before passing from one period to the other,
from the prophets to the apocalypses, we must consider
the psalms. A vast collection of short national poems,
beginning in the third century and continuing during
half of the second, the psalms will enable us to
characterise the state of soul of the Jewish people at the
time when, the voices of the prophets having ceased, the
apocalypses appear.

Beuss, the great Biblical scholar, has called the psalms
the hymn-book of the Synagogue.

In point of fact, the synagogue had arisen, and was
developing in Judaea and in the Jewish colonies. Judaism
had only one temple, that of Jerusalem; so the Mosaic
law had enjoined. But the one temple that had sufficed
during the fifth and fourth centuries, when the Jewish
State comprised only Jerusalem and its outskirts, and
even sufficed when Judaism had spread about Jerusalem

207
 208

HYMNS IN THE SYNAGOGUES

over the territory of Palestine, could not suffice now that
Israel had settlements in the whole of Palestine, in Syria,
Egypt, Asia Minor, the islands, and in Greece itself. On
the other hand, it was impossible to infringe the pri-
mordial law of Judaism; and the sacerdotal aristocracy
at Jerusalem would not have tolerated rivals.

The Jerusalem temple remained the one temple of
Jahveh. There only could holocausts be offered to him;
there only did the series of official rites proceed. Offerings
and tithes continued to flow to the Jerusalem temple;
and, from all the Jewries of the world, it was to that alone
that the pilgrimages brought the tribute of the piety of
the faithful. The Jerusalem temple remained the centre
of the Jewish fatherland. But there arose houses of
prayer, preaching, and patriotic gatherings; even in
Jerusalem there were, round the temple, pious shelters
for the pilgrims of various nationalities; and these were
called synagogues.

No cult was practised in the synagogues; no sacrifices
were offered in them; they were meeting-places. There
one listened to the reading of the Law and, later, of the
prophets; men were strengthened in the love of their
country ; and, with the reading of the national books,
the commentaries, and the exhortations of those who
speak, they loved to sing in common, in long-drawn
sombre melody, hymns in which their souls found
expression.

The psalms were the hymns they sang in the
synagogues.

Who composed these hymns ?

The old ecclesiastical exegesis did. not hesitate to
declare that the psalms were the work written in the
tenth century by the pious King David and other
venerable characters of antiquity. We cannot take a
single step in Jewish literature without finding pseude-
pigraphy. The psalms were composed by the poets of
the third and second centuries. The form, which is
 HYMNS IN THE SYNAGOGUES

209

suggested by various passages in the prophets, was
probably borrowed from ancient Babylonian poetry;
here again, however, the Jews, in appropriating a foreign
thing, succeeded in making it eminently Jewish.

Just as the authors of the prophetic books had sought
in ancient Israelitic history the situations in relation to
which they had created the discourses they wished to
address to their contemporaries, so the authors of the
psalms took their situations from ancient history,
especially from the legends of King David; and, by a
similar artifice, they represented the songs which they
would have sung to their contemporaries to be the
antique work of certain heroes of their national history.
Most of the psalms thus composed remained discon-
nected and independent of each other, and formed the
collection known as the book of psalms; others, how-
ever, were inserted in the historical books, and even in
the prophetical books, purporting to be lyrical fragments
uttered on special occasions by Moses or his sister Mary,
by David, or by Hezekiah.

As an outcome of the misfortunes of the end of the
third and beginning of the second centuries, the hymns
of the synagogue have a certain prayer as their constant
refrain:—

“ Jahveh, save us from our enemies; avenge us on our
enemies ; annihilate our enemies.”

The celebrated psalm cxxxvii., Super jiumina Baby-
toms, must be quoted in full:—

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we
wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows of the land.

For there they that carried us away captive required of
us a song ; and they that wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How should we sing the songs of Jahveh in a strange
land?

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget
her cunning.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the

P
 210

HYMNS IN THE SYNAGOGUES

root of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my
chief joy.

Remember, Jahveh, the children of Edom, who said, in
the day of Jerusalem: Rase it, rase it, even the founda-
tion thereof.

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy
shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little
ones against the stones.

Psalm xxi. 8-10 :—

Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies ; thy right
hand shall find out those that hate thee.

Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of
thine anger; Jahveh, thy wrath shall swallow them up,
and the fire shall devour them.

Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their
seed from among the children of men.

Psalm xxxv. 26 :—

Let them be clothed with shame and dishonour.

Psalm lv. 15 and 23 :—

Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick
into the home of the dead.

But thou, 0 god, shalt bring them down into the bottom
of the pit, and they shall not live out half their days.

Psalm lviii. 6-10 :—

Break their teeth, O god, in their mouth; break the
jaw of the young lions, 0 Jahveh.

Let them melt away as waters which run continually ;
let the arrows they put to the bow be as if broken.

As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass
away; let them be like the untimely birth of a woman,
which hath not seen the sun.

Before your pots can feel the thorns, let the whirlwind
take them away, both green and aflame.

Let me rejoice in seeing my vengeance; let me bathe
my feet in their blood.

Psalm lxviii. 23 :—

Let the tongue of thy dogs have its share of the enemy,
saith Jahveh.

Psalm lxxix. 6, 10, and 12:—

Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have known
 HYMNS IN THE SYNAGOGUES

211

not thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called
upon thy name.

Let it be known among the heathen in our sight that
there is vengeance for the blood which is shed.

Render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom
their reproach.

Psalm lxxxiii. 9-17 :—

Do unto them as unto the Midianites, as to Sisera, as
to Jabin, at the brook of Kison ;

Which perisheth at Endor, and were as dung for the
earth.

Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb, and their
kings as Zebah, and as Zalmunna;

My god, make them like a whirlwind, as the stubble
before the wind, as the fire that burneth the forest, and
as the flame that setteth the mountains on fire.

So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them
afraid with thy storm.

Fill their faces with shame, and they will seek thy
name, O Jahveh.

Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea,
let them be put to shame and perish.

Psalm xciv. 1-3 :—

God of vengeance, Jahveh, god of vengeance, show
thyself.

Lift up thyself, thou Judge of the earth ; render them
their reward.

How long shall they be glad ?

At times the Jew of the psalms boasts of loving his

enemies......We find, again, in psalm cix. 6-15, how he

loves them:—

Set thou a wicked man over him ; and let Satan stand
at his right hand.

When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and
let his prayer become sin.

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

Let his children be vagabonds, and beg; let them seek
their bread far from their ruined homes.

Let the extortioner cast his net on all that he hath,
and let the strangers spoil the fruit of his labour.

Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither
let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
 212

Later :—

Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of
dizziness, the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink
it again, but I will put it into the hand of them that
afflict thee.3

Jahveh hath put on the garment of vengeance, and
hath clad himself with jealousy as a cloke.

According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay; to
the islands he will repay recompense.

So they shall fear the name of Jahveh from the west,
and his glory from the east; when the enemy shall come
in like a flood, the spirit of Jahveh shall put him to flight.4

I have trodden the peoples in my anger, and trampled
them in my fury, and their blood hath been sprinkled
upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment.

For the day of vengeance is in mine heart.5

And the Jews enfevered, with anger and despair,
repeated with their prophet, as they saw pass the proud
aristocrats whom they accused of denying their god and
their country:—

I number you to the sword, saith Jahveh, and ye shall
all bow down to the slaughter; because when I called, ye
did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but did
evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I
delighted not.

Therefore thus saith the lord Jahveh:—Behold, my
servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my
servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; behold, my
servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed; behold,
my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry
for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit.6

1 Isaiah xlvii. 1-14.   2 Isaiah xlix. 26.   3 Isaiah li. 22.

4 Isaiahlix. 17-19.   6 Isaiah lxiii. 3-4.   6 Isaiah lxv. 12-14.
 192 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

The hero of the Second Isaiah (who will also be the hero
of the psalms) is designated by the words ebed Jahveh,
which the Christian translations have rendered the
“ Servant of God ”—that is to say, the servant of Jahveh.
It is important to determine the precise meaning. The
Hebrew word ebed has, in the Bible, a meaning which
varies between slave, serf, servant, and domestic. The
Mosaic law distinguishes between the Hebrew ebed, who
is a kind of half-serf and half-servant, and the Canaanite
ebed, who is a pagan slave; but Moses is at the same
time said to be the ebed of Jahveh. In the Second Isaiah
ebed of Jahveh evidently means the Jewish people.
Jahveh is the sovereign, the supreme king, of the Jewish
people, and the expression, ebed of Jahveh, means simply
subject of Jahveh; the Jewish people is the subject of
Jahveh, as all peoples of the East are the subjects—that is
to say, the slaves—of their monarch. The subject of
Jahveh is the slave of Jahveh. The ebed Jahveh is the
sombre group of the men of Jerusalem who wander
about the temple, poor, downcast, and proud. The
Second Isaiah means that the Jewish people, the slave of
its king Jahveh, will become master of the world.

Even more precisely than the First, the Second Isaiah
predicts, to the audience which he fills with his halluci-
nation, the submission of the world to the Jews. He
admits no escape from the dilemma: to submit or perish.
It is a pacific ideal, on condition that the world comes to
its knees. And to his unhappy fellows, oppressed and
humbled a dozen times, the poet repeats mercilessly these
maddening promises:—

The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their
kings shall minister unto thee..

The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall
perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.

The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree,
the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place
of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet
glorious...
 THE SECOND ISAIAH

m

The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending
unto thee ; and all they that despised thee shall bow
themselves down at the soles of thy feet...

Thy people shall inherit the land for ever......I am

Jahveh, and I will hasten these things in their time.1

Indefatigable, the fierce tribune lashes his miserable
audience into fanaticism:—

And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the
sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vine-
dressers.

But ye shall be named the Priests of Jahveh; men
shall call you the servants of your god; ye shall eat the
riches of the nations, and in their glory shall ye boast
yourselves.

For your shame ye shall have double, and for confusion
ye shall rejoice in your portion.2

You ask how all that will come about ?

Behold, Jahveh will come with fire, and with his
chariots like a whirlwind ; he maketh a fire of his anger,
and of his threat a flame.

For Jahveh will render his judgment with fire; he will
smite all flesh with his sword; and the slain of Jahveh
shall be without number.3

In that day all the Jews, scattered in the humiliation of
the colonies amid the goim, will be brought back in
triumph to Zion. It is expressed in the figure of the
return from the Deportation; but the Second Isaiah is so
far from thinking of the Babylonian captivity that he
summons the exiles, not merely from the banks of the
Euphrates, but from the west and the south4—that is to
say, from Phoenicia and Egypt, and from the midst of all
nations.5 The imperialist promises are for the Jews of
the Dispersion just as much as for those of Judaea.

The world will be subject to the Jews, and the nations
will pay tribute.

They shall bring gold and incense........the ships of

Tarshish shall come with their silver and their gold.6

1 Isaiah lx. 10-22.   2 Isaiah lxi. 5-7.   3 Isaiah lxvi. 15-16.

4 Isaiah xliii. 5-6.   5 Isaiah lxvi. 20.   G Isaiah lx. 6-9.

O
 194 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

The Jews shall be masters of the earth.

The time is come to gather all nations and tongues,
that they may come, and see my glory.

And I will set a sign among you, and I will send those
that escape of you unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and
Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles
afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen
my glory ; and they shall declare my glory among the
nations.

And they shall bring all your brethren, for an offering
unto Jahveh, out of all nations upon horses, and in
chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon
dromedaries, to my holy mountain, to Jerusalem, saith
Jahveh.1

And the last touch is:—

They shall look upon the carcases of the men that have
rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, neither
shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring
unto all flesh.2

§ 4. The Internationalisation of the Prophetic Books.

The Age of the Prophets.

We now know the work of the writers whose voice was
to sound in the ears of humanity for so many ages, and
we see that all they did was to reconstitute, democratising
it, the Jewish nationalism, or imperialism, that had been
created before them by Esdras and the Mosaic books.

As we have said, we attack no religion, and we defend
none. The aim of the historian is to discover why and
how certain books arose, which afterwards became sacred
books. We have explained how the books of Moses,
which were national and nationalist works, became
international books; we have now to explain how the
books of the writers called prophets—democratic as well
as national and nationalist books—were internationalised
in their turn.

1   Isaiah lxvi. 18-20.

2 Isaiah lxvi. 24.
 NTERNATIONALISATION OF PROPHETIC BOOKS 195

Twenty-four centuries ago there arose, in one of the
smallest States of Western Asia, certain men, an outcome
of the most pressing need of the circumstances, who
preached to their contemporaries the cult of their country
and hatred of their aristocracy.

Internationalism has converted these men into:—

1.   The apostles of the conversion of the world to
monotheism ;

2.   The protagonists of justice.

History, however, shows that:—

1.   The Jewish prophets preached, not the conversion
of the world, but its conquest and submission;

2.   The Jewish prophets were the protagonists, not of
justice, but of the claims of their people and their political
party.

The work of the Jewish people, say the Jewish and
Christian orthodoxies, was to teach true religion to the
world.1 Recently Isidore Loeb, in a work published after
his death,1 2 and M. Maurice Yernes, in most of his later
works, have revived the theory of the “ proselytism of the
prophets.” According to them, the Jews dreamed, not of
conquest and submission, but of the conversion of foreign
nations.

The analysis of the prophecies of the two Isaiahs has
fully shown, and the analysis of the psalms and apocalypses
will constantly show, what kind of “ conversion ” there
was in the minds of the Jews.

In what did the “ conversion ” of foreign nations
consist ? First, to obey the Jews; secondly, to pay
tribute to them. One must not be deceived by the
religious form that the Jewish claims took. The Jewish
State is a State ruled by priests, in which the prophets
aspire to replace the old clerical aristocracy by a clerical
democracy. Though framed by the priests, the Jewish

1   See Munk, La Palestine, commencement of Book III.

2   La literature despauvres dans la Bible ; Paris, 1892.
 196 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

law is a national law; the taxes paid to the Jewish
clergy are taxes paid to the Jewish Government. A
purely religious law, in the sense that we give to the
expression—that is to say, a purely moral law—is an
impossible idea in Judaea. So monstrous an anachronism
robs Jewish history of its real features; the glory of the
Jewish people is that it, the lowest people of the East,
came to dream, like the Roman people, of material
conquest, of the political submission of the world.

The Romans sent legions and administrators to
conquer the world. The Jews relied on Jahveh and the
hosts of heaven, Jahveh Sebaot. Jewish “ proselytism ”
differs from Roman “proselytism” only in the choice of
means. On both sides the design is to conquer foreign
nations; and the same dilemma is proposed to the world
—submission (conversion, if one insists on the word) or
extermination. There is no ambiguity; the two Isaiahs
and, later, the psalms and apocalypses repeat it invariably;
if the nations be not “ converted,” they shall be exter-
minated.

In the period of the Isaiahs, as in the time of Deutero-
nomy, Jewish nationalism, surrounded by the most
formidable dangers, drew itself up ferociously to face
other peoples. In the latter case the horizon is limited,
in the former case it is broad; but in the third century
just as much as in the fourth the idea is to reduce
foreign nations, or to perish. Nothing is more human;
nothing is simpler. Internationalism, reading “ conver-
sion” where it finds “conquest,” puts a dogma in the
place of history.

That the prophets were the protagonists of justice in
the world is another error that we have exposed. Even
the most independent commentators of to-day praise the
prophets for having claimed justice; some for having
created justice. Did not James Darmesteter, in 1891,
propose to France and the world a return to the Jewish
prophets? History should expose this effect of inter-
 NTERNATIONALISATION OF PROPHETIC BOOKS 197

nationalisation, for the idea of justice was never more
cruelly denied than by the men of the Jerusalem
democracy.

In what does justice consist ?

In this: to render to every man what belongs to him.

Suum cuique.

Justice has been represented with scales in her hands.
She is devoid of passion, and disinterested; without
passion, that is to say, she obeys neither hatred, nor love,
nor anger, nor fear, nor vengeance, nor envy; dis-
interested, that is to say, the thought of his own
advantage never whispers in the ear of the judge.

Whence comes the sentiment of justice? From an
equal consciousness of rights and duties; of duties that
come of rights, and rights that impose duties.

A human, contingent thing, depending on place and
time, differing in different places, overturned by circum-
stances, speaking one language one side of the Pyrenees
and another language the other, justice has nothing but
the name in common with the metaphysical idol imagined
by certain philosophers, and especially worshipped since
the days of Kant. Justice, a quality of an essentially
practical order, a purely political virtue, an empirical and
relative fact, is a Roman conception ; the allegory of the
scales is Roman; suum cuique is a Roman device;
“ Justitia est constans ac perpetua voluntas jus suum
cuique tribuendi.”

The Romans found the sentiment of justice in the
consciousness of their rights and their duties. Masters
of the world (that is their right), they owe justice to the
world (that is their duty). The ideal Roman is the judge
without hatred and without love, without anger or fear,
without vengeance or envy. The ideal Roman, did we
say? More correctly, the ideal of the Roman. The
definition of justice remains, after two thousand years,
the definition of the word justitia.

The Romans arose to that height because they were a
 198 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

N
 178 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

And as, at this time, the Jerusalem aristocracy had just
put forth the name and theory of the people of Israel,
gathering together under the name the whole of the
populations which it meditated ruling and assimilating,
the famous programme “ Israel in the Promised Land ”
represented the whole imperialism of the time.

Confronted with the irruption and the menace of
Hellenism, Hosea and Amos strive to recall the people
to their duties; and, like Deuteronomy, they merely
offer their contemporaries the promise of happiness at
home.

Jeremiah, in the dread of the danger that nearly
wrecks Judaism in the days of the successors of
Alexander, is a mild soul, haunted only by the threat
of the catastrophes that are about to fall again upon
Jerusalem, if Jerusalem is unfaithful. After the threat,
however, Jeremiah does not fail to tell and to repeat the
promise. But it suffices for him to tell of the flourishing
of the Jewish State, the replanting of their vines and
fig-trees, the dancing of the daughters of Jerusalem, on
peaceful evenings, to the sound of zithers and tam-
bourines. Jeremiah often addresses foreign nations;
though by foreign nations, in Jeremiah, we must under-
stand the States which surround Judaea. Never (except,
perhaps, once) does Jeremiah turn to the Islands; in the
Bible the Islands are the Greek world, and Jeremiah does
not look so far.

Ezekiel, in his sombre visions of the future, was hardly
attentive to anything but his country. He had put his
particular formula on the ancient promises; but had he
enlarged it ?

Isaiah is the first to turn to the Islands.

The dream of a universal conquest is the stroke of
genius of the First Isaiah, though it is foreshadowed in
the authors of the last Mosaic narratives.

We know what the situation of the Jewish people is at
the time. In Judaea it is subject to foreigners ; a corrupt
 THE FIRST ISAIAH

179

aristocracy oppresses it; constant wars burden the land
of Israel. In the colonies it vegetates miserably ; the son
dies after the father without having seen once more the
sky of his country. They are far from counting on the
old hopes of peace, glory, and happiness; faithfulness has
not had its reward. And it seems to the most optimistic
that the fulfilment of the divine promises is very far off,
very difficult, if not quite chimerical. The free and
peaceful possession of Palestine ; Israel prospering in
the promised land! The reality was very far removed
from the dream.

What could be said to the Jewish people to restore its
confidence and courage ?

In a sublime invention the First Isaiah, refusing to
preach a perilous defensive, suddenly turns round, and,
taking the offensive against the enemies of his country
and his party, he teaches the Jews that they have nothing
to fear, and that not only will every promise be fulfilled,
but Jahveh will give his people, at one stroke, a hundred
times more than he promised.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall
be no end, about the throne of David, and about his
kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal
of Jahveh of the Hosts will perform this.1

The golden age that other poets had put at the begin-
ning of time is foreseen in the future by the First Isaiah.

And on that day the shoot of David shall be an ensign
for the nations; to it shall the nations turn ; and his rest
shall be glory.2

On that day Philistia will be conquered, Edom and
Moab will be the prey of the children of Israel, and the
sons of Ammon will be subject to them.3 To Dumah
(probably Edom) it shall be said:—Submit.4 Tyre will
be destroyed, but it will rise again after seventy years in

1 Isaiah ix. 7.   2 Isaiah xi. 10.   8 Isaiah xi. 14.   * Isaiah xxi. 12.
 180 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

order that its wealth may be offered to the temple at
Jerusalem.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall
be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one
King; after the end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as
an harlot:—

Take thy guitar,

Run through the town,

Eorgotten courtesan;

Dance thou for ever,

Sing without end,

That men recall thee!

And it shall come to pass, after the end of seventy years,
that Jahveh will visit Tyre, and she shall return to her
hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms
of the world upon the face of the earth.

And her merchandise and her hire shall be consecrated
to Jahveh; it shall not be treasured, nor laid up; for
her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the
face of Jahveh, to eat sufficiently and for magnificent
clothing.1

The Ethiopians shall be conquered, but they will submit
and will bring offerings to the temple of Jahveh;2 the
Egyptians shall be chastised, but they will turn to
Jahveh, and he will hear them;3 Syria will accept the
god of Jerusalem; there will be a road from Egypt to
Syria, and Jahveh will bless the submission of the Syrians
and the Egyptians.4 What is the meaning of the con-
version of the Syria of the Seleucids, and the Egypt of
the Ptolemies, if not the submission of all that the Jews
of the third century know of Hellenism ? And all these
victories will have for prelude the reconciliation; that is
to say, the definitive union of Judah and Ephraim;6 that
is to say, of Jerusalem and all the ancient Palestinian
towns—in other words, the final constitution of the Israel
which symbolises the Jewish ideal.

And it shall come to pass in the last days that the
mountain of Jahveh’s house shall be established in the

1 Isaiah xxiii. 15-18.   2 Isaiah xviii. 7.   3 Isaiah xix. 21-22.

4 Isaiah xix. 23.   s Isaiah xi. 13.
 THE FIRST ISAIAH

181

top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ;
and all nations shall flow unto it.

And many peoples shall come and say: Come ye, and
let us go up to the mountain of Jahveh, to the house of
the god of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and
we will walk in his paths.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of
Jahveh from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke
many peoples.1

The submission of the world is the necessary and
logical consequence of the covenant. Provided Israel
observes the conditions, Jahveh will observe them on his
side; and the work of Jahveh will be, not only to make
Israel powerful and prosperous, but to bring the whole
world to kneel before it. For the first time in the story
of Judaism, the First Isaiah says it explicitly. It is a
momentous event. Until that time they thought only
of obtaining from Jahveh the peaceful enjoyment of
Palestine; now they dream of becoming masters of the
world. The history of the Jews will be nothing else but
the conflict of this ambition with the reality.

The whole is interconnected as cause and effect. The
grandeur of the future held out to the Jews has magnified
beyond measure the god who is capable of making such
promises; while, by a reaction of the effect on its cause,
the greatness of the god enlarges the splendour of his
promise. To the First Isaiah belongs the glory of first
magnifying Jahveh, the god of Israel, to the proportions
of the god of the universe.

We know the Jahveh of the early nomads settled in
Palestine, a tribal god, becoming later the patron-god of
the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Ephraim, entirely
similar to Camos, the patron-god of Moab, or Milkom,
the patron-god of Ammon. In the days of Esdras the
Jewish soul had needed, if it were to rise again and
endure, to hold itself aloof in a proud patriotism. At

1 Isaiah ii. 2-4.
 182 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

the same time it necessarily isolated Jakveh amid the
congenital and neighbouring gods; and from that time
Jahveh had begun to play a separate part, with a pride
equal to the pride of his people, in the crowd of Pales-
tinian gods.

Then, persevering in a pretension that gave it greater
strength, the Jewish soul had come to regard itself as
chosen for an extraordinary destiny among other peoples.
And at the same time Jahveh became, for the Jews, a
higher god among the other gods. That is the period of
Deuteronomy. There are plenty of texts showing Jahveh
as a god above the other gods. Does not Moses sing, after
the crossing of the Eed Sea:—

“ Who is like unto thee among the gods, O Jahveh ? ” 1

For the First Isaiah Jahveh becomes the supreme god;
beside him there are but demons and angels. The demons
are the strange gods, the hostile gods, the gods of foreigners
and foes, who will all disappear on the day of the victory
of Jahveh; the angels are the servants of Jahveh, encircling
his throne in the heavens. Jahveh is the one god, the
true god. Deuteronomy and Jeremiah himself proclaimed
that the worship of other gods was the greatest of crimes.
The First Isaiah is not more indulgent, but he recognises
a new sentiment; he feels that the strange gods are
inferior gods, that they are doomed to perish, and will
perish.

In that day man shall cast their idols of silver, and
their idols of gold, which they made each one for himself
to worship, to the moles and to the bats.2

The moment will come presently when the Second
Isaiah will add irony to malediction, and, railing at these
idols of wood or gold, made by the hand of man, will make
it plain that Jahveh alone is god, and that the other gods
are nothing.

With the history of Jahveh corresponds the history of

1 Exodus xv. 11.

2 Isaiah ii. 20.
 THE EIEST ISAIAH

183

the old word elohim. It is the Hebrew word which we
translate “ god.” What precisely is the elohim ? A fetish
that becomes an idol, an idol that becomes a national god,
a national god that becomes the god of the universe,
awaiting the time when the god of the universe becomes
a metaphysical god. The First Isaiah is at the stage of
the god of the universe.

But the history of the word elohim and the history of
the god Jahveh are, at the same time, the history of the
Jewish soul that is faithfully reflected therein. A Syrian
tribe that becomes a small people; a small people that
holds aloof in an extreme and fierce patriotism, finding in
it the strength to live and endure; and now a handful of
men, a brotherhood almost, hardly a nation, rather a
church, that thinks itself destined to rule the world, and
believes so strongly in its destiny that it will eventually
accomplish it.

That again is in the First Isaiah.

Until then the Jewish soul is in a state of preparation ;
it exists only potentially. Even in Jeremiah it is as yet
only concentrating, or forming. Jeremiah had been
only a strenuous return to the policy of Esdras and
Deuteronomy, become democratic as it confronted the
Hellenisation of the aristocracy. With the First Isaiah
Judaism opens out towards the world. The prophecy of
Jeremiah had been the cry of alarm of a man who saw
the foundations of the Judaic edifice give way. Now the
Jewish soul revives; Hellenisation has not disappeared from
the aristocracy, but the Jewish people have renewed their
tradition. Now, for the first time in the Bible and in
Jewish history, the eyes of the men of Jerusalem are
about to turn beyond Palestine. For the first time the
Jewish soul appears, in the First Isaiah, of the character
in which it will, under a Christian form, conquer the
world, by faith in its election.

And already the First Isaiah tells, without ambiguity,
how this extraordinary conquest will be accomplished.
 184 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

Before him Deuteronomy, the early prophets, and
Jeremiah have, one after the other, developed the
formula of the famous covenant. The First Isaiah
deduces its full consequences; he expounds it in its full
amplitude. There is a synallagmatic bargain between
Jahveh and Israel; if Israel is faithful to Jahveh, Jahveh
will give it the world. But Israel is only a small people
amid the great peoples of the earth. Syria and Egypt
crush it with their formidable power. What armies will
Israel lead out to conquer such foes ? What general
will lead them to the battle ? The armies will be the
hosts of heaven, and Jahveh will be their general.
Edom, Moab, and Ammon in subjection, Tyre giving up
its gold like an aged prostitute, the Ethiopians bringing
their tribute, Egypt and Syria on their knees, the peoples
of the earth crowding to the mountain of Jerusalem—
all that will be the personal task of Jahveh.

 THE SECOND BOOK OF EZEKIEL

165

mistress of Galilee and Samaria, will enjoy the old land
of Canaan promised formerly to the patriarchs.

And in the end we have the most chimerical utopia
that has ever been imagined. The land of Palestine is
divided among the twelve ideal tribes by means of straight
lines drawn from east to west, forming twelve geome-
trical and almost equal portions, with Jerusalem in the
centre, a sort of State of the church, the privileged
portion of the new priests. And the book Ezekiel closes
with these words :—

And the name of the city from that day shall be:—
Jahveh-Shamma, Jahveh-Is-Here.1

The enterprise of the prophetic party failed.

Practical impossibilities, such as that of realising the
extravagant division of the land of Canaan into
geometrical portions among tribes that existed only in
theory, would not have been an obstacle to the success
of the legislation of Ezekiel; the Jewish spirit always
liked to combine utopia with reality. The literary
poorness of Ezekiel’s project was a graver obstacle.

Becall the legendary fables, the profound and remote
atmosphere, of the Mosaic books. There is nothing of
the kind in the second book of Ezekiel. The first book
of Ezekiel, the lyric book, was full of sublimity and
beauty, but the second was too earthy, too devoid of
inspiration, too bare of fiction, to captivate oriental
souls. The Mosaic law had been the work of several
generations of national poets, who were at the same
time resolute politicians. The law of Ezekiel was the
work of a party-man, who lacked imagination.

Even the very traditionalism that had made the
fortune of the prophetic party was in the way of its
ambition. Its adherents were bound to present them-
selves as the authentic continuers of the ancient institu-
tions. How, then, could they impose new ones ? How

1 Ezekiel xlviii. 35.
 166

EZEKIEL

could they reconcile with the respect due to the Mosaic
legends some of the counter-legends of Samuel, Elijah,
and Elisha ?

The legislation of Ezekiel did not succeed. The
prescriptions and institutions imitated from the Mosaic
codes lived, and might give the democrats some illusion
of success; the innovations failed.

These intrinsic reasons for the failure of the prophetic
enterprise were supplemented by the historical circum-
stances in which it took place.

In a period of trouble, in opposition to a feeble or
unfortunate high-priest, prophetism might have suc-
ceeded ; in opposition to a comparatively fortunate and
strong high-priest like Simeon the Just, at the very time
when Judaea seemed to enjoy a little peace, it was bound to
fail. If, on the other hand, the priesthood had rejected
all reform, or abandoned itself to extreme Hellenisation,
the reformers would have found new weapons in the
excess of popular indignation; but we know that
prophetism itself had eradicated Hellenism from the
priesthood, and this first success prevented it from
winning again, or from dethroning its opponent.

We have compared Jewish prophetism to modern
Protestantism, and the analogy goes further. Luther
did not destroy the Homan Church ; in establishing a
rival Church beside it, he reformed it. It is too little
known that, on many points, the Homan Church satisfied
the demands of Protestants. It was the same at
Jerusalem in the third century. The prophetic party
constrained the clerical aristocracy to make certain
reforms, but did not overthrow it.

While the prophetic party attempted in vain to impose
its laws and seize the government, the old aristocracy
completed the work of the Mosaic legislation, and,
thanks, no doubt, to the action of Simeon the Just,
victoriously imposed it. The prophetic party was beaten,
but not destroyed, and had not ceased to produce great
 THE SECOND BOOK OF EZEKIEL

167

men. The causes that had given it birth remained, and
would be aggravated after the death of Simeon. It
would continue to agitate Judaea no less than before.
But it was all over with the legislative reforms of the
second book of Ezekiel, and the traditions which the
legends of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha had endeavoured
to implant. AVhen, after a century of struggle with an
aristocracy that falls deeper and deeper into Hellenism,
it finally has its revenge, it will accept and appropriate
the old Mosaic law, the work of the aristocracy; and the
book of Ezekiel will, so the Talmud relates, run some
risk of being excluded from the canon of the sacred books.
 Chapter IV.

THE TWO ISAIAHS, AND THE IMPERIALIST
REVIVAL

§ 1. The Jeioish People in the Days of the Tivo Isaiahs.

From the third century onward the history of the Jewish
people is enacted, partly in Palestine, partly in the Jewish
colonies, which spread more and more around the
Mediterranean. The earliest prophetic writers had
arisen under the stress of the frightful calamities that
had fallen on Judaea during the second half of the fourth
century. To understand the last prophetic writers, it is
necessary to resume the history of the Jewish people,
during the following century, in the colonies as well as in
Palestine.

In Palestine.—The pontificate of Simeon the Just
was a calm after the storms at the end of the fourth
century. During the earlier years of his son, Onias II.,
this peace is still disturbed only at rare intervals in
Palestine. But from the year 247 the wars begin
between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of
Syria, and Palestine is once more plundered. Again we
find the long train of misfortunes which these wars drag
after them. In 240 peace is restored ; Palestine remains
in the possession of Egypt. Will the unhappy country
have at least time to dress its wounds ? At the end
of some years the war will be renewed between the
Syrians and the Egyptians (221-217). Palestine will
again witness the ceaseless crossing of armies, battles,
and towns from which the vanquished will burst forth
with fury and the conqueror enter with threats. In 201
the king of Syria again invades Palestine. The war lasts

168
 JEWISH PEOPLE IN DAYS OE TWO ISAIAHS 169

three years ; in the end the Egyptians are beaten, and
the king of Syria remains in possession of Palestine.
Judaea has changed its master.

The Jewish historian Josephus has told us1 how
severely the Palestinian States suffered from the wars
that took place between the kings of Egypt and Syria.
At Jerusalem the humiliation is all the greater from the
high hopes that had been entertained. Had not the
books of Moses promised to the imperialist ambition of
the successors of Esdras the free and peaceful possession
of the land of Palestine ? The chosen people of Jahveh
suffered, in subjection to the goim, in proportion to its
dreams.

When the war rages, plunder and devastation are
multiplied; when peace follows, exaction begins and
violence accompanies it. The powerful desire but to
enrich themselves; they refuse justice, and oppress the
weak ; on the pretext of gathering the tribute claimed by
the suzerain, they plunder the towns and the country ;
the tax-farmers are the leaders of bands who go from
country to country, extorting the debt with arms in
their hands. But the exactions and violence seem more
cruel to the people of Jerusalem when they are committed
by men of its own aristocracy, and when its leaders rely
on the foreign master in maltreating and despoiling it.

The Mosaic law rules at Jerusalem. Under the
shadow of its unchallenged authority, and under the
suzerainty of the Syrian or Egyptian kings, the high-
priest is a kind of viceroy who wields a supreme power.
The sacerdotal aristocracy surrounds him; the people
obey. The recently completed theocratic constitution
is in full vigour; but there is an irremediable division in
the depths of Jewish society.

The hatred of the rigorists for the Hellenists had
gradually risen. To the prophets the forsaking of the

1 Jewish Antiquities, xiii. 1, 3; 2, 28; 3, 129.
 170 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

national ways was an apostasy. The prophets had set up
anew the Jewish soul, by teaching that without Jahveh
and the law of Jahveh the Jewish people were doomed to
perish. The hatred of the rigorist Jews for the foreigner
was great, but their hatred of the renegade was bound to
be fiercer.

Day by day the abyss grew deeper. The Jews of the
people, in the midst of their misery, deluded themselves
with hopes that promised them revenge; and already
some of the aristocrats of the higher clergy assured them-
selves that these hopes were vain. In the humiliation of
the land, the sons of the clerical aristocracy of Jerusalem
were contented with a state of things that left them
masters of Judaea under an easily tolerable suzerainty,
wealthy, and independent enough to enjoy their wealth.

The anger of the traditionalist and nationalist Jew
against the renegade Jew, of the poor against the rich,
was inflamed by the innumerable exactions, the denials
of justice, the increasingly severe oppression, with
which the people reproached their aristocracy. It
seems, if we take the evidence of contemporary writers,
making allowance for rhetorical exaggeration, that this
oppression was extreme, and that the common folk,
exploited and flouted by their masters, reached a
state of the most violent resentment. The scandal
was at its height, among the pious and patriotic poor
of the lower classes at Jerusalem, when, towards the
middle of the third century, under the pontificate of
Onias II., a certain Joseph, son of Tobias, obtain from
Ptolemy Philopator the farming of the taxes in Palestine.
This Joseph, son of Tobias, was the nephew of the high-
priest Onias II.; he was thus one of the heads of the
Jerusalem aristocracy. In his Hellenism, his pomp, his
exactions, Joseph, son of Tobias, exhibits all the grievances
of the children of Jahveh against their aristocracy.

Here is the episode of Joseph, son of Tobias, according
to Flavius Josephus. In order to give an idea of Jewish
 JEWISH PEOPLE IN DAYS OF TWO ISAIAHS 171

society at the time, we cannot do better than quote at
length the picturesque account in his Jewish Antiquities,
which critics are disposed to place in the Days of Ptolemy
Philopator (222-205).

The high-priest Onias had a restricted intelligence, and
was dominated by the love of money; hence, as he had
not discharged the tax of twenty talents of silver, which
his fathers paid the kings, out of their own revenues, in
the name of the people, he caused King Ptolemy to be very
angry. Ptolemy sent a messenger to Jerusalem,reproaching
Onias for not having paid the tax, and threatening that, if
he did not receive the sum, he would divide the Jewish
territory into lots and settle soldiers on them as colonists.
The Jews were terrified on hearing the king’s threats; but
nothing could move Onias, blinded by his avarice.

There was at the time a certain Joseph, a young man,
but already enjoying the reputation of a grave, prudent,
and just man with the inhabitants of Jerusalem ; he was
the son of Tobias and of a sister of the high-priest Onias.
His mother having apprised him of the presence of the
envoy—for he was then on a journey at Phicola, the
village to which he belonged—he returned to the city, and
reproached Onias with not considering the safety of his
fellow-citizens and wishing to put the people in danger.

.....Onias persisting in his refusal, Joseph then asked his

permission to go on an embassy to Ptolemy in the name
of the nation ; and Onias granted it. Joseph went up to
the temple, therefore, summoned the people to assemble,
and begged the citizens to be neither disturbed nor
dismayed by the indifference of his uncle Onias in their
regard, but to keep their minds calm and banish their
gloomy presentiments. He promised, in fact, to go on an
embassy to the king and persuade him that they had done
no wrong. At these words the crowd thanked Joseph;
and he, going down from the temple, gave hospitality in
his own house to Ptolemy’s envoy, heaped rich presents
on him, and, after treating him generously for several
days, sent him back to the king, adding that he would
shortly follow himself.....

The envoy, on his return to Egypt, told the king of the
obstinacy of Onias, and spoke to him of the great merit
of Joseph, who was coming to clear the people of the
delinquencies charged against them. He praised the
young man so much that he made the king and his
wife Cleopatra well disposed towards Joseph before he
 172 TWO ISAIAHS, AND IMPERIALIST REVIVAL

arrived. Joseph sent to borrow money of some of his
friends in Samaria, and, after preparing all that was
necessary for the journey—clothes, utensils, and beasts
of burden, which cost him about twenty thousand
drachmas—he went to Alexandria. It happened that at
the same time all the chief citizens and magistrates of the
cities of Syria and Phoenicia were going there in connection
with the farming of the taxes, which the king sold every
year to the strongest men in each city. When these saw
Joseph on the road, they railed at his poverty and
simplicity. But Joseph, hearing on his arrival at
Alexandria that Ptolemy was at Memphis, went to
meet him. The king was seated in his chariot with
his wife and his friend Athenion, the very man who
had been sent to Jerusalem and entertained by Joseph.
When Athenion saw him, he at once made him known to
the king, saying that this was the young man whose
kindness and generosity he had praised to him on his
return from Jerusalem. Ptolemy then first embraced
him, made him enter the chariot, and, as soon as Joseph
was seated, began to complain of the procedure of Onias.

 ^HE ElRST BOOK OB EZEKIEL

15i

And I heard the noise of their wings, when they went,
like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty,
a noise of great tumult as the noise of a camp.

When they stood, they let down their wings; and there
was a voice from the firmament that was above their
heads, when they stood, and let down their wings.

And above the firmament that was above their heads
there was the likeness of a sapphire stone, in the form of
a throne; and upon the likeness of the throne appeared
the likeness of a man sitting on it, above.

And I saw as the appearance of glowing brass, as the
appearance of fire, round about, serving as his home, from
his loins upward, and from his loins downward ; I saw, as
it were, the appearance of fire with, all around, a bright
light.1

It is Jahveh himself, mounted on his chariot of
Kerubim. At a later date the Christian Church will, for
the men of the West reared in the Hellenic tradition,
turn these terrible Kerubim into our charming cherubs,
chubby and curly-haired, with pretty white wings. But
the Kerubim, offspring of Babylon, brought to Jerusalem
with the traditions of ancient Chaldaea, were monsters
with the heads of animals, the bodies of bulls, two pairs
of wings, spitting fire, as we see them in the Babylonian
ruins. Henceforward the Kerubim will play their part
in the manifestations of Jahveh.

Jahveh speaks to Ezekiel:—

“ Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to
these nations that have rebelled against me; they and
their fathers have rebelled against me, even unto this day.
I do send thee unto these impudent and stiff-hearted
children, and thou shalt say unto them : Thus saith the
lord Jahveh.”2

Ezekiel rises ; he takes a brick, and on it he represents
Jerusalem besieged, and, round about it, the trenches,
terraces, and camps, and the rams round the walls; and
he takes an iron stove, and puts it, like an iron wall,
between him and the city ; for at this moment, says the

1 Ezekiel i.

Ezekiel ii. 3-4.
 152

EZEKIEL

writer, Jerusalem is besieged by Nabuchodonosor. Then
he lies down on the left side, and remains lying for three
hundred and ninety days, bearing the iniquity of Ephraim.
Then he turns to the right side, and remains lying thus
for forty days, bearing the iniquity of Judah. With corn,
barley, beans, and lentils he has prepared as many loaves
as he must remain days lying down, and has had them
baked in dung. So will the children of Israel eat a defiled
bread. As a favour, Ezekiel obtains permission of his
god to bake his bread in cow’s dung instead of in human
excrements. And he prophesies against the guilty
city.

We are now in the temple of Jahveh, dishonoured by
all kinds of idolatries and prostitutions. Opposite the
holy of holies is the idol of jealousy; here are all sorts of
reptiles and abominable beasts, worshipped by seventy
sheiks, with censers in their hands; there are women
sitting and weeping over Adonis; there, again, are twenty-

five young men throwing kisses to the sun......Does that

not cry for vengeance ?

Meantime the Kerubim unfold their wings, and bear
the prophet from chapter to chapter.

Now the hero prepares his travelling garments, and in
the evening, in the midst of his silent compatriots, he
sets out as exiles do. He has not gone out of his house
by the door; he has, with his own hand, made a breach
in the wall. Under the eyes of his compatriots he places
on his shoulder the mantle of a traveller, and departs,
covering his face, so that it shall be a sign to the house
of Israel. And he says:—

I am your sign; like as I have done ye shall do. Ye
shall go into captivity.

Your princes, in the midst of you, shall put their
mantles on their shoulders, and shall go forth in the
twilight; the wall will be dug through to let them pass
out; they shall cover their faces, that they see not the
ground.1

1 Ezekiel xii. 11-12.
 THE FIRST BOOK OF EZEKIEL

153

Later the lord addresses the guilty spouse, her whom
he has distinguished and clothed and adorned, and who
has prostituted herself to strangers.

In another place there are two women, Aholah and
Aholibah—that is to say, Samaria and Jerusalem—whom
the master had chosen. Both have been unfaithful; they
have suffered their bosoms to be touched; they have
uncovered their bellies; they have called those who
passed by to their beds. Loaded with ornaments, their
eyes painted, sitting on magnificent beds, with bracelets on
their arms and crowns on their heads, near a table covered
with incense and oil, they have, with gesture and voice,
called upon the blue-cloaked Assyrians, the pachas and
young horsemen of Assyria, the red-robed Chaldseans,
with mitres of flowing colours. They have smiled when
the Egyptians have stroked their breasts in memory of
their virginity. But they will be despoiled of their
ornaments, they will have their bosoms torn, they will be
left naked on the ground, the nose and ears cut off.

Meantime the threats are carried out. One day a
fugitive comes, who has escaped from Jerusalem, and he
says:—

“ The city has been taken.”

Then Jahveh speaks to Ezekiel:—

O thou, son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of
Israel, and say: Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word
of Jahveh...

Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed
you up on every side, and ye became a prey among the
nations;

Thus saith the lord Jahveh to the mountains and to
the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys, to the desolate
ruins and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a
prey and a derision ;

Thus saith the lord Jahveh : I will speak, in the fire of
my jealousy, against the residue of the nations, which
have appointed my land into their possession, to cast it
out for a prey.

Thus saith the lord Jahveh: I lift up my hand; the
nations that are about you, they shall bear their shame.
 154

EZEKIEL

But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth
your branches, and yield your fruit to my people.

Eor, behold, I will turn unto you, and ye shall be
tilled and sown;

And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and
they shall increase and bring fruit; and I will do better
unto you than at your beginnings, and ye shall know that
I am Jahveh.1

Ezekiel is borne through space. He walks in the
midst of a valley, which is full of bones, numbers of
bones, very dry bones.

And Jahveh saith : Prophesy unto these bones, and
say unto them, 0 ye dry bones, hear the word of Jahveh.

Thus saith the lord Jahveh unto these bones: Behold,
I will cause spirit to enter into you, and ye shall live.

And I will lay sinews upon you, and bring up flesh
upon you, and cover you with skin, and put spirit in you,
and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am Jahveh.

So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I
prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and
the bones came together, bone to his bone.

And when I beheld, lo, the sinews were on them, and
the flesh grew, and the skin covered them ; but there was
no spirit in them.

And he said unto me, Prophesy unto the spirit,
prophesy, son of man, and say to the spirit: Thus saith
the lord Jahveh : Come from the four winds, 0 spirit,
and breathe upon these slain that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the spirit
came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their
feet, an exceeding great army.

Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are
the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, Our bones
are dried ; our hope is lost; we are undone.

Therefore prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith
the lord Jahveh : Behold, I open your graves, and cause
you to come up out of } our graves, 0 my people, and
bring you into the land of Israel.

And ye shall know that I am Jahveh, when I have
opened your graves, and brought you up out of your
graves, O my people.

And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live;

1 Ezekiel xxxvi. 1-11.
 THE SECOND BOOK OE EZEKIEL

155

and I shall place you in your own land, and ye shall
know that it is I, Jahveh, who hath spoken it and
performed it, saith Jahveh.1

The earlier prophets promised Israel a happy future;
they said that Jahveh himself would accomplish the work
of liberation. Ezekiel announces that the day of Jahveh
will come only after frightful catastrophes, in the midst
of the direst anguish. The Jewish people must not hope
to enter peacefully, under a serene sky, into its era of
happiness. To fulfil the promise there must first be
frightful days ; no doubt in order that Israel may atone
for its former crimes, but also in order that it may the
better realise the price of the favours which Jahveh
reserves for it.

And in the depths of the north, among horsemen with
helmet and shield, all terribly clothed, all wielding the
sword, a multitude gathered to make plunder, to ruin the
nations and destroy the flocks, he evokes Gog, king of
Magog, prince of Rosch, Meshech, and Tubal.

Then, when the desolation is at its height, Jahveh
will manifest himself in an upheaval of the mountains, a
fall of the rocks, a rending of the walls, with pestilence
and blood, and a rain of fire and sulphur and stones
falling like hail; he will appear on his chariot drawn by
the four Kerubim ; he will see that he is recognised by
the nations; and they will know that it is Jahveh.

§ 2. The Second Book of Ezekiel: the Legends of Samuel,
Elijah, and Elisha.

Success and Check of the Prophetic Party.

Our Bibles do not distinguish the two books of
Ezekiel; but the testimony of the Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus shows2 that the two parts, so different
from each other, of the narrative of Ezekiel (chs. i.-xxxix.

1 Ezekiel xxxvii.

2 Jewish Antiquities, x. G.
 156

EZEKIEL

and chs. xl.-xlviii.) were originally separate. The second
book of Ezekiel is a piece of tentative legislation which
the prophetic party opposed to the Mosaic legislation.

About the same time certain writers of the same
group created or developed the legends of Samuel, Elijah,
and Elisha, which were afterwards incorporated in the
books of Samuel and Kings. Samuel was a character of
the older historical books; Elijah and Elisha seem, on
the contrary, to have been almost invented by the
prophetic school, and their adventures wholly fictitious.
The legends of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha were put
forward by the prophetic party in opposition to the
Mosaic legends, just as the legislation of Ezekiel was in
opposition to the Mosaic legislation.

The prophetic movement had issued from the terrible
upheavals which preceded and followed the arrival of
Alexander the Great in 332. After the battle of Ipsus,
the successors of Alexander having definitively divided
his empire between them, an era of less frightful trouble,
if not an entirely peaceful era, had set in. This period
of semi-tranquillity corresponds, in Jewish history, to
the pontificate of Simeon I., called Simeon the Just,
probably 300-270. Ptolemy is king of Egypt; Seleucus
king of Syria. The wars between Egypt and Syria are
over for a time. Jerusalem is still subject, but there is
an end of the passing of armies, the battles, the taking
by storm, the massacres, and the deportations.

We must not, however, take literally the statements of
the Siracid and of the Talmud about the happiness of
Judsea under Simeon the Just. It was a comparative
happiness, in view of the frightful calamities of the
preceding and following periods. Let us conceive the
pontificate of Simeon the Just as a calm amid the storms
which laid Judaea desolate from the year 350 to the
Christian era; and let us understand that not one of the
causes of the misery and ignominy that beset the
unhappy country had been removed. Yet these years of
 THE SECOND BOOK OF EZEKIEL

157

calm enabled the sacerdotal aristocracy, on the one hand,
to complete the work of the Mosaic legislation,1 and the
prophetic party, on the other hand, to make its first
effort to seize the government.

The books of Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the
minor prophets had been very successful with the popula-
tion of Jerusalem. They had succeeded in every case in
preventing the Hellenisation of Judaea. The prophetic
writers had proved that to Hellenise Judaea would be
to denationalise it; they had convicted the Hellenising
priests, before the tribunal of public opinion, of forfeiture ;
they had restored the ancient traditions to honour.
Moreover, though Hellenism had made terrible inroads
into the nobility of Jerusalem for a third of a century, it
could not have absorbed it; though a large number of
these priest-levites, to whom had fallen all the power and
all the wealth of Jerusalem, had abandoned themselves to
the charm of Hellenic novelties, others must assuredly
have protested, in conjunction with the democrats, against
the forsaking of ancient customs. The latter could only
reproach an Amos, a Hosea, or a Jeremiah, with exaggera-
tion. Supported by the people of Jerusalem, badly fought
by the more Hellenising aristocrats, and hardly disapproved
by the others, the prophetic writers had, at least to some
extent, succeeded in imposing their ideas.

The prophetic writers and the crowd of common folk
who had followed them now formed an opposition party
against the ruling aristocracy. Would the ambition of
this turbulent minority be satisfied with a first victory ?
They professed to reform the government and the Church
of Jerusalem; but what is the reform of a government or
a Church if not the substitution of a better government
and a different Church ?

Bead over again the invectives of the prophetic writers
against the sacerdotal aristocracy, their threats and their

1 See above, p. 95.
 158

Taking the yoke from the neck of Jeremiah, Hananiah
breaks the bar of it, saying:—

“ Thus saith Jahveh: Even so will I break the yoke of
Nabuchodonosor, king of Babylon, from the neck of the
nations.”

Jeremiah is silent, and goes his way. But on the
morrow he comes again before the people with an iron
yoke on his neck.

“ Thus saith Jahveh : Thou hast broken a yoke of
wood, but thou hast made instead a yoke of iron. For
thus saith Jahveh, god of Israel: I put a yoke of iron on
the neck of the nations, that they may serve Nabuchodo-
nosor, king of Babylon, and they shall serve him; and I
give him the beasts of the field also.”

Then, turning to Hananiah :—

“ This year thou shalt die, because thou hast spoken
against Jahveh.”

Hananiah, the romancer adds, died in that year.

Jeremiah is the prophet of death. This people, which
has given itself to the Baals and Astartes, must be
destroyed. The sentence is irrevocable. And he writes
to those who have already been deported to Babylon that
they may not hope to see their country again.

No anarchist ever preached so violently the destruction
of the present social order, that he might build anew the
social order of the future. Jeremiah goes through the
town crying that it is useless to defend oneself, or to
struggle, for the city is forsaken. He summons Nabu-
chodonosor with the sword, the plague, and famine.
Implacably he hands over to him the race of David.

The romancer describes the indignation that breaks
out in Jerusalem. The city gathers in crowds. Jeremiah
is again put in prison. Meantime the army of the king
of Babylon besieges Jerusalem. King Zedekiah goes to
see the prophet in the yard of the prison:—

“ Wherefore dost thou prophesy the ruin of the land ? ”
he says to him.
 JEREMIAH

139

" This land will be restored some day. Once again its
people will buy bouses, fields, and vines.”

And Jeremiah, always joining example with precept, at
once buys a field at Anatbotb, his native village, with all
the ceremony of a burgher who wishes to be quite safe
about his investment. The prophecies of restoration and
glory now increase. When extermination has atoned for
the present crimes, the kingdom of Jerusalem will be able
to rise again, Jahveh will bring back the captives and
re-establish them, and the nations of the earth will be
astonished at the good he will do them.

Thus saith Jahveh: Again there shall be heard in this
place, which ye say shall be desolate, without man and

without beast.....the voice of joy and the voice of gladness,

the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the
voice of them that shall say, Praise Jahveh of the Hosts,

for Jahveh is good, for his mercy endureth for ever.....

For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at
the first, saith Jahveh.

Thus saith Jahveh of the Hosts: Again in this place
which is desolate, without man and without beast, and in
all the cities thereof, shall be an habitation of shepherds
causing their flocks to lie down.

In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the vale,
and in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin,
and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of
Judah, shall the flocks pass again under the hands of him
that telleth them, saith Jahveh.

Behold, the days come, saith Jahveh, that I will perform
that good thing which I have promised unto the house of
Israel and to the house of Judah.

In those days, and at that time, shall I cause the branch
of righteousness to grow up unto David ; and he shall
execute judgment and righteousness in the land.

In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall
dwell safely ; and this is the name wherewith she shall be
called, Jah veh - our-Righteousness.

For thus saith Jahveh: David shall never want a
successor to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel;

Neither shall the priests and the Levites want a
successor before me to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle
meat offerings, and to sacrifice continually.1

1 Jeremiah xxxiii. 10-18.
 140

JEREMIAH

But for the moment Jerusalem must be delivered into
the hands of Nabuchodonosor, and burned, and its people
must go into captivity. While the army of Nabuchodo-
nosor presses the siege of the city, Jeremiah begins afresh
his abominable imprecations.

In this romance Jeremiah plays a terrible, odious, and
sublime part. Imagine, says Renan, a Frenchman within
the walls of besieged Paris during the war of 1870 hailing
the minister of heaven in the Emperor William, applauding
his victories, and urging him to destroy Paris and France !
It is quite intelligible, we reply, if the imprecations are
written two hundred and fifty or three hundred years
after the events by a polemist who is illustrating his
political theories with ancient examples.

In another place he reproaches the aristocracy with
“loving strangers.”1 The charge is incomprehensible if
it was made in the days of Josiah and Zedekiah, at the
time when the army of Nabuchodonosor threatened the
city, when Jeremiah is the only friend of the enemies of
his country; it is justified if we put it at the end of the
fourth century, and if the foreigners loved by the aristo-
cracy are Greeks.

One day Jahveh ordered the prophet to write in a book
all the words with which he had inspired him. The
king orders the book to be seized, and has it read to him
by Judi, his secretary. He was sitting in his winter
residence; it was the ninth month; a brazier burned in
front of him. And, as Judi read, the king took the
leaves of the roll, and cast them in the fire.

It was useless, as Jahveh at once dictated to Jeremiah
a new book similar to the first! The orthodox fancy
that posterity thus came to possess the precious text of
the prophet.

Meantime the romance is full of adventures. The
prophet finds it useful to leave a city where he feels no

1 Jeremiah ii. 25.
 JEKEMIAH v

141

longer safe, but he is stopped at the gate of Benjamin by
the officer of the guard, Irijah, the son of Shelemiah.
He is brought before the chief officials, beaten, and put
in a subterraneous dungeon, where he remains several
days. As a special favour the king orders that he be
brought into the yard of the prison, giving him every
day a piece of bread out of the bakers’ street.

Jeremiah is inexorable :—

“Thus saith Jahveh: This city shall be given into
the hand of the king of Babylon, which shall destroy it.”
The chief officials become impatient:—

“Let this man be put to death! For thus he
weakeneth the hands of the men of war.”

“Behold,” says the king, “he is in your hands.”

They take Jeremiah, and cast him into a dungeon,
the cistern of Malchiah, son of Hammelech. There was
no water, but mud only, in the dungeon, in which they
placed him. Now this was noticed by an Ethiopian
eunuch, named Ebed-melech, who was of the king’s
house. The king was sitting before the gate of Benjamin.
Ebed-melech went to seek him, and said :—

“ My lord the king, these men have cast Jeremiah the
prophet into the dungeon, to die of hunger.”

And the king charged Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian, to
take thirty men and withdraw Jeremiah from the dungeon
before he should die. Ebed-melech provided himself
with cords and rags of torn stuff, and, letting them down
to Jeremiah, said to him :—

“Take these cords; put these rags of torn stuff under
thine armholes.”

The holy prophet was saved.

Meantime the siege goes on. Jerusalem is in a
desperate condition. Suddenly, on the ninth day of the
fourth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, a breach
is made in the walls of the city, and Jerusalem is taken
by assault. Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, and Sarse-
chim, the leaders of Nabuchodonosor’s army, camp in
 142

JEREMIAH

the ruins of the gates. The writer narrates the catas-
trophe, and tells how the Babylonian generals recognised
in Jeremiah the prophet of the god who had guided

them.....It is easy to see how much history there is in

that.....Speaking the language of Deuteronomy, Nebuzar-

adan, captain of the guards of king Nabuchodonosor, says
to Jeremiah:—

“ Jahveh had pronounced this evil upon this place.
Now Jahveh hath brought it, and done according as he
hath said, because ye have sinned against Jahveh.”1

The romance closes with the adventures of the Jews
who remain in Judaea, and of those who escaped into
Egypt. Jeremiah is one of the latter. In Egypt he
continues his sinister predictions in the shape of threats
and vociferations against the nations of Palestine, against
Babylon itself, and, more than ever, against his com-
patriots.

But at the moment when he relates the destruction of
the ancient land of the Jews, the author of the romance
of Jeremiah declares that Jahveh, god of the Jews, is
triumphant. The ardent nationalism which could not be
established while the nation was intact is glorified by the
sombre romancer amid the ruins and the dispersal. Like
some great fire that destroys the stubble and the wood,
but leaves unhurt the granite columns, the ruin of
Jerusalem has destroyed the lower elements in Israel,
without touching the incombustible and unalterable work
that was done by Jahveh. The temple built by Solomon
to the gods of Canaan, to Moloch, the Baals, and the
Astartes, is in flames; but the melting down of their
idols does but leave erect, in bronze, to stand for thousands
of years, the name of Jahveh, who alone is renovated.

Jeremiah has prophesied ruin....

I send upon ye, he said, the sword, the famine, and
the pestilence; I will treat ye as vile figs that cannot be

1 Jeremiah xl. 2-3.
 JEREMIAH

143

eaten, they are so evil; I will deliver ye to be molested
by the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and a
desolation, and an hissing, and a reproach among the
nations whither I have driven ye; because ye have not
hearkened to my words, saith Jahveh, which I sent unto
ye by my servants the prophets.1

But he has also prophesied the restoration :—

I will bring again your captives; I will bring ye from
the nations whither I have driven ye, and I will cause ye
to return to the places whence I have driven ye......

The legend is born; it grows and spreads :—

Fear thou not, Jacob, my servant; for, behold, I am
thy saviour, and will bring thy seed from the land of
their captivity.

And I shall be with thee, to save thee, for I shall then
make a full end of the nations whither I have scattered
thee. And thou shalt be my people, and I will be
thy god.

The whirlwind goeth forth with fury, the fierce anger
of Jahveh shall not return, until he hath performed the
intents of his heart....

I love thee with an everlasting love. I will build thee
again, 0 virgin of Israel. Thou shalt again be adorned
with thy tabrets, and shalt dance. Thou shalt again
plant vines upon the mountains.

And there shall be a day that the peoples shall cry:
Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion, unto Jahveh, our god.

For thus saith Jahveh: Sing with gladness for Jacob.
Hear the word of Jahveh, O ye nations, and declare it in
the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will
gather him......Thus saith Jahveh, god of Israel.2

The old idolatrous people of Judah is destroyed; but
the Jewish people is about to arise, and Jahveh, after
dragging it through all the ignominy of the dispersal,
promises it a new Jerusalem.

Jewish history is, for the book of Jeremiah, merely an
illustration of a doctrine. There is need to exhort con-
temporaries to be faithful to the powerful nationalism
symbolised by the name of Jahveh. New gods, as

1 Jeremiah xxix. 17-19.

2 Jeremiah xxx., xxxi.
 144

JEKEMIAH

abominable as the Moloch, the Baals, and the Astartes
of former times, have appeared; they are called Greek
gods ; and the forsaking of Jahveh for Moloch, Baal, and
Astarte is only a myth representing the Hellenic apostasy.
The Jewish people is warned by the example of its
fathers, the fearful example of the ruin, and the mira-
culous example of the restoration. Like his predecessors
and followers, the sombre author of the prophecies of
Jeremiah gives a lesson for the present in the shape of a
history of the past. But the cold dogmatism of the
earlier historical books has been replaced by the impas-
sioned romance of a man of genius who, breathing life
into the dogma, dramatises the implacable action of the
national god, of whom he is the spokesman.

But we must not forget that, for the author of the
book of Jeremiah, just as for the authors of the books of
Hosea and Amos, the criminals who are forgetting the
old traditions and turning to foreign cults are the priest-
aristocrats who rule the State, the privileged leaders who
have been seduced by the pleasantness of Hellenism.
The democratic character of the prophetic writers is
clearly shown in the fact that the aristocracy is the
party of those who favour the novelties they attack with
their threats, and the democracy is the party of the pure
who have escaped the contagion ; it is seen just as clearly
in the fact that the prophetic writers were men of the
people rising in opposition to the men of the aristocracy.
But there was at the same time a profound necessity for
this, though it was an outcome of the circumstances.
On three counts the aristocracy had to be denounced by
the prophets; first because, about the year 332, it was
identifying itself with the anti-traditionalist party,
secondly because the prophets did not arise within its
ranks, and thirdly because democracy was a logical
outcome of the evolution of Judaism.

There was no democracy, in the modern sense of
the word, in Greece; there was none at Borne. The
 JEREMIAH

take Tyre); some slight allusion may be made to some
great event (such as the disgrace of an unpopular
minister). But the misfortunes of this troubled period
will be the atmosphere in which the characters of the
monodramas play their part.

In every chapter of the prophetic books will be found
the sentiment of foreign invasion, the pillage of the
country by armies, the profanation of the holy city, and
deportation. Parochial quarrels between Jerusalem and
Samaria, ending in virtual or open, but always fierce,
warfare, will fill the old prophets. The terror of Edomite
invasions will hover above them, and maledictions will be
showered on Egypt and on Syria. They will return
incessantly to the question of “foreign alliances.” Must
they take the part of Syria against Egypt, of Egypt
against Syria, or remain simply the men of Jahveh?
And they will never forget their brothers in Egypt and
Syria, their exiled brothers, the unhappy victims of
deportation or emigration, of whose return they never
cease to dream.

Thus the historical world in which the authors of the
prophetic books lived breaks through the fiction in which
they enfold themselves. Their object is quite plain to us;
in the name of the old Jewish traditionalism they hurl
threats against Jerusalem for its infidelity to Jahveh—in
other words, to its national traditions. Whatever modifi-
cations or interpolations were made in the prophetic books
down to the time when they became sacred and canonical,
the critic cannot fail to penetrate their spirit, if he be free
from theological prepossessions.

The first, the author of the prophecies of Hosea, hurls
his anathema; and, from the first lines of his fierce
diatribe, the fiction of the poet clothes with the most
highly-coloured allegories the maledictions with which
the old traditionalism would terrify its compatriots.

When Jahveh began to speak by Hosea, Jahveh said to
Hosea: Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and
 HOSEA AND AMOS

127

children of whoredoms; for Israel hath committed great
whoredom, departing from Jahveh.

So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim:
which conceived, and bare him a son.

And Jahveh said unto Hosea, Call his name Jezreel;

for yet a little while and I....will break the bow of

Israel in the valley of Jezreel.

And Gomer conceived again, and bare a daughter. And
Jahveh said unto Hosea, Call her name Lo-ruhamah [that
is to say, Not-loved], for I will no more love the house of
Israel.

And Gomer weaned her daughter; and she conceived
and bare a son.

And Jahveh said unto Hosea, Call his name Lo-ammi
[that is to say, Not-my-people]; for ye are not my people,
and I will not be your god.1

The most terrible threats are then unfolded. In the
books of the Bible, however, the threat is always succeeded
by a promise. Israel the sinner will be punished ; Israel
faithful will receive an infinite reward.

And the number of the children of Israel shall be as
the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or
numbered: and it shall come to pass, that in the place
where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there
it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living
God!

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of
Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one
head, and they shall come up out of the land; for great
shall be the day of Jezreel.

And ye shall say unto your brethren, Ammi [My-people],
and to your sisters Ruhamah [Beloved] .a

And then the exhortation;—

Raise yourselves, raise yourselves against your mother ;
for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband! Let
her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight,
and her adulteries from between her breasts:

Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that
she was born, and set her like a dry land..

For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine,

1 Hosea i. 2-9.

2 Hosea i. 10-11, ii. 1.
 128

THE BIRTH OF PROPHETISM

and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they
prepared for Baal.

Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the
time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and
will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her
nakedness.....

I will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her
new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.

And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees....and I

will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall
eat them.

And I shall punish her because of the incense which
she burned to the Baals, because of the earrings and
jewels, and because she hath forgotten me, saith Jahveh.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into
the wilderness, and speak to her heart.

And I will give her vineyards, and the valley of Achor
for a door of hope; and she shall sing there, as in the days
of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of
the land of Egypt.

And it shall be at that day, saith Jahveh, that thou
shalt call me, My husband; and I shall take from her
mouth the names of the Baals.......

And I will betroth thee unto me for ever.....1

The prophets know nothing but threats and promises.
But it is to the higher clergy of Jerusalem that the
threats are addressed.

Hear ye this, O priests: and hearken, ye house of
Israel; and give ye ear, 0 house of the king: for judg-
ment is toward you.2

Hostility to the priests who rule Jerusalem breaks out
in the famous and little-understood passage of the
prophecies of Hosea:—

I desire love ; that is to say, love of the god—that is to
say, patriotism ; I desire patriotism, and not sacrifices. I
desire respect for the god; that is to say, respect for the
national institutions, respect for the traditions; I desire
respect for the traditions rather than burnt offerings.3

The invectives grow, in strength and number, against

1 Hosea ii. 2-19.

2 Hosea v. 1.

3 Hosea vi. 6.
 HOSEA AND AMOS

129

the aristocracy of Jerusalem. Nothing of the kind had as
yet appeared in Jewish literature, neither in the Mosaic
books, nor in Judges, nor in Kings. A new soul has
arisen among the people. Henceforward, through the
whole of Jewish history, we shall follow this antagonism
between the popular party and the aristocracy. Its
appearance begins with the prophetic books; we are in
the period when Hellenism enters Jerusalem.

Amos, the successor of Hosea, enumerates in his turn
the crimes for which Jewish traditionalism demands
justice of Jahveh.

Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the
mountain of Samaria.....

That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves
upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock,
and the calves out of the midst of the stall.

That chant to the sound of the viol..

That drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with
the chief ointments, and are not grieved for the affliction
of Israel.

Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that
go captive, and their cries of joy shall cease.1

The author of the prophecies of Amos is not less
furious than the author of the prophecies of Hosea
against the powerful and wealthy—that is to say, against
the priests who govern Jerusalem:—

I hate, I despise your feast days, saith Jahveh, and I
will not smell your perfumes in your solemn assemblies.

Though ye offer me burnt offerings, I will not accept
them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your
fat beasts.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, and
let me hear no more the melody of thy viols.2

Men had arisen among the people of Jerusalem who
understood the new danger, the great danger that
threatened the country. The sombre nationalism of
Esdras and his successors had concentrated all the
strength of the little State round the name of Jahveh,

1 Amos vi. 1 and 4-7.   2 Amos v. 21-23.

K
 130

THE BIRTH OF PROPHETISM

the national god; it had made foreign idolatry the
supreme danger. Now Hellenism was a new danger, as
the leaders were forgetting the old Judaic traditions, and
were turning to Hellenic novelties.

The pleasantness of the new ways, the easy life and
festivities, the beautifully decked women and spacious
houses, the wealth that affords luxury, and the luxury
that makes the soul soft—all this is called, in the fierce
language of the prophets, apostasy, fornication, adultery,
treason, the forsaking of Jahveh, the worship of strange
gods, the installation of the abominations of anti-national
cults at Jerusalem, the revival of ancient idols, the
stealing of the heart of Israel from Jahveh by Baal,
Astarte, Camos, and Milkom.

In resuming the war upon Baal, Astarte, Camos, and
Milkom the prophets will, in the ancient fashion of
Jewish literature, give their contemporaries a glowing
lesson for the present in the guise of an ancient history.

What had the Jews of the end of the fourth century
to fear from Baal, Astarte, Camos, and Milkom ? Baal
and Astarte now mean the Hellenic seduction. Apostasy
and treachery are forgetfulness of the ancient Deutero-
nomic discipline. Prostitution is the abandonment of
the old national traditions. Twenty-two centuries before
our time we find the men who are indulgent towards
foreign ideas and ways declared by their enemies to be
“ traitors ” and “ men of no country.” It is an exaggera-
tion, assuredly; but this corrupt aristocracy brought
Judaism into danger of death. The threats, the fury—
nowhere else can one find invective comparable to that
we shall presently meet in Jeremiah—the storms of the
Jewish democrats are intelligible, if we suppose that they
are denouncing the terrible danger of an aristocracy that
is forgetting its traditions, losing its discipline, and
denationalising itself. In face of this invading Hellenism
the Jewish soul found itself at the most formidable turn
in its history, and brought forth its decisive work.
 Chapter II.

JEEEMIAH

The history of Jewish literature is, as we said, the history
of Judaism itself. Having once formulated itself in the
Mosaic books, the vast movement of ideas, which Judaism
was, became fixed in the works of certain anonymous
writers—writers of genius—the authors of the prophecies
which hear the names of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.
To analyse these works, to understand their object, to
penetrate their spirit, and to appreciate their effect, is to
write the history of Judaism from the end of the fourth,
and during the third, century before the present era.

In order to combat the Hellenic idolatry and ways, the
authors of the prophecies of Hosea and Amos had con-
ceived the characters of the prophets Hosea and Amos as
men who had lived in the remote period of the ancient
kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah, two hundred years
before Nabuchodonosor; and they had composed, and
put into circulation, certain great lyrical discourses which
the prophets were supposed to have pronounced, and
which were understood to have been preserved by some
extraordinary miracle. Apart, however, from the indica-
tion of the kings under whom the alleged prophets were
supposed to have lived, and a few other very general
indications, they had not made known any of the circum-
stances in which these discourses were said to have been
pronounced. The historical framework remained vague ;
clear enough in ideas, the discourses of the prophets
floated between heaven and earth, as far as the facts were
concerned. Were the authors of the prophecies of Hosea
and Amos ignorant of the details of the events that had
taken place in the ancient kingdoms of Ephraim and

131
 132

JEREMIAH

And they went up into the city; and when they were
come into the city, behold, Samuel came out against them,
for to go up to the high place...

Then Saul drew near to Samuel in the gate of the city,
and said: Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer’s house is.

And Samuel answered Saul, and said: I am the seer :
go up before me unto the high place ; for ye shall eat with
me to-day, and to-morrow morning I will let thee go, and
will tell thee all that is in thine heart.

And as for thine asses that were lost three days ago,
set not thy mind on them, for they are found.1

The aged wizard Samuel, who was able to find the lost
asses for a fourth part of a shekel of silver, seems to have
delivered his consultation with a somewhat simple appa-
ratus on that day. It was not always so—with some of
his colleagues, if not with Samuel. And the Bible does
not fail to give us some information on the way in which,
at the remote epoch of the legend, the predictions and
conjurations took place.

The anecdote of Saul, the asses, and Samuel continues;
and, after the meal, Samuel says to Saul, among other
things, and in the midst of theologico-dogmatic discourses
after the manner of doctors of the Esdras school:—

1 1 Samuel ix. 1-20. Certain features of this translation are taken
from Lemaistre de Saci.

I
 114

THE BIRTH OF PROPHETISM

When thou shalt have gone on forward from thence,
thou shalt come to the oak of Thabor, and there shall
meet thee three men going up to God to Bethel, one
carrying three kids, and another carrying three loaves of
bread, and another carrying a bottle of wine :

And they will salute thee, and give thee two loaves of
bread ; which thou shalt receive of their hands.

After that thou shalt come to Guibea-of-God, where is
the garrison of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass,
when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt
meet a company of prophets coming down from the high
place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp
before them ; and they shall prophesy:

And the spirit of Jahveh will come upon thee; and
thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into
another man.1

To prophesy means, in Hebrew, to utter cries and
dance to the sound of instruments.

Consider David, later, bringing back to Jerusalem the
ark of Jahveh:—

David, clothed with a linen tunic, danced before Jahveh
with all his might.

So David and all the house of Israel brought up the
ark of Jahveh with shouting, and with the sound of the
trumpet.

And as the ark of Jahveh came into the city of David,
Michol, Saul’s daughter (and David’s wife), looked through
a window and saw King David leaping and dancing before
the face of Jahveh ; and she despised him in her heart.

When David returned to bless his household, Michol
the daughter of Saul came out to meet him, and said:
How glorious was the king of Israel to-day, who un-
covered himself in the eyes of the handmaids of his
servants, and appeared half-naked like a buffoon.2

I do not regard the legends of David, Saul, and especially
Samuel, as having historical value; but they imply certain
ways. Israel could not be an exception amid the other
peoples of the East. The historical probability that
epileptic wizards, diviners, and healers, with the gestures
and speech of madmen, filled Palestine, both at the time

1 1 Samuel x. 3-6.

2 2 Samuel vi. 14-20.
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115

of the ancient kingdoms and at that of the [Restoration, is
confirmed by the testimony of the Biblical hooks.

What name did these wizards hear in Palestine ? The
Bible uses several words of which the meaning is the
more vague because of the wilful confusion that its writers
have made between the real wizard of history and the
idealised seer of the legend. The three words most
frequently used are:—

Ish haelohim, the man of god;

Hozeh, or roeh, the seer;

Nabi, the speaker, more particularly the prophet.

It is impossible, in the actual condition of science, to
determine the chronological order of these three designa-
tions. The third has been accepted by usage to designate
the prophets in the highest sense of the word; the first,
probably earlier than the other two, expresses rather the
primitive idea of the healing diviner, an insane man—that
is to say, a man inspired by a god; the second, and vaguer,
term is less frequently used, and is hardly applicable to
any but Samuel or Gad. Hence, while warning the
reader that the choice is arbitrary, I beg to be allowed,
for the purpose of explaining more clearly, to neglect the
term “ seer ” (roeh or hozeh); to restrict the word
“prophet” (nabi) to the idealised prophetic type; and
to keep for the historical Israelitic wizard the name of
“ man of god ” (ish haelohim).

For the moment we have to see how the man of god
was made a prophet.

The men of god whom we find in the real history of
ancient Israel, just as in Moab, Ammon, Edom, Syria,
and in the whole of the East and among all primitive
peoples, did not play any particular part in ancient Israel.
They were, as everywhere else, tellers of good stories,
bonesetters to whom every one had recourse when neces-
sary, and who gave their advice in the form of chants, or
rather howls, and of dances, or rather stamping and
frenzied leaping.
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THE BIRTH OE PROPHETISM

At the time of the Restoration we find them once more,
eternal features of the East, always the same, miserable
and powerful wizards, whose ravings are inspired by
Jahveh; just as we shall see them again in the Jewish world
of St. Paul, and as we find them in our own time under
the name of howling and dancing dervishes. What part
did they play in the restored Jerusalem of the fifth and
the fourth centuries? No other than that which their
ancestors had played in the ancient kingdoms; no other
than that which their colleagues played in the surrounding
peoples—that is to say, none.

They would have passed away, forgotten and of no
account, had their names not served to shelter a literary
artifice of the Jewish writers of the fourth century: had
not the historical men of god suggested to the imagina-
tion of the writers of the Bible the ideal and purely literary
type of the prophets.

The priests of Jerusalem who had related, in the earliest
books of the Bible, how Jahveh punished national infidelity
and rewarded national fidelity, had imagined that Jahveh
had, in the course of these vicissitudes, often given direct
advice to his people. With the spirit of hostility to
abstractions which caused all their teachings to pass
through the living form of legends, they had thought it
necessary that, from time to time, sacred personages
should have, on the part of Jahveh, warned their ancestors,
whose history they were relating, of the chastisements
that awaited them and the promises that were held out
to them; they had pretended that Jahveh himself had,
all through this tragic and glorious history, raised up
inspired men to speak in his name, and to repeat in his
name, at every turn in Jewish history, from the settle-
ment in Palestine until Nabuchodonosor:—

Thus saith Jahveh: Because ye have forsaken Jahveh,
your god, and prostituted yourselves to the Baals and
Astartes, I will strike the fathers and the children, the
neighbour and his neighbour...Thus saith Jahveh: If
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117

, ye return to Jahveh, your god, I will make your captives
return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and I will
break your chains, and I will take from your necks the
yoke of your enemies......

These inspired men are, therefore, above all, admonishers
invented by the Biblical writers in order to make more
precise the teaching that they wish to give to their readers.
Not only the warnings, but the warners themselves, might
be omitted from the historical books without the narrative
suffering in the least. The books of Samuel and Kings
are surcharged with these episodic personages; in every
page we find them playing the part of the moralists with
which Alexander Dumas filled his compositions, a sort of
Desgenais speaking in the name of public morality—that
is to say, to keep to the sentiment of the Bible, in the
name of Jahveh.

The Jewish spirit always disliked abstract instruction.
Instead of a simple statement that King David committed
a sin in taking the wife of his servant Uriah, and that
this sin deserved punishment, we read :—

The thing that David had done displeased Jahveh.

And Jahveh sent Nathan unto David. And he came
unto him, and said unto him :

....Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment

of Jahveh, to do evil in his sight ?

Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine
own house.1

It is an invention. Who were these admonishers who
were supposed to have the task of announcing the orders
of Jahveh to the people of Israel ? The Jerusalem writers
might have assigned the part to priests of the earlier
times; and some of them did so. But, as a rule, they
preferred to assign the part to special personages; and,
looking round them, they selected the men of god.

They supposed that in former times there were among
these demented wizards, these dreaded and venerated

1 2 Samuel xi. 27 ; xii. 1, 9, and 11.
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THE BIRTH OF PROPHETISM

diviners, who were seen wandering near the towns and
whose ravings seemed to have a divine origin, some who
were especially inspired by Jahveh, and charged with the
mission of speaking to Israel in his name. The character
was thus created. It answered perfectly the needs of
the writers, and the fiction was gradually elaborated;
under the name of prophets, the men of god came and
went on behalf of Jahveh throughout Jewish history,
drawing from events the lesson that it suited the priest-
writers to give to their people.

The men of god were thus raised to the rank of
prophets. But it must be quite understood that in the
time of the ancient Hebrew kingdoms there had never
been, and there was not in the fifth and fourth centuries,
any man of god who professed to give warnings to the
Jewish people at the command of Jahveh. In accordance
with the conventional definitions which I proposed for
the words “ man of god ” and “ prophet,” we must say
that, in the Judaea of the fifth and fourth centuries, as in
all ancient kingdoms and in the Palestine of the third
and second centuries, there were, at all times and in all
places, humble men of god, but that, in point of fact,
there were no prophets.

Later, during the first century of the present era, when
the ancient books of Judaism had become sacred books,
when everybody in Judaea believed in the historical reality
of the Samuels, Elijahs, Jeremiahs, and Isaiahs, it is true
that some of these poor healers and fortune-tellers, who
always abounded in Palestine, tried to set up as new
Elijahs and Jeremiahs; this is the only period in which
there were, historically, prophets in Palestine—pale
imitators of fictitious heroes, such as John the Baptist,
Jesus of Nazareth, or Theudas.

We may therefore define the prophets as:—

Fictitious characters, invented by the Jewish writers of
the fourth and succeeding centuries, on an idealised model
of the men of god (that is to say, the wizards, soothsayers,
 THE MEN OE GOD

119

and healers) who were found throughout the east, and
interpolated by them in their national history to play the
part of admonishers enjoined by Jahveh to give a lesson
to his people.

To explain the presence of the prophets in the books
of the Bible, it is by no means necessary to suppose that
there had been prophets in the days of the ancient
kingdoms, or were in the fifth and fourth centuries; it
was enough that there had been, and were, men of god.
For the Middle Ages to create the epic character of
Merlin the Enchanter, it was not necessary that a Merlin
the Enchanter should have existed in the Middle Ages;
it was enough that there were wizards, and that some
writer sought to idealise them. The prophets of Israel
are the Merlins of Judaism.1

The fiction remained poor, however, in the earlier
books of the Bible. The characters of Samuel, Elijah,
and Elisha had not yet been created, or at least not yet
developed; the prophet-admonishers brought on to the
scene by the earlier writers were feeble expressions of a
mediocre literary device. Lifeless and uninteresting
phantoms, they would have been lost in oblivion if, some
day about the year 332 and the conquest of Jerusalem by
Alexander, the fiction had not been suddenly raised from
its lowly level and developed, and received at once an
unexampled range.

About the year 332, in fact, when it was necessary to
raise a cry of alarm on account of the new peril that
threatened Judaism, to discover a more impressive
formula, to arrest with inspired language the men who
were leading the country of the Jews to destruction, some
writer at Jerusalem imagined that, in the remote period
of kings Uzziah, Jotham, Achaz, and Jeroboam, there
was a man of god, a soothsayer—that is to say, a prophet
—of the name of Hosea, and that this Hosea had begun

1 See Appendix VI.
 120