1. While Hosea, the man of northern Israel, frequently assails
the clergy of his home, and lays upon them the chief share of the
blame for the depraved and blinded condition of the people, Isaiah
even in his fiercest declamation against the superstitious worship
of the multitude, has not a word to say against the priests, with
whose chief, Uriah, on the contrary, he stands in a relation of
great intimacy. But it is from the Book of Jeremiah, the best
mirror of the contemporary relations in Judah, that the close
connection between priests and prophets can be gathered most
particularly. To a certain extent they shared the possession of
the sanctuary between them. (Compare Lam. ii.20.)
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we shall be justified therefore in assuming that the display
of harmony between them on this occasion was not got up merely
for the purposes of scenic effect, but that the change
in the national cultus now proposed was really the common suggestion
of prophets and priests. In point of fact, such a change was equally
in accordance with the interests of the temple and with those
of the prophetic party of reform. To the last named the restriction
of the sacrificial worship must have in itself seemed an advantage;
to it in later times the complete abolition of sacrifice was mainly due,
and something of the later effect doubtless lay in the original
intention. Then, too, the Jehovah of Hebron was only too easily
regarded as distinct from the Jehovah of Bethshemesh or of Bethel,
and so a strictly monarchical conception of God naturally led to
the conclusion that the place of His dwelling and of His worship
could also only be one. All writers of the Chaldaean period
associate monotheism in the closest way with unity of worship
(Jer. ii.28, xi.13). And the choice of the locality could