Franz Delitzsch

“ Obadiah and Joel were both of them contemporaries of Elisha. Elisha himself did not write anything, but the schools under his superintendence not only produced prophetic deeds, but prophetic writings also; and it is a characteristic circumstance, that the writings which bear the name of Jonah, whom an ancient Haggada describes as one of the sons of the prophets belonging to Elisha’s school, belong far less to the prophetic literature in the strict sense of the term than to the prophetical histories, and in fact to the historical writings of prophets. ”

“ At the same time, in the case of the chronicler, whose principal source of information must have resembled his own work in spirit and style (as we are warranted in assuming by the book of Ezra especially) , it is not so easy to determine how far his own freedom of treatment extended as it is in the case of the author of the book of Kings, who appears to have found the greater part of the sayings given in mere outline in the annals, and in taking them thence, to have reproduced them freely, in the consciousness of his own unity of spirit with the older prophets. ”

“ We are aware, therefore, of twenty-two years of active life on the part of this prophet, who may have been older when called than Jeremiah, who was youthful still. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the two great prophets who spread their praying hands over Jerusalem as a shield as long as they possibly could, and when the catastrophe was inevitable, saved it even in its fall. ”

“ But the reason why Joel is placed next to Hosea in the Hebrew canon, may possibly be found in the contrast which exists between the lamentations of the former on account of the all-parching heat and the all-consuming swarms of insects, and the dewy, verdant, and flowery imagery with which the book of Hosea closes. Amos then follows Joel, because he not only takes up again his denunciations of judgment, but opens with one of the utterances with which Joel closes (Joe. 3:16) : “Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem.” ”

“ Under David, and also under Solomon, the office of national annalist was filled by Jehoshaphat ben-AhiluÑd.The fact that, with the exception of the annals of David and Solomon, the references are always made to annals of the “kings of Judah” and “kings of Israel,” admits of a very simple explanation. If we regard the national annals as a complete and independent work, they naturally divide themselves into four parts, of which the first two treated of the history of the kingdom in its unity; the last two, viz., the annals of the kings of Judah and Israel, of the history of the divided kingdom. ”

“ It is indeed true, as we have already seen, that it is hardly possible to pronounce a decided opinion respecting the delivery of these earlier prophets; but from a sufficiently reliable and general impression, we may trace this distinction between the prophecy which prevailed till about the reign of Joash and that of the later times, that the former was for the most part prophecy in irresistible actions, the latter prophecy in convincing words. ”

“ Still we do meet with differences. The earlier prophets are uniformly occupied with the internal affairs of the kingdom, and do not bring within their range the history of other nations, with which that of Israel was so intimately interwoven. ”

“ We should then know for certain that Isaiah’s favourite phrase, “for the Lord hath spoken it,” was first employed by Ahijah (1Ki 14:11) ; that when Joel prophesied “in Jerusalem shall be deliverance” (Joe. 2:32) , he had already been preceded by Shemaiah (2Ch. 12:7) ; that Hosea (in Hos. 3:4-5, cf., Hos 5:15) took up the declaration of Azariah ben Oded, “And many days will Israel continue without the God of truth, and without a teaching priest, and without law; but when it turneth in its trouble,” etc. ”

“ There can be no question, therefore, that nearly all these prophetic sayings, so far as a common impress can exist at all, are of one type, and that the common bond which encircles them is no other than the prophetic subjectivity of the Deuteronomic historian. A similar conclusion may be drawn with regard to the prophetic sayings contained in the Chronicles. They also bear so decidedly the evident marks of the chronicler’s own work, that Caspari himself, in his work upon the Syro-Ephraimitish war, is obliged to admit that the prophetic address in 2Ch. ”

“ The date given in Amo. 1:1, “two years before the earthquake,” does not afford us any clue. But if Amos prophesied “in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and Jeroboam ben-Joash king of Israel;” assuming that Jeroboam II reigned forty-one years, commencing with the fifteenth year of Amaziah (2Ki 14:23) , and therefore was contemporary with Amaziah for fourteen years and with Uzziah for twenty-seven, it must have been in the last twenty-seven years of Jeroboam’s reign that Amos prophesied. ”

“ This little book is so similar in character to the concluding portion of the book of Judges (Jud. 17-21) , that it might be placed between Judges and Samuel. And in all probability it did stand there originally, but for liturgical reasons it was added to the so-called five megilloth (festal rolls) , which follow one another in our editions, so to speak, according to the calendar of feasts of the ecclesiastical year: for the Song of Solomon is the lesson for the eighth day of the feast of passover; Ruth, that of the second day of the feast of Shabuoth (pentecost) ”

“ But when used to designate the middle portion of the Old Testament canon, although the word is not so limited as in Amo 7:14, where it signifies a man who has passed through a school of the prophets and been trained in intercourse with other prophets, and has made prophetic teaching from the very first the exclusive profession of his life ”

“ Hosea, the Ephraimitish Jeremiah, was followed by Isaiah, who received his call, if Isa. 6 contains the account of his prophetic consecration, in the last year of Uzziah’s reign, and therefore twenty-five years after the death of Jeroboam II, and continued his labours at least till the second half of Hezekiah’s reign, possibly to the commencement of that of Manasseh. ”

“ Both of these offices are met with throughout the whole of the East, both ancient and modern, even to the remotest parts of Asia. [3]
It is every evident that the office in question was created by David, from the fact that allusions to the annals commence with the chronicles (dibre hayyamim) of David (1Ch 27:24) , and are continued in the sepher dibre Shelomoh (a contraction for sepher dibre hayyamim Shelomoh, “book of the chronicles of Solomon,” 1Ki 11:41) . The references are then carried on in Judah to the end of the reign of Jehoiakim, and in Israel to the end of the reign of Pekah. ”

“ Apion, i. 8; cf., Eusebius, h. e. iii. 10) . In the collection itself, on the other hand, the chronological order has so far been regarded, that the whole is divisible into three groups, representing three periods of prophetic literature, viz., prophets of the Assyrian period (Hosea to Nahum) , prophets of the Chaldean period (Habakkuk and Zephaniah) , and prophets after the captivity (Haggai to Malachi) . And there is also an obvious desire to pair off as far as possible a prophet of the kingdom of Israel with one of the kingdom of Judah, viz., Hosea and Joel; Amos and Obadiah ”

“ These two types are continued in the book of Joshua; and taken as a whole, the Jehovistic, Deuteronomic type is to be been in those sections which relate to the history of the conquest; the priestly, Elohistic, in those which refer to the division of the land. At the same time, they are coloured in many other ways ”

“ The latest date given in connection with his ministry (Isa. 29:17) is the seven-andtwentieth year of the captivity, which was the sixteenth year from the destruction of Jerusalem, the time between Nebuchadnezzar’s raising of the siege of Tyre and his expedition against Egypt. ”

“ The thorah unites the prophetical and (so to speak) hagiographical styles of historical composition in a manner which is peculiar to itself, and not to be met with in any of the works included among the „YN§JR „YJYBN.
Those who imagine that it is only because of their later origin, that the historical words which are found among the hagiographa have not found their appropriate place among the “first prophets,” have evidently no idea whatever of this diversity in the style of historical writing. ”