BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
Hebrews only cared to write about their own a¡airs and not those of other
nations. Hence it su⁄ces to ¢nd in the Old Testament that gentile and
uncircumcised men like Noah, Enoch, Abimelech, Balaam, and so on,
prophesied, and that Hebrew prophets were sent by God to many other
peoples besides their own. For Ezekiel prophesied to all the then known
nations, Jonah prophesied especially to the Ninevites, and Obadiah, so far
as we know, prophesied only to the Idumeans. Isaiah predicts and bewails
not only the calamities of the Jews but also those of other peoples, and
celebrates their restoration. For he says at 16.9,‘therefore will I lament Jazer
with weeping’, and at chapter 19 he predicts ¢rst the disasters of
the Egyptians and then their restoration (see 19, 20, 21, 25 of the same
chapter). He says that God will send a saviour to them who will liberate
them; God will become known to them; the Egyptians will worship
the Lordwith sacri¢ces and o¡erings; and he ends by calling this nation‘the
blessed Egyptian people of God’: all this is surely well worth noting. Finally
Jeremiah is called the prophet not of the Hebrew people alone but also of
the nations and without any reservation (see 1.5). He weeps copiously in
predicting disasters among the peoples and foretells their restoration. He
says of the Moabites (48.31),‘therefore I will wail for Moab and cry for the
whole of Moab’, etc., and at verse 36 he says,‘therefore my heart beats like a
drum for Moab’, and ¢nally he predicts their restoration, as well as the
restoration of the Egyptians, the Ammonites and the Elamites.Thus, there
is no doubt that other peoples also had their prophets, as the Jews had, and
that they prophesied both to them and to the Jews.
[9] Although the Bible cites only Balaam as someone to whom the future
a¡airs of the Jews and other nations were revealed, one must not suppose
that Balaam prophesied merely on that sole occasion. Rather it is quite clear
from the narrative itself that he had become famous for prophecy and other
divine gifts long before. For when Balak commands that he be summoned,
52 he says (Numbers 22.6), ‘since I know that he whom you bless is blessed and
he whom you curse is cursed’; thus he had the same gift that God had
bestowed upon Abraham (see Genesis 12.3).Then Balaam, as a man who is
accustomed to prophesy, tells the envoys to wait for him until the will of God
is revealed to him. When he was prophesying, i.e. when he was revealing the
true mind of God, he was accustomed to say of himself: ‘the speech of one
who hears the words of God and who knows the knowledge’ (or mind and
foreknowledge) ‘of the Most High, who sees a vision of the Almighty, falling
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