Yet, in the end, Israel was to be remembered, not for the great deeds of her kings, but for the ethical standards announced by her prophets. They brought to a new height the Israelite idea of God. Few preachers have had such success. They shaped the ties of religion with morality which were to dominate, for thousands of years, not only Judaism, but two world religions, Christianity and Islam. Through them, the cult of Yahweh evolved into the worship of a universal God, just and merciful, stern to punish sin but ready to welcome the sinner who repented. This was the climax of religious development in the ancient Near East. Religion could, henceforth, be separated from locality and tribe. The prophets also bitterly attacked social injustice. They announced that all men were equal in the sight of God, that kings might not simply do what they would. They proclaimed a moral code which was a given fact, independent of human authority. The preaching of adherence to a God-given moral law thus became a basis for criticism of existing political power. Since the law was not made by man, the prophets could always appeal to it, as well as to their divine inspiration, against king or priest. The prophets made one of the great intellectual jumps of mankind. The heart of political liberalism is the belief that power must be used within a moral framework independent of it, and its tap-root lies in their teaching.
From: A Short History of the World by J. M. Roberts (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 95.
John Morris Roberts (born in 1928) was, until his retirement in 1994, Warden of Merton College, Oxford University, and is a distinguished author.
This is not exactly how the Bible speaks of the work of the prophets, but – close enough for a secular writer (and better than some have done!).
