The people they addressed could hardly have been in a position to defend themselves against the strictures of the prophets by even to this extent taking exception to their denunciations. With the decline of Israel, Jahvism had also declined, and the Israelites must have felt instinctively that the second phenomenon was the cause of the first, and that their own exceptional sinfulness had produced the national disasters. They might, indeed, so far as they knew the past history of their country, complain that the people of Israel had before transgressed as heavily without receiving such a severe punishment from Jahveh. But here the prophets met them fully on their own ground, by denouncing their past as well as their present wickedness, and by asserting that, his long-suffering patience having at length given way, Jahveh was then punishing them for the whole course of their national sins. Only once in the prophetical books is there any sign that the people ever ventured to question the premisses of the prophets. On one occasion they are said to have replied to Jeremiah’s denunciations by asserting that their misfortunes were really due to their having forsaken other gods for Jahveh, and by announcing that they would return to these divinities, the worship of whom had been accompanied by prosperity.[29] It was a dangerously strong argument to use against the prophets, and it naturally stirred Jeremiah to a fiercer fury of malediction. But, in general, the people could not have had either the critical power or the knowledge of their own history needed for the adoption of such a line of defence. The steady darkening of Israel’s prospects must have seemed to them grim confirmation of the prophetic statements. As prophet after prophet arose screaming against their wickedness, pointing to their misfortunes as the punishment inflicted by Jahveh, and announcing that worse calamities would come before the completion of it, they must have seen in every national disaster a proof that the prophets were divine envoys, and a chill of fear must have driven them to Jahveh’s feet.