PROPHETS, The, Sylvester Hassell The priests were at first Israel’s teachers in God’s statutes by types, acts and words (Lev. 10:11). But when under the judges the nation repeatedly apostatized, and no longer regarded the dumb acted lessons of the ceremonial law, God sent a new order—the prophets—to witness for him in plainer warnings. They were bold reformers, and reprovers of idolatry, iniquity, and hypocrisy; they called the attention of the people to the moral law, the standard of true holiness; they showed the inefficacy of ceremonial observances, without the obedience of faith and love; and they kept up and encouraged the expectation of the promised Messiah, and more fully declared the sufferings of Christ and the glory which should follow.
Their claims to be considered as God’s appointed servants were demonstrated by the unimpeachable integrity of their characters, by the intrinsic excellence and tendency of their instructions, and by the disinterested zeal and undaunted fortitude with which they persevered in their great design. These were still further confirmed by the miraculous proofs which they gave of divine support, and by the immediate completion of many smaller predictions which they uttered. Their grandest object was to declare the spirituality of God’s religion, the necessity of repentance, and the fullness and freeness of the divine salvation, which was to be wrought out by the coming Messiah; we see the truth of this remark especially in Isaiah and in the last and greatest of the prophets before Christ, John the Baptist.
The ancient Jews always acknowledged that the chief design of the prophets was to foretell the times of the Messiah. The dress of the prophets was a hairy garment with a leathern girdle (Isa. 20:2; Zech. 13:4; Matt. 3:4); and their diet was the simplest (2 Kings 4:10,38; I Kings 19:6), a virtual protest against abounding luxury. The absence of greater clearness in their predictions is due to God’s purpose to give light enough to guide the spiritual, and to leave darkness enough to confound the carnal mind. Many of the prophecies have a temporary and local, fulfillment foreshadowing their final Messianic fulfillment. The prophets were the poets and historians of their people.” (Hassell’s History)