BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

On the prophets
and miracles to test the people. Christ too warned his disciples of this,
as is clear from Matthew 24.24. Ezekiel 14.9 plainly teaches that God
sometimes deceives men by false revelations: he says,‘and when a prophet’
(that is, a false prophet) ‘is deceived and has spoken a word, it is
I God that has deceived that prophet’. Micaiah says the same thing
about the prophets of Ahab (see 1 Kings 22.21).
[4] Although this might seem to show that prophecy and revelation are
something altogether dubious, yet, as we have said, it did have a good deal
of certainty. For God never deceives the pious and the elect, but as the
ancient proverb says (see 1 Samuel 24.14), and as the narrative of Abigail
and her prayer makes clear, God uses the pious as the instruments of his
own piety, and the impious as the agents and executors of his wrath.This is
abundantly clear from the case of Micaiah, just cited; for though God had
determined to deceive Ahab by means of prophets, he made use only of
false prophets, and revealed the truth of the matter to a pious man and did
not forbid him to tell the truth. However, as I said, the certainty of a prophet
was only a moral certainty, since nobody can justify himself before
God or claim to be an instrument of divine piety, as Scripture itself teaches
and is evident from the thing itself: thus the wrath of God misled David
into counting the people, yet Scripture abundantly testi¢es to his piety.
[5] All prophetic certainty therefore was grounded upon three things:
(1) that the matters revealed were very vividly imagined, as we are a¡ected
by objects when we are awake;
(2) uponasign;and
(3) most importantly, that the minds of the prophets were directed
exclusively to what is right and good.
Scripture does not always actually mention a sign, but we must nevertheless
suppose that the prophets always had one. The Bible does not
always mention every condition and circumstance (as many have already
noted) but assumes some things as known. We may further grant that the 32
prophets who prophesied nothing new beyond what is contained in the
Law of Moses, had no need of a sign, because they were corroborated by
the Law. For example the prophecy of Jeremiah about the destruction
of Jerusalem was con¢rmed by the prophecies of the other prophets and
by the admonitions of the Law, and therefore did not need a sign. But
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