Carl Heinrich Cornill

The Prophets of Israel Carl Heinrich Cornill

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE EARLY PROPHETS. AFTER this long digression on the religious and -"- profane history of Israel, let us return to our starting-point. We see everywhere that the first impulses in all the crises of the history of Israel spring from its religion. This, the oldest production of Hebrew literature that we have, the glorious song of Deborah, shows us. The narrative subsequently attached to this production calls Deborah a prophetess. She was a divinely inspired woman, who in a sad and critical period knew how to infuse into her dejected countrymen a fresh confidence in God and in themselves. There scarcely exists a more eloquent testimony of this stalwart and ingenuous belief in God, and of this primitive triumphant piety than that which the song of Deborah offers. The struggle for their heavily oppressed nationality is a struggle for God, and He fights from heaven for His people ; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera and the kings of Canaan. Similarly, at the head of the kingdom, stands Samuel, a seer enlightened of God, who bears in his prayerful heart the misery of his people, and who clearly perceives the way out of their distress and oppression, who recognises in Saul of the tribe of Benjamin the man of the time, who lights in his heroic soul the kindling spark, and gives to him the religious consecration that supports him on his way./'xThis is all that the oldest record tells us of Samuel; a later period magnified and raised his image at the expense of Saul, upon whom falls thus the unmerited lot of being numbered among the biblical miscreants. In the oldest chronicles Saul appears as a noble hero and a pious king, over whom hangs a gloomy fate, and who finally perishes in a tragic manner. The frequent assertion of a reforming and organising efficacy of Samue...