Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
IV. THE FOURTH QUESTION. When, in what order, and on what subject did the several Prophets prophesy? St. Augustine, book 18 On the City of God, chapter 37, teaches that these Prophets are more ancient than Pythagoras (for he, he says, flourished under Cyrus, who ended the Babylonian captivity of the Jews); and much more than Socrates and Plato, nay than Thales (who flourished under Romulus), Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and others who preceded Pythagoras: but that they were later than Orpheus, Linus and Musaeus; yet that Moses is earlier and more ancient than these and all, and much more Abraham. So far St. Augustine.
The wisdom of the faithful therefore was prior to the wisdom of the Gentiles; nay, these borrowed theirs from them. This is what Tertullian throws in the face of the Gentiles in his Apology, chapter 19: “The other Prophets too, although after Moses, yet the very last of them are found no later (that is, posterior) than your earliest sages. So also Eusebius, book 10 of the Preparation, at the end, and Lactantius, book 4 of the Divine Institutes, chapter 5, teach that our Prophets were older than the seven sages of the Greeks, and than all the Philosophers, nay than the Olympiads, and thence they teach that wisdom was hoary and ancient among the Hebrews when among the Greeks and Gentiles it was being born, and was an infant.” In the times of Achaz (or rather toward the end of Ozias, who was Achaz’s grandfather), says Eusebius, “the Olympiads began, and the first victor in the Olympic stadium, the Argive Corylus, was proclaimed. In the fiftieth Olympiad, under Cyrus, flourished Thales, teacher of Anaximander, he of Anaximenes, he of Anaxagoras, he of Pericles: in the times of Anaxagoras were Xenophanes and Pythagoras.” Eusebius here differs somewhat from St. Augustine: for he places Thales under Cyrus, whom Augustine places under Romulus. For although Thales lived to great age, namely from the 35th Olympiad to the 58th, as Eusebius says in the Chronicle, yet he could not reach from Romulus to Cyrus; for between the two nearly 200 years intervened, and in that age no one lived so many years.
Now the first of these Prophets was Osee; for this is why in his chapter 1, verse 2, it is said: “The beginning of the Lord’s speaking by Osee.” Osee began to prophesy under Ozias, or Azarias, king of Juda, namely at the beginning of the reign of Ozias: the last was Malachias, who prophesied after the return from Babylon, and the temple restored, under Darius son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians.
The time and order of each Prophet are to be sought from the beginning of the prophet’s own book; for there they are wont to indicate the kings under whom they prophesied. So the first, Osee, says he prophesied under Ozias: soon under the same king followed Joel, Amos and Isaias, who reached to the times of Manasses. Then, under Joatham son of Ozias, prophesied Abdias, Jonas and Micheas. Wherefore Osee, Isaias, Amos, Joel, Abdias and Micheas were contemporaries, says St. Jerome on Osee, chapter 1. Next, under Ezechias flourished Nahum, and under Manasses Habacuc. Then under Josias Sophonias, soon Jeremias, who a little before the captivity, and in the captivity itself, which happened under Sedecias, prophesied. After him, in the captivity itself, in the fifth year of the transmigration of Joachin, Ezechiel; then after Jerusalem was overthrown by the Chaldeans, in the fifth year, Baruch; in the eighth year, Daniel. Finally, after the return from captivity, in the year 48, prophesied Aggeus, Zacharias and last Malachias. For 299 years passed from Ozias to the times of Darius. Whence it follows that all the Prophets lived and flourished within a space of three hundred years.
Let us now mark each in his order, and set before the eyes the argument of each in a brief sketch, nay rather not so much a summary as a certain gathering of honey from the encyclopedia of all these seers.
The first in time and age, therefore, was Osee, who, bidden to take a harlot to wife, and to beget of her children of fornication, giving a great example of obedience, by this marriage convicts the idolatrous Jews of violating the religion and faith pledged with God; and in the three names of the three children born of her: first, Jezrahel, that is, the seed of God; second, Lorohama, that is, without mercy; third, Loammi, that is, not my people, he sets before the Jews, as in a daily image, the repudiation of the Jews and of the Synagogue and the substitution of the Gentiles, so that these children, when named, may name themselves by their own name. The Apostle treats profoundly this argument of predestination and reprobation from Osee in the epistle to the Romans, especially chapter 9, verses 10 and 14, which epistle cannot be understood without this Osee.
The second, Joel, says St. Jerome in the Helmeted Prologue, describes the land of the twelve tribes consumed by the caterpillar, the remnant of the caterpillar by the bruchus, the remnant of the bruchus by the locust, the remnant of the locust by blighting mildew; and, after the overthrow of the former people, the Holy Spirit poured out upon the servants of God and handmaids, that is, upon the hundred and twenty whose names are given in the upper room of Sion at Pentecost. The same paints the day of the last judgment in the valley of Josaphat so graphically that no one could more dreadfully conceive it in mind or set it before the eyes of the people in words.
The third, “Amos, a shepherd and a countryman (Jerome goes on), and plucking the fruit of the sycamore [the briers of brambles], but made a Prophet by the Holy Spirit, cannot be explained in a few words. For who can worthily explain the three and four crimes of Damascus, and of Gaza, and of Tyre, and of Persia; of Idumea, and of the children of Ammon and Moab, and in the seventh and eighth degree of Juda and Israel? Here he speaks to the fat kine which are on the mount of Samaria, and testifies that the house, greater and less, will fall. He himself beholds the maker of the locust, and the Lord standing upon a wall plastered over, or of adamant, and a hook for fruits, drawing punishments upon sinners, and a famine into the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of God.”
Fourth, Isaias, the Homer of sacred bards, and that heavenly Talthybius, proclaiming with a polished and eloquent herald’s voice, lit up with figures, the coming of wisdom and the sacrament of truth, seasoned, so to speak, with sacred graces and divine wit, and delightful, by whom can he at last be sufficiently explained through a whole life? Nor is there need to take a rhapsode as an extra. Thomas Hasselbach did this, Professor of Sacred Theology at Vienna in the year of the Lord 1410, who, when for 91 years he had not yet finished the first chapter of Isaias, at last left on the same chapter 84 books, says Sixtus of Siena, book 4 of the Library.