Nevuah—prophecy נבואה

"A prophet from among you, from your brothers, like me, will the Lord raise up for you"—so it says in Deuteronomy, and at once a test is given: what a prophet says and it does not come to pass, the Lord did not speak it. The test is hard and works one way only: it lets a liar be caught, but it does not let a fulfilled prediction serve as proof if the prophet calls to serve another god—such a one is not heeded, even if it came true.

What they spoke about. Reading the prophets straight through, one sees that the future in them is almost always conditional: "if you do not return, it will be thus." Their business is not a timetable but reproof, and they reprove not the neighbouring nations first but their own: the king, the judge, the rich man who oppresses the widow. A court prophet who tells the king what he likes is always, in the Bible, a false one.

How many there were. "Forty-eight prophets and seven prophetesses prophesied to Israel," says the Talmud—and those whose prophecy was needed by later generations were written down. The rest prophesied to their own time. Moses stands apart: it is said that with him the speech was "mouth to mouth," not in a vision.

The end. With Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi the spirit of prophecy departed from Israel. This is not a slip and not a complaint: from that day a disputed question is settled by argument and by majority, not by a voice from heaven. "From the day the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the sages"—and the whole Talmud stands on that arrangement.