“Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice – cheating in business, exploitation of the poor – is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the wlefare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us, an episode; to the prophet, a catastrophe, a threat to the world…
“We and the prophet have no language in common. To us the moral state of society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet it is dreadful. So many deeds of charity are done, so much decency radiates day and night; yet to the prophet satiety of the conscience is prudery and flight from responsibility. Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. To us life is often serene, in the prophet’s eye the world reels in confusion. The prophet makes no concession to man’s capacity. Exhibiting little understanding for human weakness, he seems unable to extenuate the culpability of man…
“The prophet is human, yet he employs notes one octave too high for our ears. He experiences moments that defy our understanding. He is neither a ’singing saint’ nor a ‘moralizing poet,’ but an assaulter of the mind. Often his words begin to burn where conscience ends.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, vol 1. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 3-5, 10
The last paragraph is exceptionally powerful.
Heschel is my patron saint.