Prophets and people stood on common ground in their patriotism. The attention of all the Israelites must have been absorbed in watching the national prospects. The prophets, necessarily including in their number the best and wisest minds, of course saw more clearly than the rest. Probably most of them had the acuteness to see how inevitable was the destruction of Israel. Once the group of small kingdoms fringing the eastern side of the Mediterranean was threatened by the vast power of inland Asia, it was not difficult to foresee the ultimate issue. Still the prophets, in their own way, did their best to avert their country’s ruin. Every prophetic declaration was a political pamphlet giving political advice. All their counsel was simply the development of a single precept—Rely on Jahveh only. In home matters this principle of action could do no harm, but it had a bad effect on foreign policy. When the great Assyrian empire was overshadowing Israel and all the kingdoms around, it did not require much wisdom to perceive the advantage of an alliance against the common danger. Nevertheless, the whole prophetic influence was used to prevent it; the states were separately attacked, and perished one by one. Egypt was far the most powerful of the countries near Palestine opposed to Assyria, and its protection would have been of enormous value to Israel. And yet at a time when both were threatened, Isaiah thundered against an alliance with Egypt;[30] and probably prophetic advice was the cause of the almost inconceivable folly of the religious Josiah’s attack on an Egyptian army actually invading Assyria.[31] So far as the prophets thus contributed to the political overthrow of Israel, they served the higher interests of their religion; but evidently a foolish fanaticism dictated their action, a belief that Jahveh would be dishonoured if his people allied themselves with strangers, and that, if they trusted to him alone, he would finally deliver them from their enemies.