We find the conception
We find the conception(TOC)
Of the divine love used with the same implications
Turning from the legal to the prophetic literature, we find the conception of the divine love used with the same implications. When the modern hypothesis endeavors to press the entire content of the prophetic preaching within the rigid scheme of the vindication of justice pure and simple, it ignores one of the most characteristic elements of this preaching, and is able to do so only by the violent excision of all promissory oracles. Faith in the sovereign love of God, which, in spite of the judgment, will not suffer Israel to perish, rather than a strongly developed conviction of the persistence of righteousness, is what inspires the prophets with hope for the future. The very abruptness with which threatening turns into promise, sometimes without reflection upon the intervening stage of repentance, shows that ethical considerations play at best a subordinate part in producing this sublime assurance. No wonder that the element under review forms the great stumbling block in the way of the modern Pelagianizing interpretation of prophecy. It is unnecessary to point out in detail how the various features already considered in connection with the law reappear in the prophets. The exclusive reference of Jehovah's love to Israel is affirmed on every hand, most explicitly where God speaks in Amos: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth"; or in Malachi: "Was not Esau Jacob's brother? Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau" (Amos 3:2; Malachi 1:2, 3). In the prophets, for the first time, the figure of the marriage relation becomes the form in which the conception clothes itself and by means of which it is further developed in several directions (Hosea 1-3; Isaiah 50:1; 54:5; 66:8, 9; Jeremiah 2:1; 3:14, 20; 11:15; 12:7; 31:3; Ezekiel 23), though side by side with this the other analogy of the love of a father for his son continues to be used (Hosea 1:10; 11:1, 3; Isaiah 45:9-11; 46:3; 63:16; 64:8; Jeremiah 3:4, 19; 31:9). It is thoroughly characteristic of the religious consciousness of Isaiah, with its fundamental note of reverence for the divine majesty, that in the second part of his book, where the free love of Jehovah finds voice in the most tender accents, yet the capacity in which Israel is addressed as the object of this love remains that of Jehovah's servant, with the exception of a few passages of matchless beauty, in which the impetus of the divine affection sweeps even this last reserve away (Isaiah 50:1; 54:5; 63:8, 9, 16; 64:8). This marriage bond between God and His people bears the absolute character of a monogamic relation. Israel possesses a unique value for Jehovah, so that He sacrifices men for her and gives people for her life (Isaiah 43:4). The subserviency of Israel's election to the carrying out of God's universalistic purpose is much more clearly revealed than in the law, but it is nowhere suggested that this privilege of service is the only gift by which the object of God's choice is distinguished from other nations. The sovereign gracious origin of the divine love manifested in the people's past history, in the face of their unworthiness, lies at the basis of the confidence of the prophets in the future re-adoption of Israel (Jeremiah 31:3; 33:23-26; Ezekiel 16:1-14, 60-63; 20:35-37). Writers of the modern critical school, it is true, find in the prophetic literature a different account of Israel's moral and spiritual condition in the Mosaic period than that given by the Pentateuch.
The days of the desert journey, it is claimed are here idealized as the days of the kindness of Israel's youth, of the love of her espousals, when she went after Jehovah in the wilderness in a land not sown (Jeremiah 2:2). But, leaving entirely unanswered for the present the question of whether this ideal light is the only one in which the people of Moses' time appeared to the prophets, or whether perhaps even in the writings of the eighth and seventh centuries, acquaintance with a less favorable side of this early period shows itself, at any rate, we are not told that the knowledge of this youthful affection and obedience determined Jehovah to set His love upon Israel. On the contrary, Jeremiah, with whom the ideal judgment above quoted is found, is also the one who contrasts the new covenant of the future with the old Mosaic covenant in this respect, that in the latter the law was not written upon the heart; in his opinion, therefore, the internal disposition to obey was lacking both before and after the making of the covenant (Jeremiah 31:33). Elsewhere also the same prophet declares that the Mosaic generation was disobedient from the beginning (Jeremiah 11:7, 8). Isaiah says Israel was called a transgressor from the womb (Isaiah 48:8). Nor do Amos and Hosea judge differently (Amos 5:25, 26; Hosea 9:10; 11:1, 2). All these prophets know of no other explanation for the favor once shown to Israel, and to be shown to her again, than the sovereign love of God. The future manifestation of this love will include the gift of repentance (Jeremiah 32:7, 8; Ezekiel 11:19, 20; 36:25-27). Ezekiel alone prefers to name another motive for the promised restoration, viz., the desire of Jehovah to sanctify His name and vindicate His glory among the Gentiles (Ezekiel 36:22, 23), a feature which finds its sufficient explanation in the general tone and temper of his prophecy, from which the emotional element is relatively absent.