What did Isaiah and Jeremiah believe in?

Answer 1

A:Prior to the Babylonian Exile, the Israelites and Judahites are now known to have been polytheistic. They believed in Yahweh (God), but they also believed in other gods as well. By the end of the eighth century BCE, when Isaiah lived, Judah was moving towards monolatry and aniconism. Monolatry is the belief that many gods really do exist, but it is only necessary to worship one of the. Aniconism means that the image of God (or any of the gods) was no longer shown.

Isaiah certainly believed that Yahweh was the God to turn to when the nation was under threat. Isaiah 28:14f,18 criticises the Jerusalem elite because, in the face of the Assyrian threat to their security, they did not put their trust exclusively in Yahweh. Keel and Uehlinger (Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel) say that Isaiah chapter 6 is evidence that, in his time, Isaiah could still see Yahweh in human form.

It is clear that polytheism continued up to the time of the Babylonian Exile, but Jeremiah's beliefs were monotheistic and he criticised those who still followed the other gods. The Book of Jeremiah denies that child sacrifices were performed in God's name, but Mark S. Smith (The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel) suggests that the vehemence and frequency of the book's protests really indicate that Jeremiah knew such sacrifices were still occurring and was trying to bring them to an end.