I. Prophecy is as old as the Hebrew nation itself, and indeed far older. The life of the nation begins with the age of Moses, but Moses in his writings leads us back to the fountain-head of man's history, and shows us the first dawn of the Divine revelation, breaking through the darkness of that old-world history, and making it bright with the promise of a glorious, though far-distant, day.
II. The national life is everywhere closely intertwined with this Divine revelation, which both precedes and survives it. The vital connection is seen most clearly in each great turning-point of the history and in each mastermind which rules the crisis that it helps to create. (Examples: Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah.)
III. Notice a few inferences from this sketch of prophecy in its external aspect. (1) Prophecy as it existed in Israel is a fact unique in the world's history. (2) In Israel itself the prophetic gift is not general, nor even common, but each one in whom it appears is regarded as a man set apart from, and raised above, his fellows. He is pre-eminently "the man of God." (3) We find the claim of the prophets universally acknowledged by the people among whom they lived, and to whom they were as often messengers of unwelcome reproof as of comfort or promise, and as often objects of fear and hatred as of reverence and wonder.
E. H. Gifford, Voices of the Prophets,p. 51.