§ 3. In connexion with this we must not forget that the Prophets have a very living conception of a Creator when they speak of Jahveh, and that most of the words existing in Hebrew for the idea of Creating, are employed most frequently by the Prophets and especially by the Babylonian Isaiah. Great stress is laid on the ‘Creation of Israel.’ Jahveh is the Creator of the Hebrew people. It is also undeniable that the Prophets occupied themselves with finding a metaphysical definition of the idea of Jahveh, and discovered a precisely expressed definition in the well-known Ehye asher ehye, ‘I am he who I am.’ They lay stress on the _unchangeableness_ of Jahveh: he is eternally unchangeable. But it must, on the other hand, be borne in mind that the recognition of Jahveh cannot have started from this sort of metaphysical speculation, which does not, on this or on any other subject, naturally spring up till a later stage of development of the original idea. The metaphysical foundation of the idea of Jahveh must be subject to this rule, and therefore the sentence Ehye asher ehye ‘I am who I am,’ must be assigned to a later time, when Jahveism was already fully formed. Thus then it is the Prophet Malachi, living late after the Captivity, who expresses the sense of this formula in more ordinary language by the words ‘For I Jahveh change not’ (III. 6). Another expression of the same idea is used frequently by the Babylonian Prophet—the words anî hû ‘I am He,’ where the pronoun hû does not refer back to anything mentioned before (Is. XLIII. 10, XLVI. 4, XLVIII. 12). The second of these passages especially shows that the formula anî hû expresses most emphatically the eternal unchangeableness of Jahveh: Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, Ye that are carried from the belly, Or lifted up from the womb, Even to old age _I am He_. And so the last passage has ‘I am He, I am the first, I am the last.’