History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6). Graetz Heinrich

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СКАЧАТЬ hearts to feel, whatever their race and language may be, can find in this prophet the solution of a problem, the correctness of which history has proven. He showed how a nation can be small yet great, wretched and hunted to death yet immortal, at one and the same moment a despised slave and a noble exemplar. Who was this prophet, at once a great thinker and a great poet? He says not a word about himself, and there are no records of his life. The collectors of the prophetical writings, finding that in eloquence and sublimity his words resembled those of Isaiah, added them to the prophecies of the older seer, and included them in the same scroll.

      No one could console the sorrowing Judæan community with such sympathy, or encourage it with such ardour as the Prophet of the Captivity. His words are like balm upon a burning wound, or like a gentle breeze upon a fevered brow.

      "Comfort ye," he begins, "comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins." (Isaiah xl.)

      The exhausted and despairing community was described by this prophet as a wife and mother who had been rejected, and robbed of her children on account of her sins, but who still is dear to her husband as the beloved of his youth. This deserted one he calls "Jerusalem," the emblem of all that was tender to his soul. He exclaims to the forlorn mother:

      "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury. Thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling and wrung them out.

      "There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth, neither is there any that taketh her by the hand, of all the sons that she has brought up.... O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of precious stones, and all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children....

      "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem."

      But where is this consolation to be found? Not in the hope of vain, worldly glory, not in might and power, but in an all-embracing salvation. This prophet of the Captivity was the first who clearly grasped and demonstrated that a creed of general salvation was promised through Abraham to future generations. The past was to be forgotten and forgiven; a new social order was to spring up; heaven and earth were to be re-created. All people from all the ends of the earth would be included in this universal salvation, and every knee would bend and every tongue swear homage to the God adored by Israel. It was for this purpose that Abraham had been called from a distant land, and that his descendants had been chosen before their birth. God had created the people of Israel to be His servant among nations, His messenger to all people, His apostle from the beginning of the world.

      The prophet describes this apostolic people in poetry of such transcendental beauty that it becomes an ideal. And is there any mission sublimer than that of being the vanguard of the nations in the path of righteousness and salvation? Was Israel not to be proud of having been chosen for such a duty? The prophet goes on to say how this ideal nation was to realise its apostolic mission:

      "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment into truth." (Isaiah xlii. 1–4.)

      The Law of God was thus to be universally acknowledged, and the messenger of God was to bring about this acknowledgment by his own example, in spite of scorn, contempt, and persecution. This, Israel's recognised mission, the prophet of the Captivity explained briefly, in words supposed to be spoken by the nation itself (Isaiah xlix. 1–6). He taught that martyrdom, bravely encountered and borne with gentle resignation, would ensure victory to the law of righteousness, which Israel, if true to its ideals, was to promulgate. The leading conception that runs through Isaiah's poetical monologue was thus expressed by the prophet in the short but effective verse:

      "For mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples." (Isaiah lvi. 7.)

      The fall of the Babylonian empire, with its absurd and immoral idolatry, and the deliverance of the Judæan community were to be the first steps in this great work of universal salvation. The fall of Babylon seemed indeed inevitable to the prophet, so that he spoke of it as of an accomplished fact, and not as a subject of prophetic vision.

      He apostrophized Babylon in a satirical song of masterly perfection (Is. xlvii.); he derided the astrological science by which the Babylonian sages boasted that they could raise the veil from the future; he treated the coarse idolatry of the Chaldæans with more bitter irony than any of his predecessors had done. He foretold the siege of the city by Cyrus, and declared that the Persian conqueror would give freedom to the Judæan and Israelitish exiles; that they would return to their country and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. The prophet laid great stress upon these predictions, declaring that in their realisation Divine Providence would be manifest. Cyrus was but an instrument of God for furthering the deliverance of Judah and the salvation of the world.

      For the sake of the exiles, the wonders of the exodus from Egypt would be renewed, every mountain and hill would be made level, springs would gush forth in the wilderness, and the desert would become a blooming garden. The exiles would raise Jerusalem from its ruins, and live in their beloved city in peace and comfort. But in spite of his reverence for Jerusalem, the prophet declared that the Divine Being was too great to be pictured as dwelling within a temple, however spacious it might be, but that each human heart should be a temple dedicated to God.

      "Thus says the Lord: The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me; and where is the place of my rest? For all these things hath mine hand made, saith the Lord; but to this man will I look, to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word." (Isaiah lxvi. 1.)

      The exiles, purged and truly pious, adopted this thought, and embodied it in Solomon's prayer:

      "Behold, the heaven of heavens contain Thee not; how much less a temple." (1 Kings viii. 27.)

      Unfortunately, in spite of the beautiful words of the prophet of the Captivity, the servant of God declined to accept this apostolic work, and remained blind and deaf. Instead of making the Law of God beloved, he made it contemptible, and became contemptible himself.

      The ideal and the real being thus at variance with each other, the prophet felt that his mission was to preach, to exhort, to denounce and to arouse. The Judæan community in the Captivity was now more than ever divided into two camps: on the one side were the pious and patriotic; on the other, the worldly and the callous. The former, who had become timid and despondent from continued persecution and suffering, dared not come forward at this anxious time to oppose their persecutors; they were oppressed by the sorrowful thought that God had forsaken His people and had forgotten them, whilst their enemies called out mockingly, "Let the Lord be glorified and we will see your joy." (Isaiah lxvi. 5.) Now the aim of the great unknown prophet was to encourage the one class to action, and to move the other to penitence and improvement. He announced that God's salvation was at hand, and that if the worldly and selfish persisted in their evil ways, they would reap the punishment of their sins, whilst the pious would be rewarded with undimmed happiness. He finally depicted the coming deliverance and the return, when all the scattered of Judah and Israel would assemble on the holy mount of Jerusalem.

      The king Nabonad and the Babylonian people probably felt less anxiety about the result of the war between Persia and Babylon than did the Judæan exiles. For the Judæans were alternating between the СКАЧАТЬ