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YALE UNIVERSITY
Xibrarg of the Btoinitg School
GIFT OF'
Douglas dlgde Macintosh
. DWIGHT PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY
DWIGHT PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
1916-1942
IVWlVI'1-MWWPKP.'IWWWiMIIMH  imwmiWUMWIWWWWHIV

OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.

PRINTED BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON C SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
TORONTO: THE PUBLISHERS' SYNDICATE LIMITED.

©ft Cestamntt CjKologg.

THE RELIGION OP REVELATION

PRE-CHRISTIAN STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT.

Dr. HERMANN SCHULTZ,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEN.

Cranglateti from the ifattrtft ©erman ffi&ftfon
BY THE
Rev. J. A. PATERSON, M.A., D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE IN THE
UNITED PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE, EDINBURGH.

(SECOND ENGLISH EDITION.)

IN TWO VOLUMES.
Vol. I.

EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
1898.

[The Translation is Copyright by arrangement with the Author.]

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The work of Dr. Hermann Schultz on Old Testament Theology
has long been a standard authority on the important subject
of which it treats. The author is one of the most accomplished
exponents of that school of theological thought which is at
present dominant in Germany. He stands high in the esteem
of all parties ; and it is thought by many that he has succeeded
in discovering the via media between the positions of Biblical
scholars like Delitzsch on the one hand and Stade on the
other. Biblical theology is a subject certain to receive in the
immediate future from the Christian public, both of Great
Britain and America, a steadily increasing share of attention.
One of the characteristics of the age is the emphasis with
which the Christian Churches are declaring that it is their
duty as well as their privilege to interpret Scripture in
the full light of present-day research. Hence the growing
anxiety to know what the books of the Bible actually teach.
It is this question which Dr. Schultz has undertaken to
answer, from the historical point of view, in so far as the Old
Testament is concerned. He has discharged his task in an
eminently fair and judicial spirit ; and he has written in so
felicitous and lucid a style, and with such freedom from
technical phraseology, that his work should be intelligible
and instructive, not merely to clergymen, but to that rapidly
growing class of educated laymen who, without being specialists

VI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
in theology, are nevertheless profoundly interested in the
greatest problems with which the human mind has to deal.
In churches where the voice of the lay representatives has as
much influence in determining the doctrinal standards as that
of the clergy, it is pre-eminently desirable that laymen should
have access to a work like this, which, while thoroughly
scientific and scholarly, is also distinguished by a singularly
popular method of exposition. For these reasons it seemed
to me that English readers, unfamiliar with German, ought to
have the opportunity of ascertaining for themselves the exact
views of such a master in this department of theological
study as Dr. Schultz is admitted to be.
As the Hebrew in the notes has, as a rule, not been
pointed, I have thought it well to add to the usual indexes of
subjects and of passages quoted, an index of Hebrew words
with the Massoretic points inserted. I may also state that
no attempt has been made to transliterate Hebrew names,
except where the subject under discussion rendered trans
literation necessary.
Eor their kind assistance in correcting the proof-sheets, and
for many valuable suggestions, I desire to tender to Dr. Schultz
himself, and to the Eev. Wm. M'Gilchrist, B.D., Ardrossan,
my most cordial thanks. J. A. PATERSON.

Edinburgh, November 1892.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

I trust that this book of mine, in its new form, may, in
some measure however small, contribute to the increase among
English readers of a really historical knowledge of that religion
from which our own faith has sprung. I cannot, indeed,
refrain from expressing the hope that in a land which
possesses so many distinguished Old Testament scholars, the
faults and shortcomings of this work may be leniently dealt
with. I console myself at any rate with the thought that,
in a field of study so extensive and so obscure as that of Old
Testament theology, it will be long before it becomes possible
for investigators to avoid making mistakes.
As the proof-sheets of the translation were passing through
the press, I compared them with the original as carefully as
my knowledge of English permitted. In a very few passages,
where an exact translation seemed to me somewhat obscure,
I have suggested a wider departure from the German than a
translator would have felt himself entitled to make. I have
also thought it right, in a few instances, to insert one or two
new sentences — as for example, my references to the important
work on the religion of the Semites, which Dr. Robertson

Vlll AUTHOR S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
Smith has published since the last edition of my own book
appeared. Professor Paterson has executed the translation with as
much skill as care ; and while he has not followed the
German, at the expense of the English idiom, readers may
rely on his having given the meaning of the original with
the utmost accuracy. HERMANN SCHULTZ.
Gottingen, October 1892.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Meaning and Method of Biblical Theology : Name,
Scope, Relation to other branches of Theology,
Methods, Sources, . . . . . 1-13
II. Forms of Literature in the Old Testament Scrip
tures : Didactic Pieces, Poetic Form, Books of Narra
tive, Legend and Myth, .... 14-31
III. The Religion of the Old Testament in connection
with the History of Religion : Theological and
Philosophical Estimates, Relation to Nature-Religions,
Place among Prophetic Religions, . . . 31-51
IV. Old and New Testament : Nature of Connection,
Development and Completion, Limits, . 51-60
V. Periods and Sources of Old Testament Theology, . 60-79
VI. Literature of Old Testament Theology, . . 79-85
FIRST MAIN DIVISION.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION AND MORALS IN ISRAEL DOWN TO THE
FOUNDING OF THE ASMONjEAN STATE.
VII. Israel's Pre-Mosaic Age : Picture in Genesis, Abraham,
Hebrew and Semitic Religion, Traces of Semitic
Heathenism, ...... 86-125
VIII. Moses: Personality of Moses, the Principle of Mosaism, . 125-139
IX. The Religious Development of Israel down to
Samuel, . . . 139-151
X. From Samuel down to the Eighth Century, . . 151-160
XI. Religious Figures Characteristic of the Age prior to
the Eighth Century : Nazirite, Theocratic King, . 161-174

X TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
XII. Religious Knowledge and Modes of Public Worship
down to the Eighth Century, and more par
ticularly till the Building of the Temple :
Knowledge of God, Monotheism, Revelation, "Worship
and Sacrifice, Human Sacrifices, Vows, Circumcision,
Passover, Priesthood, Feasts, Sabbath, Holy Places, Ark
of the Covenant, Tabernacle, Moral Ideal, Decalogue, . 174-220
XIII. The Assyrian Age : Historical Relations, Development of
Religion, Reform and Reaction, . . . 220-235
XIV. Personages of Influence in the Assyrian Age — the
Prophet : History of Prophecy, Heathen and False
Prophets, Prophetic Names and Calling, Speech and
Writings, Prophecy and Soothsaying, Miracles and
Signs, ....... 235-300
XV. The Babylonian Age — Judah's Trial and Execution :
Historical Relations, Development of Religion, . 300-310
XVI. The Suffering Servant of Jehovah, . . . 310-320
XVII. The Persian Age — Israel's Resurrection : the Servant
of Jehovah, the New Jerusalem, the Age of the Epigoni,
the Temple, Holy Scripture, .... 320-336
XVIII. The Sacred Institutions of Israel according to "The
Law" : Sacred Persons, the Holy Place, Sacred Seasons,
Sacred Ceremonies, . 337-406
XIX. The Closing Era in the History of Old Testament
Religion ; the Greek Age, the Maccabees, the Forming
of Sects, the High Priest, Prophet and Scribe, Holy
Scripture, Apocalypse and Prophecy, . . . 406-423
XX. Special Phenomena of the Latest Old Testament Age
which point forward : the Community of the Dis
persion, Proselytes, Temple and Synagogue, Feast-Days,
Parties, Scepticism, Foreign Elements, . , . 423-438

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.
MEANING AND METHOD OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY.
1. The name "Biblical Theology" has been applied at
different times to very different sides of theological science.
It has been used to denote a popular, as opposed to an eccle
siastical, scholastic presentation of Christianity. Storr takes
the term in this sense, and so, too, does Bahrdt, although
his general point of view is wholly different. In Pietist
circles this is still its usual meaning. Again, it has been
used to denote more particularly the creed of the early
Christians as distinguished from the later development of
doctrine in the Church.1 Again, it has been employed for
the purpose of emphasising the character of Christianity as a
revelation in contrast to a rational theology, much in the
same way as the expression " Bible-believer " has nowadays
come to indicate one holding a particular view of revelation.
Lastly, by Biblical theology has been understood a collection
of proof-passages from the Bible for the more important
divisions of ecclesiastical dogma. This is its meaning in the
works of writers like Weissmann and Schmid.2 In opposi
tion to these uses of the word, we understand by Biblical
1 So Biisching, Crusius, Gruner, Bbhme, etc.
2 In connection with the above, of. Baumgarten- Crusius, Orundziige der
bibl. Theol. etc., § 8.
VOL. I. A

2 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
^ theology that branch of theological science which gives a
historical presentation of revealed religion during the period
of its growth. We mean to describe how, during the forma
tion of our Biblical records, the religion which we ourselves
profess, advanced towards its full development among the
people of Israel. The subjects with which Biblical theology
undertakes to deal are the moral and religious views which
the sacred books contain, considered in their historical develop
ment and in their inner living connection.
The task of Biblical theology is thus purely historical, and
the sources it uses are the books of the Bible. The question
is not in what form does Christianity, as developed by the
Church, present itself to the evangelical Christian as his
'^ religion, but simply what form did religion take during the
various stages of religious life in Israel up to the close of the
apostolic age. Hence we cannot, like the early Church,
assume, without further inquiry, that the religious and moral
material which we find there must be everywhere uniform
in character, or even equally excellent. "Whether that is
the case, or how far it is so, cannot be determined till the
close of our investigation, when, after a purely historical
examination of the various stages of development, we have
reached definite results regarding the moral and religious
standpoint of each particular period.
But by speaking of a presentation of "revealed religion,"
we imply that the subject-matter to be dealt with has a
homogeneous character of its own. We mean to describe,
not various forms of religion which have merely an ex
ternal ' connection of place or time, but a single religion in
the various stages of its development, which stages con
sequently have an organic inner connection. Hence in such
a presentation each member must be properly linked tp its
^ fellow. A common ligament of living growth must bind all
the parts together. The presentation must be, not merely
historical, but "genetic."

RELATION TO EXEGESIS. 6
To the term " Biblical theology " we do not attach any
special importance. It has become current through the
works of Gabler, Schmid, and Oehler, and it seems to us
decidedly preferable to the other term, " Biblical dogmatic,"
which de Wette and Hagenbach defend. We do not, how
ever, prefer it because the name " Dogmatic " would denote, as
Baumgarten-Crusius thinks, " the variable and changing, in a
word, the human element," in the subject-matter of this science,
for this objection is obviated by the more recent application
of the word. We prefer it, in the first place, because dogmas,
that is to say, hard and fast statements of doctrine, do not
often occur in Scripture ; in the next place, because we mean
to describe the religious and the moral life as a connected
whole ; and lastly, because the notion of " dogmatic " would
require us to combine all the religious views of the Bible
into one harmonious scheme. Consequently, if this latter
name were to find general acceptance, it would have to be
restricted to such works as aim, like that of Lutz, at a
" systematic presentation " of the religious ideas of the Bible.
Lutz is therefore right in distinguishing (p. 6) between his
own subject and Biblical theology " which has a thoroughly
historical character." (Cf. v. Colin, i. 6.)
2. Biblical theology is directly connected, first of all, with
the exegesis of Scripture. The latter, being grammatical and nj
historical, makes the student of the former acquainted with what
each individual writer in the Bible wished to say to his own
age regarding religious and moral subjects, and at what period
in the history of Israel each delivered his message. Only in
this way is a historical presentation possible. Hence, as a
matter of course, the criticism of the Biblical books, both
positive and negative, is, in a special sense, the foundation of
our subject. This makes it impossible to solve the problems
of Biblical theology in a way likely to win universal assent.
As long as the results of the science of Introduction are still
being called in question, even as regards their foundation

4 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
principles, opinions must differ as to the development of the
Biblical religion. Why, even where there is essential agree
ment as to the principles of criticism, there are still many
details, especially in reference to the Pentateuch and the
Psalms, that are extremely debatable. In fact, the very
latest investigations, particularly as regards the prophetical
books, are still extending the boundaries of this debatable
ground. On the one hand, however, it is only a bird's-eye
view of the religious and moral ideas of long stretches of
time that is aimed at, so that many points, in themselves
debatable, cease to be important. On the other hand, a careful
unfolding of the history of religion may, in many individual
instances, prove helpful in settling questions of Introduction.
As a necessary preliminary to Biblical theology, one must
study the expository works which deal with the doctrinal
ideas of specially important single books or groups of books.
Taken along with the works which trace single doctrines
through all the different Biblical books, such writings would,
if complete, provide us with almost all the material we
require. We should then have the warp and the woof, out
of which we could without much trouble weave the web of
Biblical theology. Nevertheless, in this department, despite
the many valuable contributions by painstaking investigators
of proved ability which recent years have brought us,1 Science
has still plenty of work before her.
3. While unfolding the original elements of revealed re
ligion, and thereby exhibiting the permanent basis of every
thing Christian, as well as the standard by which to judge
every development of doctrine and morals in the Church,
Biblical theology has of necessity a close connection with
systematic theology. It provides what Schleiermacher already
felt to be a desideratum in the teaching of doctrine, '' a
form of Scripture proof on a larger scale than can be got
1 Especially Baudissin, Riehm, Kautzsch, Duhm, and the contributors to tlie
Theologisch Tijdschrift and the Zeitschrift fiir alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.

RELATION TO SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. 5
from single texts." Hence the distinction between Biblical
and Systematic theology must be all the more strongly insisted
on ; and it is just in the evangelical Church that it is most
necessary to emphasise this distinction, because here the risk of
confusing the two is greatest. Undoubtedly it is one of the
most important and difficult tasks of modern theology to put
an end to this vague confusion between Biblical theology and
systematised evangelical doctrine, — a natural confusion in
earlier ages, and one of which theologians were then quite
unconscious, but which in the present day shows itself in
conscious opposition to a sound historical conception of Holy
Scripture, and, with a haughty disregard of the intellectual
work of the Church, reappears in the form of a science of
Christian doctrine based on the Bible documents. In this
relation the rise of an independent science of Biblical theology
is certainly of fundamental importance. It involves an ac
knowledgment that the subject-matter of the Bible cannot bev»
the immediate foundation of Christian belief, that scientific
theology has become conscious that the old evangelical pre
supposition that the doctrine of the Bible and the Christianity
of the Church are in perfect harmony, is no longer tenable.
The distinction between these two branches of study is, in
the first place, one of form. Systematic theology has to
present in one harmonious whole the moral and religious
consciousness of an evangelical Christian of the present day,
as based on the completed development of the Bible and on
the ecclesiastical history of Christendom resulting therefrom.
Biblical theology has to show, from a purely historical stand- v^
point, what were the doctrinal views and moral ideas which
animated the leading spirits of our religion during the Biblical
period of its growth. In the next place, the distinction is one
of contents. What Biblical theology shows to have been the Ni
religious and moral contents of any particular period of Biblical
development, is by no means proved thereby to be a doctrine
of Christian faith or morals. It is but a single step in the

6 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
process of that religious development which was leading on
wards to the perfecting of religion in Christianity. Now, the
^ law of organic development is, that in every stage of healthy
development all future developments are already lying hid,
but hid only, — as germs are. Hence, in the product of each
stage in the Biblical religion, the germ of the last and highest
stage was present, but still only the germ. It is only the
man of science, to whom the life-history of a plant is familiar,
that can recognise in the germ its relation to the coming bloom
and fruit, never the superficial observer.
In like manner, no result of Old Testament theology can
become a constituent part of systematic theology till its further
development in Christianity has been recognised, in other
words, except through the medium of New Testament
theology. True, there is not a single Christian conception
but has its roots in the Old Testament. In so far, however,
as it is still Old Testament, in other words, as it is presented
in Old Testament theology, it has not yet developed into
Christianity, and is therefore not yet Christian. There is not
a single Old Testament conception which Christianity does not
set in a new light, and not till then is it rendered perfect. It
is sad to see how, for example, the representation of Old
Testament morality in Genesis or in the war-psalms is falsified
in order to juggle it into conformity with the morality of Him
who did not bestow upon His disciples " the spirit of Elias," or
how the highest phase of Christian morality is actually
darkened in order not to contrast too strongly with the
morality of an earlier age.1
Not of Biblical theology as such, therefore, but at most
of New Testament theology, can it be said that it is co
extensive with systematic theology. But even the results
of New Testament theology do not, without further explana-
1 The greatest feat of this sort which recent Protestant theology has achieved
is, perhaps, the excursus on the deeds of Ehud ana Jael in Bachmann's Com
mentar zum Buche der Richter, 1868.

N

RELATION TO HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. 7
tion, coincide with those of evangelical doctrine and ethics.
For even in the New Testament, revealed religion finds ex
pression through a multiplicity of persons whose individual
peculiarities cannot claim to be the standard for all time.
Notwithstanding all the unity of faith in the New Testament,
none but the wilfully blind can help seeing the great variety
of religious thought which it contains. The religious and
moral consciousness of the New Testament writers is always
pervaded by the ideas of their time, and influenced by their
education and by their own special cast of thought. Hence
the work of the Christian spirit, that has translated the religious
and moral ideas of the men of the Bible into the speech and
thought of other times, must not be declared useless on the
one-sided dictum of a " Bible-believer."
Biblical theology is thus distinct in form and contents
from systematic theology. But the former remains the neces
sary preliminary and the indispensable standard of the latter.
It alone can give a pledge that the conscious faith of the
Church, as of the individual, is not overstepping the bounds
of historical Christianity.
4. Thus Biblical theology lies wholly within the circle of
historical theology. Inside this circle, however, it keeps
itself quite distinct from the department of this science, which,
on the basis of the already completed religion of revelation,
has to show how the fundamental doctrines of Christianity
gradually became ecclesiastical dogmas, and how the com
munities and nations influenced by Christianity fared as
Christians in the general history of mankind. In other
words, Biblical theology is distinct both from the history of
dogma and from Church history.
For us, to be sure, Biblical theology would form only a
single section in the history of dogma, did we not recognise
Jesus as the Christ, and therefore see in His personal mani
festation, and in those developments of the religious life
which are directly due to Him, the perfect manifestation

8 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of moral and religious life. Could we see in the further
development of the Christian Church a regular, uniformly
growing continuation of what the Bible began, then Biblical
theology would be merely the first section of the history of
dogma, and the Bible merely the beginning of Christian litera
ture. Such a result might be reached by carrying to its
logical conclusion the Catholic view, that the infallible
spirit in the Church can actually impart new religious know
ledge as well as by believing in the immanence of the
Divine Spirit in the human. But even one who, though not
a Christian, takes an unprejudiced view of history, will hardly
deny that, when contrasted with its ecclesiastical development,
the Biblical stage of Christianity is " the classical." And for
the evangelical Christian, as such, it is beyond question that
all healthy ecclesiastical development in later times can only
be the shaping and unfolding of what was revealed once for
all in the Bible as something immediately living, as some
thing manifest. For such an one the Bible is not merely the
beginning, but also the classical standard of all Christian
literature, and Biblical theology the description of that
perfect typical development by which all later ecclesiastical
work must be measured.
Consequently, Biblical theology comes into closer connection
with the branches of historical theology that deal with the
development of the people, among whom the true religion
flourished till it reached its perfect form in Christianity. This
province Biblical theology shares, in the first place, with " the
history of the people of Israel." To this it stands in the
same relation as the history of doctrine and morals does to
the history of the Christian peoples. Into a general history
of Israel, planned on a large scale, there can be woven, it is
true, a history of its religion. Indeed, so far as its main
features are concerned, it can scarcely be left out.1 But just
1 The great historical work of H. Ewald, a monument of astonishing industry
and insight, is on a large scale, embracing not only the religion, but all the

RELATION TO BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY. 9
as in a history of Greece and Rome a special place is
due to the history of Greek art and of Roman law, because
in these provinces of intellectual life those two nations
have shown themselves ideal pioneers, so in the history
of Israel the history of its religion demands special atten
tion, because for us Israel is the religious people. Between
the two provinces it is easy to draw a clear line of de
marcation. Biblical theology has to set aside everything s
that bears merely on the history of Israel as a civil com
munity having political relations with other nations, and,
further, everything in which its civil development does not
differ from that of other peoples, and is not determined by the
peculiarity of its religion. Wherever there is a question as to \
the links connecting religious and civil life, Biblical theology
simply takes its statements from the history of Israel as
accepted facts.
This specified province Biblical theology likewise shares
with Biblical archaeology. The latter science undertakes to
give a view of everything affecting Hebrew life, the con
formation of the land under the influence of which this
people developed, its domestic and social conditions, its
occupations in private and public life, its enjoyments and its
needs, its legal institutions, the average standard of morals in
each age, and the forms of private and public worship.
What it specially shares with Biblical theology, is the field
of morals and of public worship. But even here the line
of demarcation between the two sciences is clear and
distinct. The subject-matter of Biblical theology is simply
the current ideal of morality and the religious thoughts
surroundings of ancient Israel, and is therefore of much service for our purpose.
Still, in consequence of the general object he has in view, even Ewald has no
room for the more minute details of the history of religion. In the histories of
Hitzig, Seineke, etc., all discussion of the finer questions of this sort is pur
posely avoided. In the work of Stade there is an attempt to unfold the
fundamental thoughts of the religion of the people of Israel, but, to my mind, in
a one-sided way. The chief problems of our science are dealt with in the works
of Wellhausen, always in a most attractive and suggestive manner.

10 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
embodied in the public worship of God. On the other hand,
the delineation of actually existing conditions and of ex
ternal acts of worship, as well as of the finer distinctions in
regard to customs and institutions, rights and duties, is the
•J business of archaeology. On such matters as these Biblical
theology has simply to treat the results of archaeology as
accepted facts.
With these three sciences, the history of Israel, Hebrew
archaeology, and Biblical theology, our historical knowledge
of the development-period of revealed religion in Israel is
complete. No other department of intellectual life ever
reached among this people such a special or important develop
ment as to require separate scientific treatment. In the case
of Israel, all questions of law, constitutional history, and art
may be discussed without loss in connection with history
and archaeology.
5. Biblical theology has thus a well-defined province of
its own among the separate departments of theology. Indeed,
it is one of the most indispensable branches of theological
science. In it alone the labours of the expositor and the
critic arrive at definite results, by which may be tested at
* once their soundness and their thoroughness. It clears the
way for systematic theology, inasmuch as by defining the
true character of primitive Christianity, it fixes the limits and
guarantees the Christian standpoint of every system of faith
and morals which aims at being Christian. As a historical
presentation of the original and complete development of the
true religion, it serves as an introduction to the history of
the progress of Christianity, and gives us the true standard
by which to estimate the value of every later ecclesiastical
form. Biblical theology is thus, as it were, the heart of
theological science, which, by working upon the original
sources, gathers the life-blood into one great centre in order
to pour it back again into the veins, so that the theological
life of the existing Church may be kept strong and healthy.

METHOD OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 1 1
But it is only as a whole that Biblical theology has this
commanding position, and it is only from belonging to such
a whole that a single section of it, like Old Testament
theology, obtains its importance. Apart from its complete
development, apart, that is, from its final stage, Old Testament
theology would be but a poor standard for Christian faith
and Christian morals.
6. Accordingly we must, after a careful chronological
sifting of the extant documents, determine by purely historical s
tests what were the moral and religious principles which at
each separate period of Israel's history were either expressly
asserted or else implied in its forms and ceremonies, taking
into account only those circles which eventually proved
themselves the successful exponents of a healthy development.
And this historical result must not in any way be either
judged or settled from the standpoint of Christianity as
developed by the Church, or from that of any philosophical
school or of one's own mode of thought.
It is self-evident that Biblical theology can be a profitable v
study only to one who is able to bring himself into living
sympathy with the spirit of that religion. No spiritual
movement can or will reveal itself in all its truth except to
one who, having come under its charm, keenly appreciates
its real meaning, and takes an interest in all its peculiar
characteristics. Still it does not follow from this that one
has a right to speak of a special theological method any
more than an art-historian should speak of an aesthetic, or
a historian of literature of a poetic, method.
7. The only writings which can be regarded as the special
and direct sources of Biblical theology are those which form
the canon of the Old and New Testament. For, even if we
lay no special stress on the name " Biblical," but look simply
to the object we have in view, our task is to give a history
of the development of revealed religion as consummated in
Christianity, not a history of all the religious and moral

12 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
products of the Jewish national spirit. Hence we can employ
as direct sources only those writings which are the outcome
of that religious movement which culminated in Christianity ;
in other words, as compared with the canonical Scriptures,
the kindred writings of later Judaism and of early Christianity
cannot be regarded as real sources, but only as explanatory
and preparative.
8. But even the books of both Testaments would not be
satisfactory authorities for an investigation into the historical
development of revealed religion, were it true, as some scholars
have surmised, that these give us in great part merely the
outer shell of the popular religion, and that, since the time of
the patriarchs, there existed among the higher classes an
esoteric religion that was marked by a deeper grasp of
religious thought.1 Whether this theory points to particular
doctrines, such as the belief in immortality, which de Wette
had in view, or regards Moses as having been initiated into
the esoteric religion of the Egyptian priesthood, of which
religion he promulgated only the outer form, or finally
holds, with Autenrieth, that a primitive Canaanitish school
of philosophy taught the doctrines of monotheism, love to
one's neighbour, and immortality, and that through its
oldest pre -Mosaic production, the book of Job, this
philosophy was introduced into Israel by David, but not
wholly incorporated into the Hebrew national religion
till the time of the Babylonian captivity, any such theory
would make a real history of revealed religion for ever
impossible. For us the Biblical religion which would then
remain would no longer have any interest. But if we succeed
in pointing out in the Biblical books a healthy inner de
velopment of religion, and find that men like Isaiah, the

1 Literature. — Reinhold, Die ebraeischen Mysterien, 1788. Autenrieth, Ueber
das Buck Hiob, 1823. De Wette on Psalm xvii. 15 ; cf. Biblische Dogmatik,
§ 113, 114. — Zachariae, "Von der Herablassung Gottes zu den Menschen "
{Philosophisch-theologische Abhandlungen, ed. Perschke, 1776, p. 541).

ACCOMMODATION. 1 3
Deuteronomist, and others, who would surely have been among
the initiated, preach the same religion as the rest, in all
simplicity too, and in the unmistakable language of perfect
sincerity and transparent candour, this idea of an esoteric
religion becomes the veriest phantom of the imagination.
It is somewhat different, however, with the question
whether the Biblical writers may not have accommodated
themselves to popular views. Wherever there is no philoso
phical teaching, there must be some such " accommodation."
Everywhere outside the language of science the inner is
represented by the outer in symbol and parable (Matt. xiii.
13), the spiritual is expressed by that which can be seen and
handled. In the Sacred Scriptures this is such an outstanding
characteristic of the language that, as Kaiser remarks, not
without reason, " the old sensuous language even in the Old
and New Testament is without any deep metaphysical ideas,
and its meaning must be grasped, that is, conceived of, through
the senses ; what is high and holy comes into touch with what
is sensuous and low." In regard to words spoken and written
for the people, we are entitled, nay, bound in duty, to make
this supposition, and not to seek in the outer garment of the
form for the true meaning of the speakers.
But we could be led astray only by accommodation as to
contents, that is, if the Biblical writers had allowed their own
religious thoughts to appear other than they were. But the
spirit by which these religious teachers were animated, and
their holy zeal regarding the religious attitude of the people,
make us certain that they meant to express their own religious
and moral convictions, that they did not keep the kernel for
themselves and give their people the shell. Hence we may
rest assured that even when they are dealing with un
developed ideas, we can ascertain from their own words
clearly and beyond a doubt what the true conviction ia
towards which they are striving to guide the nation.

14 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER II.
FORMS OF LITERATURE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.
For the meaning of myth and legend in general, cf. F. G.
Welcker, Griechische Gbtterlehre, 1857, Bd. i. 46-107. F. Ch.
Baur, Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des
Alterthums, 1824, Bd. i. 1-103. Otfried Miiller, Prolegomena
zu einer wissenschaftliclien Mythologie, 1825. Schelling, Philo
sophic der Mythologie, 1856, Bd. i. 193 ff, and Ueber Mythen
historische Sagen und Philosopheme der altesten Welt, 1793 (Ges.
W., Abth. i. Bd. i. 43-83). W. Wackernagel, " Die epische
Poesie" (Schweizer Museum fiir histor. Wissenschaft, i. 341 ff.).
On the application of this to the books of the Bible, cf. Ewald,
Geschichte des Volhes Israel, Bd. i. Aufl. 3, pp. 20-69, esp. pp. 49,
418 ff. Tuch, Einleitung zum Commentar zur Genesis, 1838,
pp. i— xix. F. L. George, Mythus und Sage, Versuch einer
wissenschaftlichen Entwichlung dieser Begriffe und Hires Ver-
hdltnisses zum christlichen Glauben, Berlin 1837. Lutz,
Biblische Bogmatik, pp. 51 f., 112 f. Bruno Bauer, Religion
des Alien Testamentes, Bd. i. p. 17 ff. — For particular points
in connection with the question before us, cf. Fr. W. Schultz,
Bie Schopfungsgeschichte nach Naturwissenschaft und Bibel,
1865, a book, the weakness and illogical character of which
has been well pointed out by Ed. Riehm (Studien und
Kritiken, 1866, iii. p. 547 ff, cf. esp. p. 572). Herm.
Hupfeld, Bie heutige theosophische oder mythologische Theologie
und SchrifterMdrung, 1861. Historical, cf. Diestel, "Bibel
und Naturkunde in den Zeiten der Orthodoxie " (Theol.
Studien und Kritiken, 1866, ii. 223 ff., iii. 483 ff. ; and
his Geschichte des Alten Testamentes in der christlichen
Kirche, 1869, p. 723 ff. On Genesis vi., cf. Schrader,
Studien zur Kritik und Erklarung der biblischen Urgeschichte.
— The principal treatises against the view we are about to

LITERATURE. 1 5
advocate : Holemann, Einheit der beiden Schopfungsberichte ;
Apologetische Bibelstudie mit einem Sendschreiben an Herrn
Bomherrn Br. Kahnis, 1862. Engelhardt, Zeitschrift fiir
lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1856, 401 ff. Hofmann,
Weissagung und Erfiillung, i. 86 ff. ; Schriftbeweis, i. 265 ff.,
408 ff. Kurtz, Die Ehen der Sohne Gottes mit den Tochtern
der Menschen, 1857. Keil, " Die Ehen der Kinder Gottes mit
den Tochtern der Menschen " (Zeitschrift fiir luther. Theologie
und Kirche, 1855, 220 ff.; 1856, 22 ff, der Fall der Engel).
1. The writings from which we have to ascertain the
essence and trace the development of revealed religion, include
every form of literary production found among the Hebrews.
Purely dogmatic or philosophical teaching is, however, almost
entirely wanting. The range of teaching is restricted in a
most practical way to the needs, the questions, and the
circumstances of the particular age. Even the moral sections
of the law, and the sayings of the prophets and sages are
couched in thoroughly popular language without any of the
art of the schools. It is only towards the close of this whole
epoch, e.g. in Ecclesiastes, that we find anything akin to a
philosophical mode of treatment. Of course, the writings that
give the simplest and fullest explanation of their religious
standpoint, are such as were directly intended for religious
and moral instruction. From these, with a knowledge of the
circumstances in which they arose, one has no difficulty in
finding the desired information.
The task is more difficult when the pieces to be dealt with
are strictly poetical. For even when these are of a religious
character, one has always to bear in mind the peculiarities of
poetry, its instinctive appeal to the senses, and its love for
hyperbole. Still more is this the case when the pieces
are secular, and do not betray their religious background,
unless involuntarily. This is true of the secular folk-song
and of the earliest form of epic poetry, with its instinctive
tendency to a naively sensuous presentation of the spiritual, as

16 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
is the case in all the oldest traditions of the primitive age of
Israel. It is equally true of the secular drama, as in
Canticles, where the spirit of the Old Testament religion can
be detected only by a spiritual insight more than usually keen.
On the same level we have the " vision," so frequent in the
prophetical books, in which the spiritual manifests itself to the
senses, not as an object of thought, but of inner contempla
tion, framed in a setting of constantly recurring forms ; —
next, the " symbol," which depicts a religious thought by an
outward act ; and then the " parable," in which eternal truths
are dressed in the garb of simple stories from nature and
from the life of the people. Lastly, we must also, in a certain
sense, include in this category prophecy proper, inasmuch as
it, too, describes in a variety of ways the eternal truths of
religion in relation to the development of the kingdom of God,
clothing them in the language of poetry, and applying them in
a concrete form to individual cases. In this whole province
1 the problem is to distinguish between the real meaning
and the mere form in which it is presented, to recognise as
the essential feature of the highly - coloured picture, the
religious, the moral, the eternal. In such cases, any one
without an instinct for poetic expression will be sure to
fall into innumerable misunderstandings.
2. To Biblical theology, the historical books present a
problem of much greater difficulty. This is not due to their
being of very varied literary value. That would not matter,
since we only want to learn from them in what condition
religion and morals were at the particular time. It is be-
J cause we really cannot be sure that they are of equal historical
credibility. For even in the case of an author animated by
the deepest religious spirit and by the most disinterested
love of truth, historical credibility depends on the nature of
1 the documents at his command, and on his own nearness
in time and place to the events which he describes. No
book can be a trustworthy authority as to events from

BOOKS OF NARRATIVE. 17
which, without any intervening records, it stands hundreds
of years apart. In the most favourable circumstances,
it may, indeed, give an essentially accurate description
of the general condition of such times. But what is for our
object precisely the most important thing, it cannot do. It
cannot give a trustworthy and detailed account of the reli-^
gious colouring of these distant ages. Consequently, the
historical credibility of the Biblical writings must vary.
From this standpoint we have two classes of writings
between which to distinguish. Those books of narrative, the
authors of which were qualified, by personal position, or from
possessing original documents, to form a historically trust
worthy judgment regarding the things narrated by them, are
for us authorities as to the religious development of the age
which they describe. Such is the oldest form of Kings and
Judges, and such, too, is the main document in Ezra and
Nehemiah. But those books, in regard to which we have
sufficient reason to doubt such qualification, are for us
authorities as to the religious development of the age in
which they arose, and the views of which they express.
Thus the stories about pre-Mosaic times are authorities as ¦
to religion as it was in the age of their authors; and the
book of Chronicles, though without value for an inquiry
into the religion of Hezekiah's time, not to speak of David's,
is one of the most important original authorities for under
standing the state of religion at the close of the Persian
period. 3. Consequently we shall not be surprised to find, in the
Old Testament, books of narrative that are little to be trusted
as historical authorities. But that will not make them less
important in our eyes, for they still remain original authorities
as much as before, although only for the age in which they
were written. But here a more difficult question meets us,
viz. whether, in view of the character which Christian faith,
04 the ground of its direct religious experience, assigns to
vol. 1. B

18 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
these books, there can be included in the Old Testament even
books of narrative, the contents of which are not history at all,
but wholly or partly legend and myth.
We here make the preliminary remark that, of course, the
expressions myth and legend have not, in themselves, a fixed
and rigid meaning. We certainly do not intend to homologate
every meaning which has at one time or another been assigned
to these words, or may on linguistic grounds be assigned to
them. We shall therefore state, first, what we understand
by legend, and then, what we understand by myth.
4. Wherever we see a nation stepping forth out of the
darkness of the prehistoric age into the light of historical life,
it invariably brings with it, as one of its most precious spiritual
treasures, the national legend. How a nation originated ;
what its ancestors were like ; how it first awoke and be
thought itself of national glory, — all this is not handed down
by history pure and simple, for which such ages have neither
opportunity nor motive, but is preserved in song, in proverb,
and in story ; and being in this form handed on and enriched,
this material is at last combined into a single whole by
virtue of the poetic spirit in the nation, — that spirit in which
resides the mysterious motive power that impels each people
to undertake its own special task among the family of
nations. Wherever the memory of a period as yet without a litera
ture is transmitted orally, we always find legend. A nation
wreathes around the figures of its ancestors and the places
famous in its earliest days a many-coloured garland of spon
taneous poetry — not a garland of fiction or of falsehood. To
the popular mind, the figures of primeval days become instinct
with life, dowered with the vigour of imperishable youth.
Hence in legend there is invariably a historical kernel. But
while it is the task of criticism to extract the historical
kernel from history which ignorance or falsehood has garbled
or destroyed, legend confronts the investigator as a unity

MYTH AND LEGEND IN THE SACRED BOOKS. 19
which does not admit of his separating the kernel from
its adornment — that is to say, as itself a historical fact,
and that, too, one of the weightiest. Still it readily reveals
itself as legend. It longs to be loved and prized as such ;
it does not wish to borrow the false adornment of historicity.
In legend, persons and times assume a superhuman character.
Heaven and earth do not keep apart as in a historical age.
The laws of probability, chronology, and development retire
into the background. But, above all, the chief figures become
typical, the accepted models of the nation's character, and
of its task in history. Consequently, legend lets us look
into the innermost heart of a nation and watch the flow of
those living springs from which its historical life wells up.1
Hence the perennial freshness of legend ; hence the feeling of
having to do with figures of flesh and blood, more real than
those of history. Indeed, one never feels so much at home
in history as in legend. One sits by the hearth in a people's
home and listens there to the very breathing of its inner life.
That the people of Israel did preserve the memory of
its earliest days, not in history, but in legend, must be
regarded as self-evident, unless we are willing to think
of that people as crippled in one of the noblest attributes
of nationality. Whoever, for dogmatic reasons, questions
the existence of such "legends" in the Old Testament,
must assume that Israel's legendary history has been lost
to us, and that, in the sacred writers, its place has been
taken by a knowledge of history miraculously acquired.
Certainly an idea as fanciful as it is devoid of religious
support ! For how could the filling of the sacred writers
with the spirit of true religion help them to a special know
ledge of historical facts ? Nowhere within the range of our
experience does a growing fulness of this spirit tend to a
1 In the same way, the characteristic features of a Greek are much more
distinctly seen in Odysseus and Achilles, and those of a German in Siegfried
and Hagen, than in any historical personages belonging to these nations.

20 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
growing certainty in the domain of experimental know
ledge. On such a theory, what would become of the value
attached to original documents, and to the testimony of
eye-witnesses ?
This fanciful idea depends entirely upon the groundless
prejudice that legend is not a suitable medium for the spirit
of revelation to employ. But a narrative does not become a
specially suitable medium for revelation because it is in
exact correspondence with fact. In this respect even the
historical books in our Canon vary according to the talents
and the position of the writer, and the authorities at his
command. Indeed, they are all far inferior, so far as facts
are concerned, to the histories which modern science com
piles from official documents. Neither does this fitness
depend upon giving trustworthy information about the people
of revelation. Josephus does not belong to the Canon,
because he writes Jewish history ; and a history of Israel
from the standpoint of Tacitus, in spite of its historical
excellence, would not be in its proper place among the
sacred books. History itself becomes sacred history, that is
to say, a medium of revelation, simply and solely because
it either places us, by means of original documents, in
direct contact with the development of revealed religion, or,
being handled in the spirit of that religion, shows us thereby
a stage of it. And the Holy Spirit, of course, excludes
deceit and lying. Still He does not render impossible forms
of presentation which may not appear to us quite permis
sible, but which were, nevertheless, in perfect harmony with
the view of the period in question, as, for example, history
written with a purpose (Tendenzgeschichte) and pseudonymity.
For it is only the moral standard actually in force at the time
that can be taken into consideration. Our method of writing
history the ancient world did not know, and did not aim at.
It was far less concerned about ascertaining the details of
what had actually happened than about expounding or

MYTH AND LEGEND IN THE SACRED BOOKS. 21
defending the great principles and truths exemplified in
history. Still less does the Holy Spirit exclude error or
ignorance regarding matters of fact. This same Spirit — and
there is not a second — did not make Luther the equal of
Humboldt or Laplace in scientific knowledge, or Augustine
comparable as a linguist and historian to Sallust, Thucy-
dides, or Grimm. All scientific knowledge depends upon the
gift of keen observation and the power of skilfully combining
and ingeniously testing the various facts obtained by means
of such observation. The spirit of revelation, on the contrary,
illumines the moral and religious life. It gives a conscious
ness of the divine will. Hence it places even the phenomena
of nature in a new light, and specially fits a man to judge of
nature and history from the standpoint of religion. The
keenness of his historical instinct did not teach Tacitus tha
ways of God, or make him see in the divine kingdom founded
by the Jesus whom he so despised, the centre of the world's
history. The matchless breadth of his views regarding nature
did not lead Aristotle to statements like " Let there be light,"
and " The heavens declare the glory of God." But on such
matters the spirit of holiness can neither increase nor correct
the inductions of science. Hence it cannot prevent a historian
imagining that he is giving us history when there is only
legend. Now the characteristic spirit, to which the special achieve
ments of a people are due, finds expression in the legends of
that people ; and these legends are themselves due to the
influence and the critical powers of those men who have the
creative instinct of that people most strongly developed within
them. Hence the legends of Israel must have been shaped
and fashioned by that Spirit which determined the special
task assigned by God to that people, in other words, by the
Holy Spirit of divine revelation as manifested in the true
religion. These legends must therefore have been due to the
men who were the religious leaders of Israel, and who guided

22 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the development of that nation's religion. In fact, legend
must be regarded as fitted in a higher degree than history to
be the medium of the Holy Spirit. For in history every
figure expresses only in an approximate and imperfect fashion
what the Spirit at work in that particular people desires. In
the legend, however, it is this very Spirit which moulds these
figures and gives them flesh and blood. They become model-
figures, ideal characters. They show in unfading clearness
and beauty the natural Israel on which the spirit of revelation
is at work. Hence the peculiar characteristics of Israel as
the religious nation par excellence never find such accurate and
vigorous expression in any historical personages as in those
met with in the patriarchal legends. Abraham is for Old
Testament revelation a more instructive figure than all the
kings of Israel from Saul to Zedekiah. In Jacob-Israel the
Israelite is more truly delineated than in any personage
mentioned in Kings or Chronicles. Hence the matchless
value of patriarchal legend for purposes of edification. Where
we meet with legend, it cannot warrant any conclusion on our
part as to the religious development of the age of which it
treats; but for giving us a knowledge of the religion of the
age out of which it springs, it is the most valuable material
we possess.
5. As history springs from legend, doctrine springs from
myth ; that is to say, from thoughts, embodied in narrative
form, concerning the essence of the phenomenal world. In
myth, transcendental knowledge previously acquired is not,
as in a parable, purposely veiled in a symbolic garb, but form
and contents are born together, and that spontaneously. The
whole presents itself ready-made as an actual fact. Myths
are " discovered rather than invented." Being invariably
simple and perfectly apposite, they have all the appearance
of intrinsic necessity. Hence the inclination to regard them
as sacred. In such symbols and myths, the sense appeals
directly to the spectator or hearer through the external object

MYTH AND LEGEND IN THE SACRED BOOKS. 23
or history, just as it was first directly apprehended in them
(Welcker, i. 56, 75).
Beyond human history and legend begins the region
accessible only to faith. Thus myth, as the quasi-historical
delineation of what faith has grasped, introduces legend, giving
us as a kind of legendary prelude an account of creation,
of the ideal development of man, and the meaning of his
material and spiritual nature. It next works its way deep
into the structure of legend, mostly, it is true, toned down in
a Euhemeristic fashion, so that the gods of antiquity and the
phenomena of nature, taken in the sense of nature-religion,
are reduced to the level of human heroes, with human joys,
griefs, and struggles.
Finally, as the myth of human destiny, it carries up
history to the eternal again, and completes the circle of
vision. The formation of myth ceases with the times
in which the nature-religions are shaped and modified by
the peoples in naive freshness and vivacity. Where a
religion, regarded as fully matured, has become an occult
doctrine in the hands of priests and scribes, there may
very well be a further artificial development of myth, but
there is no longer any genuine creation of it. The proper
time for forming myths is, as Max Miiller has correctly
maintained, the time when languages are growing. Myth
and language arise together. Such myths, closely and in
separably connected in most cases with national legends,
every people brings with it from remote antiquity. To
some extent they are the common possession of entire
stocks, that afterwards become divided. But they get a
different stamp according to the national genius and religious
development of each individual branch. For " a myth can
be enlarged and adorned, and even united with another as if
by a process of inoculation or amalgamation" (Welcker, 75).
Such myths are among the noblest possessions of early
peoples. While bearing the imprint of the freshness of the

24 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
human spirit in its infancy, they also witness to the maturity
of a time when but few great things were observed with
unsophisticated eyes.
That in this respect also, Israel did not come poor and
with empty hands out of the bosom of the larger family of
nations to which it belonged, is as self-evident as that it
did not, on beginning its separate existence, create a new
language or new national habits and customs, but only
developed in its own way those which it already possessed.
It is equally clear that the later spiritual religion of Israel
cannot of itself have produced such myths, but that they
date from times in which the religion of the Hebrew race
was still a nature-religion. Nor can there be any valid
reason why such myths should not have found their way into
the Bible. The mythical ideas about the origin of the world
and of man, held in common by the primitive Semites,
naturally took in each tribe a particular form, according
to the cast of its spirit and religion. Thus in Israel, too, the
spirit which sustained and developed Israel's religion could
appropriate such myths as raw material, and saturate them
with its true and enduring beliefs concerning God, the world,
and man. As long as Israel's religion was in full vigour, it
would be in a position to appropriate aud incorporate such
material as came to it from without. It was only when it
had ceased to grow, and, having lost its vitality, had become
conscious of its weakness, that it would hold shyly aloof from
such influences.
When myths were thus adopted, their original form would
necessarily remain and indicate their kinship with the stories
of a wider circle of nations. But in this common form the
religious peculiarity of Israel must have stood out in all the
greater contrast to whatever was foreign. The spirit that was
creating Israel's religion would have to remould the dis
tinctive contents of these stories, and, as a matter of course,
despite the affinity of form, reproduce them from within and

MYTH AND LEGEND IN THE SACRED BOOKS. 25
purify them. Thus myth grows into revelation-myth. And,
in fact, it is undeniable that the earlier myths of the Persians,
Hindoos, Phoenicians, and, above all, of the Chaldeans, are
closely akin in form to the Bible stories. But as regards
their religious character, the difference is as great as the
difference between the religions of these nations and the
religion of revelation. In the Old Testament the myth " is
born again by the creative power of the living self-revealing
God " (Riehm).
This revelation-myth is the most appropriate of all dresses
in which to present the true religion. In this form its
content can be unfolded in the freest manner, because the
form adapts itself readily and naturally to it. Hence it
surpasses every other kind of narrative. With its marvel
lous childlike beauty, in which there lie the deepest truth
and wisdom, it speaks straight to the heart. For the deepest
intellect it is deep ; for the child it is winning and simple.
It is the brightest gem in the Old Testament. The case is
different, of course, where there lie scattered, here and there
in the national legend, fragments of the mythical treasures of
a nature-religion which the true religion has not properly
assimilated. Having been toned down in Euhemeristic
fashion, and having thus lost their vitality, such fragments
have no religious value for Israel. But out of the myths
appropriated by the religion of Israel, and independently
worked up, we have to gather the religious purport, though,
of course, only as proof of the religious development of the
age which appropriated them.
6. Of the legendary character of the pre -Mosaic narra
tives, the time of which they treat is a sufficient proof. It
was a time prior to all knowledge of writing, a time separated
by an interval of more than four hundred years, of which
there is absolutely no history, from the nearest period of
which Israel had some dim historical recollection, a time
when in civilised countries writing was only beginning to be

26 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
used for the most important matters of State. Now wander
ing herdsmen have invariably an instinctive dislike to writing.
In fact, at the present day, it is considered a disgrace among
many Bedouin tribes in the peninsula of Sinai to be able to
write. It is therefore impossible that such men could hand
down their family histories, in themselves quite unimportant,
in any other way than orally, to wit, in legends. And even
when writing had come into use, in the time, that is, between
Moses and David, it would be but sparingly used, and much
that happened to the people must still have been handed
down simply as legend. Besides, the legendary character of
these stories is proved by the superhuman proportions
assigned to time and power, while at the same time no
emphasis is placed on the miraculous. Thus the patriarchs are
described exactly after the fashion of ancient heroes.1 The
length of their lives before and immediately after the Flood
are whole epochs,2 and the periods of time are given in round
numbers that are typical.3 In fact, this mode of representa
tion did not lose its influence during Israel's Palestinian
history.4 That we are dealing with legend is indicated by the
disregard of historical probability, and by the easy tolerance
of contradictions in many passages of Genesis which, never
theless, retain to the full their evidential value in spite of
the ridicule which infidelity has frequently cast upon them.
When a Cain builds cities, and is afraid of the blood-
avenger; when all kinds of animals enter a vessel like the
ark ; when the waters rise fifteen feet above all the mountain
tops, at a period when there were already civilised States in
Egypt and in the Euphrates valley ; when Abraham, whose
begetting of Isaac was a miracle, becomes afterwards the
father of many sons ; when Sarah, who mocks at the promise

1 Gen. xiv., xxix. 9 ff., xxxi. 45 ff. (Gilead, Mizpah), xxxii. 23 ff., xxxiv. 25 ff.
2 Gen. v., ix. 29, xxv. 7, xxxv. 28 (on the other hand, vi. 3).
3 Gen. v. 23, vii. 4, viii. 6, 10, 12.
4 Judg. iii. 11, 30, v. 31, viii. 28, xv. 16 ; Josh. v. 6 ; Deut. xxix. 5, etc.

MYTH AND LEGEND IN THE SACRED BOOKS. 27
of a son, becomes the object of Abimelech's intrigues, and so
forth, — all this is perfectly natural and unobjectionable in a
legend that has been composed out of a number of varying
traditions. Were it history, this would be in the highest
degree perplexing and inconceivable.1
In post - Mosaic times this manner of presentation is
certainly no longer the predominant one ; but many traces
of it can still be detected both in the history of the conquest
and in the narrative of pre-Davidic times.2 The presence of
legend is further shown in the naive way in which heaven
and earth commingle and the spiritual becomes material, — a
method of presentation wholly different from poetic descrip
tion by vision and dream. Whoever sees history in this
must come to such conclusions as that God was actually
nearer to a Jacob-Israel than to an Isaiah or a Jeremiah.8
This mode of narration is found all through Genesis, and
less frequently till the time of David.4 Finally, Genesis
betrays its legendary character in the following ways. It
often gives us the same story in several forms ; 5 it delights
to connect significant proper names or very ancient localities
with stories which owe their origin solely to the sound of the
name ; 6 and, as if the history of a people were like that of a
family,7 it habitually makes the links of connection genea
logical tables. The name Benjamin seems to me a specially
clear instance of this. In all the narratives of the older
popular cast, the members of this tribe are called Bn§(ha)-
jemini, the very way the Bedouin tribes of the present day

1 Gen. iv. 14, 17, vi. 19, vii. 2, 20, xvii. 17, xviii. 12, xx. 2, xxv.
a Ex. xii. 37 ; Josh, vi., viii., xvi.; cf. Judg. i. 7-36, xv. etc.
3 Gen. iii. 21 f., vii. 16, xi. 5, xviii. 8, 21, xxvi. 2, xxviii. 13, xxxii. 24 ff.
4 Ex. xix. 19 f., xxiv. 10, 12, xxxi. 18; Josh. v. 13 ff.; Judg. vi. Iiff., xiii.
3-25 ; 2 Kings ii. 11, etc.
6 Gen. xii., xx., xxvi., xxi. 22, xxvi. 26. The two accounts of the Flood.
6 Gen. ii. 23, iii. 20, iv. 1, 16, 17, 25, v. 29, xi. 9, xvi. 11, 13, xviii. 12, 13,
15, xix. 22, xxi. 9, xxii. 14, xxviii. 19, etc. Bethel, Beersheba, Isaac, Jacob,
Esau, etc.
7 Gen. x., xxv. 13 if., xxxvi.; cf. also Gen. iv. lif. with Num. xxiv. 21, 22.

28 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
usually describe themselves.1 It does not matter whether
the word Jemini be taken in a purely geographical sense,
when it would mean " Southern," 2 a Hebrew thinking of
himself as facing the east, or whether it have some other
meaning. As the tribe, moreover, is reckoned among the
sons of Joseph,3 it is quite clear that Benjamin is simply the
Hero Eponymus of a part of the tribe of Joseph, probably
the southern part of it, and so he is represented as Joseph's
younger brother.
If, for the reasons stated, the contents of the first eleven
chapters of Genesis would at any rate be regarded as
legendary, a more careful examination leads us to see that
these stories are strictly mythical. Certainly it is only tha
first three chapters that have become revelation-myths, in this
sense, that they present to us in the garb of a narrative the
ideas of the true religion about conditions antecedent to
experience. All the rest has been toned down to the
character of legend after the Euhemeristic method which the
Jewish Sibyl and the Church fathers 4 applied to the Greek
legends about the gods. In these chapters, however, there
are still dimly visible some very old recollections of four
world-epochs, and of Titanic convulsions on the earth.
The stories about creation, the primeval condition of man,
and the Fall, are myths. For whatever is external in the
narrative eludes the grasp of the expositor; the religious
ideas alone remain. This is best shown, in spite of them
selves, by those expositors who on principle accept these
narratives as history, and yet do not succeed in getting out
of them any other meaning than the advocates of the
mythical view. And certain as it is that the religious
import of these stories is characteristic of revealed religion,
1 Judg. iii. 15, xix. 16 ; 1 Sam. ix. 1-4, 21, xxii, 7 ; 2 Sam. xvi. 11, xix. 17,
xx. 1 ; Ps. vii. 1 ; 1 Kings ii. 8.
2 Ps. lxxxix. 13. s 2 Sam. xix. 21.
1 E.g. Origen, De Principiis, ed. Lommatzsch, p. 438.

MYTH AND LEGEND IN THE SACRED BOOKS. 29
it is equally certain that their form is not unconnected
with a wide circle of myths found among other peoples.
This might be doubted formerly when it was possible
to see in the accounts of Sanchuniathon, Berosus, and
Bundehesch, later compilations formed under Old Testa
ment influences. But it has now been proved to the
satisfaction even of one who is certainly not a credulous
judge of the monumental writings discovered in Nineveh,
that Berosus has, in his legends of the Creation and
the Flood, faithfully used the original documents of his
ancestral religion, a fact which tends to give credibility to
those narratives of his that have not yet been confirmed.
Besides, in these stories, speaking animals, miraculous trees,
and such like are not introduced as anything astonishing, —
like Balaam's speaking ass in the legend, — but as matters of
course. This, however, can only happen where the writer
has no intention of relating what has actually occurred, but
knows that he is dealing with a higher sphere. In Genesis
itself, indeed, the creation of the world is related twice, and
in such a way that, while the religious ideas remain the
same, the outward circumstances are widely different, which,
of course, is possible only in religious myths, not in histories
miraculously revealed. Nor is it a question of the same
narrator having a different intention, but of two narrators
taking different views of outward events. Thus the
whole animal world is in i. 24 created before man, but in
ii. 19 ff. after man (1VJ). In i. 9 herbs and trees are
created long before man ; in ii. 5 there is no green thing
before man, the reason, in fact, being that man has not yet
appeared C?), and it is for man that the trees are planted.
In like manner the earth is in i. 9 created out of the watery
element ; in ii. 5 ff. it requires first to be watered. Accord
ing to i. 27, v. 2, man and woman are created together;
according to ii. 21, woman is not created till after man.
According to i. 29, trees and herbs are at once given to man

30 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
for food ; according to iii. 18, the eating of herbs is a punish
ment, only the fruit of trees being man's original food.
Besides, the whole arrangement of the days of work in A is
rendered impossible by the phrase in the second narrative,
" in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the
earth." On more minute discrepancies, like the view as to
the classification of " creeping things," no stress need be laid
(i. 24-30, cf. ii. 19f., iii. 1, 14).
The short story in Gen. vi. 1-3 is worthy of special note.
Hupfeld has already pointed out how unjust to the honour of
Holy Scripture those are who take it as history, whether they
give the wrong explanation that " the sons of God " are pious
men or Sethites, or whether they really think of angels
marrying. The whole of this much disputed story is, in
reality, a parallel to Gen. iii. 22, giving a solution of the
question as to how death came into the world. It states as
the explanation of this event, that at the instigation of beings
superior to themselves, men gave up the natural position
whicli God had intended lor them. This whole story keeps
more on the level of nature than Gen. iii. does. In other
respects it might well be compared with the temptation by
the serpent and the "being as God." The preface to this
piece shows that it belongs, not to the passage in which it
now occurs, but to the beginning of the history of man,
and should, therefore, precede chaps, iv. and v.1 In this
piece, as in an instructive torso, we see how the mythical
world of the Hebrew nation appeared when not fully con
trolled by the purer ideas of the religion of Israel, — though
at least traces of the latter are shown in the condemnatory
judgment passed on what is monstrous.
1 According to Budde, the determining ver. 3 would have its original posi
tion just in chap, iii., and was pushed out of its proper place when the idea
about the tree of life forced its way in. His conjecture is certainly clever and
attractive, but it seems to me to rest on too insecure a basis (Die biblische
Urgeschichte [Gen. i.-xii. 5], untersucht von Lie. Karl Budde, Giessen 1883,
i. and ii.).

LITERATURE. 31
The result may be given in outline as follows :— Genesis is
the book of sacred legend, with a mythical introduction. The
first three chapters of it, in particular, present us with revela
tion-myths of the most important kind, and the following eight
with mythical elements that have been recast more in the form
of legend. From Abraham to Moses we have national legend
pure and simple, mixed with a variety of mythical elements
which have become almost unrecognisable. From Moses to
David we have history still mixed with a great deal of the
legendary, and even partly with mythical elements that are
no longer distinguishable. From David onwards we have
history, with no more legendary elements in it than are every
where present in history as written by the ancients.

CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN CONNECTION "WITH
THE HISTORY OF RELIGION.
Literature. — For the theological treatment, Diestel,
Geschichte des Alten Testamentes in der christlichen Kirche,
Jena 1869. Spencer, Be legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus et
earum notionibus libri ires, ed. 3, Leipzig 1705 (dissert, i.
lib. iii., Be ritibus e gentium moribus in legem translatis, 759-
937). For the philosophical treatment, Hegel, Religions-
philosophic, ed. Marheineke, Bd. ii. 46-184 (Aufl. 2); Philo
sophic der Geschichte, Aufl. 2, p. 238 ff. Rosenkranz, Bie
Naturreligion ein philosophisch-historischer Versuch, 1831, and
Zeitschrift fiir die speculative Theologie (ed. Bruno Bauer),
1837, Bd. ii. 1, p. 11 ff [Against Hegel, Nitzsch (Theol.
Stud. u. Krit. 1836, iv. 1096-1107). Against Hegel and
Rust, Steudel (Tubing er Zeitschrift fiir Theologie, 1835, i.
112 ff, ii. 138 ff).] — -Vatke, Religion des Alien Testamentes,

32 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
1835, Bd. i. 99-120. Bruno Bauer, Religion des Alten
Testamentes in der geschichtlichen Entwicklung ihrer Principien
dargestellt, Bd. i. 1838; cf. Zeitschrift fiir speculative Theo
logie, Bd. i. 2, 247 ff. (1836), Bas Antitheologische am
Hegelschen Begriff der hebraischen Religion, and I.e. 1837,
p. 329 f. — Rust, Philosophie und Christenthum oder Wissen
und Glauben (I have seen only the first edition, 1825),
p. 53 ff. F. Baur, Christliche Gnosis, 1835, p. 721 ff. (esp.
p. 727 against Rust and Hegel). — Billroth, Vorlesungen uber
Religionsphilosophie, ed. Erdmann, Aufl. 2, 1844, § 105—110.
Braniss, Uebersicht des Entwicklungsganges der Philosophie in
der alten und mittleren Zeit, 1842, p. 24 ff. Stuhr, Allgemeine
Geschichte der Religionsformen der heidnischen Volker, Bd. i. ;
Bie Religionssysteme der heidnischen Volker des Orients, Ein-
leitung, pp. xviii, xx. F. Kbppen, Philosophie des Christenthums,
1813, Th. i. p. 57 ff. Lotze, Microcosmos, Bd. iii. 147.
Schelling, Sdmmiliche Werke, Abth. ii. Bd. i. 118 ff, Bd. iv.
119 ff. Immanuel Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der
blossen Vernunft, 1794, esp. pp. 47, 84, 109, 146 ff, 188,
224 ff. Feuerbach, Bas Wesen des Christenthums, Aufl. 3,
1849, c. 12. Strauss, Ber alte und der neue Glaube, Aufl. 3,
1872, p. 103 ff.
1. The Old Testament religion, as merely one stage of
religion, and that not the highest, naturally falls to be com
pared with the other pre-Christian religions. Hence Old
Testament theology must take account of the attempts that
have been made to bring this religion into connection with
the general religious development of mankind. For historical
purposes, it must be admitted, every phenomenon is but a
single link in the continuous chain of human affairs until it
has shown itself to be something creative, something new, in
other words, a starting-point for special developments. Now
such a starting-point will certainly not lose its connection
with the parent soil of human history. Still it receives its
only adequate explanation when referred to the mystery of

FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THEOLOGY. 33
those creative and determining divine forces by which the
world, both of sense and of spirit, is upheld. For our task of
describing the Old Testament religion, we cannot be properly
equipped till we have got a firm grasp of it in its natural
limits and connections.
As long as the sacred documents were looked at from the
standpoint of uncritical reverence, theology was naturally
unable to attempt a judicial estimate of the Old Testament
religion. Least of all could it compare or connect the Old
Testament with heathen religions. Spencer was the first to
venture something of the kind, but as yet from a thoroughly
orthodox standpoint, for it was only in a number of external
matters that he asserted there was a connection between
the religion of Israel and that of Egypt. If one wished to
make a theological comparison, all that one was really allowed
to do was to compare the two Testaments. Thus, against the
Judaao-Christian amalgamation of both Testaments, as well as
against the old Catholic assumption of their essential similarity,
protests had been already raised by certain Gnostics, who, fol
lowing a one-sided interpretation of supposed Pauline hints,
ascribed to the Old Testament a God different from the God
of Christianity, that is, a different religious principle. Accord
ing to some, for example Basilides and Valentinus, this was a
more secular, less truly spiritual principle ; according to others,
for instance Marcion, it was a principle excluding love, and
rooted entirely in law, that is, in righteousness ; in other cases,
as among the Ophites, it was an absolutely immoral principle,
a principle of persistent envy and selfishness, of antagonism to
the better spirit in man. Comparisons of this kind could
not but be made in later times also, as soon as a freer atti
tude towards the Biblical records was taken up. Two distinct
tendencies then became apparent. Those who, like Semler and
Schleiermacher, insist strongly on the perfect character of
historical Christianity (cf. Glaulenslehre, § 12, 129), separate
the Old Testament from the New with conscious or unconscious
vol. i. c

34 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
disparagement of the former, and recognise only an external
historical connection between the two. But others, who, like
Kaiser in his first period of development, seek to reach some
thing higher than the Biblical religion as it is, have a direct
interest in placing both Testaments as nearly as possible on
the same level.
As soon as a judicial estimate of the Old Testament religion
was ventured on, the question had to be faced as to what
constituted its distinctive peculiarity, the fundamental prin
ciple which it embodied in contrast with other religions.
' Now, the feature that first attracts attention is its monotheism,
the exclusion of all gods save one from being acknowledged
and worshipped by the people of Israel. It is unquestion
ably the fact that in later times the faith of Israel centred
with the utmost constancy on this point — on the Echad of
Deuteronomy, which became the watchword of the martyrs.1
Accordingly the popular conception of the Old Testament
has generally taken this to be its main characteristic.2 But
the monotheism of the Old Testament is essentially practical.
It does not at first lay stress on there being only one God, but
on the duty of Israel to have only one God. Indeed, the
more recent estimate of Israel's religion sees, not without good
reason, in the conscious monotheism which distinguishes
Israel from the kindred peoples, a tolerably late development
of Old Testament religion. Besides, a monotheism is imagin
able, and in fact exists, which, as a nature-worship, is at least
as far removed from the Old Testament idea of God, as for
instance, the moral polytheism of the religion of Olympus.
1 From the Shema' of Deut. vi. 4, cf. Gratz, Die Geschichte des Judenthurm
nach den Quellen, 1856, Th. iv. 193 f. on the death of Rabbi Aquiba.
2 This does not apply to de Wette's definition, "The practical idea of
one God as a holy will, when cleared of myth and symbolised in the theocracy,
is the foundation-principle of the Hebrew nation," or with the assertion of
Baumga-rten-Crusius, "that the Mosaic religion was practical, and limited
to the single idea of the true God as the faithful patron of the Israelitish
people." For in both the emphasis is laid on the relation of this Cod to His
people.

FROM THE STANDPOINT OF PHILOSOPHY. 35
Consequently monotheism as such is not a suitable term by
which to define the religion of the Old Testament.
But even when the religion of Israel was in its prime, and
though one were to speak only of its moral and spiritual
monotheism, the unity of God was not the real foundation-
principle of this religion. As theoretical knowledge in the
technical sense, this would be a principle sufficient only for a
reformation. Consequently it is, in fact, the foundation-
principle of Islam which, without any creative force of its
own, puts itself forward in a merely human and negative way
as a purification of existing religions. But the Old Testament
religion is, as a religion, of a thoroughly creative character.
Hence that by which it is admittedly marked off from
surrounding heathenism cannot be its fundamental idea.
It became so only when Judaism, robbed of its creative spirit,
degenerated into a sect.
Just as little is the emphasising of the doctrine of a per
sonal God independent of the world to be regarded as the
special characteristic of Israel's religion. For in this respect
Israel scarcely felt that it had diverged from the religions of
the other Semites.
2. Among the philosophical critics of religions we meet,
first of all, with a number of men who, having a decided dis
like to the Old Testament religion, have seen in it a low type
of religion, and one even that is hostile to the higher develop
ment of man's spiritual life. At the first glance one is
astonished to find Immanuel Kant pronouncing a judgment
of this kind. For the emphasis laid upon the Moral Law as
absolutely binding, and the practical nature of Old Testament
religion, free from all metaphysics, seem to agree admirably
with his own system. Nevertheless, he is of opinion that
Judaism is really not a religion at all, but a body of purely
statutory laws upon which a civil constitution was based.
His idea is that, since no religion can be conceived of without
belief in a future life, Judaism, as such, had no religious

36 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
faith ; that, in fact, this fundamental religions conception
was intentionally eliminated, because, it was only something
political that was aimed at, not something ethical. Indeed,
he asserts (148) that polytheism would, if the gods were only
thought of as requiring moral conduct, be even more suitable
for a religion than the worship of a god who merely issues
commands that do not call for an improvement in the moral
disposition. What first prejudiced Kant against the Old Testament was
that its morality is thoroughly " heteronomous," and that it
seems to favour Eudaemonism (147), and therefore to mar the
purity of moral endeavour. But he overlooks the fact that this
apparent Eudaemonism is connected solely with the transitional
stage of history, to which, undoubtedly, a part of the Old
Testament belongs, but which was already surmounted in the
Old Testament itself, and that the most important parts of
the Old Testament lay emphasis in the grandest way on the
relation of the heart to God, and to what is morally good.
He separates, in a manner that is quite unjustifiable, what he
calls Judaism in its purity from the prophetic elements in
the Old Testament. Judaism cannot but appear to him poor,
after he has withdrawn from it its choicest treasures, as being
" non-Jewish." It is only the Levitical corruption of Israel's
religion that is, according to him, the real Old Testament
religion. Besides, he is wrong as to the importance that
attaches, in religion, to a belief in a personal existence after
death, and he forgets that a religion cannot possibly present
the postulates of morality save in the form of the revealed
will of God. Finally, he cannot bring himself to understand
that in the Old Testament, as is unquestionably the case, the
moral and religious life of man is conceived of, in the first
instance, as national life, and he judges of this fact as if the
civil, as such, were, for the Old Testament, the ultimate aim.
But in Israel the civil is of importance only in so far as it is
religious.

FEUERBACH. O 7
English Deism, as well as the German antichristian move
ment, e.g. in Feuerbach, showed itself directly hostile to the
Old Testament. The Old Testament is represented as the
stage of egoism. But whoever calls a yearning after per
sonal communion with God egoism, must give the same name
to every development of healthy and vigorous religious life,
as well as to all true love and friendship. On that sup
position he would have to see in Christianity the religion
of egoism. This is even to outdo the Ophites. For it is
really only in the Old Testament that the latter would
make out that God is the principle of egoism, the principle of
stolid resistance to change, without inner justification, in con
trast to the spirit of life and freedom. But on Feuerbach's
view the self-same principle would be found in every religion
which concedes personality to God. Besides, this estimate of
the Old Testament is as superficial as it is unjust. The restric
tion of religion to national ends, and the bestowal of rewards
upon virtue, are the necessary consequences of the historical
conditions in which this religion arose. But, of itself, it
carries one far beyond such thoughts. How can egoism be
more utterly annihilated than when the law demands the
absolute surrender of the ego to the idea of the people of
God ? How can opposition to egoism be more strikingly
manifested than when the prophet foretells the self-sacrificing
love of the servant of Jehovah ? This modern Gnosis, with its
estimate of the Old Testament, will make no impression on
any one who has read that book with pious care, and given it
a thorough and unprejudiced examination. And just as little
will any one who really understands Old Testament piety, be
impressed when Renan and Strauss, misled by the spirit of
Indo-Germanic pride of race, find in the religion of Semitic
Israel the religion of a migratory horde, and the expression of
a national spirit undeveloped and poor in thought, when con
trasted with the brilliant world of Indo-Germanic myth and
philosophy. Were that the right view of the matter, Judaism,

38 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Mohammedanism, and Christianity could never have laid
hold of the civilised nations of the Aryan race, or per
meated their spiritual life.
3. A really complete and harmonious estimate of Old
Testament religion, in relation to the general religious history
of mankind, was first formed by Hegel, and discussed in the
circle of philosophers and theologians who acknowledged him
as leader. To this estimate no one will presume to deny
originality, brilliancy, and depth. But in the present con
dition of the science of comparative religion it is practically
useless, being based on a far too meagre and one - sided
acquaintance with human religions. A view which regards
the Greek and Roman religions as the only higher forms of
piety among "heathen" religions, and which has nothing
special to say of the religion of the Hindoo, or the Persian,
or the Buddhist, can no longer be considered satisfactory. It
is solely because of its historical interest that it deserves a
brief notice.
According to Hegel's own view,1 the whole of heathenism
proper, as " nature-religion," is at the lowest stage of religious
development. The divine, not being yet distinguished from
the natural, is conceived of as the fortuitous. Hence these
religions are also the religions of magic. Christianity is the
highest stage, the religion of spirit, where the absolute spirit
is conceived of as indwelling in the finite as the One — that
is to say, where the finite consciousness knows God only in so
far as God knows Himself in it ; hence the religion of incar
nation and reconciliation. The necessary bridge between the
religion of nature and the religion of spirit is formed by
those three religions, in which the absolute is indeed dis
tinguished from the natural, though the higher unity of both
is not yet attained, viz. the religions of spiritual individuality
— the Greek, the Roman, and the Old Testament religion.
1 ReUgionsphilosophie, i. 263 ff., ii. 48, 49, 92, 95, 187, 188, 191, 222.
Philosophie der Geschichte, 239, 240.

HEGEL AND HIS SCHOOL. 39
Of these, that of the Old Testament is, in itself, the least
complete. For, while the Greek religion, as the religion of
beauty, freedom, and humanity, strives after the higher unity,
and the Roman State-religion, as the religion oi purpose, deals
with the thought of the absolute in the conception of the
State, and seeks to give it human expression, — in the Old
Testament religion, as the religion of sublimity, the separation
between God and man is made in the sharpest possible way,
without the higher unity of the two being really attained. But
it is just for this very reason that this religion, as being the
most consistent carrying out of the separation of the human
and natural from the divine, is the only satisfactory starting-
point from which to reach the highest stage. " It is the
Jewish people which God has kept for Himself as the old
pain of the world," since " infinity of pain could only exist
where God is known as one God, as a purely spiritual
God." It is certainly somewhat fairer to the Old Testament to
acknowledge, as Vatke does (113, 114), that within the
sphere of religion, the Greek conception of beauty affords only
a superficial reconciliation, and that for our purpose the Roman
State does not admit of any real comparison with the idea of
" the kingdom of God." The same may be said of Bruno
Bauer's position. He holds, with Hegel, that the Greek
religion is superior to that of the Old Testament in the
beauty and freedom of its morality ; while the Roman is
superior in its practical zeal for the general good, and its
insistence on the rights of the individual. At the same time
he maintains with the utmost emphasis that both these
religions are quite inferior to that of the Old Testament. In
the case of the Greeks this is due to their want of a real
consciousness of sin, and to the consequent view of morality
as a purely natural growth ; and in the case of the Romans, to
their subordination of the divine to a merely relative end,
the power of the State. But neither of these scholars has

40 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
emancipated himself from the formulae of Hegel and his arbi
trariness in comparing only the Greek and Roman religions
with that of the Old Testament. Indeed, both of them fail
to see that the deepest characteristic of Old Testament piety
lies, not in the opposition of God and man, but rather in their
growing unity in the kingdom of God already beginning on
earth. And this last mistake occurs even where the Hegelian school
avoids the first, where it represents the Old Testament alone
as the intermediate stage between heathenism and Christi
anity. For both Rust (71, 72, 166) and Baur (166, 173,
722) regard Judaism, the stage of understanding, opinion,
reflection, authority, and law, as standing contrasted, not only
with heathenism, the stage of immediate feeling or intuition,
but also with Christianity, the stage of reason. Thus a differ
ence of degree between the Old Testament and the New, viz.
that full spiritual communion between God and man is in
the Old still a growing process, is changed into a difference
of kind, as if the essence of the old covenant consisted in
its not being the new covenant, whereas what had to be
emphasised above all else was that the old, like the new,
was a covenant between God and man.
4. Much more correct is the judgment which Schelling
pronounces on the position of the Old Testament in the classi
fication of religions. According to him, heathenism, the
sphere of the general working of the Son of God, is to be
distinguished from revelation proper, the sphere of His
personal working, as historia profana from historia sacra.
But within sacred history itself the Old Testament is dis
tinguished from the New by the fact that in the Old the
worship of the true God is still influenced and determined by
antagonism to the false god of heathenism.
According to Schelling's conception of the development
of religions, people originally worshipped Elohim, that is,
the Godhead, there being as yet no distinction between the

SCHELLING. 41
true God and the false. In other words, the idea of mono
theism as distinguished from polytheism had not yet arisen.
On the intrusion of the second false god (the female), poly
theism arose, but at the same time also monotheism as its
opposite. For those who did not accept the new God, their
" Godhead " now became the one true God (Jehovah) in
contrast to the various false gods. In this way the true
God reveals Himself to Abraham. But His revelation works
through mythology, that is, can only be understood from the
fact that in heathenism the consciousness of the true God is
strained and obscured. The Old Testament exists just to
contrast the true God with the false. It presupposes the
existence of God (Elohim), who, however, has also become the
starting-point of polytheism. Hence the monotheism of
Abraham is not yet a non-mythological monotheism. A great
many of the puzzling institutions in the Old Testament are
only to be explained by the fact that revelation still clings
to this heathen principle as its own presupposition, even when
what is heathen in it has become mere material on which to
work. Hence Christianity had to do away with the Old
Testament as such in the same way as with heathenism.
It frees revelation from whatever elements still cling to it
through its having issued forth out of heathenism.1 If we
overlook the peculiarity of Schelling's general system of
constructing the history of religion, we must heartily approve
of his estimate of the Old Testament. Its religion is, like
Christianity, the revealed religion of the moral and spiritual
God, but still fettered and hampered by the nature of those
national religions out of which it sprang and in opposition to
which it grew up.
5. The opinions expressed by most modern philosophical
writers on religion are based on a similar view. According to
Billroth, the Old Testament is the preliminary stage of Chris
tianity. It is not yet the highest and final revelation, because
1 I. 145, 148, 160, 170, iv. 123, 124, 132 ff.

42 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the immanence of God is not yet recognised, because the
severance of the finite from the infinite is not yet abolished
from within, because the goodness, grace, and mercy of God
are still revealed through the medium of outward history,
bound up with the history of a particular nation. Neverthe
less it is revelation. The immediate oneness of God and the
world is abolished, and in the nation man has an actual and
real union with God. Stuhr takes a similar view of the Old
Testament, and so in all essential points does Kbppen,
notwithstanding his otherwise very one-sided estimate of it.
And Braniss teaches (24) that " until the reconciliation of
the natural and the divine is reached, all peoples must fall
into two great categories, the one of which declares nature
to be the ruling power, and the other God. In the former
case, it is true, the divine is also acknowledged but as a
something determined by nature ; in the latter, the natural
is present, but only as a something determined by God. The
concrete historical expression of these two categories is
heathenism and Judaism. Their original contrast is the key
that explains the whole life of the pre-Christian world."
And if this emphasises too strongly the contrast between the
Old Testament and heathenism, we must at any rate fully
assent to the beautiful saying of Lotze : " Among the theo
cratic nations of the East the Hebrews appear to us like
sober men among drunkards. To the ancient world they
doubtless seemed like dreamers among waking men "
(iii 147).
6. If we examine the religion of the Old Testament
from a purely historical point of view as one of the religions
of mankind, and for the time overlook its relation to Chris
tianity, then at the first glance it takes its place in its perfect
form among the prophetic or the ethico-historical religions in
the stricter sense of the word, and is thus distinguished from
the physical or the national religions. But at the same time
this final form of it is seen to be the result of a still explic-

AS A HISTORICAL RELIGION. 43
able historical development which has a connection with
physical and national religions.
In the earliest period of the history of nations, religion
meets us as elemental Nature-worship. Man in his weakness
and need feels himself subject to the mighty forces of
nature as if these were personal powers confronting him.
With these powers he strives to enter into personal rela
tions so as to make them serviceable to him, or at least
favourably disposed. Like every active force, they present
themselves to him as somehow akin to his own spiritual
life. But primarily it is not the moral life of his spirit
which he recognises in these absolute powers, but mere
power, mere will. At this stage the question as to one God
or many gods is still essentially a matter of indifference. It
is in the last analysis the same power which man encounters
everywhere, although it meets him in a thousand different and
even conflicting forms and manifestations. Contrasted with
the systematic development of polytheism in the religions of
civilisation, this original heathenism may appear akin to
monotheism because the individuality of the separate pheno
mena of nature is in itself a matter of religious indifference,
and only their power and influence are of interest, because
they can for that reason be combined, interchanged, or con
verted into one another. But in reality there is here not the
slightest trace of the idea which actual monotheism postulates,
viz. that God is one. For we must not allow ourselves to be
misled by the fact that prayers and hymns often purposely
extol the God who is praised in them, as the only God and
Lord. These religions are invariably national religions,
moulded by the national peculiarities, by the character of the
country and the climate, by the occupations, the fears, and
the aspirations that make up the national life. They are all,
to a certain extent, the spontaneous expression of the popular
heart. The mode of worship employed in them is interwoven
with the everyday life of the people. They know nothing

44 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of a theoretical interest in the gods ; and the relations between
religion and the morality that grows up out of the mutual
relationships of men are still altogether obscure and unstable.
The lowest of these religions with which we have to deal
is Animism. In it the separate phenomena of nature are
regarded as living, acting forces, though without any higher
unity or moral character. Men do not enter into rela
tions with this world of spirits from love or admiration,
but from fear and selfishness. The strongest motive for
worshipping them is anxiety to secure their services by
means of magic. They are not classified, for the purposes
of religion, into good and bad ; rather are they all of them
incalculable, unearthly, spectral. Closely akin to these
are the ghostly shades of the departed, primarily objects of
terror, but yet furnishing the basis of a higher stage, viz.
ancestor- worship. As the lowest form of this stage of religion,
though probably a degenerate one, we have fetish-worship,
where the nature-power is conceived of as connected with
some arbitrarily chosen symbol. Such pure animism was the
prevailing religion of the Turanian races of Asia. But among
the peoples of Africa, Polynesia, and America, almost without
an exception, religion rested on a similar basis. In Finland
it became a civilised religion with mythical and ethical
elements in it ; in the moral State-religion of China, it con
stitutes the popular background. If Lenormant's theories
are well founded, fetish - worship made no inconsiderable
contribution to the civilised religion of Babylon as well as to
the religion of India and of Egypt. Since the ritual of this
religion consists of magic, it has a natural tendency to
create priestly families and castes, that become the repositories
of the songs and the various other means which magicians
habitually employ.
Among the Semitic pastoral tribes elemental nature-
worship seems to have been cast in a higher mould. Even
among them, indeed, there was no monotheism in the strict

AS A HISTORICAL RELIGION. 45
sense of the term. We find that plurality of gods and
goddesses is everywhere taken for granted. But it is not the
personality or individuality of these that excites interest.
The real devotion of the people, as is proved by the names
for God, is called forth by the kind of power and authority
ascribed to the gods as such. It is from such attributes that
the Deity is named, not from the parts of nature in which His
activity is presupposed. The root-feeling is fear of God, and
that probably not in the highest sense of the word, since the
Deity is not primarily ethical, but only holy and terrible. Still
it is the fundamental feeling that affords the religious spirit a
starting-point from which to take its highest flights. It is the
natural basis of prophetic inspiration. The Deity is felt to
be the sovereign Lord of the particular tribe and people, and
is thus brought into relation with the national life. He is, of
course, also brought into relation with the ancestors of the
nation and " the shades " of the departed, but in a way that
tends to the moral interests of the national life. Here, then,
were the roots of monotheistic religion and of theocracy.
And since the attribute of absolute power constitutes what is
essential in the idea of God, we here come very near taking
the step that places God the Creator altogether outside of
nature. This, then, is the native soil of the higher forms
of prophetic religion, but at the same time also of those
wild orgies, of that religious fanaticism, of that terrible fear of
God, which finds expression in hecatombs of human sacrifices.
To this form of religion, originally peculiar to the pastoral
tribes of Arabian origin, are due in the main the composite
religions of Assyria and Babylon, as well as of Canaan, and it
is the parent soil of the prophetic religions of the Hebrews
and the Arabs.
It is beyond doubt that the highest and most attractive
form of elemental nature-worship is that which lies at the
foundation of the civilised religions of the Aryan races. The
character of it can be inferred from these religions, as well

46 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
as from the Vedic hymns and the nature - myths common
to the Aryan nations. No doubt, here also, the gods are
primarily elemental spirits, akin to and intermingling with
the souls of men. They are not primarily possessed of moral
attributes, just as nature itself is indifferent to the distinction
between good and bad. But the heaven of light is conceived
of as the common source of the powers of nature, and this
involuntarily carries with it the idea of the true and the good.
And the religious feeling entertained towards such a god is
not fear, but ecstatic love. It is a joyous, heroic religion.
Through the genius of language, the unfolding life of nature
becomes a rich spring of poetic myths full of meaning. And,
since the phenomena of nature, even when they are grasped
as a unity, are nevertheless only something relative, mere
transient expressions, as it were, of an unknown higher power,
the religious view of the world becomes, to a certain extent, a
philosophical one. Behind the gods we have the order and
power of nature itself. There is here a spring of the richest
poetry, of heroic gladness and of culture ; and here also the
strongest impulse to ethics and philosophy. But assuredly
not a foundation for genuine prophecy and for true revelation.
For where the divine is itself essentially relative, and man
feels himself equal to the gods, his highest elevation is not
that of the prophet, but of the philosopher and the poet, and
religion loses itself in metaphysics and ethics. Should a
prophetic genius spring up on such a religious soil, he will
reach out beyond the relative gods to the one absolute Being
whom he feels within himself in greater purity than in the
life of nature. He will become a Pantheist, or like Buddha,
an Atheist.
Each of these primitive religions developed into civilised
religions, sometimes in a pure form and sometimes in combina
tion with others. Sometimes a pantheistic polytheism grew
up under the influence of a philosophical priesthood, as among
the Babylonians and the Phoenicians, the Hindoos and the

AS A HISTORICAL RELIGION. 4 7
Egyptians. Sometimes an ethical polytheism was developed
by the poets on the basis of a free and joyous national growth,
as among the Greeks or in the Edda. Sometimes, under the
infiuence of civil morality, a political religion was formed
in which the old powers of nature gave place to the powers
of civil and social life, as in the religion of the Roman Empire
and among the Chinese. But in none of these cases was
there a real advance beyond the stage of the physical or
national religions. We nowhere find that a special genius
for religion was the origin of any of these religions, how
ever often we have to admire their philosophical depth or
poetical vigour, or the moral earnestness of their political
and social sentiment. The gods remain within the limits of
the empirical. That deity means that which is absolutely
exalted above nature, viz. spirit, and that its contents must,
at the same time, be the purest expression of that which, as
the basis of ethics, seeks to obtain human form, — that the
communion of man with God must be inward, and its
expression the whole social life of mankind, — that religion
has to do, not with the separate life of individual nations
and their work as States, but with the life of man as man, —
all this is nowhere fully acknowledged in any one of these
religions. Whether as regards origin or final aim, none of
the religions of this class admits of any comparison with
the Biblical.
Besides Christianity, there are only three religions at all
worthy of being compared with the religion of the Old
Testament, because they have been produced on the basis of
nature-religions by the creative strength of religious genius.
These are on the one side the Persian and the Buddhist, on
the other the Mohammedan.
In many respects the Old Testament reminds one of the
religion of the Persians as it was before it gradually lost its
purity and strength by adopting elements out of the religion of
the Chaldeans, and above all, out of the Anahita-worship under

48 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Artaxerxes Mnemon.1 Both religions are connected with a
comparatively simple and undeveloped form of nature-worship
that had not yet grown into a really systematic polytheism,
this nature-worship being in the one case Semitic and in the
other Aryan. Then, through the religious genius of their
prophets they detach themselves on the one hand from their
natural soil in their struggle after a spiritual conception of
God, and on the other hand they carry on a long fight for
existence with the higher forms of that nature-worship out of
which they sprang. In both the swaddling-clothes of nature-
1 worship are still visible in the commingling of the physically
holy with the morally holy, in the high value attached to
definite forms of outward life, and in the close relation of
the religions to the distinctive life of the nation. Both
religions still retain in legend and myth various elements of
nature-worship though blurred or transformed, while it is
chiefly through antagonism to this their parent-soil that the
course of their development is determined. Hence, it is
easily understood how these two religions were quite in
sympathy with each other when they first came into contact
(Deutero-Isaiah xliv., xiv.).
The difference between them comes out mainly in two
points. Of these, the first is that in the period after
Darius the Persians were not favoured with any men of
prophetic spirit capable of developing their religion, and
that the ceremonial precipitate of that religion had to take
the place of a living spiritual development. The strength
of the nation was exhausted in military and political
achievements. They did not hold aloof from the nations
attached to nature-worship, but as the ruling race, gathered
1 Herod, i. 131, cf. Xenophon, Cyrop. vii. 5. 53 ; Oec. iv. 24, cf. the inscrip
tions of Behistun and the epitaph of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam. On this
whole question, still obscure on many points, cf. James Darmesteter in Max
Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv., Introduction. From the Babylonian
documents it seems that Cyrus himself was a devotee of the Semitic worship
of nature (A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments).

AS A HISTORICAL RELIGION. 49
these around themselves. Accordingly, when the force of
the first purely religious revival was spent, the Persian
nation was not strong enough to withstand the overwhelming
pressure of the religion of civilised Asia.1 Israel, on the
contrary, though only after a severe struggle, was preserved
from the same fate by its prophets, till its religion had
become sufficiently mature not to fear any longer the influ
ence of such elements.
The second main distinction lies in the difference of the soil
on which the two religions grew. When one bears in mind
how closely the Indo-Germanic gods were allied with nature,
it was certainly a great religious achievement to elevate the
God of Light in the old religion into the one true God, — the
fountain of all good, the one proper object of religious love
and reverence. Nevertheless, he was still surrounded by a
retinue of kindred spirits, to whom divine honours were
paid, and thus the bridge to polytheism was built. The
Elohim of the Old Testament, on the contrary, were not
regarded as objects of national worship. One part of nature,
moreover, was regarded by the Persians as beyond the juris
diction of this god, viz. the domain of what was thought
essentially evil and bad. No doubt Angro-Mainyus, the
spirit of destruction and negation, is not God in the religious
sense ; that position is reserved for Ahura-mazdao alone.
But he represents a side of existence that does not fit in with
the conception of God. He is the sign of the unassimilated
Aryan nature-religion, of the merely relative conception of
God. But through the conception of God already described,
their Semitic nature-religion in its original simplicity enabled
1 The restoration of religion for political purposes by the Sassanidae, and the
growth of our present collection of the Avesta, remind us of the collecting of
the sacred books, and of the Levitical restoration of religion by the scribes
of the second temple. The fate of the Persian religion, from Artaxerxes
onwards, shows what lines the religion of Israel might have followed, had
the influence which Solomon was the first to give them as a world-power of the
first rank continued to grow.
VOL. I. D

50 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the Hebrew prophets in a religious way, by means of the
fear of God, to raise God absolutely above the world without
leaving any such residuum. Besides, in the emphasising of
the national God lay the possibility of reaching pure mono
theism in a really practical way. Hence the soil for the true
kingdom of God was not in Persia, but in Israel.
With Buddhism, the second Indo-Germanic religion of
prophecy, the Old Testament religion has no sort of affinity,
any more than with the developments which philosophy
underwent on the soil of Greek religion. Buddhism is the
prophetic reformation of the already highly -developed Pan
theism of the priestly religion of India, and in its relation to
the latter has many analogies with Christianity in its opposi
tion to Pharisaism and to priestly aristocracy. It is the most
logical development of nature-religion become Pantheistic.
For if the gods are powers actively at work only within the
sphere of the world's development, then higher than all of
them is the spirit of man, inasmuch as it raises itself above
nature in recognising its own supra-mundane character. To the
human spirit that has emancipated itself, the host of gods does
homage. Idealistic atheism, not naturalism, is the last word of
nature-religion. And if the world of phenomena has not a
divine origin, then the only proper verdict of the spirit regard
ing it is the verdict of pessimism. For, considered as a mere
" world," it is not good, and to belong to it is not a blessing.
Where the question is between the optimism of " the new
faith " and the pessimism of Schopenhauer, the answer of the
deeper spirits cannot but be in favour of the latter. Only
the man who believes in the providence of a God, who is spirit
and who is love, has the right to look at the world with the
eye of an optimist without being guilty of superficiality.
Thus for comparison with Christianity and the Old Testa
ment religion there now remains only the third Semitic religion
of prophecy, viz. Mohammedanism. But this does not really
admit of comparison, since the whole kernel of this religious

OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT. 5 1
system was taken from that of the Old Testament. No
doubt, in opposition to a Semitic nature-religion that had
remained at a comparatively rudimentary stage, Mohammed
preached, like the founders of the religion of Israel, with
true religious ardour, faith in one Almighty Ruler of the
world ; and his religion was strongly influenced by the con
ditions of life then existing among the Arabian people. Bui,
he knew the Old Testament religion, although in an impure
and corrupted form, and, in fact, he had also seen one-sided
forms of Christianity. What Mohammed himself added or
omitted shows his ability as a national leader, and his healthy
aversion to the petty Pharisaic view of life ; but, at the same
time, it indicates a great lack of moral earnestness, and of a
high ideal as to the chief end of human existence. However
powerful Mohammedanism has been as a factor in the history
of the world, in the history of religion it can be regarded
merely as a degenerate form of the Old Testament religion,
as a heresy, the vitality of which was due simply to its
having to contend against the spiritual caricature of Talmudic
scholasticism, and against the idolatry and heathenism of the
Oriental Church.

CHAPTER IV.
OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT.
1. Christ and His apostles do not regard the Old
Testament religion as a mere outward historical preparation
for Christianity, but as a form of piety which could and
would continue to be the foundation even of Christian piety.1
1 One must not be led astray as to this by the polemic of the Apostle Paul.
Even he does not wish to renounce the Old Testament as such. He merely
denies to the law, which he recognises even in heathenism as a pre-Christian
form of religion, the power to save and to generate true life. How far he is
from treating the law and the Old Testament as synonymous is, in fact, most

52 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
This is of itself enough to show a Christian that the Old
Testament religion can be understood only in connection
with, and as an essential part of, Christianity. An Old
Testament saint did not require to change his religion in
order to become a Christian. All that was needed was the
decisive act of faith which the Old Testament itself, by its
prophecy, as well as by the innermost kernel of its essence,
made possible, and even easy. Nothing more was necessary
than the moral earnestness of the true penitent, just what
ought to have been the natural result of the moral preaching
characteristic of the Old Testament religion. In order to
become a Christian, every heathen must be, in the strict sense
of the word, converted — that is, his attitude towards religion,
and his whole way of looking at it, must undergo a radical
change. A Jew could become a pious Christian, and still
continue a pious Jew. Hence such men as James the Just,
and, indeed, the twelve apostles themselves, are quite as much
model representatives of Old Testament piety as of Chris
tianity in the fullest sense of the word. No Christian,
however, could by any possibility continue a pious worshipper
at a Greek or Roman temple.
But this closeness of connection is also clearly established
by a thorough comparison of the two Testaments. There is
positively not one New Testament idea that cannot be con
clusively shown to be a healthy and natural product of some
Old Testament germ, nor any truly Old Testament idea which
did not instinctively press towards its New Testament fulfil
ment. Of course, it is only New Testament theology that can
adduce satisfactory proof of this.

clearly shown by the proofs which he himself takes from the Old Testament,
that the law is not the highest and permanent form of the true religion, but
must pass over into faith (Gen. xv. 6 ; Hab. ii. 4). While, from the stand
point of history, one may say that Levitism came in between the religion of the
prophets and Christianity, Paul, from his point of view regarding the date of
the Pentateuch, maintains that the law came in between the religion of Abraham
and Christianity (Rom. v. 20).

REVELATION. 5 3
Hence, in the spirit of the Old Testament religion, the
Christian will recognise the same spirit which he receives as
the perfect spirit of the God who reveals Himself in Jesus
Christ, the spirit presented to us in His personal life as man.
The Old Testament will be to him a religion of revelation,
and that, too, a revelation of the Divine Spirit which, purify
ing, enlightening, redeeming, reconciling, leads up to the
divinely-human life as that found permanent expression in
Jesus. The Old Testament religion, like the Christian, did not "•
come forth out of humanity, according to the mere law
of natural spiritual development, but as a result of the
working, upon Israel's spiritual life, of that divine, self-
communicating spirit which aims at establishing the kingdom
of God among men. This religion rightly regards itself
as called into existence by God, as called into existence
by the clear separation of this one people from the life of
the other peoples of the world. Hence the whole story of
Genesis consists of a series of separations. Hence the law
cuts Israel off from the nature-worship that was developing
all around. Hence even a Moses and an Isaiah draw a clear
distinction between their own thoughts and the voice of God
involuntarily revealed to their inner ear. Hence the people
are not to believe even signs and wonders if displayed, not
in the interests of divine truth already attested, but in the
service of mere human wisdom. Indeed, the natural life of
Israel, where it follows its own promptings, comes constantly
into conflict with the religion of the Old Testament. And
this peculiar value of the Old Testament is everywhere
unreservedly recognised in the New.
The starting-point of Old Testament religion is neither the
natural nor the human as the object of experience. It does
not reach the divine by idealising the empirical, either on the
aesthetic principle, or the teleological, or on any other. The
divine life, as absolutely transcending the whole region of

54 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
experience, as free, independent, spiritual, is, in this religion,
grasped with the certainty of direct inward experience that
cannot be shaken. In it, religious truth shines out from the
very first, not as a fact of philosophy or of science, but as the
absolutely certain, that which demonstrates itself even to the
inner life.
Hence in Israel the knowledge of God was attained
exclusively in a religious way under the influence of the
divine, and is therefore purely practical. In no sense was it
reached along the line of philosophy or of poetry. But an
original religious conviction of this kind is never to be under
stood as a result merely of previously existing conceptions or
circumstances. As an experience of forces which lie outside
the world of sense, it has its roots in the communication of
the spirit, through the love and mercy of God, to such members
of the human family as are privileged to become interpreters
to their brethren of the heavenly life, that is to say, in a
divine revelation. Israel's religious teachers are prophets,
not philosophers, priests, or poets. Hence the Old Testament
i religion can be explained only by revelation, that is, by
the fact that God raised up for this people men whose
natural susceptibility to moral and religious truth, developed
by the course of their inner and outer lives, enabled them to
understand intuitively the will of the self-communicating,
redeeming God regarding men, that is, to possess the religious
truth which maketh free, not as a result of human wisdom
and intellectual labour, but as a power pressing in upon
the soul with irresistible might. Only those who frankly
acknowledge this can be historically just to the Old Testa
ment. But on the other hand, this religion, too, like everything
that the world produces, stands in close relation to the laws
of development. It is not to be explained, it is true, by
historical relations alone, but it presupposes historical con
ditions, and is itself conformable to historical laws. The

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 55
Old Testament itself represents such historical conditions as
given to Abraham in the religion of the Semites, and to
Moses in the worship of the God of his fathers. And
although, from the character of the sources, it is only an
imperfect picture of these conditions that we can now obtain,
that does not make the fact of their existence a whit less
certain. The religion of Israel itself shows its historical development
quite plainly. It did not reject the spiritual inheritance
of the Hebrew people ; it appropriated it, but not without
leaving traces discernible to the trained eye, of what that
inheritance would have been without it.1 In the course of
its development, it adopted as raw material, popular customs,
festivals, legends, and even mythical presentations ; and, in
fact, it may in this way have incorporated even what was
non-Israelitish. It did not, as with the touch of a magician's
wand, change into a perfect morality the moral views then
characteristic of Eastern, and specially of Bedouin life, but
it influenced and purified them from within. This it could
not do without having to put up for a long time, " because
of the people's hardness of heart," with many things which
did not agree with its real character and principles, as, for
example, the avenging of blood, slavery, polygamy, and the
imperfect morality which consequently characterised married
life. It gave further organic development to national
figures ; for example, it did not directly transform the
soothsayer into a purely spiritual prophet of God, but
it gradually set prophecy free from its natural environ
ment of dream-interpretation and soothsaying, and led it
onwards to its highest height. But while it thus advanced
step by step according to historical laws, it was only in
Christ that it rose to a perfect consciousness of its true
essence. 2. In Biblical religion there is but one fundamental principle.
1 E.g. Gen. vi. 1-3, xxxii. 25 ff.

56 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
It is in every respect the same in the Old Testament as in
the New. Nor can any unprejudiced observer have diffi
culty in finding it out, however certain it is that it took the
people of Israel centuries to make up their minds about it.
All the stories of this religion have reference to the fact that
* the perfect spiritual God wishes in love to realise His holy
will in communion with man. These narratives, therefore,
refer to a loving communion of the people with a God who is
self-communicative, and whose object it is, through, and in
spite of human sin, in other words, by redemption and recon
ciliation, to produce a divine life, to set up a kingdom of God.
1 Hence the history of this religion is the history of the king
dom of God, of redemption and reconciliation. Even sacred
legend has no other centre. In this religion, wisdom is know
ledge of the way of life, in which the divine life is found,
in other words, knowledge of the laws of the kingdom of
God. The institutions, statutes, and laws of this religion
are intended to give expression to the divine life which in
spite of sin has been restored to man. The poetry of the
Old Testament is joy over a life of communion with God
the Redeemer, or sorrow for its loss, or a longing after it.
Prophecy is the outlook for a perfect kingdom of God.
Even doubts and struggles revolve around this centre. In
short, the fundamental thought of Biblical religion is the
kingdom of God, the realisation of the perfect divine life
as a redeeming and reconciling factor in human life. And,
in truth, this is no empty fantastic enthusiasm for an
imaginary ideal of salvation, but the joyful certainty of a
historical salvation actually present and accessible to experi
ence, in the definite and actual features of which the full
contents of the ideal are at once directly and indirectly
included. 3. It still remains for us to answer the question, What
relation on this theory of their inner unity do the two Testa
ments bear to each other ? It would be a simple matter

OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT. 57
to put their two religions, according to the view of the
early Church, on absolutely the same level, or, at least, to
see in Christianity nothing more than an essentially natural
completion of the Old Testament religion. But such pro
cedure would be contrary to fact. Since the essence of this
religion is not a theoretical knowledge of God and of divine
things, but a salvation that moulds human life, and finds
expression in it, then, as soon as this salvation is realised in
a human personality, as soon as the kingdom of God is
established in its true form, an entirely new stage of religious
development must begin. In comparison with this stage of
full and complete salvation, the previous stage must seem like
a type or a passing shadow. Whoever really sees in Jesus
the complete revelation of the Divine Spirit in human life,
and in His followers the citizens of the kingdom of God, for
him Jesus is also He who alone has seen God, and Christi
anity something absolutely new. Only where special import
ance was attached to a theoretical knowledge of supernatural
things was it possible to imagine that the " secret " of
Christianity, viz. that incarnation of the living God which is
characteristic of the Christian stage of religion, would be
found already revealed in the Old Testament.1 In a really
historical development, knowledge and life never stand
unrelated. The absolutely unique character of the religious
position of Jesus is not sufficiently recognised by those who
regard Christianity as having simply developed out of the
Old Testament in much the same sense as the prophetic
view of religion grew up within the Old Testament itself out
of the old Mosaic view.
1 That is the defect of thoroughgoing supernaturalism, which sees the doctrines
of revelation everywhere, and of Socinianism as well, regarding which, in this
relation, cf. Diestel, Jahrbilcher fur deutsche Theologie, vol. vii. 4, p. 709 ff.
In modern times Hengstenberg is its most prominent advocate. As against
him, the arguments of v. Hofmann are generally marked by a sound regard for
the essence of religion. The followers of Cocceius were prevented by their
arbitrary exegesis and their unscientific typology from reaping the full advant
age of the true views of history which are implied in the federal theology,

58 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
The Old Testament religion is the religion of the kingdom
of God in the process of growth, this kingdom being still
confined within the bounds of a political community, that is,
„ restricted to a single nation. In this religion the divine life
is primarily expressed in form and type, in other words, in an
external and therefore transitory fashion, and the divine will is
still primarily presented to the human heart as a mere ideal, in
other words, essentially as duty, as law. In this religion the
true realisation among men of the divine will is only hoped
for, and is therefore represented as essentially an object of
prophecy, and the separation between the divine and the
human, present in heathenism, but not felt, is consciously
experienced, but still continues as something to be done away
with. It is the religion of the holy people, of holy forms, of
law, of prophecy, and of the fear of God. Christianity is the
religion of the perfected kingdom of God in which the divine
life has been personally and spiritually, and therefore as
regards all human development, permanently expressed in
human life. Consequently it has become the moving spirit
of a human development, and therefore works in the individual
as an inward impulse, as a new vital force. Its perfect
growth is no longer something merely hoped for, but is appre
hended as belonging as much to the present as to the future,
and is therefore an object of faith, and heathenism and the
Old Testament, with their separation of the divine and the
human, are simultaneously done away with. It is the
religion of incarnation, therefore of everlasting reconciliation
and of humanity — the religion of the spirit and of love,
and therefore of true redemption — of faith and sonship.
The kingdom of God, which was first embodied in the
Old Testament under the imperfect outward form of a
State life, and was next, through deeper insight into its
essence, transformed into an ideal hope, is in Christianity
realised in the person of Jesus and the influences that radiate
from Him, although as a spiritual force in the world of

OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT. 59
phenomena it is still continually engaged in seeking after
its pure expression, and thus reaches out towards the eternal
world. Hence the old saying, " The Old Testament is patent in the
New, the New is latent in the Old,"1 is false if taken to
mean that the New Testament religion is already present in
the Old Testament as esoteric teaching. But it is correct if
it be understood as meaning that the germinal principles of '
the Christian salvation are present in the Old Testament in
various forms as yet incomplete and undefined, and that only
in the New Testament does the Old Testament salvation attain
its eternal and truly saving significance. In both religions
there is an inner unity of life, an unfolding of the same
power. No New Testament form of salvation is intelligible
without the Old Testament form. But no Old Testament
form of salvation, as such, is already Christian, but every one
of them becomes so when in the light of the new spirit it has
a new illumination thrown upon it. It is therefore perfectly
clear that no one can expound New Testament theology
without a thorough knowledge of Old Testament theology.
But it is no less true that one who does not thoroughly
understand New Testament theology cannot have anything
but a one-sided view of Old Testament theology. He who
does not know the destination will fail to understand many
a bend in the road. For him who has not seen the fruit,
much, both in bud and blossom, will always remain a
riddle. 4. The line of demarcation between Old Testament and
New Testament theology is easily drawn. The sphere of the
former is wherever there is manifested in the pre-Christian
religion a creative spirit conscious of itself and showing a
spirit of uniform advance. Its task is done as soon as this
1 Cf. Augustine, De catechiz. rudibus iv. 8 in vetere lestamento est occultatio
novi, in novo testamento est manifestatio veteris. Cf. Contr. Faust, xv. 2.
Enarr. in Ps. lxxxiv. 4.

60 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
spirit ceases, as soon as foreign influences begin to predominate,
or the scribes' method of treating the Old Testament religion
as already complete gets the upper hand. Whatever from
this point onwards is either new or peculiar belongs to
the Introduction to New Testament theology, which has to
describe the religious conditions in the midst of which
Christianity appeared. Hence we may briefly describe as
the boundary line of Old Testament theology the founding
of the hierarchical State after the Maccabean struggles.
Up to that time the spirit of the old religion was always
giving signs of life, at least in individuals. Unity was, it is
true, gradually crumbling away, but outwardly, at any rate,
it was still preserved. But under the Asmonaean dynasty,
Pharisee, Sadducee, and Essene stand side by side, exposed
to Palestinian, Grecian, and Oriental influences. The scribes,
now at the zenith of their power, are supreme. The Old
Testament religion has become a sacred literature absolutely
complete and inviolable. Any further development is merely
a stage of Judaism based on the completed Old Testament
religion. It is of use only in a very few points where some
suggestive additions have been made; but even these are to
be regarded solely as appendices, and not as strictly belonging
to our present task.

CHAPTER V.
PERIODS AND SOURCES OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
1. As periods in the pre-Christian development of the
religicn of Israel, the following would naturally commend
themselves : —
I. From Adam to Moses, Patriarchal period.
II. From Moses to Samuel-David, time of the first un
altered form of the Theocratic State, Mosaic period.

PERIODS OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. 61
III. From Samuel-David to the decline of the divided
kingdoms, that is to say, till about B.C. 800,
Time of the religion of the monarchy, Theocratic
period.
IV. From B.C. 800 to the rebuilding of Jerusalem by
Ezra and Nehemiah, Prophetic period.
V. From Ezra to the Asmonaean princes, Hierarchical
period of Priestly Legislation.
These periods, however, cannot hold their ground against
a real attempt at historical presentation. To begin with, the
first of them proves utterly useless for our purpose. Not
that we doubt that the people of Israel had a real national
life even before Moses, perhaps one not without recollections
of national glory, or that when Moses appeared, the better
among the people already had a religion which could serve
as the basis of the Mosaic, and the main features of which
were retained in Mosaism. Indeed we may confidently
assume that this was the case. Otherwise Moses could
never have gathered a whole down-trodden people around
the standard of his newly - revealed religion, or have suc
ceeded, in spite of the Egyptians, in evoking such popular
enthusiasm for it. How different it was with Mohammed,
who had to fight a life-long battle with his own people and
his own tribe before the Arabian nation was roused to
enthusiasm for Mohammedanism. And yet his work also
was rendered possible only by the fact that among wide
circles of his own kindred similar aspirations after a purer
religion had made their influence felt. In fact, within his
own nation, besides himself and partly also in opposition
to him, there arose quite a number of prophet-preachers.1
Pastoral peoples, with their strong attachment to what is
inherited, never adopt a religion unanimously without demur,
unless it is in all essential points in strict accordance with
1 Let the reader think of Waraka, Umaya from Taif, Abu Amir from Medina,
and the Prophets Tulaiha, Musailima, Al-Aswud.

62 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
ancestral tradition, or at least in sympathy with long acknow
ledged aspirations.
But for giving any information about the religious character
of that age beyond the merest generalities, our original
sources are absolutely insufficient. It is only through
popular legend that we can get an idea of the pre-Mosaic
age ; and this, of course, so far as its religious contents are
concerned, bears the stamp of the times in which it grew up.
Stories, which were committed to writing at the earliest about
the time of Samuel, can give us no real information about
the religious circumstances of the times of Abraham and
Jacob. They can only show us what ideas of these times
were prevalent among the people of Moses' day. It cannot
therefore be right to speak of a period of pre-Mosaic religion.
We can only say in what light Israel was wont to look at
the religious circumstances of its earliest age. No original
authorities for the period before Moses have come down to us.
We can do nothing more than draw inferences from the
national legends we have, and from any fragments of myth
and of ancient customs that remain.
2. Nor can it be said that there is a literature of Israel
dating from the age of Moses and Joshua. The oldest
pieces of literature in our possession are, no doubt, songs and
popular stories which have been carefully woven into our
present large histories. Whether many of these were already
consecutive writings cannot be determined with certainty.
Only the mention of the " book of the Wars of Jehovah "
(Num. xxi. 14) and of the "book of the Upright" (Josh.
x. 13 ; 2 Sam. i. 18), proves that there had once existed old
collections of songs in which were celebrated the memorable
epochs and the principal heroes of the nation's religious wars.
But the last-named book could not have been compiled till
after the time of David. On the other hand, the song of
Deborah and the main document in Judg. vi.-xvi. point
to the existence of trustworthy tradition among the people

AUTHORITIES FOR MOSAIC PERIOD. 63
from the time of the Judges onwards. Ex. xv. and Gen.
xlix. also date from the beginning of the kingly period.
The original sources of the Pentateuch as they have come
down to us, especially B, suggest a tolerably long period N
of previous literary activity. But of really consecutive
writings, we undoubtedly possess nothing that can be older
than the time of David.
None of the more detailed works of history are earlier
than the time of the Kings. And though they were certainly
intended to reproduce the character of the olden time as
faithfully as the ancient method of writing history admits
of our supposing, they do not enable us to distinguish clearly
in matters of detail between the circumstances of that olden
time and those of the historian's own day. Accordingly, if
we take only what goes back with absolute certainty to the
time of Moses, nothing remains but a very small fragment.
On the other hand, were we without more ado to treat
everything that might possibly belong to the Mosaic period
as really belonging to it, our picture would lose all historical
value. Hence our only task at this point is to determine
what results of historical development down to the eighth
century can be clearly established, without attempting a
complete presentation of Old Testament religion for the
" period before Samuel." It would be vain to attempt a
continuous sketch of the development of religion between
the time of Moses and the building of the temple. Speaking
generally, therefore, we describe as the first period the whole
time down to the decline of the divided kingdoms, that is, to
about 800 B.C This we call the Mosaic period or Mosaism,
because we are convinced that its moral and religious
foundations rest on the work accomplished by Moses in
founding the nation. But in this we purposely include
whatever was built upon these foundations during the time
of the Judges, and specially since the time of David.
As authorities for the time of David, the " Davidic "

64 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Psalms would naturally take the first rank. But the more
closely they are examined, the stronger becomes the feeling
that by far the largest number of the sacred songs which
tradition has assigned to the great king date from a very
much later age, and that perhaps only Ps. xviii. can be
ascribed to him with anything like absolute certainty. Next
to it come such songs as 2 Sam. i. 19-27, iii. 33, xxiii. 1-8
(xii. 1-5). In the period from Solomon to the eighth
century, original sources have reached us in greater
numbers. Certainly it will continue a moot point whether the
main section of Proverbs (x.-xxii. 16) goes back as far as
Solomon's time, but it must have been in existence before
the eighth century. Canticles was undoubtedly composed
in the northern kingdom not very long after Solomon's day.
The book of the twelve Judges in its old form, and several
songs, point to this era, e.g. Ps. viii., xixa., xxix., and 1 Sam.
ii. 1-10, which is, we may be sure, an old royalist song.
But the most important sources are the older books, which
are worked up into our present Pentateuch. Not only must
the collection of Laws in Ex. xxi.— xxiii. be older than the
year 800 B.C., but a much larger part of the Pentateuch.
Side by side with the priestly document A,1 of which we
shall speak later on, there runs right through Genesis a
narrative which uses the Divine name " Jehovah " even
for patriarchal times, and which was therefore called
the book of the Jehovist ; by Ewald, the Fourth Narrator
of the Primitive History. We denote this writer by B.
Like the prophets, he is fond of connecting even the
beginnings of the human race with the mission of Israel.
His style is richer than that of A, his aim much more
definitely religious. He represents the patriarchal view
of God as more akin to the later religion of Israel, because
1 The symbols A, B, C refer simply to the sequence in which the sources
meet us in our present book, and do not imply any judgment as to the time
at which they severally came into existence.

AUTHORITIES FOR MOSAIC PERIOD. 65
he does not of set purpose keep his eye on the gradual
growth of Israel's legal and moral peculiarities. His work is
pervaded by a much stronger and more direct religious spirit,
and, at the same time, it takes advantage much more freely of
the highly-coloured and wonderfully-varied store of legends
current among the people.
Most critics nowadays would bring this book down to
the eighth century, as well on account of its diction and its
mode of looking at things, as because Assyria is mentioned in
it in a way that is only to be explained by the circumstances
of this era. I cannot adopt this opinion, and must acknow
ledge that I still agree with Tuch in his view of the book.
For the religious horizon is not so wide, nor the religious
diction by any means so full, as is the case even in Hosea,
nor is the glance into the nearer future anything like so
penetrating. Above all, there is nowhere to be found in
the book any definite reference to the hopes of the Davidic
dynasty, nor is any attention paid to Zion as the central
sanctuary. The holy places of Israel, against the worship at
which Amos and Hosea are already fighting with passionate
zeal, are, to this historian, objects of perfectly unembarrassed
joy and admiration. Neither is it quite certain that the
mention of Assyria, in the very passage where it is most
striking (Num. xxiv. 24), belongs to B. It is more likely to
have been inserted by the last editor. But even if it were
B's, and Gen. ii. 14 as well, nevertheless the two together
would not be conclusive proof against a very early origin of
the book. For the idea that Assyria first became known in
Western Asia through Tiglath-Pileser, is a false assumption.
According to the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings, it is much
more probable that Israel was already tributary to Assyria in
Jehu's reign. At any rate, it would require no very intimate
acquaintance with foreign lands to know the most warlike
people in Asia, whose power dates back to the fourteenth
century B.C., even though it had not yet invaded Palestine.
VOL. I. E

66 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
There is no allusion in B to the division of the kingdom after
Solomon, or to the feud between Judah and Ephraim ; and
even the reference in xxii. 2 to the temple hill, Moriah, is
certainly foreign to the original narrative, and belongs to a
later form of text. Indeed, it appears to me so certain that
Micah vi. 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, vii. 17; Amos ii. 10, iii. 1, iv. 11,
v. 25 ; Hos. xi. 8, xii. 4, 5 i.;1 Isa. vii. 14, xxxii. 9 (cf. Gen.'
iv. 23), refer not merely to the subject-matter of B's legends,
but to his very words, that the book must, on this account
alone, be considered earlier than the eighth century. Prov.
iii. 18, xi. 30, xiii. 12, xv. 7, show acquaintance with the
story of Gen. iii. ; and 1 Kings xix. with Ex. xxxiv. Hence
I believe the book should be assigned to the time of Solomon,
a period admirably in keeping with the brilliant colouring of
its early legends, its wide knowledge both of history and
geography, and its strong national feeling. That there existed
from of old a definite " law of God," and a regular ritual in
connection with the worship of Jehovah, is clearly proved
from the way in which the oldest prophets of the pre-Assyrian
time take these for granted as regards both Judah and Israel
(Amos ii. 4; Hos. viii. 1, 12).
Side by side with A and B there is found, in the second
part of Genesis and in the following books, a considerable
number of stories which were formerly attributed to A, because
they generally employ the divine name " Elohim," or else were
regarded as extracts from A revised by B. On closer examina
tion it was seen that the linguistic character of these passages
has no affinity at all with A, but a very close affinity indeed
with B ; while, at the same time, it has peculiarities enough of
its own, apart from the use of the divine name, to warrant our
inferring the existence of a separate document. Its author is
particularly fond of describing the place of Israel among the
1 Although Hosea still read these stories in a more sensuous and naive form,
in other words, was probably acquainted with an oarlier form of the book than
ours (the angel of God " weeps ").

AUTHORITIES FOR MOSAIC PERIOD. 67
nations of the world, its treaties and commercial relations ;
and in Genesis the dream is a specially prominent feature of
his narrative. Those who acknowledge the peculiarities of this
writer generally consider him somewhat earlier than B and
independent of him. I myself, on the contrary, am convinced
that this writer, whom I call C, is later than B. He specially N
enriched the records of Israel with additions from original
sources belonging to the northern tribes. Even if one assumes,
with Wellhausen, that this writer is to be considered as origin
ally independent of B, his book and B's were, at any rate,
very closely connected long before A's was added to their
combined work. It is C whom we have to thank for pre
serving the old material which now lies before us in a revised
form as "The Book of the Covenant" (Ex. xix.ff). The
document of C, I am inclined to assign to the end of the
Mosaic period. It is certain that Ex. ii. 21, 22 is already
imitated in Judg. xvii. 7, 8, 11. In consequence of the
peculiar interweaving with B, C's handiwork can seldom be
found unaltered in Genesis, but is so oftener in Exodus.
Still where the two are combined, especially in the stories
about Israel and Joseph, that is, where the legends of the
northern kingdom, to which he undoubtedly belonged, are
being dealt with, C is the leading authority all through.
3. Against the fourth period mentioned above, no valid
objection can be brought. Prophets of conspicuous ability
were certainly at work in Israel long before the eighth
century. But the collapse of the first glorious realisation
of the theocratic State, and the visible proof of the world's
superior strength, afforded by the ever-increasing pressure of
the Asiatic empire on divided Israel, necessarily caused a
great change in the religious situation. There could not but
arise quite new fears, hopes, and aims. And the prophets,
in their new role as teachers of religion and as writers,
were, at this stage, unquestionably the guiding spirits that
determined the new direction which religion took. Con-

68 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
sequently we have a new era to deal with ; and a long and
trustworthy series of authorities of the first rank gives us the
certainty of being able to obtain an accurate picture of it.
In fact, this period is, if we may so speak, the centre of
gravity of our whole structure.
On one point only could there be any doubt, viz. as to
whether, when determining the limits between this period and
a later, one should not consider the Babylonian exile as its
natural end. So thought de Wette, v. Colin, and Baumgarten-
Crusius, the last cleverly applying the names, Hebrews,
Israelites, and Jews, to those who lived respectively during the
period of Mosaism, the era of the prophets, and the post-
exilic age. It had long been so much the custom to speak
of the influences of the Exile upon the religion of Israel.
that everything post-exilic was looked on as a whole, — a
view of the history of Israel certainly in many respects
correct, for Kuenen, Wellhausen, and others have rightly laid
stress on the fact that after Ezekiel and the priestly legisla
tion a change begins to come over the whole view of the
community regarding religion and morals. But it is just
during the exile that not only the legislative activity
directed to the sacred ritual, but also the development
brought about by the great prophets, attains its most inward
and characteristic form. Besides, the spiritualising of the
ancestral religion was nowhere so thoroughly carried out in
the prophetic spirit as in the literature at the close of the
Exile. In like manner, although prophecy by this time was
beginning to lose its true freedom and vigour, the community
which commenced to rebuild the city was still strongly per
meated with the prophetic spirit (Zech. vii. 8 ff), while visible
proofs of foreign influence were as yet quite inconsiderable.
But the situation became wholly changed when at the second
immigration Ezra and Nehemiah succeeded, though not with
out violent opposition, in setting up a legally constituted
hierarchical State. A very strong bent was then given

AUTHORITIES FOR PROPHETIC PERIOD. 69
to the religious spirit in Israel, which dominated its whole
future. Accordingly, we reckon the second period as lasting
to the re-establishment of the State under Ezra-Nehemiah.
This we call the prophetic period. It is the most brilliant
era in the religion of Israel.
The period from 800-459 B.C. falls according to its
religious development into the following smaller divisions.
First we have the time during which Assyria, showing itself
at the outset in the far distance, comes always nearer and
nearer, and at last forms the determining factor in Israel's
destiny, till it is hurled from the summit of its power by the
invading Medes and Chaldeans, and is in a short time utterly
blotted out from the roll of nations. This division from 800
B.C. to about 630 B.C., when the decisive attack on Nineveh
began, we call the Assyrian period. Then the Chaldean
empire in Babylon steps into the foreground of history.
Leagued with the Medes, it overthrows Nineveh, destroys
the last remnants of independence in Israel, and carries the
people off into captivity. The short time during which this
empire flourished before harbingers of its speedy fall began
to appear, that is, from 630 till about 560, forms the
Chaldean period.
Finally, with the first dawning hope of rescue through the
rise of the Medo-Persian empire a new life began in Israel.
Ere long the tyrant's citadel is stormed; permission to return
is granted ; a colony of godly men, with Zerubbabel a son
of David, and Joshua the high priest, at their head, return
home, rebuild the holy city, and commence, under Persian
suzerainty, a new, distinctive social life, although with little
prospect of real success, till with the arrival of Ezra and
Nehemiah new forces come into play. This period, from the
decline of the Babylonian power till Ezra (560-460 B.C.),
forms the Persian period of the epoch under consideration.
We have now to point out the various original authorities for
each of these three periods.

70 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
(a) 800-630 B.C. The great prophets of the eighth
century refer to an older literature, which, like Isa. xv. and
xvi., probably belongs to the ninth century. But for the
history of religion these sources are of little importance.
The book of Joel would be of greater weight did it date,
as I myself, like most theologians, formerly supposed, from
the ninth century. But although I do not consider that the
reasons in favour of this opinion have been conclusively
refuted, I must, in deference to Hilgenfeld, Merx, Duhm,
Stade, and Oort, confess that it would not be right to use this
book for the earliest period, so long as there are such strong
and unrefuted reasons for regarding it as a prophetic work
of art dating from the post-exilic age. Hence the earliest
important source that we have is Amos, who dates from the
reign of Jeroboam II.; then Hosea, and the author of
Zech. ix., x., xi., xiii. 7 ff., who, it is plain, lived during the
terrible time of anarchy after Jeroboam's death.1 During the
middle part of this period Isaiah 2 was active as a prophet
certainly from 740 B.C. to about 700 B.C. Next to him
comes Micah,8 and towards the close of the same period
1 Certainly this is vigorously combated by more recent scholars (cf. especially
Stade, Zeitschrift f. alttest. Wissenschaft, 1881, i. 96 ; 1882, ii. 151, 275). Zech.
ix.-xiv, is held to be the work of an author who must be regarded as an imitative
prophet belonging to the period subsequent to the death of Alexander. I frankly
confess that the mention of Javan throws a very heavy weight into the scale
in favour of this view. But till it can be explained how a Jew in the days of
Alexander's successors, instead of prophesying the return of Ephraim could ex
press a hope that all the men of war in Ephraim might utterly perish, — and
further, how he could picture his Messiah on an ass, like one of the ancient
Judges and Kings, — and so long as recourse must be had to arbitrary exegesis,
such as taking the three shepherds of chap. xi. to mean imperial powers
(Assyria, Babylon, Persia), or explaining the house of David by communal
officials after the Exile (Isa. vii.), or representing the Canaanites as shepherds
who sell the people, — I for one shall hold by the old view. To arrange the
chronology of the prophetical books according to a preconceived idea as to the
development of the Messianic hope, reminds one of dubious examples of New
Testament criticism.
2 i.-xii., xiv. 24 to end, xvi. 13 to xx., xxi. 11 to xxiii., xxviii. to xxxiii.
3 The reasons which have induced Stade to deny to the prophet everything
except chaps, i. —iii. , Ewald and others everything except i.-v., and to set aside
ii. 12, 13 as a gloss, appear to me altogether insufficient.

AUTHORITIES FOR PROPHETIC PERIOD. 71
we must think of Nahum, who may have prophtsied some
where about 640 B.C., and of Zephaniah, who already
hints at the threatening danger of Chaldean tyranny — about
630 b.c.
Of historical pieces, we assign to this period the work
which deals in a somewhat free style with the history of
David, as well as the oldest account of the history of Elijah
and Elisha, and, according to xviii. 30, also the story in
Judg. xvii. and xviii. As these books were re-edited at
a later date, one can often come only to an approximate
judgment as to how they should be used in regard to matters
of detail. Deuteronomy we assign to the following period,
because though it may have been written earlier, it certainly
had no influence on the history of religion till after its pro
mulgation. It was during this period, and in northern Israel,
that the song Deut. xxxii. was composed.
Whether the successive collections of the book of Proverbs,
and songs such as Ps. xlvi. and xlviii., belong to this age,
cannot be definitely settled. In like manner it cannot be
denied that the book of Job, notwithstanding much that
tells in favour of ascribing it to this age, may perhaps, in
view of its relations to Jeremiah, and the whole position
of the problem, belong to the later times of Israel's suffering.
(b) 6 3 0—5 6 0 B.C. To the early part of this period we assign
with confidence the introduction of Deuteronomy, that is, its
taking effect as law, and its combination with the blessing of
Moses, chap, xxxiii. Immediately thereafter Jeremiah com
mences his active career as prophet. His writings, from the
thirteenth year of Josiah onwards, are the chief original
sources for all the first part of this period.1 As his younger
1 Jer. xxv. 2 f. From the relation of Jer. xlix. 7 ff. to Obadiah, the latter
would be an older contemporary of Jeremiah. Still, on the other hand,
Obadiah, if he belongs at all to this age, must have written after the destruc
tion of Jerusalem. In that case Obadiah, like Jeremiah, quoted an older
prophet. Of Jeremiah's writings the only parts of which the authorship can
be reasonably called in question are xxxiii. 14-26, x. 1-16, and 1. — Iii.

72 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
contemporaries, we have the author of Zech. xii., xiii. 1-7,
xiv., and Habakkuk, who both prophesy immediately before
the threatened capture of the city (600 B.C.). For the second
half of this period the chief representative of prophecy is
Ezekiel, who laboured from about 593 B.C. among the colony
of captives on the Chebar. As to the historical books, the
gradual formation of the books of Kings probably belongs to
this period, although the last section of it will fall within the
post-exilic period. Its moralising tone in dealing with
ancient history, shown, for example, in 1 Kings viii. and in
many other passages, points to the same conclusion ; the older
records were more after the style of a chronicle. Pieces
like Isa. xxxvi.-xxxix. and Jer. Iii. cannot have received
their present form till at least the second half of this
period. But of still greater importance are the parts of the Penta
teuch literature which point to this age. Certainly the fine
code of laws (Lev. xvii. ff.) dates from the time of the Exile,
and probably also, as a whole, the great work of A, into
which that code has been incorporated. This book has been
subjected to such careful investigation, and, notwithstanding
the dispute as to its date, there is such general agreement as
regards both its contents and its range, among commentators
like Kayser, Noldeke, Dillmann, Graf, Schrader, Wellhausen,
etc., that I shall content myself with a mere sketch of it,
drawn chiefly from the work of the last-named scholar (Jahrb.
f. d. Th. 1876, 3. 4). It is a thoroughly homogeneous work,
constructed on a well-arranged plan, and for the most part
preserved with such care by the editors of the Pentateuch,
that, in combining it with the other books, it is only occa
sionally that even single words and sentences have had to
be sacrificed. Its object was to bring vividly before the
reader's mind the origin of the sacred customs and the
religious possessions of the people. It therefore begins with
the God Elohim, who becomes to the patriarchs, El Shaddai,

AUTHORITIES FOR PROPHETIC PERIOD. 73
and to Moses, Jehovah. In the first place, it represents the
Sabbath and the command to abstain from blood as sacred
customs originally binding upon all mankind, and circum
cision as a custom common to the descendants of Abraham.
It next shows us in broad outline how the sacred institutions
of Israel took their rise under Moses, especially the law of-
sacrifice1 in its most artistic development, and also the origin
of the festal year as based on the Sabbath, and of the holy
place, which is represented in most ideal completeness by the
tabernacle. It next carries us past the death of Moses to the
settlement of Israel in Canaan, which is in like manner repre
sented as ideally complete, the tribes portioning out the whole
land among themselves in an equitable and peaceful manner.
It comes to a close in the time of the Judges, although it
may originally have gone farther, or at least have been intended
to go farther. Written in a simple lucid style, without any
special force or grandeur of diction, it invariably becomes
diffuse when dealing with anything that is important from
the standpoint of ritual or of law. It may therefore be con
sidered the work of a priest.
While it is certain that laws of ritual were in existence in
Israel even earlier than this,2 it is equally certain that the
arrangements here presupposed were not known in the time
of the older prophets. Deuteronomy has as little knowledge
of this book as B and C. The section, Lev. xvii. ff, which is
incorporated with it, has an unmistakable similarity to
Ezekiel's phraseology and mode of thought. The book is
the work of a priest who, undeterred by the existence
of sanctuaries in Israel,3 has presented us with his ideal of
1 Unless the special codes of laws in Lev. i. ff. were not incorporated with it
till a later date. (Wurster, in Stade, iv. 112 ff., maintains that Lev. i.^vii.,
xi.-xv., were already codified in the ninth or eighth century.)
2 Hos. iv. 7 ff., vii. 12 ; Amos iv. 5, v. 22 ; 1 Sam. ii. 12, 15, 16.
3 That the book cannot have been written after the Exile in Jerusalem is
acknowledged even by Kuenen and his followers. But even in Babylon, in
view of the fact of a newly-restored ritual and temple, this document would be
scarcely intelligible.

74 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
sacred customs in the form of a history of the development of
religious ritual in Israel.
Of poetical pieces, Prov. i.-ix. points rather to the second
half of this period than to the time after the Exile. The
speeches of Elihu in Job cannot well have been composed
later than about 600 B.C. The book of Lamentations
certainly points to the first half of the Babylonian exile. Of
the Psalms, a large number refer to the times of Jeremiah,
perhaps to himself, and testify to the impression produced
by the destruction of the holy city — among these, such
beautiful ones as the 22 nd, the 51st, etc. Having at
our command so considerable a number of prophetical
authorities of known date, it is possible for us to reach
absolute certainty as to the position of Old Testament
religion. Even what is doubtful, particularly in the domain
of the Psalms, attains to something like certainty when
fitted into the frame of ascertained facts regarding the pro
phetical writings.
(c) 560-460 B.C. Towards the end of the Babylonian exile
we meet with a succession of prophets whose common object is
to proclaim the restoration of Israel and the destruction of the
Chaldeans, and to call upon the people to rally with eager
joy round the standard of God. Their names are forgotten —
were probably never known. For, under the suspicious eye
of Babylonian tyrants, and in view of their harsh treatment
of prophets who incited the captives to rebel,1 it was certainly
impossible for a prophet to show himself openly. Only by
writings circulated in secret, and perhaps by purposely hiding
their identity under the mask of old and famous names,
could these men, in many respects the greatest prophets whom
Israel ever produced, attempt to fulfil the commission given
them by God. And these we have probably to seek among
the men whom the Chaldean power crushed even in its death-
throes. Room was found for them, especially in the book of
1 As Jer. xxix. 22 takes for granted.

AUTHORITIES FOR PROPHETIC PERIOD. 75
Isaiah. It was not till after the Exile that its three collections
of speeches were combined and enlarged into the book we now
have. They are to be found in Isa. xiii. 1-xiv. 23, xxi. 1-10,
xxxiv., xxxv., xl.-lxvi. We indicate these pieces in our
quotations as the book of Isaiah (B. J.). To these also
belong chaps. 1., li. of Jeremiah, which unquestionably point,
in spite of Graf's doubts, to the time of Babylon's destruc
tion.1 Among those who returned to Jerusalem were the
prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the author of Zech. i— viii.
inclusive. Perhaps the difficult section, Isa. xxiv.— xxvii.
inclusive, also belongs to the period after the return. There
is no doubt, at any rate, that it cannot belong to the prophet
Isaiah, though there is very great doubt indeed as to when and
in what circumstances it actually originated.2
The historical books, so far as in our Canon these are still
included in the law and the prophets, were then complete as
regards their own special contents. Their final editing and
arrangement, on the contrary, was, like the final arrangement
of the Psalms and the fragments of the prophetical writings,
the work of Ezra and his successors. The book of Ruth,
although it knows so well how to present in a form true to
antiquity the circumstances of the age which it depicts, cannot
in its present form be older than the year 500 B.C. And to
the same period belongs the book of Jonah, as an answer to
the sceptical question why the divine threats were not all
carried out at once and in their full severity. To decide which
1 Not because the view of Babylon's destruction by the Medes and their allies
lay beyond Jeremiah's horizon, but because the temple is represented as actually
in ruins, 1. 28, li. 11, 51, because Babylon's position and future are spoken of
quite differently from the way in which Jeremiah speaks elsewhere (xxv. 9,
xxvii. 6, xxviii., xxix., xxxvii., xxxviii., xliii. 10 ; cf. 1. 11, 24, 31, li. 7, 34, 53),
and because the language, although intentionally akin to his, and taken from
him, nevertheless differs from the genuine writings of Jeremiah the prophet in
a very marked way in its diffuseness and want of independence. The piece may
be from the pen of one of Jeremiah's disciples.
2 According to Smend, the hostile capital, xxv. 10, would be a city of Moab,
and the date would fall between Nehemiah and Hyrcanus. Kuenen, ii. 2,
thinks of a contemporary of Obadiah in Palestine under Nebuchadnezzar,

76 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Psalms belong to this period, rather than to the following, is
extremely difficult, and in many cases absolutely impossible.
4. The period from Ezra to the Asmonaean dynasty we term
the Levitical period, in which religion, although it had not yet
come to a ccmplete standstill, had no longer, as a whole, any
real vitality, but was gradually petrifying into a system of
statutory ritual. None of the writings of this age have any
special religious value. Not one of them can bear comparison
with the nobler monuments of the prophetic age. It is impos
sible not to notice a decline of healthful creative energy, an
exaltation of the letter of Scripture above the prophetic spirit,
and a further development of the tendency already begun in
Ezekiel, A, and Zechariah. The Psalms alone indicate an
advance in the inward and personal character of religious life.
(a) 460-330 B.C. With the exception of the little book of
Malachi, tradition ascribes none of the prophetical books to
this period. But we must, at any rate, acknowledge the
possibility that during this time a not inconsiderable number
of writers, skilled in reproducing prophecy, were busily at work.
Such perhaps was Joel, and such possibly were the writers
whose productions are screened behind the names of Isaiah
and Jeremiah. Perhaps also in this period of Persian suzer
ainty, the great historical work arose which, founded on older
sources, e.g. Ezra's and Nehemiah's own journals, now includes
the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, thus giving a
history of the Jewish hierarchy from the beginning of the
world to the restoration of Jerusalem. It is clear that this
work was composed at least five generations after the return.1
Still it is quite probable that it belongs to a considerably later
period.2 Scarcely in any other book does the Levitical spirit
come out so strongly as in this. Even the older historical
writings in the Old Testament do not seek to reach what we
1 Neh. xii. 13, cf. 10, 22 (26, 47).
2 Kuenen puts it about 250 B.C. Wellhausen sees in Darius tho Persian,
Neh. xii. 22, Codomannus.

AUTHORITIES FOR LEVITICAL PERIOD. 77
regard as the true goal of historical science. Their real aim is
not the discovery and the accurate statement of facts. These
are only the materials by means of which they bring into visi
bility the grand thoughts and principles of religion. But in the
older historical writings of Israel this results from the author
being directly filled with the spirit of religion. The intense
interest which these writers have in religion causes them to
put light and shade, as it were, spontaneously into their grand
pictures of history, so that the national history of Israel
becomes in itself an instructive proof of the fundamental
truths of revealed religion. It is different in Chronicles.
Here we find, not an involuntary working of the spirit, but
a conscious intention to instruct. Happiness and Levitical
piety, misery and irreligion, are made to correspond down to
the most minute details. The purpose of the historian is
everywhere manifest. And it is not a man's moral and religi
ous principle which determines his lot, but external con
formity to sacred forms. Where the chronicler differs from
the earlier accounts, it is certainly possible that he may have
had before him special documents. But the greatest caution
must be used before accepting new facts solely on the
authority of this book ; and even where the facts are undis
puted, one must often question their setting and explanation.
A particularly well-known instance of this is the story of
King Manasseh's captivity and conversion.1 From the whole
history of that period, it is in itself very likely that, on the
occasion of the destruction of Samuges, an Assyrian force
under Assurbanipal in 647, punished the faithless vassal on
the throne of Judah, and that he was kept for a time as a
hostage in the hands of the Assyrian king, who was then
himself residing in Babylon. For, from the new arrange-
1 Cf. K. H. Graf, " The Captivity and Conversion of Manasseh, 2 Chron.
xxiii." (Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1859, iii. 467 ff.). Against him, Gerlach,
I.e. 1861, iii. 503 ff. Cf. esp. 2 Chron. viii. 2, xiii., xiv., xx, 20 ff., xxi. 11 ff.,
xxv. 7 ff., xxviii. 9 ff., xxx. etc.

78 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
ments made by Esarhaddon with Samaria, and from the
inscriptions bearing on the expedition of this king and his
successor, we know that the successors of Sennacherib had
once more advanced in strong force into Western Asia. But
the course of events, at any rate, cannot have been as is related
in Chronicles. For, had Manasseh really died penitent, and
in the full enjoyment of God's favour, later generations could
not have considered his guilt to be the reason why the
punishment of his people could not be any longer delayed,
as they actually did.1
Qoheleth, the puzzling little book which bears the name of
Solomon, may also belong to this age. At least, had it been
written later, it is not easy to understand how a book,
characterised by such scepticism, could have found its way
into the Canon.2 The number of Psalms which date from
this period and the one immediately following, is very large.
For, at all events, by the time Chronicles was composed, the
Psalter as a whole must have been in existence. Hence the
majority of the later Psalms must, at the latest, date from
this period,3 although certainly the use of the doxology in the
Psalm-mosaic of Chronicles does not prove that the whole of
our Psalter was then in existence, and still less that it was
kept strictly closed.
(b) 330-160 B.C. Esther, a book religiously of little im
portance, and also a series of Psalms in the latest books of the
Psalter, appear to date from the time of the Ptolemaic suzer
ainty. The original of Jesus the son of Sirach, too, cannot be
assigned to a later date than this.
Out of the Syrian period we have the book of Daniel
(167 B.C.), and also Ps. xliv. and lxxiv. Next to these
1 2 Kings xxiii. 26, xxiv. 3 ; Jer. xv. 4.
2 Yet cf. Kleinert, "Sind im Buche Qoh. ausserhebraische Einfliisse anzuer-
kennen ? " (Stud. u. Krit. 1883, iv. 760 ff.), and on Ecclesiastes, the writings of
Ch. H. H. Wright, 1883 ; Th. Tyler, 1874; E. H. Plumptre, 1882.
3 1 Chron. xvi. 36, with the doxology of Ps. cv., cvi. ; cf. also the way iD
which the grandson of Sirach speaks of the translation of the Hagiographa.

LITERATURE. 79
comes the oldest part of the book of Enoch, then the third
book of the Sibyl and the first book of the Maccabees,
perhaps also Tobit, Baruch, and the original text of Judith.
All other apocryphal writings point at the earliest to the
last century before Christ.

CHAPTER VI.
LITERATURE OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
A full description of the development of Biblical theology as
a distinct branch of study we do not consider it necessary to
give. That has already been done a good while ago with
tolerable thoroughness by v. Colin, § 4 ; Baumgarten-Crusius,
iii. la; and by Havernick, 2nd edition, pp. 5—12. Since then,
Diestel, in his exhaustive work, entitled, Geschichte des Alten
Testaments in der christlichen Kirche, 1869, has given us
everything relating to this subject, in full detail and from the
right standpoint. Weiss, too, in his handbook on the Biblical
theology of the New Testament, discusses with sufficient ful
ness everything relating to the progress of Biblical theology.
In a description of this progress, the one really instructive
fact is this, that it was only through the gradual giving up of
the conviction as to the perfect harmony between the teaching
of the Bible and the Church that this science of ours could
obtain a start and acquire a position of growing import
ance, — that ere long it began to take up a hostile attitude to
the doctrine of the Church, founding itself on the Bible, and
at last to the doctrine of the Bible itself as being limited by the
circumstances of its own age, until it gradually resumed the
friendly attitude which it had formerly held towards dogmatics
as its handmaid for discovering proof-passages, now, however,
in the more honourable and scientific form of serving as the
historical foundation of Christian dogmatics and ethics. That

80 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
both have in more recent days been subjected once more
to an unnatural amalgamation, implying that dogmatics must
surrender the form given to it by the Church, and again
become identical with the doctrine of the Bible, is only one more
sign of the retrograde tendency of the theological science of
the present day, and will pass away along with that tendency.
Consequently, we give only the literature itself arranged in
groups, so as to bring out clearly the significance of the indi
vidual books for the general development of our subject.
1. Treatises by which the conception of Biblical theology has
been more clearly developed.
Of fundamental importance for our branch of study was
the attempt to make exposition entirely independent of dog
matics. Such were Semler's works, Vorhereitung zur theolo-
gischen Hermeneutik, 1760, Bd. i. 2, 3a, 3b; Apparatus ad
liberaliorem Novi Testamenti interpretationem, 1767, Veteris
Testamenti, 1773; Neuer Versuch die gemeinnutzige Auslegung
und Anwendung des N. T. zu befordern, 1786. On Semler,
cf. Diestel (Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. 1867). — Keil (Be historica
librorum Sacrorum interpretatione ejusque necessitate, in den
opusc. theol., ed. Goldhorn, Lips. 1821, i. 84 ff).
The inaugural lecture of J. Ph. Gabler (Bejusto discrimine
theologice biblicce et dogmaticce regundisque recte utriusque
finibus, Alt. 1787; republished by his sons in his minor
theological writings, Ulm, 1831, ii. p. 179 ff.) applies these-
views to Biblical theology. He is the first to classify Biblical
theology definitely as a historical science, but he nevertheless
demands that the ideas should be stripped of their historical
shell. Alongside of him we may place °J. G. Hoffmann,
Oratio de theologia; biblicce prcestantia, Alt. 1770 ; and °Eber-
hard Schmid, Bissert. II. de theologia biblica, Jena 1788 (?).
In contrast with the philosophical explanation of Biblical
theology, Herder (18, Brief iiber das Studium der Theologie)

LITERAT0RE. 8 1
lays special stress on its historical character ; and K. W.
Stein ("Ueber den Begriff und dieBehandlungsart der biblischen
Theologie," in Keil and Tzschirner's Analecta, Bd. iii. H. 1,
151-204) maintains that the truth of reason ought to have
no influence on the presentation of the Biblical system, which
should be based solely on a historical principle. Similarly (?),
°A. G. F. Schirmer, Bie biblische Bogmatik in ihrer Barstellung
und in ihrem Verhalten zu dem Ganzen der Theologie, Breslau
1820. A satisfactory glimpse into the essence of Biblical theology
is given by Schmidt ("Ueber Interesse und Stand der biblischen
Theologie des Neuen Testamentes in unsrer Zeit," Tubinger
theologische Zeitschrift, 1838, 4). The true principles are
given for the Old Testament in a more important and com
plete form by G. F. Oehler (Prolegomena zur Theologie des
Alten Testamentes, Stuttg. 1845). Besides these, we may
mention F. Fleck (" Ueber biblische Theologie als Wissenschaft
unsrer Zeit," Rohr's Predigerbibl. Th. 86, 1834), C. J. Nitzsch
(Herzog's Realencyclopddie, ii. 219 ff, Aufl. 2, M. Kahler),
Schenkel ("Die Aufgabe der biblischen Theologie in dem
gegenwartigen Entwicklungsstadium der theologischen Wiss
enschaft," Theol. Stud, und Kritiken, 1852, i. 40 ff), Weiss
("Das Verhaltniss der Exegese zur biblischen Theologie," in
the Beutshe Zeitschr. fiir christl. Wissenschaft und Leben,
1852, 38, 39 ; cf. also his Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testa
mentes, § 5). 2. Expositions of Old Testament Theology.
We may pass over altogether such books as are practically
mere collections of proof passages for dogmatics, like those of
Sebastian Schmid, 1671, 3rd ed. 1689; Joh. Guil. Baier,
1716; Hiilsemann, 1679; Kbnig, 1651; Zickler, 1753-6;
Haymann, 1768 ; C. E. Weissmann, 1739 ; and also Semler's
own attempt in 1764. The subject-matter proper is ap-
VOL. I. f

82 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
proached from the standpoint of a free-thinking supranatural-
ism in the following works, in themselves of little importance,
Biisching (Bissertatio, 1756 ; Epitome theologice e solis libris
sacris concinnatce, Lemgo, 1757), and Storr (Boctr. christ. pars
theor. e solis libris sacris repetita, 1793; German by Flatt,
1803), Buddeus (Historia Eccl. Vet. Test., 2 vols. 1726, 29,
3rd ed.), as well as in the far more important work of Gotthilf
Traugott Zacharia (Biblische Theologie oder Untersuchung
des biblischen Grundes der vornehmsten theologischen Lehren,
1772-86, 6 vols., the last by Vollborth). The book of C. A
Crusius (Vorstellung von dem eigentlichen und schriftgemdssen
Plane des Reiches Gottes, 1768), written also from a mildly
supranaturalistic standpoint, is rather a brief compendium of
Christian doctrine. For a criticism of him, cf. Delitzsch, Bie
biblisch-prophetische Theologie, ihre Fortbildung durch C. A.
Crusius und ihre neueste Entwicklung, 1845.
J. H. Maj us takes up an intermediate position in his
Theologia prophetica, 1710, and Synopsis theologice christians
e solis Verbis Christi, 1708, 4. Abr. Teller is hostile to the
doctrine of the Church (Lehrbuch des christlichen Glaubens,
1764; Topice sacrce scriptural, 1761), and C. F. Bahrdt
to the doctrine both of the Church and the Bible (Versuch
eines biblischen Systems der Bogmatik, 1769—70, 1784).
With the intention of giving a really historical presenta
tion, but certainly without actually attaining his object,
Ammon wrote his Biblische Theologie, in 3 vols., 2nd ed.
1801-2, etc.; with still less success, W. Fr. Hufnagel, Bie
Schrift des Alten Testamentes nach ihrem Inhalt und Zweck
bearbeitet, of which vols. i. and ii.a appeared Erl. 1785-6.
Bretschneider, too (Bie Grundlagen des evangelischen Pietismus,
Leipz. 1833), gives nothing else but observations on the chief
dogmas taken separately. G. Lorenz Bauer wrote from a
thoroughly historical standpoint, except that in so doing he
was too little conscious of the uniqueness and the unity of
the Biblical literature (in addition to minor writings, for

LITERATURE. 83
which cf. v. Colin, 24 N. 24, Theologie des Alten Testamentes,
Leipz. 1796 ; Mythologie des Alten und Neuen Testamentes,
2 vols. 1802). G. Ph. Chr. Kaiser is a brilliant though far
from accurate writer, and with a tendency to confuse even
the most widely different things (Bie biblische Theologie
oder Judaismus und Christianismus nach der grammatisch-
historischen Interpretationsmethode und nach einer freimilthigen
Stellung in die kritisch vergleichende Universalgeschichte der
Religionen und die universale Religion, vol. i. 1813, ii.
1814, ii.6 1821). The book is commended to readers
"who are observant students of mankind, and who, refusing
to believe that any one Church is in sole possession of salva
tion, are learning to find out and appreciate the honest
worshipper of the Divine in every age and clime, whose
religion is neither Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism,
nor Paganism, but religious Universalism, Catholicism, in
the true sense of the word, what our theologians call per
fectible Christianity." Vol. ii.&, however, which treats of
the Biblical doctrine of morals, is written in an entirely
different spirit.
Among somewhat modern works that are still of value, we
may mention, of those written from the Hegelian standpoint,
Vatke (Bie biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt ;
vol. i., Bie Religion des Alten Testamentes nach den canon-
ischen Buehem entwickelt, Berlin 1835, not continued), Bruno
Bauer (Bie Religion des Alten Testamentes, vol. i. 1838,
ii. 1839). °L. Noack goes still further (Bie biblische Theologie
des Alten und Neuen Testamentes, 1853).
From the side of scientifically critical theology we have
de Wette (Biblische Bogmatik Alten und Neuen Testamentes,
oder kritische Barstellung der Religionslehre des Hebraismus,
des Judenthums und des Urchristenthums, 3rd ed. 1831),
Daniel von Colin (Biblische Theologie, vol. i., ed. Dav. Schultz,
Breslau 1836), Gramberg (Geschichte der Religionsideen des
Alien Testamentes. 2 vols. 1829-30), Casar v. Lengerke

84 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
(Volks- und Religionsgeschichte Israels, Kenaan, Th. i. 1844),
Important contributions are found in Ewald (Geschichte des
Volkes Israel, vol. i. 3rd ed. 1864, ii. 1853, iii. 2nd ed.
1853, iv. 3rd ed. 1864; Alterthilmer, 3rd ed. 1866). From
the school which is more inclined to defend the doctrine of
the Church, we have L. F. O. Baumgarten- Crusius (Grundziige
der biblischen Theologie, Jena 1828), S. Lutz (Bibl. Bogmatik,
ed. Ruetschi Pforzh. 1847). From an apologetic standpoint
we have Steudel (Vorlesungen iiber die Theologie des Alten
Testamentes, ed. Oehler, Berlin 1840) and Havernick (Vorle
sungen iiber die Theologie des Alten Testamentes, ed. Hahn
1848 ; 2nd ed., Hermann Schultz, with notes and Appendices,
1863). Many points of contact with our work may be found in
v. Hofmann (Schriftbeweis, 2nd ed. vol. i., ii.a, ii.&, 1857—60)
and J. T. Beck (Bie christliche Lehrwissenschaft nach den
biblischen Urkunden, vol. i. 1841).
Since the first edition of this work appeared, Dr. A.
Kuenen (in his book, Be Godsdienst van Israel tot den onder-
gang van den Joodschen Staai, Haarlem 1869, and later in
Be Profeten en de Profetie onder Israel, Historisch-dogmatische
Studie, Leiden 1875) has discussed the contents of the Old
Testament with great acuteness, though he often goes too
far. Among German scholars, Prof. Lie. Bernh. Duhm
comes nearest to him in his Theologie der Propheten
als Grundlage fiir die innre Entwicklungsgeschichte der
israelitischen Religion, Bonn 1875.1 H. Ewald devoted a
great part of his work (Lehre der Bibel von Gott, 1871—75)
to the doctrinal contents of the Old Testament. Still the
1 The assertions of Duhm are partly attacked or modified in the essay of
R. Smend, "Ueber die von den Propheten des achten Jahrhunderts voraus-
gesetzte Entwicklungsstufe der israelitischen Religion " (Studien und Kritiken,
1876, 4) ; cf. the dissertation by the same author, Moses apud prophetas. As
combating the views of Kuenen and his German disciples, it is worth while
mentioning Fr. Ed. Konig's book, Die Sauptprobleme der altisraelitischen
Religionsgeschichte gegenuber den Entwicklungstheoretikern beleuchtet, Leipzig
1884.

LITERATURE. 85
peculiar combination of ethical dogmatics with Biblical
theology, and the interweaving of the dogmatic materials in
the Old and in the New Testaments, make this work of little
Bervice for our purpose. The lectures of Dr. Gust. Friedr.
Oehler, whose contributions to this science were specially
great, published in two volumes in 1873-74, under the title,
Bie Theologie des Alten Testaments, do not contain very much
beyond what the author himself had previously given to the
world in separate essays on the questions dealt with in this
branch of study. A still smaller contribution to the real
advance of this science was made by the publication of
Hitzig's lectures (ed. Kneuker, 1880, Karlsruhe), and of
Kayser's (ed. Reuss, 1886), after the death of these scholars.
A very similar verdict must be passed on the Alttestament-
liche Theologie of the late Dr. Ed. Riehm (ed. Pahnke, 1889).

FIRST MAIN DIVISION.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EELIGION AND MOKALS IN ISRAEL
TILL THE FOUNDING OF THE ASMONEAN STATE.

CHAPTER VII.
ISRAEL'S PRE-MOSAIC AGE.
Literature. — E. Renan, " Nouvelles considerations sur le car-
actere general des peuples semitiques" (Journ. Asiat. 1859); cf.
Histoire et systeme compare" des langues simitiques, Paris, 2nd ed.
1858, 1, 2. Grau, Semiten und Indogermanen in ihren Bezie-
hungen zu Religion und Wissenschaft, 1864, 66. Steinthal,
" Characteristik der semitischen Volker " (Zeitschrift fiir Vblker-
psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, ed. Lazarus and Steinthal,
1850, vol. i. 328-345. Oehler, "Volk Gottes" (art. in Her-
zog's Realencyclopadie, 1st ed.). Max Miiller's Essays on Semitic
Monotheism. Joh. Rontsch, Ueber Indogermanen und Semiten-
thum. Eine volkerpsychologische Studie, 1872. LudwigKrehl.
Ueber die Religion der vorislamischen Araber, Leipzig 1863.
Palgrave, A Year's Journey in Arabia, 1862-3. Osiander,
Zeitschrift der deutsch-morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, vii. 1853.
Merx, " Abgbtterei in Israel " (art. in Schenkel's Bibellexicon).
Ben-David, Ueber die Religion der Hebrder vor Moses. Land,
" Over den Godsnamen miT," etc. (Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1868,
156 ff.). L. Seineke, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Gott. 1876,

literature. 87
vol. i. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 403 ff. Selden,
" De Dis Syris " (in Ugolin, Thesaur. Ant. Sacr. xxiii.). Chwol-
sohn, Bie Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 1856 (vol. i. 301 ff,
esp. 395 ff. ; vol. ii. 153, 273 ff., 367, 380 ff). Tuch, " Ueber
die Eigennamen der alten Araber in ihrer Zusammensetzung
mit Gottesnamen " (Zcitschr. der deutsch-morgenland. Gesellsch.
iii. 153). Miinter, Bie Religion der Carthager. Diestel, "Der
Monotheismus des alteren Heidenthums vorzuglich bei den
Semiten" (Jahrb. fur deutsche Theologie, 1860, 4, p. 669 ff,
2 art.). Dillmann, " Ueber den Ursprung der alttestamentlichen
Religion," an inaugural lecture delivered on May 3rd, 1865,
at Giessen. Movers, Religion der Phbniken, i. 168 ff. (cf. the
essays on. the Mesha stone by Clermont-Ganneau, Schlott-
mann, and Noldeke, and the article by Schlottmann on the
inscription of Eschmunazar, 1868). Ewald, "Neue Unter
suchungen fiber den Gott der Erzvater " (Jahr. f. bibl. Wissen
schaft, 1859-61, vol. x. 1 ff, cf. vol. vi. 1 ff. °Klose, Be
polytheismi vestigiis apud Hebraeos ante Mosem, 4, Gbtt. 1830.
Bruno Bauer (Zeitschrift fiir specul. Theol. i. 1, 140 ff). " Der
mosaische Ursprung der Gesetzgebung des Pentateuch."
F. W. Ghillany, Bie Menschenopfer der alien Hebrder, Niirnb.
1842, and Fr. Daumer, Ber Feuer- und Molochsdienst der alten
Hebrder, 1842. Bernstein, Ursprung der Sagen von Abraham,
Isaak, und Jacob, 1871. Jul. Grill, Bie Erzvater der Mensch-
heit, ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung einer hebraischen Alterthums-
wissenschaft, erste Abtheilung, 1875. Smith, Chaldean
Account of Genesis, 1876. Lenormant, Les premieres civilisa
tions, 1874; Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmo-
goniques de Berose d'apres les textes cunMformes, 1871 ; Bes
sciences occultes en Asie, 1874. Schrader, "Semitismus und
Babylonismus " (Jahrb. f. prot. Theol. 1875, i. 117 ff); cf.
Zeitschrift der deutsch-morgenl. Gesellsch. xxvii. 397 ff. ; Theol.
Stud. u. Krit. 1874, 2. Bie Hbllenfahrt der Istar, ein
altbabyl. Epos 1874.
1. In Genesis, as we now have it, we get a picture, as rich

88 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
as it is attractive, of the religious and moral condition of the
primeval Hebrew world. The latest narrative by A certainly
means to draw a clear distinction between that condition and
the one created by Moses. But even it takes for granted,
from the time of our first parents onwards, a special relation
between God and man. That relation is renewed with Noah,
and develops in the case of Abraham into a special covenant
of friendship.1 Thus the external life of all mankind, as well
as the special relation of Israel to redemption, rests upon a
covenant of God with man.2 And in Noah's case, as after
wards pre-eminently in Abraham's, pious faith in the divine
commands and promises, combined with a walking with God
and obedience to His ordinances, is represented as the simple
foundation of religion.3 To these times is traced back the
origin of the sacred customs characteristic of Israel, especially
circumcision and abstinence from blood,* — while the principle
governing the sacred division of time is loftily explained as
based on the creative work of God Himself.6 Here, of course,
there is no question of historical reminiscences.
The earlier narrative of B and C, which is based on
actual popular tradition, shows still less hesitation in describ
ing the patriarchal age as essentially similar, so far as religion
is concerned, to the later age of Mosaism. From the Fall
onwards it takes the Mosaic form of sacrifice for granted.6
From the time of Enosh men call on the holy name of
Jehovah (Jahveh).7 It knows even in patriarchal times of the
distinction between clean and unclean beasts,8 and of Jehovah
being inquired of by oracle.9 Even then it speaks of God's
covenant relations with Israel, and refers quite definitely and
clearly to the coming salvation.10 In those ages the theo-
1 Gen. i. 28-30, ix. 1 ff., xvii. * Gen. ix. 11, 12, xvii. 7ft
3 Gen. vi. 22, 9, xvii. 1, 3 (cf. ver. 22). * Gen. ix. 4, xvii. 10 ff.
0 Gen. ii. 3. « Gen. iv. 3, viii. 20 ff.
7 Gen. iv. 26. » Gen. vii. 2, 8, viii. 20.
9 Gen. xxv. 22.
10 Gen. xii. 2ff., xv. 5, 13 ff., xviii. 17 ff., xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14.

PICTURE OF PATRIARCHAL AGE IN GENESIS. 89
phanies and the appearances of the angel of God occur in a
tangible, almost mythological way.1
This narrative is particularly fond of describing the
patriarchs as splendid examples of humble faith and devoted
piety,2 as men who acted towards their kinsfolk and in all
matters of right3 according to the highest principles of
morality, who were strictly upright and honest to those within
a clearly defined circle,4 and who were hospitable and open-
handed,5 — all this, however, being consistent with a natural
right to deceive those outside that circle,6 as well as with
considerable moral laxity and even licence.7 This picture is
essentially the same as that which the inhabitants of the
North-Arabian desert still consider the beau-ideal of a pious
and upright man. That such sketches cannot possess the
value of historical accounts, is evident from the whole style
of the narrative. It is a general picture of religion and
morals in the light of a later period. Even in its freshest
and most original form sacred legend is still only legend.
But for giving a knowledge of these primitive days it is not
by any means, on that account, wholly valueless.
2. It certainly appears to us a well-grounded conviction,
that Moses must have found the Hebrew nation already in
possession of views of religion and morals fitted to serve
as the basis of his work. He must have found already pre
valent the belief in a God who was bound to this people
by a special covenant. However dim this belief may have
been, it must at least have implied a personal God who had
absolute power over nature. The grand simple principles of
morality and justice must have been already thought of as

1 Gen. xvi. 7ff., xviii. 19, xxviii. 10 ff., xxxii. 25 ff.
2 .Gen. xii. 4, xv. 6f., xxii. 2ff. ; cf. also xviii. 23 ff. etc
3 Gen. xiii. 8 ff., xiv. 24, xxi. 22 ff., xxvi. 16 ff., xxxix. 8ff. etc.
4 Gen. xvi. 6f., xxxi. 36 ff., etc.
' Gen. xviii. 2ff., xix. Iff., xxiv. 81 ff., xiv. 22 ff.
6 Gen. xii. 13 ff., xxvi. 7 f., xxvii. 11 ff.
7 Gen. xxxviii. 16 ff., xxxiv. 25 ff., ix. 21 ff., xliii. 34.

90 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
involved in relationship to this God, and there must have
already existed among the people a number of outward rites
and ceremonies. Only on such assumptions could Moses,
as the messenger of the God of their fathers, claim and
secure obedience to his commands as a political prophet,
muster a down-trodden people in the name of its God, and
lead it onwards to an uncertain future.1 But a higher
spiritual stage can develop without resistance, repentance,
and conversion only out of a less developed stage, never
out of one quite antagonistic. The mass of the people in
Egypt may, it is true, have been sunk deep enough in
ignorance, immorality, and idolatry.2 Even in our own day
the roving children of the desert look down with justifiable
contempt on the kindred tribes settled in the Nile valley,
for the latter generally combine Egyptian luxury with
nomadic roughness as soon as they begin to till the ground
and cultivate the gentler arts of civilised life. But those
who kept alive the better traditions of the people, we must
think of as worshipping a national God quite distinct from
nature, although, of course, the question as to theoretical
monotheism had not yet been raised. We cannot doubt
that this God was conceived of as a personal and, in a certain

1 Ex. iii. 6, iv. 5, v. 9.
2 In addition to stories like Ex. xxxii., etc., such passages as Ezek. xx. 16
justify us in inferring that the common people whom Moses led were deeply
degraded. Amos v. 26 cannot, in my opinion, be so used, since the verse must
be taken as a threat to send into exile the idolatrous Israelites of Amos' own
age. Schrader (Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1874, ii. 324ff.) translates, by trans
posing the word Da'DpS, "So ye will take Saccuth (Assyr. niDtf), your king,
and Chiun, your star-god, your images which ye have made for yourselves, and
I will lead you into captivity. " Another interpretation is attempted by Hoff
mann (Stade Zeitschrift, iii. 112), "Did ye then offer sacrifices to me in the
wilderness while ye at the same time carried about (Jer. x. 5) Saccuth, your
king, and Chiun, your idol, as your own god, made by yourselves ? " We should
say, "When ye sacrificed to me, did ye carry about idols ?" In other words :
"In the wilderness ye sacrificed to me alone, now ye give me companions.
That is the way of foreigners. Therefore, off with you to a foreign land ! "
Even this explanation — which, besides, appears to me forced — would not alter
the judgment given above.

PICTURE OF PATRIARCHAL AGE. 91
sense, a spiritual God, and that Israel was regarded as His
chosen people. According to the sacred legend, He must
have given a special revelation of Himself to the patriarchs.
The people determine unanimously and at once to hold a feast
in His honour beyond the bounds of the idolatrous land of
the foreign oppressor ; 1 and even when they fall away from
the higher revelation of God, it is still His image that they
wish to honour and worship.2 Further, the religious memory
of this people must have regarded Canaan as the land of
their fathers, the land of promise, the land destined to
be their inheritance. It could not have been in the post-
Mosaic age that ancient sanctuaries like Shechem, Hebron,
Beersheba, and Bethel became places hallowed by patriarchal
legend. Besides, there can be no doubt that legend has given us a
faithful account, at least, of the chief moral characteristics
of the pre-Mosaic period. The unchanging form of Bedouin
life enables us to-day to recognise these figures as true to life,
nearly three thousand years after the earliest parts of Genesis
were written- down. How, then, could the picture of them, a
few centuries after their own day, be anything but true.
Indeed, Israel was always in a position where it could refresh
its recollections of the life which the patriarchs had led, by
taking a glance at similar modes of life. The tribes to the
east of Jordan always continued to be mainly pastoral peoples.3
In the time of the Judges, friendly tribes, like the Kenites,
lived in tents, as they still do, in the fertile plain of the
Kishon;4 and in the Rechabites we see, at a much later
date, the picture of people clinging to a pastoral life with all
the fervour of a religious passion.6 Hence we may, without
hesitation, believe in the chief moral features of the legend,
1 Ex. v. 1 ff. 2 Ex. xxxii. 4 ff.
3 Num. xxxii. 4 Judg. iv. 11, 17 ff.
6 Jer. xxxv. This was not exactly a species of Nazirite vow, though it was
certainly akin to it. It was simple antagonism to city-civilisation and its
habits as being destructive of ancient simplicity. Such antagonism is nothing

92 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
not as if it gave us a historical account, but because its
colours could scarcely but be true to nature. There must
have been simple forms of worship and of sacrifice, feasts
expressive of popular joy. In Mosaism sacrifice is every
where presupposed as a matter of course, and the Mosaic
feasts are derived from older ones.1 If an inference from
later times is allowable, joy in nature and holidaying of a
somewhat sensuous character were probably the main features
of these festivals.2 On the other hand, the redemption of the
first-born and many of the Passover rites point to a passionate
energy of repentance, and to atonement for sin by shedding
of blood, these being the very traits which specially mark all
Semitic religions. The chief sacred customs must have
already existed in a simple form. These would probably
embrace circumcision, abstinence from blood, and a horror of
using certain animals as food. For many of the later
regulations of this kind cannot be explained except by
primitive popular customs. Faithful observance of acknow
ledged obligations and respect for" property ranked as moral
duties, especially in the marriage relation, which was
looked at from the standpoint of property. With these
exceptions, the natural right to have recourse to cunning,
deceit, and violence was admitted, and also the right of the
male to free sexual enjoyment. The rights of parents and of
the head of the clan were absolute. These were the only
recognised authorities. Shed blood demanded bloodshed.
Later legislation found this avenging of blood an established
and sacred national custom, and had to remain content with
uncommon among pastoral peoples. The disinclination to use any other tent
but the black tent of the desert, and the contempt with which the Arabs of the
peninsula of Sinai regard the art of writing, are examples of the same thing.
In fact, Mohammed's prohibition of wine is to no small extent an expression of
the views held by these children of the desert.
1 Ex. v. 1, xxxii.
2 Judg. xxi. 20 f. ; Ex. xxxii. 6, 15 ff. Unless this side of the national life had
a closer connection with what Israel found already prevalent in Canaan than
with its own tribal reminiscences.

PICTURE OF PATRIARCHAL AGE. 93
legalising it in the least objectionable forms. Hospitality,
cunning, courage, and careful provision for the family, were
held in the highest esteem. There was neither priestly
mediator nor fixed forms of worship. The head of the family
and the national leader represented the people even before
God. The simple and certainly somewhat arbitrary forms
of worship were the expression of a wish to gratify the
Deity with a gift, whether by way of thanks, or in the hope
of furthering a petition, or with a view to appease the divine
wrath ; but above and beyond all this, these sacrifices were
due to the habit of celebrating in a religious way every joyous
occasion in life. Various objects of superstition, such as
the Teraphim, must have been in use, and there must
have been a desire to possess some symbolical representa
tion of the national God. The former were still found
in the time of David,1 and actually in the possession of
pious servants of Jehovah. The ox-image of the national
God in the wilderness, as well as Gideon's, Micah's, and
Jeroboam's, warrants the inference that there was an ancient
liking for such a representation.2 Probably, too, the serpent-
form of Nehushtan is a remnant of ancient custom.3 The
normal picture of that age must have been something
like the above. The actual moral and religious condition
of the mass of the people in Egypt must also, of course,
have been comparatively low. Sacred tradition was not
wrong in cherishing only the memory of the free pastoral
life of the patriarchs, and in working up the incidents of
these days into pictures of surpassing beauty. Immorality
and degradation must have been the chief characteristics of

1 1 Sam. xix. 13.
2 Judg. viii. 27, xvii. 3ff., xviii. 31 ; 1 Kings xii. 28 ff. Certainly, in the
cases of Micah and Gideon, the precise nature of the image is not mentioned ;
but the connection of the worship kept up at Dan till the overthrow of the
kingdom with the worship in Micah's house, leads to a more than probable
conclusion regarding Judg. viii. and xvii.
3 2 Kings xviii. 4.

94 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
those half-settled nomads, just as they are at the present
day characteristic of those tribes on the borders of the Nile
valley which are in the process of becoming Fellahln. Hence
the time when Israel lived in tents as a purely pastoral race
might well appear ideal.
3. It is with the name of Abraham that all the early
memories of Israel associate the origin of the characteristic
features of pre-Mosaic religion and morals, that is, the
peculiarities that distinguish the Hebrew race from its
Semitic brethren. In the old national tradition, as we have it
in B and C, this man is a most imposing figure. He has
become the beau-ideal of a saint. He separates himself from
his family by an act of faith.1 His whole family relations are
based on faith, in contradistinction to nature.2 He appears
as the priestly servant of the God Jehovah.3 From the first,
gracious promises are made to him, and these always become
more and more splendid. As the favours increase, so does
his faith.4 Even his son he would be ready to give to God.5
God appears to him as to a friend, and takes counsel with
him as with a confederate. He intercedes for sinners.6
On his account his son is blessed.7 In a word, he appears as
the great " friend of God " to a degree not attained even by
Moses himself. He is the august model, on the one hand,
of piety, faith, self-sacrifice, honesty, hospitality, fidelity ; and,
on the other, of high position, wealth, power, honour, and
wonderful prosperity.
Tradition of the Deuteronomic cast represents him as
fleeing from his native place, in order to escape from its
idolatry. He is thus made the type of the people of the true

1 Gen. xii. 1 ff.
2 According to B, Gen. xi. 30, xviii. 11 f. B, C, xv. 2, 3. In B the land of
promise is not named as in A ; it is "the unknown."
3 Gen. xii. 8, xiii. 18.
4 Gen. xii. 2ff., xiii. 16ff., xviii. 10 ff., xv. Iff.
6 Gen. xxii.
6 Gen. xviii., esp. 17 ff., 22 ff., xix. 7 Gen. xxvi. 5.

ABRAHAM. 95
God as it escapes from the idolatrous land of Egypt.1 For
his sake God loves Israel, the nation of his descendants.2
And the honour thus given to Abraham grows steadily greater.
In the priestly narrative of A, the patriarch's figure is, it is
true, rather indistinct. Indeed the whole patriarchal tradi
tion has for A quite a subordinate significance as compared
with "the Law." Abraham's history is represented as con
nected rather with the political aims of his tribe.3 But even
in A there remains quite enough to show the splendour of
this picture. Abraham is the covenant friend of God. He
is the first on whom circumcision was enjoined. To him
the promise regarding the glory of his nation is communicated.
For his sake his kindred are rescued.4 And the theology
of later times is specially fond of Abraham's personality, so
that he is not merely the chief subject of profound allegoris
ing on the part of Philo, but even in the New Testament
he far surpasses in religious importance the great prophet
Moses.6 Finally, through the Koran, he has attained, even
in the opinion of the Arabs, the position of being the most
honourable among the men of God, the oldest and greatest of
Moslems. 4. These ideas regarding Abraham, developed as they were
stage by stage, do not possess the value of historical data.
Indeed, we must even leave it undetermined, in the present
state of tradition, how far the name of Abraham, and the
general sketch of his life, are to be regarded as historical.
If Gen* xiv. were a really primitive account, the political
importance of Abraham would be very clearly established.
Still, I cannot convince myself of the certainty of this assump-

1 Josh. xxiv. 2, 3, and carried further by Josephus, Antiq. Jud. i. 8.
Compare, also the further development of the legend, 1 Mace. xii. 21.
2 Deut. iv. 37, vii. 8, ix. 5.
8 Gen. xi. 31 f.
4 Gen. xvii. , xix. 29.
6 Rom. iv. ; Gal. iii. ; Jas. ii. 21 ; Heb. xi. 8 ; Luke iii. 8 ; John
viii. 33.

96 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
tion.1 The fact that Assyrian documents of the age to which
Abraham must have belonged give us political circumstances
and names which agree well enough with this narrative,
cannot justify us in considering it an ancient non-Israelitish
source. For the author of Gen. xiv. is, at all events, a
believing Israelite, who surrounds the figure of Abraham with
such a halo of glory as would be inconceivable in a non-
Israelitish source. This figure, which is for him the main
object of the story, he might quite easily have set in a frame
of stories thoroughly in keeping with the general historical
character of those times.2 The inferences which Josephus3
draws from a narrative of Berosus, and his statement taken
from Nicolaus of Damascus, that Abraham was king of
Damascus,4 are absolutely without historical value. But it
may be regarded as certain that the foundation of Israel's
moral and religious character was not laid in Egypt, where
the nation came into contact with an utterly alien worship,
half-naturalistic, half-philosophical. It was brought with
them from their free nomad life in Canaan and the neighbour
ing countries, having been gradually formed there in the
small pastoral clan which had migrated from Mesopotamia, and
which, at one time mixing with kindred clans, and at another
keeping itself distinct, had sojourned for several genera
tions in that country, which was then, probably, less thickly
peopled. How then had this moral and religious distinctiveness
originated ?

1 What can be said on that side may be best seen in Ewald, i. 431 ff. ; cf. also
Baur, i. 140 f. , and Sayce, Fresh Light from Ancient Monuments. Cf. on the
other side, Noldeke, Abh. iii.
2 On the other hand, a mere glance at this section is sufficient to show any
unprejudiced reader that vers. 18-20 are a late insertion, made for the purpose
of giving the holy city Jerusalem = Salem, from the earliest days, a sacred
character which it has sorely missed. The verses were inserted here because
the " king's valley " gave an opportunity for doing so.
3 Antiq. i. 7. 2.
4 Cf. also Justinns, Tr. Pomp. H. Ph. Ep. xxxvi. 2.

ABRAHAM. 97
According to the late representation in Josh. xxiv. 3, it
took its rise in distinct and conscious antagonism to the
superstition of his kinsfolk on the part of Abraham, the
founder of the nation. According to the legend in Josephus,
the lifework of this man sprang out of a definite intention
on his part to reform religion. The writers in Genesis
know nothing of any such direct antagonism on Abraham's
part to his religious surroundings. It is true that among
Abraham's kindred it is not only superstition, such as was
common even in Israel, that is taken as a matter of course,
but the actual worship of " other gods." 1 But in all
other respects A, B, and C agree in considering that a
monotheistic and ethical religion, not essentially different
from the religion of Abraham, was an ancient inheritance of
the descendants of Seth and Shem, and flourished in Western
Asia.2 The one thing represented as new in the case of
Abraham is the covenant relationship with God, together with
the promises founded upon it. And long after this, nothing
is known in Israel of any direct religious antagonism to the
petty tribes of kindred stock.
To get an answer to our question, we must study the
history of religions by the aid of the historical method, and
thus seek to obtain an estimate of the religion of the Semitic
races, and of its relation to the religion of the Hebrews before
the time of Moses.
5. Ever since Ernest Renan, in his own clever and brilliant
style, asserted that monotheism was a natural instinct of the
Semitic peoples, not a superior instinct either which set these
peoples above the rest, but one " sui generis " having both
excellences and defects of its own, — an assertion which he
explains by the further statement that monotheism is really
due to a lack of imaginative power and richness of diction, of
breadth of conception and freedom of spirit, in fact, to a
1 B, Gen. xxxv. ; C, xxxi. 19, 30, 34 (53 ?).
2 Gen. v., vi. 9ff., xiv. 19, xx. 6, xxiv. 31, 50, xxxi. 49.
VOL. I. G

98 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
lack of religious needs, and is therefore, so to speak, "the
minimum of religion," — a lively discussion has been going
on as to how far the nationality of Israel can account for the
origin of Old Testament religion.
Lassen agrees with Renan's proposition. Grau, with the
approval of Leo, has taken his assertions as being in the
main well founded, and has used them not unskilfully to prove
the unique function of the Semites as repositories of revelation ;
Steinthal, Ewald, Diestel, and Max Miiller have, on the
other hand, called attention to what is unfounded, or, at any
rate, exaggerated, in these views of Renan.1 " Could the
monotheistic instinct of the Semitic race, if it really is an
instinct, have been so frequently and so entirely obscured
by the polytheistic instinct of the Aryan race, if it, too, is an
instinct, that the Jews could worship at the high places round
about Jerusalem, and the Greeks and Romans become zealous
Christians ? " (Max Miiller). The mistake in Renan's general
verdict regarding the limited capabilities of the Semitic
peoples, is due to the very common error of generalising
judgments that apply only to particular cases that have
come under consideration. The capacity of the so-called
Semitic peoples for religion and culture, especially if, contrary
to the statement in Gen. x., the Phoenicians are reckoned
among them, and if the civilisation of the Euphrates valley i8
placed to their credit, can no more be estimated by one standard
than that of the Aryan races of the same period. The children
of the desert, who, since primeval days, have lived in tents
from Haran to Hedjaz, bear in this respect no more resem
blance to the haughty cultured peoples of Babylon and Tyre,
than the ancient Slavs and Germans in their woods and marshes
to the Greeks of the age of Pericles or to the Romans under
Augustus. To pronounce a general judgment on questions of
such extent, is what every prudent man would decline to do.
1 The book of Rbntsch goes too far in denying that any national influence
contributed to the rise of the Biblical religion.

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. 99
Only on one supposition is it possible to concede to Renan's
assertions a somewhat greater measure of justification. The
name "Semitic" would have to be strictly confined to the small
group of nations which, according to Hebrew recollection
(Gen. x.), belonged to Israel's kinsfolk in the narrower sense
— to the group of warlike shepherd tribes which, issuing, as is
clear, from the bosom of the great Arabian peninsula,1 over
ran Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan, and possessed themselves
of part of Egypt. Some of these remained in their original
condition as regards culture ; others founded military empires
on the soil of an older civilisation, and then conformed to
the culture of their vassals, in much the same way as the
modern world has seen the rise of the Ottoman and
Seljuk empire on the soil of Arabian and Persian civilisation.
It is thus that we should picture to ourselves the rise of
Semitic suzerainty in Chaldea and Nineveh, of Aramaic over-
lordship in Syria, and the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt.
Such, too, was Israel's supremacy in Canaan; and such the
supremacy of the kindred peoples, Edom, Moab, and Ammon
in the lands east of Jordan. The founders of the special
civilisation of Canaan, Babylon, and Egypt would then be
peoples of another stamp, called in the Bible Hamites, who,
though akin in language and race to the Semites, had gone
through quite a different course of life and development, and
had got even their national instincts modified by intermixture
with peoples of a different race.
Only within such limits is it possible to speak of that
peculiarity of the Semitic spirit on which Renan lays so much
stress. Better acquaintance with the civilised peoples of
Nineveh and Babylon, as well as a proper estimate of the rdle
1 According to Hommel, in a lecture, " Ueber die urspriinglichen Wohnsitze
der Semiten," Florence, 13th Sept. 1878 (Augsb. Allg. Z. Beil. No. 263, 264,
1878), we should think of their original home as in Mesopotamia, about mid
way down the Euphrates and the Tigris (A. v. Kremer, Semitische Cullur-
entlehnungen aus dem Thier- und Pflanzenreich, Ausland, Bd. xlviii., Jan. 1, 2 j
as a separate pamphlet, by Cotta, Stuttg. 1875).

100 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
which the Phoenicians played in the history of the world, would
directly contradict his assertions. We know now that a great
many of the Hellenic myths rest on the mythology of these
civilised States, especially the whole series of myths connected
with Hercules, the victorious Sun-God, with his arrows, his
lion's hide, and his gleaming locks, — with the beneficent yet
destructive Hero -God, who afterwards acts the part of a
woman and a servant, and at last, in order to renew his
youth, perishes in the flames. We know that almost all
the goddesses of Greece owe their origin to the Asiatic
Nature-mother, and that the peculiar religious excitement
known as orgiastic frenzy, which has so often smitten
European nations also, has its home in those lands where
the great mother of the gods and the dying Sun-God were
worshipped. We are acquainted with mythical and epic
Chaldee songs, like the Flood and the journey of Istar to
Hades. We are aware that we have to seek for the cradle
of Greek art by the banks of the Euphrates, just as even in
Homer " the men of Sidon," as artists and as dealers in works
of art from the cities on the Euphrates, are looked upon by
the Greeks as models whom they cannot hope to rival. And
when I point out that the constitution of Carthage was the
most satisfactory embodiment of political genius which
Aristotle in his day could discover, and that a people
which produced a family like the family of Barcas can
hardly have been lacking in political and military talent,
enough has been said to prove that the view of Renan, in
the general form in which he states it, is absolutely unten
able. 6. But if we leave these civilised peoples out of account,
and regard the gifts of genius which led them as nations to a
richer mythology and art, and to higher political organisation,
as due to national elements of a different kind by the combina
tion of which the peculiar characteristics of the " Hamitic "
nations might be explained, then there certainly remains an

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. 101
element of truth to which Renan has called attention.
And this we ought not to overlook. For while the
religion of Israel is, on the one hand, according to
Hitzig's beautiful simile, like the pearl which grows by
the pain and death of the oyster, that is, has been brought
into being through a history of suffering and chastisement ;
on the other hand, it cannot but have had an intimate
connection with the peculiar gifts of this people, and with
the religious background of the family of nations to which
it belonged. What, then, was the character of this religious background ?
To this question we may first of all give with confidence this
negative reply. It was not monotheism, and least of all a
spiritual monotheism. In proof of this we do not appeal to
the religion of Nineveh and Chaldea, the sources of which have
now been laid open to our inspection, nor to the essentially
similar religion of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites.
That these religions were full of nature-myths, that they
were in possession of an artistically constructed system of
gods and goddesses, whose forms are closely bound up with
the great events of life in nature, especially with the mysteries
of birth and death, as well as with the wonderful and yet
regular course of the planets — of all this there cannot be
a doubt. But even the elemental nature-religion of the
Semitic pastoral peoples cannot have been monotheistic. The
Semitic conquerors of Chaldea and Nineveh found themselves
quite at home among the "Accadian" myths and the deities
of the Chaldean priests ; and their own religious language
supplied them with names for the many gods of that different
civilisation. However much the idolatry of the ancient Arabs varied
with the separate districts and tribes, so that there was
perhaps only in Hedjaz and Yemen a regular system of
gods, nevertheless they always presupposed a plurality
of gods and goddesses in which the Greeks believed that

102 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
they could at once recognise their own divinities.1 In
Edom, Moab, and Ammon we do not, it is true, know of a
plurality of gods, — at least there is some doubt about it, — but
we are all the more certain that these peoples were not them
selves conscious of being different from the nature-worshipping
peoples round about them, nor were they regarded by the
Israelites as different.
7. It is much more difficult to give a positive answer to
the question as to the essence of Semitic elemental worship.
Practically it can be worked out only from the language of
these peoples, and from the effects of their common religion upon
the development of the religious life in the different tribes.
The names for God among the Semites show us that for
them the original object was not how to obtain a religious
conception of the various developments of life in nature, but
how to express their own subjection to the irresistible force
revealed in nature. The oldest name of God, El (Bab-ilu),
and then Baal, Bel, Adonai, Moloch, Milcom, Annammelech,
Melk-Qarth, Adrammelech, and certainly also Assur, Kemosh,
Allah, Kijun, Aziz, all express this one aim. Now, as the
peculiar genius of the Semitic languages generally makes it
difficult to separate the noun from its verbal root, we certainly
have here a strong barrier against the development of myth
proper, against the individualising of the gods, that is, against
polytheism properly so called, while at the same time the
strongly personal conception of the idea of God rendered the
transiti6n to pantheism difficult. The unity of God was not an
article of faith. But the plurality of divine forces, being
thought of as a matter of course, excited little interest. The
God to whom prayer was addressed, or who was regarded as
specially interested in the particular people, exercised quite
1 Herod, i. 131, iii. 8 ; Arrian, Exped. Alex. vii. 20 ; and ako Origen,
Contra Celsum, v. § 37 ; Philostorg. Hist. Eccl. iii. 4. Cf. in general the
writings of Osiander and Krehl, mentioned above, and the more recent works of
Wellhausen ( Wesen des arahischen Heidenthums) and Robertson Smith (Lectures
on the Religion of the Semites).

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. 103
an exceptional influence over the religious life. Hence it can
be said, at all events, in a certain sense that here the stage
of polytheism had not yet been reached.
With this is connected what is generally called the
" particularist " idea of God, viz. the paying of almost
exclusive attention to the god whom the particular tribe
claims as its own, either along with or in opposition to the
other gods. That is not, it is true, an exclusively Semitic
trait, but it is found wherever there is strong tribal feeling.
All really polytheistic systems have arisen mainly through
several tribes, with their respective gods, having been com
bined into a single nation. But here this characteristic is
decidedly stronger than among the Aryans, probably because
the Semites paid less attention to the various phenomena of
nature than to the sovereign power of the god to whom the
service of the favoured people was due. The Baal of the
Canaanites and the Phoenicians, the Assur of Assyria, the Bel
of Babylon, the Chemosh of Moab, as the inscription on the
Mesha stone proves, the Milcom of Ammon, and the Aziz
of the Syrians, influenced their respective peoples in a very
different way from the Zeus of Olympia or the Mars of
Rome. This " uniformity " of religious life was favoured, not only
by the language, but also by nature and by the national
development of these peoples. The pastoral tribes of the
desert did not find in nature a bright and varied life, but
only the august and uniform omnipotence that kills as- well as
vivifies, the light which is at the same time a consuming heat.
Hence, with all their power of imagination, there was really
a want of variety in their conceptions. And they lacked a
rich and harmoniously developed social and political life.
They devoted their mental energies with resolute persistency
to a few subjects. Human life, when spent amid quiet
monotonous surroundings, affords but little scope for the
exhilaration of joy, and for the consciousness of freedom ;

104 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
it rather tends to foster a spirit of submission and resignation.
Not as if the children of the desert were pious in the proper
sense. Indifference is often the result of resignation. But if
the religious sense be awakened, then in such circumstances
it delights to manifest itself in entire self-surrender. From
the very poverty of the life it gains in fervour and passion,
and may thus turn out to be the one element which, not
being weakened by distracting feelings, holds sovereign sway
over the soul.
Of such a soul the natural product is, on the one hand,
prophecy, and on the other, wild religious enthusiasm, with
its fanatical devotion to God, its sacrifices of children, its
self-mutilations, and its tribute of maidens. Moreover,
since every higher development of political and social life
is absent, the ethical element in religion must likewise
be lacking. The impression of mere might, or the patri
archal frame of mind, is the last and highest. The
fundamental element in piety is fear of God, from the very
lowest meaning of the term up to the timid reverence,
mingled with love, which a child feels for its Father and
Lord. But the nation's weal, its victories, and honours are
thought of as inseparably bound up with its God. And in
this union of God with the nation, as well as in the
emphasising of His might, lies the impulse to set Him apart
from nature as her Lord and Creator. The myths of creation
were born on Semitic soil.
Owing to its peculiar characteristics, this religion had
no strong tendency to image-worship or to priestly mediation.
In Canaan, as in Arabia, the symbols of the divine presence
were sacred stones and trees. There were no statues of the
gods. There were, at the most, symbolical figures in which the
strength and the wisdom of the godhead were worshipped.
There were no priesthoods ; the father of the household, or the
head of the clan, was also the priest, and performed the simple
sacrifices with their sacred rites.' And while the statue of a

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. 105
god in human form is a great help to the making of myths,
and to the more artistic forms of polytheism, no impulse in
this direction is given by the symbol of deity, whether it be
taken directly from nature, or produced by fancy, or be the
expression of an allegorical thought — as was, for example,
the figure of an ox. The reason is the lack of individuality.
And while in every nature - religion the priesthood is
driven onwards to a pantheistic spiritualising of their re
ligion, which is then revealed exoterically as an artistically-
constructed polytheism, wherever the worship is retained
in the hands of the father or the head of the clan,
people fight shy of every attempt at a theological, or even
theoretical, development of their religion. But in any such
religion popular customs, if once they get connected with the
worship of the gods, are kept up with all the greater per
sistency ; and it is just the pastoral life which, under all
circumstances, causes such customs to strike their roots
particularly deep.
8. This must have been the character of Semitic religion
among the tribes which did not, like the kindred tribes that
first emigrated from the country in which the race was
cradled, coalesce with the nationality and the civilisation of
alien peoples, but which, as pastoral peoples, preserved the
simplicity and the memories of their ancient home. Into this
category we must put the religion of the Terachitic branch,
which still included Aramaeans, Hebrews, Edomites, Moabites,
Ammonites, and a number of Arabian tribes. This would
certainly not be directly decisive as to the origin of the
religion of Israel, were one to assume, according to a view
recently in favour with Assyriologists, that these tribes,
during their stay in Chaldea, were deeply influenced by the
culture and religion of the Babylonian empire. In that case
it would have to be admitted that a fully-formed polytheism
of a sensuous character, already knit together by astronomy
and resting on a naturalistic pantheism, that a rich web of

106 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
myths full of deep meaning, a worship, the real centre of
which was the homage paid to the female side of nature, had
been appropriated by the Hebrews even prior to the rise of
their own religion, or had at least exerted an influence upon
them. This view is supported, not merely by the numerous
elements which the Old Testament has in common with
the Assyrio - Babylonian mythology, but also by the theory
brought into favour by recent excavations that Ur of the
Chaldees is the Uru (Mugheir) south of Babylon. This
I cannot but consider a misleading plausibility. In Genesis,
Ur of the Chaldees has manifestly so close a connection with
Paddan-Aram and with Haran,1 that it is impossible to think
of a country at such a vast distance from these districts as
Southern Babylonia. And nowhere else in the early memories
of Israel is there anything that points to a home so far south.
The Aramaean country, that is, the course of the upper
Euphrates, is represented as the fatherland of Israel. And
certainly the later culture of Israel, like that of all the nations
in Western Asia, depends to a large extent upon Babylon, e.g.
its chronology, coinage, and measures. The myths with which
our Old Testament begins are, as every unprejudiced reader
sees, closely akin to the stories of the Izdubar epic, which the
library of Assurbanipal has preserved as an old Chaldee
treasure. Above all, the Biblical tradition of the Flood i8 beyond a
doubt closely connected with the Chaldee tradition. And the
later history of Israel shows us that the worship of the Queen
of Heaven was a worship taken up by the people with special
zest.2 Still that does not prove that Israel sprang from
Southern Babylon. Babylon's contribution to their civilisa
tion may quite well have been made through the medium
of the Phoenicians and the other Canaanites, and been assimi-
• Gen. xi. 28, 31, xxii. 20 ff., xxiv. 10, xxviii. 2, xii. 1 ; JTlblD pK,
cf. xxiv. 4.
2 E.g. Jer. xliv. 17 ff.

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. 107
lated by Israel in much later times, when the whole national
life was growing more refined. At that time, during the
days of the kings, both philosophical and theological materials
akin to the Babylonian may have found their way into
Israel. Besides, we do not know how much of this belonged
to the old Semitic stock of ideas which the Semites brought
with them to Babylon and Nineveh. Nor do any of the
Terachitic tribes, whether Arabian or Edomite, whether
Moabite, Ammonite, or Israelite, show us exactly the charac
teristic features of the religious life of the Chaldeans. If the
worship of the great Nature-goddess and all its orgiastic rites, or
the Sakasan feast had actually belonged to the national religion
of Israel, we should be deprived of all means of understand
ing how, in such a soil, a pure reHgion could ever have
developed without violent convulsions. The true explanation
will rather be this, that while some Semitic tribes adopted the
civilisation of the Euphrates valley, those which kept true to
the simplicity of their ancestors in morals and religion, viz.
the Aramaean and the Hebrew, withdrew from Mesopotamia,
where they must have formed part of one huge empire, to
the vast deserts and steppes on the north and west, whence
they afterwards sallied out in various directions in quest of
their destined homes. Such must have been the migration
of Terach- Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, and from Haran
to Canaan, to a certain extent an actual flight from his
idolatrous kinsfolk ; more strictly, however, it was for the
pure-born Semites a tearing of themselves away from an
alien civilisation and religion eager to absorb them as it had
absorbed their brethren. That a pastoral people like the
Hebrews could, while living in Egyptian bondage and in
circumstances of primitive simplicity, as regards culture, have
retained in their memories for centuries the wisdom of the
Chaldeans, is an idea that bids defiance to all historical pro
bability. 9. Hence the religion out of which the pre-Mosaic religion

108 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of Israel sprang, and with which it was essentially one, must
have been that simple religion of the Semites which has been
already described. For since the Old Testament represents
Abraham as the tribal father of Ishmael and Edom, as well as
of other Arabian tribes, and regards Ammon and Moab as
descended from a man of the same culture and religion, the
common religion of these tribes must have been not only
one and the same, but also such as would explain the
religion of the Hebrews, as well as that of those other tribes.
Consequently, the name Abraham does not solve this historical
question. For, if he be thought of personally as the founder
of a pure revealed religion, it must have belonged quite as
much to all those tribes as to Israel. In the name Abraham
there is quite a number of peoples included which, however,
have absolutely nothing to do with the true religion.
The way in which this Hebrew religion could grow into
that which is presupposed in the Old Testament, can be pointed
out without difficulty. As soon as there arose a fuller and
deeper reverence for the tribal God, that God must practically
have become the one God, that is, the God to whom alone
trust, reverence, and adoration were due, and before whom the
other gods, without having their existence explicitly denied,
shrivelled up into mere subordinates, or into powers hostile,
but helpless. When the people found themselves face to face
with kindred tribes among which the old common religion was
conjoined in Hamite fashion with sensual licence and with
wild excitement, and connected with a female divinity, the
self-consciousness of Israel must have perceived the great
superiority which the simplicity of their own religion and
morals had over such developments as these. Naturally,
therefore, they would endeavour to make that distinction
greater and greater. And when a still higher moral develop
ment of the people took place, then, on the basis of His
terrible power and His consuming holiness and glory, this
God must have been at once apprehended as the personifica-

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. 109
tion of Justice, Goodness, and Truth. The people must,
as His people, at once acknowledge themselves to be a
people pledged to moral order and moral aims. The sacred
symbols of nature -worship could either be appropriated
by the higher religion, or dissolved and volatilised into
heroic legends. A multitude of superstitious customs, which
originally belonged to nature-worship, could be quite frankly
retained by the higher religion, just as they have quietly
accompanied Christianity also through all its stages of develop
ment down to the present day. If the thing happened in this
way, then it is a quite superfluous and misleading question to
ask if the God of Israel sprang from Moloch or Saturn. He
is simply the great God of the Semites, the Lord who from
being a Divinity at first scarcely apprehended as ethical, His
nature not excluding polytheism, became a moral and spiritual
God, who stands above nature, and excludes — at least such is
the trend of the religion — every other god.
In this way the thing might have come about. But, of
course, that it did so come about is not made certain by
possibilities such as these. It could, indeed, so happen only if
this people had the inward force of character not to lose
its own characteristics, but, when fighting for existence, to
steel itself and make these characteristics stand out more
sharply than ever, and if there were given to it men of a true
prophetic type, quick to apprehend any self-revealing act of
the God who guides the world towards His own ends. Else
why did not a higher religion arise in Edom or in Arabia out
of similar national elements there, and based on similar
religious foundations ? Nay, why did the religion of all these
tribes disappear, without leaving a trace behind, in the waves
of the great religion of civilised Asia, and later of Greece ?
The possibility of a historically intelligible transition from the
religion of the Semites to that of Israel is only one side of
the answer to the question as to how the Hebrew religion
arose. The other side of the answer must always be given

110 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
by faith. This people had prophets, and experienced a revela
tion of God to itself, of that God who willed that His greatest
gift to man, the religion of redemption and reconciliation,
should be revealed upon this soil. The power of religious
instinct, the prophetic susceptibility to impressions of the true
life of God, must have been awakened here in a way that can
only be explained, like all the other mysteries of endowment,
by the inscrutable omnipotence of the living spirit of God at
work in nature. Through the mysterious power and goodness
of God, who bestows the Spirit on whom He will, and assigns
alike to men and nations the part they have to play on this
earthly stage, there arose in the leading men of Israel a
higher consciousness of God.
While the world was always getting more deeply entangled
in polytheism, and the majority even of the Semitic peoples
were unable to resist the influence of a mysterious priestly
religion which charmed the senses and the imagination,
but was morally impotent, here the God of the patriarchs
became a holy personal God, who set before this tribe an
eternal goal, and gave to it moral ordinances which it
dared not break. Certainly this higher conception had not
yet become a living power in the masses of the people Moses
had to deal with. But in its leaders and in its ruling
families, the instinct for such a higher religion must have
been alive like a spark which the breath of God could,
through Moses, fan into a flame.
Hence we cannot, in point of fact, picture to ourselves
the rise of the Hebrew religion in any other way than
Hebrew legend does, when it represents Abraham as entering
into a covenant with the great God of his fathers who appears
unto him, — a covenant the seal of which is circumcision, and
the attendant blessing, the promise of the land of Canaan ; or
when, in its richer form, it represents Abraham as being called
out of the country of his birth into an unnamed land, and
tells how trial upon trial, revelation upon revelation, and

HEBREW AND SEMITIC RELIGION. Ill
promise upon promise fell to his lot till he passed away,
honoured of God and man. The religion of Israel undoubtedly
grew up on the natural soil of the religion of the Semites.
But its full growth is only to be understood as due to the
equipment, through God's creative power, of human spirits,
and to the revelation of the divine life in the hearts of indi
vidual prophets.
10. Still we must beware of thinking that the distance
between the Hebrew religion and the religion common to the
Semites, and especially to Abraham's descendants in the wider
sense, was very great, and quite discernible by external signs.
It is certain that the one great God was not yet worshipped
in the sense that the existence of other gods was altogether
denied, or even the worship of them totally forbidden
everywhere. That cannot be thought of as being brought
about otherwise than gradually. Still less was this God
conceived of as spiritual in the sense that all natural
symbols or images were forbidden. That was not the case
even long after Moses' day. The yearning desire to have
the Deity near to one in sacred memorial stones, underneath
trees, on mountains, or in the form of household gods
(Teraphim), or as strength in the image of an ox, was assuredly
expressed quite freely and frankly, as was also the case in
Israel at a much later stage in its history. The main element
in the conception of God must have been His consuming
holiness and His absolute power. We have to think of the
worship practised by the fathers of families and the heads
of the people as without a fixed form or ritual. The ancient
customs of the people, especially in reference to food and
family life, as well as the main principles of social morality,
must have been closely connected with religion, and, in
particular, with the holiness of God. Circumcision, as the
consecration to God of the organ of generation, was already
common in the pre-Mosaic age as a custom in which a natural
and a higher consecration met. The Semitic nature-feasts

112 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
were also celebrated by this people. The old mythical world,
with its myth-coloured legends, never had its life disturbed
with any theoretical interest in religion, much less with any
theological difficulties. Hence we must picture to ourselves
a religion pretty closely resembling in its manifestations
the other early Semitic religions of the kindred tribes, and
in no way consciously recognised or apprehended as in
antagonism to these, but, nevertheless, in its deepest essence, —
and when looked at in connection with the tendencies that
conditioned its development, and determined the history of
this people, — very different from those simple nature-religions.
Thus we find in the Hebrew nation the soil in which a
creative act of God in history could lay a firm foundation
for a history of the true religion, the complete form of
which appeared in the divine life revealed to man in
Christ. 11. By this view of the origin of the Hebrew religion,
and by it alone, can all the Old Testament phenomena be
explained which some 1 have regarded as proving the purely
naturalistic and polytheistic character of this religion, and
which others have attempted to ignore in the supposed
interests of revealed religion. In saying this, I am not
thinking merely of the fact that in the Old Testament,
though only in very late parts of it, mention is made of the
idolatry of the Israelites in Egypt, and of Abraham's kinsfolk
in Chaldea. In both cases this is certainly in accordance with
historical truth.2 But the latter circumstance would be of im
portance only for the religion of the ancient Semites, not
for the religion of the Hebrews in particular. The former
we should have to assume even without definite information,
if we take into consideration the moral surroundings of a horde
of nomads settled in Egypt, and bear in mind how difficult
it was for the people even in much later times, when in the
1 Daumer, Ghillany.
3 Josh. xxiv. 2, 14, 23 ; Ezek. xx. 8, 16, xxiii. 3 (cf. xvi.).

TRACES OF SEMITIC HEATHENISM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 113
midst of nations that had lapsed into regular nature-worship,
to remain content with the unattractive simplicity of a
spiritual religion.
But I attach much greater importance to the fact that
not a few genuine fragments of myth can be pointed out in
the Old Testament. No doubt the kind of exposition which
simply denies this, and turns such mythical narratives into
actual human history, can easily get over this difficulty even
without this hypothesis of ours. But any one who takes up
Genesis as an honest-minded historian accustomed to investi
gate the early history of other peoples, will disdain such an
expedient, and will readily acknowledge that here he has to
deal with reminiscences of primitive Semitic mythology. In
fact, he will admit that much later still, in the course of
the Mosaic period, mythical elements from other groups of
nations, especially from Chaldea and Phcenicia, got mixed
up with popular Hebrew legend. In not a few passages it
is, of course, hard to say which of the two cases we should
suppose it to have been.
The primeval family-registers of the antediluvian period are
neither history nor legend, but have a mythical character.
In the present state of comparative philology, it is true,
superficial comparison of words like Tubal- Qain- Vulcan,
Jubal-Apollo, Noah-Jacchus, is already out of date. But the
origin of such names, connected with the great inventions to
which civilisation owes its rise, and clearly taken by their
symbolical attributes out of the circle of purely historical
personages, can be explained by no one acquainted with the
history of the most ancient national legends otherwise than
by assuming that figures originally mythical have become
human.1 Euhemerism is very old, and comes into existence
of itself wherever mythical ideas lose their hold of the
national consciousness, and cease to be significant. It is
certainly too rash to attach to these names, without further
'.Cf. Welcker, p. 46 ff.
VOL. I. H

114 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
inquiry, a system of divine dynasties.1 But Enoch with his
three hundred and sixty-five years, and Lamech with his two
wives, are certainly mythical figures easily recognisable. The
relationship between Gen. iv. and v. is enough to show that
these two genealogies are based on the same non-historical
tradition. Cain and Tubal-Cain suggest by their very names
the attributes assigned them. Far later still, e.g., the name
Gad, if the proof-passage, Gen. xxx. 11, be compared with
other Old Testament passages,2 is seen to be a reminiscence
unmistakably mythical. The mention of Obed-Edom, 2 Sam.
vi. 10, 12, proves that the name Edom also belongs to
mythology. And the daughter of Jephthah, whose virgin
death the women of Gilead celebrate every year by a four
days' funeral festival, is assuredly no ordinary maid, however
touchingly her history is interwoven with the tradition about
that wild knight-errant her father (Judg. xi. 39, 40). In like
manner, the lion-slaying hero who arms himself with rocks
and overturns temples, and whose strength vanishes with his
hair, is originally, you may be sure, no Hebrew Nazirite, but
the Sun-god (p-K'DB'), whose locks are the rays of light in
which lies the secret of his strength (Judg. xiii. ff.).
Further, the short story in Gen. vi. 1-3 has a thoroughly
mythical background. Here we have beyond all question a
story of superhuman beings marrying earth - born wives.
Repeated attempts have been made, it is true, to restrict
the meaning of this passage to marriages between men
belonging to the pious race of the Sethites and women
belonging to the race of Cain, in other words, to purely
human transgression which overstepped the utmost limits
of impiety permissible on earth, in consequence of which
1 So Ewald, Gesch. i. 373 ff. Henoch — the god of the new year ; Lamech
— demi - god, warlike vengeance ; Methuselah — Mars ; Mahalal-el — sun - god ;
Jered — water - god ; — the first dynasty. Noah — the idea of a better world ;
Dionysus ; Jubal — music, Brahmana ; Tubal — warrior ; Naamah, Aphrodite,
etc. • B. J. lxv. 11 ; Josh. xi. 17, xii. 7 (Baal-gad).

TRACES OF SEMITIC HEATHENISM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 115
the Flood became a necessity. We take no account here
of what every scientific critic of Genesis must acknowledge
to be a fact, viz. that this little story knows nothing what
ever of Cain and Seth or of their descendants, and stands
where it now does, simply because there was no room for it
between Gen. ii. 45 and the end of chap. iv. But even in
its present position the passage cannot possibly have any
such meaning. The collective word a1?iJ), whenever it is
not more precisely defined, can be understood only of the
human race as such.1 Accordingly, when it is said that
"men began to multiply, and daughters were born unto
them," such words, in a passage where neither moral nor
genealogical distinctions are mentioned, can only mean that
daughters of the human race were born. The " daughters of
men" are therefore daughters neither of Cain, nor of Seth,
nor of the poor among the people, but simply maidens in
general. Besides, if any one class were to be described by
the word ^xn, it would certainly be the poor, the common
people as contrasted with the nobles, " the lords,"2 and therefore
not the race of Cain, among whom was to be found, according
to Gen. iv. 17 ff., every kind of power, art, and violence.
But it is equally impossible for the " sons of God " (^3
OTOKn) to be men. Where men are called " sons of God,"
they get the name only as being "adopted" children of
grace, in other words, in consequence of their being in a state
of salvation. Such is Israel as a nation, and such the king
1 The reference of Oehler to Jer. xxxii. 20, B. J. xliii. 4, Ps. Ixxiii. 5, is quite
irrelevant. No doubt Israel, although itself a nation and a member of the
human race, may be contrasted as God's people with nations and men in the
ordinary sense, and so expressions like "Adam," "Enosh," can be used where
" ordinary men " are meant (Judg. xvi. 7, 17). But, in that case, there must
be some contrast clearly indicated inside the circle of humanity. On the other
hand, where the contrast is between "Adam" and "Elohim," "Adam" always
means the human race as such,
2 Cf. Ps. xlix. 3 contrasted with {J^K. Consequently the trivial explanation
of the early Jews, which refers to lawless unions of the nobles with women
of humble birth, is, at least from the standpoint of strict exegesis, less in
defensible.

116 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
in Israel. But if that were intended here, then in the
Jehovistic context the name of the God of salvation (mrf)
must certainly have been used, and the expression "sons of
God" might well be, in that sense, an honourable epithet,
but not a name for a class of men as such. On the other
hand, " sons of God " is a well-known expression in the Old
Testament for mighty celestial beings that partake of the
dignity of the divine nature, and are superior to the flesh
and its weaknesses.1
And even if the expression as it stands could mean " men
of God," how is it known that the Sethites were godly and
the Cainites wicked ? Of Enoch, a descendant of Seth, we
are told that he was righteous, but his case is as exceptional
as Noah's. Who says that Enoch the son of Cain was not
pious also, or that Lamech the Sethite was not quite as
impious as Lamech the Cainite ? The fact is, we have
simply two fragments of one original tradition, of which
different authors have given different versions. Besides,
it is stated that these " sons of God " took them wives of
whom they chose, that is, without any one being able to
hinder them. They must therefore have been the stronger.
But how does that agree with the sword-song of Lamech the
Cainite, and with the general idea as to the warlike supremacy
of Cain's race ? Finally, the author, at least the one we now
have, certainly intended to connect these marriages with the
primitive tradition about races of giants. Hence we are forced
to the conclusion that the oldest interpretation of this passage
is also the best.2 This story has an undeniable resemblance
1 Job i. 6, ii. 1, xxxviii. 7 ; Ps. xxix. 1, lxxxix. 7.
2 Little noticed as long as a sound religious life sought in revelation, not for
something to satisfy mere religious curiosity, but for inward life, this passage
is one of those most frequently used in post-canonical times ; it is interpreted
spiritually by the Alexandrines, and is in Enoch the locus classicus for demon-
ology ; cf. Book of Enoch, translated by Dillmann, chap. vi. ff. ; Jude vers. 5,
6 ; 2 Pet. ii. 4). — Eusebius, Praepar. Fmang., ed. Dindorf, i. 218 ; of. also The
Book of Jubilees (Ewald, Jahrb. far bibl. Wiss. 1849, ii. 242) and The Testament
of the Twelve Patriarchs (Fabric. Cod. ps. Epig. p. 529).

TRACES OF SEMITIC HEATHENISM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 117
to the heathen idea of demi-gods, sons of the gods' by human
wives. And if any one is determined to see in this story " a
fact," then for such an one the oldest history of the religion
of mankind must remain a sealed book. It must be taken as
a real myth of remote antiquity.
Gen. xxxii. 24-32 appears to me to be a similar fragment.
With Jacob there wrestles a man who has to vanish at day
break. Being superhuman, he does not give his name, but he
inflicts on Jacob bodily injury. If the records of Sanchu
niathon are not utterly untrustworthy,1 we have here also a
myth common to several Semitic peoples, woven into Hebrew
legend. On similar instances I shall not touch further.2 I
have already spoken of the Chaldean myths of the Creation
and the Flood being woven into the early chapters of Genesis,
and I may just mention Ex. iv. 24 ff, where a second account
is given of the origin of circumcision, very remarkable for its
sensuous colouring.3
These mythical constituents in Hebrew religious legend
would be absolutely unintelligible, had not the religion of
Israel grown up on the soil of a popular nature-religion, and
been for long ages freely exposed to its influences. But, on
the other hand, if this religion had not cut itself loose from
the Semitic before the latter really became a religion of
civilised life, like the Chaldean or the Phoenician, it would be
impossible to understand how this mythical inheritance should
have been so completely mastered by the fundamental
thoughts of the higher religion, and been kept within such
narrow limits. If the real trend of the Hebrew religion
had not been from the first towards what was actually
1 Euseb. Praepar. Evang. i. 37 ff., cf. Ewald's essay, Ueber die phonikischen
Ansichten von der WeltschOpfung und den geschichtlichen Werth Sanchunia-
thons, 1851.
2 Esau, Oiltruos, the sacrifice of Jehud by his father Kronos, etc., in Sanchu
niathon. From the nature of the authority, however, this is quite uncertain.
5 With all the rest of the narrative according to which Moses is acting even
here simply on the command of God, this story is absolutely irreconcilable,
and in its present form it is obviously mutilated and weakened.

118 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
attained in the Old Testament religion, such a mastery over
the elements of nature-worship would have been inconceiv
able, or rather, according to all historical analogies, the exact
opposite would have happened. For even where the mythical
elements in the Old Testament have not become the medium
of purely religious thoughts, they are completely stripped of
their original character and brought into harmony with an
increasingly spiritual monotheism. That could hardly have
happened, had they existed in connection with a cultured
polytheistic religion theoretically worked out. In the names
contained in the old genealogical tables, none but a skilled
antiquarian could discover the remains of myth ; for the
people, they had nothing of a mythological character. The
sons of God in Gen. vi. are not gods on a level with the
One God, but mighty beings subordinate to Him, on account
of whose unnatural doings the sentence of death is pronounced
upon mankind. Heathen legend, on the contrary, sees in
such ideas the zenith of human glory. He who wrestles
with Jacob is changed from a being possessed of divine
power into a manifestation of God Himself,1 and the
narrative makes no greater a demand on faith than any
of the innumerable legends that have continued current
in Christendom. And in the virgins and the heroes of the
book of Judges, no Hebrew could recognise the fading
figures of Semitic gods.
Just as the fragments of myths in the Old Testament, by
their existence and the manner in which they have been
preserved, confirm our theory of the origin of the Hebrew
religion, so also do the remains of those religious customs in
Israel, which are incompatible with the higher stage sub
sequently reached by the religion of the Old Testament. The
1 Hos. xii. 4, 5 makes "the angel" exactly parallel with Elohim. One
must therefore think of a manifested form of God. Here the narrative is still
more drastic. The weeping and the supplication refer to the vanquished Elohim,
not to Jacob. That the story is obscure and ambiguous, is quite in keeping
with its originally mythical character.

TRACES OF SEMITIC HEATHENISM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 119
mention of teraphim, and of rings and amulets used for purposes
of superstition by the reinforcements that came to the Hebrew
people out of Mesopotamia,1 would not, it is true according
to our narratives, prove any such thing, for they teach that
these impure elements were rejected. But that this was
only the later view, is shown by the open use of such
idols down to the time of David.2 Before Moses, they were
doubtless in universal use among the people. The word
" teraphim," in the plural, does not always indicate a real
plural, but is used like other similar words for might, Godhead,
lordship, even where there was only one image.3 Still, the
original use of the word probably points to plurality* The
teraphim were certainly used for obtaining oracles, and that,
too, among non-Hebrew peoples as well. They were also em
ployed by Chaldean soothsayers.5 Later times rejected them
as distinctly idolatrous.6 Whether the name itself is meant
to denote the god who gives the oracle is hard to determine,
but it is not unlikely. The teraphim were clearly household
gods, of human form, so that Michal could, by putting the
teraphim in David's bed, deceive the spies.7 The fact that
Rachel was able to hide them under a camel-basket does not
militate against their having been of considerable size, for
such baskets can hold a full-grown man.8 But when a person
like David had teraphim in his house, it is quite obvious that
they did not preclude monotheism, or even spiritual personal
monotheism. They had simply been taken over by a higher
stage of religion from an earlier, when the people were nature-
1 Gen. xxxi. 19 ff. , xxxv. 2, 4. s Judg. xviii. 5, 14 ; 1 Sam. xix. 13.
» 1 Sam. xix. 13. * Gen. xxxi. 34.
6 Perhaps already in Gen. xxx. 27 (ET13) ; Judg. xviii. 5, 14 ; Ezek. xxi. 26;
Hos. iii. 4. In fact, according to Gen. xxxi. , xxxv. , the caravans from Meso
potamia must have brought the teraphim with them.
6 1 Sam. xv. 23 ; Zech. x. 2.
7 1 Sam. xix. 13. Perhaps, however, the mask thrown over their faces was
part of the apparatus.
8 Gen. xxxi. 34; cf. Burkhardt, Sitten der Bedawin, pp. 28, 30. For a
curious view that the teraphim were nodding puppets, cf. Chwolson, ii. 153.

120 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
worshippers. Accordingly, in this later stage the one Supreme
God was thought of as acting through these images by special
manifestations and for special purposes. They were household
" Palladia." x Symbolical representation of the acting, self-
revealing God of providence, especially when connected with
primitive national customs, may remain for centuries along
side of a higher religion. But it could originate only in
a non - monotheistic religion. Consequently, it is beyond
doubt a relic of an old Semitic custom that had got deeply
rooted in the national customs of the Hebrews.
The same holds good of the sacred trees and stones which
were held to indicate in a special manner the presence of
the Deity. According to the sacred legend, the Israelitish
patriarchs set up stones, anointed them with oil, and conse
crated them as " Beth-El." 2 Sacred stones of a special form
are found in Arabia as well as among the Phoenicians ; 3 and
even the Greek name for such stones, fianvXta, shows the
affinity of the ideas. In like manner, the terebinths of
Hebron and Bethel, and the palm-tree of Deborah, play a
part in ancient legend which reminds one of the " groves " of
the Canaanites and the sacred trees of Arabia. Here, too, we
find the very same relationship. This custom had its root
in Semitic nature-worship, the characteristic of which was to
connect the presence of God with prominent objects in nature,
especially with trees, which are, in a sunny land, her fairest
decoration. The custom held its ground in Israel even when
there was no longer any real foundation for it. Among the
1 Gen. xxxi. 19, 30.
2 Gen. xxxv. 14, 15 ; cf. xxviii. 18, xxxi. 13. Chap. xxxi. 45 f. has reference
only to the memorial of a covenant. In general the votive character comes out
quite plainly. The sacred circle of stones set up as the first sanctuary of Israel
west of the Jordan in Gilgal, was meant to be of a similar character, Josh. iv. 20.
The sacred stone at Bethel is still, for the narrator B, a highly venerated
sanctuary, around which popular tradition clings.
3 Among the Arabians the Kaaba stone is the best known ; for the worship
of stones and trees among the Arabians, cf. Wellhausen ; the Carthaginians, of.
Miinter, p. 72 ff.; the Greeks, cf. Schbmann, ii. 171 ff. On the general question,
cf. Ewald, Alterthiimer, 153 f., 158 f., and Gesch. i. 492.

TRACES OF SEMITIC HEATHENISM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 121
other kindred peoples, owing to their stronger devotion to
nature-worship, it attained a fuller and more varied develop
ment. We explain in a similar way the sacred character
ascribed by the Israelites to Mount Sinai and Bashan, as well
as the custom of erecting, on artificial mounds (nto?) originally
consecrated to the reproductive power of nature, the simple
altars used in the most ancient worship, unless, indeed, this
custom was altogether foreign to Israel, and only borrowed,
after the settlement in Canaan, from its Hamite inhabitants.
All this shows that the religion of Israel presupposes a
Semitic nature-religion, but, at the same time, that it was
not long in beginning to move away from the latter in
the direction of spiritual monotheism.
Finally, we are confirmed in this view by the form of the
Hebrew name for God, Elohim. That our present historians
cannot put this name into the mouths of the patriarchs, under
the idea that they were worshippers of several gods, is self-
evident. When, therefore, the plural of the verb is found with
Elohim in B and C, not to speak of A, the supposition is quite
justifiable that in such passages there is either no reference
at all to the God of Israel, or that special circumstances are
being taken into account. Thus in Gen. i. 26, xi. 7, it is the
plural of self-address. Others less happily think it an address
to the assembled Elohim. In Gen. iii. 22, God contrasts
Himself and the whole order of Elohim, i.e. of incorporeal,
spiritual powers, with man as formed of flesh. In Gen.
xxviii. 12, by the Elohim, to whose appearance reference is
made in Gen. xxxv. 7, we are to understand the whole array
of heaven's inhabitants, not the personal God alone. Only in
xx. 13 does the narrator C make Abraham in conversation
with a heathen speak of " the Gods," as it was the popular
custom to do afterwards,1 and much in the same way as the
Latin Dii was used.
1 So Judg. ix. 13. Ewald, Geschichte, i. 458 f., cleverly points out that the
plural form of Elohim joined with the singular of the verb proves that there

122 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
In our present documents the word Elohim itself is
certainly used as a singular ; it is applied even to a single
heathen god.1 In fact, in its later stages, the language is
fond of giving words signifying might a " plural of majesty,"
or "plural of power and fulness," which certainly does not
militate against the unity of the subject.2 Still this whole mode
of speaking could scarcely have arisen had not the religious
vocabulary of Israel rested on popular ideas, which, beyond a
doubt, frankly presupposed a plurality of Divine beings, and
had not the idea of the unity of God been first limited
to the unity of the national God, before whom the other
Elohim shrivelled up into a body of subordinate beings, who,
though standing high above mortal men as Elohim and Bne-
Elohim, were in no sense comparable to the One God. Thus
all the traces of early Semitic religion in the Old Testament
go to confirm our theory as to the origin of the religion of
Israel. The view just explained is not essentially different from
that advocated by Land, although I cannot but regard many
of this scholar's assertions as wrong, or, at any rate, as
incapable of proof. According to him, the old Israelitish
religion regarded Sinai as an ancient sanctuary, and this
sanctuary the kindred peoples — Ishmael, Midian, and Edom,
likewise divided into twelve tribes each — shared with Israel.
Antoninus Martyr of Placentia is still acquainted with an
old Semitic worship on the peninsula of Sinai, in which a
linen ephod and an image are used; and Diodorus Siculus
arose very early in Israel a use of language that implied monotheism. One sees
quite plainly from Ex. xxxii. 4, cf. 19, that even where the plural of the verb
stands with Elohim, one can think quite well of one God. The idol, indeed, is
only an ox, and is intended to represent Jehovah.
1 So 2 Kings i. 2 ; Judg. xi. 24 ; cf. in general the phrase "pHPS ni!T.
2 Ps. xiv. 12 ; 1 Kings i. 33 ; Gen. xl. 1, xlii. 30, xxiv. 9; Isa. xix. 4, xxii. 18 ;
Job iii. 19 ; D'O'IK, Prov. xxx. 3 j Josh. xxiv. 1, DWp ; D^JQ, Isa. i. 3 ;
CCHD, Isa. x. 15. In a somewhat different way the ''E'J? and VK'J?, Job
xxxv. 10 ; Ps. cxlix. Specially instructive is Josh. xxiv. 19, where Jahveh is
described as Elohim QedSshim.

TRACES OF SEMITIC HEATHENISM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 123
6ays there was a sacred oasis there. In this religion they
kept the feast of the new moon, practised circumcision, and
worshipped the God of Heaven (El, Baal), without a female
deity, and with no trace of a service coloured by sex, as the
God of Fire and War, to whom even human sacrifices were
offered. In the chastity and simplicity of this religion lay
its capability of development. The kindred tribes around
Lebanon were in possession of a religion which had sprung
from similar sources, but which had already undergone a
fatal degeneration. They adored the God of Heaven, but it
was along with the Queen of Heaven in a sexually orgiastic
worship. In struggling against this North-Semitic worship,
Israel developed the South-Semitic religion into monotheism.
Were I to substitute for North-Semitic in this sentence the
word Hamitic, and for South-Semitic the simple term Semitic,
I could then acknowledge this view as historically probable.
Against Stade's sketch of the origin of the religion of
Israel, I must express myself in stronger terms, even when
leaving entirely out of account the dispute as to the time at
which a real religion began in Israel. He, too, is unquestion
ably ready to find the roots of Israel's higher religion in the
worship of Jehovah that originated at Sinai. This Jehovah,
who became through Moses the One God of Israel, Stade
pictures to himself as the God of Heaven, in all essential
points exactly as Land does. But instead of regarding this
God and His religion as in conflict with the Canaanite wor
ship, which, though akin to it, had developed in a different
direction, Stade supposes animism to have been the religion
of Israel in earlier times, and the predominating element in
the pre-prophetic parts of the Old Testament as well as in
Israel's whole mode of worship, or, more specifically, a
fetishistic variety of spirit-worship which mainly consisted in
the worship of departed ancestors, and, in particular, of the
heads of families and clans. Thus, according to Stade, the
various " Gentes " had their own particular cult, which showed

124 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
itself in taking care of the graves of their tribal heroes. The
heads of clans performed this worship. A member of one
tribe could not make a member of another tribe his heir.
Each tribe had its own court of justice, and was fond of
naming itself after the god whom it worshipped (Gad, etc.),
or after heavenly bodies from which it claimed to be
descended, or after animals (Leah, Levi, Rachel, Caleb, etc.).
Ancestors were regarded as intercessors with God.1 The stage
of actual polytheism was not yet reached. The shrines of
animism were the high-places (worship at ancestral graves),
sacred trees, mountains, stones, wells. The god of this
religion dwelt in Canaan. The graves of the patriarchs at
Hebron, Shechem, etc., were his holy places. Magic was an
essential part of this worship.
With this old religion of Israel the religion of Jehovah
is in conflict, not, however, without appropriating several of
its elements. So far as the departed alone are concerned,
it takes up an attitude of indifference towards the idea of
ancestral spirits, but so far as the relations of the living to
the dead are concerned, an attitude of hostility and pro
hibition. Whoever touches a dead body becomes unclean, i.e.
incapable of engaging in the worship of Jehovah. Sacrifices
for the dead, dirges, etc., make a person unclean, or are
forbidden. Nevertheless they are still practised.2 The God
of Sinai cannot dwell in the shrines of animism. Moses
has no grave. The religion of Jehovah protests in this way
against ancestor -worship. But the later development of
Israel, after it had put down animism, retained in worship,
customs, and language many of its elements.
This theory, while not without elements of truth, appears
to me, as a whole, to lack historical probability. The idea
that the people of Israel in its collective religious life can
ever have practised a religion at variance with the religion of
Jehovah is in itself irreconcilable with history, at least so
1 Jer. xv., xxxi. 35. 2 1 Sam. xxviii. ; Isa. viii. 19 ; Jer. xxxv. 4.

PERSONALITY OF MOSES. 125
far as that has left written records behind it. The religion
with which, in Canaan at any rate, the religion of Jehovah
had to struggle for victory, was a highly developed polytheistic
nature-religion, in which worship of the dead, whether ancestors
or not, played but a very secondary rdle. On such practices
no special attack is ever made in the Old Testament. There
is nowhere in our traditions any proof that the tribes of
Israel ever had a religion belonging to the stage of animism,
which was perfectly distinct alike from the religion of Hamitic
civilisation and from the Mosaic religion of Jehovah, nor is
such a hypothesis necessary in order to explain any of the
phenomena of Old Testament tradition.

CHAPTER VIII.
MOSES.
1. The life of oppression and temptation in Egypt neces
sarily led to spiritual declension. But the succeeding period
proves that there must have been in the people a rich store
of unimpaired vigour. God was educating Israel to be the
people through which He would reveal Himself ; and in order
that Israel might not prove untrue to its calling, but advance
to a higher stage, He raised up a deliverer,1 the man who
became the real founder of the true religion, and whose work
determined the whole development of that religion down to the
time of Jesus. As purified in Jesus, that work forms even now
the foundation of the religion and civilisation of Christendom,
just as it is, on the other hand, the best part of Moham
medanism, and still works on directly in non-Christian Israel.
With the exception of Jesus, Moses 2 is the most important
1 Ex. ii. 23-25.
2 TVtA'O, though derived, according to the etymological fancy of the narrator C
(Ex. ii. 10), from HE'D, "he who is drawn out of the water," cannot possibly

126 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
religious personality of whom we have really trustworthy
historical information.
It is true that we now have the picture of Moses only as
it appeared in the light of a much later age, and we meet
with a not inconsiderable variety of tradition regarding him.
Still we may feel absolutely sure that we are in a position to
ascertain everything in his life which is of any religious
significance. For he is not separated from his biographers by
an interval of time that is absolutely unhistorical ; and even
although legend has surrounded his figure with a sacred halo,1
the true picture of the man who made Israel a nation can
scarcely have got its main features obscured.
Like every creative act of God that stands out prominently
in history, the founding of this religion by Moses was
undoubtedly connected with historical circumstances that
exercised a moulding influence over it. We cannot, it is
true, infer, from the mere mention of Aaron meeting Moses,
that " there were kindred spiritual movements in Israel," or
assert that the action of Moses " was but the most powerful
swing of the pendulum in a long series of most important
movements which had come to a head among the people, and
had then exhausted themselves again " (Ewald, ii. 46). The
conditions that lead up to great spiritual deeds are often quite
unnoticed, and keep on developing while the outer surface
of a people's life appears to indicate only the quietude of
have such a meaning, for it is an active participle. The derivation of Josephus
(Antiq. ii. 9. 6, ed. Col. 1691, p. 56) from p-Z, water, and ftrus, rescued, is
clearly a mere guess, founded on the Septuagint. The name is perhaps the
Egyptian Mos, Mesu (Ebert). In Hebrew the word meant, though certainly in
defiance of the idiom of the language, " he who draws out," " the deliverer,"
which would in reality sound something like JW1D (Judg. iii. 9, 15 ; 2 Kings
xiii. 5 ; Isa. xix. 20). Still we may call attention to the Levitical family HMD
(Mushi) (Num. iii. 20). Land thinks it a pure Semitic word, and takes the
form itJ'IO from a root akin to ''Si" (Jesse).
1 It may at least be mentioned here, that if Lenormant's deciphering is
correct, King Sargon I. (about 2000 B.o.) relates an incident of his eventful life
which reminds us in a very remarkable way of Moses being put into the river in
an ark, and of his ultimate rescue.

PERSONALITY OF MOSES. 127
exhaustion. But the first and most important condition of
Moses' work was certainly the religious peculiarity of the
Hebrew people itself, the tradition of its ancestral religion,
the simple forms of which were probably preserved in special
purity within the circle of his own kindred. Like all the
religious heroes of mankind, he was certainly not without
forerunners, but these the splendour of his name has relegated
to obscurity.The development of his religion is in its main principles
thoroughly national. It is founded on the religion of the God
of his fathers,1 the simple principles of which, appealing but
little to the senses, necessarily appeared to one of high
religious and moral gifts far superior to the sensuous idolatry
of the Egyptian populace or the mysterious natural philo
sophy of the priests. And Moses, when away from the
Nile valley, among the kindred nomad tribes of the Sinaitic
peninsula, was probably more than ever under the influence
of the purer traditions of the Hebrew race. The later
narrative, at any rate, represents the home which he found
there as the house of a priest.2
Hence we should require, on the one hand, to reject all the
writings that have come down to us, and thereby give up all
hope of getting any idea of the work of Moses ; and, on the
other, to close our eyes to the manifest peculiarity of this
religion, were we to accept the very prevalent but superficial
view which we owe to Manetho's polemical treatment of the
history of Israel, and to the advocacy of which, in company
with Kaiser and others, even Schiller lent his pen, the view,
viz. that the philosophy of the Egyptian priesthood was the
1 According to C, Ex. ii. 12, 13, 15, iii. 6, iv. 5, vii. 16 ; according to A,
Ex. vi. 2, 3.
2 In C (B), Ex. ii. 16, iii. 1, xviii. 1 ; if |rD here signifies priest, and has not
a wider meaning, which in such a context is highly improbable. From very
different standpoints, Kuenen, Stade, Land, etc., all point to the peninsula of
Sinai as the "mother-soil" of the religious development carried out by Moses.
We meet with a view not exactly the same in Num. x. 29 f. (probably A).

128 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
chief source of the Mosaic religion. The popular reminiscence,
which, even though late, is quite above suspicion, makes
Moses hear the voice of God, not in the temple at On, but in
the solitude of the desert of Sinai, among Hebrew tribes.
When he leaves Egypt, he is not yet a prophet, but a national
hero, pure and simple.1 And, according to all the accounts,
he appeared before Pharaoh as the messenger of the God of
the Hebrews, whose worship was an abomination to the
Egyptians.2 His relation to the priests of Egypt is not that
of betraying their secrets, but of opposing them. His rod
swallows up their rods. His plagues show that his God is
mightier than their idols. Ewald is right in seeing in the
exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt a religious war.3
Nevertheless we cannot regard it as a matter of indiffer
ence that, according to Hebrew as well as Egyptian tradition,
Moses was exceptionally familiar with the wisdom and culture
of Egypt. There is no reason to doubt that owing to the
knowledge and skill which he had acquired in Egypt, Moses
found his work very much easier. The Old Testament
accounts themselves indicate quite frankly a similarity,
even though it be only in form, between his mighty deeds
and the acts of the Egyptians.4 And assuredly for the heavy
task of leading an untrained and unruly multitude, he must
have acquired in that country, then the centre of civilisation,
much valuable knowledge. It might very well be that he
incorporated into his own religious system forms and institu
tions which had been tested in Egypt. We might point, for
example, to the Urim and Thummim and the sacred ark —
though the latter at any rate is so natural, and occurs in so
many old Asiatic cults, that we need scarcely seek for any
1 Ex. ii. 11-16, iii. (0, B).
2 According to C, Ex. iii. 18, v. 3, vii. 16, viii. 21 ff., ix. 1, 13, x. 3 (A,
Ex. vi. 10).
3 Cf. the composite narrative in Ex. vii. 8-xi. Ewald, Geschichte, vol. ii.
pp. 73-123.
* Ex. vii. 8, cf. 11, 12 ; 19, cf. 22 ; viu. 1 f., cf. 3, 7.

PERSONALITY OF MOSES. 129
particular prototype. Indeed, to find in the work of Moses
uames and ideas borrowed from the learning of Egyptian
priests, would in itself be nothing strange, even were they
names of God, such as rtin\ That it is not actually so, is to
be ascertained only by an unprejudiced examination of the
facts, not by assuming the impossibility of such borrowing.
But if anything Egyptian was adopted by Moses, it can only
have been such elements as appeared to him suitable for
giving outward expression to the thoughts of his own per
fectly distinct religion. The main effect which Egyptian
life must have produced on Moses was certainly this, that
to him, through contrast with even the most dazzling forms
of natural wisdom, the infinite value of the religion of the
one living God, who governs the world and is not hampered
by the phenomena of nature, became doubly clear, and that
he consequently guided the religion of his own people all
the more resolutely in this direction. But from this higher
standpoint of culture, and with the ability to form a more
independent judgment, he could better understand his own
work, and keep more clearly in view the goal which the
revelation of the true God had set before him.
Thus Moses is represented as doubly prepared for his
work. As regards the contents of that work, the religion of
his nation furnished him with the necessary historical basis ;
while, as regards its form, he was fully equipped by his contact
with the highest culture of the then existing world. Still,
both these facts do not explain how Moses came to be what
he was. Here also the really determining factor is the
revelation of God. Having chosen him as His instrument,
God endowed him with religious and moral gifts of singular
power. By special dealings with him" God subjected him
to a special preparation both inward and outward. The
spirit which He had thus carefully trained, God illumined at
the proper time with the certainty of the divine will and of
the divine thoughts and ways regarding him. Just as the
VOL. I. i

130 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
national spirit of Israel is far from being identical with the
holy spirit of revelation, so the spirit of Moses himself is
far from being the author of the Old Testament religion.
It was neither as philosopher nor as poet, but as prophet,
that Moses became the founder of his people's religion. He
received it, he adopted it in a religious spirit, he did not by
his own thought create it.
Hence the early tradition of Israel relates how, in the
solitude of the sacred mountain Horeb-Sinai, Moses, who had
fled from Egypt as a merely human hero, grows conscious of
the divine presence and becomes a prophet.1 It presupposes
throughout that this mountain was already a very ancient
shrine,2 at which it was quite in keeping with the ideas of
the Hebrew people to hold a festival in honour of God.3 This
majestic mountain, standing alone in the midst of a pathless
desert, became again in later days, as inscriptions prove, a
sacred place of pilgrimage for the Arab-Aramaean tribes of
the peninsula. According to our narrative, it was when
Moses was at this holy spot that the eventful moment
arrived when he became a man of God. Not by study or
learning, but by the direct illumination of divine certainty
he became what he became.
Moses trembled at the voice of God. His humility as
well as his fear prompted him to decline the task.4 He had
first to be made conscious of the omnipotence of the God
who was sending him. God had to fill him with the strength
of a new inspiration, to convince him that the Creator has
an absolute right to the energies and gifts of the creature,8
and to remind him that his weakness could be made up
for by the strength of others, and afforded no excuse for
1 Ex. ii. 13, 14, iii. 1 ff. (C).
2 Ex. iii. 1, 5, 12, iv. 27, xviii. 5, xxiv. 13 (B, C) (mount of God, holv
ground). » Ex. iii. 12, 18, v. 3, 8, 17, vii. 16, viii. 22 f., x. 7 (0).
4 C, Ex. iii. 10 ff, iv. 1, 10.
DC, Ex. iii. 12, iv. 3f., 11.

PERSONALITY OF MOSES. 131
disobeying the divine call.1 God must, in His own new and
holy name, give Moses credentials to show that he had really
seen deeper into the divine essence than his predecessors, and
that he had been chosen as His messenger.2
According to the view of the Old Testament, therefore, the
whole way in which Moses does his work is a result of this
divine voice, a result of the consciousness that he is acting
by God's commission, and is therefore doing each particular
act which furthers his work in obedience to the will and
voice of God. The narrative in its earliest as in its latest
form represents all his acts as due to definite divine com
mands, and his whole life as strengthened, supported, and
sustained by the divine approval.3 His face shone with
the reflected glory of the divine presence,4 so that he had
to cover it with a veil.5 And from his own standpoint,
which had certainly become a very peculiar one, the
narrator A says that Moses heard the voice of God, not like
other prophets only in moments of great spiritual excitement,
but in every phase of his life-work, in quiet action and
in impassioned speech. There arose no prophet since in
Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.6
The narrator does not indeed mean to assert, when he says
that Moses " was faithful over the whole house of God," 7
that the complete idea of the institutions about to be founded
was brought before the soul of the prophet. But all through
1 C, Ex. iv. 14. 2 C, Ex. iii. 14.
8 B, Ex. xi. 1, xiii. 1 ; C, Ex. vii. 14, 26, viii. 16, ix. 1, 13, 22, x. 1, 12,
21 (xix. 3, xx. 1) ; A, Ex. vi. 2, 10, vii. 1, xii. 1, xiv. 1.
4 C, Ex. xxxiii. 18. 6 Ex. xxxiv. 29-35.
6 Num. xii. 6 ff. ; Deut. xxxiv. 10 (A).
7 As Steudel, 269, would infer from Num. xii. 6-8. With greater reason
Wellhausen infers (Jahrb. fur deutsche Theol. 1876, iv. 558), from the narra
tive in Ex. xix. ff., that the legal commandments of God properly so called
must end with the ten commandments, and that the rest was originally re
garded as oral instruction given to Moses, which enabled him as often as was
necessary to speak to the people in place of God (xx. 19), and which put the
Thorah within him as a living power. The forty days are here in a sense the
school-time of a scholar with his master.

132 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
our present books of Moses the assumption plainly is that
everything which necessarily follows from the divine work
which he had undertaken, and which presses in upon the
spirit of the man of God, is regarded as a direct message
from God. Hence we may certainly give the sense of our
narratives as follows : '' From the day Moses was consecrated
and strengthened by God for the work to which he was
called, in all his actions he loyally executed the divine
will, and carried out God's thoughts of love towards Israel."
For the latest writers of the Pentateuch it was an accepted
fact that all the religious knowledge and all the sacred
institutions of Israel that were in actual existence down to
the time of Ezra, had been received from God by Moses
and communicated to the people as a complete and har
monious system for their guidance through life. This
view is not that of Israel's early reminiscences, and
no historical inquirer of the present day will advocate
it. But what must we then regard as actually the work
of Moses ?
2. Moses undoubtedly placed the true religion on a firm
and indestructible basis. In the later account which the
law gives of itself, it is rightly said,1 " The Lord made this
covenant, not with our fathers, but with us." In this sense,
but in this sense only, can I agree with Stade's declaration, —
" That Jehovah is the sole God of Israel, who absolutely
forbids all other worship, is not a Semitic idea, but one
traceable to Moses, the founder of the religion of Israel."
This whole fundamental reformation may be summed up in
a single great principle, viz. that in a world of perishing
peoples, there should be set up- one people through whom salva
tion should come. The fellowship of Israel with its God as the
God of salvation, which had hitherto found expression only in
the ordinary half- unconscious and inconsequent life of the
1 In Deut. v. 1-5, Hos. xii. 10, xiii. i, Jehovah is named as the God of
Israel from the land of Egypt onwards.

PERSONALITY OF MOSES. 133
tribes, now becomes the conscious motive - power of an
organised national life.
The character of this God has to be stamped upon the life
of the whole nation, upon its civil constitution, its laws, its
political and social habits, its aims and aspirations— in a
word, upon its whole mode of existence. The people must
be a holy people, God's own possession. Everything must
have on it the stamp of this God, as a personal, holy, spiritual
God, so that in this people there is thus implanted an
infinite capability of moral development. But this God is
likewise understood to be a gracious God, whose mercy
reaches beyond the limits of the finite and the sinful, so that
everything in His people has on it the seal of reconciliation.
Between the holy God, who keeps a loving hold of His
people, and the holy people that has been redeemed and
reconciled, there must be an everlasting covenant, a relation
ship of mutual obligation.
When the religious centre of gravity is thus being shifted
from the individual and from traditional usage to an organised
community, there arises in one way a risk of retrogression.
For the moral and religious life of a people cannot find ex
pression except in sacred forms ; it cannot take shape in the
inner life of the individual. In the forms of national life to
which the individual has to adapt himself, it meets him from
without as law, " Thou shalt." Hence, the Christian gospel-
sermon, which, looking away from the outer form, aims at
the inner life of the heart, is in many respects more
closely akin to the picture which national legend has given
us of the patriarchal age ; and it is not without reason that
the apostles, in their speeches, pass so often over Moses to
Abraham. Nevertheless, the work of Moses was, in truth,
an immeasurable advance. He was the first to implant in
history an indestructible life, in which the kingdom of God
is -permanently realising itself as, at least, in process of
growth, and in which reconciliation of a spiritual God with

134 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
sinful man is a present fact, though not to the exclusion of
the strongest conviction of man's impurity and God's perfec
tion. The powers of the divine life can now be tested on
human soil ; the thought of a holy God should no longer kill,
but make alive.
It was a grand idea to create a people of God whose task
in the world was to be the bearers of salvation, to be God's
peculiar people, even though this relationship should, in the
first instance, be expressed but in outward forms and customs.
Indeed, only in some such outward unchanging form, only
as a living constituent part of the national consciousness,
could this salvation be kept safe through all the storms of an
age inwardly unripe for it, until it should reach maturity.
This strong, though hard and repellent shell preserved for
mankind the noble kernel of divine truth within it, until it
was no longer needed, because that truth had struck its living
fibres firmly enough into sanctified human hearts. Had it, at
the very beginning, been planted only in the inner life, it
would long ago have perished from the ignorance and evil
passions of an unripe humanity. Now, we must not imagine
either that the sacred forms, as such, were mainly new, and
invented by Moses, or that he left behind him, in writing,
detailed directions as to the national life. Perhaps, with the
exception of the Sabbath, the name Jehovah, as describing
the one God, whom the people were to worship, and a few
religious rites, he did not create much that was absolutely
new. His work was rather the organisation of the people
into a confederacy of twelve tribes. But he gave to all such
traditions of Israel a significance, through which they acquired,
for the first time, religious value, " by making the people
of God a holy nation with a definite moral stamp, in
which the life of their God might unfold itself." By in-
dissolubly linking Israel's consciousness of nationality to
the religious conception of these moral rules, he inscribed
them upon the life of his people more indelibly than by

THE PRINCIPLE OF MOSAISM. 135
writing a complete code of laws. Whatever is great in
history, especially in religious history, is accomplished,
not by "teaching, theory, or system," but by deeds, demon
strations of the spirit and of power. Else how poor Jesus
would appear beside the least of the post-Socratic school
men !
From this conception of Moses' life-work it follows, as a
matter of course, that a twofold judgment of his personality
and of his work is possible. He was the creator of Israel as
a nation, and only in that connection, of Israel as the bearer
of a new religion. Thus one may look at him, on the one
hand, as a mere statesman and social reformer, who, not as
teacher, but as hero, created a State, not a sect, by gathering the
masses of Israel into a confederacy of twelve tribes under the
protection of the national God. Hence not till the struggle
with the Canaanite mode of life began, were the peculiar
energies of Israel's religion properly aroused. When Philistine
oppression had welded Israel more firmly together into one
nation, their simple religion, preserved in the tribal sanctuary,
was brought more fully home to the hearts of the people by
Samuel and David, who resumed the work of Moses (Land).
On the other hand, one may regard the religious side of
Moses' task as that which stood in the foreground from the
very first, and ascribe to Moses himself the intention of
founding a higher and morally purer religion than any of
those around (Kuenen and Stade). The nature of our existing
documents does not furnish conclusive proof of either of these
views. But the general impression which the personality
of Moses left on the memory of his people, and the fact that,
under the most unfavourable circumstances, and in spite of
much intermixture of religions and the apostasy of large
sections, it was nevertheless able to strive after the loftiest
ideal of religion and morals, is, in my opinion, a decisive proof
in favour of the second view, which sees in Moses, not a mere
national hero and founder of a State, but a prophet of

136 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
God. The religion of Moses centres in the conception of
God's relation to His people. Jehovah is the God of
Israel. In this way the true thought of the unity of
God is combined in the happiest and most effective way
with the feeling of the closest dependence on that God
whom the people specially worships, without the theoretical
question of monotheism being raised at all. To advance
His work among men, and to communicate His salvation,
God sets apart as on a special stage the people among
whom He is known. By the mighty act of redemption, He
obtains this people as His own inheritance. The deliverance
out of Egypt is thus the fundamental fact to which the
special relation of the Israelite to salvation can be as clearly
traced as a stream to its source.1 Consequently God is
the real King of this people, its constitution being sovereignty
by God, or theocracy, as Josephus, apparently using a
word coined by himself, rightly designates this relationship.2
A human authority is simply God's deputy. Hence Moses
is, according to all the accounts,8 only a prophet, a man of
God, who lays the affairs of the people before God,4 and then
brings back to them the divine commands. Consequently
Gideon at a later stage declines the proffered kingship with
the words, " Jehovah shall rule over you." 5 Hence the
wish for an earthly king is in the eyes of the pious of a
later age a " rejection of God." 6 And when there was in
Israel a kingdom sanctioned by God, we are nevertheless
1 To this corresponds the New Testament xirfeio-ts, redemption through the
death of Jesus from the captivity of the prince of death ; the expressions H3p
HIS in their New Testament translation correspond exactly with the Old
Testament figure.
2 Contra Apionem, ii. 16, ed. Col. p. 1071 : is &' ri; tiiroi (Ziourccf&svos tov xiycy,
clearly therefore a word not yet in ordinary use.
3 The passage, Deut. xxxiii. 5, were it to be taken in the opposite sense,
would only give the view existing in the prophetic period. But even it calls
God, not Moses, the King of His people.
4 Ex. xviii. 19.
6 Judg. viii. 22 ff.
s 1 Sam. viii. 7.

THE PRINCIPLE OF MOSAISM. 137
told that God went before the king of Israel ; that the latter
is His son, and sits at His right hand.1
Everything that concerns this people is God's affair.2
Through the oracle of the priests as well as through the
prophets whom God sends, the people receives communica
tions regarding the divine will, guidance as to its resolutions,
and warning as to the dangers that threaten it. And as
long as Israel remains faithful, it may be perfectly sure of
God's protection. Now this fundamental conception of God's
relationship to Israel becomes, in the latest view of the work
of Moses, an artistically-constructed theocratic system that
is to be traced back to Moses. For the latest writers in the
Pentateuch all the legal and moral ordinances in Israel are a
direct expression of God's will, a revelation to Moses of His
holiness. The Thorah, as " the word of God," is the law
book of this people, in which the idea of a holy national life
conformable to the majesty of God unfolds itself in moral,
civil, and ceremonial forms. Even in the discovery and
punishment of criminals God gives direct help.3 In this
way God Himself makes this people a nation. Israel is,
as a nation, the first-born son of God among the nations
of the world.4
On the other hand, the people being the special possession
of this God, must always look on itself as a holy people, and
gather all its national feeling round this one spiritual
centre. Whether there are other gods elsewhere in the
world is not the immediate question. Rather this people has
to surrender itself wholly and unreservedly to this God as
1 2 Sam. v. 24 ; Ps. ii. 4 ff., ex. 2 f.
2 A particularly instructive instance of this mode of expression is Ex. xiii.
17 (B), where an act of generalship is directly attributed to God. Besides,
the whole idiom of the law is based on this idea. Thus, in the song
of Deborah (Judg. v. 23), the tribes are censured " because they came not to
the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. "
8 Lev. xviii. 28, 29, xx. 20 f. ; Num. v. 12 ff. ; Josh. vii. 16 ff., etc.
4 The religious side of these relations can be discussed in detail only when
we come to describe Israel's message of salvation.

138 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
His possession. It must become a people in whose public
appearances the characteristics of a holy Godlike life may
find expression, — a people which reveals to the world the true
character of its covenant God, and thus " glorifies His name
upon the earth."1 But certainly it was only a later age that
created in detail the several institutions in which Israel's
unreserved surrender to God of time, possessions, and even of
personality, finds logical expression.
Hence this people does not stand to its legal constitution
in the same relation as do modern peoples, whilst it shows
in this point the greatest similarity to the conception of
religion prevalent among many other peoples of antiquity.
Everything is of a piece, from the most trifling command
ment regarding outward cleanliness up to the fundamental
thoughts of the moral law. Civic virtue is indissolubly
linked to piety. Whoever violates the great fundamental
principles of law and order, dishonours the national God
as grievously as he who directly attacks His rights and
sanctuaries. Whoever is pious in the Israelitish way has the
welfare of God's people nearest his heart. On the other
hand, whoever shirks the orders of his people's king, or
breaks the ceremonial or the moral law, cannot be a good
citizen. The whole is woven into a splendid unity, into
the thought that this people should represent the kingdom
of God on earth, and realise in its national life the main
features of the divine order of things.
Kuenen has shown in a very satisfactory manner (i.
268) that the tradition about Moses as a lawgiver would
prove, even though there were not a single one of his laws
extant, that he must have stood prominently forward as
a revealer of God's will,2 just as it would be inconceiv
able, had David not been a poet, and Solomon a patron of
1 So the old expression, Ex. xix. 5, 6, cf. Lev. xi. 45, xix. 2 ; Num. xv.
40 in A.
1 Micah vi. 4 ; Hos. xii. 14.

RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISRAEL. 139
philosophy, that the tradition about their doings could ever
have arisen.
The work of Moses was at all events not of a theological
kind. He did not concern himself with the question whether
Jehovah was the one only God, and what was His relation
to the other Elohim. But the result of his life-work was to
make this God be recognised as the God of this people, and,
indeed, as bound up with the main principles of its moral
and social life, — a result which was never again entirely
lost, and which formed the starting-point of all further moral
and religious development in Israel.

CHAPTER IX.
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISRAEL DOWN TO SAMUEL.
Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, i.,
1876. 1. The Mosaic idea of the theocratic State demanded so
much devotion on the part of the several tribes of Israel to
the thought of a national religion, and such constant resist
ance to the natural desire for independence, that we cannot
wonder that nothing but the first grand uprising of the
national and religious spirit, such as a war of emancipation
arouses, under the overmastering influence of one so powerful
and consecrated as Moses, could for a short time give it
reality. For such a realisation must certainly be admitted.
True, one hears ringing quite distinctly through all the
reminiscences of Israel, and even through the conceptions
of the latest age, which encircle with a halo of glory every
thing ancient, the thought that the Mosaic age itself fell
very far short of the ideal; that even those who stood nearest
to Moses behaved in a way utterly at variance with the
true religion, and arrogantly opposed the great leader of the

140 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
people ; 1 and that Moses was the most toil-worn of men, and
not even able to maintain himself, on every occasion, upon that
pinnacle of faith which his mission required.2 Still, it is certain
that at that time a nobler spirit was aroused in the nation, and
that Israel really felt, and desired to feel, that, in contrast with
the peoples of Canaan, it was the people of God.3 Nothing but
such an uprising of the national spirit could have overthrown
the superior civilisation of Canaan. Without this assumption,
on which Ewald also rightly insists, it would, in fact, be
impossible to understand how the people could have developed
the religious powers which it displays in the time of Samuel
and David. It is only by denying all value to the reminis
cences of Israel, and by assuming that the oldest ancestral
seats in Canaan were not conquered by a united people that
came out of Egypt, but that there was a gradual peaceful
settlement of the mountain districts by Israelites who did not
at first show themselves in any way directly hostile to the
native inhabitants, to say nothing of their being animated by
- the pride of higher religious worth (Stade), that one can think,
not of a sudden upheaval and subsequent exhaustion, but of
a slow continuous rise from very low beginnings.
At all events, one must not think of the situation as
uniformly favourable. Certainly it is not to be imagined
that the people had at that time any really inward apprecia
tion of the great thoughts which the prophets afterwards
developed out of Mosaism. Otherwise we should not under
stand how, for such a long time afterwards, even their leaders
had never the slightest scruples in displaying a sad mixture of
faith and superstition, of morality and immorality, and how
they succumbed so frequently to the civilisation and influence
1 Num. xi. 12 ff., xii. 3, xvi. 1 ff. (Levites and the "first-born" Reuben); cf.
Ezek. xx. 8, xxiii. 3 ; Ex. xv. 24, xvi. 3, xvii. 1. That in such narratives the
practical needs and antagonisms of the later time also find expression, does not
rob them of their indirect significance for the question under consideration.
2 Num. xx. 10, 12, 24, cf. xxvii. 14 (A ?).
3 The old narrative according to C, Ex. xix. 8, cf. xxiv. 3.

JOSHUA. 141
of the surrounding nations. For the later development of
the national religion is a conclusive proof that these pheno
mena were not due to actual decay of inner force. Con
sequently, it is more than probable that in Mosaism, after
its first realisation, there still remained unextruded many
remnants of a somewhat impure character, that in the
religious ideas of the people themselves there was still much
darkness and much externality, and that a clear theoretical
perception of the scope of this religion was wholly lacking.
In fact, it cannot be denied, as Vatke points out (251-254),
that, in comparison with the age of Moses, the age of the
Judges shows in many respects progress, not retrogression.
This must certainly have been the case, in so far as the
fundamental ideas of Israel were more deeply felt and more
consistently grasped in the spiritual centres of the national
life, by the prophets and the priests at Shiloh, and were
specially recognised as antagonistic to the Hamitic religion,
and indeed developed and spiritualised by this antagonism.
But if the one age be pitted against the other, then that of
Moses and Joshua was, in comparison with the succeeding
centuries, an age of national and religious elevation. The
one fact, that in this age Israel felt and acted as a united
" people of Jehovah," is for the essence of this religion of the
utmost significance. Even though we admit that there was
an advance, between the time of Moses and Samuel, in the
theoretical conception of the character of Jehovah and in the
knowledge of the moral ideal, still we must regard the age of
the conquest as superior to the succeeding in religious self-
consciousness and in the fidelity and strength of faith exhibited
by Israel Although, in the succeeding age, progress was
being quietly and imperceptibly made in many directions,
yet, in contrast with the preceding, it must appear one of
retrogression. In fact, such periods of apparent retrogression
are often the birth-hours of a new and higher life.
By welding together the civil and the religious, the age of

142 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
successful conquest must have made the people rejoice in its
spiritual and national characteristics, and must have aroused
a feeling of proud enthusiasm for the God of the hosts of
Israel. Certainly the sketches in the book of Joshua,
especially those by the latest hand that touched the book,
which would presuppose a condition of the highest political
and religious perfection,1 were composed in the magnifying
light of later times, in which even external successes are
represented in such a way as makes it impossible to under
stand the subsequent existence in Canaan of powerful hostile
States.2 If the religious and moral institution, as it stands
in its finished state before the mental vision of A, or even
before the eye of the Deuteronomist, had been then in actual
existence, scarcely a page of pre-Davidic history would be
intelligible. But there must have been at that time an outburst
of moral and religious zeal such as may coexist even with
impure forms of worship and very undeveloped conceptions
of dogma, especially whole-hearted enthusiasm for the God
and the sanctuaries of the people, — an outburst of much the
same kind as occurred among the kindred Arabians when the
enthusiasm of the earliest days of Islam put into their hands
the conqueror's sword. It is a firmly-rooted conviction and,
in spite of its lateness, undoubtedly a true one, that Israel
" served Jehovah " as long as Joshua, and those associated with
him during that eventful time, survived.3
2. A period of great strain and excitement in national life
1 The originally Deuteronomic passage, Josh. i. 8 ff., xxiv. 15-29.
2 Cf. e.g. Judg. i. 21 ff., according to A. The true view will be that rapid
and successful forays determined Israel's supremacy in Canaan, although the
whole land was not conquered, or actual possession taken of the strongest
fortified towns ; and then from the centres thus left a reaction soon made itself
felt. According to Judg. i., e.g., Judah had to conquer his own territory all by
himself. Israel's really independent possessions on the west of Jordan, down
to the time of the Kings, were probably confined to the northern hill-country
of Judah and the territories of Benjamin and Ephraim. Everywhere else they
were intermixed with Canaanites, or had beside them petty independent
Canaanite kingdoms.
3 Josh. xxiv. 31 ; Judg. ii. 7.

THE JUDGES. 143
is generally followed by a period of reaction, in which,
however, the forces that lead to a new revival are being
imperceptibly prepared. But owing to the peculiarly close
connection between the religious and the national conscious
ness of Israel, such reaction was necessarily accompanied by
religious declension, by an inclination to amalgamate with
other religions, and succumb to the civilisation, in some
respects superior, of the surrounding peoples. They had, in
fact, to reckon on living among, and associating with, the
Canaanites for a considerable length of time, during which
there could not fail to be a general interchange of habits and
views. And owing to the close connection among all ancient
peoples between men's mode of life and their morals and
religion, this new style of living, in a civilised agricultural
land, involved also the risk of adopting foreign views of
religion. The political position of the nation down to the time of
the kings presented the gravest difficulties and dangers
to the development of its religion. True, Israel ran no
risk of meeting the fate of the Persians, whose religion
soon lost its purity in consequence of their imperial
position and their free intercourse with subject peoples.
For, in the centres of national life in Israel where the
heathen population had been rooted out, there flourished in
all its purity the worship of the God of Sinai, whom the
national priests served ; and the devotees of the national God
— Nazirites, judges, and prophets — fostered the enthusiasm
for the national religion. But most of the tribes of Israel
were living with Canaanite cities among them that had been
left undestroyed. Solomon was the first who succeeded in
imposing tribute and forced labour1 upon the remnants of
the native population which it had proved impossible to
exterminate. Even the later parts of the book of Joshua,2
1 1 Kings ix. 20 ; 2 Chron. ii. 17 ff., viii. 7 ; Josh. xv. 63.
2 Josh. xiii. 13, xv. 63, xvii. 12, 13.

144 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
and still more plainly the stories in the book of Judges,
indicate that the remnants of the Canaanites were tolerably
numerous. Gibeon, which Saul in his zeal for God and Israel wished
utterly to destroy,1 Jerusalem, and Shechem2 were inhabited
by a Canaanite population. And the policy adopted towards
them, as well as towards the surrounding peoples, was by
no means one of isolation, as the laws of the later age
represent. Notably, the tribe of Judah had such intimate
relations with foreign elements that, for example, the power
ful family of Caleb may, with equal propriety, be reckoned
either to Judah or to the Kenizzites.3 Even among David's
heroes there are Ammonites and Hittites. In his own family
there is an Ishmaelite. One of his female ancestors is a
Moabitess. He takes his parents to the Moabites, and lives
himself among the Philistines.4 Inter - marriages with
Philistine women are not represented as very desirable,
but they are not forbidden.5 David and Solomon enter
without hesitation into alliance with the Phoenicians.6
Now, as the Canaanites were unquestionably far superior
to the Israelites in matters of secular culture, such inter
course could not but result in a toning down of the simplicity
and stern severity of Israel's religion and morals. "The
conquered gave laws to the conquerors."7 To Israel, as to
every ancient people without a clearly defined monotheism,
it must have seemed very natural to pay to the gods of their
1 2 Sam. xxi.
2 Judg. ix. 28 ; Josh. xv. 63 (cf., on the other hand, Judg. i. 8, 17 ! ).
3 Gen. xv. 19 ; Num. xiii. 31 ; Josh. xv. 17 ; Judg. i. 12 ff. (Gen. xxxviii. ;
Josh. vi. 25).
4 2 Sam. xvii. 27, xxiii. 37, 39 ; 1 Chron." ii. 17 ; Ruth i. 4 (of. 1 Sam.
xxi. 11, xxii. 3, xxvii. ff.).
6 Judg. xiv. 3. 6 1 Kings v. 6ff. (vii. 13 ff.).
7 The later historians see in the sparing of the Canaanites sometimes a
national sin (Judg. ii. 1), sometimes temptation by God, and an intention to
strengthen Israel's national spirit by a struggle for national existence (Judg.
ii. 3, 22, iii. 1, 2, 4), and sometimes a wise rule, that the land might not
become a waste (Deut. vii. 22).

THE JUDGES. 145
new and beautiful land, at the ancient shrines, the worship
which these had been accustomed to receive, and to which
the former inhabitants thought they owed the corn and the
wine which the land produced.
Now, idolatry proper, actual apostasy from Jehovah for the
sake of other gods, cannot have occurred in the way repre
sented in the later accounts, which view it from the stand
point of the doctrine of retribution. The people as a whole
were, beyond a doubt, proud of their nationality, and therefore
also of their religion. They were a nation of conquerors.
Only in very evil times, such as they experienced during the
Philistine oppression, could the thought ever have occurred
to them that their -God was less powerful than the gods of
Gath and Askelon. And during that period the unity of
Israel, that is, its national and religious feeling, was actually
strengthened and steeled by adversity. But the natural
impulse to do honour to the god of the country would induce
many an Israelite to frequent the sanctuaries and imitate the
worship of Canaan without ceasing, on that account, to con
sider Jehovah as his own God.
Naturally the tribes most exposed to the danger of be
coming lost to Israel's calling were those which, like the
Ephraimites, were in close proximity to a central shrine of
the native inhabitants. Thus, at Shechem, a process of amal
gamation went on between the two peoples, just because
of the sanctuary of Baal-Berith. A royal city, it ruled over
considerable portions of Ephraim as well as its own Canaanite
population. A nature-festival, much like " the feast of Taber-
nacles," united both.1 On the other hand, old Israelitish
tribes were weakened by coming into conflict, like Reuben,
Simeon, and Levi, with the native population, or, like
1 Judg. ix. We are certainly tempted to see in this " Baal of the covenant "
Jehovah Himself under an ancient title, JVQ 7N (ix. 46). But in v. 28 the
Canaanitish character of the population of Sheehem comes out quite unam
biguously. VOL. I. K

146 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Benjamin, with their own brethren.1 But in spite of such
complications, we must recognise that a common feeling
animated Israel during those " times of the Judges," which
it is probable were considerably shorter than the traditional
chronology of later ages represents. And though there are
no grounds for exchanging the Old Testament picture of
a time of conquest, followed by a troubled period during
which Israel had difficulty in keeping possession of the
country, for a picture of gradual encroachment and settle
ment, extending over several generations, and resulting in
actual supremacy only in the time of the Kings, we may still
believe that in the midst of peril and apparent declension
these times, nevertheless, witnessed an inward strengthening
and development of Israel as a nation.
3. A strict political or religious unity, such as we may
assume to have existed at the time of the exodus and the
conquest, is not to be thought of during this period. The
several tribes and cities were independent guardians of the
religion and customs of the fathers. Hence it was once a
common saying in Israel, "If ye ask counsel in Abel, then
ye do well."2 Each tribe had in the last resort to act on its
own responsibility. It is particularly striking that Judah is
represented as standing quite aloof from the national life.
Neither in Deborah's song nor during the wars for freedom
is this tribe ever mentioned. Far down into the time of
the Kings the conflicting interests of Judah and Joseph,
and even of Judah and Benjamin, determine their respective
Still there undoubtedly existed, despite this independence

1 Not merely Judg. xix. 20, in a narrative obviously very late, but also Hos.
ix. 9, x. 9. The doings of Simeon and Levi at Shechem typify the reckless and
treacherous refusal of all intercourse with the inhabitants of the country, Gen.
xxxiv., xlix.
2 2 Sam. xx. 18. Each tribe had its own sanctuary, Judg. vi., viii., xi.,
xviii. ; 1 Sam. xx. 6.
3 E.g. 1 Sam. xxii. 7.

THE JUDGES. 147
claimed by the several sections, a higher national bond,
by which all Israel was united together as " the people of
Jehovah." A certain unity was implied in the fact that
Ephraim, in whose territory the national sanctuary was
situated, openly claimed and exercised a sort of hegemony
over the tribes that lay within its sphere of influence.1 Still
more powerful was the prestige of the national sanctuary at
Shiloh, with its Levitical priesthood. This sanctuary exercised
over the history of Israel a paramount influence similar to
that exercised by the sanctuary at Delphi over the develop
ment of the Hellenic people.2 The prophets of Jehovah and
the Nazirites, who specially represented the antagonism of the
Hebrews to the Canaanites, were looked up to by all classes.
Finally, it was the bounden duty of the whole people to fight
"the wars of Jehovah," and to execute the ban which God
imposed. Whoever shirked this duty fell under the ban
himself.3 By such means there. was kept up a community
of national and religious feeling, which made itself felt even
in the bitterness engendered by civil war.4
4. During this period the morals of the people as a whole
must have been tolerably pure, and their sense of morality
and justice very active. The horrible crime at Gibeah is
represented as something absolutely unheard of in Israel ; it
remains a byword for centuries, and causes, at any rate
according to the later account, the annihilation of Benjamin's
power as a tribe. The old proverbs, " No such thing ought
to be done in Israel," and " Folly in Israel," imply a high
morality.6 The appreciation of national religion was also
lively. Notwithstanding all their laxity in worship, they
thought a Levite and his oracle a desirable possession.6
1 Judg. viii. 1, xii. 1. 2 Josh, xviii. 1 ; Judg. xviii. 31, xxi. 19 f.
3 Judg. v. 13 ff., 23, viii. 4ff., xix. 29 ff, xx. 1, xxi. 10 ff. ; cf. 1 Sam. x. 17,
xi. 7 ff.
4 Judg. xxi. 3 ; 2 Sam. ii. 26, xx. 19 f.
6 Gen. xxxiv. 7, 31 ; Josh. vii. 15 ; Judg. xix. 23, xx. 10 ; 2 Sam. xiii. 12 f.
6 Judg. xvii. 7ff., xviii. 18.

148 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Times, whose watchword was, " For the Lord and for
Gideon," and which sang the song of Deborah, and perhaps
also the Passover-hymn, must have been aglow with en
thusiasm for the God of the people. The song of Deborah
praises God because rulers arose in Israel and the people
offered themselves willingly. It speaks of the saving deeds
of God, who drew near in the glory of the tempest to defend
His people against the mighty. The enemies of Israel are the
enemies of Jehovah, and they who fight for the national cause
fight for God. And so overmastering is this religious feeling,
that Jael's breach of hospitality, because committed in the
interests of Jehovah, is extolled as an act of heroism. With
all this, one must allow that the iron age produced a rough
ness of manners, and, in the parts of the country most
exposed to the attacks of rival peoples, a ferocity such as we
see in Jephthah, who was both prince and bandit.1
It is certain that in the time of the Judges it was con
sidered unobjectionable, and quite in harmony with the
religion of Israel, to worship the national God by means of
images, and to believe in the divinity of oracle-giving house
hold gods. Gideon is not merely the political deliverer of
Israel. He is also zealous for the religion of his people.
His struggle against the worship of Baal-Berith, and against
Canaanitish practices in general, and the reaction produced by
this struggle can be clearly enough traced in the history.2 He
1 Judg. xi. 1 ff., 34 ff. It is much the same with David, 1 Sam. xxii.
2 Judg. viii. 23. Still it was probably the purpose of a later age that first
gave his name Jerubbaal (Judg. vii. 1) the meaning of Baal's antagonist (Judg.
vi. 32). At that time Baal was like El, a name of God in Israel, which fell into
disuse only at a later stage through antagonism to the other Baalim. Jerubbaal
probably means "Baal supports." Proper names in which Baal is the name of
God are not at all rare in Israel, cf. Jerubbaal, Ishbaal, Mephibaal (2 Sam. iii. 8,
iv. 4, 8, xvi. 1, xxi. 7, cf. xi. 21 ; 1 Chron. viii. 33, ix. 39). In later times these
were either altered in a good sense into compounds with Jahveh, e.g. Ishjo for
Ishbaal in 1 Sam. xiv. 49 (cf. Wellhausen on the passage), or by way of ridi
cule into compounds with Bosheth = shame, e.g. Jerubbosheth, Ishbosheth,
Mephibosheth, cf. above. The opinion I formerly held, that ]"lt5>3> o^us, was also
au old name of God, is improbable in view of that other change of the name.

THE JUDGES. 149
declines to be king, saying, " God shall rule over you." Never
theless, he has no scruple in making into an image of God
the gold taken as spoil in the sacred war, — conduct to which
it is clear the term " to go a-whoring," or apostatising from
God, is only applied in accordance with a much later mode of
thinking.1 On Mount Ephraim, Micah worships the God of
Israel, and rejoices to get a Levite as priest. But up to that
time his own son performs the duties of priest ; and a molten
image and teraphim constitute the paraphernalia of his
domestic worship. These are so coveted that a whole
Israelitish tribe takes them from him by force, and uses
them down to a late period in the public worship of its
chief city. And the Levite who is willing, for food and
clothing and ten pieces of silver a year, to conduct this
worship, the principal part of which consists in giving
oracles, is represented as a grandson of Moses ! 2 Even in
David's house teraphim are regarded as quite unobjectionable
objects of worship.3 Whether the brazen serpent which
It is, besides, worthy of notice that in Saul's family names with Baal were
specially common, and in David's those with Jahveh. Still, according to
Judg. vi. 25 ff., viii. 33, ix. Iff., Gideon's zeal is obviously for the God of his
people. 1 Judg. viii. 27 is clearly a reflection due to the later writer. The ephod in
Ophra need not exactly mean an image, but may, as elsewhere, be the shoulder-
cape of the priest, which acts as an oracle. In that case the molten image made
of the gold is not expressly named, and is, according to the analogy of other
passages, to be thought of as the image of an ox (Judg. xviii. 30 ; 1 Kings xii.
28 ff. ; Ex. xxxii. 4). Besides, it is in no way improbable that the name
ephod, as well as ephnddah, denoted originally the coating of precious metal
with which the wooden or clay images of the god were generally overlaid
(Isa. xxx. 22). It is exactly the same as with Jehu, who was also zealous for
Jehovah, and yet had no scruples in allowing the ox-image of Jehovah to con
tinue an object of worship (2 Kings ix. 22 f., x. 16-29).
2 The image is intended to represent Jehovah (Judg. xvii. 3). Micah has a
private chapel, cf. xvii. , xviii. At any rate the story is obviously meant to
cast ridicule on this whole service, the image being made out of stolen gold and
attended to by a strolling priest. But that such was not the idea at the time,
is proved by the plunder of this sanctuary by the tribe of Dan, and by the long
oontinuance of the worship.
3 1 Sam. xix. 13 ff., xv. 23; 2 Kings xxiii. 24; Zech. x. 2. A later age
naturally sees in these images gods subordinate to Jehovah.

150 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Hezekiah ordered to be destroyed, and which purported to
be the one made by Moses in the wilderness, was already in
existence, and regarded as a symbol of God, hardly admits of
being determined.1
The whole period before Samuel we must picture to our
selves as ah age of contradictions. We find in it deeds of
violence, blood-feuds even for acts done in war (as among
the Bedouin of the present day), great licence for men in
sexual intercourse, and polygamy without limit.2 But along
with these we find strong indignation against acts of cruelty,
an admirable gentleness towards compatriots, keen dislike of
a " foreign city," with a corresponding love for the customs
and peculiarities of Israel ; 8 hospitality which will risk every
thing in defence of a guest,4 and in contrast with which the
inhospitality of the inhabitants of Gibeah is represented as
something unheard of; fairmindedness, so that even the run
away wife of a Levite is taken back again5 unpunished ; in a
word, the normal characteristics of a simple and joyous exist
ence. If the book of Ruth, despite its late date, gives a
lifelike picture of these times, as the impression made by the
story inclines us to believe, as well as the popularly simple
explanation of the primitive custom of "taking off the shoe,"6
we find in everything which is told us of.Boaz and Ruth
proofs that the people were kindly, honest, and naively chaste.7
The wild times of oppression undoubtedly steeled the nerves
of the people. And the hearth at which the sacred fire of the
religion of Jehovah was kept purest was at the sanctuary of
Shiloh, the home of the " ephod-bearing " priests.8
In David's time we still find the people exceedingly brave
1 2 Kings xviii. 4, jntJ'nj. In itself it would be in no way improbable that
the serpent-form, which among most ancient nations represents something
divine or daemonic, should be used in the worship of Jehovah.
2 Judg. xi. Iff, xvi. 1, 4, cf. viii. 18, 30, ix. 42 ff.; 2 Sam. iii. 27.
3 Judg. xix., xx. 4 Judg. xix. 20 ff, cf. Gen. xix. 1-8.
6 Judg. xix. 1 ff. e Ruth iv. 7.
7 Ruth ii. 2-20, iii. 3, iv. 2. 8 1 Sam. xiv. 3.

SAMUEL. 151
and simple.1 Marriage was held in high esteem.2 An en
thusiastic piety, certainly without any theological bent, formed
the distinctive characteristic of the better Israelites.8 The
highest moral traits were considered to be honesty, submission
to the will of God, abhorrence of usury and oppression,4
charitableness,5 generosity and magnanimity,6 sincerity and
fidelity in friendship.7 But at the same time even the best
are represented as having no scruples in behaving arbitrarily
as husbands,8 and in telling lies to an enemy in order to
deceive him.9 Cruelty in war is not merely permitted, but
enjoined.10 Side by side with individual instances of sincere
repentance we meet with a naive self-complacency.11 Along
with the highest magnanimity we find malicious joy at the
misfortunes of a foe.12

CHAPTER X.
FROM SAMUEL DOWN TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
1. The grand task of re-inspiring a thoroughly disorgan
ised and to all appearance decaying nation with the spirit of
its heroic past and its divine calling fell, by all accounts, to
Samuel, the son of Elkanah of Ephraim.13 Like a second
1 Cf. 2 Sam. viii. 4, xi. 11, xxiii. 15 ff.
2 2 Sam. xii., xiii. 2. s Judg. v.; Ps. xviii. 3, 4, 7, 11.
4 2 Sam. xv. 25, xvi. 11, xxiv. 14 (cf. Ps. vii., xi., xv. 1, xxiv. 3-6 ¦,
Prov. xi. 1, 26, xviii. 5, xx. 10, 22, 23, etc.).
5 Prov. xi. 25, xix. 17, xxi. 13, xxii. 9. 6 1 Sam. xxiv.
7 1 Sam. xviii. 3, xx. 8, 16-42, xxiii. 16 ff. ; 2 Sam. i. 26.
8 1 Sam. xxv. ; 2 Sam. v. 13 (excess in drinking, 2 Sam. xi. 13).
9 1 Sam. xxvii. 8-12.
10 1 Sam. xxvii. 9 ; 2 Sam. xii. 31. According to 1 Sam. xv. 32, Saul is blamed
for not having killed Agag. Vengeance even for acts done in war, 2 Sam. ii. 23,
iii. 27, xiv. 7, 11.
u Ps. xviii. 22 ff. ; cf. 2 Sam. vii. 18, xii. 13. 12 1 Sam. xxv. 39.
18 The statement in 1 Chron. vi. 28 ff, that his family was Levitical, cannot
have any weight as against 1 Sam. i. 1, because the aim of that book is to
exalt the Levitical priesthood. It gets more importance from the consideration

152 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Moses, this leader and prophet not only gave his people unity
and safety under monarchical rule, but also raised them to a
higher religious unity. To the later age he appears the
zealous advocate of priestly forms, and the opponent of a
monarchy which was anxious to make itself independent of
" spiritual " supremacy. According to the original tradition,
he is a seer, and his interests are those of one zealous for
Jehovah and His people. Above all, it was due to him that
the consciousness of Jehovah's sovereignty over Israel got
firm hold of the nation as a whole. As he himself was
inspired with the prophetic spirit of revealed religion,1 he
is represented as the head, perhaps as the founder, of the
prophetic guilds, in which devotion to Israel's God and to His
salvation was cherished as at a sacred hearth. At first by
his personal influence, and then by instituting a monarchy
based on the idea of the divine headship, he secured the
unity of Israel, and thereby the unity of its religion. Hence
it was mainly owing to him that the theocracy attained the
solidity and strength which found outward expression in the
sovereignty of David and in the building of Solomon's
temple. He impressed the people with a keener and more
vivid consciousness of its position and calling as the people
of God, an impression it long retained.
But nothing he could have done personally was so effective
that a non-Levite would scarcely have been allowed to serve in the sanctuary
and share in its revenues and honour. But Samuel is consecrated by his
mother's vow to service in the sanctuary, which would have been superfluous in
the case of a born Levite. That his parents should have gone up every year to
offer sacrifice at the sanctuary, would scarcely be an intelligible proceeding on
the part of Levites (1 Sam. i. 11, 21, according to the Sept. tithes). Although
as a servant in the sanctuary he is represented as wearing a priest's linen
garment, which is, however, also related of David (1 Sam. ii. 18, cf. 2 Sam.
vi. 14), he always appears afterwards simply as a prophet and national leader,
never as » priest. For although he pronounces the blessing at the national
sacrifices, and indeed performs them, that is a natural result of his position as
prophetic leader. Elijah does the very same. For the honour paid to Samuel
later, cf. Jer. xv. 1 ; Ps. xcix. 6 ; Jes. Sir. xlvi. 16 ff.
'Early accounts in 1 Sam. iii. 3ff., 19, viii. 7, ix. 5, 15, 19, cf. vii. 9,
xiii. 8 ff., and later, xv. 10.

DAVID. 153
as his securing for the people, by means of the national mon
archy, a hundred years of full and complete unity, years during
which everything that was of greatest importance for the
religious development of the people was settled once and for
all. It is in this respect that the first king, Saul, has a
special claim on our attention. He protected his people both
in the south and in the east,1 exterminated wizards and
sorcerers, and was, in the national sense, zealous against the
remnants of the Canaanites.2 He held fast by the noble
simplicity of Israel's ancient customs.3 But though heartily
devoted to Israel and Israel's God, he manifested no desire
for a Levitical priesthood and a central temple;4 and he
really felt no anxiety for the development of that deep
spiritual religion for which Samuel was so eager. The
closing years of this high-spirited king were full of gloom,
misery, and violence.
All the greater was the effect produced by the personal
character and deeds of his successor David. Probably
Bethlehem, his family seat, had some early connection with
the tribe of Levi.5 At all events, David was not only
heartily attached to the religion of Jehovah, but also to its
Levitical and prophetical supporters, in other words, to what
ever elements in it had an elevating tendency ; and he
was himself in turn favoured by both prophets and priests.6
While still a freebooter, he kept in his train a prophet,
and a priest's son who wore an ephod. And when he
became king over the whole nation, he made his new
citadel, the city of David, also the religious centre which
from that time onward ruled and regulated the whole
religious history of Israel. The national unity being
now assured, and the sanctuary being in the very centre
of the kingdom, the religious consciousness of the people
1 1 Sam. xi., xxxi. 11 ff. - 1 Sam. xxviii. 3 ; 2 Sam. xxi. 2.
3 E.g. 1 Sam. xi. 4 ff., 13, xiv. 2 ; 2 Sam. ix. 7.
4 1 Sam. xxii. 10 ff. » Judg. xvii. 10, xix. 1. 8 1 Sam. xxii.

154 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
was at any rate set free from its earlier uncertainties and
fluctuations. The copestone was put on this structure by Solomon when
he built for the God of Israel a splendid temple which, as
was natural, aimed at becoming the one centre of national
worship. This is the zenith of the national development,
although in no sense the pure expression of the idea of this
religion. Solomon was an Asiatic monarch of the type seen
in heathen countries, and only too much inclined to show
that such was his position by massing together in his capital
the religious services of many different peoples. But all the
same, his reign, looked at externally, was the final stage of
the development in Israel of the theocratic State.
2. It is a common tendency among Old Testament theo
logians of the present day to overestimate the influence of
the monarchy on the nationality and religion of Israel. I
do not believe that the state of things under Saul and David
was so very different from the state of things under Gideon
as many expositors represent. But it does not remain a
whit less certain that the monarchy after it had been
firmly established by the triumph of David, was of the very
highest importance to the nation, and consequently also
to its religion. For a long while it was quite clear that
Jehovah had proved Himself the God who rules the world,
His religion, with all its ordinances, having been triumphantly
established and successfully maintained in Canaan. Every
thing connected with the subject population of Canaan and
its civilisation now appeared increasingly impure and objec
tionable. The God enthroned on Zion appeared more glorious
than the God worshipped at Shiloh. As the joyful conscious
ness of national unity and national glory grew stronger, faith
in the power of Jehovah grew stronger also.
3/ Although the sudden prosperity which Israel enjoyed
under David and Solomon had thus a tendency to promote
religion, still such prosperity was not only very far from

SOLOMON. 155
producing that elevation of thought which the great prophets
show us, but it brought in its train dangers of every sort.
This warlike people ran the risk of having its simple con
stitution remodelled on the lines of a centralised military
State, and of being thus assimilated also in religion and morals
to those conquering peoples whose organisation was purely
secular. Increasing riches must have done away with the
strict simplicity of the Israelitish mode of life. There was,
especially in the chief towns, a growing eagerness both to
make money and to enjoy life, while honesty and fair dealing
in business were becoming less common.
The more prominent position now occupied by Israel
among the nations of the world could not have been attained
without giving way in many respects to heathenism and
to heathen ideas. Only from this standpoint can we
understand the complaints of the oldest prophets as to the
religious and moral conditions of the ruling classes. But
we must not think of this declension as rapid, or as extending
to all classes of the people. It is still the age in which
patriarchal legend was handled in the spirit of B, C, the
age to which was due the beautiful eulogy of the housewife
in Proverbs,1 and in which the phrase, " I dwell among mine
own people," expresses a woman's perfect confidence that
she would get justice and protection.2 In fact, at the very
time when the northern kingdom was tottering to its fall,
the view taken of Naboth's treatment shows how powerful
patriotism was, how keen the indignation at legal trickery
and corruption, how strong the attachment, based on religious
motives, to the family inheritance, and thus to the simplicity
of agricultural life,3 and how lively a force was the " un
written " law of national custom.
4. In Solomon's brilliant reign, seeds of decay were sown,
and, indeed, in a certain sense, by the very building of the temple.
1 Prov. xi. 16, xii. 4, xviii. 22, xix. 14. 2 2 Kings iv. 13.
3 1 Kings xxi. 3, 17 ff. ; 2 Kings ix. 36.

156 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
It was not merely that the old premier tribe of Ephraim,
which included the best blood in Israel, held proudly aloof
from the capital of Judah and its magnificent temple, and
was always ready to raise the old war-cry, " What portion
have we in David, or what inheritance in the son of Jesse ?
To your tents, 0 Israel I"1 It was not merely that the
military organisation and the civil burdens were felt oppressive
by a people accustomed to freedom.2 Even from a religious
point of view, the temple, with its heathenish splendour, was
not to the taste of ancient Israel, which had still a vivid recol
lection of how Jehovah had, since the exodus from Egypt, dwelt
" in a tabernacle," and how His sacred ark was suited, not for
a splendid Phoenician edifice, but for a shepherd's tent.3 And
a royal family which, to increase its own renown, offered sites
in Jerusalem on which to worship the gods of the neighbouring
nations, was not to the mind of the zealous in Israel.4
In Solomon's time the temple at Jerusalem did not claim
to rival the ancient holy places in the land, such as Bethel,
Hebron, Shechem, or Beersheba, or even to question their
importance for the religious life of the people. It merely
took the place of such spots as Shiloh or Nob, which were, in
fact, not regarded as in themselves " holy places " strictly so
called. Tt is the sanctuary of the king, and therefore of the
kingdom. It is only those ancient places of worship which
sacred legend celebrates with the most unreserved and joyous
enthusiasm.5 Jerusalem, it is probable, was not generally
popular till after its destruction. It is only in the final edition
of the Pentateuch that the need was felt of ascribing to it
a sacred character in the patriarchal times. Hence such
a "legitimation of Zion" is inserted where there was a
geographical possibility of doing so, in the interpolated
passage Gen. xiv. 18-20, and by the alteration of the text
1 2 Sam. xx. 1 ; 1 Kings xii. 10. 2 1 Kings ix. 11, xii. 4 (x. 26).
3 2 Sam. vii. Cf. Duhm, p. 49 ff. 4 1 Kings xi. 4 ff.
5 Gen. xii. 2, 6, xiii. 18, xvi. 14ff., xxvi. 23, xxviii. 16ff. etc.

DISRUPTION OF THE KINGDOM. 157
in Gen. xxii. 2 (nnbn pK). But the favour thus shown it,
and its own magnificence, made it all the more distasteful
to the people.
Consequently it is Jehovah's prophets who initiate and
promote the rebellion of Israel against the house of David,
although afterwards they must have been anything but
satisfied with the result.1 In northern Israel the worship
of the national God by means of images was again con
fined to the ancient holy places, which still had strong
attractions even for the inhabitants of the kingdom of
Judah.2 And as late as the Assyrian period we see that even
great men of God like Elijah, never refer either to the temple
at Jerusalem or to the house of David, but devote them
selves solely to the worship of the national God of Israel.3
Nevertheless, the disruption of the kingdom proved that it
was impossible for Israel to realise the kingdom of God in
the form of a national State. Despite its larger population,4
the kingdom of the ten tribes was utterly incapable of
becoming the exponent of the true religion, then in process
of development. Indeed, it scarcely managed, after a hot
struggle, to retain what, at an earlier stage, had been proved
sound and authoritative. In Judah, afflicted with internal
weakness, there was a growing inclination to admit foreign
elements, and thus fall away more and more from the
national religion. Still the future was with this small and
feeble kingdom. For here that mighty upward movement
was quietly gathering strength, that spiritualising of religion,
1 1 KiDgs xi. 29 ff.
2 1 Kings xii. 29, 32 ; Amos iv. 4, v. 5, vii. 13; Hos. iv. 15.
3 Specially noteworthy is 1 Kings xix. 3 ff., 10. Elijah acknowledges the
altar on Carmel as the altar of God, and his sole aim is to root out the worship
of Baal (xviii. 30). Besides, when Ahab's family is destroyed, Elisha does not
advise the people to resume their allegiance to the house of David, but orders
Jehu to be anointed (2 Kings ix.). The mountain of Zebulon is also, according
to Deut. xxxiii. 19, a legitimate place at which to sacrifice.
4 The blessing of Moses says of Judah : " Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and
bring him back to his people." In other words, Israel, not Judah, is regarded
as the representative of the people.

158 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of which the great prophets of the following age were to
become the advocates. If the age of Samuel proves that the
period of the Judges, with all its roughness and wildness, had
not only preserved, but even ripened the seeds of its better
elements, then the prophets of the eighth century prove that
in like manner the age after Rehoboam had not only not lost
the seeds of the Davidic age, but had, among the circles of
godly prophets, under circumstances apparently unfavourable,
spiritualised and transfigured them. This quiet work of the
Divine Spirit had as its instruments the prophets and the
priests,1 and as its visible station the temple of Jehovah,
where, since Solomon's time, worship without images could
never be quite put down, however frequently and openly the
gods of other nations had also been worshipped there.
5. The religious development in the northern kingdom
kept closely to the old national lines, especially in retaining
the free and somewhat sensuous mode of worshipping the
national God which had been in vogue from the days of old.
The month of the feast of Tabernacles was altered. Priests
were consecrated who did not belong to the ruling families,
for the interests of the Levitical priests were too closely
connected with the temple-worship at Jerusalem. The king
himself appears to have performed various acts of worship, as
the leaders of the people used to do. The shrines at Dan
and Bethel became the centres at which the national God was
adored under the form of an ox.2 The time when the house
of David reigned was to be wholly obliterated from the
memory of the people. And this stage of religion retained
its ascendency.
1 That in priestly circles a side of this religion was cultivated different from
that in favour with prophetic circles, that the former paid special attention to
worship and sacred ritual, the latter to religion and morality, comes clearly
out in the following age. But at first they were probably at one in their
endeavours to obtain a unified and spiritual form of religion ; and, indeed, it
is not till after the Deuteronomist that the difference between their respective
aims comes quite clearly out.
2 Cf. Judg. xviii. 31 ; 1 Kings xii. 28-32, xiii. 1, 33.

DISRUPTION OF THE KINGDOM. 159
For a time it certainly seemed as if, through the influence
of Jezebel,1 a Tyrian princess, a purely Canaanitish worship
would be established in the northern kingdom, as the worship
of Baal-Berith was formerly established in Shechem. The
religion of the God of Israel seemed about to succumb. . But
soon a new and popular dynasty overthrew both the reigning
house and the new religion, and re-introduced the old national
worship.2 Jehu, like Gideon and Saul, is thoroughly zealous for the
religion of the God of Israel. Jezebel, with her intrigues
and sorceries, is the object of his special hatred. With
reckless cruelty he sweeps away every trace of the worship of
Baal, and regards himself as executing " the word of God by
His prophets." But in so doing it never occurs to him to
put an end to the worship of Jehovah by means of images.8
At a still later date such worship was not given up. Indeed,
there is no evidence that even men like Elijah or Elisha ever
tried in earnest to put it down. But that did not prevent
the pretty frequent appearance of prophets of Jehovah ;4 nor
did it make Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, regard the religion of
the northern kingdom as essentially different from his own.6
Here, therefore, religion could make no real advance. It re
mained at a stage of development with which no great fault
could be found, had the light been less bright ; but which,
when contrasted with the purer expression given to the Mosaic
thoughts by God's prophets in Judah, could quite justly
be compared to a rebellion against God, or to adultery, as
1 1 Kings xvi. 31-xviii. 19.
* Kuenen's idea (i. 360 f.), that the persecution of Jehovah's worshippers under
Ahab, and the successful resistance to it, resulted in a higher and more mono
theistic conception of God, receives no support at all from the original docu
ments. 3 2 Kings ix., x. It is peculiarly striking that, in this undertaking of his,
he leans for support on the son of Rechab, evidently a man well known among
the people as a zealous adherent of the ancient national God (x. 16). The harsh
judgment of Jehu's rebellion in Hos. i. 4 is remarkable.
4 1 Kings xi. 30 ff., xiii. 2, 4, 14, 18, xiv., xvi. 1, xx. 13, 22, 35, xxii.
B 1 Kings xxii. 5.

160 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the later age from its own standpoint terms it.1 Joseph-
Ephraim lost his birthright.2 The prophets of the next
generation, such as Hosea or Amos, who laboured quite in
the spirit of the purer religion, were too late in calling the
people back to the way by which alone they could be saved.3
Naturally such a religion, being unprogressive and without
clear self-consciousness, could not hold its ground when new
civilised religions, backed by the power of victorious empires,
came into contact with Israel. It then gave way without
resistance before the worship of the great god and of the
nature-mother.4 In the southern kingdom we hear almost more about real
idolatry than in the northern, where there obviously was a
stronger feeling of nationality and a greater abhorrence of
what was foreign. The worship of Baal, indeed, forced its
way into Judah only through the family of Jezebel, and by
force it was again driven out through a revolution which
centred in the temple and in the family of the high priest.
But, with few exceptions, the kings of Judah permitted the
worship of strange gods to exist side by side with that of
Jehovah.6 Nevertheless, in Jerusalem, and no doubt just in
consequence of the spiritual worship in the temple which,
thanks to the influence of the prophets, had never been
entirely given up, the essential features of the true religion
came out in a far stronger, purer, and more spiritual form than
in Ephraim. We have, it is true, comparatively few trust-.
worthy documents belonging to this age from which to obtain
a knowledge of its inner working. But the prophecy of the
eighth century is itself a fact sufficient to prove our assertion.

1 1 Kings xiii. 2, 34, xiv. 4, 9.
2 Gen. xlviii. 3ff., 17 ff., xlix. 22 ff. 3 Hos. i. 7, ii. 2.
4 That the gods of foreign nations were worshipped in Israel at a later date is
proved by Hos. i.-iii. ; Amos iv. 3, v. 26.
5 1 Kings xiv. 21 ff, xv. 3 ; 2 Kings viii. 18, 28, xi. 4-24, xvi. 3.

THE NAZIRITE. 161
CHAPTER XI.
RELIGIOUS FIGURES CHARACTERISTIC OF THE AGE PRIOR TO THE
EIGHTH CENTURY.
Nazirite and King.
Literature. — Realencyclopddie, art. "Nasiraeat" (1st ed.
Oehler, 2nd ed. v. Orelli). Ed. Vilmar, "Die symbolische
Bedeutung des Naziraeergeliibdes " (Stud. u. Krit. 1864, iii.
438 ff). Dr. Julius Grill, "Ueber Bedeutung und Ursprung
des Nasiraeergelubdes (Jahrbb. f. protest. Theol. 1880, p.
645 ff). Realencyclopddie, art. " Kbnige. Konigthum in
Israel" (1st ed. Oehler, 2nd ed. v. Orelli). L. Diestel,
"Die Idee des theokratisehen Konigs" (Jahrbb. f. deutsche
Theol. viii. p. 536 ff).
1. In the earliest days of Israel's national growth, we find
both the prophet and the Levitical priest exerting a powerful
influence on the side of religious progress. But these we had
better leave for consideration till they have reached their full
logical development, and then we shall trace them back to
their origin. The figure on which the peculiarly Israelitish
spirit stamped itself most clearly and definitely in those early
times, was unquestionably that of the Nazirite. In its later
form, as sketched in the law,1 this figure has already become
so dim as to be scarcely intelligible. Had the Nazirite
vow meant nothing more to an Israelite than this legisla
tive prescription indicates, the rdle which national legend
assigns it in the lives of Samson and Samuel would be as
unintelligible as the emphasis which Amos lays upon this
form of consecrated life. Samson as well as Samuel is
consecrated2 as a Nazirite to the God of Israel before his
birth, and for his whole lifetime too, even his mother being
1 Num. vi. 1 ff. 2 Judg. xiii. 3, 14 ; 1 Sam. i. 10.
VOL. I. L

162 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
required to abstain from wine and from everything unclean ;
whereas the law speaks only of a voluntary Nazirite vow
lasting but a few months. It was as a Nazirite that
Samson expected superior divine strength and a personal
" holiness," and that Samuel was dedicated to the service of
Jehovah, and yet neither case can possibly be understood
from the regulations of the law concerning a Nazirite. But,
according to Amos, it is regarded as one of the grossest
insults to Jehovah that any one should induce a Nazirite
to break his vow ; x and they are represented as being
" awakened " by Him, just as the prophets were.2 Hence
we must think of the Nazirite as occupying in the early
times a far more important position than is accorded to
him by A.
The name plainly denotes " the vowed one," 3 thereby
indicating the real character of this relationship. The
Nazirite is in a special sense holy, consecrated to the God
of Israel. He must therefore, even in his outer life, avoid
everything which would obscure the special character of this
national God, and His antagonism to the gods of Canaan.
The Nazirite is originally regarded as one inspired with a
consecrated zeal for Jehovah, the stern and jealous God of
the Patriarchs, the foe of the voluptuous and orgiastic nature-
worship of Canaan.
Hence, according to the law, the Nazirite must not
touch anything which would unfit him for the worship of
Jehovah. So long as " the crown of God " is upon him, he
must not touch any dead body — probably in direct antagon
ism to certain religious customs of Canaan. Every such touch
makes his vow null and void.4 Of course, this did not
1 Amos ii. 12. 2 dipn.
• Philo, De Hebr. i. : A /uyix* tltf. ifj -nj. The root-meaning, probably,
is separation. In Zech. vii. 3, "l^n is applied to abstinence from food and
drink ; in Gen. xlix. 25, Joseph is called the Nazir among his brethren, i.e.
the distinguished one.
4 Num. vi. 7, xxxi. 19.

THE NAZIRITE. 163
debar him, especially in the warlike days of old, from taking
part in "the sacred wars of Jehovah." Furthermore, no
artifice of civilised life must check the free natural growth of
his body. The hair, untouched by a razor, forms, as the
crown of his head, the special sign of his holy dedication.1
Above all, however, he is forbidden to taste the fruit of
the vine, not merely wine as an intoxicating drink, but
the whole produce of the vine. The use of this plant was, in
Canaan, the regular symbol of civilised life, and even Israel
used it with thankfulness and joy. Originally, however, the
children of the desert saw in the vine a plant cultivated by
foreigners, and worshipped by them. The Rechabites, whose
ancestor is represented as a. highly-honoured worshipper of
Jehovah,2 belong to a tribe closely akin to Israel, which did
not adopt the civilisation of Canaan ; and this they showed
by abstaining from wine. Besides, the use of wine was closely
connected with the orgiastic worship of the Hamites, and, as
the legends of Pentheus and Orpheus prove, was regarded at
first, even by the Greeks, as an objectionable foreign element.
Consequently, the Nazirites were, along with the prophets of
the olden time, the true upholders of the national religion.3
2. But the determining factor in the religious develop
ment of the second half of this period is the figure of the
theocratic king. Not, indeed, as if this religion had been
originally a work of the monarchy. The king is the last of
the figures which had an important influence on the religion
of Israel. And his importance in this respect depends less
on his personal influence on the development of this religion,
than on the effect which the whole bearing of the for
tunes and position of the monarchy had on the religious
horizon of the people. It does not admit of doubt that the
1 Num. vi. 3if. JPI3- The word IH for head - ornament, diadem, Ex.
xxix. 6, xxxix. 30 ; Lev. viii. 9, xxi. 12 ; 2 Sam. i. 10 ; 2 Kings xi. 12.
2 2 Kings x. 16 ; Jer. xxxv. 2 ff. Islam's rejection of wine is also due to
similar views.
3 Kuenen, i. 313 ff.

164 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
thought of a " holy people " originally arose without any
reference to an earthly king. The picture of " the congrega
tion of God " with its elders, as given to us by A, was cer
tainly due to the circumstances of the exiles, whose ideal
was an aristocratic theocracy.1 But, historically, Israel had
been for centuries an aristocratic republic uniformly directed
in the last resort by the " oracle of God." The individual
tribes, with their princes, were in a position of great inde
pendence, which it is clear they still retained till far on into
the monarchical period.2 Moses himself was not a king, as
all our information about him conclusively proves. However
high his position was acknowledged to be, and however
resolutely he claimed, by virtue of his spirit and his mission,
the obedience which is due to the leader of a nation, and
faced the insubordination even of his nearest relatives with
unflinching confidence in the rights conferred upon him by
the divine call, he was nevertheless very far from occupying
the position of an Eastern hereditary king. Even in Deut.
xxxiii. 5 it is probably better to refer the kingly name to
God. " So He (God) became king in Jeshurun." 3 Still less
is Joshua represented as king, although he was appointed
commander-in-chief in obedience to the oracle of the high
priest. Nor have the Judges any definite official authority,
but only personal influence. The whole character of their
work indicates a certain want of order, a mixture of heroism
and sensuality, of faith and superstition. And though
the title of king is given to a half-heathen city magnate
1 CKBO in A., elsewhere CHE* (Ex. xxxv. 27, xxxiv. 31; Num. xiii. 2,
ii. 5, 10, 18, i. 16, 44 ; Josh. ix. 15, 18, xxii. 14 ; cf. Judg. viii. 14 x. 18 ;
Deut. xx. 9; 1 Kings iv. 2). D^pf, Ex. xxiv. 1; Num. xi. 16; Deut. xxix. 9;
Josh. viii. 33, xx. 4, xxiii. 2 ; Judg. viii. 14.
2 Judg. viii. 14 ; Deut. xxix. 9 ; cf. 2 Sam. xiv. 7, xx. 1 ff.
a Ewald, Jahrb. iii. 234 f. ; Graf. According to Wellhausen, this passage is
meant to exalt the law and the kingdom exactly in the sense of the later time,
as the two highest blessings which Israel had. " Instruction Moses left to us
. . . and a king arose over Jeshurun when the heads of the people were gathered
together" (p. 266).

THE THEOCRATIC KING. 165
like Abimelech, or to a chieftain like Jephthah, these are, of
course, instances which lie altogether outside the domain
with which we are here dealing.
Certainly in the narrative of A there shines out, even in
the patriarchal period, the hope of a brilliant monarchy in
Israel ;x and Deuteronomy gives us a definite constitution for a
kingdom, as if Moses had so ordained from the very outset.2 It
might therefore appear as if the monarchy, so far at least as
expectation and purpose were concerned, had started into life
simultaneously with the other religious institutions of Israel.
But a comparison with history shows that we have here only
a transference to primitive times of the views held by a later
age. For how else, according to the view of history given in
the Old Testament, could Gideon have declined with pious
reverence the title of king, saying, " Jehovah shall be king
over you " ? 3 How could Samuel have dared to resist the
desire for a monarchy, and how could even the oracle of
Jehovah have seen in such a desire " the rejection of
God " ? 4 How could the people, when expressing the
wish to have a king like other nations, have failed to
refer to the hopes of the patriarchs, and to the kingdom
already provided for in the law of Moses ? 5 Finally, how
could Samuel have drawn up a constitution for the kingdom
without ever referring to that earlier one in Deuteronomy
which was, in fact, incomparably more in accordance with
the spirit of Israel's religion than his own ? 6 And even
if we were to regard such statements, which are partly,
1 Gen. xvii. 6, 16, xxxv. 11 ; cf. Num. xxiv. 17.
2 Deut. xvii. 14-20. 3 Judg. viii. 22, 23.
4 1 Sam. viii. 6 ff. ; still more bitterly, xii. 12 f. Such opposition to the
monarchy is certainly met with to a far less extent in the older narrative,
1 Sam. ix. 15 ff.
5 1 Sam. viii. 4 ff.
6 1 Sam. viii. 10-18 makes the king a perfectly arbitrary despot, and this is
in x. 25 raised to the dignity of a written law. Still, as a matter of fact, in
earlier times the crown appears to have been conferred by election on definite
aofiditions and pledges, Cf. e.g. 1 Kings xii. ; 2 Sam. v. 2 ff.

166 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
at any rate, of late origin, as being all due to the gloomy
views of later days, still the monarchy when it came upon
the scene was plainly something so new, so epoch-making
in the history of the people, that it is impossible to think of
it as expected in the time of the patriarchs.
It was the wish of the people, who were eager for external
security, and probably also for the splendour of a fully equipped
court, that induced Samuel to introduce the monarchy. The
first king can have had no really permanent infiuence on
the religion of Israel. The accounts we have of him are,
it is true, from very different sources, and express divergent
judgments. But in their opinion of his religious insignifi
cance they are at one. It was under happy auspices, and
with the full sanction of religion, that Saul was raised to his
new dignity. Sacrifice having been solemnly offered, he was
consecrated and blessed by the prophet anointing and kissing
him.1 He is represented as a thoroughly able soldier, and
full of national zeal for the religion of Israel, but without the
capacity to enter into the spirit by which that religion was to
be furthered. His great services in promoting the safety and
independence of the people cannot be questioned. Though
he was suspicious, moody, and violent, faults like these, judged
by the standard of Oriental rulers, should not cast too dark a
shadow over his memory. But he certainly was not fitted to
give this people the true idea of what their king should be.
His successor David was a man of a very different stamp.
His is a figure the influence of which on the religion of
Israel it would be difficult to overestimate. Even before he
was actually king, the voice of the prophets had begun to
direct the hopes of Israel towards the young hero. Pro
phets and priests were already flocking to his standard in the
days of his adventurous youth.2 After his accession, the
kingly office was looked at in a religious light ; and wherever
grievous misuse of the kingly power did not tarnish its
1 1 Sam. ix. 22 ff, x. 1. 2 2 Sam. iii. 9, 18, v. 2.

THE THEOCRATIC KING. 167
repute, it was invariably represented as a great blessing
given by God to His people. This is shown by the fact
that the book of Judges considers the pre-monarchical age a
time of lawless disorder.1 The same thing is shown by the
high opinion which the oldest parts of the book of Pro
verbs entertain of the king's power, infallibility, wisdom, and
goodness.2 And how beautifully the later narrators depict
David's reverence for " the Lord's anointed " ! 8 How glori
ously the earlier songs express the confidence which Israel
places in her kings ! 4
In view of the picture expressly given us in the Old
Testament, we must beware of regarding David as absolutely
perfect, or as one who lived habitually in the world of
religious thought and feeling. The traits of an ancient
Eastern hero, and, indeed, in his later days, of an irre
sponsible despot, are to be seen even in him in all their
naturalness.6 But his great achievement was, to found
among a people whose king was God, an earthly kingdom
which did not clash with the divine, but was its proper
expression, its willing instrument, and which brought into
effective operation the blessing of divine protection which
as the people of God they ought to enjoy, thereby giving
them a permanent impression of the power of their divine
King. Hence it was only as the kingdom of David that the
kingdom in Israel assumed a religious form. David's house
is the one chosen by God, on which to base the thought
of the true kingdom which He desires. A feeling of this
unique significance of his life and position runs through
David's own songs,6 and it is this, and not any religious
1 Judg. xvii. 6, xviii. 1, xix. 1, xxi. 25.
2 Prov. xiv. 28, xvi. 10, 12, 14, xix. 12, xx. 2, 8, xxii. 11.
3 1 Sam. xxiv. 11, xxvi. 11 ; 2 Sam. i. 14, 16.
4 1 Sam. ii. 10 ; Ps. ii., xx., xxi., xiv., lxxii.
61 Sam. xxi. 3ff., 14f„ xxv. 21 ff, 39, xxvii 8ff. ; 2 Sam. xi., xii. 31;
1 Kings ii. 5 ff.
6 Ps. xviii. 44, 51 ; 2 Sam. vii. 26, xxiii. 5. For his sake God protects
Jerusalem, 2 Kings xix. 34, xx. 6.

168 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
knowledge he himself gained and taught, which is for the
Old Testament religion the important side of David's
work. The brilliant reign of his son has indeed added
many new beauties to the picture of the true kingdom ;
but the figure of David, with its unique importance for the
religious views of the people, it could not cast into the
shade. The special significance of this kingdom in Israel is as
follows. Upon that throne, which is properly God's own,
" the throne of Jehovah," * there sits a mortal who is therefore
God's deputy, "the visible representative of the invisible
divine King " (Riehm). Hence, according to another metaphor,
he sits on " the right hand of God," 2 that is, in the place
of honour.8 And on that account blessings of every kind are
spoken of as being poured out upon his head, — long life, fulness
of joy, victory, renown, an enduring race, — blessings which
may therefore be wished for and foretold to every individual
king as a member of this royal house.4 Consequently, he
stands in a still more special manner in the favoured position
into which Israel was taken in preference to all other nations.
He is the son of God, begotten thereunto of God's grace, on
the day when God raised him to the place of honour as king
in Israel.5 He is the Anointed One, the Messiah in a special
sense.6 For even if the anointing of the high priest were not,
as is to be assumed, merely an ideal of the later age, at any
rate the king alone is always represented as " the Messiah of
God." And actual custom had no hesitation in ascribing
even priestly rights to the head of the nation. Thus, at the
solemn consecration of the sanctuary, David himself is
represented as officiating in priestly apparel.7 And the
oracle of Jehovah thus addresses the king : " The Lord
1 The expression is found only in 1 Chron. xxix. 23 ; cf. xxviii. 5.
2 Ps. ex. 1-3. 3 Cf. 1 Kings ii. 19.
4 Ps. ii. 8ff., xxi. 5, xiv. 8, 9, 17, lxxii. 9, 17.
6 Ps. ii. 6, 7 ; 2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Ps. lxxxix. 27.
6 Ps. xviii. 44, 51, ii. 2. f2 Sam. vi. 14 ff.

THE THEOCRATIC KING. 169
hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever
after the order of Melchizedek."1 It is only the later
priestly religion which rigorously restricted all sacred acts
to a priest.
In Israel the king does not dispossess God of His kingship.
On the contrary, his power depends on the power of the true
King. And because he derives his authority solely from God,
God can also take it from him. The prophet, as the direct
messenger of God, has the right to deprive even a king of his
kingdom.2 But inasmuch as the true kingdom was once for
all permanently realised in David, to his family belongs the
promise that it shall never be quite driven from its place
as the reigning house. In spite of all shortcomings, in
spite of all possible punishments, the idea of the theo
cratic kingdom must remain for ever identified with this
family.3 For the people, the theocratic king is the reflection of the
divine majesty. This is indeed the predominant idea in the
kingdoms of the ancient East. Even in Egypt, Assyria, and
Chaldea, the king is the visible embodiment of divine majesty.
But here, where the conception of God is meant to include
not merely power, but above all a moral attribute, it
naturally has quite a different significance when the earthly
king is His image. Hence the king may be addressed as
" Elohim." This word is used in general as the official
designation of the highest dignitaries to whom is entrusted
the responsibility of final decision. But this word is once
used directly of the king as an individual. I, at least, am
always becoming less able to escape the conclusion that in

1 Ps. ex. 4. I cannot think it probable that in this torso of a Psalm kingly
dignity is ascribed to a priest, not priestly dignity to a king. Consequently, I
do not consider an Asmonaean to be the hero of the Psalm, but one of the
ancient kings.
21 Sam. xv. 26, xvi. Iff. ; 1 Kings xi. 29 ff., xiv. 10 f., xvi. Iff., xxi. 21,
etc. 3 2 Sam. vii. 14-16.

170 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Ps. xiv. 7 the king is saluted as " Elohim." All other
explanations of this address, e.g. " Thy divine throne," " Thy
throne is God," " Thy throne is God's (throne)," are clumsy ;
and to alter the text, e.g. by leaving out the word tf'rii'N
altogether, or by understanding some such verb as "estab
lishes," is arbitrary. The author who wrote miT for God
(not Dw£, as the editor has now mangled his poem by
writing), by using the word ^>!P^. in contrast with the
divine name miT1, meant to salute the king in an oratorical
fashion as the bearer of the highest divine dignity on
earth.1 The people wish him the blessing of an ever
lasting kingdom.2 His enemies are God's enemies.3 His
kingdom is to be founded on righteousness, and under his
sway the land is to bloom and prosper.4 All the hopes and
desires of the people gather round the figure of the king,
which is in all essentials that of David, embellished by
certain features of the upright, wise, and powerful Solomon.
But, above all, in the idea of this theocratic kingdom there
lies the assurance of overcoming the world. The God of
Israel is not merely the God of this people, but also the
Creator and King of the world. Hence His anointed is sure
that he will triumphantly extend his sway wherever a right
eous war summons him, until he shall have completely
conquered Canaan, and until the other nations of the world,
from the great river even to the river of Egypt, do homage
to him and serve him.5
Addendum. — From the death of Solomon to the downfall
of Samaria there was a double kingdom in Israel. For a
long time this fact was not felt to be a contradiction of the
idea of a theocratic king. The kingdom of Ephraim was
1 The objection, that one would in that case expect D^iy?, appears to me,
in view of Ps. x. 16, xlviii. 15, to be at least not of sufficient weight to counter.
balance the other difficulties.
2 Ps. lxxii. 8ff. (Ixi. 7ff.) » Ps. ii. 1 ff., xxi. 10.
4 Ps. lxxii. 16 ff. 6 Ps. ii. 8, 9 xiv. 5, 6, lxxii. 10.

THE THEOCRATIC KING. 171
founded by the help of prophets ; and even when the
several dynasties were overthrown, great prophets like
Elijah and Elisha never thought of bringing the people
of Israel back to the house of David.1 And in external
pomp and military capacity there was scarcely a single king
of Judah after Solomon to compare with Jeroboam the
Second, or even with Ahab. But this changed as the
northern kingdom drew nearer and nearer its end. In
comparison with the religion at Jerusalem, which was always
growing purer and more spiritual, the sensuous worship of
the northern kingdom was looked upon by the men of God
as more and more akin to heathenism, and the eyes of every
pious Israelite were again turned to the house of David.
How hallowed it was through the memory of the former
unity and greatness of the people, through the prophecies
and the divine thoughts bound up with it, through its con
nection with Jerusalem and the true worship of the spiritual
God ! Hence it was in the eyes of the pious the only
legitimate dynasty. The reigning families of Ephraim are
represented more or less as usurpers.2 That these should
rule over the land, that the people should be divided, is
God's way of punishing the sin of David's house. But this
punishment will come to an end, and only with the return
of David's house can God restore prosperity to the people.
Accordingly, though a citizen of the northern kingdom who
had himself seen the glorious days of Jeroboam, Hosea looks
to the house of David to save the whole people.3 In fact,
Hosea did not merely look forward to this, but hoped that
the disorder caused in Israel by dynastic changes would
actually give him an opportunity of helping to bring it about
himself.4 In the same way, when the glory of the northern
kingdom was at its highest, Amos looked forward to the time
1 1 Kings xi. 29 f., xiv. 10 f., xvi. If., xxi. 21 ff.
2 Hos. viii. 4, xiii. 11 ff. 3 Hos. i. 7, ii. 2, iii. 5.
4Cf. Hitzig on Hos. v. 10 ff.

172 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
when the fallen tabernacle of David should be again set
up.1 This Davidic kingdom, as it then was, certainly did not
give much occasion for joyous hope and great expectations.
Conquered by Egypt, by the neighbouring robber-clans, by
Assyria, by Babylonia, for a time tributary to the northern
kingdom, and long a vassal to Assyria, it was possessed of no
glory that could have given ground for hope to a people in
heriting such memories. It was, in truth, a fallen tabernacle.
It was guilty of childish levity and unmanly cowardice,
of idolatry, and wanton cruelty to the saints. In the whole
list of kings there were only a few who " did that which
was right in the sight of the Lord, like their father David." 2
Most of the kings of Judah were despots like the princes of
the surrounding heathen, warlike and cruel, or ostentatious
and effeminate. Seldom did they pay even outward respect
to the religion of Jehovah, not to speak of sincere obedience
to His will. It is easy to see the impression which this
declension produced. The Deuteronomic law regarding the
king is an earnest attempt to stem the tide of royal de
generacy.3 Samuel's words, as moulded by a later age, reveal
a deep sense of the hurtful character of the monarchy, as
compared with the former kingship of God.4 In the later
parts of Proverbs there is not a trace of the old joy that was
felt in the monarchy. The one thing emphasised is its power.
Nevertheless, all this could not efface the impression which
the reign of David had produced. Even in Jeremiah the
Davidic king is still spoken of as a signet-ring on the hand
of God.5 The book of Lamentations still emphasises in a
touching way the significance of God's anointed.6 And
1 Amos ix. 11 (Zech. xi. 8, xiii. 7).
2 For these references, cf. 1 Kings xiv. 25 ; 2 Kings xiv. 12 ff, xvi. 3ff., 7,
xviii. 14ff., xxi. Iff., 20ff, xxiii. 29 ff., xxiv. ff. ; 2 Chron. xxi. 16ff., xxxiii
11 ff. ; Amosi. 6f., 9f. ; Isa. iii. 12, vii. 2ff. etc.
3 Deut. xvii. 14-20. 4 1 Sam. xii. 12 ff.
6 Jer. xxii. 24. * Lam. iv. 20 ; cf. ii. 9.

THE THEOCRATIC KING. 173
where songs of later days take the monarchy as their subject,1
they celebrate its loving and gracious relations with God as
well as its splendid victories, and they see in it the embodi
ment of Israel's happiness and glory.
It was not the present that awakened thoughts like these.
It was the glorious past, with its promises of a better future.
David remained the ideal of this decaying age, David who had
tended Israel with clean hands and according to the integrity
of his heart.2 In the darkest days faith clung to the oath,8
sworn by God ages before to David and to his house, that
the kingdom would not depart from him, that David's son
would be God's son, and God his father. Thus it was a faith
in things not seen, a faith in the everlasting significance of
this house. It is a phenomenon without parallel in history,
that even under such circumstances the confident hope of
seeing the Saviour of the future born of this dishonoured
family is never lost.
Still, even in the centuries after Solomon the family of
David was not without exceptional members of a better type,
who were, so to speak, a pledge that in this ancient family
the better faculties were only dormant, not extinct. Such
exceptions gave faith the wished-for strength ; thus a Hezekiah
standing out in striking contrast to his father Ahaz, and
showing, despite all his weaknesses, a close resemblance to
his great ancestor, must have confirmed in Isaiah and Micah
the joyful hope of a Messiah. Josiah, too, with the double
crown of a reformer and a martyr, might well recall4 the
promises made to the house of David. And Zerubbabel,
the descendant of David, who led to Zion the first little
band of returning exiles to rebuild the ruined city, was, in
1 Ps. lxxii. ; cf. xxviii. 8, cxxxii. 10, 17, cxliv. 10.
2 Ps. lxxviii. 69 ff. ; cf. the way in which the book of Ruth glorifies tha
family legend of David's house.
3 Ps. lxxxix. 20-39 (27, 28) ; cf. Ps. cxxii. 5.
4 " The holy princes," whom God gave over to desecration, are Jehoiachin and
Zedekiah, B. J. xliii. 28.

174 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
spite of all his lack of outward pomp, a figure round which
Haggai's hopes of a Messiah might well entwine themselves,
and one which Zechariah could regard as at least the type
and pledge of the coming " branch " of David.1

CHAPTER XII.
RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE AND MODES OF PUBLIC WORSHIP TILL
THE EIGHTH CENTURY, AND MORE PARTICULARLY TILL THE
BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE.
1. Till the building of the temple, and, indeed, during
the immediately succeeding centuries, we must assume that
religious knowledge and the mode of public worship remained
practically unchanged. Unquestionably the unification of the
people under the monarchy, and the worship at Jerusalem,
exercised a really great influence over religious life. But of
the effects of these changes the people themselves were
scarcely conscious, till they were explained by the creative
spirits of the prophetic period. At any rate, the documents
at our command are not sufficient to enable us to form a
judgment as to this development. Before the monarchy was
at its best, there were no organs for a visible furthering of
religion. The prophets had to do with the definite tasks of
practical life, not with religious reforms. The priests were
occupied with giving oracles and with the national worship,
and had to preserve intact at the national sanctuary the
peculiar characteristics of the Hebrew religion, and to make
the sacrificial ritual more definite. And the leaders of the
people had enough to do in maintaining the political inde
pendence of the tribes of Israel, settled as they were among
foreign peoples possessed of a higher civilisation than theirs,
and in guarding against a religious and moral fusion with the
1 Hag. ii. 23 ; Zech. iv. 6 ff.

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. 175
Canaanites, though in many particular instances they were
neither willing nor able to prevent the adoption of foreign
views and customs.
If we wish to throw ourselves back into the religious life
of those days, we must first lay aside all the ideas current in
our own. Israel never thought, any more than did the other
ancient nations, of a national religious education being a con
dition of national piety. That was successfully effected only
by the religious community that returned from the Exile;
and by so doing, it assuredly took a step fraught with con
sequences of immeasurable importance to the whole religious
life of mankind. All that the people knew of God in the
olden days, was derived from the sacred legends that told
what He had done for His people and what He had revealed
to Israel, as these lived on orally in the popular memory, and
as we have them still in B, C, although, of course, in a diluted
and purified form. The prophets did not seek to teach
what God Himself was, but they wished in particular cases
to declare His will. The priests sought to serve God in
the appointed way, to secure for the people His favour, and
to avert His wrath.
Only when this is realised with the utmost definiteness, is
one able to answer aright the first and most important
question about our subject, viz. Were the Israelites during
these centuries monotheists ? In the sense in which Judaism
after Ezra's time, Mohammedanism, and Christianity pre
suppose monotheism on the part of their adherents, i.e. as a
distinct theological conviction, the people of Israel prior to
the eighth century were certainly not monotheists. But in
that sense monotheism was not predicable of the people at
all till the Exile. For when a people is really convinced
of the theory that, with the exception of the one spiritual
God whom it worships, divine beings in general are merely
the non - existent offspring of superstition and sin, there
is no danger at all of its turning away to false gods.

176 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Hence the fact of the ever-recurring worship of strange gods
in Israel proves that in the above sense the people was not
monotheistic. Of his own free will, man worships only what
he considers an actual being, one possessed of divine power.
This conclusion is as unassailable as the other, that as long as
the Israelites had no scruples in worshipping their own God
on the high places and at the shrines of Canaan, they cannot
have been aware of any law of that God commanding them
to worship only at one particular place and in one particular
way. For if a people is ready to serve its God by surrender
ing to Him whatever it has, even what it reckons dearest, it
seeks to please Him, not to enrage Him by intentionally
transgressing His ordinances. On the contrary, it will seek
with scrupulous eagerness to ascertain where and how its
offering will be most acceptable to God, and will not from
some mysterious impulse of self-will do anything by which
all the trouble and pains it has taken must be rendered
fruitless and even hurtful. That Israel honoured the gods of
the beautiful land of Canaan as the dispensers of its gifts,
that it afterwards thought the gods of Assyria and of Babylon
mightier than its own God, and honoured them more, is psycho
logically quite intelligible ; but it is so, just because the people
was not yet, in our sense of the term, monotheistic. And that
it paid also to its own God the worship usual in the country,
is readily understood. But to ascribe to Israel the folly of
worshipping gods of whose non-existence it was convinced, or
of paying to its own God, out of sheer love of contradiction,
a worship which it knew He had forbidden, one would require
to have the passionate zeal of Jewish scribes or the ignorance
of criticism characteristic of many Christian theologians.
Accordingly, there can be no question of monotheism,
unless, in the first place, we inquire only as to the convictions
of the spiritual leaders of Israel, without expecting from the
people any clear theological view on the matter ; and, in the
Second place, unless we forget that religious monotheism is

PARTICULARISM. 177
something altogether different from a metaphysical conviction
of the unity of God. The true representatives of Israel
certainly acknowledged even in these ages only one God of
Israel, only one God whom the people, as united to Him by
religious bonds, ought to worship. However many mythical
elements and legendary ingredients may "be traceable even
in the earliest recollections of the people, the pious among
them, so long as they had a distinct religious conscious
ness, clung closely to the one national God, between whom
and the gods of Canaan a sharp distinction was drawn.
If " Elohim " are mentioned along with Him, they have
long ceased to be gods to whom worship is due, as it is to
Him ; they are merely powerful beings who attend on Him
and serve Him. The first commandment in the law of the
covenant forbids Israel to have any other gods beside the God
that brought them up out of Egypt, or to worship them.1
The oldest songs, such as the Song of Deborah or the " Pass
over " song,2 glow with a sublime enthusiasm for the one God
of the people. The piety of men like Gideon, Samuel, Saul,
and David is perfectly alike in this respect, that it is per
vaded by patriotic feeling, and by enthusiasm for the one God
of Israel.3 The view of patriarchal times given in B and C
represents Jehovah as being from the very beginning the sole
God of the patriarchs.4 In the oldest Psalms we undoubtedly
meet with the most unswerving faith in this God, without
a thought of there being any other gods.5 Apostasy from
this covenant-God is, it is true, of frequent occurrence during
this whole period. But this we cannot regard as strange.
Hamitic nature-worship, with its charmingly sensuous back
ground, had necessarily a greater attraction for peoples at a
low stage of development than the strict, stern simplicity of
1 Ex. xx. 2 ff. 2 Judg. v. 3-5, 11, 23, 31 ; Ex. xv. 2 f.
3 E.g. Judg. vii. 18 ; 1 Sam. xi. 6, 13, x. 18, xiv. 41.
4 Gen. iv. 26, vii. 1, xv. Iff., xviii. Iff. etc.
5 Esp. Ps. xviii., xix. a, xxix. (iii., iv., vii., xi.).
VOL I. M

178 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the religion of Jehovah. And the people found this worship
prevalent all over the land, associated with all the local
memories and with a relatively high civilisation.
But the worship of a national God is not monotheism, but,
at the most, only "monolatry." It does not exclude other
nations from the right to have their special gods as Israel has
his, less powerful perhaps, but still real gods all the same.1
Indeed, it is implied in the view which the nations of
antiquity had of religion, that, while not denying the actual
existence of strange gods, they confined their own worship to
certain national deities. For example, the language of the
Mesha-stone is such that if the name Chemosh were changed
into Jehovah, one would in many passages fancy oneself in
the midst of Old Testament phraseology. Not only is it
undeniable that such a view had impressed itself deeply upon
the thought of the Hebrew people, but it is by no means
wanting even among their spiritual leaders. It is very naively
expressed when Jephthah asks, " Dost thou (Moab) not possess
what Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess ? " 2 or when
David complains, saying, " They drive me out of the inherit
ance of Jehovah, and make me serve strange gods." 8 All this
is quite in harmony with the idea of the ancient world, as we
may see from such instances as those of Naaman, who takes
with him some of the soil of Canaan that he may be able to
pray to Jehovah on holy soil 4 even within a heathen temple ;
of the Queen of Sheba, who praises Solomon's God although
He is not her god ; 5 or of the heathen who exclaim, " Their
gods are mountain gods. In the plain we shall conquer."6
Even where this view is not quite so prominent, it still
1 This has lately been insisted on with the utmost emphasis by Kuenen,
" Yahveh and the other gods" (The Theological Review, Manchester, No. 54,
July 1876) ; cf. also Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte,
Heft 1, Leipzig 1876, pp. 47-177, and Stade, p. 428 (God of the Hebrews
Ex. iii. 18, v. 3, vii. 16, x. 3).
2 Judg. xi. 24 (cf. Num. xxi. 29 ; 2 Sam. vi. 21, xiv. 16).
3 1 Sam. xxvi. 19, 20 ; cf. Judg. x. 4-17. 4 2 Kings v. 15 ff.
5 1 Kings x. 9. 6 1 Kings xx. 23, 28.

PARTICULARISM. 179
determines the expression. It is not merely the heathen (?)
Jethro who says, "Now I know that Jehovah is greater than
all gods." x Even where the unity of Jehovah is being
emphasised, the expression, "Who is like unto Thee among
the gods ? " 2 is quite readily used. It is as messenger of
" the God of the Hebrews " 3 that Moses comes first on
the scene. In fact, the whole covenant theory is really
based on the thought that the people chooses as its God
the God who has shown Himself the God of their sal
vation.4 Jehovah is just the God of Israel.5 And in quite
the same way, at a much later date, in 1 Kings xviii. 21 f.,
the choice between Baal and Jehovah is regarded as an act
of moral freedom,6 however biting may be the scorn with
which this author speaks of the " dumb idols." Hence, when
they want to consult the oracle of Baal-zebub, the man of God
merely puts the reproachful question, " Is there then no God
in Israel ? " The God of Israel formally proclaims war against
the other peoples and against their gods, that it may be seen that
" there is a God in Israel." 7 Only in this way is it possible
to explain how Solomon, while maintaining the worship of
1 Ex. xviii. 11 (Gen. xliii. 23), C.
2 1 Sam. ii. 2 ; 2 Sam. vii. 22 ; Ex. xv. 11 ; cf. Num. xiv. 9 (the Lord is
with us, their defence is departed from them).
3 Ex. iii. 6-16, vii. 16 (C).
4 Ex. xx. 2, xxiv. 3 (cf. the Deuteronomic repetition, Josh. xxiv. 16 ff.);
Lev. xxii. 33.
6 Gen. ix. 26, xvii. 7 f., xxiv. 12, xxxi. 29, 42, 53, xxxii. 9, xxxiii. 20, etc.
Particularly instructive is Gen. xxviii. 20 f., if one may here translate, " If God
will be with me, and keep me in this way that I go, and give me bread to eat
and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then
shall Jehovah be my God, and this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall
be God's house." The order of words is in favour of this translation, and also
the fact that in the other rendering there would be a repetition of the condition
" if God will be with me " in the sentence " and if Jehovah will be my God "
(Baudissin). Judg. xi. 30 f., where the perf. consec. introduces the substance of
the vow, appears to me greatly in favour of this rendering. Accordingly, I no
longer think it right to translate "if this happens, and Jehovah be my God,
i.e. show Himself my protector as He blessed my fathers, then shall this stone
become the house of God." Yet cf. xvii. 8.
6 1 Kings xviii. 21-39 ; Josh. xxiv. 15 ff.
7 2 Kings i. 2 ff., 16 ; cf. 1 Sam. vi., xvii. 46 ; Ex. xvii. 16.

180 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Jehovah, could erect altars to other gods,1 — conduct which
Ewald is wrong in comparing with modern toleration, as it is
rather " ancient " toleration, due to the polytheistic stand
point. The habit, never entirely given up till the Exile, of
worshipping other gods, without at the same time ceasing to
give the national God the highest place of honour, is only
conceivable on the theory that the unity of the God of
Israel did not in any way exclude the existence of other
national gods, and their power to hurt or help. The whole
stress is laid, not on there being no gods except Jehovah,
but on Israel having no right to have any other god.
Doubt as to this fact is not possible. We must, however,
be careful as to how we use this argument, for during the
whole period down to the Exile, however certain it be that at
that time there was a clear recognition of monotheism, similar
expressions were never wanting. But though one does not
forget that Christian monotheism itself has not prevented the
worship of saints and the adoration of the Virgin, the fact
still remains certain, that during these times, and even much
later, the idea that there were absolutely no beings at all of a
divine nature except the God of Israel, so far from being
carried out to its logical conclusion, was not even seriously
entertained. It was never doubted that there were "gods
many and lords many." 2
This view does not come into conflict with the religious
conception of the unity of God so long as all these powers are
regarded as merely relative, as incapable of resisting the one
Supreme Being. Where they are so regarded, there is in this
particularism, however imperfect it is in itself, something really
helpful to a religious relation with the Deity. Where it is a
matter of religion, not of philosophy, the first and necessary
thing always is the conviction of having God as one's own,
and of being also God's, not the consideration of how this God
stands related to the abstract possibility of there being other
1 1 Kings xi. 7 ff. 2 1 Cor. viii. 5.

PRACTICAL MONOTHEISM. 181
gods. As soon as one God only, and that a personal and spirit
ual God, is the object of worship, and has a hold on the piety of
the people, it is a matter of comparatively little importance
whether reason has already discovered the only proper expression
for this relationship — in other words, whether it has already
denied the possibility of there being any other gods. For no
other god can any longer be regarded as equal to this God of
theirs, that is, be regarded as really and truly a god.1 The
missionary who, after the fashion of the ancient Church, sees
in the heathen gods actually existing hostile powers, does not
therefore consider himself less a monotheist than the man who
sees in them the products of the human spirit.
The idea of Israel's leaders was something similar. Out
side the people over whom the God of salvation rules, is the
heathen world in which there are other gods. That these are
mere creations of the religious imagination is never thought of
at first, because of the vigorous realism of these olden timea
They are rather thought of, in comparison with Jehovah Him
self, as hostile powers antagonistic to the God of Israel. Foi
where a god is not worshipped, he is not the god of that people,
and he has, religiously considered, no existence. Hence it is
quite a natural conception that the gods of the heathen world
should have their place alongside of the God of Israel. Only
they are hostile and invariably subordinate powers which must
disappear before God. Who is like unto Him ? He is the
one God of salvation, the wonderful, the mighty, the incom
parable, whose glory is to fill the whole earth.2 That was all
with which this ancient people in its struggle for existence had
to do. It had not to concern itself primarily about a know
ledge of the things of the heavenly world, but only about its
connection with that personal God who overcomes the world
and its opposition, who can and will help. Hence what Israel
needed was the conviction that only in this God were victory
1 So far Lessing is not wrong, "Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts," § 13.
2 Ex. ix. 16, xiv. 21 ff., xv. 11 ; Num. xiv. 21.

182 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
and help to be found, and that upon them alone had He
conferred His salvation. The first article in Israel's creed
was not that there could be no divine beings at all except
the God of Israel, but that strange gods signified nothing
to Israel, and could not harm.1 The idea of the unity of
God was reached by an act of faith, not by an inference of
reason; it came practically into being through faith and
love. Here, therefore, and not on the soil of a philosophy
seeking after monotheism, there sprang up a strong living
conviction as to the unity of God. True religious monotheism
consists in this, in trusting the true spiritual God and Him
alone. Religion never grows out of theories, but out of acts
and convictions of the heart. Hence from being the holy
King of His people, who permits His worshippers to have
no other god but Himself, the God of Israel, by whose side,
even in the earliest days of the nation, no female deity ever
appeared, became by necessary evolution the " One " God of
the Jews.
From the character of the documents relating to this whole
period, particularly the pre-Solomonie, it is not possible to
show with certainty how far this religious monotheism as
held by the best of the people already included a theoretical
acknowledgment that the Elohim were, in comparison with
Jehovah, absolutely powerless and subordinate, without in
fluence on the government of the world, and incapable of
contending with Him; in other words, not "gods" at all,
but merely superhuman beings of no importance so far as
human interests went. But I have myself no doubt that the
certainty of Jehovah's power, and the conviction that He ruled
even outside the boundaries of Israel, were already sufficiently
strong to furnish a basis for such a knowledge, though not
of a systematic kind. In the old songs there stands along
side of the expression, " Who is like unto Jehovah ? " this
other distinct declaration, " There is no God but Jehovah, no
1 Ex. xx. 2ff., xxii. 20, xxiii. 13, 24 ff. ; cf. Gen. xxxv. 2ff. ; 1 Sam. vii. 2ff.

THEORETICAL MONOTHEISM. 183
rock but our God."1 According to the book of the covenant,
Jehovah chose Israel just because the whole world was His ; 2
that is to say, not because He was in any way attached, as a
special God, to this land and people. Psalms like the eighth,
nineteenth, and twenty-ninth praise Him who created the
heavens and the earth, in whose holy temple the sons of the
gods stand and serve. According to B, C, the same Jehovah
who is Israel's covenant God is likewise the creator of the world,
the God of the fathers, whom, as a matter of course, non-
Israelites also acknowledge as God, the God of the spirits of
all flesh.3 He proves Himself in His wonders and in His glory
the judge and the destroyer, the supreme ruler of Egypt, Sodom,
and Canaan. In point of fact, therefore, the other Elohim
withdraw as being no-gods, unable to determine the course
of the world. He alone is a God who can inspire faith, love,
trust. And He will manifest His glory also to the heathen
world, and will not rest till it fill the whole earth.4 He will
bestow upon His people such happiness as will compel all the
peoples of earth to acknowledge Him as the God of salvation.5
It is indeed true that even polytheistic peoples not un
frequently regard one God as the creator of the world,
and ascribe to Him the direction and development of its
history, without, on that account, doubting the existence of
other gods. But they do so while themselves surrounding
that God with a crowd of other gods, whom they worship
without derogating from the supremacy of their chief
God. But a people which itself worships only one God,
and regards this God as the creator of the world and the
guide of its whole history, is for that very reason monotheistic,
1 Ps. xviii. 32 ; 1 Sam. ii. 2. In 2 Sam. vii. 22 both expressions occur
together. Judg. vi. 28 ff. already contains a bitter taunt as to the nothingness
of the idols ; but both passages betray a later hand.
2 Ex. xix. 5 ff.
3 Gen. ii. 4ff, iv. 3, 26, xii. 17, xxiv. 31, 50, xxvi. 29 ; Num. xvi. 22,
xxvii. 16.
4 Ex. xv. 2 (Num. xiv. 21).
6 Gen. xii., xv., xviii., xxii., xxvi., xxviii.

184 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
For gods whom nature and history do not obey, and who are
at the same time excluded from worship, cannot be called
gods at all. And a God whose rule is not restricted to the
land and the nation where he is worshipped, is no longer a
mere national God.
Accordingly, the particularism of Israel's idea of God had
already, in these olden times, become merely the protecting
shell within which the pure monotheism of the Old Testa
ment religion could grow and mature. But the unity of God
was not by any means conceived of as absolute singleness.
What the school of Hegel affirms of the Old Testament
conception of God, and what is certainly a tenet of later
Judaism and Mohammedanism, — the abstract sublime single
ness of God, — of that there is in the religion of Israel at this
period absolutely no trace. God is represented as sur
rounded by a crowd of superhuman beings who are akin to
Him in "nature," and may, to a certain degree, be compared
to Him ; and with these He holds intercourse. The con
ception of God is not limited, but open to this fulness of
spiritual life. The pious in ancient Israel believed in " sons
of God," in beings springing out of the circle of existence to
which the divine life belongs,1 beings that can only be con
ceived of when the Godhead is considered open to a fulness
of kindred life and action. In B and C, God is, beyond a
doubt, represented as surrounded by beings that are like
Him, so far as the form of life is concerned. " The man
is become," he says, " as one of us." 2 And where He appears
to Abraham, He comes accompanied by attendant beings,
who are, however, so connected with Him that, at any rate,
an abstract separation of God from every other supersensible
existence is impossible.8 Hence the religious imagination of
1 Gen. vi. 1-3 ; Ps. xxix.
'' Gen. iii. 22 (whether in ver. 5 also the 'JTP belongs to DTlPN is doubtful.
3 Gen. xviii. 2-17. Here, at any rate, there is a clear distinction drawn
between God and His attendants, "the two men." But their appearance is,

REVELATIONS OF GOD. 185
Israel pictured the national God as the central figure of a
group of kindred supersensible figures.
3. The pious of this age conceived of this God of Israel
with a vividness, a freedom, and a power of sensuous
imagination which would unquestionably have appeared
objectionable to a later generation. In this they would
hardly have been conscious of any essential difference be
tween themselves and the kindred peoples. On His throne
of authority, which is represented at least in the Song of
Deborah as still connected with Sinai,1 God sits surrounded
by the Elohim. He sits enthroned upon the Cherubim.2
The grandeurs of the thunderstorm at once enwrap and reveal
Him.8 In fact, He is obviously thought of in connection
with every kind of heavenly phenomenon with which myth
deals. For, though it is not impossible that such thoughts as
those now in question may have been derived by the later
writers from the fancies of the civilised peoples of Asia, the
probability is that the seraphs of Isaiah,4 the constellation
of " the fool," 6 and the leviathan,6 the fleeing serpent which
God pierced through, are all the offspring of Israel's own
religious fancy.
Now sacred legend told how God came down from heaven
to watch mankind,7 and how He walked in the garden of
Eden in the cool of the evening.8 Fear lest men may become
too strong determines the decisions of God.9 With His
own hand He shuts the ark.10 He partakes of human food.11
With His own fingers He writes the tables of the law.12
nevertheless, the same (xviii. 5, 9 ; cf. 15, 17, xix. 1) ; cf. Gen. xxviii. 12,
xxxv. 7.
1 Judg. v. 4 (Isa. xix. 1 ; Ps. civ. 3).
2 1 Sam. iv. 4 ; 2 Sam. vi. 2 ; 2 Kings xix. 15 (Ps. lxxx. 2, xcix. 1 ;
1 Chron. xiii. 6).
3 Ps. xviii. 11 ff. * lsa. vi.
4 Job xxxviii. 31 (ix. 9) ; Amos v. 8.
6 Job iii. 8 ; Isa. xxvii. 1 (Job xxvi. 13).
7 Gen. xi. 5, 7, xviii. 21 ; Ex. iii. 8.
8 Gen. iii. 8. 9 Gen. iii. 22, xi. 6. 10 Gen. vii. 16,
11 Gen. xviii. 8 (xix. 3). 12 Ex. xxxii. 16.

186 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Jacob is surprised that the God of his fathers is also to be
found at a distance from his father's house ; in other words,
he takes for granted a close connection between God and the
places at which He revealed Himself and was worshipped.1
In general, His presence is thought of in a vividly sensuous
way, in His intercourse with the patriarchs as in the ark of the
covenant.2 In the rustling of the trees David detects tho
near approach of God, as Elijah does in the sacred stillness.3
Here, it is true, one must not forget the peculiar character of
legend. Still all such features could only spring out of
naively sensuous conceptions of God.
Revelations from this God the people expected by the
mouth either of the priest, whose duty it was to consult the
oracle in the sanctuary,4 or of the prophet, in whom the spirit
of God spoke.5 It was taken for granted that He would
make known His will in visions,6 and by omens voluntarily
chosen or due to accident.7 But no one doubted as to
real personal manifestations of this God. He was seen, in
the terrible grandeur of the tempest,8 nearing the earth on
the wings of the storm.9 The story went that He had
walked and talked in bodily form with the patriarchs in the
holy places,10 and that His messenger had assured them that
He would be present to console and help.11 He was thought
of as the miraculous light that glowed and burned in the holy
bush on Sinai,12 as the pillar of fire and cloud that led
Israel through the desert.13 Heaven and earth were not
1 Gen. xxviii. 16.
2 Gen. xii. 8, xviii. 1, xxvi. 2 ; Ex. iii. 16, xiii. 21, xxiv. 1, 10, xxxiv. 6 ;
1 Sam. iv. 3ff., v. 3-vi. 19, etc.
3 2 Sam. v. 24, vi. 7-11 ; 1 Kings xix. 12 (n»Cn ^lp).
4 Judg. xx. 28 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 34, 37, xxii. 10. (The Urim and Thummim we
Bhall treat of later on.)
6 1 Sam. iii. 20, ix. 7, 19, 20, x. 2ff.
6 1 Sam. iii. 3 ; 1 Kings xiv. 1 ; 2 Kings viii. 1 ; Gen. xl. 8, xli.
7 1 Sam. x. 3 ; Gen. xxiv. 13 ; cf. Judg. vii. 13.
8 Judg. v. 4ff. ; Ps. xviii. 8ff. 9 Ps. xviii. 11.
10 E.g. Gen. xii., xv., xviii., xix. n E.g. Gen. xvi. ; Judg. vi. 13.
12 Ex. iii. 13 Ex. xxxii. 34, xxxiii. 2, 14, 24, xxxiv. 9, 15.

REVELATIONS OF GOD.

187

sternly kept apart. At Jabbok an Elohim, a Malach, had
wrestled with the patriarch, and been forced to grant him
a blessing.1 In the wilderness God had met Moses, intending
to slay him, and had been appeased only by the bloody sign
of circumcision.2 God was represented as a terrible destroyer,
before whose wrath His people trembled, even when not
conscious of any real moral guilt ; 3 as a God who avenged
His offended honour4 by pestilence and other kinds of
destruction ; who exterminated the enemy and the scorner,
and visited the iniquity of the fathers upon the children;5
who, it is true, consented to be reconciled when once the curse
on His enemies, or on the family of the sinner, had been
fulfilled ; but who, before He was appeased, exacted a terrible
vengeance from the whole people for every violation of His
holiness.6 A terrible God this who kills with a look,7 but who loves
His holy people, and wishes to be their shield and help ;8
who chose them for their fathers' sake, and promised them
the land of Canaan ; 9 a God who loves righteousness and
truth, who has prescribed to His people as His holy will the
fundamental principles of justice and morality, and who is
thus the source of all that is good and orderly in Israel.10
Even in those days Israel knew that they could serve this
God only by respecting the great fundamental principles of
moral life. But it is equally certain that in all sorts of
" religious " observances, in sacrifices, feasts, and lustrations,11
1 Gen. xxxii. 25 ff. ; Hos. xii. 5 (still more sensuously coloured).
2 Ex. iv. 24 ff. 8 Ex. xii. 13, xxx. 12 ; cf. Ps. vii. 12, xviii. 9.
4 2 Sam. v., xxiv. (xxi. 1 ff.).
s 1 Sam. xxv. 18 ; cf. Ex. xx. 5 ; 2 Sam. xii. 14.
8 2 Sam. xxi. 8ff. ; cf. xxi., xxiv. ; 1 Sam. xxvi. 19; 1 Kings xii. 15,
xxii. 20.
7 Gen. xxxii. 30 ; Ex. iii. 6, xix. 12, 21, xx. 19, xxiii. 20, xxiv. 11 ; Judg.
vi. 23, xiii. 22.
8 Ex. xx. 6, etc. 9 Ex. xix. 5ff. ; cf. Gen. xii., xv., xviii., xxviii.
10 Ex. xx.-xxiii.
11 The proof is found in passages like Isa. i. 11 ff. ; Micah vi. 6 ff. ; Hos. v. 6,
vi 16 ; Amos v. 25.

188 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
as well as in the keeping up of the ancient forms of purifica
tion, even though these were neither moral nor even purely
Israelitish,1 they saw an equally important, and perhaps even
a more important, means of obtaining the favour of their
God ; and that if they overlooked any of these things, thev
were afraid of His anger.2
4. That there existed during any part of this period a
definite order of service, or a single place of worship as pre
scribed in Deuteronomy, or as is presented to us in A's ideal
sketch of Israel's early age, we cannot for a moment believe.
Every trait in the old stories recorded of the days of the
Judges, proves that nobody can ever have dreamt of the exist
ence, at that time, of laws for worship such as we have in our
present Pentateuch. Even the late narrative in Judg. xvii. 6
sees in the unity of worship, not an effect of the Mosaic law,
but a blessing due to the national unity brought about by
the kings. But even the founding of the royal sanctuary
at Jerusalem could not at first cause any essential change,
since it was certainly never intended to absorb the worship
of the whole people. Only after the time of Hezekiah does
it begin, under the influence of new views and circumstances,
to have any such effect.
In ancient Israel, as among all ancient peoples, ritual
and sacrifice naturally received great attention. Even the
earliest prophets had to declaim against attaching a super
stitious value to such observances. And it is self-evident
that in their sacrifices the Israelites had in view all the
ends which are afterwards referred to in the sacrificial
"Thorah." In those days men sought to honour God, to
thank Him, adore Him, pay vows to Him, and, above
all, to appease His wrath, not indeed by inward action or
moral conduct, as the prophets and the psalmists of later
days teach, but by fasting and prayer, by weeping before
1 Ex. iv. 24 ff. ; 1 Sam. xiv. 33.
2 Micah vi. 6, 7 ; 2 Sam. xxiv.

WORSHIP AND SACRIFICE. 189
Him,1 by acts symbolical of self-humiliation,2 and, above all, by
letting Him " smell a sweet savour." 8 Any one who dreads
that the holy presence of God may destroy him, presents a burnt
offering, and, as soon as God has accepted it, feels himself safe.4
Every one on beginning an important task seeks to gain the
favour of God by an offering of some sort.5 But sacrifice is
most frequently represented as a gift of joyful gratitude for
divine favours, and is therefore connected with a gladsome feast
at the ancient shrines of the country. In fact, in Deuteronomy
the intimate connection between sacrifice and feasting is simply
taken for granted.6 At the harvest feasts the first-fruits
were brought into the house of God ; 7 the " Olah " (burnt
offering) was perhaps a part only of the more important
sacrificial meals. Sheep-shearing was an occasion for sacri
ficial feasting.8 The firstlings of the herd were presented at
the sanctuary.9 Those who lived near a popular shrine
assembled there for the annual feast;10 members of leading
families went also to the original seat of their clan.11 People
were naive enough to think that the splendour and value of
the sacrifices helped to please God. This is proved, not
merely by the expressions that found their way even into the
language of the law, e.g. " sweet-smelling savour," " pleasure," 12
but still more by expressions like " May God let thy sacrifice
be fat,"13 which has quite a Homeric ring. It was thought
that a gift pleasing to men would be also pleasing to God.
Sacrifices are, in fact, nothing more than " the embodied
prayers of men who think like children," and are in very truth
as old as men themselves and their religion, as B and C take
1 Judg. xx. 23, 26 ; 1 Sam. vii. 6, xxxi. 13 ; 2 Sam. i. 11, 12, xii. 16, etc.
2 1 Sam. vii. 6. The pouring out of water is a symbol of self-humiliation
(Ps. xxii. 15 ; Lam. ii. 19); cf. 2 Sam. xii. 16 ff.
8 1 Sam. xxvi. 19. 4 Judg. xiii. 23.
6 1 Sam. xiii. 12. 6 xii. 5, 12, xxvi. 11 (Ex. xxxii. 6 ff.).
7 Ex. xxxiv. 26. 8 1 Sam. xxv. 2 ff. ; 2 Sam. xiii. 23 ff.
9 Ex. xxxiv. 19. 10 1 Sam. i. 3 ff. (ix. 12).
11 1 Sam. xvi. 2, xx. 29 ; 2 Sam. xv. 7, 12 (1 Kings i. 9).
12 niTO-m, ilVI. 13 Ps. xx. 4 ; Odys. i. 61 f.

190 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
for granted ; and these Israel adopted as matters of course,
and practised without reflection, just as the kindred peoples
did. Now, it is an admitted fact that in Israel sacrifices were
always offered under certain fixed regulations, which it was
a grievous sin for a priest1 to violate in a selfish or
arbitrary way. But the people as such do not appear to
have taken a religious interest in the manner of their per
formance. That was left to the priests, or else ancestral
custom was followed, not a book of ritual. It was not the
ritual that made the sacrifice lawful.2 That depended simply
on its being offered to the proper God, in a spirit free from
greed and deceit. The sacrifices which are incidentally
described to us in the course of this period are very various.
Side by side with the magnificent offerings of kings, there are
others of a very simple and primitive character,3 but they
differ one and all from those subsequently prescribed by the
law. Thus, in Judg. vi. 18ff, boiled meat4 is burned
with fire, for the general habit of boiling flesh gave way only
gradually to the habit of roasting it.6 The accompaniments
are quite homely, and are left to the pleasure of the offerer.6
There is no mention of the costly incense of the priestly law,7
or of any distinctive ritual for sin-offerings and trespass-
offerings, which seem to have been presented rather as pay
ment of a fine, or in the form of a burnt- offering.8 Besides,
the polemical speeches of the prophets of the eighth and
the seventh centuries show quite plainly that they knew
nothing of a divine " Thorah " about ritual,9 and that, on the
1 1 Sam. ii. 12 ff. 2 2 Kings v. 17.
3 1 Sam. xiv. 34 ; cf. 1 Kings xix. 21.
1 We must take this as a description of a real burnt-offering, even though
xiii. 1 6 ff. be regarded as a mere act of hospitality.
5 1 Sam. ii. 12 ff. (Ex. xxix. 81, the boiling of the milluim-flesh).
8 1 Sam. xiv. 34. 7 Cf. Wellhausen, i. 67 ff.
8 1 Sam. vi. 3 ; Hos. iv. 8 ; 2 Kings xii. 16.
9 Amos iv. 14, v. 21 ; Hos. iv. 6, viii. 8, 11 ; Isa. i. 20, ii. 3, v. 24, viii
16, 20, xxx. 29 ; Micah vi. 6 ; Jer. vi. 19, vii. 21 ff.

HUMAN SACRIFICE. 191
contrary, " the teaching " of God appears to them to be
diametrically opposed to sacrificial ceremonies.
That God might claim for Himself even a human life as the
greatest gift which man can offer, probably appeared to Israel
in those old times not a whit more doubtful than to the
kindred peoples ; and here one has to think, not merely of
sacrifices to appease the wrath of God, but also of sacrifices
in token of worship and in fulfilment of vows. Without this
assumption, the constant relapse in the time of the later kings
into the habit of human sacrifice would be quite unintelligible.
But even the story of Gen. xxii. could only be told among a
people according to whose reminiscences and point of view
human sacrifice, although something extraordinary, was in
no way inconceivable or revolting. The same inference is to
be drawn from what we are told about the daughter of
Jephthah.1 He vowed a human sacrifice. For what else
but a human being could he have expected to come first out
of his own house to meet him ? And in spite of his bitter
grief as a father, he does according to his vow. The rational
istic watering down of the story by Hengstenberg, Cassel, and
others does not deserve refutation. For whoever turns the
sacrifice of the virgin into mere consecration to temple service,
must simply do violence to expressions like " burnt-offering,"
or " do according to his vow," and the annual four days'
lamentation he reduces to a sentimental absurdity.
In like manner, the life of Jonathan was all but sacrificed
through a similar vow of Saul's,2 — a proof of the terrible
earnestness with which Hebrew antiquity understood "the
fear of Jehovah" and the vow. And to atone for Saul's
breach of faith, seven descendants of his were hanged on a
tree before Jehovah.8 Lastly, even in the time of Elisha,
1 Judg. xi. 35 ff. Whether a myth originally lay hidden in this story does
not, of course, in any way change the bearing of this passage upon the question
before us. Cf. Oort, " Het menschenopfer in Israel" (Theol. Tijdschr. 1878, xii.).
2 1 Sam. xiv. 24, 26, 45.
3 2 Sam. xxi. 6 (1 Sam. xv. 53).

192 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
according to the conviction of the writer, the king of Moab,
by sacrificing his son, gave the war a turn favourable to
himself.1 Hence it is impossible to doubt that, although the
human sacrifice of the ancient Semitic religion had utterly
disappeared from the regular sacrificial customs of Israel, it
was not in extraordinary cases considered either wicked or
inconceivable. It was only to men who had reached a higher
religious standard that this seemed a relapse into the heathen
atrocities of the neighbouring peoples.
We also meet with vows that do not refer to sacrifices 2 —
not to speak again of Naziriteship. With regard to meat
and drink, we must assume primitive customs of cleanliness.
Nothing else will explain the later laws about food. Rules
of cleanliness likewise regulated sexual intercourse, and were
conscientiously observed, even when the moral considerations
that should govern such matters were disregarded.3 On the
other hand, it is probable that in early times marriages which
later Israel held to be incestuous — especially marriage with a
half-sister 4 — -were not yet objectionable to the people.
5. In this period two sacred ceremonies are already
regarded as conditions and tokens of membership in Israel,
and therefore as sacraments, viz. Circumcision and the
Passover meal.5
Circumcision is not exclusively confined to Israel, nor even
to nations of Terachitic descent. The facts cited by Herodotus,
Strabo, Josephus, Philo, Clement, and others place it beyond
1 2 Kings iii. 26. 2 Gen. xxviii. 20 ff. ; 2 Sam. xv. 7.
3 1 Sam. xx. 26, xxi. 5 ; 2 Sam. xi. 4. 4 Gen. xx. 12 ; 2 Sam. xiii. 13.
" Ugolin, Thesaur. ant. sacr. vol. xii. Spencer and Deiling on Circumcision.
Saalschiitz, I. c. i. 245 ff. J. H. Autenrieth, Ueber den Ursprung der Beschneidung
bei wilden und halbwilden Volkern mit Beziehung auf die Beschneidung der
Israeliten, Tub. 1829, ed. Flatt. F. Baur, '"'Ueber die urspriingliche Bedeutung
des Passahfestes und des Besehneidungsritus " (Tub. Zeitschr. f. Theol. 1832,
94 ff.). Bruno Bauer, i. 88. Winer on the word. Schelling, iv. 134. Herod.
ii. 104. Joseph, c. Apionem, 1047, A, C ; 1069, B. Diodorus Siculus, ed.
Becker, i. 75, 241. Clemens Alex., ed. Potter, 354. Origenes, ed. de la Rue,
ii. 237 ff., iv. 494 ff. Epiphanius, c. Haret. 30, 76. Strabo, Geogr. xvi.
Euseb. Prcspar. Evang. 432d.

THE SACRAMENTS OF THE MOSAIC COVENANT. 193
doubt that this rite, which has been found even among South
Sea Islanders and many negro tribes,1 was practised from time
immemorial by the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Kolchians, and
many other African peoples. Certainly in later times among
the Egyptians it was only the priestly caste that made a
regular practice of it. But the frequency with which this rite
is represented on ancient monuments, the Phallus symbol
in the Hieroglyphs, and the condition in which most of the
mummies have been found, prove that this custom was
originally very widespread. And no one will now agree
with Eusebius in thinking that such peoples derived this
custom from the Israelites. Perhaps the Old Testament
itself lets us see that it claims for Israel neither the sole
possession nor even the origination of this custom.2 At
all events, the practice of circumcision in Israel reaches back
beyond Moses into patriarchal times,3 and it would in itself
1 Cf. e.g. on the Dualla of the Cameroons and the natives of Mahin,
the articles by Hugo Zoller (Die deutschen Besilzungen an der westafrikanischen
Kuste, ii., Th. 1, p. 80).
2 According to Herodotus, it was from the Egyptians that the Phoenicians
and the Syrians adopted circumcision. According to Origen, the Egyptians,
Arabians, Ethiopians, and Phoenicians were acquainted with this custom.
According to Epist. Barnab. ix. 6, it was practised by all Syrians, Arabians,
idolatrous priests, and Egyptians. Ezekiel, too, xxxii. 19f., represents it as a
disgrace for the Egyptians, and also, according to ver. 29, for the Edomites,
to be classed with the uncircumcised. The expression in Josh. v. 9, "the
reproach of Egypt is taken away from you," is probably meant to imply that in
Egypt non-circumcision was regarded as a disgrace. Hence, too, the passage
Jer. ix. 25 must, contrary to Graf's interpretation, be explained as speaking of
the Egyptians, Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites as "circumcised in flesh."
Besides, it would otherwise be hardly possible to explain how in the patriarchal
legend circumoision is referred back to Abraham, and therefore extended to
Ishmael and Edom, and that only the Hivites and the Philistines are described as
"uncircumcised." That the Idivmasans, having intermixed with the Nabath-
seans, had given up this custom in the time of the Asmonseans, and that force had
to be used to make them resume it, is quite intelligible. For between Jeremiah
and those days lie the religious influences of the Chaldeans, the Persians, and
the Greeks. In the time of Josephus, at any rate, circumcision can have been
practised by none of the nations in Syria except the Jews (ed. Coin. 1691,
p. 1047).
8 Gen. xvii. 11. Also the omission of all reference to it in the Sinaitic law
of the covenant.
VOL. I. N

194 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
be quite conceivable that the influence of Egypt, a country
with which the Hebrew people were very early brought into
contact,1 gave the external impulse to it, although when once
this practice became the sacred mark of the covenant people,
succeeding generations were perfectly right in regarding it
as the expression of God's will and God's command to the
fathers of the people. Still, several passages, and especially
the puzzling old story in Ex. iv. 24 ff,2 permit us to infer
that it was only during the Mosaic age that a strict observ
ance of the custom was insisted on, and that, too, in the
face of strong opposition ; and Josh. v. 7 ff. shows us that
even after Moses we must still suppose irregularity in
the practice of this rite. But, by the time of the Judges,
at any rate, it was not merely a custom observed as a
matter of course, but one so deeply rooted in the national
religion, as to be a source of pride to the Israelite, and a
reason for despising " the uncircumcised," and especially the
Philistines.8 What, then, is the meaning of circumcision ? Long ago, in
reference to the other peoples, Herodotus and Philo attributed
the practice to considerations of health and cleanliness ; and
modern scholars like Saalschiitz follow them. But since it
was invariably the religious element that determined the
sacred customs, this explanation is quite contrary to the spirit
of heathen, and especially Egyptian antiquity, to which such
considerations were utterly foreign. Modern scholars like
Autenrieth have thought that this practice was connected
1 Gen. xii.
2 Moses' own son is not circumcised ; cf. the words of Zipporah, which,
though based on a proverb, have certainly a harsh and passionate ring : "A
bloody bridegroom art thou to me." Probably the whole narrative, like that of
Jacob wrestling with the Elohim, had originally a more sensuous colouring, and
has been intentionally made more indistinct.
3 Judg. xiv. 3, xv. 18 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 6, xvii. 26, 36, xxxi. 4 ; 2 Sam. i. 20
(Ezek. xxviii. 10) ; Gen. xxxiv. 14. I agree with Stade, that the practice did
not originally spring out of Jehovah-worship, although I cannot think it probable
that it has any specially close connection with ancestor-worship.

THE SACRAMENTS OF THE MOSAIC COVENANT. 195
with the habit of exhibiting the male organs of slain enemies
as trophies of victory ; clearly far too superficial and one-sided
an explanation of a sacred custom like this. By an over
whelming majority, modern scholars suggest a religious motive;
and they are right. Among many peoples the organ of genera
tion was an object of religious awe and reverence. It was so
even among the ancient Hebrews, as incidental references to
the national customs prove.1 Hence some 2 have thought cir
cumcision should be considered a mild substitute for castration.
The latter was, in fact, regarded by many peoples as " a
sharing with nature in the decay of vital power," and on that
view circumcision would be a remnant of Hamitic nature-
worship, become an organ of the higher religion. But if that
were the case, why is it not found among the very peoples
that insisted on their priests submitting to complete castra
tion in the above mentioned sense ? It is more correctly
a " bloody sacrifice " (Ewald), or, still more accurately, a
consecration of the life to God by a painful bloody purifying
of the source of life which is regarded as holy.
Among peoples given to nature-worship, this custom may
be connected with the consecration of the natural powers
of generation and conception. But in Israel its meaning was
conceived to be religious and moral. There was indeed no
intention to express the thought of a universal priesthood,
by applying to the whole mass of the people a sign which
in Egypt was characteristic of the priests alone. Even if
we were willing to admit the presupposed fact, this
implies, for those times, far too much self-consciousness, and
is too little in accord with their naive and creative character.
Circumcision is in Israel the consecration of a man on
being admitted as one of Jehovah's holy people. On the
organ upon which depends the perpetuation of life, and to
which religious reverence was paid, this bloody purification
was performed as a sign that the perpetuation of the whole
1 Gen. xxiv. 9, xlvii. 29. 2 Spencer, Bruno Bauer, Schelling.

196 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
people is sacred to God. The blood of circumcision is in
very truth what the Rabbis call it, " covenant-blood," by the
shedding of which communion with the holy God is rendered
possible. This was how the act was afterwards understood
in Israel, as the religious idiom proves. The word " circum
cised," " uncircumcised," was used as equivalent to " conse
crated," " unconsecrated," being applied in the most varied
relations to natural objects — to the heart, the ears, the lips,
etc.1 Without this sacred sign, no one dared to take part in
the religious privileges of Israel.
The second sacrament which attested the right of those who
belonged to the holy nation to have fellowship with God and
with one another, was the sacred covenant-supper, the Passover.
In the earliest times it may, perhaps, have been an expiatory
sacrifice. But even the oldest of our present documents know
of it only as a feast in commemoration of the last evening before
the deliverance. The sacred act of covenant-consecration, as
it is described in the oldest narrative, the sprinkling of the
people with " the blood of the covenant," the acceptance of
" the words of the covenant," could never, in the nature of
things, be repeated.2 But, in memory of God's mighty act of
deliverance, of the blood with which, on that occasion, the
holy community was marked and protected from the wrath of
the angel of death, in memory of the hasty exodus and the
afflictions of those days, this supper was to be observed as a
symbolical act of worship. The supper was holy. The animal
had to be served up whole.8 Every portion of the flesh had to
be carefully kept from becoming putrid, and from any profane
use.4 Those who ate it, the members of the family as well
as of the nation, could regard themselves as a holy com
munity created by God's acts of deliverance, and sharing in
1 Lev. xix. 23, xxvi. 14 ; Ex. vi. 12, 30 ; Deut. x. 16, xxx. 6 ; Jer. vi. 10,
ix. 25, etc.
2 Ex. xix. 5, 8, xxiv. 1-8 (Gen. xv. 9ff, xvii. Iff.), p")3t, like the twelve
".tones in the Jordan, Josh. iv. 4 ff.
3 Ex. xii. 8f., 46. 4 Ex. xii. 10.

THE PRIESTHOOD. 197
the highest " consecration." None but the circumcised could
partake of the sacred meal ; but all circumcised persons could
do so, even though they were not descendants of Israel
according to the flesh.1 Here, then, we get a glimpse of a
religious community wider than the nation.
We cannot, of course, assert that ancient, and especially
pre-Solomonic, Israel observed this sacred rite in the way
which the law prescribes, and did so regularly. In later
times people remembered quite well that the earlier Passovers
had not been kept in a legal way.2 The enforcement of the
law as to a single sanctuary necessarily altered many of the
details connected with its observance. But this custom was
unquestionably, even in olden days, an important and integral
part of national piety.
6. It may be safely assumed that throughout this whole
period the public worship of the community had been in the
hands of an officially authoritative priesthood. In later times
this priesthood is represented as identical with the " tribe " of
Levi, as well as with the hierarchically organised personnel of
the temple, as we find it in the law. Even in the histories
of the Judges, it is taken for granted that no sanctuary of
Jehovah is properly equipped till it has a Levite to act as
priest, and especially to insure a proper use of the oracle.3 In
the popular sanctuary at Shiloh, we find a family of official
priests possessed of great influence, and enjoying large revenues.
They trace their lineage back to Levi, from which we may
safely infer that the sacred character of this tribe was early
acknowledged.4 They have as their inheritance the burnt-
offerings presented to Jehovah. They are the priests in Israel.
" God Himself is their heritage." They are severely blamed for
increasing at pleasure the income assigned them by custom out
of the sacrifices.5 At private sanctuaries, the owners paid them
1 Ex. xii. 43 ff. 2 2 Chron. xxx., xxxv. 3 Judg. xvii. 10, xviii. 4.
4 1 Sam. i. 3 ff. (Judg. xix. 18, xx. 18, 27, xxi. 5, 19).
0 1 Sam. ii. 28 (12 ff.) ; Josh. xiii. 14, 33, xviii. 7 ; Deut. xxxiii. 8ff.

198 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
a salary, " filled their hands," on appointing them priests.1
Outside the national sanctuary, these Levites are mentioned as
both at Dan and Bethlehem. They play the somewhat un
dignified rdle of homeless " priests," wandering up and down
the country.2 The removal of the ark to the royal seat of their
patron David, placed them, of course, in quite a different
position. They now had a regular connection with a powerful
royal house ; and the magnificent temple which Solomon
built, gave them a natural centre and favourable conditions of
existence. It is true that the " Levitical priests " did not on
this account cease to exercise the functions of their office at
other national shrines. We have this fact expressly vouched
for down to the time of Josiah.3 But the priests at Jerusalem,
especially the new family which Solomon placed at their
head, naturally held quite a different position from that of the
priests at the high places. And when unity of worship was
actually carried out and became an acknowledged principle,
their relations necessarily altered still more. It is true, the
first intention was to give the priests outside Jerusalem the
full right to sacrifice at the national sanctuary.4 But from
the very nature of the case this could not be actually accom
plished. The Levites, who lost their occupation, became
priests of an inferior grade. In fact, their very existence was
threatened ; and in Deuteronomy they are already mentioned,
along with the poor, as fit objects of charity. As " Levites "
they were soon quite subordinate to the priests. Ezekiel
already directs that the Levites should, as a punishment for
offering sacrifice at the high places, perform the menial duties
originally assigned to heathen slaves, and that none but the
sons of Zadok should exercise priestly functions.5 In A the
" Levitical priests " of the Deuteronomist have been replaced
1 Judg. xvii. 12. Later, as the priests had fixed incomes, the word becomes
the ordinary expression for " consecrate," Ezek. xliii. 26. In A the priests
fill their own hand, Ex. xxix. 24 ff., 35 ; Lev. viii. 26 ff.
2 Judg. xvii. 8. 3 2 Kings xxiii. 9.
4 Deut. x-nii. 1-7 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 9. 6 Ezek. xliv. 6-16.

THE PRIESTHOOD. 199
by the hierarchical organisation of high priest, priest, and
Levitical temple-drudge.
It is very difficult to draw a historical picture of the
Levitical priests in the olden days. The Levites, whom A
represents as living since the days of Moses in tens of
thousands on fixed incomes in their own Levitical cities,
certainly do not belong to history. One can scarcely con
ceive a more startling contrast to this idea than the priestly
family at Shiloh, with its " servants," x or the Levites of the
book of Judges, as they wander up and down the country
alone.2 On the other hand, it is an incontrovertible fact that
there was " a tribe of Levi " in the very earliest times,3 as is
proved, not merely by the unfavourable judgment pronounced
upon it in the national legend, which would not have been
possible had " the Levites " been nothing but priestly families,
but also by the circumstance that the unanimous voice of
tradition makes Moses belong to this tribe, and never to
one of the historically important tribes.4 It is quite possible
that in the tribe of Levi, as probably in all the tribes of
Israel, there were families included which had merely joined
it. The way in which Deut. xxxiii. 8 ff. speaks of Levi
probably points to this, and the position of Samuel5 indicates
something similar.6 Nevertheless, it is hard to persuade
oneself that it was solely through a mistake due to the
accidental similarity of the name that the priestly Levites, as
"persons attached to the sanctuary,"7 "professional priests
1 1 Sam. i. 2, ii. 12, 18. 2 Judg. xvii. 8, xix. 1 ff.
8 Perhaps the name is connected with Leah, and is an instance of the gens
being denoted by the name of an animal, as is so frequently the case among the
kindred peoples (Stade, Zeitschr. i. 116; W. Robertson Smith, "Animal
Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament,"
Journal of Philology, ix. 75, esp. 89 ff.).
4 Gen. xxxiv. 25, 29, xlix. 5. " 1 Sam. i. ff.
6 Deut. xxxiii. 8 ff. shows, on the other hand, how much importance even the
Northern Israelites attached to this official priesthood ; and this importance
even after the exile of Israel is vouched for by ¦Pos. iv. 1-10, vi. 9, and
2 Kings xvii. 27.
7 rr6.

200 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
in no way connected with each other by actual ties of blood,"
were identified with the traditional, "lost" tribe of Levi,
because, owing to their vocation, they had grown into a sort
of " artificial tribe."
The following theory seems much more probable : Levi, the
tribe of Moses, one of the oldest leading tribes in Israel, being
through him, as it were, a "holy" tribe, was granted the
privileges of the public priesthood. This position it retained
even when it fell into civil disrepute. According to ancient
ideas, moral and social virtues had nothing at all to do with
" priestly holiness." As a tribe reckoned among the " first
born " of Israel, that is, as a leading tribe politically, Levi
was so much weakened by fighting against the Canaanites
that it became insignificant, and even lost its independent
existence, — as Reuben did by struggling against Moab, and
Simeon probably against the peoples of the desert. Levi
succumbed ; and Israel regarded his fate as a well-deserved
punishment for having despised justice and equity in
their cruel treatment of the native inhabitants of the
land.1 The remnants of the tribe, which, of course, like all
the tribes of Israel, had never counted its fighting men by
tens of thousands, as A delights to do, but whose numbers we
must set down at a very modest figure,2 had nothing for it
1 Gen. xlix. 5. Israel declines all responsibility for their conduct.
2 We ought at last to accustom ourselves frankly to recognise the numbers
given by the historical writers of Israel, in so far as they are not describing
statistical matters of their own day, as what they invariably are, — in A as well
as in Chronicles, in the editors of the older historical works as well as in
Josephus, — products of an irresistible tendency to revel in large numbers. As
soon as we get a view of actual circumstances, as in the case of the Danites
(Judg. xviii. 11), or when David began his career (1 Sam. xxiii. 16), we have
never to do with tens of thousands of fighting men, but with hundreds. The
country west of the Jordan, so far as it was actually in the possession of the
Israelites before David's time, cannot at the most be reckoned at more than
from 11-12,000 square kilometres, and this modest territory they shared in the
south with kindred peoples, in the north and west with the Canaanites.
Besides, the mountainous district of Judah was still in David's time a purely
pastoral country, a safe refuge for bands of freebooters (1 Sam. xxii., xxv.), and
all the stories about the olden days leave the impression that the country was

THE PRIESTHOOD. 201
but to make good their claim to serve Jehovah. This the
tribe succeeded in doing notwithstanding the mean and dis
reputable life many of its members must have led. Thus it
eventually became in spiritual matters the ruling tribe in
Israel. The twofold character of its position is reflected
with special distinctness in Deuteronomy, which commends
the Levite as well as the stranger and the poor to the
charity of the people,1 and in the Deuteronomic song which
extols the lot of Levi, and bestows on him the highest
blessing.2 But in whatever way this question may be answered, it is
certain that in early times the priestly office of the Levites
did not give them an exclusive right to offer sacrifice, and
to perform the various other sacred rites, but only certain
privileges in connection with the oracles at the shrines, and
with the public sacrifices which required a definite ritual. Just
as sacred legend represents the patriarchs as priestly figures,
who build altars and offer sacrifices wherever God has made
His presence manifest,3 so during the whole period down to the
not thickly populated (Judg. xviii. 2ff., xix. 10 ff.). Nomad shepherds could
still pitch their tents in the valley of the Kishon (Judg. iv. 17), and outside the
towns there was no population capable of offering any opposition to the robber
bands from the east of Jordan (Judg. vi. Iff.). What the state of civilisation was
is shown by stories such as we have in 2 Sam. xxiii. 11 (cf. Judg. iii. 31), where
a man, by defending a field of lentils, wins for himself lasting renown and the
gratitude of his people ; or in Judg. vi. 11, where a rich man threshes wheat in a
wine-press ; or in 1 Sam. xiii. 19, where the Israelites have to get along for a time
without smiths. There were no large towns in Israel. There was absolutely
no trade or manufacturing industry. Now, if fully settled and populated in the
same proportion as the German empire is at present, the above-mentioned
territory would have scarcely contained a, million of inhabitants. Hence it
would certainly be the highest possible estimate to reckon the Israelites west of
the Jordan at the close of the period of the Judges at from two to three hundred
thousand. This would give at the most fifty thousand fighting men. At the
invasion of Palestine, therefore, we might perhaps put them at the half, thus
getting for each of the smaller tribes somewhere between one thousand and
fifteen hundred able-bodied men of war.
1 E.g. Deut. xiv. 29, xvi. 11, 14, xxvi. 12.
2 Deut. xxxiii. 8 ff. (Judg. xvii. 8).
:l Gen. iv. 4, 26, viii. 20, xii. 7, 8, xiii. 4, 18, xv. 9, xxi. 33, xxvi. 25,
xxxv. 3, 7. It is noteworthy that, according to A, the patriarchs do not

202 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
building of the temple, it was undoubtedly upon the father
of a household, the head of a tribe, the prophetical leader,
and the king, that custom conferred priestly functions at the
sacrificial feasts which accompanied every solemn assembly.
These were the persons, too, who were permitted, as amongst
most nations of antiquity, to offer sacrifice at the tribal
sanctuaries and at the private chapels of the nobility.
Before Micah obtained a Levitical priest he made his own son
act as chaplain.1 Gideon, Samuel, and Elijah had no scruples
in performing acts of ritual worship.2 David offered family
sacrifice at Bethlehem, and, at the bringing home of the ark,
showed himself to the people clothed in priestly attire ; 8
nay more, according to the most natural interpretation of
2 Sam. viii. 12 (1 Kings iv. 2-5), he even invested his own
sons and other men of high position with priestly functions
at the sanctuary,4 alongside of the Levitical priests. And
although a great change may have taken place after the build
ing of the temple, still Nathan's sons are priests, and Zadok's
sons hold secular offices;5 while in the northern kingdom
the chief sanctuaries are simply described as " royal." 6
7. The feasts which, till Solomon's time, Israel celebrated
without any legal guidance at all, and afterwards in accord
ance with very simple laws,7 are perhaps of old-Hebrew
origin only in so far as they are connected with the chief
events in pastoral life, such as sheep-shearing, firstlings, and
sacrifice. According to him sacrifice is offered to Jehovah only after Moses
introduced the sacred form of sacrifice. In Job i. 5, Gen. xiv. 18 ff., Ex.
ii. 16, iii. 1, rightful priests are seen outside Israel.
1 Judg. xvii. 5.
2 Judg. vi. 20, 26, viii. 27 ; 1 Sam. ix. 12, xiv. 15, xvi. 5 ; 1 Kings xviii.
30 ff. (viii. 22, 54 ff).
3 1 Sam. xx. 6 (that it is a mere pretext does not, of course, alter the matter
at all); 2 Sam. vi. 14 (Ps. ex.).
4 It is needless to say that the chronicler cannot allow this, and changes the
priests into court officials (1 Chron. xviii. 17). But |!"D in early documents
never denotes anything else but " priests, " and just in 2 Sam. xx. 25 Zadok and
Abiathar are described by the very same word.
6 1 Kings iv. 2, 5. s Amos vii. 10 ff. 7 Ex. xxiii. 14, xxxiv. 18.

THE ISRAELITISH FEASTS. 203
the Passover.1 For the real harvest - feasts the people had
possibly to thank the customs of the land into which they
immigrated. But this cannot now be determined with
certainty. What is certain is that Israel kept two great
nature-feasts, of which the one, the feast of Tabernacles, had
at this period no historical by-meaning ; while the other, the
Paschal Feast of unleavened bread, though perhaps already
brought into connection with the exodus, was, as yet at any
rate, mainly connected with natural occurrences, such as the
offering of the firstlings of the flock and the dedicating of the
first-fruits of the barley harvest. The feast of Wheat-harvest
(C) seems to have been the least popular. It plays quite a
subordinate part in the old festival-laws, and, in fact, can have
originated only in a purely agricultural country.
The oldest festival-laws prescribe that Israel should on the
appointed days come to the sanctuaries bringing the firstlings
of the herd, the first eatable fresh bread (the heave-offering of
seed),2 and the first ripe fruits of the fruit-trees and of the
vine. Such procedure even the oldest prophets regard as a
matter of course.8 " The maintenance of public worship was a
tribute due to Jehovah, the generous owner of the land. To
Him from threshing-floor and wine-press gifts of corn and wine
were dedicated with ringing shouts of joy. And wherever this
was done, the joyous consciousness of a grateful people found
festive expression within the house of God."4 In Canaan
the most joyous of the festivals, at any rate, was the harvest-
feast, the rites of which were connected with the usages of the
original inhabitants of a country producing corn and wine.5
On the other hand, echoing through the usages of the Pass-
1 Sheep-shearing, Gen. xxxviii. 13 ; 1 Sam. xxv. 3. Tithe of wool, Hos. ii.
7, 11 ; Deut. xviii. 4 (Wellhausen, i. 96).
2 Ex. xxxiv. 23 (Deut. xvi. 9).
8 Isa. i. 13, 14, xxix. 1, xxx. 29 ; Hos. ii. 11, v. 7, ix. 5, xii. 10 (TjJlD, 3D).
' Ex. x. 9 ; Deut. xvi. 7 ; Isa. xxx. 29 ; Hos. ii. 9.
5 Judg. ix. 27 ; cf. xxi. 20. This feast is probably meant also in 1 Sam. i. 3.
(Choral songs of maidens, songs of praise, festive sacrificial meals.) (Movers
PhSnikier, 483.)

204 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
over, if we separate it from the feast of Unleavened Bread,
we hear the notes of a pastoral age, and of life in the
desert. The whole ceremonial seems a faint reflection of
older habits, and the historical ideas with which the festival
has been draped have doubtless replaced older ones, for
which, as the religion became purer, there was no longer
room. It was precisely to those feast days, as something due to
Jehovah, that the religious consciousness of the people, as we
see from the polemic of the prophets, attached an extra
ordinarily great importance. Everywhere in our present
documents we find, as their main foundation, the old-fashioned
feasts of the New Moon and the Sabbath, which are closely
connected, and are generally mentioned together.1 When,
under the influence of the Chaldee method of dividing time,
the course of the moon with its four phases was adopted as
the unit of time- measurement,2 the new moon and the
seventh day were naturally regarded as the chief divisions of
time, and therefore as holy days. Thus in Israel, as in other
ancient nations, the new moon became a religious festival,
celebrated by a meal of which only " the pure " could
partake.3 And the Sabbath is very early represented as holy,
as a day to be kept free from business, on which one turns to
the prophets for the word of God, and prefers, as a rule, to
transact religious business.4 In all this, the thought of a
service to God, in the sense of an irksome duty binding upon
all, was still something quite foreign to the national con
sciousness. It was a day of recreation and joy, irksome only
to the selfish rich, and the greedy.5 " One had time on the
Sabbath for other than one's daily occupations. Servant and
1 Amos viii. 5 ; 2 Kings iv. 22 ; Isa. i. 13 ; Hos. ii. 13 (1 Sam. xx. 5).
2 Smith, The Eponym Canon (London 1875, p. 19 f.). Also among the
Assyrians and the Babylonians the seventh day was a day of rest.
3 1 Sam. xx. 5, 18, 24, 26.
4 Amos v. 21, viii. 5 ; 2 Kings iv. 23 (xi. 5).
6 Hos. ii. 13, ix. 1 ff . ; 2 Kings iv. 22 ; Amos viii. 5.

THE SABBATH. 205
ass could be spared for a journey which was longer than a
Sabbath day's. The masters were always on holiday. On the
seventh day they had to let their servants and their beasts of
burden rest also " (Wellhausen). In B, and even in Deutero
nomy, the object is not so much that a man should strictly
abstain from all work himself, as that he should not selfishly
deprive his dependants of their rest.1
The Sabbath rest is certainly not a pre-Mosaic custom,
otherwise it would scarcely have been included in the funda
mental law, which, for example, makes no special mention of
circumcision as a primitive practice. Besides, its possibility
depends upon the change from pastoral to agricultural life
being already complete. Now, although the idea of the
Sabbath, as has been said, can be traced back to Babylonian
civilisation, it is a mistake to derive the name Sabbath from
the planet Saturn, which the Rabbis call " Shabbti," and
thus to bring the Sabbath holiday into connection with the
Chaldee worship of the planets. The naming of the days
after certain planet-gods can hardly be so old as the Sabbath
holiday. Besides, Shabbti is neither the Babylonian name
for Saturn, nor even an old word. According to the four
phases of the moon, the seventh day was the natural resting-
point in computing time, and one well known among other
nations also.2 Thus the day was pointed out of itself, and
was given the name " day of rest." 3 Its planet is therefore
called by the Rabbis the Sabbath planet, " Shabbti," as the
one to which this particular day was dedicated by astrology.
8. In the age before Solomon, and, in fact, down to the reign
of Josiah, nothing was further from men's minds than the idea
that Jehovah was to be worshipped only at a single sanctuary
chosen by Himself ; although Deuteronomy orders this, and A
1 Ex. xx. 10, xxxiv. 21 ; Deut. v. 12 ff.
2 1 may remind the reader of the primitive Delphic custom of giving oracles
on the seventh day, as the day dedicated to Apollo (Plutarch, Qua>st. Gr. 9.
Herod, vi. 5. 7) ; cf. Dio Cassius, xxvii. 18 ff. Macrob., Saturn, i. 16.
3 nap naap-

206 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
maintains that from the days of Moses there was an express
law in Israel to that effect. The holy places in Canaan,
whether hallowed by sacred memories of the patriarchs or
used by the original inhabitants as places of worship, the
Israelites, on gaining possession of the country, unquestion
ably retained as sanctuaries for themselves, without having
the least doubt that such an arrangement was pleasing to
God.1 And provided Jehovah alone was worshipped at such
places, and not the gods of the land, no one would have any
conscientious objections to the forms of worship formerly
in use there.2 Owing to their sympathy with nature, all
ancient peoples gave these holy places a significance no
longer intelligible to nations of a later civilisation. The God
of heaven was worshipped on high mountains, which, tower
ing aloft in solitary grandeur, seemed most befitting thrones
for the Heavenly One. In the sacred gloom of the grove
one felt the very breath of the Deity. Regions where
remarkable natural phenomena seemed to indicate a special
revelation of God's presence, — fountains and wells which had
served since the days of old as tribal rendezvous, — the shrine
of the domestic hearth or the public centre of city-life, —
spots which sacred legend had hallowed by memories of
ancient acts of worship or of divine manifestations, — these
were one and all recognised as places at which the Deity
delighted to assemble His worshippers, and ac'G^pt their
gifts. On such places 3 the native inhabitants of Canaan had
1 Real-Encyclopadie, art. " Hohen, Hohendienst der Hebraer '' (1st ed.
J. G. Miiller ; 2nd ed. Wolf Baudissin). For the Greek and Roman customs, cf.
Schbmann, Gr. Alterthumer (2nd ed. 1863, vol. ii. 181 ff.). Hermann, Lehrb.
der gottesdienstlichen Alterthumer der Griechen (2nd ed. by Stark, 1858, p. 68).
L. Friedlander, Darstellung aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (Leipzig 1864,
vol. ii. 105 ff).
- Smend (Stade's Zeitschrift, ii. 95, 105).
3 Some such custom is clearly indicated by expressions like " the oak of the
sorcerers, teachers " (Judg. iv. 4, ix. 6, 37 ; Josh. xxiv. 26 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 2,
xxii. 6 ; 1 Kings xii.), or "the Dragon-well" (Neh. ii. 13 ; the spirit as the
water-serpent, Stade).

THE HOLY PLACES. 207
built their ancient shrines. Altars on artificial mounds,
frequently connected with real temples (houses on mounds),1
were the ordinary places of worship in the Hamitic nature-
religion, which, in fact, paid special reverence to the generative
power of nature.2 Idols in really human form do not appear
to have been used in the olden time. But faith in the effec
tive power and presence of the Deity was readily connected
with sacred stones which were anointed with oil,3 or with
specially prominent and evergreen trees in which the vital forces
of nature were revealed, and eventually with artificial wooden
pillars and posts (Asheras), which were meant to symbolise
the organ of generation.
How many of these customs the Israelites practised before
they got possession of Canaan, cannot now be definitely
ascertained. It is probable that the God of Israel was
originally worshipped in a simpler way, perhaps merely
with an altar erected on a consecrated site,4 and that his
actual visible presence was conceived of as confined to Sinai.
But as far back as we can trace the early ideas of Israel,
we already find in Canaan a great variety of shrines and
images ; and it is only in the eyes of a much later age that
this appears to be a culpable falling away from purity of
worship.5 The older forms of sacred legend represent the
shrines of Bethel, Shechem, Hebron, Lachai-roi, and Beersheba
as places consecrated to national worship by appearances and

1 i"l03 (fiSius ?). The worship at the high places was certainly Canaanitish
(Ex. xxxiv. 10 ; Num. xxxiii. 52 ; Deut. xii. 2, 30 ; Ezek. xvi. 20), and the
worship of Jehovah displaced at these the worship of the gods of the country.
At Shechem and Gibeon this transition is effected almost in the full light of
history (Wellh. i. 18).
2 In the Chaldean worship of the mother of the gods these artificial mounds
constantly form the substructure for the funeral- pile of Hercules-Sandan, and
refer originally to Priapus -worship.
3 Gen. xxviii. etc. fimrixiK.
4 Ex. xx. 24 ff. (the circle of stones at Gilgal, Josh. iv. 7).
5 Already in Deut. xii. 8 ff., and in the later revision of the book of Kings,
1 Kings xii. 31, xiv. 23, xv. 14, xxii. 11, 44 ; 2 Kings xii. 3, xiv. 4, xv. 4, 35.
Especially natural in A, Josh. xxii. 10 ff., 29.

208 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
revelations of Jehovah, and by the prayers and sacrifices of
the patriarchs.1 Bethel, in particular, with its sacred pillar
of stone, is represented as the chief sanctuary of Israel
in patriarchal times.2 Sinai and Hermon are extolled as
holy mountains.3 Under the oaks and terebinths of Canaan,
beside the springs of Beersheba and Lachai-roi, the patriarchs
dwelt and worshipped Jehovah.4 The judges, as well as
Samuel, David, and Solomon, take their sacrificial meals5
on " the high places," where, as at Hebron and Shechem,
the fathers lie entombed ; or where, as at Gilgal and
Shiloh, memories of the nation's great heroic age still sur
vive ; or where the natural situation of the place points
upwards, as at Mizpah the Wartburg, or Ramah the height,
or Gibeah the hill.6
Leading families meet together at the original family seat,
as at Ophra, Hebron, and Bethlehem, to offer family sacrifice.7
On Ebal Joshua builds an altar, and in Shechem he has
a sanctuary.8 In Mizpah and Bochini the congregation
assembles for prayer and sacrifice.9 Gideon and Jephthah,
Samuel and Saul, sacrifice at the places which are the centres
of their power and activity, in the land east of Jordan, as
well as on the mountains of Judah and Ephraim.10 No one
forbids Micah to set up a chapel in his own house ; and when
the tribe of Dan secures by conquest a strong tribal city,
its first care is to get a sanctuary, with a priest and an
oracle.11 David has a place of prayer on the Mount of Olives ;
and in honour of the angel he builds an altar beside the
1 Gen. xii. 7, 8, xvi. 14, xxi. 28, xxviii. 10 ff. ; Amos vii. 14 ; Hos. iv. 15.
2 Gen. xxviii. (the tithe).
3 Judg. v. 4 ; cf. Ps. xxxvi. 7, Ixviii. 16 (civ. 16).
4 Gen. xii. 6, xiii. 18, xviii. 4, xxi. 33, xxiv. 62.
6 1 Sam. ix. 12 ff. ; 1 Kings iii. 3 ff.
6 Gen. xxxv. 8 ; Judg. xvi. 1 ; 1 Sam. vii. 5, 16, ix. 12 ff., x. 3, 8, xi. 15,
xiv. 35, xv. 21.
7 Judg. viii. 23 ff. ; 1 Sam. xx. 6 ; 2 Sam. xv. 7. s Josh. xxiv. 25.
9 Judg. ii. 5, xx. 1, 18, 27, xxi. 2, 4.
10 Judg. vi. 24 f., xi. 11 f. ; 1 Sam. ix. 12 f. etc
u Judg. xvii. 18, xviii. 19 ff.

THE HOLY PLACES. 209
threshing-floor of Araunah with as little hesitation as the
patriarchs ever showed.1 Adonijah gives his sacrificial feast
at the spring of Rogel, Absalom his at Hebron. Solomon
sacrifices at the great high place at Gibeon, and there Jehovah
appears to him.2 In short, just as the whole land, being
Israel's possession, is Jehovah's house,3 people are convinced
that they may worship Him at any place within it at which
He makes Himself known. Accordingly, the oldest code of
laws prescribes nothing more than the building of a simple
altar to God " wherever He should record His name."4 Even
the later historian, who decidedly disapproves of such freedom
of sacrifice, and the Deuteronomist whose main object is to
establish a single sanctuary, frankly admit that, prior to the
building of the temple, the exercise of discretion in this
matter was nothing unusual.5 Isaiah also prophesies of an
altar to Jehovah in Egypt, obviously quite unconscious that
it would be against the law to worship at such an altar.6
In these holy places the presence of God was symbolised
in a variety of ways. In essentials, no doubt, ancestral
customs were followed, but there was also a tendency
towards Canaanitish rites, which were foreign to the religion
of Israel. The worship of a real individual image of God
always remained foreign to Israel and its kindred nations.
But in the worship at Bethel, when B and C were written,
the sacred " stone of Jacob," as a memorial of God's presence,
must have been the chief sacred object,7 just as the sacred
1 2 Sam. xv. 32, xxiv. 25.
2 2 Sam. xv. 7, 12 ; 1 Kings i. 9, iii. 3 ff. Chronicles excuses this on the
ground that the tabernacle was there (2 Chron. i. 3 ff. ; 1 Chron. xxi. 29).
3 Hos. viii. 1, ix. 3 ff; 2 Kings v. 17.
4 Ex. xx. 24 ff. Compare with this the narrative of Josh, xxii., which shows
the utmost anxiety to shield the "altar " of the tribes to the east of the Jordan
from the suspicion of being a "sacrificial altar ! "
8 1 Kings iii. 2, 3 (viu. 16) ; Deut. x. (1 Sam. ix., x.).
6 Isa. xix. 19. Even Deut. xxvii. 5 ff. still admits the possibility of erecting
altars in exceptional cases outside the sanctuary (B. J. lxvi. 1 ff. points perhaps
to the last struggle in this connection).
7 Gen. xxxi. 45, 51, xxviii. (xlix. 24 ?) ; 1 Sam. vi. 14, xiv. 33.
VOL. I. n

210 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
circle of stones at Gilgal also points to a national symbol
ism.1 Mazzebahs and Asheras, artificial constructions of
stone and tree, were never in Israel necessary adjuncts of
the national worship.2 But, obviously, their use was not
considered, even at a later period, at all reprehensible or
incompatible with the worship of Jehovah. But it is
absolutely beyond a doubt that in many sanctuaries,
although not in the national one, Jehovah Himself was
unhesitatingly worshipped under the form of an ox, i.e. as
the life-giving power. It is true that in some passages
the particular kind of image is not actually stated.3 But
from the narrative of the journey through the wilderness,4
and from the practice in the great national sanctuaries
of the northern kingdom,5 of which there is frequent
proof down to the time of the Exile, it is certain enough
that one can think only of the above-mentioned symbol of
God. The oldest and most highly - prized national symbol of
Jehovah's presence was in those days undoubtedly the ark
of Jehovah, which excluded from the national sanctuary
every other symbol of God. It can scarcely have contained
from the days of Moses, as " the law " declares, the ten
commandments as the covenant-contract of Israel with his
God. For apart from the fact that our ten commandments,
with their stern prohibition of every visible representation of
Jehovah, can hardly have been regarded at that time as
indispensable conditions without which no one could belong
to God, this whole conception is much more akin to the spirit
of the times in which " the law " was considered the holiest
thing that Israel possessed than to that of the primitive age
which strove to assure itself of the protecting presence of its
God in a way as convincing to the senses as possible. What-
1 Josh. iv. 9 ; cf. Ex. xxiv. 4 (Cromlechs).
2 Hos. iii. 4, x. 2 ; Isa. xix. 19. 3 Judg. viii. 26, xvii., xviii.
4 Ex. xxxii. 8. 5 Especially 1 Kings xii. 28 ; Hos. xiii. 2.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT. 211
ever the ark may have contained, people certainly believed
that, wherever it was, there they had God Himself present.
Wherever it halted, they sacrificed as at a holy place. When
it went forth with their armies, they believed that victory
was certain.1 And they thought that, as it indicated
the presence of the holy God, it must bring death and
judgment upon the foe and upon all unconsecrated persons.2
Hence it was called the ark of Jehovah, and also, perhaps,
from the priestly oracle attached to it, the ark of revelation.
It is only the later writers who soften the. expression into
" the ark of the covenant." 8
Now this ark of the covenant gave any spot on
which it stood4 the distinction of being the true national
sanctuary. It was not, it is true, enclosed in a tabernacle
such as A describes. No matter what apologists may say,
a comparison of the exertions required for building Solomon's
temple5 shows that a magnificent structure, such as we
find , depicted by A, cannot have been erected by a band
of roving shepherds, even though laden with the spoils of
Egypt. But, above all, it would have been as impossible for
Israel to take the ark of the covenant out of a Holy of holies,
such as A imagines, as out of Solomon's temple, and carry it off
to the wars, to remain away perhaps for years. Besides, in the
narrative of the building of the temple, there is no allusion to
a sanctuary having been previously constructed at God's com
mand and according to a divine pattern, which the pious builder
of the temple must have felt constrained to copy closely.6
1 1 Sam. iv. 5 ff.; 2 Sam. xi. 11. 2 1 Sam. vi. 14, 19.
3 Wellhausen, 404.
4 1 Sam. i.-iii., vi., vii. 1 (Shiloh, Beth-shemesh, Kirjath-jearim), 2 Sam. vi.
(Zion). 6 Even though we set aside the representation in Chronicles, still we are face
to face with a strain which exhausts the nation at the time of its greatest
prosperity. What sums were required for a plain chapel is shown by Judg.
viii. 24 ff., xvii. 2.
6 Compare the original simple narrative, 1 Kings vi. (The mention of "the
tabernacle," viii. 4, is inserted for an obvious purpose) ; 2 Chron. i. 3 ff.
naturally knows of the tabernacle.

212 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Moreover, 2 Sam. vii. 2 knows only of the ark dwelling
within curtains, and regards the tabernacle made by David
as quite in keeping with the ancient custom. And the
older narrative in the Pentateuch knows only of a simple
tent, without any special sanctity, in which the ark was
kept.1 The tabernacle in A is an ideal expression for the
holy place in Israel. The description of it is not a delinea
tion of an actual thing, but a depicting of religious thoughts
borrowed from Solomon's temple.
But the tabernacle, the plain structure like a nomad's
tent in which the sacred ark was kept,2 became, in the time
of the Judges, a more strongly constructed sanctuary in the
territory of the ruling tribe at Shiloh. And this sanctuary
was the seat of the national worship and of the national
priesthood. It is expressly called a house of God, a palace ; 3
and the worship was carried on by priests, servants, and
attendant women,4 and had a definite ritual, important privi
leges, and large revenues.5 As yet no particular respect
was paid to this building. At least neither the sitting-rooms
nor the bed-rooms of the high priest and his servants appear
to have been at any distance from the ark of God.6 Still it
was the spiritual centre of Israel. It is quite clear that its
main importance for the people lay in its having the oracle
of God, which they believed only a priest with an ephod
could use. It was such an oracle as Micah and the Danites
were in search of, when they also furnished their sanctuaries
with an ephod. After the destruction of Nob, David
1 Ex. xxxiii. 7. We must think of a tent such as Burkhardt saw among
the Turcomans (Reisen, vol. ii. p. 1000), or still better, of the Sheik's tent on
the Square at Tantah as described by Bovet (Reise in das gelobte Land iibers.
von Jdnisch, 1866), — standing in the middle of the camp, with two apartments
ami an uncovered court for people to assemble in, and so " a tent of meeting."
2 Ex. xxxiii. 7, cf. xxxv. ff.
* Judg. xviii. 81, xix. 18 P3TI ; 1 Sam. i. 9. According to 2 Sam. vii. 6,
indeed, God must have dwelt constantly within "curtains."
4 Samuel as TViV/Q, 1 Sam. iii. ; the women, 1 Sam. ii. 22.
6 1 Sam. ii. 13 ff. « 1 Sam. iii. 1 ff.

THE TABERNACLE. 213
welcomed the priest with the ephod to his camp.1 After
Eli's unsuccessful war with the Philistines, the sanctuary at
Shiloh is obviously no longer in existence. Some centuries
later, it is true, the place Shiloh is again mentioned, and
indeed it still exists in ruins under the name Seilun. But
it does not follow that it was not destroyed at that time and
robbed of its temple. If that were not so, why was the ark
of God not taken back to it ? 2 Why throughout the whole
history of Samuel is this, the place of his youth, never once
mentioned again ? Why did Jeroboam connect his new
places of worship with the sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan,
but not with Shiloh ? 3
The remains of this priesthood we next find at Nob, where
Saul dealt it a fatal blow. There, too, there was a well-built
house in which, for instance, the sword of Goliath was pre
served, and in which there was room for fugitives and for such
as were under vows. We also incidentally see, from the
narrative, that there was in the sanctuary a table with shew
bread, which was renewed daily, and then became the priests',
but which could, in exceptional cases, be given to one
not a priest, provided he were " clean." 4 But since this
shrine had not the ark of the covenant, it certainly never
became very important. When David brought the ark into
his own city, at first only to a tent, the sacred character of
Jerusalem was definitely settled. This was confirmed by the
building of the temple on the site already consecrated by the
sacrifices which David had offered. At first, however, this
had no more effect in causing the other holy places to fall
into disuse than the sanctuary at Shiloh had previously had.
9. If any one wishes to get a true idea of the conduct
expected in ancient Israel of a just, straightforward, pious,
and sensible man, he must not turn his attention first
to the commandments in the Pentateuch, least of all to
1 1 Sam. xiv. 37, xxi. 1 ; 2 Sam. ii. 1 ; 1 Kings iv. 4. 2 1 Sam. vii. 2.
3 1 Kings xi. 29, xiv. 2 (Jer. vii. 12, xxvi. 6ff). 4 l Sam. xxi. 5ff.

214 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
their final form as given in A. Written commandments can
scarcely have had much influence in early times ; and where
they had, they can only have been very simple directions as to
national customs. We must first of all study the ideal figures
of the patriarchs, and the traits particularly prominent in the
greatest religious characters of the earlier ages, and then care
fully note which sides of the moral nature are most frequently
and distinctly dealt with in the oldest songs and proverbs.
The root of all morality is the fear of God.1 All true
moral action is briefly summed up in these simple words: to
walk faithfully, justly, and honestly " before God " and
" with God." 2 From this spring the virtues characteristic
of genuine morality, viz. humility,3 gentleness,4 pity5 even
for animals,6 long-suffering and patience,7 filial affection.8
To do intentional injury to one who might become an
enemy would not be right.9 To do anything unjust10 or
deceitful n would be wrong. Drunkenness is condemned, for
" wine is a mocker," 12 also unchastity,13 and pride.14 A corner
in grain, and usury in general, is specially abhorred.15 To
rejoice at another's misfortune is censurable. In fact, it is
considered wrong to return evil for evil.16 It becomes an
Israelite 17 to be truthful, and to abstain from slandering his
neighbour, in a word to show " mercy and truth." 18 Such
' Ex. i. 17, 21, ix. 20, xviii. 21 ; Gen. xxii. 15 ff., xlii. 18 ; of. Prov. xiv.
2, 26, xv. 16, xix. 23 ; cf. Prov. xvi. 3, xx. 22.
2 Gen. v. 22, vi. 9, xvii. 1 ; 1 Kings iii. 6.
3 Prov. xviii. 12, xxii. 4.
4 Prov. xi. 25, xix. 17, xiv. 31, xvii. 5, xxi. 13, xxii. 9.
5 Prov. xiv. 21. 6 Prov. xii. 10.
1 Prov. xiv. 29 f., xix. 11. 8 Prov. xix. 26, xx. 20 (Ps. xv. 4).
9 Ps. vii. 5. I0 Prov. xviii. 5.
11 Prov. xi. 1, xx. 10, 23. 12 Prov. xx. 1.
13 Prov. xxii. 14. 14 Prov. xi. 2, xiii. 10, xvi. 5, 18, xxi. 4.
15 Prov. xi. 26 (Ps. xv. 5). I6 Prov. xx. 22.
17 Prov. x. 18, xii. 17, 19 ; Ps. xv. 4.
18 no&O TDn, Prov. xiv. 22, xvi.. 6 (IDfl contrasted with cruelty, Prov.
xiv. 7) ; cf. Gen. xxiv. 49, xlvii. 29 ; Josh. ii. 12, 14 (1 Sam. xxvi. 23) ;
2 Sam. xv. 20 (of God, 2 Sam. ii. 6) (in Ps. xii. 2 TDn and D'OIOK are
parallel).

THE MORAL IDEAL. 215
conduct is better than sacrifice.1 Honest dealing brings
happiness ; for poverty with love is better than riches with
hatred.2 Marriage is represented in Gen. ii. as a divinely
appointed union of equals for life-long help, although the
right of the husband to rule is distinctly asserted. The
servile position of woman is due to sin.
The description we get of the ideal figures also corresponds
in the main with these fundamental characteristics. Abraham
is represented as being as pious as he is magnanimous ;
unselfish, brave, faithful to the duties of kinship, as well as
to every covenant he enters into.3 To avoid a quarrel with
his kinsman, he generously gives up his own right.4 Being
fair and upright, he does not allow the rights of his spouse to
be infringed, even when his heart yearns for the handmaid
who has borne him an heir.5 He shows himself hospitable
and polite to the angels,6 just as his nephew Lot also displays
a hospitality which is ready to sacrifice life and honour in
defence of a guest.7 His gentle and merciful disposition
makes him pray earnestly even for Sodom on the eve of its
destruction.8 In a word, as we are told in the style of a
later age, he kept the commandments and statutes of God,
and taught his descendants to keep them.9 He is the beau
ideal of true morality. Elsewhere, in the patriarchal legend,
filial reverence is specially emphasised,10 and woman is praised
for her readiness to serve and for her chastity.11 And in the
history we meet with the fiercest indignation against insolent
violation of female honour and of the law of hospitality.12
The relations with servants appear to have been mild and
humane.13 That woman had a somewhat free position, in

1 Prov. xxi. 3, cf. xv. 8, xxi. 27. * Prov. xv. 16 f., xvii. 1.
" Gen. xiv. 14 ff, 20 ff. * Gen. xiii. 8.
6 Gen. xvi. 6 (xxi. 12). « Gen. xviii. 2 ff.
7 Gen. xix. 1 ff. (cf. Judg. xix. 23). 8 Gen. xviii. 23 ff.
6 Gen. xviii. 19 (xxvi. 5, 24). 10 Gen. ix. 23.
11 Gen. xxiv. 17 ff., 65 f. " Judg. xix. 30.
13 Gen. xxiv., cf. xiv. 14, xv. 2,

216 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
comparison with the slavish condition of Oriental wives in
later times, is proved by figures like Miriam, Deborah,
Abigail, and the virgin in Canticles.1 We must likewise
bear in mind David's wonderful submission to the divine
will,2 his heroic readiness to take God's wrath upon himself,
that it might not fall upon his people,3 his humble submission
to the word of God,4 his sorrow at the death even of his
rebellious son,5 his magnanimity and his respect for God's
anointed,6 and his touching friendship unto death for
Jonathan.7 His strong sense of equity shows itself in the
way he divides the spoil.8 Breaches of the law and of usage,
even though by a royal offender, constantly excite fierce
indignation in Israel.9 The true king of Israel takes the
field in defence of " truth, and meekness, and righteousness." 10
This moral ideal, so far as we are able to judge, became
more and more spiritual down to the Assyrian period, but
it did not change. In later times also the greatest stress is
laid upon filial affection.11 In the Book of Ruth we get a
view of the marriage relationship as naive and free as it is
morally strict.12 The model housewife is shown us in Prov.
xxxi. 10—31, and such a faithful performance of duty is
regarded as the fear of God (ver. 30). The rights of the
poor, of widows, orphans, and strangers are everywhere looked
upon as sacred.13 "Wisdom" warns against unchastity,
deceit, causeless strife, falsehood, and mischief-making,14 and
persuades to " mercy and truth." 15 And Job describes his
own character in a particularly instructive manner. Without
1 Ex. xv. 20 ; Judg. iv. 4, xi. 34 ; 1 Sam. xxv.
2 2 Sam. xv. 25, xvi. 11 ff, xxiv. 14.
8 2 Sam. xxiv. 17. 4 2 Sam. vii. 18, xii. 13, xv. 23.
6 2 Sam. xix. 1. 6 1 Sam. xxiv.
7 1 Sam. xviii. 3, xx. 8, 16, 42, xxiii. 16 ff. ; 2 Sam. i. 26 ; Prov. xviii. 24.
8 1 Sam. xxx. 23 ff. 9 2 Sam. xii. ; 1 Kings xxi. 19.
10 Ps. xiv. 5, 8. u Ruth i. 16 (Deut. xxi. 18 ff. ; Ezek. xxii. 7 ff.).
12 Ruth ii. 20, iii. 1 ff., 9, 12, iv. 3 ff, 10, 14 (Ps. cxxvii. 3 ; Ezek. xviii. 5 ff.).
13 Ps. xxxvii. 12, 21, 26, xli. 2ff. ; Amos ii. 6, v. 12 ; Deut. xxii. 28 ff.
14 Prov. iii. 29, iv. 24 ff., v. 3 ff, vi. 12, 14, 20, 24 ff., vii. 5 ff., viii. 13.
w Prov. iii. 3, 27, viii. 7.

THE MORAL IDEAL. 217
hypocrisy and fearing no man, strictly pure even in thought ;
a terror to the scorner, devoted to the cause of the oppressed
and the poor ; strictly just towards inferiors, from a full con
sciousness that, as men, they have the same rights as himself ;
even towards an enemy neither malicious nor malevolent,
charitable even to forgetfulness of self; such is his sketch of
the ideal just man.1 And in a long array of psalms we meet
with the self-same picture of the unselfish upright man, who
never oppresses, and is the sworn foe of usury and deceit.2
While the moral ideal of Mosaism is in many respects
similar to that of prophetism, it nevertheless shows important
dissimilarities, even in reference to the features just mentioned,
not to speak of its divergences from a perfect morality.
Many characteristics are mentioned without censure as being
quite common among men in the highest position, which
show how hard it is for a real morality to force its way even
in theory through the customs of a national life, that has just
grown up naturally and is anything but highly developed. I
shall briefly refer to what has been already mentioned. It
is not considered anything extraordinary for a man to be a
coward, deceitful to strangers,8 or unfaithful as a husband.4
Excessive indulgence in wine is mentioned as a thing to be
expected at a feast.5 An act of violence excites no surprise.6
Sexual licence is regarded as so natural that not only is it
mentioned in the case of Samson the Nazirite without
censure,7 but it lies at the foundation of the whole story of
1 Job xxix. 12-17, xxxi.
11 Ps. xv., xxiv., xxxiv. 14 ff., xxxvii. 21, 26, xli. 2, cxii. 4, 9, cxxxiii. ;
Prov. xi. 26, xvii. 14, xx. 10 ; Isa. xxxiii. 15 ff. In Ezek. xviii. 5 ff, xxii.
5 ff. , xxxiii. 25, more emphasis is already laid on Levitical purity.
8 Gen. xii. 13 ff, xxvi. 7 ff., xxvii. 6 ff. (It is only the fear of being
discovered that makes Jacob hesitate, not moral considerations. )
4 Gen. xvi., xxx. 18 (the giving of the handmaid to be concubine is con
sidered a meritorious act. Marriage itself, i.e. the husband's right of possession,
is considered all the more sacred), Gen. xx. 3, 6, xxxix. 10, 12 ; the disagree
able story in 1 Kings i. 1 ff.
6 Gen. ix. 21, 24, xliii. 34 ; 2 Sam. xi. 13. 6 Judg. xviii. 7ff, 24 ff.
7 Judg. xvi.. 1, etc.

218 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Judah and Tamar, as the natural assumption on which Tamar's
scheme is based.1 So inveterate is violence on the part of
a blood-avenger that it can only be hallowed and regulated,
not abolished.2 Cruelty in war is regarded as a matter of
course.3 Men exult quite openly in revenge and treachery.4
The magnanimity of David who does not forget, even as
regards his arch - enemy, the respect due to " God's
anointed " is regarded as something quite extraordinary.5
That he loves those who hate him is actually reckoned
a proof that he is not to be trusted.6 Even he rejoices over
Nabal's death,7 and on his very death-bed he seeks vengeance
on his enemies.8 Suicide, without being exactly described as
morally justifiable, is nevertheless mentioned with all the
frankness characteristic of the ancient point of view.9 David's
dreadful robber-raids from Ziklag, and his alliance with the
national foe, are thought quite natural, as well as his deter
mination to destroy the whole family of Nabal, simply because
he had refused to pay black-mail to the outlawed freebooter.10
In short, in the ideal actually regarded by the people as repre
senting a high morality, many traits of a strong, uncorrupted,
but rough nationality of a thoroughly Oriental type were
combined with the fundamental thoughts of a higher religioa
This is particularly well seen from the way in which the
very word which denotes the highest religious and moral
wisdom can also be employed to denote mere worldly shrewd
ness and, in fact, artful cunning.11
The early narratives know nothing of a comprehensive
1 Gen. xxxviii. 15 ff., 20, 21.
2 Gen. ix. ; Num. xxxv. 6 ff. ; Josh. xx. (2 Sam. iii. 27, xiv. 7, 11).
3 1 Kings xi. 16 ; Judg. i. 6 ; 2 Sam. xii. 31, viii. 2.
4 Judg. iii. 20 f., iv. 12, 17, v. 25 ff. (Ps. xli. 11).
6 1 Sam. xxiv. 20.
6 2 Sam. xix. 6. Still there is in this case also the justifiable censure that
David sets his private grief above the public weal.
7 1 Sam. xxv. 39. 8 1 Kings ii. 5 ff, 8 (Ps. iii. 8).
9 Judg. ix. 54, xvi. 29 ff. ; 1 Sam. xxxi. 4 ff. ; 2 Sam. xvii. 23.
10 1 Sam. xxvii. 9, xxv. 13 ff.
11 2 Sam. xiii. 3, xiv. 2, xx. 16 ; cf. Prov. xi. 15, xiii. 3 f., xvii. 18, xx. 2, 16.

THE DECALOGUE. 219
moral law of God for the ancestors of Israel. It is in A that
we first find the significant formulae -,1 to be blameless, and
to walk before God and with God, i.e. so that the presence
of God may always give the life the right direction. But the
oldest form of the account we have received of the making of
the covenant on Sinai already sums up in the classical form
of the ten commandments the religious and moral demands
which result from the holiness of the people, from its dedica
tion to the holy God. This series of commands runs like
a text in various forms all through the middle books of the
Pentateuch, and in the prophetic law it is made the sacred
foundation of Israelitish morality.2 The " decalogue " form
was undoubtedly intended from the first,3 and on fuller
examination similar " decalogues " are found elsewhere also
in the law-books. Hence Goethe already noticed that Ex.
xxxiv. 1 0 ff. contains a decalogue. So does Deut. xxvii. 1 5 ff,
as soon as one combines the prohibitions in vers. 22 and 'Z3
of marriage with a sister and with a mother-in-law.
Now the idea that our decalogue actually goes right back
to Moses, and was from the beginning the fundamental law
of Israel, is one so closely connected with the traditional
view of the Old Testament that it goes sorely against the
grain to give it up. But it will always remain impossible to
explain how the worship of God, by means of images, as
was the unopposed custom in all Israel before the time of
Solomon, and in the northern kingdom till its fall, can be
reconciled with the hypothesis of such a fundamental law
being in existence. And that will, at any rate, raise the
question whether the combination in this form of the
fundamental thoughts of Old Testament morality was not
originally the product of an age in which the worship of
God without images in the national sanctuary had to struggle
against the customs natural to earlier times. That will be
1 Gen. v. 22, vi. 9, xvii. 1. 2 Deut. v. 6 ff.
8 Ex. xxxiv. 28 (Deut. iv. 13, x. 4). For the Greek title, cf. Geffken, p. 9.

220 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the more readily acknowledged as possible, if it is borne in
mind that the commandment about the Sabbath in Ex. xx.
certainly lies before us in a form that has been influenced
by A. One might then assume that the oldest compilations
of the national laws, somewhat after the manner of Ex. xxxiv.
(which, it is true, also forbids molten images), must have
been directed more to the details of sacred usage,1 and that
an age of more self-conscious and concentrated religious
feeling first substituted this enduring model for the more
imperfect forms. But, at all events, these ten command
ments give the moral ideas of the Mosaic religion an
expression as brief as it is exhaustive, and the leading ideas
in them certainly agree with what Israel was accustomed,
even in those days, to regard as Jehovah's will : to serve no
other God but Jehovah ; to abstain from the worship of
idols ; not to take God's name in vain ; to keep His Sabbath ;
to show honour to parents, and respect to life, marriage,
and the property of one's neighbour, and to abstain from all
intrigues against him even when seemingly legitimate.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE ASSYEIAN PERIOD, 800-630 B.C.
1. Towards the end of the ninth century the prosperous
state of things which seemed in the time of David and Solomon
to contain within it all the conditions necessary for the ideal
development of the kingdom of God, was broken up bit by

1 There the extermination of the Canaanites, the redemption of the first-born,
the feast of unleavened bread, the prohibition of molten images, the three
annual feasts, the Sabbath, the prohibition of leaven in the sacrifices, and
against leaving anything over from the Passover meal, the offering of firstlings,
and the command not to seethe a kid in its mother's milk, are all mentioned at
the making of the covenant as fundamental laws. (Cf. Wellhausen, Jahrb. f.
deutsche Theol. 1876, 4, p. 551 ff.)

THE DOWNFALL OF ISRAEL. 221
bit. When the unity of the kingdom ceased, and with it
unity of worship, the idea of Israel as " the people of God "
either disappeared altogether, or was reduced to such small
proportions that it seemed but the shadow of its former glory.
In the northern kingdom there prevailed a sensuous adoration
of Jehovah,1 along with actual worship of Baal and Ashera, a
worship which rapidly developed under the influence of the
victorious neighbour peoples.2 The powerful guilds of prophets
that had flourished under the leadership of Elijah and Elisha
had perished. The kings of Israel, who looked at things from
a purely political standpoint, could no longer tolerate such
fanatical advocates of Jehovah. We now meet with prophets
of a different stamp. These perceive that it is impossible
for the people to remain longer in the religious vagueness
which had hitherto satisfied them, and that deliverance can
be achieved only by the restoration of national unity, and by
adherence to the spiritual, non-idolatrous worship of Jehovah
at Jerusalem.
To these men Baal, as a name of God, becomes unendur
able, and every comparison of the religion of Jehovah with
the Semitic nature-religion a sin.3 For that very reason,
however, their work in the northern kingdom is no longer
encouraged but hindered. Henceforth they labour at great
personal risk, and encounter many obstacles.4 Most of them
come, though only for a time, from Judah, in order to make
a last effort to save the degraded sister-kingdom.5 In the
southern kingdom we see civil mishaps of every sort, perhaps
1 In Gilgal, Bethel, Dan, and Beersheba in Judah, Hos. viii. 4, 5,x. 5 ; Amos
iv. 5, v. 5, viii. 14. Amos and Hosea do not reckon it a worshipping of Jehovah
at all. For them Beth-El has become Beth-Aven. But the high priest at Bethel
is called Amaziah, that is to say, he is a priest of Jehovah. On the religious
Syncretism which Hosea takes for granted, cf. Duhm, p. 128 f.
2 Hos. i.-iii., iv. 11 ff., ix., xi. 2, xiii. 1.
8 Hos. iv. 11, viii. 5, xiii. 1, 2, xiv. 4.
4 E.g. Hos. iv. 4 ; Amos vii. 10 ff. ; Zech. xi. 4 ff.
5 So Amos vii. 14, cf. i. 1 ; Zech. xi. 4, 17. On the other hand, Hosea appears
to belong by birth to northern Israel (l. 3-11, v. 1, xi. 1, xii. 1, etc.).

222 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
even temporary subjection to Israel,1 but nevertheless a
continued attachment, not only to the old ideal of religion
in David's family, which once more possessed, in rulers like
Uzziah and Jotham, good vigorous members, but also to the
non-idolatrous worship of God in the temple at Jerusalem.2
This city now begins to prove itself more and more
the all-powerful centre of the little kingdom, although,
it is true, idolatry raises its shameless head close beside
the temple in which the name of Jehovah is named, and
moral aberrations of every sort make their appearance in
the prosperous capital as it grows into a great commercial
centre. It was a time of sad declension, when it was very natural
that men should either look back with longing eyes to
the glories of the past or turn an eager gaze towards the
ideal of a better future. The ancient glory of the nation
was now described with special delight. The history of
the patriarchs and of the Mosaic age was by this time
completed, at least as regards its older constituent parts. By
the union of B and C these were now put, at any rate
for the time being, into a finished literary form. The
prophets of this age, too, such as Hosea, show a particularly
lively interest in the happy time of Israel's youth.3
The figure of David, the great hero-king, was now painted
in brighter colours than ever, his youth especially being
surrounded with a halo of poetry. The great men of
God in the northern kingdom, Elijah and Elisha, were now
set before the eyes of the people in splendid pictures of
marvellous sublimity. And at the same time men began,
with a glow of ardour never felt before, to hope that still
more glorious days were in store for Israel in an age of ideal
perfection ; and it was with the house of David, despite its
1 .ET.gr. 2 Kings viii. 20 ff, xii. 17f., xiv. 11 ff, etc.
2 On the merits of the priesthood at Jerusalem, cf. Kuenen, i. 337 ff.
3 Hos. x. 9, xi. 1, xii. 3f. (Isa. i. 9f.).

ASSYRIA. 223
present low estate, that this hope became ever more and
more closely associated.1
It was certainly a time when it was still possible to hope
that the salvation of the future might develop, without violent
revolution, out of existing circumstances, and that after a long
succession of divine punishments, and especially after the
break-up of the despotic monarchy in the north, a new Davidic
age might again arrive. In the northern kingdom men
looked with hopeful eyes to the southern, which was at times
at least in a relatively healthier condition ; 2 while in the
southern they hoped to see, as soon as ever the repentance
and faith of the people rendered the mercy of God possible,
the sun of the new era shining out from behind the passing
clouds of divine chastisement. As long as the enemies of the
two Israelitish kingdoms were only petty States, really not a
whit more powerful than either of the two taken separately ;
as long as Egypt was reduced to impotence by internal
dissension, and the petty neighbouring kingdoms mentioned
by Amos were the only foes,3 the terribly serious, nay the
inexorable, character of the divine judgment was never fully
realised. It was very different when, in the plenitude of
imperial power, Assyria confronted Israel on the stage of
history. It then became evident to all who were taught of
God that God's ways with this people were rapidly nearing
the final catastrophe, that the Israel of the present had been
weighed in the balances and found wanting.
2. The first time Assyria played an important part in
Israel's history was when king Pul (Tiglath-Pileser) turned
his victorious arms against Menahem, king of Israel, about
768 B.C.4 This first blow did the northern kingdom irrepar
able damage. It never recovered its former strength.
Compelled to take sides with one or other of the world
1 Hos. iii. 5, vi iff, xiii. 14, xiv. 1 ff. ; Amos ix. 11 ff.
q Hos. iii. 5, iv. 15 ; Amos ix. 11 ; Zech. ix. 7 ff.
3 Amos i. 3 ff., vi 2 ff. 4 2 Kings xv. 19 ; 1 Chron. xv. 6-17.

224 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
empires, it oscillated with pitiable indecision between Assyria
and Egypt, and thus brought down on itself all the more
heavily the suspicion and vengeance of the great king.
Internal dissensions shattered the national strength. The
wildest disorder, terrible degeneracy, and utter dissolution of
social bonds, were the results of this party strife, and of the
State's short-sighted and vacillating policy.1 To protect them
selves from Assyria, the people entered into alliance with
their former foes the Syrians, and breaking the peace with
Judah, which it had taken so much trouble to make, they
began a civil war.2 The vengeance of Tiglath-Pileser was
sudden and fell.3 The northern kingdom was given up by
Jehovah.4 Ephraim had to die because of his apostasy from
the true God.5 Henceforth the holy people was in Judah alone.
By the victorious campaign of Shalmaneser, an end was put to
the convulsive struggles of the dying state.6 Samaria fell into
the hands of his successor, Sargon, at the very commencement
of his reign. Death set in, that is, the dissolution of the
State, and then mortification, — the scattering by exile of the
individual atoms. That the mass of the lower classes remained
behind, and subsequently formed the material for "Judaising"
Galilee, and that under Assyrian suzerainty the country had still
a certain autonomy, has no bearing on the religion of Israel.
Ephraim, however, although actually dead, still lived on in
the hopes of the best. At a later stage, when the time of
Judah's suffering began, men like Jeremiah and Ezekiel turned
their eyes with special expectation and love towards that
noble branch of Joseph which had been sold to the Gentiles,
but must be again won back. Even Hosea could not bring
himself to believe that the God who loved Ephraim would
pronounce upon His people a final judgment of rejection.7

1 E.g. Hos. iv. 8 ff, vii. ff. ; Zech. xi. 8 ff. 3 Isa. vii.-xi.
3 2 Kings xv. 29. 4 Zech. xi. 9 ff. 6 Hos. xiii. 1 ff.
• 2 Kings xvii. 3 ff.
7 Jer. iii. 10 ff. , xxxi. 9, 15 ; Ezek. xxxvii. ; of. Hos. xi. 8, xiv. 2 ff.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELIGION. 225
Meantime the southern kingdom is in a plight almost
equally sad. The remains of ancient power which had been
wisely strengthened and husbanded by Uzziah and Jotham
are quickly lost under the childish and profligate rule of Ahaz.2
While Jehovah is outwardly worshipped, idolatry and super
stition of every sort grow rampant. Childish levity goes
hand in hand with faint-heartedness and unbelief.8 Even
the appearance of independence is purchased only by shame
ful submission to the demands of the Assyrian empire.
The son of David becomes an Assyrian vassal.4 Hence
Micah prophesies that even here no deliverance is possible
save through death, while Isaiah foretells at least a sifting of
the most terrible kind, when the land would be made waste
and desolate.5 Here also the end seems near.
Nevertheless in this case the end neither would nor could
come as yet. In this small, humiliated, degraded people there
were still at work forces of so powerful and divine a character
that the old trunk could once more show signs of life. Hence
Amos and Hosea already looked to Judah, full of hope and
sympathy. But it is pre-eminently men like Isaiah who now
become the saviours of the people. For the development of
religion, this time of danger and distress, a time that stripped
the splendid covering off many things hitherto greatly prized,
proved to be of the very greatest and most far-reaching im
portance. Turning away from merely outward worship,
which was seen to be but a worthless, hypocritical, and even
blasphemous caricature, when combined, as it had been,
with unblushing disloyalty to Jehovah, people began to have
their attention directed to that which alone gives value to
worship — to the worshipper's disposition, honesty, and faith.
The mere outward performance of sacred rites had proved
empty and hollow, where it could continue its hypocritical
1 2 Kings xiv. 21 ff., xv. 33 ff. 2 2 Kings xvi. (Isa. vii. ff).
3 Isa. i. 1 ff. ; 2 Kings xvi. 2 f. 4 2 Kings xvi. 7 ff.
5 Micah iii. 12 ; cf. Isa. vii. 17, 20 ; xxviii.-xxxii.
VOL. I. P

226 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
existence alongside of a degraded type of character. Hence
the prophets insisted on singleness of moral purpose, on
mercy and truth, and taught that the value of every indi
vidual act depends on what is the centre of the inner life.
Old popular customs were transformed into prophetic law,
which found incomparable expression in the moral teaching
of the great prophets, and afterwards in Deuteronomy. For
certain as it is that the earlier times were not under law in
the Levitical sense, it is equally clear from the opposition of
the oldest prophets that in its sacred customs, Israel had
attached paramount value to feasts, sacrifices, vows, national
assemblies, and forms of purification — not to precision of
ritual observance in the sense of the Levitical law, but to the
richness and splendour of the gifts, and to the magnificence of
the feasts.1 Hosea made it a matter of serious reproach
that the priests gave the first place, not to the " Thorah,"
i.e. instruction regarding God's will, but to sacrifices.2
Resistance to the idolatry that was gradually gaining the
upper hand, to the idols that were, through the external
splendour of their worshippers, triumphing as it were over
Jehovah, forced the better minds in Israel to a clearer
consciousness that their own God was so different from the
other gods as to be the only God. What had hitherto been
rather an intuitive perception now became a doctrine clearly
and consciously held. This age also witnessed the disappear
ance of the last trace of the theory that the God of Israel
was merely higher in rank than the heathen gods, and that
in other respects these were in the same category as He. It
is in the sayings and writings of the great prophets that a
full and clear exposition of monotheism is really found.
Those who now saw in Jehovah nothing more than the
1 Cf. e.g. Amos iv. 5 (thank-offerings of that which is leavened), v. 21, viii.
10 ; Hos. ii. 13, iii. 4, v. 6 ff., vi. 6, viii. 13, ix. 3, 4, 5, xii. 10 ; Isa. i. 11 ff.,
xxix. 1, xxx. 29 f. ; Zech. ix. 7 ; Micah vi. 6 ; Nah. ii. 1 ; Jer. vii. 21 ; Joel
i. 9ff., ii. 14.
2 Hos. iv. 6 ff., viii. 1.

MONOTHEISM. 227
national God could no longer consider Him mightier than the
gods of Assyria. A choice had therefore to be made between
real conscious monotheism and open worship of the victorious
heathen gods. This monotheistic piety did not as yet, it is
true, prevent the use of expressions due to theoretical
particularism. In this respect the phraseology of the prophets
is very free, just as they never hesitate to adorn their story
with old mythological memories and metaphors.1 Indeed, the
use of such language continued as long as Israel retained a
frank religious diction, instinct with life. Hence the God of
Israel is extolled in choral song as the God who sits enthroned
upon the cherubim, who inhabits the praises of Israel, who
brought the people up out of Egypt, and who dwells on Mount
Zion.2 Faithfulness to Him is the first and great command
ment. Every lapse of the people into idolatry is adultery.3
It is interesting to observe how, although Jeremiah considers
the gods of the heathen to be no gods, he nevertheless praises
their worshippers because they at least remain faithful to their
own deities. In other words, the giving-up of the worship practised
by one's fathers is in itself represented as impiety.4 In like
manner, even in the prophetic period, the existence of other
Elohim, worshipped by other nations, is not expressly denied.
Moab is called the people of Chemosh, Ammon the people
of Milcom.5 The host of heaven, as is said in Deuteronomy,
God apportioned to all the peoples, but Israel He chose for
Himself.8 And according to the brilliant correction by de
Goeje, it is said in Deut. xxxii. 8, 9, that the Most High
divided and allotted the nations according to the number of
the sons of God.7 Even in the post-exilic Book of Ruth, to
return to the people of Moab is the same as to return to
1 So e.g. Job xxvi. 12 f. (Rahab, the fleeing serpent).
2 Hos. xii. 10, xiii. 4 ; Micah iv. 5 ; Joel iv. 17 ; Ps. xxii. 4 (translated on
the analogy of 1 Sam. iv. 4 ; Ps. lxxx. 2 ; Isa. xxxvii. 16).
3 E.g. Hos. i.-iii.; Ezek. xvi.; Deut. v. 6ff; Isa. i. 21 ff, ii. 6.
4 Jer. ii. 10, 11 (Dan. xi. 37 ff.) B Jer. xlviii. 46 ; xlix. 1. « Deut. iv. 19.
7 Instead of pN-|B» read ^>K. In the Clementine Homilies xviii. 4, indeed the

228 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the god of Moab, while to join Israel is to acknowledge
Jehovah.1 But the God of Israel is not only, as a matter of course,
addressed as the greatest and mightiest of the Elohim : " Who
is like unto Jehovah whose inheritance Israel is ? Who is
like unto Thee among the gods ? Where is there a nation
whose god has redeemed it to himself, who has revealed him
self to it without destroying it ? He is the great King above
all gods, the God of gods, the Lord of lords.2 The gods of
Egypt quake when, riding lightly on a cloud, He draws near
their land as judge." 3 But side by side with this naive
language which continued in ordinary use long after this date,
we also meet, from Amos onwards, with numerous undeniable
proofs that the spiritual guides of this age were beginning,
with philosophical perspicuity, to acknowledge Jehovah as a
being, in comparison with whom the other Elohim are not
gods at all, but mere phantom figures of the human spirit
and the human hand. Thus we find, in Hos. viii. 6, an
idol described as no-god, and considered as much the work of
man as its image. Baal is called " shame," while Jehovah is
spoken of as the living God.4 In Amos the idols are called
" lies," that is, beings which do not really bring help.5 In
Isaiah the idols are described as "Elilim," and indeed this
was so common a phrase that the prophet even puts it into
the mouth of an Assyrian.8 Micah ridicules idols as the
work of men's hands, and puts both gods and images in the
same category.7 But it would have been impossible for one
number seventy, as the number of the Israelites who immigrated into Egypt, is
represented at the same time as the number of the nations.
1 Ruth i. 15 ff., ii. 12.
2 Amos ix. 1 ff. ; Micah vii. 18 ; Zeph. iii. 15 ; Deut. xxxiii. 26 ; Jer. x. 6 ;
cf. Ex. xv. 11, xviii. 11 ; Deut. iii. 21, 24, iv. 32 ff., x. 17 ; 2 Sam. vii. 23 ; 1
Kings viii. 23 ; Ps. xxxv. 10, lxxvii. 14, lxxxvi. 8 (still cf. ver. 10), cxxxv. 5
(still cf. vers. 15 ff.), xcv. 3, xcvi. 4, xcvii. 9, cxxxvi. 3 ; Joel ii. 17.
3 Isa. xix. 1-3 (i. 29, ii. 18) ; Jer. xlvi. 25 (Ex. xii. 12 ; 2 Sam. vii. 22).
4 Hos. ix. 10, ii. 1. 6 Amos ii. 1; ix. 6. 6 Isa. ii. 18, 20, x. 10, xix. 1, 3.
7 Micah v. 12 ; cf. Isa. ii. 18.

MONOTHEISM. 229
holding the old view of polytheism to ridicule in this fashion
even gods that he himself refused to worship.
Accordingly, in the prophets of the Assyrian period, Jehovah
is already represented as One, beside whom there is no other,
and, save whom, there is no Rock, no God.1 In Amos it is
Jehovah who brought Aram out of Kir as well as Israel out
of Egypt, to whom the children of Israel are as the Ethiopians,
and who will punish Moab for acting cruelly to the king of
Edom.2 How can any one be anxious to weaken such
passages by pointing to " the more fully developed conception
Amos has of God," as if we had to investigate anything else
than the faith of the spiritual leaders of Israel, and as if
Amos regarded his teaching as something novel ! And how
can any one imagine that in such sayings the government of
the world is looked at solely in connection with Israel, when
it is clear that the matter in question is the mutual relation
ship of two foreign peoples and the national destinies of the
Syrians and the Philistines! Similarly in Zech. ix. 1, Jehovah
is spoken of as He who has His eyes on all mankind. Isaiah
represents Jehovah as using even Assyria at His pleasure,
just as a workman uses his tools.3 The question is put into
the Assyrian's own mouth, " Have I come up against this land
without the permission of Jehovah ? " 4 In Micah, Jehovah is
called the Lord of the whole earth,5 as He is also in fact the
Creator of the universe, at whose work all the sons of God
shouted for joy.6 And that the hope of Jehovah revealing
Himself as Lord of the world, as God over all nations, as it is
put in Isa. xix— xxiii., was also quite common in the preceding
age, we may well conclude after comparing Isa. ii. with Micah iv.
Indeed, both of these passages point to an older source.
In those dark days, when it seemed as if the hard realities
of the present would annihilate the old joyous confidence that
1 Hos. xiii. 4 ; Isa. xxxvii. 20 ; 2 Kings xix. 15.
2 Amos ii. 1, ix. 7. 3 Isa. x. 5, 15. 4 Isa. xxxvi. 10.
8 Micah iv. 13. " Gen. ii. ; Ps. xxxiii. 6 ; Job xxxviii. 7.

230 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
victory and happiness would be the lot of those who remained
true to God, the inexhaustible vigour of this religion reasserted
itself. Believers triumphantly maintained that all the happi
ness of the wicked is but a phantom show, compared with
the true prosperity of the godly ; and that even where one
cannot see, one may still, despite the sore conflict and
temptations too great for human strength,1 hold fast to the
love and righteousness of God. When they looked back,
these men saw that Israel's golden age had also been the age
of fidelity to Jehovah. All suffering was seen to be punish
ment for idolatry. When they looked forward, the dark back
ground of the present only made the hope shine out all the
more brightly that Israel and the family of David would
obtain a complete salvation.
3. In the kingdom of Judah there were thus powerful
divine forces constantly at work. Indeed, religion was
developed and deepened without innovation and without
excitement by the spirit of Mosaism itself, which was a
living force in the hearts of the men of God. These forces
were so strong that they were not merely capable of surviving
the death of Judah, to be the seeds of a better time, but they
were actually able, before that death occurred, once more to
beget a new life ; and they made a period of deliverance
possible, which in many respects reminds us of the fair
prospects with which the nation started. And to this possi
bility the history of the world contributed.
Once more this ancient nation got a new lease of life.
Upheld and guided by the spirit of the great prophets by
whom he was surrounded, Hezekiah, a worthy descendant of
David, undertook to reform the nation in the spirit in which
it was founded by God. Not yet with definite reference to
any codified law of Moses, like Josiah afterwards, but still, in
faithful obedience to the traditional statutes and ordinances
ascribed to Moses, he purified his people from the rankest
1 Job, if the book belongs to this age.

HEZEKIAH. 231
growths of a corrupt worship and of impure customs. He
probably did away with the pillars and the Asheras. At any
rate he broke in pieces the brazen serpent, which was kept in
the temple probably as symbolical of the god of healing.1
True, even this king was at first sadly lacking in trustful
devotion and in decision of character. However earnestly
Isaiah might warn him against making treaties with Egypt,
and rebelling against Assyria, thus endangering the breathing-
time granted to the people for rest and recovery, — however
distinctly he might promise that God would, in His
providence, without any such means, point out the way
of deliverance,2 the king followed the advice of his nobles
and the lying utterances of false prophets, and broke his
oath. But when Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded the
country, Hezekiah's courage failed him. In the most abject
way he sued for peace. Then the tide of fortune turned.
When the Assyrian proved treacherous, and sought to take
possession of the country, even after the tribute which he
had imposed had been paid, Isaiah became convinced that
God would not now refuse to rescue His people from so
insolent a tyrant, and counselled a resolute resistance. Once
more miracles were seen like those of early days. On the
soil of the Holy Land the army of the haughty Sennacherib
was annihilated. God's scourge, which had raised itself
against its own Master, was broken.8 Judah was once more
free. God, whose presence appears to the prophet Isaiah
so closely bound up with Mount Zion, had, in very truth,
defended His holy city.
The people could now live in their own fashion, under
their own laws and their own God. Indeed, even as regards
the remnants of Ephraim, memories of the time of national
1 2 Kings xviii. 3 ff. In this reform the Assyrians see a dethronement of the
god of the country which must arouse his anger. 2 Kings xviii. 22.
2 Cf. especially Isa. xxviii. -xxxii.
3 Isa. x. 5ff, xxxvi. ff. Cf. Judah und die assyrische Weltmacht, eine
Quellenuntersuchung von Asmus Soerensen, 1885.

232 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
unity seem to have revived. However much of what is
stated about this relationship may be due to the popular
tendency to embellish such facts, it appears certain that
Hezekiah, like Josiah afterwards, having succeeded in adding
a part of ancient Ephraim to his own kingdom, governed it
from Jerusalem. Above all, however, every feeling of enmity
to the sister-people, with which there had been such frequent
feuds, vanished. Henceforward hope and love embraced the
whole nation. Ephraim and Judah were no longer rivals, but
one people — God's people Israel.
For religion, too, the experiences of such a time must have
been of more than ordinary importance. Israel's salvation,
Israel's covenant was, as it were, confirmed anew. It had
been shown that " this city God had founded to be His own
abode." x It had been proved that before God's holy arm all
the hostile efforts of the world-power were as nothing — that
Jehovah alone was God. It had been proved that God, in His
mercy, was ready to remit His chastisements whenever their
cause had been removed by contrition and penitence. It had
been shown that little Judah possessed in its law, its faith, its
worship, a bulwark which could resist and drive back the
stream of the world-power; and that, on the other hand,
human calculation and trust in the help of man invariably
proved a tottering staff, a fatal refuge. All these experiences,
through which that age had to pass, shine out upon us from
the glorious words of its great prophets with ever new force.
The true supramundane power of the kingdom of God is
indeed not yet recognised. It is not the victory, through
suffering and death, of the servant of God that is the content
of this faith, but the vanquishing of the world-power through
God's working of miracles. But we may well say that,
humanly speaking, the respite of a century and a half granted
to Judah made the further development and final completion
of Israel's religion possible.
1 Ps. xlvi. xlviii. ; Isa. xxxvii. 22 f.

MANASSEH.

233

4. And yet the men of God must have seen clearly enough
that this time of prosperity was a mere temporary respite,
not the actual beginning of the new and perfect era. This
was not a beginning out of which a permanent and perfect
life could be developed. Hezekiah himself, with all his
excellent qualities, seems to have been weak, selfish, and
full of worldly vanity.1 And behind him stood the figure of
Manasseh — a man as cowardly as he was tyrannical, as
hostile to the true worship and to those that observed it
as he was despicably weak in his dealings with the world.
The reformation of Hezekiah, which did away with the
Asheras, the pillars, etc., was followed by a violent reaction.
The state of religion which the prophets of Jehovah abhorred
(Moloch, the host of heaven, unchaste worship) continued to
be legal all through the reign of Manasseh and of his son.
The prophets who did not keep silent on this matter had to
endure a bloody persecution. And the picture, too, which
they give us of the people is hopeless and gloomy. Of the
high tone which characterised the men of God there is
little trace in the people. But there is all the more deceit,
oppression, selfishness, violence, immorality ; it is a people
"of unclean lips." Ere long the worship of the queen of
heaven became so widely prevalent as to be actually like
a new national religion. Idolatry was practised in the very
temple, and children were ruthlessly sacrificed to Moloch, as
if that were the religion of Israel.2 Hence the keynote of
1 2 Kings xviii. 1 4 ff. ; Isa. xxxix. Iff, 8.
2 Jer. vii. 30, 31, xi. 10 ff., xxxii. 35, xliv. 15 ff. ; Ezek. viii. We must,
with Kuenen, distinguish the Moloch here referred to from the Ammonite
Milcom, and regard him as a Canaanitish deity (1 Kings xi. 5, 33 ; cf. 7 ;
2 Kings xxiii. 13). Infant sacrifice may have been early introduced even into
the national customs of Israel, from an ancient Semitic practice, in which case
the act of Ahaz was nothing new but merely gave fresh eclat to the old habit
(2 Kings xvii. 11). Hence those who worshipped Moloch might consider that
they were entitled to worship Jehovah also (Ezek. xxiii. 38 ; Lev. xviii. 21,
xx. 3). Indeed, in the oldest sources of the Semitio religion, the god who be
came Jehovah for the Israelites may not have been different from the one who
became Moloch for the Canaanites. But since the time when Israel and

234 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
prophecy towards the close of the Assyrian period could not
be one of joyous hope for the present or for the immediate
future. The great deliverance had indeed shown that, for
His covenant's sake, God would still espouse, with all His
old power of working miracles, the cause of His already
condemned people ; that if it would only return to Him,
in faith and penitence, He would graciously forgive and
repent Him of the evil. But a glance at the present, with
those divinely-guided eyes of theirs, showed the prophets
clearly enough that this could not yet be their rest ; that
divine judgment was only postponed, not averted, and that
the ways of God with this people could not reach their goal
save by leading them through the valley of death.
Consequently, even in Hezekiah's days, a new period of
suffering is already in prospect. Peace and prosperity are to
continue only so long as Hezekiah lives ; and in the figure
of the new world-power just rising above the horizon he is
shown the bearer of God's chastening rod.1 Even the
humiliation by Assyria was not yet the final one. True,
Sennacherib did not again attack Hither- Asia, but he was still
a powerful warrior-prince and conqueror. And Esarhaddon
unquestionably made these districts once more the goal of
a victorious campaign.2 According to Chronicles a king of
Assyria carried Manasseh himself away into a captivity, from
which he returned a changed man. And the fact would suit
the circumstances of the time very well, although one must
unhesitatingly assert, with Graf, that the thing cannot
possibly have happened exactly as is related in Chronicles.8
the Hamites separated there was at any rate no kinship between Jehovah and
Moloch, not to speak of identity. Moloch is always represented as a hostile
deity and his worship as Canaanitish immorality (Ezek. xvi. 20, xx. 30, xxiii. 32 ;
Lev. xviii. 21, xx. 2-5 ; B. J. lvi. 9, lvii. 5 ; cf. Kuenen, " Jahve en Moloch"
(Theol. Tijdschr. 1868, 539 ff, against Oort).
1 Isa. xxxix. 6 ff. 2 2 Kings xvii. 24 ff. (Inscriptions).
3 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 f. The picture drawn by the Chronicler does not agree
with Jer. xv. 4 ff. ; 2 Kings xxiii. 26, xxiv. 3. The defeat of Manasseh by
Assurbanipal, or his voluntary submission, is perhaps historical. Here, too,

THE PROPHET.

235

The reign of Manasseh, at all events, irrevocably decided
that the reformation of Judah under Hezekiah was only
transient, a mere respite. The wounds which Manasseh
inflicted upon the kingdom of God were so deep that even
the better will of a Josiah could no longer heal them.
Assyria, it is true, was not to execute the death-warrant of
Judah. That empire was itself going gradually down to
destruction. New peoples continued to fight for the
supremacy till, after a long struggle, the haughty capital
of Nineveh finally succumbed. Nevertheless the new world-
ruler, God's servant Nebuchadnezzar, was all the more certain
to execute His counsel.
Hence in this period there lies a wealth of most fruitful ideas
by which the old religion of Israel was regenerated, spiritualised,
and strengthened. Men, such as God gave to that age, Israel
had not seen since Moses and Samuel. When the old vener
ated house of God fell, the pillars of the new spiritual temple
which was to outlast that fall were already a-building.

CHAPTER XIV.
PERSONAGES OF INFLUENCE IN THE ASSYRIAN PERIOD.
The Prophet.
Literature. — Heinrich Ewald, Bie Propheten des Alten
Bundes, 1840, voL i pp. 1—64. Knobel, Prophetismus der
Hebraer, 1851, 2 vols. Tholuck, Bie Propheten und ihre
Weissagungen, Abdr. 2, Gotha 1861. Kuenen, Be Profeten
en de Profetie onder Israel, 1 and 2, 1875. W. Robertson
Smith, The Prophets of Israel and their Place in History,
the Chronicler has edited old sources in his own edifying way. Manasseh's sub
mission probably coincided with the quelling of the rebellion that had arisen in
Babylon, after which King Assurbanipal himself resided for a time in that city.

236 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
1882. Oehler, Ueber das Verhdltniss der alttestamentlichen
Prophetic zur heidnischen Mantik, 1861 (Gliickiuunschschreiben)
— also in Herzog's Realencyclopddie in the articles " Propheten
thum des Alten Testamentes," and " Weissagung '' (2nd ed.
v. Orelli). Kiiper, Prophetenthum des Alten Testamentes,
1869. Karl Kohler, Ber Prophetismus der Hebraer und
die Mantik der Griechen in ihrem gegenseitigen Verhdltnisse,
1860. Dillmann, Ueber die Propheten des alten Bundes nach
ihrer politischen Wirksamkeit, 1869 (Festrede). Eduard Graf,
" Ueber die besonderen Offenbarungen Gottes," etc. (Theol.
Stud. u. Krit, 1859, 2, p. 227 ff, 3, p. 411 ff). Diister-
dieck, Be rei propheticae in Vetere Testamento quum universal
turn Messianae natura ethica, 1852. Steudel, " Ueber Ausle
gung der Propheten, wie sie unter treuer Wurdigung der ihren
Ausspriichen zu Grunde liegenden Idee sich gestalten wtirde "
(Tilbinger Zeitschr. f. Theologie, 1834, 1). Hengstenberg,
" Abhandlung fiber die Auslegung der Propheten " (Evan-
gelische Kirchenzeitung, 1833, 23). Cf. by the same author
Christologie des Alten Testaments, 2nd ed. iii. b. p. 158 ff.
v. Hofmann, Weissagung und Erfilllung, 2 vols., 1841, 44.
Orelli, Bie alttest. Weissagung und die Vollendung des Gottes-
reiches, 1882 [transl. (T. & T. Clark) 0. T. Prophecy of the
Consummation of the Kingdom of God]. Bredenkamp, Gesetz
und Propheten, 1881. Ad. Koster, " Wie verhalt sich in der h.
Schrift die Offenbarung zur freien Geistesthatigkeit der heiligen
Schriftsteller?" (Theol. Stud.u. Krit., 1854, 4, esp. p. 892 ff.).
Georg Hoffmann, "Versuche zu Amos" (Zeitschr. f. altt. Wiss.
iii. 87 ff). Friedr. Koster, Bie Propheten des Alten und Neuen
Testamentes nach ihrem Wesen und Wirken dargestellt, Leipz.
1838. E. v. Lassaulx, Bie prophetische Kraft der menschlichen
Seele in Bichtern und Benkern, 1838. Redslob, Ber Begriff des
Nabi oder des sogenannten Propheten bei denHebrdern,1839. J.F.
N. Land, " Over den Godsnamen mrp en den Titel K"1^ (Theol.
Tijdschr., 1868, 156 ff) Cf. Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, 96.
Umbreit, Be Veteris Testamenti prophetis clarissimis antiquis-

HISTORY OF PROPHECY.

237

simi temporis oratoribus (cf. by the same author, Einleitnng
zum Commentar zum Jesaja). Riehm, Studien und Kritiken,
1865, i. iii. 1869, ii. Baur, Geschichte der alttestamentlichen
Weissagung, vol. i. 1860, Giessen. Bertheau, "Die alttest.
Weissagung von Israels Reichsherrlichkeit" (Jahrbilcher fiir
deutsche Theologie, 1859, ii. p. 314 ff. p. 595 ff 1860, p.
486 ff. For Greek Parallels, cf. C. Fr. Hermann Lehrbuch der
gottesdienstlichen Alterlhilmer der Griechen (2nd ed* by Stark,
1858), Schomann, Griechische Alterthumer, vol. ii.
1. It was only in the Assyrian period that the primitive
figure of the "prophet" in Israel reached that stage of develop
ment at which it became clearly distinguishable from kindred
figures, and an important factor in religion. Hence this is
the place to give a consecutive account of it. Of religious
figures the earliest and most characteristic is that of the
prophet. In his spirit the Spirit of God awakens an im
mediate certainty, an inward perception of things which
elude the testimony of the senses, and which can
never be known by the meditative or speculative reason,
except as approximate probabilities; hence the essence of
a revealed religion is absolutely dependent on prophecy.
Without it we have only natural religion or philosophy.
Hence later ages could not but regard the patriarchs of
Israel, when transfigured in sacred legend, as prophetic figures.
The ancient song in Gen. xlix. 1-28 already makes Jacob-Israel
speak as a prophet ; and, in the account of B and C, Abraham
himself receives the word of God 1 " in a deep sleep," and with
" holy dread," and is actually called a prophet.2 Like the word
of the prophet, an ancestor's dying blessing has imperishable
value as " a divine saying." 8 Indeed, in the language of late
poetry, the nation itself is called God's prophet.4 But Moses

1 Gen. xv. 1, 4, 12, 13 ; cf. xlvi. 2ff in A. 2 Gen. xx. 7,
3 Gen. xxvii. 27 ff., xlviii. 14 ff.
' Ps. cv. 15 ; yet compare the very similar idea in B. J. xliv. Iff., xli. 8
xliii. 1 ff. , and in general the figure of ' ' the servant of Jehovah. "

238 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
is represented as pre-eminently a prophet, or to put it more
correctly, the prophet of Israel, like unto whom none other
ever arose, the prophet in whose ear, during the whole course
of his life-work,1 the voice of God was continually sounding.
And in like manner a continuance of prophecy after Moses
is taken for granted. Hence, in the history of Samuel, it
is looked upon as a misfortune, a sign of evil times for
Israel, that " the word of the Lord was rare in those days ;
there was no open vision."2 Consequently the prophetic
law in Deut. xviii. 15 already represents Moses, the great
man of God, as himself foretelling an uninterrupted series
of prophets whose words Israel is to obey.
And although this view may throw back the circumstances
of later times to the very beginning, it has undoubtedly a
real historical justification. Despite all the unfavourable
tendencies of the times, the Levitical priesthood certainly
succeeded in making their position as revealers of the divine
will, though originally insecure, more and more stable. By
maintaining religious ordinances, and deepening their spiritu
ality, as well as by rousing enthusiasm in Israel for the
national religion, they unquestionably did very great service.
But a regular priesthood, based on heredity and tradition, is
invariably inclined to attach undue value to the outward
observances and ritual of religion. In addition to a priest
hood, the people required a direct connection with divine things
such as prophecy alone can guarantee. Prophecy protected
Israel from the dangers of priestcraft ; and in the ages when
this religion was most highly developed, the paths of the
priestly scribe with his Thorah, and of the prophet with
his message from God, went further and further apart.
Yet, in Israel as among other nations, the offices of priest
and prophet might be combined in one individual ; and
1 Ex. xxxiii. 11 ; Hos. xii. 15 ; cf. Num. xii. 6 (A) ; Deut. xxxiv. 10. In A
this idea is already held without any real living appreciation of prophecy (Num.
xii. 6). 2 1 Sam. iii. 1.

HISTORY OF PROPHECY. 239
probably there were, as among the Greeks, certain families in
which the prophetic faculty was particularly strong.
Later writers represent Moses and his contemporaries as
being of quite the same type as the prophets of later days.
By the side of Moses his sister Miriam, too, appears as a
prophetess.1 Indeed, in an outburst of prophetic self-
sufficiency she dares to say to Moses, Doth not God speak
through us also ? 2 In like manner the spirit of prophecy,
proceeding from Moses takes possession of the seventy elders
of Israel. On hearing of it Moses gives utterance to the
joyful wish, "Would God that all the Lord's people were
prophets ! " 8 We also see prophets in the interval between
Moses and Samuel, — God sent them daily to His people.4 In
reality, however, Moses was hardly a prophet, in the sense
in which Isaiah or Jeremiah was. He was liker an Elijah.
And the prophets, of whom there was certainly no scarcity in
those days, we must think of as more nearly akin to the seers
and soothsayers of the neighbouring peoples than to the men
of God of the Assyrian period. This is shown us by the
figure of Deborah, at once a wife and a heroine, to whom, as
she sat under her palm-tree between Ramah and Bethel, the
children of Israel came "for judgment."5 Such, too, is the
figure of Samuel at his first meeting with Saul,6 and such the
companies of ecstatic prophets in Saul's time. At any rate
their activity was due to purely personal impulse ; it varied
with the religious condition of the people, and was indeed an
index of it. Prior to Samuel's day, at all events, prophecy was
not a regularly organised religious force, with a definite form
of its own. There were prophets, but not as yet, in the sense
of the later period, a prophetic class. This class goes back,
as most scholars suppose, to Samuel. In the early recollee-
1 Ex. xv. 20, A. a Num. xii. 2 (A?). 8 Num. xi. 25 ff.
4 Jer. vii. 25. ' Judg. iv. 4, 5.
6 The stories of the prophets in Judg. vi. 8, 1 Sam. ii. 27, have plainly the
character of later unhistorical accounts.

240 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
tions of Israel this man was known as an infallible prophet,1
whom posterity considered a second Moses.2 He is in all
probability to be credited with founding the schools of the
prophets, and establishing a prophetic class, which obtained
a definite and important position among the various parties
in the State. In order to check and defeat opposition
to the religion of Moses these prophets were ready to avail
themselves of every means, often even of violence. It has
been recently maintained that the prophetic guilds in Samuel's
time were in nowise closely akin to those existing at a later
date in the northern kingdom, the leaders of which were
Elijah and Elisha, and that Samuel himself was not closely
connected with the companies of ecstatic Nebiim which
owed their origin to the Harnite religion,3 and which are
mentioned in his days. But neither assertion is supported
by any actual proof, however certain it is that a man like
Samuel must have been different from the ordinary members
of prophetic guilds, and that a few centuries must have
wrought great changes in these institutions.
A reason for attributing the schools of the prophets to
Samuel is afforded by the fact that they are first mentioned
in his time, and that they are found in those country districts
and towns where Samuel's own influence was strongest.
They took their rise among the tribes of Ephraim and Ben
jamin, at the shrines of Ramah, Bethel, Gibeah, Gilgal, and
Mizpah, as well as in the district round about Jericho.4
Besides, Samuel could discover no better means of further-
i 1 Sam. iii. 20, iv. 1.
2 1 Sam. viii. 7, ix. 6, 19-27 ; later xv. 16-30. Then 1 Chron. ix. 22, xxvi.
28, xxix. 29 ; Acts iii. 24 (vrdvris §e oi vpoQvTai «« 2z.fi.ovjx).
3 From the remark in 1 Sam. ix. 9 that the later Nebiim (D,N'I33) were
formerly called Roim (D^l) Dutch scholars have inferred that the Nebiim
were a guild of fanatics directly under Hamite influences, formerly unknown in
Israel. How little that suits the context and the general use, in Israel, of the
word "Nabi"; cf, among others, Kbnig, Offenbarungsbegriff des A.T., i. 63 ff.
4 1 Sam., vii. 16, 17, viii. 1, 2, 4, x. 5, 13, xix. 18 ff. ; cf. 2 Kings ii. 1-5,
iv. 38.

HISTORY OF PROPHECY. 241
ing that union of Jehovah's people at which he aimed than
the organisation of prophetic enthusiasm.
To have been a member of such a guild was, of course,
not an indispensable condition for doing the work of a
prophet in later life. Elisha himself, for instance, had never
been, so far as appears, a member of such a guild when he
was suddenly called away from the position of a well-to-do
farmer.1 Still it was the rule for " the sons of the
prophets," or " the prophets " 2 as they are also termed, to
live together under the superintendence of distinguished
prophetic personages called their fathers,8 — a title which
is also used in Proverbs to describe the similar relationship
between teacher and scholar. Their numbers appear to have
been considerable. Ahab assembles four hundred, Obadiah
hides a hundred, and fifty are sent out from Jericho to search
for Elijah.4 In the towns they lived in enclosed cloister
like buildings.5 Sometimes their establishments were set
up in quite out-of-the-way places.6 It is clear they did
not refuse to engage in ordinary secular occupations,

1 1 Kings xix. 19.
2 D^aan ija, 1 Kings xx. 35 ; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 7, 15, vi. 1, ix. 1 ; D'lJU,
2 Kings v. 22.
3 So Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, " before whom they sat," t'.e. under whose care
and superintendence they were, 1 Sam. xix. 20 ; 2 Kings ii. 7, 12, 15, iv. 1, 38,
vi. 1-5. For the expression, cf. 2 Kings ii. 12; Ps. xiv. 11 ; Prov. i. 8, 10, 15,
ii. 1, iv. 1, 10. The passage, 1 Sam. x. 12, I cannot possibly understand, with
Oehler, as if the man meant to say, " Have they then, as contrasted with Saul, a
hereditary right ? " The question means, Who then is the head of this company
of prophets who is going to turn even Saul into »¦ prophet ? Besides, the ex
pression, " And who is their father ? " a'nd the other, " Is Saul also among the
prophets ? " are both used here simply as being old proverbial sayings. One
might rather think, with a slight alteration of the text, that the questioners
meant to express their amazement as to how and under whose teaching Saul
could have become a prophet. Sept. irP3N 'D.
4 1 Kings xviii. 4ff, xxii. 6 ; 2 Kings ii. 7.
5 The word JV13 (1 Sam. xix. 19-24, xx. 1) describes, like <UJ the building,
the school, the xomjim itself (Ew., Oehler) ; cf. besides, Isa. xxii. 1, 5, the j^J
P^n in contrast with Mount Zion.
6 2 Kings vi. 1 ff.
VOL. 1. 0

242 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
especially agriculture.1 Still that did not prevent their
being supported by the friends of the national religion,
who saw in them the best and bravest champions in the
struggle against idolatry.2 Celibacy cannot have been a rule,3
although, probably, in most cases it was submitted to during
the period of education. The outward needs and the business
affairs of these guilds were attended to by the superintend
ents, and they, in turn, employed the members in executing
any commissions or business connected with their prophetic
calling.4 Clearly the object of their living together was to arouse,
in a wider circle of gifted and sensitive youths, the enthusiasm
that would make them prophets, living fountains of religious
enthusiasm. In this enthusiasm for the religion and the
statutes of Jehovah they must all have shared. According to
the idea of the Old Testament, the spirit is communicated by
personal living contact.5 It is by the laying on of Moses'
hands that the spirit of wisdom comes upon Joshua.6 A
double portion of the spirit of Elijah, that is to say, the
portion of the first-born, was given to Elisha, because he
did not leave his master till the last, till he had witnessed
his translation and received his mantle.7 Even a Saul could
not resist the enthusiasm with which he was seized on
meeting a band of inspired prophets.8 Hence the Old
Testament certainly means us to believe that people joined
these guilds under the conviction that they would them
selves be brought under the influence of the prophetic
spirit and become messengers of God.
It is this personal intercourse with men enthusiastically reli-
1 2 Kings iv. 39.
2 2 Kings iv. 42. First-fruits for "the man of God," that is, almost like
a gift to the sanctuary.
8 2 Kings iv. 1. ' 2 Kings iv. iff, 38, 42, vi. iff, ix. 1, etc.
5 Num. xi. 25. ° Deut. xxxiv. 9.
7 2 Kings ii. 9, 15. (According to Ewald, two parts, Deut. xxi. 17, certainly
not the double spirit. )
8 1 Sam. x. 6-11, xix. 20-24.

HISTORY OF PROPHECY. 243
gious — hardly real teaching in our sense of the term — that we
must regard as the chief means of attaining the object in view.
We know, however, that religious music, probably combined
with choral dancing, was practised as an effective means of
arousing enthusiasm.1 We must bear in mind what an im
portant part music played in education, e.g. among the Greeks,
and how much attention was still paid to it by the philo
sophical schools as a branch of popular education. Even
according to the later narrative, music was the means of
banishing " the evil spirit from God." 2 Such music and
dancing overpowered even the most obstinate natures. And
it may not be out of place to refer here to the modern East,
where the pious ecstasy of fakirs and dervishes is, in fact,
kept up by dance and song. It is also quite natural to suppose
that the arts of speaking and writing would be taught. This
would explain the peculiar cast of prophetic speech, with its
half-poetic, half-oratorical style.3
The period during which schools of the prophets are
mentioned embraces somewhere about two centuries, from
the time of Samuel onwards. Under the dynasties of Ahab
and Jehu they are seen to be the very heart and pith of the
national theocratic party in the northern kingdom. When
this kingdom perished, they disappeared, or, at any rate,
lost their importance. In the southern kingdom Amos
certainly points to the later existence of such prophetic
guilds;4 but they do not appear to have had any great
standing. The splendid service in the capital, which
attracted to itself all the national interest, told heavily
against them.
During this period we must picture to ourselves a great
variety of prophetic phenomena. Men like Samuel, Gad,
Nathan, and Elisha are very different from excited com
panies of inspired fanatics. But this difference is not more
1 1 Sam. x. 5ff., xix. 20 ; 2 Kings iii. 15. 3 1 Sam. xvi. 16, 23, xix. 9.
8 1 Chron. xxix. 29 ; 2 Chron. ix. 29. 4 Amos vii. 14.

244 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
surprising than the fact that the same person, Samuel, should
be a soothsayer of the ordinary type, and also a great man
of God.1 We have to do with a period of contrasts and of
naive developments. During this whole period the struggle
for the supremacy of Jehovah in Israel was carried on by
external means, by rousing into enthusiasm tolerably numer
ous bodies of men. Prophecy is a fighting power in the
State. This is its heroic age, the time when Nathan decides
which dynasty is to rule in Judah ; when Elijah, like a second
Moses,2 fights with fire and sword against foreign worship ;
and when Elisha gives the kingdoms of Syria and Ephraim
new reigning families.
In this prophetic period the classical personality is
Samuel himself. Then come his contemporaries and suc
cessors, the royal counsellors, Gad and Nathan, who direct
the great career of David. The later prophets are as
frequently the opponents as the friends of their respective
kings. The originals of this militant prophecy are Elijah
and Elisha, whose history is given us in a special document,
so wreathed in a garland of legend, that it is now scarcely
possible to determine with anything like certainty what is
strictly historical. In it Elijah is the beau-ideal of prophetic
power, passion, and enthusiasm ; Elisha, the type of quiet
dignity and wise discretion.3 The prophets seem, by this time,
to have been in the habit of gathering the people regularly
round them, and, perhaps, of granting inquirers and suppliants
an audience at new moons and on Sabbaths.4
But it is not till the beginning of the eighth century
that the prophet becomes so very prominent a figure in the
religious development of Israel, that we may describe this
period as the prophetic period proper, — the period during
1 1 Sam. ix. 7ff. 2 1 Kings xix. 8-11.
3 1 Kings xvii. 1, 4, 14, xviii. 37 f., 41 f., xix. 6ff. ; 2 Kings ii. Iff, viii. 14,
19 ff., i. 10, 12, iii. 13, iv. 5, 29 ff., 41, 43, v. 8ff, 25 ff., vi. 7, 15 ff., 18 ff.,
viii. 10 ff., ix. Iff.
4 It appears so from 2 Kings iv. 23.

HISTORY OF PROPHECY. 245
which a new and higher phase of the Old Testament religion
is unfolded by men of prophetic spirit. In this period the
figure of the Israelitish prophet first separates itself in all
its characteristic beauty from the kindred figures among
other nations.
With the downfall of the schools of the prophets in the
northern kingdom, prophecy ceases to represent an organised
theocratic power, — " an autocracy " (Ewald), — and by acting
and ruling as such, to assert the kingly rights of Jehovah
over Israel. After this, when the prophets interfere in
the history of the nation, they do so only by uttering
words of warning, prophecy, and instruction. They wish,
by their revelation, to write upon the conscience of
the people the will of God, and thereby the way of salva
tion. Such are the phases through which prophecy passed.
However long the older and more violent form of prophecy
might continue side by side with the new and more spiritual,
still, in presence of the higher, it could not but degenerate
gradually into a caricature of what it once was. The true
prophets become teachers of the people. Their aim is to
gather out of all Israel, by means of the word, a spiritual
Israel. But all teaching, especially if its object be to point
to the future, to give directions regarding it, and to work for
it, must create for itself a permanent form, in order that it
may not pass by unheard, and be forgotten. Consequently
the prophets become writers. As teachers, they develop
the prophetic phase of the Old Testament religion, which,
while thoroughly loyal to the religion of the fathers,
nevertheless spiritualises and transforms it into something
higher. As writers, they produce the most lasting, lucid, and
important religious literature which appeared in Israel prior
to the Epistles of Paul.
During this period also it was still usual for prophets
to come out of circles in which religious enthusiasm was

246 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
fostered. Consequently, there was in prophecy an element of
tradition ; otherwise Amos could not mention as something
unusual that he was neither a prophet by profession nor the
pupil of a prophet. For he can hardly mean merely to deny
being connected with a proscribed class of foreign prophets.1
We also know that influential prophets like Jeremiah and
Ezekiel belonged to the priestly class,2 and that the more
prominent men among the prophets had in turn their scholars
and disciples,3 by whom the influence of the master was
continued more or less fully. Still it was always maintained
that this was not a necessary condition of prophetic activity.
Even from among cattle and sycamore trees the Spirit of
God called His servants.4 Only every true prophet had to
know of a time when the authoritative voice of the Lord
sounded in his ears, and put into his heart the conviction
that he had been called of God.5 A feeling of divine com
pulsion must sustain the true prophet. " If the lion growls,
who does not fear ? If the Lord speaks, who does not
prophesy ? " 6
That the literary activity of the prophets began exactly
with the oldest fragments of prophetic writing which have
come down to us, we cannot, of course, prove; in fact,
we cannot consider it even probable. Nothing could be
more natural than that men like Nathan and Gad should also
have written down along with their historical records the
divine messages they had to communicate. But that con
nected literary productions like the prophetical books which
have come down to us cannot have existed at a much earlier
date is, at any rate, made highly probable by the simple con
sideration that, had it been otherwise, there must surely have
1 Amos vii. 14.
2 Jer. i. 1 ; cf. ii. 8, 26, vi. 13, viii. 10, xx. 6, xxiii. 11, 33 f., xxvi. 7, 11, 16,
xxix. 1 ; Ezek. i. 3.
3 Isa. viii. 16 ; Jer. xxxii. 13, xxxvi. 4, 32 ; B. J. 1. 4, liv. 13.
4 Amos i. 1, vii. 14f. 6 E.g. Isa. vi. Iff.; Jer. i. 2f.; Ezek. i. Iff.
6 Amos iii. 8.

HISTORY OF PROPHECY. 247
remained, side by side with the comparatively numerous and
unbroken series of writings from the time of Amos onwards,
some unmistakable traces of the earlier ones.
In the northern kingdom also prophets continued to
appear till the very end. Still, in contrast with the position
which Elisha, for instance, had gained there, prophets were
apparently during this period looked at askance. They were
charged " not to prophesy." 1 They were, indeed, no longer in
a position to identify themselves with the national interests
of northern Israel and its reigning dynasties, as against
Judah and the house of David. They could no longer allow
the worship of Jehovah under the image of an ox to go unre-
proved, on the ground that it was, at any rate, Jehovah and
not Baal that was being worshipped. They preached the
unity of Israel under Davidic kings, and pointed to the
spiritual worship of God as it was practised in the temple
at Jerusalem. " Go, flee thee away into the land of Judah,
and eat bread there, and prophesy there ; but at Bethel thou
must not prophesy any more, for it is a royal chapel, and the
seat of the royal court,"2 are words too expressive of a
courtier-priest's abhorrence of prophetic freedom of speech to
have been spoken only to Amos. Hosea complains of
suffering the bitterest taunts, and of having traps of every
kind set for him.3 The fact that Amos comes from Judah
into the northern kingdom,4 and that the author of Zech. ix. ff.
probably also belongs by birth to Judah, and had only a
temporary influence in the northern kingdom,6 shows that
there was no longer any room there for the proper develop
ment of prophetic energy.
Still, apart from transient apparitions like Jonah,6 even in
the wildest time of revolution in northern Israel, it was
possible for a man like Hosea to arise. And the important
influence which the prophetic word could always exercise
1 Amos ii. 12. 2 Amos vii. 13. 8 Hos. ix. 7 8.
4 Amos i. 1. * Zech. ix. 9ff., xi. 13. 6 2 Kings xiv. 25.

248 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
there is shown by the noteworthy document, Zech. ix. ff.
True, God speaks there in person, telling how He guided His
people, acting the shepherd over them with the two staves, —
Union (with Judah) and Grace (peace with the Gentiles), —
and how in one month He destroyed three shepherds.1 But
all this points to the personal fate of the prophet as one who
acts in the name of God ; and what is told us about the
end of the shepherd's career, — God's scornful dismissal of
him, with a hireling's wages for his trouble, — can scarcely be
taken as purely symbolical.
The real stage for the prophets of this period is Judah
one may, indeed, say Jerusalem ; for even men out of the
landward part of Judah, like Micah from Moresheth,2 or the
author of Zech. xii. ff. (who betrays his special interest in the
country towns of Judah by the way in which he inveighs
against the pride of Jerusalem and the family of David,
and insists that the great deliverance is to be begun by
the peasantry of Judah3), lived and taught in Jerusalem.
Naturally their position varied with the varying circumstances
of the times. Under a Hezekiah or a Josiah, they were the
friends of royalty,4 and were respectfully consulted by depu
tations consisting of the highest nobles of the court.5 Under
a Manasseh, or by the factions which managed Zedekiah,6
they were threatened and persecuted. By an Ahaz, who
pretended all the while to be good and pious, they were
derided.7 Nor were hostilities by any means confined to
mere words, or to increasing the difficulty of their task. In
the opening years of Hezekiah's reign we find distinct
reminiscences of actual persecutions, which the prophets of
Jehovah had to endure because of their freedom of speech.8
The blinded multitude were very often anxious that the

1 Zech. xi. 7 ff. 2 Micah i. 1. 8 Zech. xii. 6 f.
4 Isa. xxxvii., xxxviii. ; 2 Kings xxii. 14 ff. e Isa. xxxvii. 2.
6 2 Kings xxi. 16 ; Jer. xxvi. 7 Isa. vii. 12.
9 Isa. xxix. 21, xxx. 10.

HISTORY OF PROPHECY. 249
prophets, with their far from joyous prophecies, should not be
allowed to open their lips.1 Even under Joash, Zechariah
fell a victim to the rage of the offended populace.2 But no
one had more to suffer from this unpopularity than Jeremiah.
Fellow - countrymen and kinsfolk wished to kill the hated
messenger of evil. He was treated as a traitor to his
country, openly accused, thrown into a loathsome dungeon,
and threatened with death, while other prophets were
actually executed.8 Of course the prophets who lived
during the Exile were exposed to still greater risks ; for
the State officials would naturally regard them as dangerous
agitators, who were inciting the mass of the captives against
their masters.
Nevertheless, in spite of all these drawbacks, the prophets
in Judah had a very great influence as preachers. They
could say to the authorities with impunity what no one else
could have said save at the risk of his life.4 It happened
again and again that the elders, as representing the com
munity, successfully defended, against their rulers,5 the right
of the prophets to freedom of speech. And when the worship
of Jehovah was not being openly put down, as under
Manasseh, it was always regarded as a matter of course, even
in times of grievous apostasy, that special importance should
attach to the utterances of such men as were considered
true prophets of God. Even Zedekiah sends to Jeremiah
in order to get the prophet to speak for him ; and after
wards when he dare not any longer consult him openly,
he still does so secretly.6 Not to consult God regarding
1 Micah ii. 6 (Amos vii. 16). Prophesy ye not, they are ever prophesying.
(Isa. xxviii. 9 ff. imitates the style in which unbelievers scornfully parodied the
intolerable pedantry of hortatory preaching. )
2 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 f.
3 Jer. ii. 30, xi. 19, 21, xii. 4ff., xv. 10, xviii. 18, 22 f., xx. Iff, 10, xxvi.
7ff., 20 ff., xxix. 26 ff., xxxii. 2f., xxxiii. Iff., xxxvi. 19,xxxvii. 15 ff., xxxviii.
6ff. (Hos. ix. 7f.).
4 Isa. vii. 12ff., xxii. 15 ff. ; Jer. xx. 3, xxii. 13 ff. etc.
5 Jer. xxvi. 16 ff. 6 Jer. xxi. If., xxxvii. 17, 21, xxxviii. 14 ff.

250 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
important State affairs is considered a sign of reckless
"Dapiety.1 Indeed, even when people would not obey, they
tfere nevertheless ready to listen beforehand to the utterances
of the prophets as to " a very pleasant song." 2
2. Prophecy is by no means an exclusive possession of
Israel. Among every people there have been persons who
were believed to have a special connection with the Deity,
and consequently to be gifted with supernatural knowledge
and power. Such persons, mainly because information was
asked and expected from them regarding the dark riddle of
the future, attained to great influence, and often to a leading
position in their own nation. Among most ancient peoples,
such prophesying was confined to a particular class. Thus
the Old Testament mentions the soothsayers of the Philis
tines, who were likewise priests.3 In later times the priests
of Baal are also his prophets.4 The whole story of Balaam
takes for granted that among the peoples that bordered on
Israel, such persons had a definite and honourable position ;
just as the Mesha-stone tells us of a word from Chemosh, in
consequence of which the king felt himself constrained to
make war against Israel.5 The oracles of the priests in the
sanctuaries are found alongside of the words of the prophets.
Often, too, both are combined. Legend mentions the wise
men of Egypt.6 A multitude of old laws 7 and old names 8
point to guilds of men and women in Canaan who practised
the art of soothsaying.
Among the Greeks we have full information about a
state of matters undoubtedly similar. In many of their
families in the very earliest days prophecy was here-
1 Isa. xxx. 2. 2 Ezek. xxxiii. 30 ff. (cf. 1 Kings xxii.).
3 1 Sam. vi. Iff. 4 1 Kings xviii. 19 ; 2 Kings x. 19.
6 Num. xxii. 6, xxiii. 5, xxiv. 3 ff. ; Micah vi. 5 ; Neh. xiii. 2.
6 Gen. xli. 8, 24 ; Ex. vii. 11, 22, viii. 7, IS, ix. 11 (D^BBbO, D^DtSIPI,
D'Dan); of. also t^|-0 in Gen. xliv. 5, 15.
7 Ex. xxii. 17; Lev. xix. 27, xx. 6, 27 (ply, mtf, ijjjT1); elsewhere DDp-
8 E.g. Judg. ix. 37, DW3 \bit ; ™- i. rnian njn:i.

ISRAELITISH AND HEATHEN PROPHETS. 251
ditary,1 as among the Jamidee, the Clytiadte, the Telliadse,
etc. In later times it was usual to divide the whole sooth
saying profession2 into two classes, although both often
appear combined. In the one class the enlightenment is not
acquired by art or got by study.8 The soul is enlightened
when awake or in a trance, or else it is thrown into an
ecstasy. In the other, the enlightenment is got by study, as
an art is, in innumerable different ways.4 Omens obtained
in answer to prayer, or voluntarily sent by the gods, were
carefully examined ; for example, the flight of birds, lightning,
falling stars, eclipses of the sun and the moon, comets, pro
digies, and later, too, the conjunctions of the stars. People
noticed whether the victim came to the altar willingly or
reluctantly, how the different pieces of the sacrifice burned,
and what omens the entrails gave. They were on the watch
for omens in the house and by the way, and for accidental
cries of special foreboding. With lots, sieves, barley, eggs,
rings, and innumerable other objects, the future could be
foretold according to a fixed tradition and art. Both kinds
of soothsaying are lost in hoary antiquity, and are already
glorified in ancient legend. But while more and more
honour was paid to persons really inspired of God, and
particularly to the Pythia, down even to a somewhat late
period, so that it was only the scornful unbelief of times of
declension which scoffed at inspired persons as fools and mad
men,5 professional "interpreters of dreams," ventriloquists,
and pythonists,6 were looked upon with contempt, and
were miserably paid.7 But in every case of soothsaying
1 0. Miiller, Hist. Gr. Lit. i. 172 ; Schomann, p. 295, etc.
2 Cf. for the whole subject, Schomann, ii. 266 ff. etc. ; Hermann, I.e. 226 ff.
3 tkTZfcVQV xoct ocoi^a»Tov yivos.
4 to Tixnzh yivos. Compare the passages from Plato, Plutarch, and Pausanias,
in the archaeological works cited above ; also Cicero, De Divin. i. 18. 41.
6 Schol. Aristoph. Av. 988, in Schomann, p. 271 ; cf. Pausanias, iii. 11. 9
x. 9. 7; Herod, ix. 33 ff, 294, etc.
6 31K> PythOj Plutarch, De Def. Orac. 9 ; Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1055 (14).
7 Aristoph. Vesp. 52.

252 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
proper, the form in which the Deity revealed Himself to
men was the trance. Hence Plato draws a clear distinction
between the fidvri<; proper and the •n-pocji^Tyi who merely
expounds or interprets ; x just as the prophet stood beside
the Pythia to receive and communicate the oracle.2 More
over, among the Greeks also the complaint about lying
prophets is an old one.3
Prophecy in Israel had undoubtedly to be developed out
of such circumstances as the generally prevalent conception
of the soothsayer implies. Popular figures are the historical
parent-soil of all the sacred figures of Israel. From the
first even the prophet must certainly have had in the earnest
and moral religion of Israel a different character from what
he had in the voluptuous orgiastic nature-worship of Canaan.
But, with the documents at our command, it is impossible
to determine precisely the nature of that distinction. The
oldest narratives in no wise indicate so marked a cleavage
between the divine oracles in Israel and those of other
nations as there was in later times. Quite in accordance
with the ancient idea, Ehud comes as the bearer of a message
from God to the heathen Eglon, who receives him with due
respect. In later times, too, the king of Edom goes with the
kings of Judah and Israel in order to hear from Elisha a
word from God.4 The way in which, in Judg. vii. 13, the
dream of the Midianite soldier is taken and applied as an
omen, is quite in harmony with ancient ideas. Interpretation
of dreams plays an extremely important rdle in sacred legend
as given by C, and by no means so as to draw a distinction
between the dreams of heathens and the dreams of Israel's
forefathers.5 In early times the people have no scruples in
1 Plato, TimaeUS, 71 f. , ovhiis yap 'ivvous \<pd.VTlrxt fiavTtxws ivtlzov xai a.Xv\6au$.
2 Herod, viii. 36.
3 Sophocles, Antig. 1036 (55) ; jEschyl. Agam. 1168 ; Herod, ix. 95.
4 Judg. iii. 20 ; 2 Kings iii. 12 f.
6 Gen. xxxi. 10, 24, xxxvii. 5, 9, 19, xl. 5, 8, 12, 18, xli. 1, 11, 15, 25,
xlvi. 2 (rilD^nn bjn. ina, O^lriB DTI^) ; cf. Gen. xx. 3, 6, and often.

ISRAELITISH AND HEATHEN PROPHETS. 253
making precisely the same demands on the prophets of Israel
as the heathen made on their soothsayers. A particularly
striking proof of this is the way Saul consults Samuel, and
the way he is directed to him.1 The greatest men of God
could not take it amiss if they were asked to answer, for a
soothsayer's usual fee, questions about the most ordinary
affairs of daily life.
Still, it can only have been the simple and artless kind of
soothsaying in which such men engaged. The really pro
fessional kinds, especially the Canaanitish necromancy, which
kept its place in the people's favour with great persistency,
were regarded by the law in Israel as foreign abominations,
against which kings like Saul, in their zeal for Jehovah, acted
with the greatest severity. Necromancy was, it is true, not
considered, even in Israel, as deception pure and simple, but
as a wicked recourse to powers and arts inconsistent with
faith in the covenant God of Israel. Most worthy of
attention, and perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the older
times, is the story which makes King Saul ask the Witch of
Endor, the day before his last fatal battle, for information about
the future.2 It shows us that the practice of necromancy
had been forbidden as non-Jewish, and that the king, in his
zeal for the religion of Jehovah, had visited it with heavy
punishment. But it shows at the same time that not only
did popular superstition, in spite of all official edicts, make
such a practice possible and lucrative, but that even the
followers of Jehovah saw in it no mere empty superstition,
but a mysterious and wicked use of strange powers, by
means of which a glimpse, at any rate, could be got into the
dark realm of the future.3 But in other respects we cannot
1 1 Sam. ix. 6 ff. ; cf. xxiii. 2.
2 1 Sam. xxviii. 3 ff. As a narrative the passage indeed belongs to a
pretty late period. But the impression it gives of being perfectly natural and
true to life will escape nobody.
3 The occurrence itself was certainly due, as in similar Greek stories, to the
art of ventriloquism (C)V3V and njnn, Isa. viii. 19), by which the voice of the

254 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
maintain that soothsaying in Israel was so very different from
that of the heathen. The spirit of the higher religion did
not simply negative popular forms and views, it did not make
the living spirit of the people a mere blank page; but it
appropriated what was there, and then gradually cut out
what was inconsistent with itself.
Even in early times, as in the case of Moses, Samuel,
Nathan, and Elijah, soothsaying was not the most important
function of the prophets of Israel, still less that which
constituted their life-work.1 Certainly in those vigorous
days, and in those countries where every sort of feeling gets
free outward expression, inspiration was generally rapture of
a most violent kind. Under the influence of sacred music,
the prophets worked themselves into a state of passionate
excitement. Even Elisha did not disdain this use of music.2
The people actually called them " madmen " ; 8 and, indeed,
this name was not a mere term of derision, but one in quite
general use.4 It must be borne in mind, that in the East at
the present day insanity is regarded as a kind of rapture ;
that lunatics are still, as in David's time, looked on with much
respect, as persons who are on no account to be injured, as
dead was imitated as if coming either from the sky or the ground ; while, of
course, only the sorcerer, not the inquirer, saw the figure. The dead person
appears as D^iiPX, like the Manes, ver. 13. The soothsaying spirit was termed
31X ; the word S}5?T properly denotes the soothsayer himself ; then, also, the
spirit as "knowing," Lev. xix. 31 (according to Stade, merely " clever spirits";
Deut. xviii. 11 ; 2 Kings xxi. 6). The account of necromancy in modern Egypt,
with the final exposure of the trick, is very interestingly told by Lane, Manners
and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. Besides, our enlightened age needs
only to notice how every "medium" acts, in order to understand the trickery
required and the credulity even of educated persons.
1 It is much more likely that forms of professional soothsaying were practised
with the Urim and Thummim, in connection with the oracles of ephod-wearing
priests. 2 2 Kings iii. 15 ; cf. 1 Sam. x. 5, 9 ff., xix. 20 ff.
3 J)3B"D, cf. also the work ?BJ (Num. xxiv. 4) in the antiquely - coloured
narrative about Balaam.
4 A term of scorn, Hos. ix. 7, but differently in 2 Kings ix. 11 ; Deut.
xxviii. 34 ; Jer. xxix. 26 ; cf. Odys. xx. 360.

ISRAELITISH AND HEATHEN PROPHETS. 255
men on whom God has set a special mark, whose spirit is away
in heaven,1 whose touch brings good luck, and who must not
be denied even the most unheard-of request. But Israelitish
prophecy can be properly compared only with the nobler and
more spiritual forms of heathen soothsaying. In order to
distinguish it from these, the view of the Old Testament does
not require us to regard the inspiration of non-Israelites as
imaginary or fictitious, and only that of the prophets of Israel
as actually the work of a higher power. The Old Testament
goes upon the supposition that even a Balaam is inspired by
the true God, and that his curse or blessing takes effect ; 2 that
Moses has a certain resemblance to the wise men and the
sorcerers of Egypt ; 8 that even heathen kings have dreams of
a truly divine significance ; 4 that the prophets of the Philistines
prophesy truly ; 5 in a word, that " God " speaks even beyond
the bounds of Israel. As regards the relations of Israel to
the heathen world, the older parts of the Old Testament
are on the whole very impartial and mild. It is only with
the later struggles, and especially after the law gets a more
definite written form, that the stern severance begins.
Hence we cannot, so far as the form of their gift is
concerned, separate the Israelitish prophets from similar
personages among other peoples. In both cases it is taken
for granted that the influence of the Divine Spirit raises them
spiritually above ordinary men, and gives them a miraculous
knowledge of future events and of the supernatural world.
What differentiates the prophets of Israel is the character of

1 Cf. the early narrative in 1 Sam. xxi. 14-16, where the high respect paid to
the J/J£'D or JJ3rie>D as such is manifest all through. For the modern East, cf.
Lane, vol. ii. Schulz, "Leitungen des Hochsten," etc. (In Paulus, Sammlung
der merkwurdigsten Reisen in den Orient, Bd. vi. 149, 156, vii. 34).
2 No doubt only in a somewhat late representation, which, however, is, of
itself, proof of what has been stated, Num. xxii. 6, xxiii. 5, xxiv. 3 ff. ; Micah
vi. 5 ; Neh. xiii. 2 ; Josh. xxiv. 9, 10. (A's conception of history no longer
tolerates such equality of position, Num. xxxi. 8, 16 ; Josh. xiii. 22.)
3 Ex. vii. 11, 22, viii. 7, 18, ix. 11.
4 Gen. xx. 6, xl. 5 f., xli. 1 ff, 25, 28 (C). 6 1 Sam. vi. 2 f.

256 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
their knowledge of God. Called to be spiritual leaders of
the people acknowledging the religion of Jehovah, they are
full of enthusiasm for Jehovah, the holy God of their fathers,
the moral Ruler of the world. Hence the prophetic powers
which they possess are devoted to the accomplishment of a
great and holy task of world-wide moment. It is only in
the performance of this religious task that Israelitish prophecy
separates itself more and more from the kindred forms. The
prophets of Israel are the servants of a God who is building
up a moral and spiritual kingdom on this earth. Hence the
prophets of Israel, in so far as they come under consideration
in connection with the development of the true religion, are
distinguished from the prophets outside Israel in exactly the
same way as the revealed religion of the Old Testament is
distinguished from nature-religion. Even in the latter there
is the religious feeling, the common revelation of God in the
spirit of nature and of man. In like manner, in the prophets
outside Israel there is prophetic inspiration, the working of
an enhanced religious power. But the Old Testament
prophets experience the working of the Spirit who leads
mankind to salvation. They are placed in a great historical
connection which conducts to the highest goal, and have made
this people the religious people. Accordingly, the later age 1
was right in considering the one infallible mark of a genuine
Old Testament prophet to be, that he should make known
the God of Israel, that is to say, should be in accord with
the spirit that was revealed through Moses. Of this, no
other endowment, not even the power of working miracles,
gives absolutely certain proof.
As possessors of this holy spirit the prophets are in a
special sense what Israel itself is as distinguished from the
other peoples. The prophets are in a special sense " holy,"
dedicated to God. They have " the law " of God written on
their hearts, as it was at first written on the heart of a prophet.
1 Deut. xiii. 2 ff.

TRUE AND FALSE PROPHETS.

257

They are proofs to the people of the high position it holds as
the people of God. Prophecy is just like the rainbow in
nature, a constant token of God's covenant with Israel, a
constant pledge of the divine love whose everlasting light
irradiates the darkness of time.
3. Of really conscious deceit for the purposes of gain, the
earlier age, in its judgment of the prophets of Jehovah, knows
nothing. Such an idea is altogether out of keeping with the
thoughts of the people in those early days. It was only
in later times, when men were more given to thought and
reflection, that things began to be looked at in this fight.
When a prophet lies, without being inspired by a false or
impotent god, it is because God in His anger against Israel's
sin means to destroy him, and therefore puts into the prophets
" a lying spirit," " an evil spirit from the Lord." Here we
must specially notice the interesting and picturesque narra
tive in 1 Kings xxii. 5 ff, the date of which is early. The
prophets who cry "Peace, peace," while all the time God
has, in His anger, determined on a terrible judgment, are
not considered professional tricksters, as in later ages the
opponents of Micah, Zechariah, and Jeremiah were. God led
them astray in His anger;1 and even the true prophet of God
had at first, in accordance with the divine will, to say what was
untrue, because he was aware that God intended to beguile
the king (ver. 15). The statement in 2 Kings viii. 10 can
scarcely be interpreted in this sense. For here, in the words
of Elisha, there is either a ring of lofty contempt for the
ambitious servant, of whose murderous thoughts against his
master the prophet is aware, while he is able at the same
time to say that the illness of that master will not prove fatal;
or else we must follow the form of the text according to
which Elisha foretells the death of the Syrian king. 2 Sam. vii.
1 Naturally these men feel their reputation as prophets most grievously tar
nished by the disclosure of Micah, and exclaim, "Has the spirit of God left us
to speak to thee ? " (ver. 24).
VOL. I. R

258 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
3, 4 does not require to be taken into consideration here ;
for what Nathan first says to David is merely the impression
which the proposal to build a temple makes on his own
heart. It is only the second answer, refusing permission,
which is represented as " a word from God."
The position is different in the " prophetic period '' proper.
No doubt, even during this period the Israelites come more and
more into contact with the neighbouring peoples and their
superstitious methods of soothsaying ; and the prophets have
constantly to censure the people for their frequent use of
such methods. It is not in Egypt only that sorcerers,
diviners, and wizards are found.1 It is not in Chaldea only
that soothsayers, whisperers, conjurors, and astrologers
appear ; 2 while Nineveh itself is called the mistress of
witchcrafts.3 But in connection with Israel also there is
mention made of " inquiring at the teraphim, and asking
c&unsel at wood and stone."4 Ezekiel, the author of Job,
and other poets, speak of consulting the entrails and the liver ;
they refer to the use of arrows as lots, and to those who
curse the day, being skilful at rousing up leviathan, that is,
to astrological conjurors ; and they are familiar with the
charming of snakes.5 Deuteronomy and the historical books
presuppose that many varieties of this professional sooth
saying were well known to the people. Hence we cannot
doubt that this wicked heathen habit was widely prevalent
in Israel.6 Jeremiah is aware of prophets prophesying by
Baal, and of still more grievous errors.7 Isaiah knows
that the land is full of foreign superstitions, of the con-

1 Isa. xix. 3, QiJJW, D^tSN, ITOIK.
2 Ezek. xxi. 26 ; B. J. xliv. 25, xlvii. 10, 12 ; cf. Jer. xxvii. 9, 1. 36 (D^3,
D'EJEb, trnn, d^odp).
3 Nahum iii. 4. 4 Hos. iii. 4, iv. 2 ; Zech. x. 2 ; Ezek. xxi. 26.
B Ezek. xxi. 26 ; Job iii. 8 ; Ps. lviii. 6.
6 Deut. xviii. 9 ff. ; 2 Kings xvii. 17, xxi. 6, xxiii. 24 (in addition to the
words already quoted, piJJD, ETUD, 31N *?KIV, DTlBrrta BHl).
7 Jer. ii. 8, xxiii. 13 f.

TRUE AND FALSE PROPHETS.

259

juring arts of the Philistines and men from the East.1
Down to the time of the Exile the bad old heathen
custom of calling up the ghosts of departed chiefs as manes
or Elohim, was evidently quite common; ventriloquists
imitated the chirping voices of the spirits dwelling in the
tracts of air, and the hollow moaning of those in the under
world;2 and there also flourished many other kinds of
professional soothsaying.3 Such arts God brings to nought.4
In notable contrast with this is the picture which the later
age gives us of Balaam. Here the poet obviously intends to
sketch the figure of a foreign prophet of the olden time, but
at the same time one who is inspired by the true God, and
over whose strange character and unpurified will the spirit of
divine prophecy gains a complete triumph.5
Accordingly, after the ninth century the heathen form of
prophecy was vigorously and consistently attacked as unworthy
of the holy people.6 In one of its most beautiful passage's,7
the prophetic law expressly declares that it is not the will of
God that the people should seek to discover His present and
future purposes by any of the superstitious arts of foreign
soothsayers. God is willing to raise up prophets out of
Israel itself, who shall, likd Moses, declare unto the people,
without any superstitious mystery, the divine will.8 The
people might themselves have heard this divine voice directly ;
but they had been unwilling to do so, and in their terror at
Horeb they had desired not to hold any further direct inter-
1 Isa. ii. 6, QlpD DW^'.
" Isa. viii. 19 ; cf. xix. 3, xxix. 4, f]VQXD ; cf. x. 14, QijnD- The word
Qt6n in Isa. viii. 19 just means D^ITO!"!, exactly as in 1 Sam. xxviii. 13
(should not a people consult its Elohim, the dead regarding the living?).
3 Cf. e.g. Isa. viii. 19, xix. 3, 12 ; Jer. xxvii. 9 ; Micah v. 11 (also the word
CDDD).
4 B. J. xliv. 25. 6 Num. xxiii., xxiv. ; cf. Micah vi. 5.
6 Isa. viii. 19 ff. 7 Deut. xviii. 9 ff. (Num. xxiii. 23).
8 Whether the word &023 (Nabi), in addition to its acknowledged collective
meaning of "the prophetic class," has also a special prophetic reference to a
particular person, is a question to be put at a later stage.

260 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
course with God ; and so they now have to listen to these true
prophets. In other words, since the moral weakness of the
people makes it impossible for each individual to learn God's
will directly, the task is entrusted to men in whom the con
sciousness of this will is clear and powerful. The sign of this
divine gift of genuine prophecy is not the power of working
miracles. True, this is at the command of God's prophet,
but not at his only.1 Even fulfilled prophecy is not an
infallible sign. It is a condition, but not a proof of genuine
prophecy.2 It may even happen that God lets such a prophecy
be fulfilled merely as a test, in order to see if His people really
love Him so much that no alluring Will-o'-the-wisp can
entice them from the right path.3 The one real proof is the
prophet's agreement with the law, his fidelity to the covenant.4
Consequently, the opposition to foreign forms of prophecy
is, in this period, unmistakable and direct. All the more
dangerous, therefore, is the appearance in Israel of a false pro
phecy, with essentially the same external form as the true.
When a prophet prophesies in Israel in the name of other gods
than Jehovah, it is easy to unmask him.5 But it is more
difficult when he prophesies in the name of Jehovah something
which He never commanded.6 Even during this period there
are still traces of the idea that such false prophecy is due to
the anger of God, who sends a lying spirit abroad in order
to punish the people by means of false prophecies.7 In a
noteworthy passage in Micah, we find the belief that the false
prophets were conscious of their lies, actually combined with
the idea of a divine influence working upon them ; and the
complete cessation of divine communication is represented
1 Deut. xiii. 2, 3, 6.
1 Deut. xiii. 3 ; cf. xviii. 22 (JTIK with N3).
3 Deut. xiii. 6.
4 Deut. xiii. 3-6.
5 Deut. xviii. 20 ; cf. Jer. ii. 8, xxiii. 13 f.
* Jer. xiv. 14 f., xxiii. 9, 11, 25 f., 30 f. ; Ezek. xiii. 9, 23.
7 Hos. ix. 7 (iv. 5) ; Isa. xxix. 10 ; Ezek. xiv. 9 (Deut. xiii. 6).

TRUE AND FALSE PROPHETS. 261
as really a punishment for their misuse of the prophetic gift.1
And from a purely historical standpoint, we cannot doubt that
men who were proved, by the course of events, to be " false
prophets," were often personally quite convinced that they
were proclaiming the will of God, especially when they were
under the spell of truths of which they had grasped but one
side, or continued to be influenced by ideas which in the
altered circumstances were no longer in harmony with the real
purposes of God.2
On the whole, however, false prophecy appeared to the
men of God as a wicked profession consciously practised.
The liars spoke out of their own hearts what God had not
said.8 The means for such deceit were not far to seek. In
the nature of things the prophets had a particular outward
appearance and manner of speech. They were known by their
coats of skin and their garments of hair.4 The expressions
" Word of the Lord," " Oracle of God," " Thus saith Jehovah,"
" God hath sworn," were standing formulae, which the
narrative of B and C allows to appear even in patriarchal
times.5 Their calling, however thorny for the conscientious,
cannot but have afforded the unscrupulous an easy means
of living and a comparatively honourable position. Hence
some took to prophesying just for the sake of a livelihood.6
There were also not a few women who, for a pitiable wage,
1 Micah iii. 6 ff. ; Jer. iv. 10 ; Ezek. xiv. 9.
2 This has been specially well emphasised by Duhm in his judgment of Jere
miah's opponents, p. 229.
3 Jer. xxiii. 16 ; Ezek. vii. 26, 27, xiii. 2, 3, 10, 17 ; Micah ii. 11 ; Zech.
xiii. 2 (nwtsn nn, D3$> \\m, nn "f?n) ; cf. isa. ix. 14 (gloss) ipa* rniD n'oj,
an. N1B>' ptn, Jer. v. 81, vi. 13, viii. 10 ; Ezek. xii. 24, xiii. 6 f., xxii.
28 ; Zeph. iii. 4.
4 Zech. xiii. 4 ; cf. 1 Kings xix. 19 ; 2 Kings i. 8, ii. 13.
5 On these expressions in detail see later on. Cf. Gen. xxii. 16 ; 1 Kings
xvii. 2, 8, xviii. 1, xxi. 17, xx. 28 ; 2 Kings vii. 1 ; especially strong, Jer. xxiii.
25, 33 f., 36, 38 ; Ezek. xiii. 6f., xxii. 28 (the interesting phrase, Ps. xxxvi. 2,
JHSfc DM).
8 Amos vii. 12 (the connection of "prophesying" and "eating bread")-
Micah iii. 5, 11 ; Zech. xiii. 3, 5 ; cf. B. J. lvi. 10 f.

262 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
deceived people with a stereotyped form of soothsaying, who,
as Ezekiel puts it, hunted for souls and killed them.1 Lying
prophets appear at all periods in the kingdom of Judah, and
even among the exiles ; and Jeremiah evidently draws no real
distinction between such prophets and the soothsayers of Edom,
Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon.2 They have, as it were,
conspired together to deceive the people as to its true salva
tion.3 Their object is an easy and luxurious life.4 They
never think of standing in the breach and fighting for the
people in the day of the Lord. They are for the flock
of Israel 5 dumb but greedy dogs. Their anxiety is to stand
well with the people, who do not want to have the truth
prophesied to them, but desire to hear "flattering words."
Hence they delight to prophesy good fortune, to cry " Peace,
peace," where there is no peace.6 And at the same time
they make themselves feared : " Whosoever putteth not into
their mouth, against him they proclaim a holy war."7 The
thought of effecting a reformation, a conversion of the people,
never once occurs to them.8 They grieve the righteous, they
harden the wicked. Thus, on the one hand, they steal the
words of the true prophets, to wit, their prophecies of good,
in order to employ them on the wrong occasion, without
the condition of penitence and conversion on the part of the
people.9 On the other hand, they scoff at the true prophets
as dull pedagogues who do not know how to live, whilst they
1 Ezek. xiii. 17 ff. ; Lam. ii. 14.
2 Jer. xxix. 8 f. , 15, 21, xxvii. 3, 9, 10.
3 Ezek. xxii. 25.
4 Isa. xxviii. 7 ; Jer. xxix. 23, 31 ; B. J. lvi. 10 f.
0 Ezek. xiii. 4 ; B. J. lvi. 10.
6 Micah ii. 11, iii. 11 ; Isa. xxx. 10 ff. ; B. J. lvi. 10, 11 ; Jer. v. 31, vi. 14,
viii. 11, xiv. 13, xx. 6, xxiii. 9ff, 16ff, xxvii. 14 ff. ; Ezek. xi. 2ff, xiii. 10,
16 (to chatter of wine and strong drink).
7 Micah iii. 5 ; Lam. ii. 14. 8 Ezek. xiii. 22.
9 Jer. xxiii. 30. An example is afforded by the oracle which Micah quotes
(ii. 12 f. ). Such men might often imagine they were speaking quite in the spirit
of the true men of God of former days, and would then, in turn, regard their
opponents as lying prophets.

TRUE AND FALSE PROPHETS. 263
themselves imagine they have in their prophecies a sure
refuge against death, Hades, and every kind of destruction.1
Necessarily such prophets were everywhere hostile to the
true prophets. They fought each other with divine oracles
and signs.2 And where this false prophecy got the upper
hand and was handed down in particular schools and
families, the true prophet had good cause to declare, with
deprecating gesture, " I am neither a prophet, nor the son
of a prophet."3 Then the expectation could be expressed
that in the future there would be no more soothsayers.4 It
is to such prophets that the ruin of the people is really
due. They are worse than the prophets of Baal.5 But God
will confound the lying work of such men.6 Although
their outward appearance, perhaps indeed their own con
sciousness, did not always distinguish them from God's
true prophets, still there were unmistakable differences. The
judgment of God in the history of the world brings to
nought the lies of the false prophets.7 The true prophet is
distinguished from them by the power of the spirit of God,
which in good and in evil days is like a fire, or a hammer
that breaks the rock in pieces.8 But the main distinction
between the two is, as Jeremiah insists, the thoroughly
moral character of the preaching of the true man of God.
He never proclaims unconditional happiness and salvation.
His word never fails to punish sinners and call them to
repentance. Prophets who know how to speak of nothing
but happiness and blessing are always false prophets, who
speak according to the desires of their own and the people's
heart.9

1 Isa. xxviii. 7-18.
2 So, e.g., Jer. xxviii. Iff, 10 ff. ; Ezek. xiii. Iff.
8 Amos vii. 14. 4 Zech. xiii. 2ff. 8 Jer. xxiii.
6 Isa. xxviii. 19. There will come a time when it will cause nothing but
terror to hear a prophecy (Ezek. xiii. 11 ff., xxii. 30).
7 Deut. xviii. 22 ; Jer. xxviii. 9, xxxvii. 19 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 33.
8 Micah iii. 8 ; Jer. xxiii. 29. 9 Jer. xxiii. 22, xxviii. 8, 9.

264 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
4. Most of the names for " prophet " used in the earlier
days point to the character of the prophetic office. They
indicate special inspiration, and a knowledge of hidden
things, gifts not supposed to be exclusively confined to Israel,
The oldest designation is " seers," " gazers ; " that is, men to
whom, apart from the experience of their bodily senses, God
gives power to see things hidden from ordinary people,
whether in reference to the future or to the dark regions of
the present.1
From the inspiration that streamed upon them, and
seemed to snatch them away beyond the limits of self-
conscious thinking life, they were called " nebiim," 2 a name
that was given even to Moses and Abraham.3 The ordinary
meaning of this word cannot well be doubted. Where
the one writer says that Aaron has to serve as " a mouth "
to Moses, the other says that Moses must be to Aaron
as God, and Aaron to Moses as " nabi." 4 The Hithpael of
the verb, which, it is evident, was originally a denominative,
means " to go about raving under the constraining influence
of a higher power and an irresistible excitement."5 The
connection of the Niphal with a name of God by the pre
position 3 6 clearly shows that what is meant is " speaking
under the influence of a deity, be it the God of Israel or
be it Baal."7 It is quite plain, therefore, that a nabi is
one who speaks under the influence of the deity as his
1 HNIi iltn, 1 Sam. ix. 9. Formerly in Israel when a man went "to
inquire " of God, he spake thus, " Come and let us go to the roeh (seer)," for
he that is now-a-days called a nabi (prophet) was formerly called roeh (seer).
The purposely archaic style of the later age is fond of these terms as well as of
the old phrases for prophetic action (2 Chron. xxix. 25, 30 ; Hagg. i. 2, 13,
ii. 1, 20 ; Zech. i. 1-16, ii. 9-14, iii. 7-10).
2 sni.
8 E.g. Deut. xxxiv. 10 (A).
4 Ex. vii. 1 (A) ; cf. iv. 16 (C).
5 Num. xi. 26, 27 ; 1 Sam. xviii. 10 ; 1 Kings xviii. 29, N3jrin (it can hardly
imply, as Redslob maintains, the idea of affectation).
6 Jer. ii. 8.
I So 1 Kings xviii. 19 ; 2 Kings x. 19 ; Jer. ii. 8, xxiii. 13 f.

NAMES FOR A PROPHET. 265
instrument, and without any independence of his own.
Certainly a nabi is never a speaker in the usual sense of
the word, but a person who, overpowered by the Divine
Spirit, utters involuntarily what the Spirit whispers to
him. " God seizes his inspired prophet roughly, and the
latter shouts out his words in loud and boisterous tones"
(Hoffmann).1 On its etymological side the question is more difficult.
The verb obviously expresses the idea of a dull sound.2 The
noun may be taken either as a passive form, corresponding to
the passive participle, or as an active intransitive form.3 In
the first case the nabi would be the recipient of revelation,
" the inspired one " ; in the second case " the speaker," but in
the sense of speaking God's mysterious words. The latter
hypothesis seems to me the more probable,4 because a passive
form for " speaking," " murmuring," is in itself improbable.
But the idea of " extraordinary," " ecstatic " speaking certainly
belongs to the root, as is quite evident from a host of passages.5
The term " madman " also occurs with a certain affinity to this
word, whether used as a term of reproach or in a more neutral
sense.6 The prophet is called " a man of the Spirit," 7 one upon
whom God's Spirit rests, consecrating and anointing him to
his office ; 8 one who is, to use another metaphor, clothed with
1 1 Kings xix. 11-15 ; Job iv. 16. (The most noteworthy phrase is i>ip
nDDT) 2 JJ33, Hiph., Ps. xix. 3 ; cf. JJU, DNJ, DHJ. 3 Ewald's Gram. § 149e.
4 Among the Arabs the nabi is the speaker, among the Chaldeans the nabo is
the messenger, of the gods. According to Kuenen, it denotes the divinely-inspired
fanatics of Canaan. Land's hypothesis is quite improbable, that the word is
(like the form -|ifj, etc.) a Niphal form, from Nia ='ivhos, " one into whom a
higher has entered."
6 1 Sam. x. 5, 10, xix. 20 ; 1 Chron. xxv. 2, 3 ; Jer. xxix. 26.
6 1 Sam. xviii. 20 ; 2 Kings iii. 15, ix. 11 ; Jer. xxix. 26 ; Hos. ix. 8.
(Here, apparently, the reference is to true prophets of God who are scoffed at, and
for whom snares are laid in the temple, yjntJ'D, WE'D).
7 nnn b»'«n, Hos. ix. 7.
8 B. J. xlviii. 16, Ixi. 1. "The sense of a universally binding conviction
is, to the prophets, a pledge that it is due to something outside of themselves "
(Hoffmann).

266 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the Spirit as with a garment.1 The hand of God, called
also simply " The hand," takes a grip of him ; 2 he is
the instrument of a higher power.3 He receives words
out of God's mouth,4 so that he speaks God's word,5
announces His oracle,6 and proclaims the declaration of
the Lord } the oath of God.8 In an archaic expression, pur
posely retained, the prophet is called the man who heareth
the words of God " with eyes closed, but with the inner
eye open," who falls prostrate under the influence of a higher
power.9 Other names are intended to denote the special character
istics of the Old Testament prophet. Whether these were
already employed in the earliest periods of prophecy can
hardly be determined. The name of the town, Ramathaim-
Zophim, can scarcely refer to the prophets as watchmen.10
And we are as little able to ascertain whether the title of
honour, " servant of Jehovah," u which is applied in later
days to Moses, was an epithet in use in the olden times.
On the other hand, it is certain that the prophets were early
described as " men of God." 12 And in the prophetic period
1 mb, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20. *?]} rb)S, 1 Sam. x. 6, xvi. 13. bv 733, Ezek.
xi. 5.
2 Isa. viii. 11 ; Ezek. iii. 14, 22, viii. 3, xxxiii. 22, xxxvii. 1, xl. 1.
" Isa. xx. 2.
4 Num. xxiii. 5, 12, 16 ; Deut. xviii. 18 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 7. (Deut. i. 26, 43,
ix. 23.)
6 TWf "QT in countless passages.
6 nini DX3, really=" that which is murmured, " oracle ; e.g. Amos ii. 11, 16;
Micah iv. 6, v. 9.
7 niiT1 131 Nfe;D, from h\p KtM, "an elevated utterance;" e.g. Isa. xxi. 1, 2,
11, 13, xxii. 1 ; Nahum i. 1 ; in later times distorted into "burden," Jer. xxiii.
31 ff.
8 niff JQtM, e.gr. Zeph. ii. 9; B.J. xiv. 24, xiv. 23; of. rnfP "ION H3,
Ezek. iii. 11, 27 ; already in 1 Sam. ii. 27, x. 18.
9 Num. xxiv: 3 ff . ; B. J. 1. 4, 5.
10 1 Sam. i. 1.
11 mrp 12]1, of Moses, e.g. Josh. xiv. 7, xviii. 7 (A).
12 D^Nn K^K of Moses, Josh. xiv. 6 (A). But of others already in Judg.
xiii. 6 ff. ; 1 Sam. ii. 27, ix. 6, 7, 10. The expression is a standing one as
applied to Elijah and Elisha.

THE PROPHETIC CALLING.

26V

such expressions become more and more prevalent, the more
it is acknowledged that the real characteristic of a prophet's
task is to work in behalf of Israel's God among His people,
and to counteract ungodliness and forgetfulness of duty.
Their life is not their own. Even where flesh and blood
would rebel against the suffering, and the mouth would refuse
to utter the name of God,1 they must speak. It is in their
heart as a burning fire, and they cannot endure it.2 They
are given no rest, no joy, no security. None of the ordinary
pleasures of men are theirs. They endure reproach for God's
sake. They who accept the word of God with eagerness
must go about mournful and sad in the midst of general
levity.3 They must often curse the day of their birth.4
When they would desert their calling, God is too strong for
them. He talks them over,5 or His almighty power compels
them to return to the vocation they would gladly quit.6
Like new wine in new bottles, God's spirit ferments within
them, compelling them to speak without respect of persons.7
They are not their own, but God's8; servants of God,9
who stand 10 before Him as attendants.
This difficult position of theirs is at the same time a
position of the highest dignity. .As God's servants they are
consecrated, having their lips purified ; u called when in their
mother's womb, ay, even acknowledged and sanctified before
God formed them in the womb ; men sent from God with His
spirit.12 Fired and strengthened by the Divine Spirit, they go
1 Jer. xx. 7.
- Jer. xx. 9 ; cf. vi. 11, xii. 5 ff. ; Amos iii. 8 ; Jonah i. 13.
3 Jer. xv. 15 ff., xx. 7 f. ; B. J. 1. 4 ff.
4 Jer. xv. 10, xx. 14 ff. ; 1 Kings xix. 10. 6 Jer. xx. 7.
6 Jon. i. 3ff., ii. 1, 11 ; cf. Num. xxii. 8ff., 12 ff, 18 ff., xxiii. 8, xxiv. 13.
7 The expression in Elihu's speech, Job xxxii. 18 ff.
8 Jer. xxxv. 1 ; 1 Kings xii. 22, xiii. 1, 4, 7, 13 ff., xvii. 18, 24.
9 Isa. xx. 3 ; Jer. vii. 25, xxv. 4, xxvi, 5, xxix. 19, xxxv. 15 ; Zech. i. 6 ;
2 Kings xvii. 13, xxi. 10, xxiv. 2.
10 Jer. xviii. 20 ; 1 Kings x. 8, xvii. 1 ; 2 Kings iii. 14, v. 16.
11 Isa. vi. 4 ff. ; cf. Micah iii. 8 ; Jer. i. 9.
12 Jer. i. 5 ; B. J. xlviii. 16, xlix. 1 ff.

268 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
forth to preach the word of God.1 Ezekiel must eat the
whole book of the divine prophecies. It has to be sweet
unto him ; that is to say, conscious of being God's ambassador,
he gladly discharges the duties of his office, hard though
they are from a human standpoint.2 Hence the words of the
prophets are "instruction and testimony," of which the
people must keep a firm hold ; and they themselves are signs
and wonders from Jehovah unto Israel.8 Hence their
intercession is effectual. They can appear in behalf of the
sinful people with good hope of being heard4 and their
prayers are in great request.5 These are regarded as so
efficacious that when God can no longer show mercy, He
actually forbids the prophets to pray for the lost and ruined
people.6 In fact, whatever is done to them is done to God
Himself.7 As God's servants, the prophets are watchmen set over
Israel, — -an expression first employed in a purely poetical way
in popular proverbs, but afterwards used as an actual designa
tion. In the night, which hides from the unconsecrated eye
the purposes of God, they stand on their watch-tower, their
glances piercing the darkness of that night, and discerning
coming events before the people can understand them. They
are thus able to raise the alarm in time, so that none need
perish unwarned, or the courage and faith of the people be
lost in doubt.8 They are sentinels, — a term used indeed very
1 Jer. i. 7, xxiii. 29 ; Ezek. iii. 10, 14 ; Zech. vii. 12.
2 Ezek. ii. 9f., iii. 3.
3 Isa. viii. 16, 20.
4 Deut. ix. 14, 19 f., 26 f., x. 10 ; 1 Sam. xii. 19, 23; 2 Kings xix. 4;
Amos vii. 2, 5.
5 Isa. xxxvii. 4 ; Jer. xv. 11, xxxvii. 3 ff. , xlii. 2 ; cf. Num. xxii. 6.
6 Jer. vii. 16, xi. 14, xiv. 11, xxvii. 18 ; cf. Gen. xx. 7 (C) ; 1 Kings xvii. 1 ;
2 Kirgs vi. 17, 18 ; cf. 1 John v. 16.
7 Zech. xi. 12 ff, xii. 10 ff.
8 "HDSf', Isa. xxi. 11, still used quite in the popular song style. B. J. lxii. 6 ;
Ezek. iii. 17, xxxiii. 7. So, too, the D'S^D of B. J. xliii. 27 are probably the
prophets of Israel who act as interpreters between God and His people, like the
angels in Job xxxiii. 23.

PROPHETIC DUTIES.

269

loosely and with many shades of meaning,1 but still with
special reference to the foreseeing by the prophets of mis
fortunes still iu the future.2 God holds them responsible if
the members of the nation perish unwarned.3 They are
compared to the smelter, who has to separate the dross from
the precious metal of God's people.4 They are shepherds
entrusted with the duty of safely guiding the national flock,
and guarding it from mishaps.5
In post-exilic times, when the old simple notions about
heavenly messengers began to be replaced by a more elaborate
angelology, the prophets, like the priests,6 were spoken of as
God's commissioners by the old name of messengers from
heaven, " angels," " messengers." 7
5. The conduct of the prophets of the earlier days we have
to picture to ourselves as violent and extraordinary. But even
then, in contrast with the prophets of the orgiastic worship of
Canaan, the chief means which they employed was the word,
the proclaiming of God's will regarding the pressing questions
of the day. It was so in the case of men like Moses,8
Nathan and Gad, Elijah and Elisha. In later times this is
perfectly self-evident. In fact, the ancient forms of ecstasy
pass over into the ordinary forms of speech. Without
noticing the contradiction in terms, people speak of '• seeing
the word of God " ; and a " vision " means nothing more than
"revelation."9 The prophets' speak by God's commission.
The truth of their utterance is self-evidencing, and requires
1 D^SV, D»3VD, Hos. ix. 8. Ephraim is on the outlook against God. B. J.
lvi. 10 f., of prophets untrue to their calling.
2 Hab. ii. 1 ; Jer. vi. 17 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 2, 7. In Micah vii. 4, the day of the
sentinels means "the day foretold by the prophets." 2 Sam. xviii. 24 shows
that sentinel and watchman are virtually synonymous.
3 Ezek. iii. 17 ff, xxxiii. Iff. * Jer. vi. 27.
6 Zech. xi. 4 fl". » Mai. iii. 1 ; Eccles. v. 5.
7 B. J. xliv. 26 ; Hag. i. 13.
8 A, Ex. vi. 12, 30, vii. 1 ; C, Ex. iv. 10, 16.
9 Isa. i. 1, ii. 1, xxi. 2 ; Jer. ii. 31 ; Amos i. 1 ; Micah i. 1 ; Hab. i. 1 ; Num.
xxiii. 3. Tho peculiar expression in Isa. xxviii. 15, 18 is probably due to the
corruption of the text.

270 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
no corroboration. What they communicate they feel to be
due to an imperative inward call.
The earlier prophets were very far from having a connected
and harmonious religious system to develop and proclaim to
the people. The revelations made to them were watchwords
for the complications of their own time, exhortations to be
faithful to Jehovah and to the customs of the fathers, words
of warning and of consolation. They communicated to the
people short authoritative sayings and divine commands.
They grasped with firm hand the wheels of the State chariot,
even when the drivers gave them but little thanks.
The confidence displayed by the prophets in their vocation
was due to the consciousness that they were speaking, not of
themselves " out of their own heart," 1 but as commissioners
sent by God. Hence they felt themselves endowed with an
authority which no one could possibly call in question.
Whatever they spoke and did was for them the word and
deed of God. Hence they can, as God's favoured servants,
intercede effectually for others. The hosts of heaven are
seen encamped around them.2 When the spirit of God lays
hold of them and compels them to speak, they claim
obedience for their unsupported word. And as, according
to popular recollection, the congregation of Israel, in spite
of all its murmuring, followed Moses in all essential matters ;
so the bitter hatred of the idolatrous party in Samaria, and
the vacillation of the fickle king, never succeeded in crippling
the influence of Elijah or Elisha.3 Saul, though at the
head of his victorious army, does not venture to resist the
word of Samuel.4 Eli bows at once to the divine message ; s
and David, amid all his glory, submits humbly to Nathan's
1 Num. xvi. 28. Particularly worthy of note is 2 Sam. vii. 1-3, cf. 4, where
Nathan at first speaks according to the view that suggested itself to his own mind,
but afterwards the divine voice makes him come to an opposite conclusion.
2 2 Kings vi. 17.
3 1 Kings xxi. 20 ff, 27 ff. ; 2 Kings iii. 13 ff.
4 1 Sam. xv. 21 (certainly later). " 1 Sam. ii. 27 ff.

PROPHETIC DUTIES.

271

reproof.1 Without arms, without the prestige of priestly
consecration, without learning and human wisdom, the
prophets claim obedience, and are conscious of their influence
over the magnates of the nation.2 And although an Elijah
suffers persecution as an enemy to the king, and the sons
of the prophets are put to death ; 3 although a Micah,
"who always prophesies evil against the king," is put into
prison till the truth of his words is proved,4 nevertheless
their influence is constantly reasserted, and is always a factor
of the utmost importance. A true prophet of God, by his
prayers and his knowledge of the divine will, by his warnings
against the danger of wrong enterprises, is "the chariot of
Israel and the horseman thereof."5 He is to the people
like a defending army. The prophets warn kings, change
dynasties by a word, counsel princes, prevent wicked wars.6
Even over foreign kings they exercise a guiding influence,
because " God " speaks in them.7 The history of Nathan,
it is true, shows clearly that they themselves did not always
draw the line very strictly between activity in purely party
politics and their work as prophets.8 And, on the other
hand, they are personages so dedicated to God that it may
easily be dangerous for "sinful mortals" to come into close
contact with such men of God, who may bring their sins to
their remembrance.9
The characteristics that distinguish Hebrew prophets, not
only from mere enthusiasts, but also from priests, come out
with much greater clearness after the eighth century. Out
wardly, they are just ordinary private people. Isaiah was,
we know, a married man of good position living in the
1 2 Sam. xii. 13 ff. ; cf. xxiv. lift 2 2 Kings iv. 13.
3 1 Kings xviii. 4, 9ff, 17 f., xix. 2ff, 9ff. 4 1 Kings xxii. 8, 18.
11 2 Kings ii. 12, xiii. 14.
6 2 Kings vi. 9 ; 1 Kings xi. 29, xii. 22, xvi. 1, 12, xx. 13, 21.
7 1 Kings xix. 15 f. ; 2 Kings iii. 12, viii. 7f., 12 f., ix. 2; Jer. xxvii. Iff
81 Kings i. llf., 22.
9 1 Kings xvii. 18, 24 ; 2 Kings iv. 9 (Blip) ; Luke v. 8.

272 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
metropolis. Even a prophetess like Huldah was married.1
If the prophets acted as medical practitioners,2 it was
simply because the wise men of antiquity and the priests
were everywhere in the habit of practising the healing art.
With the affairs of the kingdom and with public worship the
prophets no longer interfered actively. They simply gave
advice, and that they did by applying to the present and its
cares the standard of God's eternal thoughts. When Ezekiel,
who, in fact, can be called a prophet only in a limited sense,
sketches not merely an ideal picture of the future theocratic
State and its sanctuary, but actually writes down " a law " for
the temple and the altar, which the children of Israel are to
keep as a model for the final era,3 that is merely a form of
legislative activity due to prophetic revelation ; a form, too, in
which the influence of Ezekiel's priestly descent makes itself
distinctly felt. It is practically the same as when the
Deuteronomist codifies the customs of Mosaism according
to new principles, and when A sets up a complete system
of sacred ritual for the final era as " the Law of Moses."
A prophetic speech no longer consists mainly of short,
dark, oracular sayings, but of consecutive, logical, artistically-
constructed lectures. For a prophet of this period, the plea
" I cannot speak " would be a much greater disqualification
for office than it formerly was for Moses.4 The weapon of
the prophets is the lecture. Hence, when God calls them,
He makes their mouth a sword ; gives them, even though
they are not sons of a prophet, " the tongue of the learned "
— that is to say, of those who have learned to speak as
prophets should.5 And whatever they say or do symbolically
as prophets, they feel to be the direct expression and outflow
of knowledge received from God.6 They distinguish clearly
1 2 Kings xxii. 14 ; cf. Isa. vii. 3, viii. 3 ff. 2 Isa. xxxviii. 21.
3 E.g. Ezek. xliii. 10, 12, 18, xliv. 5.
4 Jer. i. 6 ; cf. Ex. vi. 12, 30, vii. 1, iv. 10, 14, 16.
0 Jer. i. 9, v. 14 ; cf. B. J. xlix. 2, 1. 4.
6 E.g. Isa. vi. 9, vii. 3, viii. 1, 6ff., xx. 2.

PROPHETIC DUTIES. 273
between what their own heart tells them and what makes
itself felt by them as a constraining divine influence. If they
are in doubt, they first wrestle in prayer for the assurance
by which they may know that they are speaking God's word
regarding the people.1 Occasionally, indeed, it is only by the
fulfilment of a prophecy that they learn that a thought which
had arisen in their hearts was a word that came from God.
But, as a rule, they know quite clearly that in pursuing their
vocation they are speaking God's word.2 Thus they can
fearlessly say the most disagreeable things to their rulers and
princes, under the conviction that they are speaking with a
higher than earthly authority.3 God is with them, and
neither prince nor people can overawe them.4 Whether,
therefore, in the discharge of their duty, they speak or keep
silence,5 punish and threaten, or praise and promise ; whether
they perform symbolical, or even miraculous acts,8 or simply
take the usual steps required by their profession, as, for
example, the writing down of their own words,7 — whatever
they do in their vocation with the consciousness of a higher
necessity, that God does through them.
Accordingly, backed as they are by the omnipotence of
God, they never doubt as to their word being efficient. The
words of the prophets determine the course of events. Their
prophecies have a mighty influence on the destiny of the
world. Their blessing, like their curse, is of decisive im
portance, though, of course, only when it proceeds from God ;
for no groundless curse ever takes effect.8 They build up
1 Jer. xlii. 2, 7 (6, 9, 20). 2 Jer. xxxii. 8.
3 Amos vii. 16 ff. ; Isa. xxii. 15 f. ; Jer. xx. 3 (xxxvi. 30, xxxvii. 7).
4 Jer. i. 8, 17, 19, xv. 19 ff., xx. 11 ff. ; Ezek. ii. 6 ff., iii. 9.
5 Ezek. iii. 24 ff., xxix. 21, xxxiii. 22 (xxiv. 17, 27).
11 Isa. vii. 11 ff., xx. 2f. ; Jer. xiii. 1, xviii. 2, xix. Iff., 10, xxvii. 1, xxviii.
12 ff, xliii. 8.
7 E.g. Deut. i. 19, ii. 4, 9, 13, 17; Isa. vii. 3ff.; viii. Iff, xxii. 15; Jer.
xiii. 3, 6, xvii. 19, xxii. 1, xxvi. 2 (Isa. xxx. 8 ; Hab. ii. 2 ; Jer. xxx. 2,
xxxvi. 2, 27).
8 Prov. xxvi. 2 (Micah vi. 5 ; Num. xxii. -xxiv.).
VOL. I. S

274 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
and pull down ; they harden and convert.1 For what they
say and do is the expression of the will of Him whose hand
guides and controls the universe.
Since the words they speak professionally are of such
moment, a clear line of demarcation must be drawn between
such words and the wishes with which the human heart of a
prophet is filled. True, both often coincide. Hosea prays
for the divine retribution which he foretells.2 But, as Riehm
rightly insists, Jeremiah distinguishes very emphatically
between the prophecy of disaster which, as God's com
missioner, he has to deliver, and the patriotic wish of his
own heart, which would have preferred the false prophecy of
Hananiah.3 Even when the human hearts of the prophets
shudder with fear,4 or are touched with sympathetic sorrow
because of the unhappy fate of Israel and other peoples ; 5 even
when they do not wish for the disastrous day,6 they must
follow the higher voice of truth which announces itself to
them as the voice of God. They must bear testimony to this
divine will, even where there is no prospect of producing an
effect on man. Whether Israel gives ear or not, the prophet
must speak ; the people must know that there is a prophet
among them.7
6. The way in which the prophets themselves became
conscious of the revelations made to them naturally varied
in the course of this history, and, even within the same
period, it oscillated between certain extremes. As the Greeks
distinguished between ecstatic soothsaying and conscious pro
phecy, and as Paul distinguishes between speaking in unknown
1 Isa. vi. 9 ; Jer. i. 10, 17, v. 14 ; Ezek. xxxii. 18. I also understand Hos.
vi. 5 to mean, "God smites by means of the prophets ; He slays by the words
of His mouth,'' not, " He smites at the prophets."
2 Hos. ix. 14 ; cf. Jer. xi. 20.
* Jer. xxviii. 6 (Stud. u. Krit. 1865, 16 N. 6).
4 B. J. xxi. 3ff., xxiv. 16.
8 Isa. xv. 5, xvi. 9, xxii. 4 ; Micah i. 8 ; Jer. iv. 19, viii. 18, 21, 22, ix. 1 f.,
x. 19, xxiii. 9, xlviii. 31 f. ; Ezek. xi. 13.
• Jer. xvii. 16. 7 Ezek. ii. 3-6, iii. 11, 27 (2 Kings v. 8).

FORM OF PROPHETIC SPEECH. 275
tongues and prophesying,1 and recognises the latter aa the
higher, because implying full self-consciousness ; so in Hebrew
antiquity, also, we have both forms.
But we cannot doubt that, in the earlier times, the usual
form of prophecy was ecstasy, the form most akin to speaking
with tongues. It was when in a state of rapture, transported
out of the calm of their ordinary thought and judgment, that
the prophets lived through moments of direct communion
with God, and found in visions the solution of the ques
tions which perplexed their hearts. Such is still the view
taken in the late narrative, which makes a part of the spirit
of Moses be put upon the elders in quite a concrete material
fashion, so that they " prophesy " in holy excitement, and
even those not personally touched are affected.2 In like
manner, the sacred music and dancing have such an effect on
Saul that he joins in, and flings himself on the ground naked,
in a state of rapture, as the fakirs do in the East 3 at the
present day. By the playing of a minstrel, Elisha has his
spirit excited until the hand of God comes upon him.4 In
the ear of Samuel, asleep in the sanctuary, a voice sounds,
calling him again and again, until Eli explains its meaning
to him.5 God lays His hand on Elijah, so that he runs in
front of the king's chariot when going at full speed.6 After
being fed by angels, he travels for forty days and forty nights
to Horeb.7 According to the legend in B, it is by a festive
meal that Isaac works himself into the mood for uttering a
prophetic blessing.8 Balaam is represented as forcibly con-
1 1 Cor. xiv. 2, 3. * Num. xi. 17-26.
J 1 Sam. x. 6ff. ; cf. xix. 20-24; 2 Kings ii. 8, 13; Isa. xx. 2. Illustra
tions from the domain of Islam are given in Dozy (Islamisme, 399) ; Lane, ii.
39; All the Year Round, 1860, Feb. 4 (Melbush, i.e. "clothed" with the
spirit of God). One is reminded of the naked dervishes and their eccentric
conduct. 4 2 Kings iii. 15.
6 1 Sam. iii. 3ff. How closely akin this is to incubation is self-evident;
cf. Job iv. 13 ff. ; Odyss. iv. 839.
8 1 Kings xviii. 46. 7 1 Kings xix. 8. 8 Gen. xxvii. 4, 25, 31.

276 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
strained to deliver the oracle which is opposed to his own
desire. It is only from this standpoint that the people could
call the seers " madmen," x and that it could seem strange to a
later age that the word of God was communicated without
dream or rapture to Moses when in full possession of his
senses.2 As prose grew out of poetry, so the quiet lecture
grew out of the impassioned harangue, and out of ecstatic
rapture came the distinct consciousness of divine inspiration.
Naturally this rapture was not of long duration, but it
recurred in moments of excitement, when God " opened the
ear of the seer to understand His word." 8 In these days
the object of the prophecy, as the very word " seer " indicates,
must have generally been presented to the eye as something
seen, " a vision " in the true sense of the word.4 What the
prophets were to communicate to the people in answer to
their questions was received by them when in a state of
spiritual excitement, in most cases probably, in dreams by
night.5 Direct certainty as to the questions and difficulties
with which they were burdened was not obtained consciously
by meditation and study, but grasped by an excited fancy,
and therefore in a sensuous garb. And even when the men
of God were describing such visions to the people, the repre
sentation threw them into a state of passionate excitement.
They lived over again, as it were, the moments of rapture.
Symbolical action, too, was in the earlier times, as several
examples prove,8 a particularly favourite form of prophetic

1 Especially Num. xxii. 8ff., iyxolfino-is.
2 Num. xii. 6 ; Deut. xxxiv. 10 (A). True, A has already lost the proper
conception of prophecy.
3 1 Sam. ix. 15 ; cf. xx. 2.
4 ntn is used in the older prophets of gazing at actual visions (Hos. xii. 8).
The niTnn in Num. xii. 8 supposes a state of still higher excitement of the
imagination than does the word of Jehovah, which goes straight to the question
at issue (Hoffmann).
6 When a man has been racking his brains over a problem till far on in tha
night, he continues to do so even when half-asleep.
6 1 Kings xi. 30 ff, xx. 35, xxii. 11 ff.

FORM OF PROPHETIC SPEECH. 277
expression. A person not accustomed to abstract reasoning
gets a more vivid impression from what his eye sees, than from
what is merely described to him in words. And a symbolical
act, owing to its greater directness, has more force, and is
therefore more in keeping with the distinctive character of the
prophets of that age, than the ordinary lecture. In such an
action, a threat, promise, or advice is so presented to the senses
that the action becomes a sign (nitf). In the sphere of language
what comes nearest to this . is the parable or allegory, a fine
example of which is given us in Nathan's rebuke of David.1
Of course, even among the prophets of the eighth century
and later, the state of rapture in which a man loses his
mental consciousness is by no means rare. In these times,
also, we are told that God's hand lays hold of the prophet ; God
whispers in his ear ; in the twilight thoughts come upon him
from God;2 he falls down, that is to say, is thrown down, in a
rapture.3 But such forms of prophecy were no longer the
rule, and they became always less and less frequent. Foi
example, although dreams are occasionally regarded as
ordinary occurrences in the life of a prophet,4 many men of
the Chaldean age actually attached an evil meaning to them
as compared with the express word of God.5 The words
" see," " gaze," " vision " are often used so indefinitely that
they can mean nothing more than a divine communication,
and do not in any sense imply the notion of ecstasy.6 By far
1 2 Sam. xii. 1 ff. ; Judg. ix. 8 ff.
- E.g. Isa. viii. 11, xxii. 1, 5, 14 ; B. J. xxi. 4. 3 Num. xxiv. 0.
4 Deut. xiii. 2, 4, 6. A beautiful description of such dream-visions is given
in Job iv. 13 ff., "Then a breath passed over my face, the hair of my flesh
stood up. There it stood, I could not discern the form thereof ; an image was
before mine eyes ; I heard a low whispering voice " (cf. 1 Kings xix. 12). The
dream is also alluded to in many other passages of Job (vii. 14, xxxiii. 15 f
xx. 8).
5 Jer. xxiii. 25, 28, 32 ; Zech. x. 2. It includes the trickery of professional
prophecy. 6 Prov. xxix. 18 ; Nahum i. 1 ; Obad. 1 ; Hos. xii. 11 ; Joel iii. 1 ; Lam.
ii. 9, 14 ; Ezek. vii. 26 ; cf. the previously mentioned combination of ntn with
OW' "131, and such like.

278 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the more common way is to receive a revelation consciously,
without any other enthusiasm than the lofty tone which a
warm and healthy spiritual life implies. This was, it is certain,
of a more impassioned character than the circumstances of
modern European life produce, but nothing unusual in that
age and among that people. Such is the impression which
we inevitably get from the writings of the greatest prophets,
Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. The form of
their address was essentially the same as that of an evan
gelical sermon of the present day, or an animated and
eloquent popular speech. It showed the absolute sincerity
of the speaker's faith, it judged the present by the great
principles of true religion ; and in these it found certainty for
the future. It was intelligible to the people, and was raised
above ordinary speech, not by any artistic form exclusively its
own, but by the directness of its inspiration. Its character
istics are all essentially moral. The object of the prophet's
word is to proclaim to the people their sin, to bid them repent
and believe.1
In this age theophanies occur only in the form of visions ; 2
and the post-exilic prophets are again fonder of this form
than the earlier prophets are.8 But when we examine the
visions which are related to us since the time of Amos, we
cannot doubt that they are in most cases only a poetic dress
consciously adopted, that is to say, poetry is purposely em
ployed in order to present a spiritual truth clearly to the
people in the form which they understand and like. Some
times this intention is made quite plain by a play upon words;
the dress is put on so very loosely that every one can see
the real object.4 In such cases, therefore, the revelations are
not conceived in the imagination as pictures, but are recom-
1 B. J. lviii. 1. 2 E.g. Ezek. 1 ff., 10 ff.
8 Amos vii. 1 ff., 4 ff., 7 ff., viii. 1, ix. 1 ; Jer. xxiv. 1 ff. ; especially Ezek. i. 1,
4-28, iii. Iff., 12 ff., 22 ff., viii. 3, xi. 24, ix. Iff, xl. 2 ; Zech. i.-vi.
4 Isa. vi. Iff. ; Jer. i. 11 f., xvi. 1 ff, 5ff, xxv. 15 ; Ezek. xxi. 25 ff. (on the
other hand, it is possible to interpret Ezek. viii. 3, xi. 24, of actual visions).

FORM OF PROPHETIC SPEECH. 279
bined by it into pictures.1 They are then akin to the parable,
which, though rare, is presented in a most masterly style ; 2
or to the proverb, which is very frequent, especially in Ezekiel.3
It is much the same with a symbolical act. The prophets
still perform such acts in order to produce a lasting impres
sion upon the people through their senses, to give them, as it
were, a visible pledge of the invisible truth.4 But very often
even these are but an oratorical, poetical form, mere drapery.
Instead of expressing a threat or a promise in naked words,
the prophets clothe them in a story.5 They tell of something
they were ordered to do, or of something they did, although the
thing need not on that account have actually happened or been
even possible. And here the parable so closely resembles a
symbolic act which is merely related, not performed, that in
both even the form of presentation is often quite similar.6
The effect which the prophets produced by their preaching
and by everything connected therewith, was, from the eighth
century onwards, increased and perpetuated by their writings.
1 Already in Ezekiel and Zechariah we find masks instead of persons, and
in Num. xii. 6-8 there is no longer a. trace of the spirit of genuine ancient
prophecy (Hoffmann).
2 Isa. v. 1-7 (Hos. xii. 11 reckons the i"IDT among the characteristics of a
prophet). 3 Num. xxiii. 7, 18, xxiv. 3 ; Hab. ii. 6 ; Ezek. xvii. 2, xix. 1, 14, xxvi. 17,
xxvii. 1 ff., 32, xxxii. 2 ff. (xxi. 5, Engl. xx. 49, this is made a subject of direct
reproach against Ezekiel) ; Amos v. 1 ; Micah ii. 4 (b&0, HT'n, T\i, nj'p).
4 Isa. xx. 2; Jer. xix. Iff, 10ff., xxvii. Iff, xxviii. 12ff, xviii. 2f., xxxii.
6ff., xliii. 8ff. ; Ezek. xii. 3ff., 18 ff, xxi. 11 ff., xxiv. 15 ff, xxxvii. 16.
"Ezek. iv. 1, 4ffi, 9ff, v. Iff, vi. 11. Zech. xi. 4-14 is a remarkable
weaving together of actual events with a parable as to God's office as
Shepherd. If in Jer. xiii. Iff. the "Phrat" is taken to mean the Euphrates,
as it does everywhere else, then, of course, we have mere drapery. If, on the
other hand, it means the well "Farah" beside Anathoth, as Schick (Ausland
1867, 24) thinks, an actual performance of the act would be possible. As for
Hos. i.-iii., I am still of opinion, in opposition to the majority of modern
interpreters, that we have here not actual events in the prophet's family life,
but an allegory. Not to speak of the fact that the prophet cannot possibly
have taken such stories to be a revelation of God to himself, it is not conceiv
able that two so very similar events should have happened to him within so
short a period.
3 Ezek. xxiv. 3.

280 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
They not only placed single important sentences out of their
prophecies before the people's eyes in the form of monumental
inscriptions,1 in order to imprint them on the popular memory,
and wrote letters to those at a distance in order to increase
their influence over them also ; 2 but they were in the habit
of gathering the whole results of their prophetic activity
into one or more collections, generally by the help of
their most intimate followers and scholars, and then leaving
them to posterity in the form of a book.8 Naturally they
did not repeat everything which they had spoken to the
people on special occasions : they were not simply their own
transcribers. The speeches of several years they arranged
together in short extracts, as, e.g., in Isa. vii.— xi. all the
prophet's work during the period from the invasion of Rezin
and Pekah till the break down of the coalition is condensed
into a few chapters. By giving prominence to what was
most important, and by adding supplements, they made, as it
were, a new work. Thus we read of Jeremiah that he
collected, by divine command, the revelations he had received
from God, and that when this book was destroyed, he on
replacing it added " many like words." * In later times, and
especially when free public speech was no longer possible, as
in Babylon, or when the subject was not suitable for a popular
address, as in the last section of Ezekiel, the prophets put
before the people in writing eveL speeches that had never
been publicly delivered.
These prophetical writings had, in turn, the greatest
influence on the whole development of religion ; only now
could a consecutive series of efforts be begun by the pro
phets. Each prophet could choose as models those of his
predecessors who were specially akin to him in spirit. This

1 Isa. viii. 1 ff., xxx. 8ff. ; Hab. ii 2. 2 Jer. xxix. 1.
3 Jer. xxxvi. 4, 32; Isa. viii. 16. Isa. i.-xi, xiv. 28-xxiii. ; Hosea, Micah,
Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others were put together in this way.
4 Jer. xxx. 2, xxxvi. 2 ; cf. xxvii. 32.

PROPHECY AND SOOTHSAYIN.G. 281
use, for proof of which I must refer my readers to books on
Old Testament Introduction, begins very early. Less highly
gifted ages had thus access to the divine springs which had
flowed freely in happier days. It was only the age after Ezra
that saw the ancient Scriptures appealed to as an acknowledged
and infallible authority, and the prophets turned into scribes.
7. The predicting of future events is not the chief function
of prophecy. The great prophets that follow Amos lay far
more stress on the doctrinal teaching, which makes the eternal
truths of God the standard by which to judge the present
and its moral transgressions. But as " oracles " were in the
earlier ages what was most sought for, both from prophet and
from priest, so in later times hardly anything important was
undertaken without a word from God,1 whether the prophet
obtained it simply from his own inner consciousness, or
sought information in some special way about the matter in
question. The prophets undoubtedly engaged both in pro
phesying and in soothsaying, two, in themselves, perfectly
distinct modes of foretelling the future ; and they practised
both arts without drawing any conscious distinction.
Prophesying is inseparably connected with the prophetic
calling, and stands in the closest possible connection with the
duty of warning and guiding the people. Whoever has with
the eye of the Divine Spirit been watching the present, and
the conditions of the past that led up to it, is thereby made
certain of the future also. For, on the human side, this
depends on the real contents of the past and the present ; on
the divine side, on the everlastingly just and impartial love of
the Divine Being and His willingness to save. Hence the
ways of God in regard to the salvation of His people, in so
far as they are within the sphere of salvation, must lie within
the range of a prophet's vision ; and this is just the gift of pro-
1 Jer. xxii. 12, 19, 30, xxviii. 16, xxix. 22, xxxvi. 30, xxxvii. 7 ff., 17,
xxxviii. 14, xxi. If. ; Ezek. xiv. 1, 8, xx. 1, 81, xxiv. 1 (xii. 12 f.), (2 Kin^s
xx. 1-5, xxii. 13).

282 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
phesying. It is not a mere forecasting of the future from the
circumstances of the present, any more than the assurance of
faith due to a revelation of the divine life is the same as a
philosophical view. No doubt both will coincide in many
points whenever the forecast and the philosophical speculation
are at once acute and sagacious. But their source and the
kind of conviction they produce are fundamentally different.
In prophecy, as in faith, there is a personal certainty, which
is in no way disturbed by errors in calculation. Consequently
this is communicated to others also, without argument, simply
through the influence of personal contact, because in their
case, too, the power of truth produces its effect on the human
heart. It is only with this explanation that one can assent
to Schleiermacher's definition : " When one half of a religious
event has been given, every religious anticipation of the other
half is prophecy."
Prophecy is thus the prophet's application to the future, of
his certainty as to the eternal laws of the Divine Being and
Will and as to the final goal of salvation, in so far as that
future is of importance for the present, and is connected with
the sphere of religion and morals. This certainty can of itself
arise quite as well in a condition of special spiritual excite
ment and enthusiasm, as in the tranquil course of conscious
spiritual meditation. In earlier times the former must have
been the usual method ; in later times the latter, but still
always in combination with the former. Now in its essence
prophecy is neither magical nor unnatural, but a conviction
of a really moral and religious nature. Its proper object is
exclusively the history of the kingdom of God. Where
prophecies against or concerning heathen nations occur, these
are considered solely in relation to the people of God. They
are never the real object of prophecy, which takes notice of
them only as having a bearing on the objects of the kingdom
of God. But the real object of prophecy is Israel. When
he takes to evil courses, his destruction is foretold, and every

PROPHECY AND SOOTHSAYING. 283
foreign power becomes God's rod of correction with which to
threaten him. But behind all threats there stands the ever
lasting covenant with the people which cannot be broken,
God's covenant love which never grows cold. Such genuine
prophesying is, of course, only the fruit of a long history of
prophecy. Israel can scarcely have known it previous to the
time of B, C, Amos, and Hosea.
Soothsaying is something quite different from this. It
is knowledge, professed or actual, of a coming event, in all its
details and contingencies, no matter to what category that
event belongs. It has nothing to do with the inner course of
history, with the Divine Spirit moving therein. It prefers
to search out details, things which stand in no inner con
nection with the fundamental moral principles of history and
its eternal laws. While prophecy only touches an individual
where great moral principles come to fulfilment in him, or
where the history of salvation is interwoven with his, sooth
saying deals, by preference, with the destiny of individuals.
While in prophecy details belong purely to the poetic form,
soothsaying takes special delight in choosing as its subject,
times, names, and numbers. Where soothsaying is not due to
trickery or self-deception, it must be connected with that dark
and mysterious realm of spiritual life in which a special
unnatural excitement and one-sided enlargement of particular
faculties of the soul awaken presentiments which are taken for
certainties. Undoubtedly the old Hebrews, like every other
ancient nation, saw in such phenomena divine communications.
In ancient Israel, indeed, they probably constituted a by no
means inconsiderable part of its religious life. Soothsaying,
it is true, was not an exclusive possession of the prophets.
A person who wished to " consult God " 1 betook himself as

1 Gen. xxv. 22 (xxiv. 57) ; Ex. xvii. 1, xviii. 15, 19, xxxiii. 7 ; Lev. xxiv. 12 ;
Num. iii. 16, 39, iv. 37, 41, 45, 49, ix. 8, 9, 18, 20, 23, x. 11, 13, 29, xiii. 2,
xv. 35, xxxiii. 2, 38 (cf. by the hand of Moses) ; Josh. ix. 14 ; Judg. i. 1 •
2 Sam. xxi. 1 (cf. 2 Kings vi. 9, vii. 1, 2, viii. 1).

284 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
readily, probably more readily, to the priests with their ephod
and their Urim and Thummim,1 and to the decision of God

1 This difficult point, though one that properly belongs to archaeology pure
and simple, may be briefly explained here on account of its connection with Old
Testament ideas of soothsaying. For the literature of the question, cf. Ugolin,
Thesaur. ant. sacr. vol. xii., where the works of H. Buxtorf, Polemann,
Spencer, and Riboudeald are to be found, also Saalschiitz, Prilfung der
vorzuglichsten Ansichten von den Urim und Tummim (Ilgen, Zeitschr. fur
histor. Theologie, viii. 2). The head of the priesthood had, according to A, as
a means of ascertaining the will of God, which the civil power was bound to
respect, his high priest's cape. On the front of it was sewed a gold-embroidered
cloth like a pocket, on which were fastened the names of the tribes of Israel,
engraved on four rows of precious stones (Ex. xxviii. 15ff., xxxix. 8ff). As
" the wearer of the ephod," he was ia possession of the priest's oracle (1 Sam.
xiv. 3 ; cf. xxi. 10, xxiii. 6, 9-11, xxx. 7f.). As regards the more exact form
of this oracle, we are told that " the priest shall put into the pocket the Urim
and Thummim " (Ex. xxviii. 30). In my opinion the whole narrative shows,
and especially the parallel passages Lev. viii. 8 and Ex. xxv. 21, that these
Urim and Thummim cannot be the twelve precious stones on the pocket already
mentioned, but must be some object which could be put into the pocket upon
the breast of the priest's cape. These Urim and Thummim, then, by whose
"judgment," e.g., Joshua was to be bound (Num. xxvii. 21), must have formed
a sacred object of no great size, and familiar to the people from of old, as
there is nowhere any mention of its being made (n). Spencer supposed the
Thummim might correspond to the ornament which had to be worn by the
Egyptian high priest as a mark of the highest judicial dignity, and which, con
sisting of precious stones, was worn round the neck on a gold chain, and called
"Truth" (Aelian, Variae histor. xiv. 34; Diodor. Sic, ed. Becker, i. p. 101).
"With this he connects the further theory that the Urim were not different from
the Teraphim, the miniature statues of these as oracle-giving gods being in this
way withdrawn from the service of superstition and adapted to the ritual of the
true religion. The latter view, the only support for which is a dubious inter
pretation of Hos. iii. 3, is quite arbitrary. The Rabbis generally suppose that the
sparkling of one or even all of fhe twelve precious stones on the pocket was what
constituted the sign, Joseph, Antiq. iii. 8. 9, iiravo-ciTo h <fu.p^mv\ tov Xapvuv,
or that the letters engraved on them formed some sort of word. In the same
way Sohar thinks of the divine name PlirP being read in a variety of Cabbalistic
ways. All these theories, however, are refuted by the fact that the Urim and
Thummim were ' ' put into " the pocket. As to the real nature of this " oracle "
no conclusion can be drawn from the statements in A. For he had certainly
never seen it in use, and merely drew a picture of it for himself according to
his wont. In my opinion 1 Sam. xiv. 36-42 (cf. xxiii. 2-11, xxx. 7, 8), if we
restore the first passage, as Thenius does, gives us the needed explanation.
There were probably two stones, the one called D'H'IK from its transparency,
and the other D^ISH from its opaqueness, or, as is more probable, from their
object being to give "light" and "judgment." When Urim fell, the answer
was "yes" ; when Thummim, "no." When neither of the stones sprang out,
or an evil omen prevented the casting of the lot, it was a sign that God was

PROPHECY AND SOOTHSAYING.

285

by the lot.1 The prophet Gad, with his prophetic counsel, is
put into the background when Abiathar comes into David's
camp 2 with the priestly oracle. As Eglon listens reverently
to the word of "the God of Israel," so the Israelites also
went to foreign oracles, for example, to Baal-Zebub, the god
of Ekron ; and the prophet, by way of rebuke, merely asks,
'' Is it because there is not a God in Israel ? " 3 When God
will not give an oracle, either by dreams or by the Urim or
by prophets, Saul betakes himself to the witch of Endor.4
In the worship of Micah and the Danites, the ephod and the
oracles obviously play the chief rdle.5 The highest com
pliment that could be paid to human shrewdness was to say
that the answers of Ahithophel were always "as if a man had
inquired at the oracle of God."6 But just as people paid
attention to dreams,7 so they also asked the prophets to
become soothsayers for hire.8 And even after the eighth
century there are found, scattered here and there among the
prophecies, elements of soothsaying that are, it is true,
not very clearly distinguished from the poetic dress of
prophecy.9 Naturally Israel never doubted that the word
of a true prophet must issue in fulfilment. Such an one
angry. Consequently this oontrivance would fall quite within the more general
category of "oracle by lot" (of. Judg. xx. 18 ; 1 Sam. x. 20 ; Josh. vii. 16).
That it was merely a symbol of priestly illumination cannot be inferred from the
poetic allusion to it in Deut. xxxiii. 8 ; cf. Ps. xliii. 3 ; nor does it suit the
stories about the way in which the Urim and Thummim were used. An answer
"yes "or " no " is plainly required by Judg. i. 1, xx. 1 8 ff. ; 1 Sam. xxiii. 11 ff. ;
2 Sam. ii. 1. 2 Sam. v. 19, 23 is somewhat less simple.
1 Josh. vii. 16 ff. ; 1 Sam. x. 20 ff.
2 1 Sam. xxii. 5 ; cf. 10, 11, 13, 15, xxiii 2-12, xxx. 7, 3.
» 2 Kings i. 2 f. ; Judg. iii. 20.
4 1 Sam. xxviii. 6, 15.
6 Cf. the expressions in 2 Sam. xvi. 23 ; Num. ix. 8, 9, xv. 35 ; Ex. xviii. 19 f. ;
Josh. ix. 14 ; Judg. xviii. 4 ff, xx. 18 ; 1 Sam. xii. 14 (men) ; 2 Sam. xxi. 1 f.
etc. 6 2 Sam. xvi. 23.
7 Gen. xl. 8, xli. ; cf. 1 Kings xiv. 1 ff. ; 2 Kings viii. 1 ff.
8 1 Sam. ix. 7, x. 2ff. ; cf. iii. 20.
9 Isa. vii. 8, 14, 16, xvi. 14, xxi. 16, xxxvii. 7, 33, xxxviii. 5, xxxix. 5 ;
Jer. xxii. 12, 19, 30, xxviii. 16, xxix. 22, xxxvi. 30, xxxvii. 7.

286 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
does not speak on his own initiative.1 If his word does not
come to pass, he is a lying prophet, or else, in order to
punish His people, God has in His anger purposely put a false
answer into the mouth of His servant.2
The kind of prophecy, with which alone we are here con
cerned, is not met with in its purity and distinctiveness till
after the eighth century. The judgments of the future are held
up before the people as the due reward of their present sins.
Every foreign power, as it comes to the front, is represented
as God's rod of correction ; Assyria as well as Babylon, the
Scythians as well as the Egyptians.3 Against the individual
enemies of divine truth among the people, against a Shebna,
a Pashhur, etc., the vengeance of God is proclaimed.4 The
heathen nations, that stand as obstacles in the paths of sacred
history, are menaced with destruction in the storm of God's
rapidly approaching judgments.5 But behind all the suffering
there stands Hope's bright picture of redemption and a time of
bliss. The prophets always speak as men familiar with the
purposes of God. They are in God's confidence. What the
Lord is about to do He tells unto them.6 Although the un
believing multitude hope that "the prophets shall become
wind," and say, " the days are prolonged, and every vision
faileth," nevertheless, God will bring to pass that which He
has announced by the mouth of His messengers.7 And the
prophecies are invariably spoken with the practical and moral
purpose of making the exhortations, warnings, and consola
tions more vivid and effective.
Prophecy never takes the form of abstract statement. It is
1 God has uncovered their ear, i.e. has had communication with them, 1 Sam.
ix. 15 ; cf. xx. 12 ; 2 Sam. vii. 27 (Gen. xxvii. 1-33).
2 Deut. xviii. 22 ; Jer. xxviii. 9 ; cf. 1 Kings xxii. 5 ff.
3 Compare the different standpoints of Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, contrasted with
Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and again Joel and Zechariah.
4 Isa. xxii. 15 ff.; Jer. xx. 3 (Amos vii. 17).
5 So Isa. xiv. 24-xxiii. ; Amos i. ; Obadiah, Nahum, etc.
6 Jer. xxiii. 18, 21 (the gloss, xxxiii. 2).
7 Amos ii. 12 ; Jer. v. 13 ; Ezek. xii. 22 f.

PROPHECY AND SOOTHSAYING. 287
always presented as a view or a picture, drawn with the special
features suggested by history and by everyday experience.
We never get the bald statement : Nineveh and Babylon will
perish. We see them taken by storm, and, amid every kind
of horror and outrage, razed to the ground by ruthless foes.1
It is not said : Assyria will come and devastate the land, but
not utterly subdue it. We see the invader devastating
Lebanon and striding across the pastures of Bashan ; we watch
him hurrying along the highway towards the south, through
the pass of Michmash, capturing city after city till, before the
gates of the holy city, he receives his death-blow from God.2 In
like manner, the day of judgment is depicted with all the terrors
of darkness, earthquake, tempest, and flood. The final deliver
ance borrows its chief traits from the exodus out of Egypt ;
and it is from the glorious memories of David and Solomon
that the picture of the Messiah gets its brightest colours.
It is also quite natural that numbers and names should occur
in prophecy. But were these to be regarded as actually fore
telling definite names still unknown to the existing generation,
or particular numbers that belong to the domain of chance,
prophecy would sink to the level of soothsaying. In reality,
however, the dates are either quite indefinite, — like " shortly,"
" at hand," " yet a little while," " though it tarry long," and so
on,3 — or they are round numbers, like one, three, seven, forty,
seventy, which are mere general expressions for a longer or
shorter period of time.4 Even Jeremiah's famous number is
1 Nahum ii. 1 ff. ; Jer. xlvi. 3 ff, 14 ff, xlvii. 3 ff.
" Zech. xi. 1-3 ; Isa. x. 28 ff.
3 Isa. vii. 14, viii. 4, xiii. 6, 22, xvii. 14, xxix. 17, xxxii. 10; Jer. li. 33;
Ezek. vii. 8 ; Micah v. 2 ; Hab. ii. 3 ; Joel i. 15, ii. 1.
' Isa. xvi. 14, xxi. 16 (according to the years of an hireling, i.e. short mea
sure, at the utmost so long), xxiii. 15, 17 (seventy years, according to the days
of one king, i.e. of a dynasty); Jer. xxv. 12, xxix. 10; Ezek. xxix. 12; cf.
Welcker, i. 52 f. (Jonah iii. 4); cf. Jer. xxviii. 1 ff. (the false prophet). Also in
Isa. xx. 3, the three years would most naturally be taken as the time that would
elapse before the sign was accomplished. But, according to the present context
the meaning must be that the sign was repeated during the course of the three
years, the time probably during which Ashdod was besieged.

288 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
certainly used in this sense. Possibly the prophet himself
means to indicate this very thing when he uses the same number
in two passages of quite different date, compare chap. xxv. 1 1
with chap. xxix. 10 ; for there is nothing to justify Hitzig's idea
that the first passage should be considered an interpolation.
But, in any case, the perfectly indefinite character of the number
remains. The scribes were the first to work up the sacred
numbers into a system actually meant to be taken seriously.1
Wherever there occurs in the earher prophecies a really exact
number apparently accidental, there is certainly good reason
for examining carefully into the date or the authenticity of
the passage.2
In the same way, names of persons still in the future have
always a metaphorical signification, and are not meant to be
names in the literal sense. Names like Immanuel, Jehovah-
Tsidkenu, Pele-Joez, Abi-Ad, Sar-Shalom, El-Gibbor, Lo-
Ammi, Lo-Ruhamah,3 are words which are self-interpreting.
Names otherwise meant, like the name Koresh (Cyrus) in
Deutero-Isaiah,4 or details of any kind which belong to the
same category5 are always proofs that the paragraphs in
question belong to times when these names and details were
already within the sphere of experience. ,
Prophecies have an indissoluble connection with history.
Nevertheless they are not mere calculations about the future
1 Ezek. iv. 5ff. adds together from Ex. xii. 40 and Num. xiv. 34, 390+40=430.
Daniel next made the years of Jeremiah into year-weeks, and so on.
2 Isa. vii. 8, " And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken,
that it be not a people," is shown, even by the laws of parallelism, and still
more by a comparison with vers. 16, 17, and 22, to be a gloss that probably
arose out of the number 70 (which also occurs in Isa. xxiii. 15, 17 ; Jer. xxv.
11, xxix. 10), or else was ingeniously calculated by a later editor, after the rise
of the "no-people," the Samaritans (2 Kings xvii. 24 ff).
3 Hos. i. 4, 6 ; Isa. vii. 14, viii. 4, 10, ix. 5 (Jer. xxiii. 6).
4 B. J. xliv. 28, xiv. 1.
D There are cogent reasons for assigning the whole narrative, 1 Kings xiii. 1 ff. ,
to the period after Josiah (ver. 32, cities of Samaria !). (On the other hand, as
the whole position of affairs in the world at large in the days of Jeremiah
naturally pointed to Media as the only rival of Babylon, the mention of the Medes
in Jer. 1. 2 ff. is not one of the proofs of the non-authenticity of the section.)

I'ROPHECY AND SOOTHSAYING. 289
based on the present. Their eternal ground -thoughts are
independent of the vicissitudes of time, resting, as they do,
on deep religious certainty. But their form, colouring, and
figure depend on the actual present, with its needs, views,
and general environment. The prophecy of Amos is inti
mately connected with the political relations of his age,
especially with the attitude of the petty neighbour-peoples ;
those of Micah and Isaiah with the world-empire of Assyria,
and with the enterprises of northern Israel and Syria. It is
always so. Prophecy under a Hezekiah has one note, under
an Ahaz and a Zedekiah another. It has likewise one note
as long as Assyria and Babylon are God's rods of correction,
but another when they have been used and their arrogance
has to be broken. God gives the eye of the prophet power
to see the threads which run from the web of the present
out into the future. Let his prophecies be cut loose from
this web, let them be explained in an unhistorical fashion
without reference to their environment, and they will not
only be mutilated, but get so entangled with each other as to
become untrue.
The speeches of the prophets, in fact, never present truths,
even the most general, in any other way than in living con
nection with time and history. Hence they can never be
really understood apart from their own time and occasion.
The prophets read the will of God in the flaming letters of
the world's history. The circumstances of their time were to
them more than a mere outer garment which, in itself indif
ferent, covered prophetic announcements that were always of
similar import. They were in the most real sense factors that
contributed to the making of the prophetic teaching, stages,
as it were, by which the prophetic spirit penetrated more
deeply and thoroughly into the purposes of God with Israel.
Without Israel's decline, without the childish notions of
the people regarding the external character of worship, with
out the actual circumstances in which the world then was
VOL. I. T

290 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
and the rise of its different States, without historical figures
like David and Hezekiah, the rich variety of revealed truth
which we possess in the writings of the prophets would never
have found expression. It is not enough to have divine seed
and the soil to receive it. Both sun and rain, storm and
cold, affect the growth of the plant. And all this is, of
course, very specially applicable to prophecy. For as soon
as the creative power of imagination produces pictures of
things which lie beyond the experience of the present, the
impressions of that present necessarily provide the imagina
tion with colours and forms for these pictures.
8. If such is the case, genuine prophecy can never demand
either complete or unconditional fulfilment. As regards
its poetical details, this proposition is self-evident ; but it
holds true even of the main import of a prophecy, though
certainly not in the way Hengstenberg1 meant, viz. that
we might consider the predictions of the prophets as practic
ally fulfilled if their " idea " was realised, although in quite
a different way from what they had stated. The prophets
wished to predict, not ideas, but facts in the history of the
world. It may, for example, be said : Isaiah's prophecies
regarding the punishment of Assyria are fulfilled, as' to their
idea, wherever a haughty self-willed empire, forgetful of God
and His eternal purposes, is overthrown. But, on that account,
what the prophet meant and what he wished to foretell is
not in any way fulfilled, say, by the destruction of Rome or
some such event. On the contrary, Isaiah meant the destruc
tion of this historical Assyria in the period immediately follow
ing his prediction, and under circumstances which never arose.
Hengstenberg's view gives full play to every sort of arbitrary
interpretation, and abandons the firm ground of history2 as
1 " Abhandlung fiber die Auslegung der Propheten " (Evangelische Kirchen-
zeitung, 1833, 23, 24), an essay which, in spite of its errors, contains golden
words. 2 Of course, it is something altogether different when Riehm points out that
in prophecies there are often found features which, being borrowed from the

PROPHECY AND FULFILMENT. 291
completely as do the dreams of those who expect in the last
times a literal fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, and
who pare down the grand spiritual hopes of Christianity, in
truly Jewish fashion, to a " glorious kingdom of Israel." The
fact is, the relation of prophecy to fulfilment simply depends
on the nature of the subject.1
Prophecy uttered by a true prophet of God must, of
course, be true ; it must express the real judgment of God
regarding the present and what is to develop out of it.
What distinguishes the true prophet from the false is, that
God stands to the word of the former as to a word that has
gone out from Himself.2 Still, this is meant in a much
narrower sense than is generally supposed. The people are
to recognise a false prophet by the fact that his words do not
show themselves in harmony with the actual will of God as
proved by the result. If a prophet praises his contemporaries
and announces their salvation, whilst their sin is provoking
God to vengeance, God has not sent him.3 But this cannot
mean that prophecies are to be looked on as irreversible
decrees of fate regarding a future that lies beyond the range
of experience ; otherwise the people could form no judgment
at all regarding them. When a threat or a promise is uttered

view of the existing theocracy, cannot possibly have been intended by the
prophets to be taken literally ; and in these cases more importance is evidently
attached to the idea than to the form of presentation, so that the latter
apparently just passes directly over into the domain of conscious symbolism,
as in Zech. xiv. 16 ff. ; B. J. lxvi. 23.
1 Cf. Bertheau, Jahrb. f. deutsche Theologie, 1859, ii. 314 ff, iv. 559 ff;
1860, iii. 486 ff. ("Die alttestamentlichen Weissagungen von Israels Reichs-
herrlichkeit "). Diestel, Geschichte des Alten Testamentes, p. 722, etc.
2 Deut. xviii. 22 ; Jer. xxviii. 9 ; cf. Hab. ii. 3 (Zech. i. 6).
3 This idea is insisted on by the exilic Isaiah with special vigour and
emphasis. The prophet shows himself the servant of the living God, by the
fact that from the first he recognises God's will in the dark problem of the
world's history and development, and that, after the first scene has been
witnessed by all (the successes of the Persian king), he also perceives what is
new and incomprehensible, that this victorious hero will redeem Israel, and
that Israel will once more live to see a time like that of the exodus from Egypt
(xli. 17 ff., 27, xlii. 9, xlviii. 5 ff.).

292 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
regarding the actual circumstances of a people, it must be ful
filled if these circumstances remain unaltered. If a prophet
promised his own generation God's favour and prosperity, and
judgments overtake it without circumstances having so com
pletely altered as to reverse the conditions of that promise,
then the prophet lied, and did not make known the real
intention of God. If he threatened the people with God's
wrath and judgment, and they experience only happiness
and salvation, without having, by repentance, removed the
cause of God's anger, then he spoke of himself, and was
not a divine messenger. On the other hand, it by no means
follows that the picture in which the final ideal age and its
accompaniments presented themselves to a prophet's eye must
be realised in all its details. As every such idea has its
roots in the present and its environment, then if the circum
stances of that present be utterly changed, the idea cannot
come to full realisation.
The present out of which the words of the prophets are
spoken is not regarded by the Old Testament religion as one
that has by a necessity of nature to go on developing. It
includes the moral freedom of the creature. Every people to
which divine promises or threats are uttered may change,
may repent, just in consequence of a threatening word from
God, and thus remove what justified the threat ; on the other
hand, it may with sinful levity forsake the right path to which
the words of promise applied. In the one case, God graciously
recalls His threat ; in the other, He angrily revokes His promise.
For if prophecies once uttered obtained fulfilment simply as
being irreversible, they would just on that account be no longer
true in the higher sense of the word. If sin has given place
to penitence and piety to apostasy, threats and promises are
no longer the true expression of the divine will. And this
is just how the unchangeableness of God's will is manifested.1
Because the prophecy of this God has a moral character, it
1 Ezek. xviii. 25, 29, xxxiii. 20.

PROPHECY AND FULFILMENT. 293
can claim only a conditional fulfilment. Hence Amos himself
is convinced that he can, by his own intercession, avert for a
time the very strokes of misfortune which he beholds in
vision.1 Naturally the conditional and variable character of prophetic
prediction has very definite limits. The purposes of Almighty
God cannot be baffled by the fickleness of man. Successive
generations may forfeit their own salvation, but salvation
comes none the less, — not salvation in the form in which any
one prophet beheld it in accordance with the conditions of
his age and personality, but still the same salvation, the same
fulfilling of the divine thoughts which constituted the very
essence of that prophecy. The how and the when of prophecy
are conditional. Both are woven together out of human
freedom, the turnings of which lie hid from the prophet's
eye. But the salvation itself is sure, since it depends, not on
man, but on God.
There is still another way in which prophecy may cease to
be conditional. A people may sink to such a depth of
depravity as excludes the possibility of true repentance and
real conversion ; may reach a stage of sin where, according to
the laws of the moral world, the means of grace only harden
the sinner and sink him deeper; where the object with
which a prophet speaks is no longer to call to repentance,
but to bring iniquity to a head.2 There are times when the
thunderclouds of divine judgment are so piled together that
the fatal bolt cannot be turned aside. At such times, when
repentance and conversion are no longer possible, prophecies
are naturally no longer conditional.
With these qualifications, however, one must firmly maiD-
1 Amos vii. i ft, nurbv mrr am.
2 Amos vii. 8 ; Isa. vi. 9 ff. ; Jer. xv. Iff., 6. Moses Maimonides occupied
himself with this question ( Vorrede zur Mischna, by Surenhuis, vol. L pref.
p. 4). His view is that evil does not need to happen because God can repent ;
but that a blessing unconditionally foretold must occur, otherwise the prophet
lied.

294 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
tain that prophecy requires only a conditional fulfilment.
A glance at history should convince every unprejudiced
person of this. Tyre did not, as Isaiah prophesied, succumb
to the Assyrians, that it might after seventy years regain
its ancient glory, and dedicate to Zion the profits of its
commerce.1 Babylon did not fall into utter ruin before the
assault of Cyrus, as the prophets of the Exile promise.2 Even
yet Damascus has not been blotted from the muster-roll of
cities. The Egyptians were not carried captive either to
Assyria or to Babylonia. Egypt and Assyria 3 have not united
with Judah to form a threefold kingdom of God.4 When
the exiles returned, Jerusalem was not rebuilt in the way
the prophets expected.5 Judah gained no such victory over the
Phoenicians as Joel describes ; 6 and, in like manner, almost
every prophecy shows, on close inspection, views of the future
which have not been realised. Nor can anything be more
contrary to the true meaning of the prophetical books than to
maintain that whatever is not yet fulfilled will still be fulfilled
in some distant future. As if those prophecies did not form
an absolutely perfect organism, from which one cannot break off
a single member without mutilating the whole ! Or as if the
hopes of those men of God were not so thoroughly bound up
with times already past, never to return, that they cannot by
any possibility be fulfilled in the days to come. What the
Isaiah of the Exile prophesied can never to all eternity be
fulfilled in the way he expected. For all the circumstances
in which he thinks of the new nation as developing have
passed for ever away. And it is the same with all the
prophetic descriptions of the millennium. Without a Philistia
and an Edom to conquer and hold down by force of arms ;
without an Assyria, whose yoke can be thrown off in triumph ;

1 Isa. xxiii. Iff, 15 ff. (Ezek. xxvi. 1-xxviii. 9).
2 B. J. xiii., xiv., xxi., xl.-lxvi.
3 Isa. xvii. 1, xix. ; Jer. xlvi. ; Ezek. xxix. 4 Isa. xix. 23 ff.
5 B. J. xxxv., xlii., xliv., xlviii., liv., lx., lxii. 6 Joel iv. 4 ff. etc.

PROPHECY AND FULFILMENT. 295
without a Tyre, whose splendid merchandise might embellish
the temple at Jerusalem; without the nations that are to
muster in the valley of Jehoshaphat for the final war against
Jerusalem, — the Jerusalem, too, of the Jews, ruled over by a
descendant of David, — and a thousand similar details, there
can be no fulfilment of the prophetic predictions. When all
these features are left out or explained away, people should at
least have the honesty not to talk any more of the strict
fulfilment of the prophets' utterances.
Certainly there is some truth in the idea of " perspective "
in prophecy. Naturally every prophet sees the great goal of
God's ways in immediate connection with those acts of divine
providence which influence his own time. In every storm-
cloud he sees the awful menace of the last judgment, and
behind every night of sorrow the dawn of the perfect day. But
that is no justification for tearing the prophecies into shreds,
page by page. It is untrue to say : " Although Tyre was
conquered by Alexander instead of by Assyria, that is a fulfil
ment of Isaiah's prophecy ; " or, " Although Babylon fell slowly
into decay, like most of the great cities of the ancient East,
still the prophecy of the exilic prophets is thereby fulfilled."
It is untrue to say : " Although Jesus did not appear in all the
glory of a victorious king like David, as the prophets depict the
Messiah, yet Israel will still in the coming future appear in all
the glory of a nation, with Jesus as its king ; " for Jesus has
already given another and a higher fulfilment to these Messianic
prophecies, a fulfilment in which Israel as a ruling nation has
no place. Thus the prophecy, though revoked as regards its
temporal form, has been most really and truly fulfilled.
But this conviction, that prophecies might possibly not be
fulfilled, was one clearly and consciously entertained even by the
prophets themselves regarding their own prophecies. In fact,
while threatening punishment, they always hold out the offer
of mercy in the event of repentance. They threaten only for
the purpose of producing an impression, that is, for the purpose

296 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of rendering unnecessary the punishment which they prophesy.
From Amos onwards to the Isaiah of the Exile the refrain
always is, "Repent, that God may have mercy upon you; return
unto God, that He may return unto you."1 As long as con
version is not impossible, that is, as long as intercession is not
absolutely unavailing,2 the prophets continue to point out the
way of salvation. Even for Zedekiah himself up to the very
last an opening was left, by which, through obedience to the
word of God, he might have escaped from the prophecies of
evil, definitely expressed though they were.3 And when many
of the prophets repeat, with additions of their own,4 famous
declarations of God by earlier prophets, they do not mean to
point to these as utterances of doom still unfulfilled, but to
strengthen their own denunciations by the authority of
accredited men of God.
Indeed, in particular cases it is directly taught that a
fulfilment of the prophecy in the strict sense need not
necessarily follow. I do not here attach any particular value
to a comparison of Ezek. xxvi. 1-xxviii. 9 with xxix. 17 ff,
although such a comparison certainly appears to me to prove
the open and conscious alteration of a prophecy previously
given ; for in this instance a different interpretation is at any
rate possible. But in Jer. xxvi. 17 ff. it is distinctly
stated that Micah's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem
was averted by Hezekiah's repentance ; and it is in this
connection that the exhortation is expressly given, to avert
even yet by repentance the catastrophe which Jeremiah has
threatened rather than punish that prophet for announcing
disaster. In fact, if the conditions alter, it is considered to
be God's prerogative to alter at will the word spoken by
His prophets. And Ezekiel impresses on his contemporaries

1 Amos v. 15, vii. 1-7 ; Isa. i. 18 ; Jer. vii. 3, xviii. 7ff., 11, 13, 19, xxvi. 3,
13 ; Ezek. xviii. 21 ff, xxxiii. 14 ff.; B. J. xlviii. 18 ; Joel ii. 13.
2 Jer. vii. 16, xi. 14 (xv. 1).
3 Jer. xxxiv. 4f., xxxvi. 3, 7, xxxviii. 17. 4 E.g. Isa. xv., xvi. etc.

MIRACLES AND SIGNS. 297
with the utmost earnestness that a prophecy necessarily
alters with every alteration of the moral circumstances to
which it refers.1 Finally, among the objects served by the
little didactic poem which stands among our prophetical
books as the book of Jonah, one of the most prominent is
to show that even the most definite prophecy may be
revoked, and continue unfulfilled, if the circumstances on
account of which it was uttered are altered by repentance,
and that God, who willeth that all should live, is invariably
ready to pardon as soon as penitence is shown.2 And in
support of such teaching the prophetic historians furnish
numerous proofs.3
9. The prophets, as ambassadors of God, have also a share
in the divine power which directs the world and works
miracles. What they demand, God grants. Whenever in
the exercise of their calling anything extraordinary or mira
culous is necessary, God never fails them. This conviction,
being a matter of course in Israel, has crowned the earliest
prophets with a garland of miracles. According to all the
narratives, Moses is a notable worker of signs and wonders.4
His sin was that on one occasion he lost heart and became
doubtful as to the miracle-working power of the God by whom
he was sustained.5 In this respect as in every other, Elijah
and Elisha, the leading spirits of the true religion during the
stormiest epoch in the northern kingdom, are heroic figures.
They perform miracles in a way that savours very much of
magic; and the stories, too, are told in a highly plastic and
sensuous fashion. For instance, Elijah's official dress as a
prophet is evidently represented as working miracles, just
like the hair of Samson the Nazirite.6 People expect the
prophets to heal diseases by prayer and laying on of
1 Jer. xviii. 7-10; Ezek. xxxiii. 13 ff. 2 Jonah iii. 4, 10, iv. 10 f.
3 2 Sam. xii. 13 ; 1 Kings xxi. 28 ff. ; Isa. xxxviii. 1 ff.
4 Ex. v.-xv. 6 Num. xx. 10 ff. (A).
<- 1 Kings xvii. 1 ; 2 Kings i. 10ff, ii. 4, 11-14, 20, 24, iv. 6, 29. 31, 34 ff,
v. 10 ff. vi. 6, 8, 18.

298 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
hands, and they pay them high fees.1 Other prophets also
occasionally perform miracles.2
After the eighth century the prophets scarcely ever attach
importance to this part of their equipment. Still, not only
are incidents related regarding them which the narrator con
sidered miraculous in the true sense of the word ; 3 but at
least one passage puts it beyond a doubt that the prophets
themselves were thoroughly convinced of their own power
to work miracles in virtue of their calling as servants of
the God who guides the world.4 For when Isaiah makes
Ahaz the unconditional offer of choosing a sign " be it deep as
Sheol or high as heaven," he must have been absolutely con
vinced that any natural event which Ahaz might ask would
actually occur, even if we assume that the custom and idiom
of that age allowed the prophet's offer to be understood in a
narrower sense than it would appear to us to have.
According to prophetic law, however, miracles are as little
decisive of the worth of a prophet as soothsaying is.5 Both
alike belong to a realm which is morally indifferent, — to the
realm of human power increased to a degree altogether extra
ordinary. They may be performed by a false prophet as well
as by a true.6 The only sure proof of being a true preacher
of God's will is the right spirit, agreement with the revealed
will of Israel's God.7 Even when miracles occur, they are
never an end in themselves, but always merely the means by
which a prophet exercises his calling and fulfils the special
duties incumbent on him at the time. They are proofs either
of God's power to punish His enemies or of His love for the
pious ; but at the same time they are pledges of the prophet's
divine commission. They are, in a word, " signs " (ninis). Of
course, just as a miracle is not always a sign, so a sign is
1 2 Kings v. If., 15 f., 20 ff.
2 E.g. 1 Sam. xii. 14 ff; 1 Kings xiii. 6.
8 2 Kings xx. 9 f. ; cf. Isa. xxxviii. 7 f.
0 Isa. vii. 11. » Deut. xiii. 1 ff.
6 Deut. xiii. 2-6 ; cf. B.J. xliv. 25. 7 Deut. xiii. 3.

PROPHECY AND THE LAW. 299
not always a miracle. The signs which Samuel gives Saul are
merely particular suppositions, the actual occurrence of which
are to be an inward pledge to him of the more important things
of which he has heard.1 Before his daring assault, Jonathan
chooses his own token or omen of success.2 The sign, as a
visible pledge of the invisible promise, may even be nothing
more than a suggestive act3 or a significant name.4 Indeed,
the very word "miracle" (fiBto) is applied quite freely to things
of this kind, simply because they have a special import.5 But
Old Testament history naturally looks on the actual miracle
as a specially valuable equipment of the prophet who has to
perform a great historical work.6
10. The whole activity of the true prophets is due to their
vital connection with the history of their religion, especially
with its great foundation, the making of Israel into a nation
by Moses. Hence fidelity to the God of Israel and to His will
is the one sure test of every prophet in Israel.7 Nevertheless,
during the whole period down to the Exile we do not find any
proof that the prophets were consciously dependent on a written
law as their highest authority. Until Deuteronomy was written,
no such law was in existence. And even subsequently the
prophets who felt themselves to be such, always held that the
" Thorah " within their own breast was quite as trustworthy
as the Law. It was to the religion of Jehovah which filled
their own souls, that they considered their loyalty was due.
It is certain that a systematic study of the law did not
begin till the age immediately preceding Ezra. It was from
the cattle and the sycamore trees that God called prophets like
Amos to preach. The true prophet is, like Jesus, one who

1 1 Sam. x. 7, 9. 2 1 Sam. xiv. 8ff.
3 E.g. Isa. xx. 3 ; Jer. li 63 ; Ezek. xii. 6, 11, xxiv. 24, 27.
4 E.g. Isa. vii. 14 ff, viii. 18, xxxvii. 30; Zech. iii. 8; Deut. xxviii. 46
(where the curses against Israel are called signs and wonders).
5 If Jer. xliv. 29 be not a gloss, we have there one prophecy given as the proof
of another.
6 Ex. vii. 8 ff. (A.) 7 Deut. xiii. 6.

300 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
" has not learned letters." And how free the prophets, in the
strength of this spirit, considered themselves to be in regard to
what was formerly held true, we see with special clearness from
the way in which they dare to contradict the very axioms of
Israel's religion. Thus they oppose to the customary sacrifices
and feasts, the true sacrifice of the heart ; x and to the law of
nature by which sin is punished to the third and fourth
generation, the higher moral law, in accordance with which
every one may by his own moral development free himself
from his hereditary curse.2
It is only during the Exile that prophecy begins to fade
away into the learning of the scribes. Ezekiel one may
already call a prophet learned in the law.8 One of the
exilic prophets already points to the book of God and to the
fulfilment of its declarations ; 4 and Zechariah is constantly
basing his statements upon his acquaintance with the older
Scriptures. Nevertheless, even these men claim a freedom
which does not bow before the letter, and retain the feeling
that they themselves are still speaking God's words. And,
side by side with them, what freedom and living independence
of spirit, e.g., in B. J. xl— lxvi. ! It is only in Ezra's day that
the place of the prophet is finally taken by the scribe.

CHAPTER XV.
THE BABYLONIAN PERIOD. JUDAH'S TRIAL AND EXECUTION.
1. According to the divine decree as revealed by the
condition of the world, judgment could no longer be averted
from Judah. The storm-clouds were gathering from all
quarters, and becoming always more and more threatening.
» Isa. i. 14 ff; Hos. v. 6; Ps. xl. 7, 1. 8ff. etc. 2 E.g. Ezek. xviu. 2ff.
' Cf. iv. 5f., xxviii. 13, 16, xxxi. 8, 9, 18, xxxvi. 35.
* B. J. xxxiv. 16.

JOSIAH.

301

On the one side was Egypt, a flourishing empire, pressing
ever onwards in its victorious career ; on the other, the
Chaldean empire, ready to dispute with Egypt the inheritance
of Assyria ; and right between these mighty adversaries a tiny
almost defenceless land, the natural theatre of war. And all
around were ill-disposed and envious neighbours, Edom with
its newly-won freedom and its hereditary hatred, Philistia in
all its renewed prosperity, and the robber tribes of the
neighbouring desert. Israel was also threatened with de
struction by the great Scythian outbreak. And at the same
time in Judah itself, though its resources were few and its
danger great, there was much worldliness and degeneracy, a
want of loyalty to God, especially in regard to the worship of
the Queen of heaven,1 which had become almost legal ; and
even among the very prophets and priests a degeneracy
which warranted the gravest fears.2
At this time the people witnessed a new phenomenon
quite strange to former times, at least in such clearness and
grandeur. Out of the actual Israel, that is, the people as a
whole which had no longer any real vital force in it, there
grew up, from within, a true Israel, a national nucleus, most
of which naturally gathered round the true prophets. This
nucleus devoted itself to the calling, the law, and the religion
of the nation, with an ardour, strength, and purity hitherto
unparalleled. With holy dread of the wrath of their offended
Covenant-King, and yet with an ardent love for Him and
His people, they stand before Him ready, as it were, to
step into the breach for the lost and ruined nation.
This true Israel first tries whether it has not still
sufficient vitality to revivify the dead nation, to breathe into
it once more the warm breath of love and faith. With
1 Jer. xliv. 15 proves that this worship was regarded by the people as an
acknowledged custom, and even as a right; cf. Jer. iii. 10 ff., xii. 9, xiii. 9,
xvii. 2ff., xviii. 13 ff. ; Ezek. viii., ix., xvi., xxii., xxiii.
2 Jer. v. 13, xxiii. ; cf. Ezek. vii. 26 ff, xiii. 4ff. etc.

302 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
heroic fidelity, Josiah, and the circle of men who support
him, attempt to regenerate the nation, although the outward
means for accomplishing this have long been gone. The pro
phetic law, Deuteronomy, is made State-law. The people
pledge themselves in a solemn covenant to be faithful to God
and to His law.1 The priests of the high places, even the
Levitical, are deprived of their office, and reduced to private
life with a fixed income.2 All that song and prophetic
oratory can effect is tried in order to breathe a new spirit
into the decrepit body of the nation, and make it young again.
For the first time in Israel, the use of a single sanctuary
is legally decreed and enforced. This was certainly in the
existing circumstances an indispensable condition for the
healthy development of this religion. In point of fact, it
became the means of uprooting more and more the ancient
worship of God by sacrifice, and of making it a mere symbol
of spiritual worship. For living worship demands constant
personal service, and is therefore in its ancient form incom
patible with the use of only one sanctuary. At first, it is true,
there arises the new danger of pride in possessing the proper
ritual and of offensive confidence in the letter, a danger
against which Jeremiah is the first of the prophets to con
tend ; 3 while, on the other hand, he is equally emphatic as to
God's covenant relationship with His people, and the heavy
responsibility which any breach of that covenant entails.4
From this time onwards these two tendencies begin to show
themselves more and more strongly ; but, of course, their
germs had long existed in this religion. The one party culti
vated a free and profoundly religious spirit, which was now
brought to full maturity by a large number of highly pro
phetic souls, their watchword being " the word of God by the
mouth of His prophets." The other party devoted themselves
to the priestly side of religion, paying special attention to
1 2 Kings xxiii. 2 Deut. xii. 2 ff.
3 Jer. vii. 4, 22 ; cf. viii. 4-9, xviii. 8. 4 Jer. xi.

MONOTHEISM.

303

Israel's outward holiness, and to establishing a complete ritual,
their watchword being " the Thorah as the written legal rule
of life for the holy people." In Jeremiah1 and the Deuter-
onomist these two tendencies are still in close and inward
connection. Ezekiel and A proclaim the triumph of the latter.
In these times, beyond all doubt, it had come to be fully
acknowledged that the God of Israel is the one only God ;
that everything else that men call God, or that claims to
possess superhuman power, belongs to the category either of
non-existent lying figures, or of subordinate beings that simply
execute His will, or of feeble antagonists to whom for a time
He gives free scope. The naive language of the olden time,
which had grown up in the midst of polytheism, did not, it is
true, altogether cease.2 Neither Jeremiah nor the Deutero-
nomist hesitates to speak of the heathen gods as the fathers
of their respective peoples,3 or of the army of heaven as lords
set up by God over the nations of the world.4 And still
later,5 the army of heaven is represented as being condemned
by God, that is, as being in opposition to Him. But all this
does not preclude the existence in these times and writings
of a distinct theoretical monotheism.
The gods of foreign nations are spoken of as dumb, spiritless
idols,6 weak and helpless, non-existent.7 They are identified
in bitter satire with their images, unjustly, of course, so far as
the history of religion is concerned, but in consequence of the
belief that apart from these man-made images they did not
really exist. They are specially derided by the exilic prophets
as ludicrous lying products of human self-deception.8 They
'Jer. vi. 19, vii. 9, viii. 8, xviii. 18, xxvi. iff
2 This still occurs even in Ruth. 3 Jer. ii. 27, xvi. 13.
4 Deut. iv. 19, 20, 28, xxviii. 36, 64 ; of. xxxii. 8, 9, 12.
5 B. J. xxiv. 21 (2 Chron. xxviii. 23). 6 Hab. ii. 18 f.
7 Jer. ii. 27, x. 3-14 ; Deut. iv. 28 ; 1 Kings xviii. 27 ff, xix. 18 ; B. J.
xlvi. 1, lvii. 13 f.
8 B. J. xl. 18 ff, xli. 7, 24, 29, xlii. 17, xliv. 9-20, xiv. 16, 20 f., xlvi. 6 ;
cf. Judg. vi. 26 ; 1 Kings xviii. 27 ; Jer. x. 1; Ps. cxv. 4, 8, cxxxv. 15 f. (B. J.
xli. 22, "Do something good or bad that we may see that ye are gods ").

304 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
are called nonentities,1 shams,2 wind,3 nothings,4 spiritless,5 no-
gods,6 abominations,7 horror,8 shame,9 blocks,10 etc.
God is the absolutely One. Even evil is not an act of
hostile powers. He creates good and evil.11 He is the God
of the gods ; and they are His servants.12
And the prophetic law does not merely declare again
and again that He is God, and there is none else,13 but it
expressly lays down as the foundation principle of the whole
religion the formula, " Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord thy God is
one God," 14 the watchword with which in later times Israel
marched to martyrdom and death ; and which Jesus also
emphasises as the first principle of true piety, hereby includ
ing within the limits of monotheism His own person and
work. This age is unanimous in hoping that at the close of
history God will establish His own absolute unity, and that
one name, " Jehovah," will be common to all nations. He
has sworn that to Him every knee shall bow,15 just as He is
already guiding heathen princes like Cyrus and Nebuchad
nezzar without their knowing it.18
1 inn, B. J. xlvi. 3 ; 1 Sam. xii. 21, etc.
2 Nl^, Jer. xviii. 15 ; Jonah ii. 9.
3 ?2T\, Jer. ii. 5, viii. 19, xiv. 22, xvi. 19 ; Deut. xxxii. 21 ; 2 Kings xvii. 15 ;
-1p2>, Jer. x. 14.
4 DvvK (from ps, but intentionally formed so as to sound as if from ?K),
Ezek. xxx. 13 ; Ps. xcvii. 7 ; Lev. xxvi. 1, xix. 4.
6 Hab. ii. 19 ; Jer. x. 14.
6 D^K t&, bii $b, already in Deut. xxxii. 17, 21, 39 ; Jer. ii. 11, v. 7.
7 najnn, Jer. xvi. 18 ; Ezek. vii. 20, xi. 18, 21, xiv. 6 ; 2 KiDgs xxiii. 13 ;
B. J. xliv. 19.
8 )>1pK>, Jer. iv. 1, vii. 30, xvi. 18, xxxii. 34 ; Ezek. vii. 20, xi. 18, 21, xx. 8,
xxxvii. 23 ; 1 Kings xi. 5-7 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 13, 24 ; Deut. xxix. 16.
9 HBO, Jer. iii. 24, xi. 13 (for bl>2).
10 W*yf?i, Lev- xxvi- 30 ! Deut. xxix- 16 ; 1 Kings xv. 12, xxi. 26 ; 2
xvii. 12, xxiii. 24 ; very frequent in Ezekiel.
11 B. J. xiv. 7 ; cf. Amos iii. 6. 12 Deut. x. 7.
13 Deut. iv. 35, 39, xxxii. 39.
14 Deut. vi. 4 (therefore people are to swear by Him alone, ver. 13).
16 Zeph. iii. 9 ; Zech. xiv. 9 ; Hagg. ii. 8 ; B. J. xiv. 14, 23, xlix. 26
lxxxiii. 19.
16 Jer. xxv. 9, xxvii. 6, xliii. 10 ; Ezek. xxix. 20 ; B. J. xiv. 1.

THE SUFFERING OF THE BEST. 305
2. At this time an event occurs that is at first sight
mysterious and unintelligible. The attempt of the true Israel
to leaven the inert mass of all Israel proves a failure. This
Israel is trodden under foot. Josiah himself falls 1 in battle
fighting against the Egyptians, mourned by the noblest in
Israel After the death of this reforming king, impure forms
of worship and the inclination to worship the gods of the
heathen revive with redoubled strength. Jehoiachin, a man
not without energy and popularity,2 is carried away, with th»
best of the nation, into captivity in Chaldea. We have here a
specially striking example of what constitutes the truly tragic
element in all history. The judgment, which a long course
of sin has rendered inevitable, bursts at last upon a generation
which has itself an inclination towards what is good.
These events produce something quite new to the religion
of Israel. There exists an Israel that does not, in itself, deserve
death, but is perfectly capable of living a new and nobler life.
If this Israel die, it dies not because of its own, but others'
guilt. And a nation for which such men die, a nation which
still contains within itself such strength of devotion, cannot,
just because of these saints and their devotedness, remain for
ever lost. These men of the true Israel are a pledge that the
people will rise again out of the death which it cannot longer
avoid. A people which has within it such a kernel cannot
utterly perish. The true supramundane strength of the
kingdom of God begins to show itself.
And when it is on this Israel that the divine judgments
fall, a deeper glimpse is given into the ways of God in
general. In this case the reward of self-improvement and
purification, of true love to God, is special suffering and
woe. Hence, faith has to distinguish between prosperity
1 He had evidently tried to obtain supremacy over northern Israel also
although in alliance with Assyria ; and this — perhaps, too, his confidence in
promises like Deut. xx. — may have drawn him into the unequal struggle.
2 Jer. xxii. 24.
VOL. I. TT

306 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
that is outward and earthly, and glory that is inward and
real. Suffering ceases to approach the individual as a
messenger of divine anger. It is seen to be in harmony with
the consciousness of God's love, and even with the special
revelation of it. There is a suffering for others, for mankind,
— a suffering of voluntary self-sacrifice in behalf of the chosen
people, in order that a seed may remain in it for the better
time about to be. From the thought of the involuntary,
meaningless sacrifice of animals the mind is lifted up to the
thought of a voluntary self-sacrifice due to love. Thus
greater emphasis is also laid on individual personality and
its relation to God, which is, as Duhm justly remarks, a
characteristic feature of Jeremiah's prophecies.
Finally, the more unsolved contradictions and riddles
there are in man's earthly lot, — the less possible it becomes
to harmonise his relation to God with that lot, — the more
must the religious spirit feel constrained to seek, somewhere
beyond this earthly existence, an eternal transcendental
happiness inseparably connected with life in God. It is
true that, in accordance with the whole essence of this
religion, individuals gain such experience but slowly and
gradually, and rather from the pious welling-up of feeling
than from knowledge clearly seen and firmly grasped. But
the people get it all the more fully through looking for their
national resurrection, and for everlasting blessedness and
glory in the kingdom of God. No wonder that under these
circumstances the brilliant figure of the victorious Davidic
king as seen by Isaiah and his contemporaries grows paler
and paler. But, in its place, a reinvigorated and glorified
commonwealth of saints becomes more and more the central
object of faith.
During this period the capital of this tiny land, the seat of
the sanctuary, the one spot which so often remained unharmed
while the enemy was master of all the country round,1
1 Isa. i. 8, xxxvi. 1 ff. ; 2 Kings xviii. 18.

o

THE DESTRUCTION OF ZION. 307
acquired an importance in the eyes of the godly that it never
could have acquired in the larger kingdom of David and
Solomon. It is the city of God, the holy city,1 the centre of
the world.2 Its citizen roll is the book of life.3 Its name is
significantly shortened to Salem, the city of peace.4 It is
more and more the subject of eulogy in song.6 Indeed, so
fully does it become the regular expression for the true
people of God, that, even while it lay in ashes, the prophet of
the Exile regards the " preachers of Zion " as the true nucleus
of the nation,6 and still speaks reverently of the forsaken city
as the great mother of the nation who is once more to be
surrounded with troops of merry children.7 The godly are
" those who love Jerusalem ; " the wicked, those " who forget
Jerusalem." 8 Thus Zion becomes the standing expression
for the commonwealth of God.
3. Judah is speedily, even suddenly, overtaken by utter
destruction. Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, set up by the
Chaldeans as their vassal, was, it appears, a man of naturally
good disposition.9 But, being weak and easily led, he fell into
the hands of the fanatical national party, which was supported
by the false prophets of good.10 The religious revival of
Josiah's time was quickly followed by a greater intermingling
of religions than ever, and by all kinds of disorder.11 And
the king was blind enough not to perceive that in the
actual circumstances of the world, and in view of the woeful
want of vigour in his own nation, the only course in real
1 Ps. xlvi. 5, xlviii. 2, 9 ; B. J. xlviii. 2.
2 Ezek. xxxviii. 12.
3 Ps. Ixxxvii. 6.
4 Ps. lxxvi. 3.
" Ps. xlvi., xlvii., xlviii., Ixxxvii. (cxxii., cxxxii., cxxxvii., ci. 8).
" B. J. xl. 9.
7 B. J. Iii. 1 ff.
8 B. J. lxv. 11, lxvi. 10 ; cf. Ps. cxxxvii. 5ff.
9 Cf. e.g. Jer. xxxviii.
10 Jer. xiv. 13 ff., xxiii. 13, xxvii.
11 Jer. ii. 26, vii. 31, ix. 12, xiii. 10, 27, xvi. 11, 12, xvii. 2, xviii. 15, xxii. 9 ;
Ezek. viii., xvi., xx., xxii., xxiii.

308 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
harmony with the divine purposes was to submit to the ruling
world-power. In vain Jeremiah proclaimed again and again
that nothing but a policy of wise and trustful waiting could
be, for the present, the will of God.1 Prophets like Hananiah
probably thought they were acting quite in the spirit of Isaiah
when predicting for the holy city a sure deliverance. The
king broke his oath,2 attempted a war of liberation, and in the
terrible punishment which ensued all that remained of the once
glorious nation of Israel 3 was utterly shattered. A little later
what the Chaldeans had left — a handful of tributary peasants
under a governor — was also destroyed in consequence of a
in ad attempt at rebellion in which this governor, Gedaliah,
met his death.4 As for the members of the holy people
whom the miseries of the time had not already cut off, some
perished in the flight to Egypt, — even the fate of Jeremiah is
lost sight of in this universal destruction, — and others were
taken captive to Babylon, and settled there.
In this sorrowful time we see revealed the full glory of
that true Israel which was brought into being by the purify
ing effects of this final judgment ; and nowhere are its
characteristics more splendidly embodied than in Jeremiah,
the greatest man of God of this period.6 He already feels
the misery and dire distress of the people, while the multitude
is still going about light-hearted and hopeful. When false
prophets promise freedom and fresh renown, he who would
so willingly agree if he only could, has to lift the veil from
the awful fate which was really awaiting his people. In all
their sufferings he discerns the holy anger of God against a
rebellious people, and this anger he has time after time to
1 Jer. xxvii. Iff., xxviii. 14 ff., xxix. 4ff. Uriah, who, like Jeremiah, had
preached against the foolhardy undertaking, was brought back from Egypt,
where he had sought shelter, and put to death ; while Jeremiah was rescued,
though with the utmost difficulty (Jer. xxvi. 20 ff. ).
2 Ezek. xvii. 14ff. 3 2 Kings xxv. Iff.
4 2 Kings xxv. 25 ; cf. Jer. xli. -xliii.
6 The greatness and the tragic character of this man are admirably sketched
by Duhm, p. 228 ff.

THE DESTRUCTION OF ZION. 309
proclaim afresh to a people that will not listen. And yet
he is willing, in infinite devotion to his people and to the
divine thoughts that are embodied in Israel, to face along
with them the death he himself has not merited, rather than
give them up, and by breaking off from them, secure his
personal safety.1 Taunted with being a herald of disaster, a
traitor to the national honour and liberty,2 having to endure
trials in double measure, — in addition to the siege, imprison
ment, scorn, mockery, and danger of every kind, — he stands
there as a man who suffers, not for himself, but for Israel,
and who in his own pure life bears the sins of his impure
people. Hence the book of Jeremiah shows us with startling
vividness and beauty the figure of the "men of sorrow."
Unquestionably many of the noblest elegies in the Psalter
were sung by the pious Israel of that age.3
4. Israel, thus dead even to its last remnants, was cast
out into the heathen world as a putrefying corpse. Every
chance of present salvation was utterly gone. The sanctuary
where God had promised to be present had disappeared in
flames. The thank-offering and the sacrifice of atonement,
which were the pledges of Israel's salvation, had been rendered
impossible. The holy city which God " had founded for ever
and ever " lay in ruins ; and the house of David, which had
received the promise that " the ends of the earth should be
given unto it," had perished in misery and shame. Even the
priesthood, which in its sacred office represented this people's
union with God, was desecrated. The ancient and venerable

1 Jer. xxxii., xl. 4ff. ; cf. xliii. 6. 2 Jer. xxviii., xxxvi. -xxxviii.
8 I cannot, indeed, consider it a justifiable critical procedure to ascribe songs
which bear the stamp and character of this age, simply on that account, to a
single well-known man belonging to it, such as Jeremiah, least of all on the
ground of »¦ prosaic explanation of single figures, as, e.g., the figure of a pit
without water, for that is just a poetical antithesis to a rock, a wide plain, and
other equally common figures. But suoh songs as Ps. xxii., etc., certainly give
us the best idea of the tone and temper of this age. In like manner, Job, if
not a product of these times, is at any rate a type of the men of sorrow
of such days.

310 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
forms in which the kingdom of God had been manifested were
remorselessly shattered.
If any element of redemption still survived this disaster, it
must dwell spiritually and personally within this people, or
else as an ideal of hope it must in the midst of death point
to a new life. Thus it was by punishment that the hand of
God completed the religious development towards which this
whole period had been striving. Faith kept turning more and
more from the earthly present to an ideal future, the concep
tion of which became always more and more spiritual. Men
learned to think of a salvation independent of outward cir
cumstances and possessions. They realised that Israel was not
dead for all time ; that though the forms of redemption had
been destroyed, the great redemptive thoughts of God, embodied
of old in the nation founded by Moses, had not perished.
Thus, of a truth, through the dying of the seed-corn, a host
of influences were set free which still continue at work in
Christianity. The judgments which the prophets of God had
threatened had now been executed. Hence it became possible
for the people to retain in the midst of misfortune their
faith in Jehovah as Judge and Lord, even when their self-
delusions as to Jehovah having pledged Himself to keep His
people safe were rudely shattered. God had shown Himself
faithful and true in the terrible earnestness of His chastise
ments. Must He not show Himself faithful also to the
eternal thoughts of mercy which formed a background of
promise to His threats ?

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.
Literature. — Havernick, Vorlesungen uber alttestamentliche
Theologie, Aufl. 2, Beilage 2. Hermann Schultz, Ueber den

THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. 311
Begriff des stellvertretenden Leidens, 1864. Umbreit, Ueber den
Knecht Gottes, 1840. Delitzsch, Zeitschrift fiir luther.
Theologie, 1850, i. 29ff. ; cf. by the same author, Schluss-
bemerkungen zu Brechslers Commentar, and Delitzsch's own
commentary on the passage. D. F. Oehler, " Ueber den Knecht
Jehovahs" (Tiibinger Zeitschrift, 1840, ii. 134 ff). Victor
Friedr. Oehler, Ueber den Knecht Gottes, 1865, 2 vols.
(Schenkel) Theologische Studien u. Kritiken, 1836, iv. 982 ff.
Rosenmuller's Scholia on the passage, and also Gesenius.
Hengstenberg, Christologie des Alten Testaments. Steudel,
Observations ad Jes. Iii. 1 3— liii. 12, part i. Christmas 1825;
ii Easter 1826; Bisquisitio de Ebed Jehovah, Easter 1829.
Bleek, Ueber Jes. Iii. 1 3— liii. 12. Studien und Kritiken, 1861,
ii. 177 ff; cf. also Vorlesungen, ed. J. Bleek. Fr. Koster,
Be servo Jehovce apud Jesajam, 1838. Ch. Dav. Martini,
Commentatio philol.-crit. in locum Jesaj. Iii. 13— liii. 12, Rost.
1791. Reinke, Exegesis critica in Jes. Iii. 13— liii. 12,
Munst. 1836. Kleinert, "Ueber das Subject der Weissagung
Jes. Iii. 13— liii. 12 " (Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1862, iii. p. 699 ff).
Thenius, Neue Beleuchtung des leidenden Jhvhdieners Jes. Iii. 1 3—
liii. 12. Kuenen, ii. 36 ff. Scholten, "De lijdende Knecht
Gods" (Theol. Tijdschr. 1878, 12). v. Hofmann, Schrift-
beweis, iia. 148 ff. de Wette, Be morte Christi expiatoria,
p. 23. H. E. G. Paulus, "Erklarung von Jes. liii." (Memor
abilia, iii. 175 f.). For other literature, cf. Hengstenberg,
Gesenius, V. Fr. Oehler.
1. In this period, as the previous chapter has shown, there
appeared in the spiritual history of Israel the highest religious
figure which the nation has produced, the most peculiar and
complete expression of the forces which existed within this
religion. The name " servant of Jehovah," x in the most
general sense, simply denotes one who is God's subject, one
who serves and honours Him as Lord and Master. Hence
God gives this name to Job.2 It is applied to individual
1 mil' 12V- 2 Job i. 8, ii. 3, xlii. 7.

312 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Israelites, and even to converted heathens.1 Now, in this sense,
Israel alone of all the nations of the world is the servant
of Jehovah. For Israel alone worships this God, and acknow
ledges Him as Lord.2 And, again, those who are specially
distinguished in Israel by the name " servants of Jehovah "
are men whose service and devotion took an exceptionally
beautiful and exclusive form. They are chiefly prophets.
But in this, the most general signification of the name,
there already lies directly included a second. A servant is
always at work in the service of his Master. Hence the
name " servant of Jehovah " denotes a definite divine call.
It becomes, so to speak, an official name. It is even applied
outside Israel to men through whom God brings to pass the
great events in the world's history. Nebuchadnezzar is
called God's servant as he is also called His hired soldier.3
But even in this sense Israel as a people is pre-eminently
God's servant. His is the task of showing how the salvation
of the world may be rendered possible. Israel is God's
witness against idol-worshippers, God's holy instrument for
realising the unsearchable thoughts of salvation.
Accordingly, when God employs certain instruments
within Israel itself to bring back outward Israel, the Israel
according to the flesh which is continually at war with its
heavenly calling, these men are called " servants of God "
because they are commissioned to purify Israel, to restore it
to its true position as the people of God, and thereby, at the
same time, render possible God's purposes of mercy towards
the heathen world. Thus in Deutero-Isaiah the servant of
Jehovah distinguishes between himself and Israel, and speaks
of punishing the sins of the people, and showing them the
significance of their high vocation. Hence by this title the

1 B. J. liv. 17, lvi. 6.
2 B. J. xli. 8f., xlii. 18 ff., xliii. 3ff., xliv. 1, 3, 21, xiv. 4, xlviii. 20; Jar.
xxx. 10, xlvi. 27 f.
3 Jer. xxv. 9, xxvii. 6, xliii. 10 ; cf. Ezek. xxix. 20.

THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. 313
prophet primarily means himself. But in such passages he
never speaks as a mere individual, but as fulfilling a voca
tion which he shares with many. He speaks, that is, in
name of the prophetic order, or rather, to put it more
accurately, in name of the prophetic faithful Israel, which is
the real instrument with which God works on Israel, and
through Israel on the world. According to the idiom of the
Old Testament, these ideas lie in the very name.
2. In Deutero-Isaiah, xl— lxvi., the people of Israel as such
is in many passages clearly and unambiguously spoken of as
the servant of Jehovah. But, in my opinion, already xlii. 1 ff.
cannot refer any more to this people as a whole. It is not,
however, because the servant of Jehovah is called Djnrna.
These words certainly cannot mean " covenant people." But
the expression "the people" might indicate the heathen world
(cf. ver. 5), and Israel might quite well be spoken of as " God's
covenant with mankind." But, then, what is said in vers.
2-4, 6, is not applicable to a people. And the call of the
servant of Jehovah to the prisoners and the blind, points,
according to vers. 16, 18 f. and xliii. 8, when the context is
looked at with unprejudiced eyes, to something done to Israel.1
The prophet might speak in such terms of himself. And
unquestionably he does speak of himself in many passages of
this book. But he obviously does not mean to speak of
himself as an individual. Indeed, he sometimes uses even
the expression " the messengers of Jehovah," that is, he
speaks in the name of tfs? T)^??,2 the prophetic people.
Hence, in xlii. 1 ff, the designation " servant of Jehovah "
cannot refer to an individual in contradistinction to the
people, for it is as clear as possible that, both immediately
before and after, it is used of the people. Here, therefore,
as there is at any rate no mention of a future personage,
1 npB^ is obviously quite parallel to -\)$b and rnilb- xliv. 25 ff.,
xlviii. 16 ff. , 1. 4 ff., Ixi. 1 ff. (10 f. is put into the mouth of Jerusalem).
2 B. J. xl. 9 (xli. 27).

314 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the servant of Jehovah I take to be the covenant-keeping
Israel, which has the prophet as its representative spokesman,
and is considered one with empirical Israel in its vocation,
although distinguished from it in its actual form. In like
manner, the prophet speaks of himself also in xlviii. 16 ff,
1. 4 ff, but only as the common mouthpiece of all in Israel
who are faithful to their God.1
Similarly, in xlix. 1 ff, the servant of Jehovah can only be
this self-same covenant-keeping Israel. It would in itself be
somewhat singular to speak of the whole people as armed
with the word of the spirit as with a sword, and as being a
weapon of God like a sword or an arrow. But such
expressions might, at least in rhetorical speech, be applied to
that Israel which was really " called from the womb to be
the servant and instrument of God." But how can the
people of Israel, which is blind and deaf and doomed to
destruction because of its sins,2 lament in a style like this :
" I have laboured in vain, I have given my strength for
nought and in vain " ? How can it be said of the people,
that its task is to turn Jacob to God, so that Israel may be
gathered unto Him ? For, to translate " that God may turn
Jacob," is plainly to do violence to the whole structure of
the sentence; and it is not a construction justified by li. 16.
How can Israel, the people, be called not merely "to raise
up the tribes of Jacob and to bring again the dispersed of
Israel," but to be " a light to the Gentiles, that the salvation
of God may be unto the end of the earth," " a covenant of
the people to raise up the land, to make them inherit the
desolate heritages ; saying to them that are bound, ' Go
forth ' ? " These words can only mean either the prophet or
the Israel that remained faithful to its God, the " Zion " of
the captivity, which, as contrasted with the other sections of
the people, especially with northern Israel, is the nucleus
of the new kingdom of God. Now the reference to the
1 Cf. B. J. xliv. 26, Iii. 7. 2 B. J. xlvi. 1, 2, 3, 8, 12, xlviii. 1, 4, 8, 1. 1, etc.

THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. 315
prophet is made impossible by the remarkable ver. 3, where
the servant of God is addressed as " Israel in whom I will be
glorified." For here it is neither allowable to strike out the
word " Israel " nor to translate, " Thou art my servant, and in
Israel I shall be glorified," nor yet, " it is Israel in whom I
shall be glorified through thee." And I cannot think it possible
that the prophet himself would be described as " Israel in
whom I will be glorified," that is, as " the true Israel." The
expression is only admissible if Israel be actually addressed ;
but in that case it must be the people in whom God is
glorified, the Zion of the captivity, the Israel faithful to God.
What elements unite in the servant of Jehovah is then
made quite plain to us by such passages as liv. 17, lxv. 8, 9,
13, 15, 22, lxvi. 2, 5, 14. Here, in direct opposition to the
idolatrous part of the people in Babylon, " the servants," " the
chosen ones," are those from whom the Israel of the future
will spring, on whose account God does not utterly reject His
people, whose future happiness will be a brilliant contrast to
the destruction of the sinful nation. Those servants, poor and
oppressed, and now despised and rejected of men, are to be
named by a new name, and to obtain full salvation. Here,
then, beyond all doubt, the members of the true Israel, among
whom the prophet reckons himself, are regarded as a complete
organism, as the seed of the Israel to be, in contrast to the
Israel that is.
Since in the actual Israel there grows up, especially
through the sifting process of national misfortune, a dis
tinction between the people which declines its appointed
work of salvation, and the faithful nucleus which essays to
make that work its own, the word denotes, not only Israel
in general, but this faithful nucleus in particular. This band,
the true Zion, the seven thousand who have not bowed the
knee to Baal, naturally find their best representatives among
the prophets, the servants of God. It is theirs by meek
ness, gentleness, and inexhaustible strength, in the fulness

316 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of the spirit and of prophetic eloquence, to make atonement for
Israel, to lead him out of prison, to enlighten him, and then
to become a light unto the Gentiles, to give unto them judg
ment and instruction in the truth for which they are already
waiting.1 Hence this term becomes gradually narrower, just
like the title " Son of God ; " and, like it, this too was carried
along by its own weight to a prophetic application, in which
this servant of God and his work are seen in their perfect form.
3. The idea that the best suffer, is already met with in
the tradition and history of the earliest times. But it does
not reach its full clearness and significance till the time of
national misfortune. The people itself, as the servant of
God, is an instance of such suffering. The people of Jehovah
has to endure a thousand forms of oppression and woe. Its
treasured possessions and sanctuaries become the spoil of the
stranger. It must die a shameful death. " The plowers
plowed upon its back : they made long their furrows." 2 And
that, not because it was more wicked than other peoples,
than haughty Assyria or voluptuous Babylon, but because
to this people more had been given and of it more was
required ; because it had a unique vocation, and had therefore
to incur all the special risks and responsibilities involved in
that vocation. Indeed, suffering often comes upon the people
just because of its closer relation to God. " Yea, for Thy sake
are we killed all the day long ; we are counted as sheep for the
slaughter." 3 Thus Israel itself already reveals a suffering
which, though deserved, it is true, on account of the people's
faithlessness and sin, is nevertheless, in the last instance, due
to this people's redemptive work, is therefore caused by God's
love, and has to be endured in order to redeem the world.
But if, among the people as a whole, guilt and suffering
simply balance each other, the real peculiarity of the suffering
endured by the servant of Jehovah is revealed in quite a
1 B. J. xlii. 1-7, xlix. 1 ff, Ixi. 1 ff. a Ps. cxxix. 3,
3 Ps. xliv. 23 (a late Psalm).

THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.

317

different fashion in the Israel which is His real servant. This
is shown by the whole position of this true Israel. It has to
bear all the misery of which it is so far from sharing the
guilt, that it has spent its whole life in striving to avert that
guilt. It feels sooner and more keenly than the people in
general the wrath of God that rests on Israel. Whilst the
Israel of the flesh is still foolish enough to dream of a
brilliant deliverance, the true Israel learns from the woes of
the present that God means to give His people up to judg
ment. Still, it must die with Israel, must lose the joy of
its heart, so that "its eyes become a fountain of tears to
weep day and night for the virgin daughter of its people." 1
To its own people it is odious by reason of its troublesome
warnings, and they ridicule it as a self-tormenting dreamer.
To the hostile heathen world, which rightly recognises in it
the invincible nucleus of God's people, it is a special object
of scorn and hatred.2 And all this it has to suffer just
because it will not separate itself from God and from the
divine task assigned to Israel, or from the people as a
whole ;3 because out of love to the people and enthusiasm for
God and His salvation, it will rather suffer and die than save
itself by separating from the people and leaving them without
a seed of a nobler future. Hence this suffering is endured in
faith, love, and hope.
For such a picture the life of the individual servants of
God, especially towards the end of the Babylonian age,
furnished a rich choice of striking examples. In the Psalms
we hear the complaint of the pious, " that God has forsaken
him, keeping far from his cries, from the words of his roaring ; "
that all the billows go over his soul, that he must pine in the
waterless pit of captivity, must for God's sake suffer indignity
because the zeal of His house has eaten him up.4 We see
1 Jer. viii. 23, xiv. 17 ; cf. Lamentations.
2 B. J. xlix. 7, 1. 5-7 ; Ps. cxxxvii. 3 Jer. xl. 4 ff. ; B. J. 1. 5.
4 Ps. xxii. 2ff. OnyitJ'), xxxviii., xl., xli., xlii. 4, 8, lxix. 8, 10.

318 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Josiah, a king after God's own heart, trampled under foot of
the stranger.1 Jeremiah exhibits to us a life of such misery,
that he would gladly flee from his people, and he curses the day
when his mother bore him.2 He is thus the prototype of the
Man of sorrows, who withheld not His cheek from blows, nor
hid His face from shame and spitting ; of Him whom every
one despised, whom the people abhorred, a servant of
rulers.3 And why all this ? Because of a mysterious decree of
God, who allows tbe best of the age to endure the woes from
which salvation is to spring ; 4 because of the love of the best
for their people and its redemptive calling, since they too, like
Moses of old, choose rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God than share in the glory of the Gentiles.5 That a seed
may be preserved for the future, that an elect people
may rise from the ashes of Israel, the best suffer and die.
For, as one spares the grape for the sake of the new wine in
it, so God spares the sinful people of Israel for the sake of
these servants of His.8 In the pains which they endure they
certainly feel the effect of God's wrath, and indeed have a far
deeper and clearer consciousness of it than others.7 But they
feel that this wrath has not been caused by them personally.
They know that it is on account of the sinful people Israel ;
and that they have a share in bearing it, simply because their
love makes them stand by this Israel. They know they are
enduring the wrath of God for the sake of others, for the
sake of their people, to make forgiveness possible, and bring
a better future within reach ; that they are bearing it as
substitutes. Hence Ezekiel symbolically takes upon himself
the guilt, that is, the punishment of Jerusalem, for every year
of its exile a day.8
1 2 Kings xxiii. 29. 2 Jer. ix. 1, xi. 19, xv. 10.
3 B. J. xlix. 7, 1. 5 f. 4 B. J. Iii. 12-liii. to end.
6 Jer. xl. 4 (Heb. xi. 26). 6 B. J. lxv. 8 f.
7 E.g. Jer. ix. 10, 12, xvi. 3-16, xvii. 3, esp. xv. 17.
8 Ezek. iv. 4 f.

THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. 319
4. This figure was of supreme importance for the whole
development of the Old Testament religion. It came into
collision with everything which a superficial faith was wont
to regard as most certain. When Israel was first brought
face to face with the idea that suffering might fall upon a
saint without being deserved as a punishment, it was only
after a hard struggle and many a bitter trial that it succeeded
in making this thought its own. The whole book of Job
proves how distressing, how well-nigh unbearable, this idea
was at first considered.1 Still more powerfully must the
traditional views of Israel have been changed by the pro
longed experience of such special suffering on the part of the
very best among them. And suffering, due to God's gracious
will and mysterious counsel, borne vicariously by the guiltless
as an atonement for the people, which finds deliverance on
account of its connection with the suffering servant of God,
— such suffering must cast a new light on other problems of
religion as well. The priest who acts as mediator for Israel,
and is consecrated to atone for the shortcomings of Israel's
sacred offerings, now appears in a far higher form, because
his right no longer depends on his office, but on moral action.
Sacrifice, the offering up of unwilling and unconscious beasts,
had to pale before this sacrifice, in which the upright volun
tarily gave themselves up from love, to make atonement for
the people.2
The greater the emphasis laid upon the office of the servant
of Jehovah, upon his call to do the work of God upon earth, the
more significant did the figure of the suffering righteous man
1 It is easily understood how the book of Job should, on this account, be
often interpreted as referring to Israel's condition when in exile. So especially
Seineke (Das Evang. des A. T. 1890). He regards Jeremiah as the prototype
of Isa. xl. ff., and both as the prototypes of Job (cf. Hoekstra, "Job de
Knecht van Jehovah," Theol. Tijdschr. 1871, v. 1 ff. He translates 3istf by
"the tempted "=the suffering Israel). But Job deals only with the problem of
the suffering saint, not with the problem of salvation by vicarious suffering. And
the eighth century already gave occasion enough for pondering that problem.
2 D^K, B. J. liii. 10.

320 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
necessarily become. For it was thus made clear that the
innermost secret of successful work for the kingdom of God
is self-sacrificing suffering, vicarious self-surrender. When
the picture of the servant of Jehovah became embodied, to
the eye of the prophets, in an ideal person, it was in the
figure of a prophet labouring faithfully, not only by word
and deed to build up the kingdom of God, but by loving
surrender of his own person, by vicarious suffering, to make
atonement for the people.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE PERSIAN AGE. ISRAEL'S RESURRECTION.
1. So far as we can judge from the literature that has
come down to us, the beginning of the exilic age was, on the
whole, an unfruitful age as regards religion and morality.
The unpurified mass of the people, overwhelmed by the
terrible catastrophe, perished under it. The sketches Ezekiel
gives, not merely of the last days of Jerusalem, but also of
his own associates, who were the very bone and sinew of
the exiles, indicate a very gloomy state of matters.1 How
much lower still must have been the condition of those exiled
along with Zedekiah ! The Israelites who fled with Jeremiah
into Egypt, actually thought that the worship of the Queen
of heaven was legitimate, and that the neglect of it had
brought misfortune on their country.2 Stolid despair or
light-hearted surrender of all that made the religion of Israel
precious, must have been the feelings most prevalent among
them; and the gods whom they had willingly worshipped in
their own land, now obtained a still more general preference
as conquerors of " Jehovah and His people." The beautiful
pictures which the book of Daniel gives us are not historical
1 E.g. Ezek. ii., iii., xiii., xiv. 2 Jer. xliv. 17 f.

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL. 321
pictures, but products of the imagination of a later age, which
painted earlier ages in ideal colours.
The true men of God of that age, indeed, never doubted
that Israel's death was but a passing over into a new life.
The old hopes lived on,1 but without independent vigour ;
and the pressure of the Chaldean empire and its great
monarch, God's servant Nebuchadnezzar,2 checked any very
joyful hope. Even Jeremiah had assigned a long lifetime,
seventy years, as the duration of the captivity, and had
exhorted the captives to accommodate themselves from the
first to their new circumstances as permanent.8 Such are the
circumstances amid which we must picture to ourselves this
oppressed and apparently dying people, among whom the
forces of a new era were fermenting unseen, until, with
Nebuchadnezzar's death, the rapid decline of Babylon began,
and the threatening figure of the Medo-Persian empire showed
itself in the north-east.
As already hinted, it was in this time of exhaustion and
stagnation that the eventful step was taken which decided
the whole later religious development of Israel. From the
day the Deuteronomic law was made by Josiah the law of the
nation, it was in the very nature of things that there should be a
tendency in the holy people to regulate the national life more
and more strictly by a written " Law of Moses," and to put a
more and more artificial stamp on life and worship. Those
to whom the Thorah in the mouth of the priest was of
greater importance than the word of God from the mouth of
the prophets, could not but feel impelled in this direction, — all
the more that the true prophetic spirit in Hosea, Amos, Isaiah,
and Jeremiah was being more and more lost by the people.4
And it was just the want, during the Exile, of the sacred
1 E.g. Ezek. xxviii. 25 ff., xxxiv. 11 ff, xxxvi. ff., xl. ff.
2 Ezek. xxix. 20 ; Jer. xxv. 9, xxvii. 6, xliii. 10.
3 Jer. xxv. 11, xxix.
4 It is true, the circles that regarded Zion as impregnable, seem not to have
given up their sanguine hopes till late. Jer. xxix.
VOL. I. X

322 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
forms that helped to surround them with a still brighter halo,
and make the hope of their restoration be cherished more
ardently than ever. The yearning fondness for the sacred insti
tutions which had perished, built them up anew in higher
perfection as ideal pictures for the future. The typical re
presentative of this prophetic tendency is the priest Ezekiel,
who, without ever referring to a Mosaic law of worship, drew
an ideal sketch of Israel's holy things. The priestly working
out of this line of thought is the historical work of A. In it
the whole of sacred legend and history is turned into a history
of the development of the sacred institutions of Israel, and an
introduction to the best thought-out and most logical system
of ritual which has ever guided the religious life of a people.
This is presented to the reader as a series of original instruc
tions given by God to the community led by Moses. The
more this school of teaching governed the life of the com
munity, the more impossible must it have become to under
stand the real ideas of the great prophets of the eighth and
seventh centuries, although their main dogmatic and ethical
positions were not attacked in detail. Still B. J. xl— lxvi.
shows that in its initial stages this development was by no
means everywhere successful in quenching the old spirit.
2. At the time when the Persian power first began to bestir
itself though still far from Babylon, the necessary process of
sifting and purifying Judah had been gradually completed.
The great mass of the people had beyond a doubt got used to
their new surroundings, and had begun to turn them to good
account. This is proved by the small number of those who
could subsequently bring themselves to exchange the comforts
they had secured in Babylonia for the insecurity of their native
land. And assuredly a people, the majority of whom were
inclined to idolatry, would willingly and readily adopt the
religion of their conquerors. Only on this supposition can
we understand the exilic prophet's bitter ridicule of the folly
of idolatry, and the complaints he makes agamst his own

THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. 323
people, complaints partly borrowed from older prophets, and
partly uttered by himself.1 With all the greater vigour and
determination, however, did those circles which represented
the true Israel give expression to their enthusiastic attach
ment to the true religion, and to their consciousness of the
everlasting mission of God's people.
The lowest depths of misery had now been sounded. It
was not merely that they were exposed, as members of a
nation captive and spoiled, to all manner of insult in the
proud and wanton capital — " worm Jacob, servant of rulers,
despised of men." 2 As faithful members of that nation they
had to endure special suffering. Their haughty conquerors
gathered around them, and, mocking at their grief, said to
them in taunting tones, " Sing us one of the songs of
Zion." 3 And as danger drew nearer Babylon, they naturally
became objects of suspicion and hatred. They were regarded
as the natural allies of every enemy. The brave men
of God who scattered their rousing words of consolation
and hope among the enslaved community, dared not do
so except anonymously, in writings secretly circulated.
Hence the names of the greatest men of God who lived
amid the catastrophes of those days are unknown to
us. Yet, despite these precautions, many doubtless died as
martyrs, meeting the fate which Jeremiah prophesied would
befall the false prophets in Babylon who preached rebellion.4
This is the meaning of the solemn words about the righteous
man, " who perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart." To this
the figure of the suffering servant of God already points.5
And perhaps the very authors of the prophecies that have
come down to us, perished or were executed as disturbers
of the people, their names being lost in the overthrow of
Babylon. Meanwhile the worldly-minded among the Israelites
1 B. J. xl. 18 ff., xli. 6ff., xliv. 10. ff.; cf. lvii., lxv. 3ff, lxvi. 17.
a B. J. xli. 14, xlix. ~. 3 Ps. cxxxvii. 3.
* Jer. xxix. 21 ff. s B. J. Iii. 13 ff, lvii. 1.

324 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
would be all the more anxious to hold aloof from these sus
pects and side with their enemies, in order to enjoy in peace
the comforts they were beginning to obtain.
But amid this misery the faith and hope of the godly
became all the stronger and more enthusiastic. Their
leaders are not the priests, who, as teachers of what is clean
and unclean, had the making of the laws. It is the
prophets' unfettered faith and enthusiastic piety that win the
victory. The idols of the heathen are described in all their
impotence with the most biting scorn.1 The might of the
world as against the omnipotence of God is counted as " the
small dust of the balance, and as a drop of a bucket." '2
Cyrus, the youthful hero who is filling Asia with his fame,
the eagle from the East, the servant of the unseen spiritual
God, is the anointed of Jehovah, called by Him and sent to
execute His will upon Babylon and to rebuild Jerusalem.3
The night is over, the warfare ended, and messengers with
glad tidings of victory are drawing near to forsaken, childless
Zion,4 who will once more become the mother of countless
throngs. The call resounds, bidding them return home boldly.5
The time of blessing is nigh, the feast of Jehovah for all
people on Mount Zion. Death is vanquished; Sheol gives
up its captives.6 Underneath, in the realm of the dead, the
king of Babylon is greeted with the mocking song of the
kings whom he had once trampled in the dust.7 This true
Israel, the servant of Jehovah, not only foretold the new birth of
the nation, but brought it about himself. Had not a believing
community gathered round the inspired prophets of the Exile,
ready to stake its all on Israel's future, firmly convinced of
God's redemptive purpose and of the glorious future, Judah
would have perished like Ephraim in the world of heathenism
1 B. J. xl. 18 ft, xli. 6ff., xliv. 10 ff. 2 B. J. xl. 15.
3 B. J. xliv. 28, xiv. 1, xlvi. 11.
4 B. J. xl. If., Iii. 1, 7, liv. Iff. s B. J. xlviii. 20, Iii. 11.
B B. J. xxv. 6, 8, xxvi. 19 ff. (if we may apply this prophecy here).
7 B. J. xiv. 4 ff.

THE NEW JERUSALEM. 325
without leaving a trace behind. In that case, indeed, the
liberating edict of Cyrus would never have been issued. It
never occurred to him to dismiss to their homes the other
nations that had been transplanted by their Assyrian or
Babylonian conquerors. He acted as he did, as tradition has
quite rightly maintained,1 because he found that, in this case,
restoration had been foretold and was eagerly desired.2 And
still less would there have been found, without these men
of God, a community strong enough to overcome all opposing
elements, and actually to create a new national life that lasted
for centuries, and which only perished when its fruit had
been ripened for eternity and brought into the light.
The prophecies of these men shine as with a higher light ;
they have with justice been called the Gospel of the Old
Covenant. They are marked by a tone of incomparable
grandeur and enthusiasm, and, amid all the darkness of the
age, by a sublime serenity. And there is something more in
them that has always a wonderful attraction for a Christian.
This true Israel had felt itself in its glory in the midst of
suffering, conscious of having endured the very worst without
any guilt on its part, from enthusiastic love to God and a
self-denying devotion to the mission of Israel. Without
priest or king, without temple or worship, without earthly
independence, it had found its true life in the spiritual beauty
of religion. Here, therefore, hope is purer, more spiritual, less
earthly, than anywhere else. Here there is a large heart
ready, with warm affection, to receive the whole world into
the new Israel.8 Here little regard is paid to outward forms
except where these are necessary to indicate loyalty to Israel,
1 Josephus, Antiq. xi. 1. 1 f. Naturally his narrative is cast in the mould of
his own time.
2 From the light the Babylonian inscriptions throw on Cyrus, we certainly
cannot infer that he took a special interest in the religion of Israel as
distinguished from that of Babylon (A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from Ancient
Monuments). But any pious-minded man in ancient times was inclined to
attend to oracles about himself, even though given by a foreign God.
3 B. J. xlix. 6, lvi. 3 ff., lxvi. 23 (xxv. 6 ff).

326 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
and boldness in confessing the truth, — as the keeping of the
Sabbath, for instance, does, — little regard to royal glory and
civil splendour. In this picture of the future, Israel itself,
proved by suffering, crowned with victory, one in spirit,
embracing all the world, stands as the central figure. Here
once more, ere it gives place to priest and scribe, true
prophecy reveals its full splendour.
3. This ideal of religion was not destined to receive an
actual permanent form. The fulfilment was not such as
to maintain the community at the high level of its spiritual
birth. True, as had been foretold, the command was given
to go forth and build up the old sanctuaries. And the true
Israel, a small company, but great in faith and hope, returned
home, with David's son Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua
at their head. They began to rebuild the city, by and by also
to lay the foundations of the second temple;1 and even prophets,
a Haggai and a Zechariah, were again given to the people.
But the reality, poor and miserable as it was, was a sad
contrast to the splendid picture in the hearts of those who
had returned home. The hope of living in peace and harmony
with the Persian Government was soon dispelled, not to speak
of their thinking that even in religion they were in essential
agreement with this people, and of their seeing in the
conquering king a conscious and willing servant of Jehovah.
Israel was to the Persians nothing more than any other petty
people, which it was good policy to restore to its country,
but which must on no account be made into a really strong
and independent State. The ill-will of the neighbours found
ready support in the suspicion of Persian satraps. All signs
of budding prosperity were speedily destroyed by the miseries
of a war with Egypt. Everything continued pitiable, poverty-
stricken, and petty. The descendant of David was a Persian
1 Whether this was attempted before the time mentioned in the books of
Haggai and Zechariah is of no importance for the question before us. Cf.
Schrader, Jahrbucherfur deutsche Theologie, 1867.

THE NEW JERUSALEM. 327
deputy without power or influence. The kingdom of God was
very far from including the whole world. Even the narrow
limits of ancient Judah were not fully restored. Edom's
grasping hands were not compelled to let go their hold.
Instead of the old brother kingdom of Ephraim there stood
face to face with Judah a Samaritan people of mixed descent,
which ere long repaid with a bitter and venomous hatred the
narrow exclusiveness of Judah. The new temple was on
such an insignificant scale that sorrow and not joy filled the
hearts of all who had seen the glory of the former.1 Their
prophets were Epigoni standing on the boundary line of mere
learned imitation. In other respects, too, the new colony
was certainly destined to indigence and misery. The most
of the rich, indeed, remained in their accustomed homes beside
the Euphrates.
Still the first generation of those who lived in the new
Jerusalem continued to feel something of the inspiration of
their fathers. What the reality lacked, faith and hope
supplied. The disappointments which the founders of the
nation had to bear, and their pitiable circumstances, were
regarded as trials of faith.2 The glorious days, the immediate
advent of which the previous generation had hoped for and
had expected to see, were thought of as merely postponed for
a littie. The people of God are standing, so ran their hopes,
in the early dawn of the day of judgment. In short, the
great world-catastrophe is at hand when everything will
at last be arranged in accordance with the divine will.8 The
scion of David and the high priest are the heirs of promise;
and if, in reality, they do not quite fulfil the divine promises,
still they are pleasant and blessed pledges of a higher
kingdom and priesthood.4 Yet despite its poor exterior,
1 Hagg. ii. 3 ; Zech. iv. 10 ; cf. Ezra iii. 12.
" Hagg. i. 4 ff, ii. 19 ff. 3 Hagg. ii. 6, 7, 22 ff. ; Zech. i. 12 f.
¦' Hagg. i. 14, ii. 3 ff., 22 ff. ; Zech. iii. 1 ff, iv. 6, vi. 11 ff. If Zechariah had
regarded Zerubbabel himself as the promised one, which does not appear to me
proved, the above sentence might then be worded even more strongly.

328 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the new temple is to cast into the shade all the splendour
which earlier ages witnessed.1
Consequently, even this age was still rich in fruitful thoughts
and hopes, and had great influence on the moral and religious
life. It was just in these last days that Israel attained what
the most brilliant epochs of her history had never realised.
The outward commonwealth of Israel and the ideal of the
people corresponded, so far at any rate as that is possible on
earth. In the new Jerusalem there was neither idolatry, nor
giddy, worldly enjoyment. None but the God of Israel could
be worshipped in His holy city. Decorous conduct, religious
gravity, and hearty zeal for the nation's allotted task
characterised every member of the new community. For
only persons of this stamp could, in the circumstances, feel
impelled to return home in hope and faith. This was really a
people of God. Those who were Israelites after the flesh wished
to be so also after the spirit, and that at least honestly. The
new temple was actually a house through the gates of which
righteous men entered in the name of the Lord.2 And the
community among which the Psalms of Ascent originated,
manifested a personal piety and a sincerity of religious feeling
which would compare favourably with the best ages.
But in these very circumstances there lurked the seeds of
special dangers, and these actually came to light in the next
generation. There was among the returning exiles an over
whelming proportion of priests, of men actually devoted to
a religious career.8 Without the necessary complement of a
fresh, healthy secular life, this introduced into the life of the
people an unhealthy, one-sided element akin to Pietism, of
which the better ages of Israel had known nothing. The
great mass of writings of a legal character, which the com
munity now considered sacred, although it was only through
1 Zech. iv. 10, viii. 3 ff. 2 Cf. Ps. cxviii. 20, 26 ; B. J. xxvi. 2.
8 The Levites having been degraded into mere servants of the sons of Zadok,
it is easily understood why so very few of them took part in the return.

THE NEW JERUSALEM. 329
Ezra that they obtained a really decisive influence over the
people,1 fostered the rise of a learned caste, and gave exagger
ated importance to ritual. The new commonwealth was, in
fact, not a nation, but a religious community gathering round
sacred forms and ordinances. Hence "the congregation of
Israel" having been synonymous with "the congregation of
the righteous," one ran the risk of regarding these terms as
synonymous long after unavoidable change in the circumstances
of the people had rendered this view unjustifiable. But, as
yet, such dangers were not apparent. Perhaps, as Kuenen
thinks, the legal spirit of the real priest was at first stronger
in those that remained behind in Babylon than in the com
munity that returned home under the influence of the prophets.
In former times the view was often vigorously insisted on,
that in the time of the Exile and immediately thereafter the
Old Testament religion was largely moulded by foreign influ
ences, — by the Chaldeans, and the peculiar science especially
of an astrological character which had its home in Babylon,
or by the Persians, whose spiritual worship of light, in which
images were unknown, and which pointed to a kind of mono
theism, was certainly by far the most likely to exercise an
influence over the religious conceptions of Israel.
It must, first of all, be emphatically denied that the
Chaldeans exercised any influence whatsoever on Old Testament
religion. It is certainly true that the mass of the people did not
keep clear of the sensuous and mysterious worship of Babylon.
But the upholders of the true religion have nothing but
scorn and ridicule for the idols and the secret learning con
nected with idolatry, and it is only these, the true Israel,
that have anything to do with the Old Testament religion.2
No body of men, indeed, can ever wholly resist the influence
of the civilisation around them. Expressions and figures due
1 Haggai (ii. 11) still points, not to a priestly law-book, but to instruction by
the priests.
2 B. J. xl. 18 ff, xli. 6 ff, xliv. 10 ff.

330 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
to Babylonian speech and thought, as well as highly imagina
tive conceptions connected with the brightly-coloured mythical
systems of Inner Asia, found their way into the language even
of the Israelites, as Ezekiel and the exilic portions of Deutero-
Isaiah frequently show. But that has nothing to do with the
Old Testament religion. It belongs merely to the outer gar
ment of expression, to the language of rhetoric.
But even the Persians, although in religion they stood
very much nearer to Israel, and were so far from being hated
and despised that they were regarded with confidence by the
best of the people, never exerted any real influence upon the
religion of Israel. Any one who compares Zechariah and
Haggai, or any of the Psalms that can be assigned with
confidence to the earliest Persian period, with the pre-exilic and
exilic works, e.g. with Job, Ezekiel, and the additions to Isaiah,
will easily satisfy himself that no foreign elements of import
ance have been anywhere introduced. At the most it may
be granted that in a few unessential points the religious view
shows traces of an acquaintance with the Persian religion.
Thus there now begins a tendency to draw fantastic pictures
of the heavenly hierarchy, and a greater emphasis is attached
to superhuman evil. Still it is not to be forgotten that even in
these works such characteristics show themselves in a really
striking fashion only at a much later period, and, therefore,
are probably to be attributed less to the Persian religion
than to the general tendency of the times — that the
development of angelology may be explained from purely Old
Testament materials,1 and that the Satan of Zechariah, for
example, is not different from the Satan of the book of
Job. Even the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead
grows so organically out of the Old Testament religion itself,
and its presence in ancient Parseeism is so doubtful, that it
cannot be taken into account here.
1 Cf. also Kuenen, I.e. ii. 251ff., andKosters. The more transcendental working
out of the doctrine of God must have had an influence on the doctrine of angels.

THE AGE OF THE EPIGONI. «531
4. Thus the first age of the new Jerusalem already had the
character of an age of Epigoni. But that it was finally to
develop into another spirit than that of the great prophets,
was only decisively settled when, in Jerusalem, under the
protection of the " secular arm " (Nehemiah), Ezra succeeded in
realising his ideals as priest and scribe, organised the people
into " a congregation under the Mosaic law," and imprinted
on it the stamp which, in spite of many hostile influences, it
ever afterwards retained in a form that became more and
more definite and inalienable. It is clear that, at first, Ezra's
schemes met with violent opposition. Not only did Manasseh
go over to the Samaritans, but the rest of the prophets also
became rebellious.1 But at last Ezra was completely success
ful. Israel, the people of God, became the people of "the
Jews," for so the people as a whole were called from this time
onwards.2 The lofty enthusiasm, the joyous assurance that
relied on the Divine Spirit without looking anxiously to a
sacred book, was replaced by an inward weakness which leant
all the more heavily on the former strength. Instead of inward
religious assurance, the letter of the law governed the life of
the people. It was no longer needful to oppose to nature-
worship the true religion in all its grand spiritual unity and
depth. The principles of salvation were no longer matters of
dispute in Israel. The only question was how to retain what
had been given, and clothe it with the proper legal form.
And this task was represented as the proper vocation of the
people, which was forbidden by the conditions of its existence
to undertake any other great national task.
Everything of true religious import that could be attained
from an Old Testament standpoint the prophetic age attained.
Before the divine life was revealed in human life through
a person, and therefore in a way purely spiritual and
1 Neh. vi. 14.
2 DHini, e.g. Esth. iii. 6, 13, iv. 3, 7, 13, 14, 16, v. 13, vi. 10, 13, viii. 1,
8, 7ff, ix. 5, 25 ff.

332 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
accessible to all men, that is, before Christ appeared, no
higher conception of salvation could be formed than that
proclaimed by the great prophets and poets of the earlier
ages. Hence we meet everywhere with signs of waning
spiritual power. Smaller men administer the treasures
bequeathed by greater. Whatever new addition is made is
but a doubtful gain, as will always be the case when
originality and freshness of thought are confined within fixed
limits. Still we must take care lest we treat these ages
unjustly by looking at them through the spectacles of pre
judice. Not only did the gain in real moral and religious
knowledge won by the earlier ages remain, on the whole,
absolutely intact throughout the later ; but the personal
inward devotion of individuals to this religion and its
benefits, a devotion utterly unknown in the earlier agesj
was a sort of compensation for the creative religious genius
of these earlier generations. Religious poetry put forth its
fairest blossoms. The relation towards religious and moral
problems was more self-conscious and individual than before.
Leavening elements showed themselves, which, if not purely
progressive, nevertheless had in them some seeds of universal
religion. Consequently this age led on, not merely to the
Pharisaism that was hostile alike to Christ and to the pro
phets, but also to those companies of upright Israelites who
found in Jesus the fulfilment of their eager longings.
5. Only for a short time could it appear as if the Persian
empire would treat the kingdom of God in a manner essen
tially different from that adopted by its predecessors, as if it
were destined to become the helper and servant of the God
of Israel. Already Haggai and Zechariah see in Persia the
mountain that must become a plain,1 and know that the
time of fulfilment cannot arrive until the earth ceases to be at
rest,2 and God again shakes both the heaven and the earth.8
This becomes more and more the prevailing view. True,
1 Zech. iv. 7. 2 Zech. i. 11 ff. - Hagg. ii. 7.

THE AGE OF THE EPIGONL 333
the people do not forget the great service which Persia
rendered the kingdom of God by authorising Jerusalem to be
rebuilt, and by at last granting the often postponed permission
to fortify the city and restore the temple.1 Persia is not, like
Babylon and Assyria, an actual enemy and troubler of the
sanctuary. But, otherwise, the circumstances soon came to
resemble those of former days. However obscure those times
are for us, it is beyond question that the main characteristic
of the Persian epoch was galling bondage and heavy burdens.2
Even here there was no rest. The eye of the people had
once more to look for the golden age in a new future, away
behind new and fateful judgments of God.
In this age a healthy national development was for Israel
an impossibility. But it clung all the more firmly and faith
fully to what was left it as its most peculiar treasure, and
in which alone it could still lead an independent life, — to
the religion of its forefathers. In this connection there
are two things which specially call for attention. The
first is the holy city with its temple and its worship.
The public worship of God became more and more the
pride and joy of the whole people. Splendidly performed
according to the prescribed rules, it presented more and more
the appearance of a perfect sacred service. The priests,
severed as they now were by an express law3 from the
Levites, were very numerous in proportion to the number
of those who returned,4 and thus gave the whole people a
more distinctly religious character than ancient Israel, with
its fresh and often flourishing national life, had ever had.
Their joy in beautiful forms of service made them delight
to trace the origin of these back to the earliest times. A
already represented Moses as the author of a well-organised
1 Cf. Ezra i. 2, vi. 3, 10.
2 Cf. Eccles. iii. 16, v. 7, viii. 2ff, 9 f., x. 6, 16f., 20 (Ewald, Gesch. d. V.
Isr., Bd. iv., 3rd ed. p. 168 ff).
3 Ezraii. 36 ff., 62; Neh. vii. 64. 4 Ezra ii. 36 ff; Neh. xii

334 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
order of service. The sacred music and other arrangements
of public worship were referred back to David.1 Thus the
olden days were held in remembrance by the people as an
ideal age in the Levitical sense, which they neArer in reality
- were. The laws which, founded on the work of Moses, had
grown in the long course of centuries into a well-rounded"
written code, were regularly read and expounded.2 The high
priest, raised by A even in theory above his colleagues, and
now the one really independent representative of the people,
obtained more and more influence. His relation to the weak
vassal princes was altogether different from what it had
formerly been towards the warlike and powerful kings of
Judah.3 What an impression was produced by the imposing
figure of such a high priest if his personality was in keeping
with the dignity of his office, we may readily infer from
the sketch of the son of Onias by Jesus the son of Sirach,
although this sketch, of course, belongs to a much later age.4
And to the temple with its attendants, the community of
the dispersion attached itself with ever-growing zeal as to a
common centre, a connection, indeed, of which Zechariah,
chap, vi., already gives proof. Nay more, " those who feared
Jehovah," the co-religionists of Israel who were of heathen
descent, by agreeing to worship at the temple, prefigured a
world-wide kingdom of God. Owing to this growing import
ance of the temple and its servants, more and more weight
was, as a matter of course, also attached to sacrifice, and to
the whole outward service performed at the temple. The
1 1 Chron. vi. 16 f., 24, 29, ix. 33, xv. 16 f., xvi. 4ff., 37. ff, xxiii. 5, xxv.;
2 Chron. v. 13, vii. 3, 6, viii. 15, xxix. 25, 30 ; Ezra iii. 10 ; Neh. xii. 45 f.
2 Neh. viii.
3 This is brought out most clearly by comparing the position of the Patriarchs
with that of the Rajahs in the Turkish empire. The conquerors gave them a sort
of political position which they never conceded to the old ruling families.
Thus the people saw in them the last remnant of its national honour and
importance. 4 Jes. Sir. 50. In this connection one involuntarily thinks of the impression
which the splendour of the episcopate made on the nations at the time of the
barbarian inroads.

THE PERSIAN AGE.

335

tendency to give such predominance to sacred form dates from
Ezekiel and A ; but it was not till the civil and ecclesiastical
reformation by Ezra and Nehemiah that its victory was
complete. The perfect freedom with which the prophets
dealt with outward forms of worship made way for a legalism
pious and worthy of respect, but at the same time narrow and
dangerous. It was from this standpoint that the chronicler
wrote the history of the olden time. The Levitical righteous
ness of the individual kings is always the standard of their
favour with God. The matters recorded with the greatest detail
are arrangements for worship and reforms in divine service.
The second and still more important point is Holy Scripture.
By the exertions of Ezra and his successors, the people were
given in a permanent form the best part of their sacred books
so far as these had reference to law. Ezra himself was
certainly the first to put some of these writings into a
thoroughly finished form, for the tradition which ascribes to
him their final redaction is in the main perfectly trustworthy.
Though the legends as to the miraculous way in which he
restored these writings by inspiration x are, of course, later than
Josephus, they at least warrant the inference that, according
to popular recollection, this work of Ezra was not purely
formal. He and his successors, taking the document of A as
a basis, formed into a single whole the book of early history
and of the giving of the laws. And since A thus stamps its
character on the whole, the statutes relating to sacred form and
the exact provision for the external holiness of Israel became
the foundation-stone of national life. The prophets, on the
contrary, had regarded faith and morality as the essential
characteristics of the nation founded by Moses. Naturally, in
presence of this Thorah, Israel's religious history looked quite
different from what it had appeared to an Amos or an Isaiah.
Except in the case of the Law, there was no thought as yet
of " closing the Canon." During this age and the following,
1 4 Ezra xiv.

336 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
such productions as books of narrative, psalms, and even
artificial aftergrowths of prophecy were still freely added to
the other books. But to the " Law " the people no longer
stood in the same relation as to their own living religious
writings. It was something not to be touched. Its very
letter had become sacred. Learned scribes began to master
its contents. It was therefore inevitable that, in the con
sciousness of the community, whatever was statutory and
external, whatever could be laid down in fixed rules and
forms, should come to the forefront.1 The law, closed as it
now was, came to be the real centre of religion.2 Accord
ingly, attempts were made to construct a theology of the
law, that is, a religious jurisprudence. The transition from
inward religious assurance to a dependence on scholarship is,
of course, always a gradual process.
We must accordingly think of the religious life of Israel
during the later Persian epoch as predominantly conservative
and ritualistic. Around the temple with its worship, around
the high priest as representative of the people's religious
independence, around the Scriptures which were growing into
a Canon as the divine inheritance of Israel, there gathered a
pious and earnest community — on the whole, in spite of many
an exception, more strictly moral and religious than any
previous community had been. But it no longer possessed
the creative force of earlier days. And just as the greater
technical skill of ages when art is decaying cannot compensate
for the want of the genius which distinguishes epochs of
progress, so in the sphere of religion, the earnestness and piety
of the average man cannot make up for the want of the
creative religious spirit which glows in those who live during
the periods of religious growth.
1 As a natural consequence of this, the statutes relating to the life of the
people soon appear of greater importance than the acts of sacrifice performed
in the temple without the co-operation of the people. The " Book of Scripture "
is a stronger power than the temple.
1 Ps. i., xix. 5, cxix.

LEVITES AND PRIESTS.

337

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SACRED INSTITUTIONS OF ISRAEL ACCORDING TO " THE LAW."
1. Levites and Priests.
Literature. — Ugolino, Thesaurus antiq. sacr. vol. xii.
(Saubert, Krumbholz, Boldich, Braun, Selden, Carpzov, " Ueber
den Hohenpriester "). Herzog, Realencyclopcedie, art. "Hohe-
priester, Leviten, Priesterthum " (Oehler, 2nd ed. Orelli).
Saalschiitz, Mosaisches Recht, i. 89 f. Kiiper, Bas Priesterthum
des alten Bundes, 1865. Maybaum, Entwicklung des altisrael-
itischen Priesterthums, 1880.
1. Alongside of Nazirite and prophet, the Levitical priest
had from the first the very greatest influence on the develop
ment of the religion of Israel.1 As a distinct order, whose
life-interests were all bound up with the worship of the
national God at the national sanctuary, this priesthood in
times of division and anarchy firmly upheld the national
unity. For a time the national life gathered round the
sanctuary at Shiloh. And the persecution of Jehovah's
priests at Nob no doubt contributed largely to the final
downfall of Saul's dynasty and to David's triumph. Having
secured a higher and more secure position at Jerusalem owing
1 The Di^>n dyna of Deuteronomy (x. 8, xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1-8, xxi. 5,
xxiv. 8, xxxi. 9) and of the older historical documents (Josh. iii. 3, viii. 33 ;
Jer. xxxiii. 21 ff. ; yet cf. 1 Kings viii. 4 according to the Massorah) represent,
in my opinion, the original relation of Levites and priests. The Levites collect
ively have the right to the priesthood and its revenues (Josh. xiii. 14, 33,
xviii. 7 ; 1 Sam. ii. 28 ; Deut. xviii. 6 ff., xxxiii. 8 ff.). Certain families of them
have the right to the national priesthood. Such is still Josiah's view, for he
allows even the Levitical priests of the high places to keep their incomes (2 Kings
xxiii. 9). It was owing to the number of the Levites being out of all propor
tion to the decimated people, to the concentration of worship at Jerusalem, and
to the fact that most of the Levitical families had taken part in the services at
high places, that the distinction between priests and Levites grew up, which
was legalised by Ezekiel (xl. 45 f., xliii. 19, xliv. 9ff, xlviii. 11), and taken for
granted by A. The exilic prophet still thinks it possible to take "Levitical
priests" in the new Jerusalem from other families also (B. J. lxvi. 21 ff).
VOL. I. Y

338 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
to the temple being there, they gave Judah religious ascend
ency over Israel, however averse the despotic kings of the
Davidic family may have been to grant the priests political
influence and independence.1 To the priesthood is due the
credit of having given the sacred ordinances of Israel more
and more the form of fixed laws. It was the high priest
who introduced Deuteronomy. The work of A was of priestly
origin. And the whole character of Ezekiel's views points
unmistakably to his close connection with priestly interests.
Still, unlike the prophets, the priests were not always on the
side of religious progress. This was not because there were
priests who gave themselves up to nature-worship, and showed
but little zeal in opposing the arbitrary doings of the kings,2
or because the prophets bitterly complain of the selfishness,
corruption, and luxury of the priests who abuse their position
as judges for purposes of oppression, regard the sins of the
people as good sources of income, and dishonour the right of
asylum in the priestly cities by wanton acts of violence.8
Such conduct would have no influence on the development
of religion. It was rather because the very existence of a
priestly class tends to exaggerate the value of ritual, and to
change into a law what was formerly mere sacred custom,
and- thus make religion consist mainly of outward ceremonies.
The Thorah of the priest pointed in a different direction from
the word of the prophet, although it was not till after Josiah
that this antagonism became theoretically definite.4
Still, whatever faults might be found with individual priests,
the priesthood, as a whole, is represented as an important
factor in Israel's religious life, highly honoured and influential.
1 Solomon changes the high priesthood (1 Kings ii. 26 ; cf. 1 Sam. ii. 31, 35,
xiv. 3 ; 2 Sam. xv. 24).
2 2 Kings xvi. 16 ; Zeph. iii. 4.
3 E.g. Hos. iv. 8, v. 1, vi. 9 ; Micah iii. 11 ; Isa. xxviii. 7 ; Zeph. Iii. 4 ;
Jer. i. 18, ii. 26, iv. 9, vi. 13 ; Ezek. xxii. 25 ff.
4 This antagonism naturally showed itself still more plainly where, as in the
northern kingdom, the priesthood wished, in spite of the preaching of the pro
phets, to maintain an antiquated and impure form of religion (Amos vii. ).

LEVITES AND PRIESTS. 339
Indeed, the reputation and influence of the priestly class were
but little affected by the contempt with which many of its
members were regarded in private life. That is, of course,
quite natural where the main duty of a priest is to perform
mysterious acts of ritual, and where he is believed to have
influence with the divine powers, and to keep up a mys
terious connection with them such as ordinary mortals do
not possess. Thus Eli's sons did not ruin the priesthood by
their profligacy.1 Nor was the high position of the Levitical
priesthood injured either by the strolling Levites in the time
of the Judges,2 or by the insecure position of the same class
which Deuteronomy presupposes when, in consequence of their
having become too numerous, it commends them to public
charity, along with the poor and the stranger.8 They are still the
judges of what is " clean " and " holy," and the administrators
of the oracles of God. Hence the very Hosea who censures
the priests in the most bitter fashion, also describes a hope
lessly obstinate person as " one who strives with the priest." 4
In direct opposition to the blessing of Jacob, the song of the
Deuteronomist distinguishes the tribe of Levi thus —
"Let Thy Thummim and Thy Urim be with Thy godly one,
Whom Thou didst prove at Massah,
With whom Thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah."
It is in these terms that the poet addresses God, while he
praises Levi thus —
"Who said of his father and of his mother, I have not seen him ;
Neither did he acknowlege his brethren,
Nor knew he his own children :
For they have observed Thy word,
And keep Thy covenant.
They shall teach Jacob Thy judgment,
And Israel Thy law :
They shall put incense before Thee,
And whole burnt-offering upon Thine altar."6

1 1 Sam. ii. , iii. 2 Judg. xvii.
3 Deut. xii. 12, 18, 19, xiv. 27, 29, xvi. 11, xviii. 1, xxvi. 11 ff.
4 Hos. iv. 4 (Deut. xvii. 12). 6 Deut. xxxiii. 8-10 (Gen. xlix. 5).

340 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Jeremiah attaches great importance to the priesthood, and
with Ezekiel priestly interests are always uppermost.1 And
how important a role a high priest could play among this
people, is shown by the history of Athaliah's dethronement
and the reformation under Josiah.2
Ezekiel's legislation was meant to separate on a definite
principle the Jerusalem priesthood from the other Levitical
circles.8 But in the well-defined figure of the high priest, in
the degrading of the Levites to mere temple-servants, and
in the completed laws anent the rights and duties of the
priests, A was the first to sketch out what became realised
fact after Ezra's time.4
After the Exile the high priest was the one official in the
new nation who really possessed a measure of independence.
His was the office over which the Persian suzerain could
exercise least supervision. And the removal of the Davidic
king from beside the high priest must have had to a certain
extent the same effect, on a miniature scale, as the downfall
of the Roman empire on the development of the power of
the Roman bishop. Compared with the high priest, the
Persian officer in Jerusalem, even when a Zerubbabel, was
necessarily quite in the shade. Thus in Zechariah it is clear
that the high priest Joshua takes the leading part. If he
discharges his duties aright, he is to have free access to God
through the midst of the attendant angels.5
The earlier age of Israel saw in the priest chiefly the ephod-
bearer8 — that is, the medium through which Jehovah delivered
His oracles, and this because the daily sacrifices of private
1 Jer. xxxiii. 18-26; Ezek. xliii. 19 ff, xliv. 9ff, xlviii. 11 ff.
2 2 Kings xi. 4, xii. 3, xxiii. 4.
"Ezek. xliv. 18 ff., 29ff. ; Ex. xxviii., xxix., xxxix. The sons of Zadok
are, according to the historical books, of later Levitical nobility than the family
of Eli, 1 Sam. ii. 27-36.
4 Larger incomes and life-tenure, Lev. vi. , vii. ; Num. xviii. The claim of
the other Levites to equality with Aaron is, according to him, rebellion punish
able with death, Num. xvi.
6 Zech. iii. 7. « 1 Sam. xiv. 3, 8.

LEVITES AND PRIESTS. 341
individuals and of the several tribes were considered less
dependent on the services of priests.1 Besides, the priests were
the natural teachers of the people regarding what was clean and
unclean, regarding what the sacred customs of Israel did or
did not allow.2 In later times the oracle fell gradually into
the background, while the real worship at the national
sanctuary came more and more to the front. The chronicler,
besides, speaks of them "judging" the people according to
" the law of Jehovah," especially since Jehoshaphat's time.
Still it is a question how far this statement is to be trusted.8
When the law had obtained official recognition, it natur
ally fell to the priesthood to superintend the whole public
life of the people in so far as it was regulated by the
law.4 2. It was only in the second Jerusalem that the theory
of the priesthood, which was henceforward the prevailing one
in Israel, was worked out in distinct contrast to that of earlier
days. While it was formerly a fundamental conviction that
the whole people was holy,5 and capable, therefore, of drawing
near unto God, A, despite his high-strung views as to the
dignity of the holy people, resists in the most strenuous
manner every attempt to call in question, on this ground, the
sole right of the priests to hold intercourse with God. Plainly
even A must still have known of the old view as to the
priestly rights of all. This is sufficiently proved by his
deliberate refutation of it.6 But the more emphasis was
laid on the transcendental character of God and the non-
consecration of nature, the more necessary it appeared that
1 Cf. the sketch of the pre-Solomonic epoch. s Cf. Ezek. xxii. 26 f.
3 Deut. xvii. 8, 12, xix. 17 ff., xx. 2 ; Jer. xviii. 18 ; Ezek. vii. 26, xxii. 26,
xliv. 23, 24; Hag. ii. 12; Lam. iv. 16 (i. 4, iv. 13); 2 Chron. xvii. 7ff.,
xix. 5 ff. (Wellhausen would regard all this as a mere echo of the Sanhedrim at
Jerusalem, since it is not mentioned in 1 Kings xxii.).
4 We already find, in Jer. xviii. 18 ; Ezek. vii. 26, — that is, after the publica
tion of Deuteronomy, — that the chief duty of the priest is to know ihe law, while
people go to the elders for counsel and to the prophets for word and vision.
5 Ex. xix. 6. 6 Num. xvi. 3.

342 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
all acts implying immediate contact with the divine should
be restricted to persons specially " consecrated."
The first and lowest expression of this need is exemplified
in the servants who were gifted to the sanctuary, and had to
consecrate to it the whole labour of their life. Accordingly
we find in A so-called " gifted ones " (Nethunim or Nethinim),
who had to do the menial work connected with public
worship ; properly speaking, they were only the servants
of the Levites, though placed in a class by themselves.1
Originally, it is clear, they were nothing else than temple-
slaves, foreign captives put into posts implying, not privilege,
but privation. But Ezekiel puts in their place the Levites,
who had shown themselves unworthy of the priesthood ; 2 and
according to Josh. ix. 2 1 ff. they are at least heathens who
had voluntarily submitted to Israel. Side by side with these
there were also, from the days of antiquity, serving women,3
probably to assist in the less important parts of sacrificial
work, and perhaps also to lead the choral dances at feasts.
Here the connection with God is still something quite
external, simply one of possession, which is, indeed, the funda
mental conception of consecration to God.
This thought receives a somewhat higher expression in the
consecration of the tribe of Levi as distinguished, since Ezekiel,
and especially since A, from the priesthood proper. A knows
nothing of them as priests. They do not appear in the
sanctuary till long after the priests are at work there, and
not as Aaron's kinsmen, but as the " first-fruits " of Israel.
1 Num. viii. 19 ; cf. Ezra ii. 43, 58 ; Neh. vii. 46, 60, xi. 3.
2 Ezek. xliv. 9 ff.
3 Ex. xxxviii. 8 ; cf. 1 Chron. xxv. 5, the daughters of Heman (?). It is
quite wrong to deny that the reference here is to women in constant employ
ment. They are called niK3¥. Their mirrors are taken to ornament the
sacred water-basin. They are mentioned as early as 1 Sam. ii. 22. Among
the Greeks, too, not only were Hierodouloi in the immoral sense of the term
gifted to the temple of the nature-goddess, but virgins were also consecrated
to that divinity (Schomann, 210. As to the sacred mirrors of these women,
cf. 205).

LEVITES AND PRIESTS. 343
They are mere servants. They are forbidden to touch sacred
objects till the priests have put a covering over them.
Otherwise the holiness of God's presence would slay them
also.1 Consequently the determining thought is that of
property and service. They, too, are " gifted to God," 2 and
have to serve the regular priest.3 It is in room of the first
born of the people, who should belong wholly to God, that they
and their possessions are set apart for God.4 But they stand
in a still closer relation to God ; in the holy nation they are the
holy tribe. They alone are to touch the sacred vessels, lest
wrath come upon Israel.6 They are consecrated, presented by
the laying on, as it were, of the hands of the community, as
representatives of that community's own relation to God, and
thus they are offered to Him as a sacrifice.6 Only while in the
flower of their age are they to engage in sacred work.7 They
are maintained by the sacred gifts which are presented to
God.8 Hence their office is represented also as a privilege.9
Perfect consecration belongs, according to the theory of A,
only to the priesthood proper, to "Aaron and his sons,"10
"the anointed priests."11 The etymological meaning of the
word Kohen, which is the technical term for priest,12 is
matter of dispute. If it is connected with pa,13 one has to
choose between the meaning of " setting oneself up," i.e. taking
1 Num. iv. 15 ff. 2 Num. xviii. 2.
3 Num. iii. 9 (D^rB).
4 Num. iii. 12 ff., 41, 45, viii. 11-17. As Tenufah, Num. viii. 21 ; Ex. xiii,
15. 6 Num. i. 47-54, ii. 17, viii. 19. 6 Num. viii. 5-21.
7 Num. iv. 3, 23, 30, 50, viii. 26.
8 Num. xviii. 21 ff. Of course the ideal picture in A, according to which
Levi, scattered throughout Israel, was to dwell in his forty-eight cities without
work or care, is in most significant contrast to the actual history.
9 Num. xvi. 9 ; Deut. xxxiii. 8.
10 This expression in A ; cf. also Num. iii. 10, 38, iv. 15, 19, 20, xvii. 5
xviii. 1.
11 Num. iii. 3. ^ |D3.
13 To derive it from the frequently-used denominative ]7\2, to be brilliant, dis
tinguished, reverses the course which language takes. jro, f>nO, "iDDj of. ftj

344 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
a particular position, and that of " setting up," i.e. preparing.
The first meaning might be supported by those passages in
which, as is thought by many, the word is applied to a mere
court official.1 But, in my opinion, the form of the word,
which points to an active signification, is conclusively in favour
of the second. But, granted that the word itself is obscure,
it would still be easy to determine in what sense A used it.
The idea of " service " lies in the functions of the priests, and
in the word " servant," which is applied to priestly persons.2
And the privilege of " drawing nigh unto God " is represented
as the special right of the priesthood.3 These two things, the
performing of service at the temple and the coming near to
God, are also met with in Ezekiel's idea of the priest.4
Accordingly, since the time of A the priests are regarded as
at once the servants of the sanctuary, and the persons through
whom the people fulfils its mission and enjoys its ideal
privilege of drawing near unto God and presenting offerings to
Him. Thus they form a living bond of connection between
God and Israel which falls short of the holiness of its ideal.
They are supported by God as His servants, but in accordance
with definite laws, the wilful transgression of which is
followed by punishment ; 6 they are consecrated by a special
ceremony and presented to God, and the general tenor, at
1 2 Sam. viii. 18, xx. 26 ; 1 Kings iv. 5 ; cf. 1 Chron. xviii. 17. In these
passages I see no reason for giving up the meaning ' ' priest. " And even if that
had to be done, the wider meaning might very well be derived from the idea of
priest and applied to the duties of a courtier, just as in Arabic the word has
acquired the additional idea of soothsayer. The use of the denominative |rD,
e.g. in B. J. Ixi. 10, is due to the splendid official dress of the priest. The
derivation from "communicating the ways of God," "soothsaying," is highly
improbable. (Kuenen, Hibbert Led. p. 81. Land.)
2 1 Sam. ii. 11, 18, iii. 1. Samuel wears the dress of a priest, as a rpC'D ;
but he is distinguished by it from the priests proper. On the other hand,
Joel i. 13 uses D'jna as interchangeable with nDtD Tllty'lO ; of. Ex. xxix. 30,
xxx. 20, xxxv. 19, xxxix. 1, 41.
3 Num. iv. 19, 20, xvi. 5. * Ezek. xl. 45 ff., xlii. 13, xlvi. 19 ff.
6 Cf. Josh. xiii. 14, 33, xviii. 7. The regulations referred to are found in
Num. xviii. 8-28 ; Lev. vi. 7, vii. 8, 30 ; Ex. xxix. 26, 28 ; cf. Num. vi. 19f.,
xxxi. 28. It is very interesting to note how these incomes rise from

THE HIGH PRIEST. 345
any rate of their outward, if not of their moral life, had to
be in keeping with the character of their office. We shall,
however, deal better with all these matters in connection with
the religious picture of the high priest.1
3. The priests are consecrated with sin-offerings and acts
of purification, so as to represent a state of perfect holiness.
They have to be, not merely "purified" like the Levites, but
" consecrated." 2 They are then invested with the rights of
their office. Of the ram, which is for this reason called the
" installation ram," 3 that part which belongs to the priest as
the servant of God, is put into their hand, in order that, after
offering it to God, they may, as it were, receive it back from
Him. This is here called " filling the hand," 4 a phrase which
originally just meant payment for priestly service.5 Then the
president of the priesthood has his head anointed with holy
oil, the usual symbol of the consecrating and healing power
of the Spirit. Hence he is specially called " the anointed
priest ; " 6 sometimes, too, the priest who is greater than his
brethren,7 or the high priest.8
The priests also receive a sacred dress as the outward
mark of their office. The ordinary dress of a priest is
meant to betoken purity.9 But that of the high priest
Deut. xii. 7-18, xviii. 3, to Lev. vii., Num. xv., xviii. Perhaps by that time
the temple-gifts had really become taxes levied for behoof of the priests.
Wellh. 160.
1 Naturally the head of the priesthood at the national sanctuary always had
a position of influence, as is clear from the story of Eli, the change made in the
priesthood by Solomon, and the success of Jehoiada ; 1 Sam. i. 9, 12 ; 1 Kings
ii. 35 ; 2 Kings xi. 4, 17, xii. 2. But the high priest, as described in "the
Law," is a personage not to be thought of as possible before the Exile. Whether
" the second priest," nJCBn jn3, was merely a vicar or a temple official with
special duties, is a matter with which Biblical theology has no concern.
(2 Kings xxiii. 4, xxv. 18 ; Jer. Iii. 24. )
a Ex. xxviii. 41, xxix. 1 ff. (cf. Num. viii. 6, inti).
3 Ex. xxix. 22, 31 ; Lev. iv. 35, viii. 22 (31, 33).
4 Ex. xxix. 9 ; Lev. ix. 17, xvi. 32 ; Num. iii. 3.
0 Judg. xvii. 5, 12 ; cf. also outside the law, 1 Kings xii. 31, xiii. 83.
6 Lev. iv. 3, 5, 16 ; Ex. xxix. 7 ; Lev. viii. 22, xxi. 10.
7 Lev. xxi. 10. 8 Num. xxxv. 28, ^njn |nan.
• Ex. xxviii. 39, 40, xxxix. 27 (Byssus).

346 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
has, as it were, to indicate that the covenant-God is revealing
Himself in royal splendour as the God of light, and that
to His people, who appear before Him by their representa
tive, the God of Israel is graciously vouchsafing counsel and
help. Hence the high priest's robe glitters with gold, the
sign of royal dignity, and with dazzling colours, symboli
cal of the God of light.1 Hence on the ephod covering
his shoulders there are two memorial onyx stones, with the
names of the tribes of Israel on them, and these Aaron wears
before God by way of remembrance.2 Hence on the breast
plate which covers the ephod, there gleam, engraved on four
rows of different jewels, the names of these twelve tribes,
worn also as a memorial before God.3 Hence his brow is
encircled with a golden band, fastened to the front of his
turban, and bearing the inscription, " Holy to Jehovah." 4
Hence there lie in the pocket of his cape the Urim and the
Thummim, means or symbols of illumination, by the use of
which he can communicate to his inquiring people the divine
will.5 Finally, as the symbol of vital force, of undesecrated
nature, there rests on his head a lily-shaped head-dress, which
may be compared with the unshorn locks of a Nazirite.6
The priest must be without blemish.7 No one whose
"human form divine" is either maimed or marred may
serve at the altar of Jehovah. And, while he is on official
duty, everything distracting or exciting is to be kept away
from him,8 as well as everything which would, even in the
case of an ordinary Israelite, interrupt communion with God.
Above all, he must not defile himself by touching a dead
body. Even an ordinary priest must not attend a funeral,

1 Ex. xxviii. 4-9, 31, 36, xxxix. 2 ff, 22 ff.
3 Ex. xxviii. 9-12. 3 Ex. xxviii. 17-29.
1 Ex. xxviii. 36 ff. ; Lev. viii. 9.
6 DSE'Dn (tJ'n, Ex. xxviii. 29 ; Lev. viii. 8. Aaron bears ' ' the judgment "
of the children of Israel constantly on his heart before God.
6 Ex. xxxix. 30 f.
7 Lev. xxi. 16 ff. , xxii. 4 ff. ; cf. Hermann, 209. 8 Lev. a. 9.

THE HIGH PRIEST.

347

except in cases of emergency, when he is the only male
person within reach who can help.1 In no case can the high
priest attend.2 The high priest may not approach a woman
to whom any dishonour attaches.8
Thus, according to A, the priesthood represents the people
as ideal, devoted to God. It is the official representative of the
people, as that people appears to the eye of God, and as it is
according to its vocation. On this official position depends the
right of the priests to draw nigh unto God, to appear before
Him, on every occasion, with the requests of the people, and
to perform the sacred acts which God requires of His people ;
in other words, to serve the individual members of the nation
as mediators, bring them in to God, like those at court, " who
see the face of the king." This right of theirs does not
depend on their personal sinlessness, but rather, just because
it rests on office, on everything connected with their official
appearance being agreeable to God. Hence the importance of
avoiding every outward impurity ; hence the symbolical dress,
the freedom from physical blemishes, etc.4 This right they
exercise, not for themselves, but as representatives of the
people. The priest is not, like the prophet, efficient in conse
quence of personal worth,5 but in virtue of his office, that is,
only so long as he acts in an official capacity. Hence, to dis
honour this sacred office is to render the whole nation guilty.6
But where everything is right, the priesthood can represent
the people before God, expiate their guilt by prayer and
sacrifice, and secure for them communion with God, and the
blessings resulting therefrom. Hence the high priest blesses
the congregation in the name of the Most High.7 Hence he
bears on his shoulder and on his heart, that is, patiently and
lovingly, the name of the people before the Lord, in order that

1 Lev. xxi. 2ff. s Lev. xxi. 11.
8 Lev. xxi. 7 ff. ; Ezek. xliv. 22. ' Ex. xxviii. 43, cf. xxxix.
5 So Moses, Ex. xxxii. 10 f., 32 ; Num. xiv. 13 ff. ; Lev. viii. 15, 19, 28.
6 Lev. iv. 3. 7 Num. vi. 22-27 ; Lev. ix. 22.

348 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
God, looking at Israel through him, the representative of the
ideal Israel, may remember them in love. And he wears on
the golden band round his brow the motto, " Holy to Jehovah,"
and thus Aaron bears the iniquity of the holy things which the
children of Israel have sanctified, as regards all their holy gifts;1
that is to say, his complete surrender to God is to be com
pensation for whatever duties towards God the actual Israel
has unwittingly failed to perform. That the people may not
be destroyed as unholy should it come near unto God, the
priests and the Levites must bear the iniquity of what is con
secrated, the iniquity of their priesthood;2 in other words, they
are in their official holiness to take on themselves the danger
which contact with the Divine brings on man. Accordingly,
the flesh of the sin-offering is given to the priests, on the
understanding that they eat it, in order " to bear the iniquity
of the congregation, to make atonement for them." 3 By
appropriating the flesh of the sin-offering, by means of which
the most sacred act of expiation is performed, the priesthood,
taking upon itself, in its official holiness, the danger of contact
with what is sacred, has to bring the act of atonement to a
worthy conclusion.
The high priest thus acts the part of a substitute. On him
is laid what would annihilate the people; in virtue of his
sacred office he bears it unharmed. In him God sees His
people holy and acceptable, as the object of His favour and His
purposes of mercy. The gifts which he presents the God of
Israel can accept, and allow to effect what they are meant
to effect, because presented to Him by the holy hands of a
servant who has always free access to Him. Hence Aaron,
as the representative of reconciliation with God, can withstand
and mitigate even the judgments of divine wrath. He stands
1 Ex. xxviii. 38, xxxix. 30. * Num. xviii. 1, 23.
a Lev. i.. 17. The emphasis which is here laid on the eating of the flesh
of the sin-offering, shows how closely connected the duties of the priesthood
were seen to be with this appropriation of what was most holy and therefore
dangerous.

THE HOLY PLACE. 349
there with the sacred means of atonement between the living
and the dead, and stays the plague.1 And in all matters
connected with the ordinances of public worship, the chief
personage is the high priest. When a high priest dies, the
exile of those who have fled to the cities of refuge is at an
end. The old life is, as it were, blotted out; a new life
begins.2 Thus the priesthood stands before the eyes of A as
a perpetual statute.3 2. The Holy Place.
Literature. — Bahr, Symbolik des mosaischen Cultus, vol. i.
1837, ii. 1839. Saalschiitz, Mosaisches Recht, vol. i. 297 ff.
Keil, Archaologie, vol. i. 94 ff. Georg Lorentz Baur, Be-
schreibung der gottesdienstlichen Verfassung der alten Hebraer,
vol. ii. 1806. Wilhelm Neumann, Bie Stiftshiltte in Wort
und Bild gezeichnet, 1861 (cf. Lutherische Zeitschrift, 1851, 86).
Leyrer, " Stiftshiltte " (Herzog, Realencyclopddie, 2nd ed., J.
Riggenbach). Kamphausen, Studien und Kritiken, 1858,
i. 9 7 ff. ; 1 8 5 9, 1 1 0 ff. Fries, I.e., 1 8 5 9, i. 1 0 3 ff. Friedrich,
Symbolik der mosaischen Stiftshiltte, 1841. Riggenbach, Bie
mosaische Stiftshiltte, Basel, iv. 1862. Ewald, Alterthilmer des
Volkes Israel, 2nd ed. Knobel (Dillmann), Commentar zu
Exodus xxv. ff. H. Graf, Be templo Silonensi, 1855.
Wilhelm Engelhardt, " Die Idee der Stiftshiltte " (Zeitschr. fiir
luth. Theol. u. K. 1868, 3). Kurtz, Ber alttestamentliche
Opfercultus, 1862. Smend, "Ueber die Bedeutung des jeru-
salemitischen Tempels fiir die alttest. Religion " (Theol. Stud. u.
Krit. 1884, iv. 689). Philo, Quis rerum divinarum hceres (ed.
Frcft. 1691, p. 510 D), Be plant. Noe, (216 ff). Josephus,
Antiq. iii. 7. 7. Origen, Hom. to Exod. (de la Rue, ii. 162 ff).
Clemens Alex. (ed. Potter, 666).
1. The sanctuary, which is described in A as the original
1 Num. xvi. 46 ff, xvii. 13. ' Num. xxxv. 25, 28 ; Josh. xx. 6.
3 Ex. xxix. 9, xl. 15.

350 OLD testament theology.
place of worship, constructed in accordance with the direct
orders of God, is like the ideal temple of Ezekiel, a product
of religious thought. Its historical basis is the temple of
Solomon. The great king built a splendid sanctuary, not
essentially different from those which the neighbouring
peoples dedicated to their gods. But this temple was early
considered a sanctuary of quite a peculiar character. And
when A idealised it into his picture of the tabernacle, he
intended thereby to give perfect expression to the divine
ideal of the place of worship.
From early times, indeed ever since the days of Philo and
Josephus, very different explanations have been given of the
tabernacle.1 These old Jewish writers held, although not
to the exclusion of other meanings, that this building repre
sented the world, that is, both the ideal and the real world,
above which God sits enthroned as Benefactor and Judge.
This thought, after being repeated by many of the Church
fathers, has been lately developed by Bahr in a very skilful
fashion, his theory being, that the tabernacle represents the
world as a revelation of God. Other interpretations are also
very numerous. It is true that the direct reference to Christ
has not of late been reasserted. Still, this may be included
in the explanation that the tent is man as a microcosm ; an
explanation hinted at by Philo, openly asserted by Luther, and
recently expounded with rather curious learning by Fried-
rich. The Dutch School of Typology makes the tabernacle a
type of the Commonwealth, or Church of Christ. Neumann
and Keil see in it the stages by which God and man draw
near each other ; Lisco, the picture of a future indwelling of
God in humanity ; Kurtz, the place where God dwells in
order to sanctify His people.
The last-mentioned view, now the most widely adopted,
1 For the fuller history of its interpretation, cf. in Winer, Riggenbach (3),
Bahr, and in Diestel's Geschichte des Alten Testaments m der christlichen
Kirche, 1869, p. 753 f.

THE holy place. 351
seems to me the only tenable one. Not a word in the
description of the tabernacle ever indicates that other secrets
are lying hidden there. And it was scarcely in keeping with
Israel's mode of thought to allegorise the universe after
the manner of a nature-religion, far less the human body or a
secret in the womb of the future. The tabernacle is simply
a dwelling-place of God formed on the model of a shepherd's
tent.1 Hence it is called with special emphasis " the dwell
ing." 2 And since the dwelling of God is synonymous with
His revealing Himself, it is therefore called " the tent of
witness," 3 where God makes communications by oracle, or in
general reveals Himself to this people as the God of their
salvation. Its shape is copied from the ordinary plan of a
nomad's tent. Surrounded by an open uncovered court,
where any one may stand, a shepherd's tent, lighted, not by
the sun, but by a lamp, has first a tolerably large apartment in
which are kept various household articles, and into which the
master's friends are freely admitted ; then a smaller apartment,
which is the home sanctum, and into which no stranger dare
enter. Here, too, the arrangement is quite similar, and the
various articles of furniture correspond exactly with the
prototype. The Holy of Holies 4 corresponds to the apartment in the
tent into which no one is admitted. Here the measure
ments are perfect — the number ten in length, breadth, and
height expressing the most perfect shape of room.6 In this
1 The historian got this idea from the old tradition regarding the tent, "the
curtains," in which the ark of Jehovah dwelt. Ex. xxxiii. 7 ; 2 Sam. vii. 6.
2ptr'En, Ex. xxxvi. 8, 13, 14, xxxviii. 21, xxxix. 33, xl. 17, 34; Lev.
viii. 10, etc. Combined with other words, Num. ix. 15 ; Ex. xxxix. 32 40
xl. 2.
3 nnj)n pWO, Ex. xxv. 22, xxxviii. 21 ; Num. i. 53 ; nnyn ^DK, Num.
ix. 15, xvii. 22. The name IJftCi bilH must unquestionably mean, according
to A, the tent in which God meets with His people, Ex. xxv. 22, xxix. 42
xxx. 6 ; Num. xvii. 19.
4 D'CHpH Wip, Ex. xxvi. 33. (In the temple, l»n, 1 Kings vi. 23.)
5 In the temple, 20, 20, 20, 1 Kings v. 2, 16. So also according to Ezek.
xl. 47, xli. 5. In the tabernacle, Ex. xxvi. 2, 8, xxvii. 9 f., the proportions are

352 old testament theology.
room there is always a dim religious light, in keeping with
the mystery of the divine, and with the solemn feeling that
God is near. Here everything is overlaid with gold, the
symbol of regal splendour. The wall is brightly coloured
and splendidly ornamented with parti - coloured tapestry,
betokening the effulgent brightness of the God of light, whose
rays gleam with the colours of the rainbow. This splendour
can only be symbolical. For no eye may see it. Here are
the mysterious figures of the cherubim, indicating God's
presence and proclaiming His inaccessible glory. Only once
a year may God's holiest and most trusted servant, the
high priest, enter this place ; and even he not without
" the blood of sprinkling," enveloped in a cloud of incense,
heralded by the tinkling of the bells on his robe,1 and pro
tected by his sacred garb of office, lest he feel the consuming
glory of the Most High. For here is God's proper dwelling,
where He has settled among His people.2 He dwells in the
midst of Israel.3 Certainly it is not in a material way, as the
primitive ages may have thought. Already the Deuteronomic
narrator guards against the idea of confining God within a
house,;4 and still less, of course, is there any such idea in A.
But the glory of God, that is, the revelation of His holy
the most ideal. The mystic significance of numbers is, indeed, in its full
development, a favourite amusement of later times. But to consider certain
numerical relations as significant and sacred is quite in accordance even with
the spirit of antiquity. Thus the number 7 is already found in the Pentateuch
in B, and also 40 and 400. The number 12, as the number expressing the
sacred relations of peoples, is very ancient (Gen. xxv. 16, xxxv. 23 ff. etc. ). It
is probably quite right to consider "3," the first indivisible number, as the
number for divinity ; 4, for the universe ; 3 + 4 = 7 = the divine in the
earthly ; 3 X 4, the earthly according to divine measure ; 10, the complete
number ; 5, imperfect development. (On the symbolism of numbers among
the Greeks, cf. Welcker, i. 52 f.)
1 Ex. xxviii. 35.
2 Thus A, Ex. xl. 34, 35, distinguishes between the sanctuary as a whole
and the dwelling which is filled with the glory of God.
3 Ex. xxv. 8, xxix. 43 ff, xl. 34 ff. (1 Kings viii. 10 ff, 29 ff.). Besides, the
primitive holiness of the north side is indicated by several features, Lev. i. 11,
vi. 25, vii. 2 ; cf. Judg. v. 4 ff. ; Ezek. i. 4 ; Isa. xiv. 14.
4 1 Kings viii. 27.

the holy place.

353

presence, is thought of as filling the Holy of Holies.1 Here
Israel has to think of Jehovah as present, and to seek Him as
his covenant God. But the foundation on which this presence
of God in Israel rests is the covenant. Hence, the most
essential article is the ark, containing the covenant-contract.
This is the foundation on which alone God's presence in
Israel is justified. No doubt, before the time of Solomon
the sacred ark was often far away from the sanctuary, at other
places,2 especially in the camp of Israel,3 and even captured by
the enemy.4 It was always regarded as the real palladium; and
as superstition gathered around it, it became quite synonymous
with the presence of God.6 Wherever it was, people thought
they " stood before Jehovah." 6 They prayed before it.7
But for A this ancient sacred object is the pledge of
God's presence, simply because it has within it the covenant-
contract and other very old memorials of a sacred kind. It
stands immovable in the Holy of Holies. From its golden
covering God speaks from between the cherubim.8 It was
formerly called the ark of testimony,9 probably because the
oracle of God was connected with it. But in A it is " the
ark of the covenant " in which is preserved " the covenant of
Jehovah." 10 God's presence in Israel is not something natural,
something connected with some attribute of a place, but a
moral fact, conditioned by God's covenant grace offered
1 Ex. xl. 34 ff. ; 1 Kings viii. 10 f. ; Ezek. x. 3ff
2 Judg. xx. 18, 26, xxi. 2 ; 1 Sam. vii. 1, 2, vi. 12 ; 2 Sam. vi. 2, 3.
8 1 Sam. iv. 3ff. (xiv. 18) ; 2 Sam. xi. 11 (xv. 24 ff).
4 1 Sam. iv. 11, v. 1 ff. (of. 2 Sam. v. 21, where the Philistines leave their
idols on the field of battle).
6 1 Sam. iv. 3, .7, 13, 18, 19, 21, 22; on the other hand, Jer. iii. 16 ff.
6 Josh, xviii. 10, xix. 51, xxi. 1, xxii. 9, 12 ; Judg. x. 10, xx. 1, xxi. 1.
7 Josh. vii. 6 (A).
" Num. vii. 89.
9 miyn JTIK, Ex. xxxix. 35, xl. 20 f. ; Josh. iv. 16.
10 mni nna )1"IX, Num. *. 33, xiv. 44; Josh. iii. 3, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 17,
iv. 9, 18, vi. 6, viii. 33 ; 1 Sam. iv. 3, 4. Simply mni p1N> jos^m ^ i3
(2 Sam. vi. 2, vii. 2) ; cf. 1 Kings viii. 9, 21 (tbe ark in which was the covenant
of Jehovah). VOL. I. 7

354 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
to this people for its free appropriation.1 The " law " is God'3
real presence in Israel.
But the real presence of God in Israel is connected with
the throne above the ark. Over the ark, though probably
not as an ordinary lid, but rather as an ornament placed upon
it, is the kapporeth,2 " the covering." According to the view
taken by A, the name is to be explained from the purpose
of atonement as "place of atonement," a view fully justified by
the verb 1S3. For A's general mode of thought, the meaning
covering of the sacred ark, derived from the first signi
fication of the verb "to cover," is too jejune. Here under
the guardianship of the cherubim 8 God dwells ; here He
speaks and reveals Himself. These show that the holy
dwelling-place of God is here, and they veil the divine glory
from the vulgar eye.4 Hence the old name of God, " He who
sits upon the cherubim," gets a new shade of meaning.5 It
now implies that He dwells in the thick darkness underneath
their wings.6 Here is the place where the penitent may
find God. Here the atoning blood is brought into the very
presence of God by the most solemn atonement in Israel.7
Separated from this Holy of Holies by a costly curtain, the
veil of witness,8 the Holy Place9 corresponds to the larger
apartment of the tent, in which daily life goes on, and to
which also the intimate friends of the master have access.
Here, too, the idea of grandeur is still kept well in view,
although no longer to the same extent as in the Holy of
Holies. Here the proportions are more irregular. It is
1 Ex. xxv. 10, 16, 21, xxvi. 33, xxxvii. Iff., xxxix. 35, xl. 3ff., 20 ff.
2 maan, Sept. ixourrifuv, Ex. xxv. 17, 20 ff, xxxvii. 6 f., xxxix. 35; Vulg.
propitiatorium ; Luther, Gnadenstuhl=meTcy-sea,t.
3 The simple consideration that elsewhere the ark never has cherubim, and
that the two great cherubim of the temple would, in fact, have covered the two
other cherubim, if these had been fastened on the kapporeth, ought to leave no
doubt as to the relation of the two sanctuaries. 4 Lev. xvi. 2 ff.
6 D'OIZin 2&C, 1 Sam. iv. 4 ; 2 Sam. vi. 2 (1 Kings viii. 16).
9 1 Kings viii. 12. 7 Lev. xvi.
8 naiQ, Ex. xxvi. 31 ; nnj/n nmS> Lev. xxiv. 3.
' EHpn, Ex. xxvi. 33.

THE HOLY PLACE.

355

merely a question of convenient and sufficient accommodation.1
Nevertheless this is the real place of public worship. Here
stands the table of Jehovah with its twelve loaves, which,
according to ancient custom, are presented to Him as " bread
of the face,"2 i.e. bread placed before Him, appropriated
to Him, or as " bread of fragrance," i.e. sacrificial bread.3
From the gifts of nature which God bestows upon them, the
twelve tribes, according to their sacred number, offer one con
secrated loaf each, of course as food, not for God, but for His
servants.4 These loaves, with the drink-offering of wine,
which, though not mentioned, is certainly presupposed,6 form, as
it were, a continual sacrifice. Owing to the incense which lies
upon them, they are, in fact, " an offering by fire." 6 Thus
they stand as a gift to God from His people of the products
of nature, symbolically representing His " nourishment by fire,"
but in no sense " representing the people as a pure dough of
life " (Havernick). They are a part of the furnishing of the
chamber, which would not be complete without a dining- table.
Here is the sacred golden candlestick for lighting the
chamber, from which the sunlight was quite shut out.7 It is
hard to say if this, too, represents some religious idea, and if
so, what ? It is a pleasing idea that it may symbolise the
holy people as it stands in the full sunlight of God's favour,
drinking in His Spirit. But it is simpler and equally pleas
ing to think of the illumination afforded by the divine revela
tion, — of the law, as the everlasting light of Israel. Certainly
the candlestick is the light of God's house, and it has seven
4 10, 10, 20,-20, 20, 40, 1 Kings vi. 16 (so in Ezekiel).
2 D^B Dn?, and also Qijan Dn^J, shew-bread, Ex. xxv. 30, xxxv. 13 ; cf.
1 Sam. xxi, 4 ff.
3 n"Dti<? Dn?, Lev. xxiv. 7 (bread of remembrance ?).
4 Lev. xxiv. 9 ; 1 Sam. xxi. 5-7.
5 Ex. xxv. 29, xxxvii. 16 ; Num. iv. 7 (Kurtz). 8 Lev. xxiv. 7 ff.
7 Ton 13, Lev. xxiv. 2, to be kept as "an everlasting statute," Ex. xxvii.
21 (Ex. xxv. 31-37, ant mjO), xxvi. 35, xxxvii. 17, xxxix. 37 ; Num. viii. Iff.
According to 1 Sam. iii. 3, we must think of lamps which were kept burning
only during the night. In the temple there were ten lamps, 1 Kings vii. 49.

356 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY
arms, seven being the sacred number, which in Zechariah is
multiplied by itself.1 Here stands the golden altar of incense,
from which the incense is wafted into the Holy of Holies ;
so that it, too, might quite well be regarded as a piece of
furniture in somewhat close connection with this room.2 The
incense, which certainly could only be the sacred kind, the
use of which for any secular purpose 3 was strictly forbidden,
had to float inwards to the presence of God, as a symbol of
adoration and thanksgiving offered to Him by Israel. Similar
fragrance, we know, filled the palaces of the nobles.
The outer court,4 or open space in which the people are
wont to assemble, runs all round the dwelling-house proper.
Its measurements have been determined solely by the object
of the building, and have no symbolical meaning.5 In it
are placed the household utensils, which would take up too
much room inside, and also the altar of acacia wood overlaid
with brass,6 on which, out of their own meat and drink, the
people offer to God " sacrifices by fire," consisting of flesh,
baked bread, oil, and wine. The altar, with its horns pointing
heavenwards, is, as it were, the home-hearth of God Himself,
and affords a safe asylum to refugees.7 Here, too, are the vessels
used for purification and consecration. In a word, the real
worship of God, as it concerns the people, is performed here.
1 Zech. iv. 1 ff.
2 Owing to Heb. ix. 4, this has become an interesting point. Here, in my
opinion, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews certainly had in his mind only
the description of the tabernacle according to the Septuagint in Ex. xxx. 1-6,
xxxvii. 25, xxxix. 38, xl. 26, where the imvxvTi rod xaTcvnTao-pxns quite easily
allowed of such a meaning. 1 Kings vi. 22.
3 D^BQn mtip, Ex. xxx. 7, 9, 10 (once a year the blood of atonement was
put on its horns too).
4 pBTSn 1Xn, Ex. xxvii. 9, xxxviii. 9.
0 Ex. xxvii. 9, 100 cubits south and north, 50 cubits west and east. In
Ezekiel, 100 cubits all round.
6 n?J?n natD, Ex. xxvii. 1, xxxi. 9, xxxviii. 1, xxxix. 39. How this is to
be actually carried out in practice is no concern of the narrator.
7 1 Kings i. 50, ii. 28 ; 2 Kings xi. 15. (That the horns of the altar are meant
to refer to the ox-image of Jehovah appears to me, in view of the similar custom
in Greece and Rome, improbable.)

THE HOLY PLACE. 357
The tabernacle is thus not a synagogue or place of meeting
for the congregation, but a house of God, like the heathen
shrines, which, strictly speaking, were simply homes for the
deity and his servants. But God dwells there, not as an
image, or in a form conditioned by relations to nature, but in
virtue of His testimony, of His revealed salvation. Hence
the temple is already called " a house for the name of
Jehovah ; " x and the tabernacle is " the place where Jehovah
meets with His people." 2 God's presence in Israel is a
gracious presence, and therefore depends on the continuance
of the covenant. Hence, even at the building of the temple
it is said that God will dwell in Israel only if the people keep
His statutes and His commandments.8 God dwells above the
ark of the covenant, the foundation-stone of this divine presence.
Individual and national sins, resulting from human weak
ness, do not destroy the covenant or prevent God from
dwelling among His people. In this ideal place the fellow
ship of God with His people finds permanent expression,
although not a single member of the people may feel himself
worthy of such fellowship. Hence the place where God is
present is also the place of atonement. Here God is to be
found when the people come, with the duly prescribed offer
ings, to entreat His forgiveness. Here is the holy spot where
every one can daily get away out of the state of separation
from God caused by sin, back into the fellowship which
Israel has with God. It is therefore the place of reconcilia
tion. In this holy abode the covenant people has a con
secrated spot where every penitent sinner, as well as the
people when it seeks for mercy, may find God present and
ready to forgive.
Hence, according to the story of the building of the taber
nacle, all the materials required for it are given as free-will
offerings by the people, as " oblations," and they are conse-

• 1 Kings v. 17, 18, viii. 20.
1 Ex. xxx. 6, xxix. 42 f.; Num. xvii. 19. " 1 Kings vi. 12, 13 (Deut.).

358 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY,
quently looked upon as being in themselves holy, dedicated
to God.1 Hence they afterwards get a special consecration,
are anointed with the holy anointing oil, and are thus made
" most holy " ; so that whoever touches them becomes holy
himself, and is henceforth the property of God.2 Hence it is
said that the cloud representing the divine presence covered
this house, and filled it with the glory of Jehovah ; 3 that is,
God took possession of His house; and from it He speaks4 and
blesses His people. This is beautifully expressed in regard
to the temple by the prophetic narrator, when, thinking of
how people would turn in prayer toward it, he says, "The
eyes of God are open toward this house day and night ; God's
name is in it to answer prayer ; " and when he describes how,
in the most different situations in life, the people are to seek
here for salvation and reconciliation.6 Naturally A expresses
this in a still clearer and more definite way. Hither, there
fore, the people have to bring all their offerings. Indeed,
according to the ideal requirement, an animal's life, being the
property of God, is not to be taken anywhere else than here,
where it may be given back in its blood to its only owner.6
Historically, Israel had attached no religious value to the
external details of the temple. Solomon got a Tyrian
architect to build it, who naturally made use of ornaments
and symbols copied from the ordinary sacred buildings
of Phcenicia. Hence the pomegranates and the lilies, the
two splendid pillars before the temple, the brazen sea
1 Ex. xxv. Iff., nonn ; of. Num. vii. 3ff
2 Ex. xxx. 25 ff., xl. 9ff. ; Num. vii. 1 ; cf. Ex. xxix. 43.
3 Ex. xl. 34 f. ; cf. 1 Kings viii. 10, 11. Ezekiel transfers this to his hope
for the future, xliii. 4 ff.
4 Lev. i. 1, etc. 6 1 Kings viii. 24, 31 f., 38, 44, 48, ix. 3.
" Lev. xvii. 3 f. , 8 ff. In Israel, as among other ancient peoples, an act of
sacrifice was originally connected with the killing of every animal. But that
takes for granted that nothing was known as to one place only being holy. Of
course, a nation with a single sanctuary could not keep up any such custom.
Hence Deut. xii. 15 logically abolishes it. But A, for whom questions about
the practical carrying out of a thing never stand in the way of a principle,
keeps up the old demand, in spite of there being only one Holy Place.

SACRED SEASONS. 359
resting on twelve oxen, and the bases on which the lavers
rested. The two pillars before the house, Boaz and Jachin,
are clearly symbols taken from the Asiatic nature-religion.
Indeed, it is quite possible that the outlandish magnifi
cence of this temple, compared with the old simplicity of
divine worship, was displeasing and offensive to the patriotic
circles in ancient Israel. But ere long every part of it, once
it was there, was worshipped with growing punctiliousness.
The introduction of an altar made after a foreign pattern
was represented as an act of impiety.1 Just as A traces back
every separate part of the tabernacle to a direct divine order,
so the chronicler also represents the temple of Solomon as
built according to a plan given by God.2
3. Sacred Seasons.
Literature. — H. Ewald, " De feriarum hebrsearum
origine et ratione " (Zeitschrift fiir Kunde des Morgenlandes,
iii. 410-441), cf. Alterthumer, p. 447 ff. ; Jahrb. d. bibl. Wiss.
iv. 131 f., viii. 223, ix. 257 f.; Gbtting. gel. Anz. 1835,
2025 f.; 1836, 678 f. Hupfeld, "De primitiva et vera
festorum apud Hebraeos ratione ex legum mosaicarum
varietate eruenda," part 1, Osterprogramm, 1852 ; part 2,
also, "Commentatio de anni sabbatici et jobilei ratione,"
Osterprogramm, 1858; "Appendix quo festorum memoria?
apud rerum hebraicarum scriptores cum legibus mosaicis
collatse examinantur," Osterprogramm, 1865. Gramberg,
vol. i. chap. iv. F. Baur, " Ueber die ursprungliche Bedeutung
des Passahfestes und des Beschneidungsritus " (Tiibinger
Zeitschrift, 1832, i. 40-124); "Der hebraische Sabbath
und die Nationalfeste des mosaischen Cultus " (I.e. 1832,
iii. 123-192). J. F. L. George, Bie dlteren jiidischen Feste
mit einer Kritik der Gesetzgebung des Pentateuch, Berlin
1 2 Kings xvi. 16. Still the chief priest himself has a hand in it.
2 Ex. xxv. 9, 40 ; of. 1 Chron. xxviii. 19.

360 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
1835. Hitzig, Ostern nnd Pfingsten, 1838 (cf. 1837, Neue
Kirchenzeitung). Oehler, " Feste der alten Hebraer, Sabbath,
Sabbath- und Jobel-jahr " (in the articles in Herzog's Real
encyclopddie, 2nd ed., Delitzsch u. Orelli). Joh. Bachmann,
Bie Festgesetze des Pentateuch auf's Neue kritisch untersucht,
Berlin 1858. Wilhelm Schultz, "Die innere Bedeutung der
alttestamentlichen Feste" (Beutsche Zeitschr. fiir chr. Wiss.und
chr. Leben, 1857, 23-27, 28-30). Redslob, Bie biblischen
Angaben iiber Stiftung und Grund der Passahfeier, 1856. J.
Meyer, Be festis Hebrmorum, 1724, 4. Saalschiitz, Mosaisches
Recht,i. 385 ff. H. Oort, "De groete Verzoendag " (Theol.
Tijdschr. 1876, 142).
1. A had also a decisive influence on the festivals of the
religion of Israel, although here he found earlier laws which
his system did not abrogate in every detail. Here we have,
of course, to leave quite out of view the older national festivals,
which were regulated solely by custom, and to take into
account the " Thorah " only. Its oldest sections are found
in Ex. xxiii. 14 ff, and these lie at the foundation of the
tradition as now given in C. They quite agree with those
in xxxiv. 18 ff, and whatever else can' be taken from the
narratives of C and B. In Deut. xvi. 1—18, it is simply on
the basis of these laws that the three principal feasts are
instituted at which Israel has to appear with gifts before
God. Deuteronomy knows nothing of the more detailed
ritual of the Passover, or of the day of atonement, or of any
historical reference in the feast of Tabernacles. Nevertheless,
even here the Sabbath is the foundation of everything, and
the spring festival has already, in addition to its natural
character, a special reference to God's mighty act of deliver
ance by the hand of Moses. A next brought the feast of
Tabernacles into connection with Israel's sojourn in the
wilderness,1 which does not, however, agree very well with the
"joyous" dwelling in booths built in the newly - cleared
1 Lev. xxiii. 43.

CYCLE OF SACRED SEASONS IN A. 361
gardens. Nowhere in the Old Testament has the feast of
Pentecost a historical significance.1
2. According to A, the main idea of a sacred season is, that
the ordinary arrangements of life, depending as they do on
the changing seasons, must be brought within the sphere of
religion, — that Israel is leading a life which has a constant
reference to the doings of God. The whole time of this
people belongs to its God, and has to be given back to Him,
according to His statutes, by the dedication to Him of the
holy seasons. Resting on the sacred number seven, and going
back in its original conception to the theory of creation, the
cycle of festivals in A embraces every important occasion in this
people's life, whether natural or historical, which indicates its
special relationship to God. In these feasts every state of
feeling, from pure enjoyment of God's gifts in the good land
of its inheritance to sorrowful repentance and humble sub
mission to His holy severity and pardoning love, finds
full and clear expression. And at all these feasts the holy
people has to gather round its divine King with offerings
of reverence and love, and to assure Him of its devotion and
loyalty. The feasts are, on the one hand, " set times," 2
fixed points marking the flight of time, landmarks of
eternal thoughts in the stream of passing phenomena. On the
other hand, the three great annual festivals are " holidays," 3
days of religious joy, when the multitude of those who keep
holiday gather exultantly round the throne of their God.
The cycle of festivals is based on the hallowing of the
seventh day, the Sabbath. Israel's original day of rest, which
is already mentioned in the fundamental law,4 and which
Deuteronomy bases on the grateful kindness of the redeemed
people to the oppressed and hard-working classes of society,5
1 The rabbis connect it with the festival in commemoration of the giving of
the law.
2 1JND, Gen. i. 14. 3 in-
4 Amos viii. 5, 6 ; 2 Kings iv. 23 ; Deut. v. 12 ; Ex. xx. 8 f.
5 Deut. v. 15.

362 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
A worked out in the sense of the statute ; and the whole
post-exilic period added to its sanctity.1 A ascribes the
special dignity of this day to the work of the Creator Himself,
because after His work, God rejoiced on this day in the beauty
of His world, and experienced the happy rest of the Master
whose work is finished.2 He accordingly makes the order of
nature which follows the history of the divine work of creation,
with its sacred alternation of labour and rest as exemplified by
God, find expression in the Sabbath, thus beautifully connect
ing the natural character of the day with the desire to base it
on the sacred history. The essential characteristic of this
day, according to A, is perfect rest ; while it originally meant
" recreation," " natural enjoyment." 3 Such perfect rest,
however, is not insisted on at the regular feasts.4 Sabbath
labour is absolutely forbidden. This day belongs to God,
and to withhold any part of it from Him by using it for the
ordinary duties of daily life, is impious sacrilege. Hence
Sabbath-breaking is punished with death.6 The allegorisers
lay emphasis on the number seven, as the virgin number, the
indivisible that divides everything, the image of the creative
word of God.6
Founded directly on the idea of the Sabbath, there is a still
grander consecration of time to God in the Sabbath year 7 and

1 Jer. xvii. 21 ; Ezek. xx. 16, xxii. 26 ; B. J. lvi. 2, lviii. 13 ; 2
xi. 9, etc.
2 Gen. ii. 1 f. ; Ex. xx. 10, 11, xxxi. 13-17, xxxiv. 21.
3 Hos. ii. 13 ; cf. ix. 5.
4 According to Num. xxix. 7, only on the day of atonement. Elsewhere it is
only "hard work" that is forbidden, Lev. xxiii. 7, 8, 21, 25, 35, 36; Num.
xxviii. 18, 25, 26 ; cf. xxix. 1, and that, too, only on the first and the seventh
days of the feast. Ex. xii. 16 and Deut. xvi. 8 mean also to forbid all labour
on the seventh day of the feast of Unleavened Bread.
6 Num. xv. 32 ff. ; Ex. xxxi. 14ff. ; cf. Ex. xvi. 5 (where the manna ceases on
the Sabbath) ; Ex. xxxv. 3. No fire to be lighted.
6 Philo, ed. Mg. i. 21, 497, 503, ii. 108, 166, 281.
7 Lev. xxv. Iff., pnatJ* rUB*. Ex. xxiii. 10 deals solely with humane
measures, such as setting Hebrew slaves free, and giving a harvest gratis. And
it need not be done simultaneously by every owner or with every field. Even,
according to Deut. xvii. Iff., 12 ff., cf. Jer. xxxiv. 8ff. , nothing more than a

CYCLE OF SACRED SEASONS IN A. 363
the jubilee year.1 Every seventh year the fields are neither
to be tilled nor reaped. Nature is to be set free, as it were,
from the service which mankind exacts from her, and to be left
entirely to herself. Only what she voluntarily offers is to be
taken, and that not for any selfish purpose. But when seven
times seven years have passed, then comes the great year of
jubilee, when every change in the divinely-ordered condition
of the holy people, brought about by the vicissitudes of social
life, will be as if it had never been, when he who has become
a bondman will again receive the freedom which is his due
as one of God's people, when the inheritance that has passed
into the hands of strangers will be once more restored to its
rightful owner.2
This hallowing of the seventh day, then, with which we
may compare the primitive popular custom of keeping holy
the first of the month,3 becomes the basis on which to arrange
the cycle of feast days. Accordingly, in the principal feasts,
which last seven days,4 the great days on which the interest
of the festival centres are the first and the seventh. In like
manner, the first and the seventh months represent' the sacred
seasons ; and in these, new moon and full moon, that is, the
first day and the fifteenth, form the important divisions.
The first sacred season is that of the opening year in the
first month.6 The festival laws in Ex. xxiii. and xxxiv., as

release from debt is prescribed, though there may also be a liberation of Hebrew
slaves ; but even that could not be carried through.
1 Lev. xxv. 8ff., byP> THI- In Ezekiel the term is probably still applied
only to the seventh year, xlvi. 17.
2 Here also A pays no attention to the practicability of his measure. It could
be carried out only when Israel was no longer in his own country, dependent on
slave-labour and agriculture, but a nation of traders scattered up and down in
foreign lands.
3 Num. x. 10.
4 In the feast of Tabernacles, according to Deut. xvi. 13, 15, it is the seventh,
according to A the eighth day, so that the festival is being lengthened, Lev.
xxiii. 36 ; Num. xxix. 35 ; cf. Neh. viii. 18. Similarly, compare i Kings
viii. 65 f. with 2 Chron. vii. 9.
5 Abib (from the barley harvest) or Nisan. The civil new year begins, at

364 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
well as in Deut. xvi., know only of a single " feast of un
leavened bread." In A, on the other hand, this festival is
really a double one. The Passover and the feast of Unleavened
Bread form a double festival,1 just as the day of atonement
and the feast of Tabernacles do. Even according to A, it is
undoubtedly as a direct preparation for the feast of Unleavened
Bread that the Passover is celebrated on the evening before
the latter feast begins, as the ancient unity of the festival
required.2 But a significant custom3 suggests to the reader
that it really should have been celebrated on the 10th of Nisan,
like the day of atonement on the 10 th of the seventh month.
It is certain that in the Passover a very ancient feast is kept
up. The bitter herbs and the blood of the lamb were, appar
ently, signs of a primitive sacrifice of atonement by which in
spring, when everything about the future is still uncertain,
the favour of God had to be secured for the harvest. But in
A the sacrificial character has quite disappeared.4 The sacred
meal has really become a sacrament, a covenant meal at which
the members of the holy congregation — recognisable by the
least after the Exile, with the seventh month. According to Ezek. xiv. 18 ff.,
the first day of the first (seventh ?) month is to be celebrated by purifying tho
sanctuary by sprinkling the door-posts of the house of God with the blood of an
animal slain as a sin-offering.
1 Ex. xii. Iff, 21 ff. ; Lev. xxiii. 5ff. ; Num. ix. 3ff, xxviii. 16 ; Josh. v. 10.
2 The Passover may originally have been the feast of the firstlings of the cattle,
and not restricted to a particular day (Wellhausen) ; while the feast of Un
leavened Bread betokened the first swing of the sickle. But these points of view
have quite given way even in Deuteronomy, not to speak of A, to historical ones.
3 The choosing of the lamb on the tenth, Ex. xii. 3 f. (Ewald). In my opinion,
A wishes to make an exact parallelism between the feast in the seventh month
and the feast in the first. Hence tbe 10th of the first month, as the day for
choosing the lamb, is made parallel to the 10th of the seventh month as the day
of atonement. Hence the feast of Tabernacles is extended to eight days, so as to
be quite equal to the Passover and the mazzoth feast together.
4 Ex. xii. 27, there is mention only of n3T ; and in Num. ix. 7-13 the Passover
is put in the general category of \2~\\), and 2 Chron. xxx. 16, xxxv. 11 merely
show the importance attached to Levitical and priestly help in slaying the
Passover lamb. But in Deuteronomy, in addition to eating the Passover, in
the sense of A, there is also mention of festal sacrifices offered during the whole
seven days of the feast, which are called " Paschal," and which could not be
eaten with leaven, Deut. xvi. 2 ff.

CYCLE OF SACRED SEASONS IN A. 365
blood of the lamb on the door-posts — meet together to com
memorate the national deliverance, and to remember with
thankfulness how the angel of death was once kept away from
their consecrated homes, and in what a suggestive fashion the
last meal before the deliverance was eaten. In addition, there
fore, to its purely memorial character,1 A considers that the
Passover has, at the same time, the significance of a sacrament
of which only members of the covenant can partake.2 The
first-born are "redeemed" but are no longer "paschal."8 There
is probably an echo of the original significance of the day in the
word itself, which means " sparing," 4 though not in the special
historical sense in which the narrative explains it.5 Certainly
the explanation that it is derived from "the passing of the
sun" into the sign of Aries, and that the eating of the lamb
has an astrological meaning of that kind, may well be regarded
as an antiquated notion, despite the ability with which it has
been expounded.6 But in primitive times the Passover may
very probably have required a sterner style of repentance and
more painful sacrifices than our present narratives indicate
to us.7After the observance of the Passover on the 14th of Nisan,
"between sunset and complete darkness,"8 the feast of
1 Ex. xii. 42, xiii. 9. 2 Ex. xii. 43 ff. (Num. ix. 10 ff.).
3 In Deuteronomy it is said of all the animals killed during the festival, that
"the Passover is being killed," xvi. 2.
4 nD3, cf. Isa. xxxi. 5 (*DJJ). For this word the passages, 2 Sam. iv. 4,
1 Kings xviii. 21, 26, are important, where the root meaning appears to be " to
be bent."
11 Ex. xii. 12 ff, 23, 29, nDB.
5 Supported by Herod, ii. 42 ; Plat. Repub. 268 ; Eurip. Orestes, 80 ; Electr.
730 f., Baur, Vatke, Br. Bauer. Besides, Maimonides and Spencer traced back
the feast to Egyptian analogies (that the lamb was sacrificed as a protest
against its being worshipped by the Egyptians). Baur thinks the ram a
symbol of Jupiter Ammon, who opens the year. He thinks there was originally
an actual sacrificing of the first-born, a ver sacrum. The sprinkling with
blood he connects with the Egyptian custom related by Epiphanius, De Hcsr.
xix. 3.
7 Ex. xiii. 15.
8 D'njtfl TO, Lev. xxiii. 5 ; Ex. xii. 6 (42, D'HSt?" W>).

366 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Unleavened Bread1 began on the 15th, and continued for
seven days, the first and last of which were specially marked
by sacred meetings and celebrations.2 The nature of religious
customs makes it self-evident that the absence of leaven is
originally due to the unholiness of the process of fermentation,
and has only an artificial connection with the hasty meal at
the exodus.3 In the presentation of the first sheaf,4 we are
reminded that this feast was originally in honour of the first
beginning of harvest, the barley harvest, from which, too, the
month Abib gets its name. The time of the full moon, the 15 th,
is important, as is proved by the fact that in all the legal
and illegal shiftings of the feast, the month was changed, but
never the day.5 Now for A it is the feast of deliverance.
The congregation of Israel, assembled with one heart before
God with offerings in their hands, call to remembrance
the mighty acts of divine deliverance, whereby they first
became the congregation of God. The dedication of nature's
gifts to the God who gave them, is overshadowed by the
memory of His still greater spiritual gifts. And at this feast
the ancient dedication of the first-born is brought in a very
beautiful and suggestive way into connection with God's
mighty act against the first-born of Egypt.6
With this feast, which indicates the first beginning of
harvest, the feast that ends the harvest is closely connected.
Seven times seven days after the first sheaf of barley has
been offered, the harvest is to be regarded as over, and the
produce of the field consecrated for use as food by " a new
meal-offering." 7 Originally the feast may have been simply a
popular holiday in connection with the feast of Unleavened
1 rVIXBn in, Lev. xxiii. 6 ; Ex. xxiii. 15, xxxiv. 18 ; Num. xxviii. 17.
2 Lev. xxiii. 7 f. 3 Ex. xii. 11.
4 Lev. xxiii. 10 ff.
9 Num. ix. 10 ff. ; cf. 1 Kings xii. 32 for the feast of Tabernacles.
6 Ex. xi. 5, xiii. 2, 12 ff., xxxiv. 19 (Deut. xii. 17, xiv. 23, xv. 19).
7 Lev. xxiii. 15 f. In the Jordan valley wheat harvest is in May, in Hebron
in the beginning of June ; cf. Robinson, Travels, ii. 560 ; Num. xxviii. 26.

CYCLE OF SACKED SEASONS IN A.

367

Bread. In Deuteronomy it lasts only a single day.1 In
Ezekiel it disappears altogether.2 In A, however, since the
Passover feast of Unleavened Bread got quite a historical
character, this day naturally becomes all the more emphatically
a " harvest-feast," 3 and attains to greater importance (George).
It is the harvest-feast or feast of Weeks, that is, of the seven
weeks of harvest, which are over.4 It closes the new year
holiday season.
The seventh month of the year is as holy as the first,
and indeed holier. Even the 1st of this month is a very
solemn feast-day.6 But it is on the 10th that "the feast"
begins, the greatest double festival which Israel has.6 It
continues from the 15th to the 21st, and thus corresponds
exactly with the spring festival. The 1 0th day of the seventh
month is the great day of repentance and atonement? Israel
looks back on the goodness of his God, experienced in the
course of the year's harvest, remembers his own unworthiness
of these blessings, and seeks to expiate his sin, that he may,
in purity and without fear, enjoy the blessing of his God.
This is the only fast-day which the law prescribes.8 On
it the remarkable sacrifice is offered with which we shall

1 Deut. xvi. 10. 2 Ezek. xiv. 21 ff.
3 Ex. xxiii. 16, -p«JJ)D n33 "Vxpn in, xxxiv. 22, D'tsn -VXP 1-133 ; Num.
xxviii. 26, Qi-n33n.
4 Ex. xxxiv. 22, rUDE> in ; cf. Num. xxviii. 26. It was not till a very late
period that this feast was held in memory of the giving of the law.
6 Lev. xxiii. 23, nynn |mt Jinat^ (Num. xxix. 2).
6 Cf. 1 Sam. i. 3, 20 ; Isa. xxix. 1, xxxii. 9 f.
7 Lev. xxiii. 26 ; DiTsan DV, Lev. xvi. ; Num, xxix. 7.
* Lev. xxiii. 27 ; C'Bi nsjj, Num. xxix. 7. The day of atonement, which
first appears in A, — perhaps in earlier days it was only a purification of the altar
(Ex. xxix. 36, xxx. 10; Ezek. xliii. 20ff., Mishna Tract. Taan.), and had a
joyous character,— has its origin in the growing attention paid to such ' ' unclean -
ness," on account of which the prophets would scarcely have dreaded the anger
of God (Adler in Stade Zeitschr. iii. 178). Ezek. xiv. 18 institutes another day
of repentance, and, consequently, he does not yet know of this day. (Wellh.,
' ' Before the Exile, fast-days are proclaimed only on the occasion of public
calamities," 1 Kings xxi. 9, 12 ; Jer. xiv. 3, xxxvi. 6, 9 ; cf. Joel i. 14, ii. 12,
15. During the Exile they begin to become customary, B. J. lviii. 3ff)

368 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
deal more fully in the following section. Only with deep
humility and holy longings after purification can the holy
people worthily receive with full heart the good gifts of its
God. Israel, thus purified, can now begin with a glad heart the
great festival of thanksgiving and joy which corresponds to the
feast of Unleavened Bread, " the harvest-home at the close of
the year,"1 which lasts from the 15 th to the 21st of the seventh
month, when the fruit is ripe and the grapes are gathered.
During these days ancient Israel feasted and danced in the
newly-gleaned vineyards.2 People came out from the villages
and towns to the fruit-gardens to live in booths and enjoy a
happy autumn holiday. Hence the feast was also called " the
feast of Booths." 3 Even when these " gladsome booths " had
become memorials of the movable tents used in the homeless
wilderness, the joyous character of this harvest festival continued
indelible.4 At it the choicest product of the land which God
had given to His people, the fruit of the vine and of all fruit-
bearing trees, was thankfully consecrated to the Giver, — that
gift with which, when once the bare necessaries of existence
have been secured, the pleasures and the culture of life, with
its hearty social intercourse, are closely connected.
The great cycle of the festal year is thus complete. In
addition to the seventh day of the week, the fundamental
principle of which reappears in the Sabbatic year and the
year of jubilee, we have first, in the first month, the feast of
the Passover together with the feast of Unleavened Bread, then
the feast of Weeks, and lastly, in the seventh month, the first
day of which has its own special celebration, the great day of
atonement, together with the feast of Tabernacles. On all these
days specially solemn sacrifices were offered about which there
1 nj#n nKx3 t|Dsn in, Ex. xxiii. 16 (rum naipn, Ex. xxxiv. 22).
2 Judg. xxi. 19 ff. (ix. 27). 3 niSBn in, Lev. xxiii. 34.
4 Lev. xxiii. 42 f. ; Hos. xii. 10 puts the matter in exactly the reverse way,
"I will yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles as in the days of the solemn
feast." Even Deut. xvi. 13 ff. does not yet know of the historical reference.

SACRED CEREMONIES.

369

is in A a special law.1 On the principal days of the three
great feasts there was a festal gathering 2 of the holy people
before their Lord. And as subjects must not approach the
throne of their king without a present, they, too, were for
bidden to appear before Jehovah with empty hands.8 This
cycle of festivals was meant to indicate that God was this
people's King ; that this people's life was wholly His ; that
their time, with the blessings which it brings, was His pro
perty ; and that the cares of daily life might be cast upon
Him as soon as their dedication to Him of what they had
received, and their penitent yearning after reconciliation, made
the people a worthy object of His providence and love.
4. Sacred Ceremonies,
Literature. — A. On purifications, prayers, and vows :
Pressel, art. " Gebet," in Herzog. Oehler, art. " Geliibde,"
in Herzog, 2nd ed., Delitzsch. Leyrer, art. " Reinigungen
bei den Hebraern," in Herzog, 2nd ed., Konig. Spencer,
" De lustrationibus et purificationibus Hebraeorum " (Ugolin,
Thesaur. ant. sacr. vol. xxii.). Hermann, I.e., 124 ff. Scho
mann, I.e., vol. ii. 192, 216, 249, 256. — B. On sacrifices
in general: Georg Lorenz Bauer, Beschreibung der goltes-
dienstlichen Verfassung der alten Hebraer, i., 1805. G. H.
F. Scholl, " Ueber die Opferideen der Alten, insbesondere
bei den Juden" (Studien der wiirttemb. Geistlichkeit, 3, 4, 5),
(Bie dltere Literatur, vol. iv. p. 3 ff). Hegel, Religionsphilo-
sophie, vol. i. 229 f., ii. 90 ff. Bahr, I.e. Ewald, I.e.
Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 2nd ed. ii.a, p. 214 ff. Oehler,
1 Num. xxviii. 9-xxix. 39.
KHp SOpD. nviV, Lev. xxiii. 8, 36 f. ; Num. xxix. 1, 7, 12, 35, xxviii.
18, 25 f. ; cf. Isa. i. 13, where mVJJ is parallel to {Tipo. For the outward form
of the ceremony, cf. Ex. xix. 10. The three feasts of Unleavened Bread, of
Weeks, and of Tabernacles, are constantly represented as the festival season
proper, Ex. xxiii., xxxiv. 18 ; Deut. xvi. ; 1 Kings ix. 25.
3 Ex. xxiii. 15 ; Deut. xvi. 16 ; cf. Maundrell, Reise, p. 37.
VOL. I. 2 A

370 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
" Opfercultus des Alten Testamentes " (Herzog, Realencycl,
2nd ed., Orelli) ; " Eiferopfer " (supplement to Herzog). J.
Kurtz, Ber alttestamentliche Opfercultus. Saalschiitz, I.e., i.
306 ff. Hengstenberg, Bie Opfer der heiligen Schrift, 1859.
Tholuck, Beilage ii. zum Commentar iiber den Brief an die
Hebraer, 5th ed. 1861. Valentin Thalhofer, Bie unblutigen
Opfer des mosaischen Cultus, 1848. Keil, Handbuch der bibli
schen Archaologie, 1859, i. 191-345 (cf. Luther. Zeitschr.
f. Theol. 1856). Spencer, Bissert. ii. 937-992; Bissert.
iii. 993—1042. Wangemann, Bas Opfer nach der heiligen
Schrift, 1866, two vols. Neumann, ''Die Opfer des Alten
Bundes " (Beutsche Zeitschrift fiir christl. Wissensch. und
christl. Leben, 1852, Nos. 30-33 ; 1853, Nos. 40-44 ; 1857,
Nos. 36-38 ; cf. Sacra Veteris Testamenti salutaria, Lips.
1853. Ed. Riehm, " Ueber das Schuldopfer " (Theol. Stud. u.
Krit. 1854). By the same author, Begriff der Siihne im Alten
Testament, Gotha 1877. Rink, "Ueber das Schuldopfer"
(Stud. u. Krit. 1855). Adalbert Merz, "Kritische Unter
suchungen fiber die Opfergesetze," Lev. i— vii. (Hilgenfeld
Zeitschr. f. wiss. Th. 1863, i., ii). Alb. Stockl, Liturgie und
dogmatische Bedeutung der alttestamentlichen Opfer insbesondere
in ihrem Verhaltnisse zur neutestamentlichen Opfertheorie, Niirnb.
1848. G. Karch, "Bie mosaischen Opfer als vorbildliche
Grundlage der Bitten im Vaterunser, i., 1856; ii., 1857,
Wtirzburg. Ritschl, Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol. 1863, ii., iii. ;
Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versbhnnng, vol. ii. 185 ff.
J. Marbach, " Das Blut, eine theologische Studie " (Hilgenfeld
Zeitschr. fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie, Halle 1866, ii.
137 ff). Chwolsohn, I.e., ii. 142. Hermann, I.e., 126, 132,
Not. 24, 141, 156 f., 162. Schomann, I.e., ii. 220 f., 226 f.,
231 ff. (cf. Knobel, Commentar zu Ex. u. Lev.). — G. On the
ritual of the day of atonement: Spencer, I.e., 1425-1504.
Oehler, " Versbhnungstag " (Herzog, Realencycl., 2nd ed.,
Orelli). Diestel, " Set, Typhon, Azazel, und Satan " (Ilgen-
Niedners Zeitschr. f. histor. Theol. 1860, ii). Hengstenberg,

PRAYER. 371
Bie Biicher Mosis und Aegypten, p. 167. Movers, I.e., p. 267 f.
Chwolsohn, I.e., i. 816, ii. 246. Plutarch, Be hide et
Osiride, pp. 27ff, 49 ff. Philo, ed. Mg. i. 498; Julian Orat.
iv. 281, 288 (ed. Cram. Par.). Josephus, Antiq. xx. 7. 1
(Herod, ii. 46). Enoch, translated by Dillmann, viii. 1,
x. 4, xiii. Iff. (Kaiser, I.e., ii 123; Graul, Reise nach
Ostindien, iii. 296 ff.)
1. Of the sacred acts by which, among every people and
in every age, piety instinctively shows itself, prayer is the
simplest and most natural. In ancient Israel, and indeed
even in the Law, it has no fixed form, and obviously has
not the predominance which it attained in later ages. So
far as is known to us, it was, before Ezra's time, only the
expression of feelings real and strong, such as gratitude,
sorrow, or anxiety, — not a sacred form independent of special
exciting causes.1 A stronger form of prayer is the vow,
whether it be one to do or not to do a particular thing.2 Its
purpose is to give the entreaty greater force, to express the
earnest desire, as well as the sincere piety of the suppliant.
This naturally implies that the person thinks that such a gift
or such an act of renunciation will be appreciated by God,
and be agreeable to Him. Even here the Law still keeps
within strictly moral lines, while, at the same time, it shows
itself in solemn earnest about whatever is promised to God.
Vows, such as were undoubtedly very common among the
people since the earliest times, and were taken in terrible
earnest,8 the Law nowhere encourages or even sanctions.4 Per
sons in a dependent position are forbidden to take a vow which
would render them incapable of discharging their duties, or
1 On modes of offering prayer (by standing, kneeling, lifting up or stretching
out the hands, falling on the ground, putting the head between the knees), and
on turning while at prayer towards the temple, cf. Pressel and Ewald, Alterth.
18 ; Ex. viii. 24. TTIJ/n, Hos. v. 6 ; Isa. i. 15 ; Jer. xiv. 12 ; 1 Kings viii.
27 ff. ; Prov. xv. 8 ; Job xxxiii. 26.
» ^ -)&$. s Judg. xi. 35 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 24 ff.
4 So esp. Deut. xxiii. 23 ; Lev. xxvii. 2-8.

372 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
would injure their family position.1 But where it is made, it
must be made in good faith ; a vow cannot be retracted, nor
can one less onerous be substituted.2 It must not include
anything unclean, or, as a matter of course, anything which
already belongs to God.8 The most usual form of vow appears
to have been that of the Nazirite.4 We may put fasts 6 next,
instances of which occur not unfrequently in the national
history6 on occasions of a sorrowful kind. It is a voluntary
act of the community or of an individual, due to some momen
tary impulse. Of a holy passion for self-humiliation in order
to please God, such as is common in other ancient religions,
the Law as yet knows nothing.
The earnestness with which Old Testament saints con
ceived of the holiness and majesty of Israel's God, and of
man's natural unworthiness, is indicated by the various kinds
of washings and purifications, which are exceedingly numerous,
and were beyond a doubt in frequent use even in ancient
Israel. Sometimes it was enough to express purification from
a stain of any kind by a symbolical washing with water, or
with water mixed with ashes.7 Sometimes those who took
part in sacred acts had, owing to the solemn nature of the
event, to be themselves made holy by consecration.8 Indeed,
fire itself as the element of destruction was used for cleansing
1 Num. xxx. 2ff. (Dependants not without the permission of those on whom
they are dependent.)
2 Num. xxx. 3ff. (Deut xxiii. 23). 8 Lev. xxvii. 26 ; Deut. xxiii. 18.
4 Num. vi. " Num. xxx. 14.
6 Judg. xx. 23, 26 ; 1 Sam. vii. 6, xxxi. 13 ; 2 Sam. i. 11, 12, xii. 17, 22 ;
1 Kings xxi. 9, 12, 27 (Ps. xxxv. 13 f.). (As a sign of mourning, Joel i. 13,
ii. 12, 13, 15; Zech. vii. 3, 5, viii. 19.) The pouring out of water before God
as a sign of mourning and prayer, 1 Sam. vii. 6.
7 Num. xix. 9 (viii. 7). Sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop ; cf. Ovid, Fast.
iv. 733, 639, 725; Virgil, Eclog. viii. 101, Mn. vi. 230; Juven. Sat. ii. 157
(Olive-twig). Cedar wood is the symbol of incorruptibility ; hyssop is regarded
by all the nations of antiquity as purifying ; red is the symbol of vital force.
B E.g. Lev. xiii. 34, 58, xiv. 8, 9, 47, xv. 5f., 13, 17 f., 20 ff., 27 ff., xvi. 4,
24. 26, 28 ; Num. xix. 13, 19, 20, xxxi. 19, 20 ; 2 Sam. xi. 4 (Ovid, Fast. ii. 45).
Cf. Zech. xiii. 1. Clemens Alex. (ed. Potter, 361). The Egyptians were the
first to lay down the law, pM us tipa. sitrtivai airo yuvacixos uXovtous.

SACRIFICES. 373
where water was not sufficient.1 But in every case the pur
pose was to bring into accord the majesty of God and the
consecration of those who are His people.
2. As for sacrifice, — according to our use of the word,
the offering of what might be human food, as a gift devoted
once for ali to God, — it is no more the case that it arose in
Israel, than that the first regulations for it were the sacrificial
laws of the Pentateuch. But A, founding on written and oral
traditions, drew up on a systematic plan of his own a general
code of sacrificial laws. A, of course, no longer thinks, as
did the ancients in their naivete', that God experiences
" sensuous pleasure " in accepting a sacrifice, although even
he speaks of a " sweet-smelling savour." 2 But that Jehovah
attaches great importance to these gifts is for A a self-evident
truth. Of the indifference of the prophets to this whole
department he knows nothing. The sacrificial laws in A are
the result of the natural tendency of a priestly class to make
its sacred forms more and more detailed. For the Old Testa
ment doctrine of atonement they really possess no religious
importance. And even in themselves, from having been
compiled from a variety of traditions, they present, despite
their systematic arrangement, many great difficulties. Above
all, they leave us quite in the dark as to the religious
significance of the individual acts. The only interest
they possess is with regard to the exact nature of the sacred
form. The most general name for sacrifice, which extends far
beyond the domain of sacrifice proper, as we have defined it,

1 Ex. xix. 14, xxix. 4, xxx. 19, xl. 12, 31 f. ; Lev. viii. 6, xxii. 6. Even put
back to patriarchal times, Gen. xxxv. 2. Washing before prayer is first men
tioned in Judith xii. 7, 8. Still, as among other peoples, something similar was
probably the custom at an early date. Iliad, vi. 266 ; Eurip. lone, 94. The
metaphor, "to wash one's hands in innocency," Ps. xxvi. 6.
2 ntS'N Orb, Lev. iii. 11, 16, xxi. 6; Num. xxviii. 2; D^npS oni>, Lev.
xxi. 17, 22 ; nn^n nn, Ex. xxix. 18, 25, 41 ; Lev. i. 9, 13, ii. 2, 9, 12, iii. 5,
16, iv. 31, vi. 8, viii. 28, xvii. 6.

374 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
is Qorban, offering.1 But within the domain of sacrifice
proper there is, first of all, an important distinction. There
is the sacrifice of a living creature, Zebach,2 slaughter. This
word may, of course, be used to denote the killing of any
animal. But since originally such a thing scarcely ever
happened without being a sacrifice, it came to be the term for
killing in connection with worship. Alongside of it we have the
sacrifice of vegetable foods, the meal-offering, MinchaL,3 com
bined with the drink-offering, Nesech.4 In the Law it is only
in rare cases that the Minchah is offered alone ;5 it is generally
an accompaniment of animal sacrifice, so that " sacrifice and
offering " is the standing formula for a complete sacrifice. It
may have a variety of forms,6 but its chief component is invari
ably wheaten meal. Oil and salt7 are always mixed with it; the
one as representing the vigour and fulness of life, the other as
that which prevents putrefaction. Incense, the proper symbol
of the public worship of God, is always used along with it, so
that the incense-offering? though occasionally presented alone,9
may be regarded as the normal accompaniment of the Min
chah.10 There must be neither honey nor leaven in it, as these
are signs of putrefaction.11 Besides, only plants which belong to
a man, having become his through his own labour, are allow
able. A part of it God consumes with fire as " a sweet smell."12
1 pip, from 2npn, Lev. i. 2, ii. 11, iii. 1, 6, v. 11, vii. 29, xvii. 4 ; Num.
vii. 3, 12, 19 ; cf. »Hp TUNO, Ex. xxviii. 38.
2 nar. s nnjo, Lev. vi. 7 ff.
4 "|DJ. The drink-offering of water on fast-days in 1 Sam. vii. 6 ; just as
among the Greeks, too, water was offered to the gods of the under- world instead
of wine (Schomann, ii. 220 ; Hermann, 141).
5 Lev. ii. 1 ff, v. 11 ; Num. v. 15, 25. Originally, according to Gen. iv. 3,
Judg. vi. 18, 1 Sam. xxvi. 19, ii. 17, 1 Kings xviii. 29, the word denoted
"offering," in the wider sense. 6 Lev. ii. Iff.
7 The salt of the covenant of God, Lev. ii. 13. 8 niDp.
9 Ex. xxx. 34 f. 10 Num. xvi. 7, 17 ; Isa. I 13 ; B. J. xliii. 23.
11 Lev. ii. 11 (probably as first-fruits, 12).
u matX. I understand the word as Ewald does (Alterih. 62). B. J. lxvi.
3, T\12? "V3tn. According to A, the translation would be something like
" memorial sacrifice ; " Lev. vi. 15, ii. 2, 9, 16, v. 12 ; Num. v. 26, 15, 18.
The incense is utterly consumed, Lev. ii. 2, 16.

SACRIFICES. 375
The remainder belongs to the priest as most holy,1 but, of
course, only when the offerer is not himself a priest. If he be,
the whole must be given to God.2
The offering of a slain beast was undoubtedly the normal
form of sacrifice which, at every period of their history, the
Israelites believed that God valued and accepted. The meal-
offering was a mere supplement, like vegetables to meat.
Hence even early legend represents the better sacrifice,
which Abel offered, as the slaying of an animal.3 It is
true that the more general name, " Minchah," gift, was after
wards applied to a bloodless sacrifice. But the expression was
not used in a strict sense. Now, as it is certain that the
idea of " feasting " was invariably associated by a pastoral
people then, as it is now, with that of " eating flesh," it is
difficult to imagine that the bloodless offering was ever
considered the higher.4 Still in times when the people were
not very well off it may have been, for obvious reasons,
comparatively more common than the other.6 From the
form in which the offering is presented to God, there also
occur, in addition to the names already mentioned, " in
cense-offering," " sweet-smelling sacrifice," " drink-offering,"
the expression Isheh,6 sacrifice by fire, which can be used
of all sacrifices presented to God by fire, and the special
word Olah,7 burnt-offering, which is certainly not connected
with the idea of "rising up,"8 but with the root-meaning
1 Lev. ii. 3, 10, vi. 9f., vii. 9 f., *. 12. 2 Lev. vi. 14 ff, ^3.
3 Gen. iv. 3ff.
4 Isa. xxii. 13 ; Gen. xviii. 7, xxvii. 4 ; cf. e.g. Robinson's Travels, i. 342 ;
Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, 218, etc. Even the name of the altar, PQID,
favours this interpretation.
6 Of all animals sacrificed, even when they are otherwise used as food, the fat
and the blood, being the symbols of strength and life, belong to God alone,
Lev. iii. 17, vii. 25.
6 n$X, of all kinds of sacrifice, Lev. i. 9, 13, 17, ii. 2, 9, iii. 5, 16, viii. 28 ;
Num. xv. 3, xxviii. 8, xxx. 13. 7 r\b)V-
8 nbv> although it is often connected with n?yn- But the idea of " mount
ing upon the altar " is unquestionably too jejune and general to indicate a kind
of sacrifice.

376 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
" glow." 1 In addition to this word, and denoting the same
kind of sacrifice, we have the term whole burnt-offering,
Kalil,2 by which is meant that the whole animal is burned,
and thus presented to God without any other use being
made of the victim's flesh.
3. We divide sacrifices according to their meaning and
object into three classes : —
A. Sacrifices of worship ; that is, sacrifices offered, not be
cause of any special ground for thankfulness or penitence,
but as expressions of religious devotion to God on the part
of the community, and of an individual as a pious member
of that community. This class is represented by the burnt
offering or the whole burnt-offering.3 In earlier times it may
have had a still wider meaning, and may, perhaps, have even
represented the sin-offering and the guilt- offering. There are,
at any rate, clear traces of this sacrifice having a really
expiatory character, and that, too, where it is a question of
actual sin, not of ceremonial uncleanness in itself without guilt.4
1 — 1*13/- Perhaps even in n?yn there lies a similar meaning (Ewald), Judg.
xiii. 19 ; cf. 2 Sam. vi. 17 (cf. Fiirst on this word), otherwise there is here a
similar combination to r\)2$ Sltf-
2 (ji|j3, certainly synonymous with n?lj?, 1 Sam. vii. 9 ; Deut. xxxiii. 10.
Even the co-ordination with *, Ps. li. 21, can only be a poetic expression for
"and what is the same" (Ps. lxxiv. 11, xliv. 4, xc. 2), since the statute in
Lev. vi. 15 f. is too fragmentary and too late to explain a poetic expression of
this kind.
3 Lev. vi.
4 Lev. i. 4 ; 2 Sam. xxiv. 18-25 ; 1 Sam. xxvi. 19 (?), iii. 14 ; Micah vi. 6 f. ;
Job i. 5, xlii. 8. May it possibly be that the distinction between sin-offering
and burnt-offering, for which no proof - passages can be quoted earlier than
Ezekiel and Ps. xl. 7, is connected with the fact that the numerous priesthood
could not exist among a small people without getting a greater share of the
sacrifices than it had any right to from the D'OPB'i which were being offered
more and more rarely ? It is a striking fact that a sin-offering is not wholly
consumed with fire, and that the sins for whioh it is commanded rather favour the
idea of its having originated at a late period. That would explain the emphasis
with which the duty of the priests to eat this sacred flesh was insisted on by A,
— an emphasis which is scarcely intelligible in regard to an ancient custom, Lev.
vi. 19, 22, vii. 6 ; cf. ix. 8-11, 15, x. 16-20. (In 2 Kings xii. 17 there is
mention only of DCK S)D3 and niXtSn S]DD, and it is to this that the taunt
in Hos. iv. 8 has reference, " They feed on the sin of my people, and set their
heart on their iniquity.")

SACRIFICES. 377
But in A it has no special expiatory chnracter. It is offered
simply in connection with a joyous feast,1 and where there
can be no question of an appeasing of divine wrath.2 By it
the community has to show its reverence for God. Hence
the most valuable males without blemish are to be offered.8
Hence, when they are dedicated by the laying on of hands,
they are devoted wholly to God by fire, this constituting the
peculiarity of this kind of sacrifice.4 It would be quite
incongruous if any part of what the piety of the community
dedicated to God as a present, were to be consumed by that
community itself. Hence the burnt-offering is the form of
the daily sacrifice in the sanctuary. Regularly morning and
evening (a custom which also regulated the division of time5)
a burnt-offering was laid on the altar, consisting of a lamb,
" the continual burnt-offering," and its proper meal-offering.6
Whatever else comes upon this altar is consumed with the
burnt-offering.7 This offering of the community in connection
with the public worship of God 8 formed the regular founda
tion on which any special act of sacrifice could be afterwards
performed. The burnt-offerings in individual cases form, on
the other hand, the concluding act of worship, after the special
atonement is completed. The blood is sprinkled on the
1 Ex. x. 25 ; 1 Kings iii. 15, and Judg. xi. 30 f.
2 Gen. viii. 20, xxii. 2, 7 ; Ex. xxxii. 5 ff. ; Deut. xxvii. 6. It occurs along
with sin-offerings and guilt-offerings, Ex. xxix. 10-14, cf. 15-19 ; Lev. ix. 2f.,
xii. 6, 8, xiv. 12, xv. 14 f., 30 ; Ezek. xiv. 23.
3 Lev. i. 3, 10, 14 (in cases of necessity, pigeons).
4 Lev. i. 9. 6 1 Chron. xvi. 40.
6 Lev. vi. 2ff.; cf. Ex. xxix. 38 (1 Chron. xvi. 40). The Ton T)b)V,
"between the evenings," that is, immediately after sunset, and in the morning.
7 E.g. Lev. vi. 5. Besides, even strangers could show their reverence for the
God of Israel by such sacrifices, as, e.g., the Roman emperors (Joseph, c. Ap. ii. 6 ;
Bell. Jud. ii. 17. 2 ; cf. Lev. xvii. 8, xxii. 18, 25). The gradual increase of this
regular Olah from 2 Kings xvi. 15 and Ezek. xlvi. 13 ff. up to A, Lev. vi. 1-7,
— the idea of the Olath Tamidh as an opus operatum forming the centre of the
religion (Lev. vi. 6, vii. 2 ; Deut. ix. 27), — is not without interest for the history
of religion.
8 In early days paid by the king, afterwards a tax on the community ; cf.
Ex. xxx. 11 ff.

378 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
altar in order to devote the life to God, in the sense,
however, not of a definite atonement, but of a gift, a token
of reverence. The feeling of general unworthiness in presence
of the holy God, even in A already very strongly developed,
must certainly have accompanied every act of worship in
Israel. Every one who comes to an act of sacrifice must
" sanctify himself." l But still that is not the essential feature
of this sacrifice.
B. In the second class we put the thank-offerings,2 sacrifices
offered to God on special occasions and for special reasons by
individuals to express their thankfulness for what God gives.
These were naturally offered on every festive occasion, and
without such an offering the piety of ancient peoples did not
permit flesh to be eaten. They were anxious to present God
with a welcome gift, whether on the occasion of a vow,3 or
from an instinctive prompting of piety,4 or simply out of
gratitude.5 What distinguishes these from the other sacrifices
is the festive meal, in which the person " rejoices before God." s
In A, of course, the traces of this, as well as of the ancient
gladness with which the people offered sacrifice, have already
become very faint. Hence even leavened bread might be used
1 1 Sam. xvi. 5.
2 Wu?W n3T, Lev. vii. 11, xvii. 5, in most cases also meant when n3T
stands alone. The word denotes neither sacrifices of blessedness nor
sacrifices of salvation, intended to indicate "the whole fulness of salvation."
It rather refers to the unbroken covenant relation which the sacrificial meal
serves to express (Wellhausen). But even the Olah presupposes such a relation.
It is connected with the Piel of the verb, and is therefore a sacrifice of
"requital," "repayment," that is, a sacrifice for a favour received or about to
be received.
3 "112, Lev. vii. 16, xxvii. Iff. (Of course, in a vow one may also choose other
forms of sacrifice, Lev. xxii. 18 ; Num. xv. 3 ; Judg. xi. 30 f.)
4 n313, Lev. vii. 16 (Ps. lvi. 13). (All other acts of sacrifice, e.g. Ex. xxxv.
29, xxxvi. 3, may, of course, be also regarded as Nedaboth.)
5 min r\2t, Lev. vii. 12, xxii. 29 ; cf. Ps. xxvii. 6, nyiin'^niT- In this
case the strict law was that nothing of the sacred meal should be left over till
the following day — in the case of the Neder and Nedabah nothing was to be left
till the third day (Lev. vii. 15 f., xix. 6).
6 Deut. xii. 7, 12, 18, xiv. 24 ff. ; 1 Sam. xx. 6, xi. 15 ; of. Ex. xviii. 12 ;
Gen. xxxi. 54.

SACRIFICES. 379
with sacrifices of this kind; and where there was no vow,
people might choose even animals of no great value and not
altogether without blemish,1 only not such as would not make
a meal.2 Among the ancient people such votive thank-
offerings not infrequently degenerated into " scenes of
debauchery " very far from holy.3 On the other hand, they
have enriched the vocabulary of religion with a number of
most significant metaphors for joy in God.4
In these sacrifices the offerer presents the animal to God,
dedicates it by laying his hand on it, and slays it. In the
blood, the priest presents to God the life of the victim.5
Then, as a token of homage, God is given " the best of the
flesh," i.e. the fat, which is burned,6 and the right breast and
shoulder — not merely as being the choicest piece (as in
1 Sam. ix. 24), but as the seat of life and strength, as is
proved by the selection of the right side. These are His by
way of honour, and the priests offer them to Him by lifting
them up7 and presenting them,8 in order to receive them back
again from Him as His servants. Whatever is left over is
then eaten at a festive meal as an act of worship. In such
sacrifices there is no idea of anxious penitence for sin. They
make prayer more efficacious, and they express thanks for
its having been heard. To this general class belong also the
covenant-sacrifices connected with the solemn feast, at which
1 Lev. vii. 15, xxii. 23. 2 Lev. iii. 6ff.
3 Prov. vii. 14 ; Isa. xxviii. 8. 1 Sam. i. 13 also shows that at such
sacrificial feasts drunkenness was not considered anything extraordinary.
4 Ps. xxii. 26 f.; B. J. xxv. 6ff., lxii. 8, 9; Deut. xxvii. 7.
6 For the rite, cf. Lev. iii. 1 ff., vii. 11.
6 ni>n "I'Dpn, 1 Sam. ii. 15. (Not merely the inside fat ; for, according to
Lev. iii. 3-5, the fat tail of the sheep is also included.) For the idea, cf. the
expressions, "the fat of the land," "the fat of wheat," esp. Ps. xx. 4, May
God think thine offerings "fat."
7 nonnn pie>-
8 nSUFin ntn- The meaning of the expressions, "lifted up before God,"
"presented to God," comes out very clearly in Ex. xxxv. 5, 21, 22, 24, xxxvi.
3, 6, xxxviii. 24, 29, xxv. 2 ; Num. viii. 11, 13, 15, 21 ; cf. Ex. xxix. 24 ff. ;
Lev. vii. 30 f., ix. 21, x. 14 f.

380 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the contracting parties assist, and which are a very ancient
custom. These, however, are rather a symbolical form of
oath, the sacrificial meal being meant as a pledge of
fellowship. C. The third class consists of sin-offerings and guilt-offerings}
These are sacrifices offered by an individual or a community
in order to restore the relationship to God which sin or guilt
has disturbed, that is to say, in order to obtain reconciliation.
The common characteristic of these is the atoning use of the
sacrificial offering and the sacrificial blood, and they have one
and the same Thorah.2 It seems to me not improbable that
both of these, as special kinds of sacrifice, restricted, but
only gradually, the general use of the burnt- offering ; and
that, on the other hand, their respective differences were never
quite agreed upon and clearly formulated. The distinguish
ing of the two is essentially a matter of archaeological interest.
It must, in the first place, become clear to every one that
it is an utter impossibility to separate these two kinds of
sacrifice, if Lev. v. 1—1 3 is regarded as a law anent the guilt-
offering. For in that case the guilt-offering would be simply
presented as a burnt-offering for sin,8 and the cases cited,
viz. keeping silence when under oath, touching something
unclean, taking an imprudent vow, correspond so exactly with
the causes of a sin-offering, that a distinction is impossible.
But as a guilt-offering is undoubtedly to be regarded as a
different kind of sacrifice from a burnt-offering for sin,4 we
must either conclude that there are two sets of laws from
different sources, or assume, with Riehm, that the word
" repentance " has, in the section cited, a more general
1 JlKBrl, Lev. iv. 24, viii. 2, 14, etc.; cf. Stan, Lev. ix. 15 ; KBnnn, Num,
viii. 21 ; DB'X, e.g. Lev. vi. 10.
2 Lev. vii. 7.
3 Lev. v. 6-8, 12. (Asham and Chattath are here interchanged as absolutely
gynonymous. )
' 4 Lev. vi. 10, vii. 1, 7, 37, xiv. 12 f.; Num. v. 5f., vi. 12, xviii. 9 ; 2 Kings
xii. 17 ; Ezek. xl. 39, xlii. 13, xliv. 29, xlvi. 20.

SACRIFICES. 381
meaning, as indeed the expression " to be guilty " occurs
elsewhere also in connection with sin-offerings.1 The guilt-
offering, then, is made where one has infringed the rights of a
sacred personage or of a neighbour inadvertently, or in some
other way regarded as pardonable ; in other words, where
satisfaction has to be given to a definite person, whether God or a
neighbour, on account of some encroachment on the privileges
he enjoys, the word privilege being used in its widest sense.
It is atonement for infringement of a right. If a man
meddles with something sacred,2 or if, as Nazirite, he
unwittingly injures what he has vowed to God, and thus
defiles what is dedicated to God in his own person,8 or if he
lays faithless or violent hands on the property of a neighbour,4
— a female slave included, — then all these are cases where a
guilt-offering is necessary. Its distinctive mark is its fixed
value,6 the amount to be paid as compensation being one-fifth
more than the damage done ; 6 in a word, the payment is of
the nature of an indemnity. The sin-offering, on the other
hand, is required wherever, through inadvertence or any other
mitigating cause, something has occurred which, without doing
definite injury to God or one's neighbour, violates the require-
1 E.g. Lev. iv. 22, 27: DB'X, according to the older usage of the language,
is applied to presents of gold and other sacred gifts, 1 Sam. vi. 3, and to money-
fines paid into the temple treasury, 2 Kings xii. 17. This original meaning of
a "money fine" without a special sacrifice is still characteristic of the word,
even in A.
2 Lev. v. 15 f. (Thus even the sacred gift with which the Philistines send
back the ark of Jehovah is DK>X, a "fine," 1 Sam. vi. 3ff.)
3 Num. vi. 12. It is certain it is only in this respect, and not in regard to
the time devoted to God's service, that he has offended. On the other hand, it
will always be difficult to make the case in Lev. xiv. 12 f., 17, fit in with this
whole theory. In that instance a guilt- offering was probably prescribed, because
a condition of things had arisen which destroyed the sacred character of the
Israelite, and before the right relationship could be re-established an equivalent
must first be paid to God ; whereas for the violation of physical holiness, as in
the case of touching a dead body (Lev. v. 2 ff. ), a sin-offering was presented.
4 Lev. v. 21 ff ; Num. v. 6 ff. ; Lev. xix. 20 f. ; Ezra x. 10 6jJD).
6 DnSOn'^N, Num. v. 8 ; ECNn^K, Lev. v. 16 ; cf. the price, Lev. v,
15, 18 : two shekels of the sanctuary.
6 Lev. v. 16, 24 ; Num. v. 7.

382 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
ments of moral or physical holiness. It is atonement for
uncleanness. Its peculiarity is the search after purification,
because the question of compensation or indemnity cannot
come in. Hence its essential and most solemn characteristic
is the shedding of the atoning blood. Accordingly the value
of the offering depends on the position of the culprit ; for the
higher that position is, the graver does the impurity become.1
This sacrifice being really the chief example of its class, we
must give it almost exclusive attention.2
It is only when a sin has been committed " inadvertently,"
" unwittingly," that these expiatory sacrifices of the Law can
1 Lev. xvi. 3, 5, iv. 13, 22, 27.
2 As stated above, the view adopted by Riehm has commended itself most to
me ; although, on account of Lev. xiv. 12 ff. and v. 17, I am by no means free
from doubts. The theory of Ewald, that the guilt-offering was made "where
the individual feels himself shut out from the favour of his God by conscious
guilt or a mysterious divine suffering, — the sin-offering where the individual
does not feel himself intentionally guilty," — is, in my opinion, disproved by
Lev. v. 1-13, where sin-offerings are required for cases which include a distinct
consciousness of guilt on the part of the individual, and on the similarity of
Lev. v. 17 with Lev. iv. 27. The theory of Gesenius, that the guilt-offering
atoned for lighter transgressions, and the sin-offering for more flagrant ones, is
disproved by simply comparing Lev. iv. 1-v. 13 with v. 14 ff.; Num. v. 5ff.
Indeed, the compensation to be paid and the definite value of the victim would
rather lead to the opposite conclusion. It would, however, be very natural to
consider the guilt-offering as a mere subdivision of the sin-offering, especially
where there is, apart from the sin, " a condition the reverse of holy." Only in
that case it would be difficult to understand why the guilt-offering is always
found along with the sin-offering, while in many cases the two ought to be inter
changeable. And besides, if it were so, a sin-offering must have been offered
in every case, even where special justification for a guilt-offering exists, which
is obviously not the case. The correct view, that in a sin-offering reparation for
the sin can be made only by penitence, whereas in a guilt-offering this can be
done by an indemnity, by compensation to God, His sanctuary, or one's neigh
bour, is also given by Saalschiitz ; and even Rink acknowledges that a guilt-
offering is in place wherever an act of atonement or requital is necessary. But
when he adds, probably on account of Lev. xiv., "also in order thereby to
obtain privileges," he forgets that in that case the guilt-offering would fall into
the category of a precatory or votive sacrifice — not into that of a propitiatory
sacrifice (cf. Kurtz, Oehler, etc.). (Cf. on this question, Wellh. 77.) I have no
doubt also that ancient ordinances lie at the foundation of these laws, although
the religious life of ancient Israel knew of money fines in place of these sacri
fices (2 Kings xii. 17 ; Hos. iv. 8). The criticism of Lev. xiii. and xiv. by
Fr. Delitzsch ("Pentateuch Kritische Studien," Zeitschr. f. kirchl. Wits. u.
kirchl. Leben, 1880, 1) is very instructive.

SACRIFICES. 383
be properly offered.1 Still there are a number of cases where
they are allowed, even although there is no such "inadvert
ence " in the proper sense of the word ; as, for instance, when
the culprit informs against himself, without having been con
victed, and so on. He has then to offer, if it be a guilt-
offering, a victim of the required value ; if a sin-offering, one
of more or less value, according to his own standing in the
theocracy. The priest and the holy congregation are rated
highest, then the prince, and last of all the ordinary citizen.
The value ranges from a bullock to a she-goat 2 or a ewe ; 8 in
cases of poverty, to pigeons ; and in an extreme case, a bloodless
offering without oil and incense.4 In every case, however,
the character of sadness is kept up. Female animals,5 the
goat,6 the want of incense and oil, betoken this peculiarity of
the expiatory sacrifice. The victim is dedicated to God by
the offerer laying his hand upon it, and is then killed.7
If it is a sin-offering, the next act is a specially solemn
application of the blood as an atonement. In the most
solemn case the blood is brought direct to God into the Holy
of Holies, while all the sacred utensils are besprinkled with it.8
In other cases of a solemn sin-offering, the priest sprinkles
the atoning blood with his finger seven times on the veil and
on the horns of the sacred altar, and pours out the rest of it
before the altar of burnt-offering.9 In more ordinary cases
the blood is put with the finger only on the brazen altar
and its horns.10 But in every instance it is this sprinkling
with blood that constitutes the really sacramental part of
the ceremony. Then almost the same portions of the victim
are devoted to God by fire as are burnt in the case of
1 In reality, therefore, they have nothing to do with the question of atone
ment and forgiveness of sins.
2 Lev. iv. 28. 8 Lev. v. 6.
' Lev. v. 7, 11 ; cf. Num. v. 15, 25.
5 Lev. iv. 28, 32, v. 6 ; of. Schomann, ii. 22*. 8 Lev. iv. 23, svi 7.
7 Ex. xxix. 10 ; Lev. iv. 4, 16, 24, 28 ff.
8 Lev. xvi. 14, 15, 18. 8 Lev. iv. 7, 17.
20 Ex. xxix. 12 ; Lev. iv. 25, 29, 30, viii. 15, ix. 9.

384 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
a thank-offering.1 But the remainder of the victim, too,
which has been offered in token of penitence, belongs to God
as most holy.2 It cannot be used for any ordinary purpose ;
it must npt even be touched by anything unconsecrated.
Every vessel in which it is prepared must be broken, or if it be
of iron, it must at least be cleansed.3 As a rule, the offering
must be eaten by the priests in a holy place.4 But a signifi
cant story reminds us that this was something unusual, and
expresses the horror which the eating of such a sacrifice pro
duced, the awe with which everything " consecrated to God "
was regarded.5 When the priest himself, or the whole com
munity, brought the sin-offering, so that, as a matter of
course, no part of it could be appropriated by the priest, it
had to be burned in some clean place, while the blood was
brought into the very tabernacle, that is, was consecrated to
God Himself.6 In this case the burning, of course, served as
a mere means of destruction, so that what was holy might
not be polluted by becoming rotten and putrid ; and in the
sanctuary there was no place to burn what could not be
offered. That what was in this case really essential, was
the sacrifice of an animal, and that the meal-offering was
merely an adjunct, is evident from the whole character of the
rite. 4. When we inquire as to the religious meaning of the
various forms of sacrifice, we find it easiest to determine the
significance of the thank-offerings. They are meant merely
to express a specially pious frame of mind, and have through
out no significance except as gifts, presents. Whoever asks
anything in prayer, or has obtained anything, should not
appear before God empty-handed ; 7 he is bound to show and
1 Ex. xxix. 13 ; Lev. iv. 8, 10, 31 ; cf. vii. 1 ff. The ram of tbe guilt-offering.
2 Lev. vi. 10, 18, 23, vii. 1, 6, x. 17, xiv. 13.
3 Lev. vi. 20 f. 4 Lev. vi 19, 22, vii. 6.
6 Lev. ix. 8-11, 15, x. 16-20.
6 Ex. xxix. 14 ; Lev. iv. 11, 12, 21, ix. 11, xvi. 27 f. ; cf. vi. 23, x. 18.
7 Ex. xxiii. 15.

THE MEANING OF THE SACRIFICES. 385
acknowledge that he receives everything from the Most High.
Just as a man brings the first-fruits of his fields and the
firstlings of his herds as tribute, so, on the special occasions
when he appears before God, he ought to appear with gifts.
Indeed, he should never partake of any festive meal without
remembering his God, and presenting Him with a part of it,
with the honourable portion which belongs to the King.
In all this there is absolutely no thought of any kind of
atonement. One cannot, it is true, give an animal to God
without killing it, and dedicating its life to the Lord of life
by the shedding of its blood. But that has no more to do
with atonement than has the burning of incense in the meal-
offering. On this point the one-sided view taken of a single
passage has caused great confusion. In Lev. xvii. 10, 11,
the sacredness of the blood is emphasised, because it is the
property of God alone, His holy of holies in nature, within
which the secret of life lies under lock and key. It is there
said, " I have given it to you to cover your souls." From
this it has been inferred that wherever the blood is offered
to God, it invariably gives the sacrifice an expiatory character.
But the idea of expiation has been put into the word " cover "
without any justification, and the fact has been overlooked
that this passage simply regards the most important object of
sacrifice as applicable to all the various kinds of it. The
blood, being the life or the bearer of life, is holy, dedicated
to God, withheld from every profane use.1 This is already
emphasised in Deut. xii. 16, 23 f, and is certainly a very
ancient view. When this blood is in sacrifice brought again
into the presence of God, and poured out on His altar, the
victim's life is thereby given back to Him. This completes
the act of consecration, by which a man is made fit to appear
1 Gen. ix. 4ff. ; Lev. xvii. lOf. The special exposition follows in connection
with sacrifices of atonement, and the view there given of the term "cover."
(The B'Q33 and lB'Dja, vers. 11 and 14, is quite as clear a gloss as is IDT in
Gen. ix. 4.)
VOL. I. 2 B

386 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
before the holy God. When this is done for the purpose of
atonement, the blood certainly receives its most special and
mysterious sacrificial meaning. In the thank-offering, on the
other hand, the victim is killed simply because it can be
dedicated to God in no other way. Its blood is poured out
on the altar because its life belongs to God, and has to be
presented to Him. Hence, according to the Deuteronomist,
when an animal is eaten, though not as a sacrifice, the blood is
to be poured out upon the ground like water.1 Consequently
in the thank-offering the blood consecrates the person for
sacred service. A part of the victim's flesh is burned, that it
may ascend in flame to God. The honorary portion is given
to Him in His servants ; the rest is eaten with gladness as in
a covenant feast. The whole sacrifice has simply the char
acter of a gift to God, the King, presented out of gratitude, joy,
or reverence. Of an arrestment of human life, for which the
victim's life is substituted, there is, of course, in none of these
sacrifices any suggestion at all. Nor do we meet with the
ancient idea of a communion of life between God and His wor
shippers being effected by their partaking of the flesh of the same
animal (Robertson Smith). It is simply as a part of human
food, of human property, that the animal is given back, just
as a vegetable gift might be, to God the Lord and Giver of all.
The religious ideas which lie at the foundation of the
burnt-offering are less simple. This is to be expected since
all the varying moods which influence the life of a community
in its public worship are expressed by this class of offerings,
so that its meaning is necessarily richer and more manifold.
But it is still more to be expected, because through all the
stricter details of the law regarding this kind of sacrifice
there shines an original and much wider meaning. The

1 In Israel this idea about blood is ancient. Thus David, 2 Sam. xxiii. 14 ff,
pours out the water brought to him by his mighty men at the risk of their
lives "to Jehovah," because it is "the blood" of the men who risked theu
lives for it.

THE MEANING OF THE SACRIFICES. 387
essential feature of the sacrifice is the complete surrender of
the victim to God. Hence its main purpose is to indicate
that it is the absolute duty of the community and the indi
vidual to belong with all their possessions to God, to testify
that God may demand from His people what He will, and
reckon on a perfectly boundless devotion. Human sacrifice,
which the primitive age had no scruple in including within
this duty, is no longer thought of by the law. The life of a
man has to be unconditionally redeemed by that of an
animal.1 Here, then, an animal is, in a certain sense, the
substitute of a man ; 2 but not as if it were punished for him,
or bore his guilt, but simply because, instead of the greater
offering which He might claim, God is willing to accept the
smaller ; instead of the highest life that exists on earth, the
lower, that of the animal. There is no reason, even in the case
of a burnt-offering, why we should regard the sprinkling of
blood as expiatory. It merely expresses the dedication to God
of the life of the animal sacrificed. The real intention is to
signify that unreserved devotion to God which does not con
sider even the most costly gift as too valuable to be given up
and dedicated to the Most High God, who is King over Israel.3
The greatest difficulty, however, is to ascertain the religious
ideas at the basis of the expiatory sacrifices, the sin-offering
and the guilt-offering. It is here that the sacramental and
the symbolical touch each other. It is here that the widest
scope is given to mysticism, and in such a realm it is always
a matter of extraordinary difficulty to find a doctrinal expres
sion for the import of such ceremonies that will at the same
1 Gen. xxii. 13 ; Ex. xiii. 13, 15 ; Lev. xx. 1 ff. ; cf. Jer. xix. 5 ; Ezek. xx. 25 ;
Micah vi. 6 ff. In the same way among the Egyptians also, the oxen that were
properly marked were sacrificed instead of human victims, and by tbe Greeks
and Romans a similar development is seen.
2 Hnn ; cf. Gen. xxii. 13 ; Ex. xiii. 13, 15.
3 If God accepts the burnt-offering, He has thereby entered, as it were, into
the relationship of "guest," which excludes anger, Judg. xiii. 23. A person
undertaking something important generally assured himself in this way of tbe
favour of God, 1 Sam. xiii. 12, rOT 'JEmX n^n.

388 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
time be just to every feeling. At any rate, we need nevei
imagine that we are here in possession of really religious
ideas of atonement, or that we shall obtain any explana
tion of the significance of the atoning work of Jesus, which is
acted out on a far higher moral plane. But we are never
theless face to face with a difficult and interesting question.
The general meaning of the expiatory sacrifices can, it is
true, be determined with perfect certainty. They, too, are
primarily meant to be gifts, presents. Whenever a man
becomes conscious of having failed to discharge his duties and
obligations, in other words, of having made himself guilty in
the eyes of the King of Israel, he seeks to get rid of the con
sciousness of God's displeasure. In cases of actual moral
guilt, the older prophets had rejected as popular superstition
the wish to win back the favour of God by any outward
sacrifices whatsoever. Where God is really angry, the prayer
of His servants may restore the people to His favour, by
reminding Him, for example, of Israel's fathers, of the
covenant, and of the divine honour which is bound up with
Israel, and which must suffer from a ruthless infliction of
punishment.1 Thus one loved by God may, with all the glow
of love, intercede for this nation, may connect himself indis-
solubly with its fate, and by vicarious suffering work out its
redemption.2 Or deeds done through zeal for God, and in
accordance with the divine will, may avert His anger, if it
can be averted at all.8 Sacrifices like the legal sacrifices of
atonement are not intended for actual sins like these. But
when the covenant has not been broken, when a mere
mistake, such as may be committed by one sincerely anxious
to be loyal, has separated an individual from his God,
then God, who is not really angry, has in His covenant-
1 So Ex. xxxii. 11 (C).
2 So Ex. xxxii. 30, ~\])2 "ISO; B. J. liii. Ezek. iv. 4ffi, on the other
band, bears the guilt of the people only symbolically.
3 So through the deed of Phinehas, Num. xxv. 11 ff., pj/ "1B3-

THE MEANING OF THE SACRIFICES. 389
mercy instituted the expiatory sacrifice as the legal mode of
settlement. By it God's " countenance is smoothed," as is the
countenance of an earthly potentate.1 Just as in a court of
justice, a person guilty of a crime which does not absolutely
deserve death, not having been intentionally committed, may be
let off with a fine,2 if the party injured be willing ; so, in virtue
of His covenant-mercy, God is willing to accept a ransom for
sins which are not absolutely unpardonable. And because the
life of an animal is the highest and holiest thing in the posses
sion of man, it is fixed upon as the ransom, although, of course,
its efficacy depends solely on the good pleasure, the mercy of
God. This is certainly the general idea, and one quite sufficient
to explain the guilt-offering, for here it is evident the leading
thought is that of a fine, or payment according to the amount of
damage done.3 In the case of the sin-offering, however, we have
to do with a number of more delicate questions connected with
the death and the blood of the victim, and their atoning efficacy.
The whole procedure would be most simply and fully
explained, could it be traced back to the idea of an actual or
real substitution ; that is, to the idea that the victim, in stepping
into the place of the guilty person, must let the punishment
due to him be inflicted on itself. Then, with the laying on
of the man's hand, the guilt would be, as it were, transferred
to the head of the victim, to its soul. For this theory there
is much to be said. Among many other nations there is
undoubtedly something of the same idea to be found, especi
ally in the view taken of the polluting character of the
1 D^JS n^n ; cf. 1 Sam. xiii. 12 ; 2 Kings xiii. 4 (also of other sacrifices) ;
Gen. xxxii 21 ; Zech. vii. 2 ; D'OB "1Q3 ; of. Ps. xiv. 13. Even the rich among
the people shall entreat Thy favour, "shall smooth Thy face with presents."
2 "133, Num. xxxv. 31-34 ; Ex. xxi. 30, etc. The parallel is complete. For
intentional murder the court cannot accept a ransom. For intentional sin
(ntn T3) there is no atoning sacrifice. For a fatal, if unpremeditated, blow,
compensation may be accepted, if the plaintiff be willing. For unintentional sin
(njJB>3), God, who is always gracious, does accept a ransom.
3 Thus, in more ancient times, there is mention only of a ransom or fine, of
which the sanctuary got the benefit, 2 Kings xii. 17 ; Hos. iv. 8.

390 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
objects used for expiation.1 And that there was in Israel a
similar popular belief, may be inferred from their deep-seated
horror of the flesh of the sin-offering.2 It is likewise
undoubted that the people when under the wrath of God
obtained reconciliation by the death of individuals who were
not personally guilty.3 And the whole theory that the blood,
as the source of life, that is, as the soul, " covers " or " atones
for " the soul, points most naturally to the theory of an inter
change of roles, in other words, to a real substitution.4
Still nothing more can be conceded than that even in the
law involuntary echoes of such a view are found. It is clear
that even the heathen theory of an atoning sacrifice admits
of only a symbolical substitution.6 And the support appar
ently given by certain passages to substitutionary atonement
disappears on a closer examination. Thus the question in
Deut. xxi. 1-9 is not about a substitutionary atoning death,
but about a symbolical form of oath by which the community,
while repudiating connection with the crime, calls down a
curse on itself in case of perjury. And when, in 2 Sam.
xxi. 5 ff, cf. Ex. xx. 5, the curse of an organised body works
itself out even on its innocent members, in that case the
innocent are not punished for the guilty, but the whole race
is judged as if it were a single individual. Besides, in the
law there is no question as to capital offences. Finally, if a
human sacrifice is replaced by an animal one, that is merely
a vicarious act, not a vicarious punishment. And the flesh of
an animal slain as a sin-offering falls, indeed, under the
ban, and is regarded with dread. But it is not unclean; it
is rather most holy? and only on that account is it destructive

1 Cf. Hermann, 126, 132, Nr. 24, 164 ; Schomann, ii. 230 ff, 239.
2 Lev. ix. 8-11, 15, x. 16-20 ; cf. Lev. xvi. 28 ; Num. xix. 7, 8, where it is a
question as to a means of purification. Also expressions like Prov. xxi. 18,
" The wicked is a ransom for the righteous," point to some such popular view ;
cf. also the metaphor in B. J. xliii. 4, 10.
3 2 Sam. xxi. 5 ff. 4 Lev. xvii. 11.
B Cf. Hermann, I.e. 6 Lev. vi. 10, 18-23, vii. 1, 6, x. 17, xiv. 13.

THE MEANING OF THE SACRIFICES. 391
and fatal.1 The priests use it as food. If there is nobody
who can eat it, as, for example, if it be offered by the priest or
by the community itself, then, like everything wholly devoted
to God, even the meal-offering,2 it must come under the "ban,"
that is, be destroyed, in order that no profane use may dis
honour it. In some clean place (and therefore not as a thing
itself unclean), it is to be burned outside the camp, that the
people may not run the risk of coming into contact with
what is most holy ; 3 and the same rules also hold good of the
meal -offering and of other things.4 Indeed, in the most
decisive instance, viz. Lev. xvi., not only must he who takes
part in the sacrifice purify himself, but so also must he who
accompanies the animal that is let loose. Here, therefore, it
is not the sacrifice, but the whole character of the transaction,
that makes purification necessary.
By the laying on of the hand the sin is not transferred, to
the victim. In itself this is merely a general act of dedi
cation. By this act the person who dedicates confers his own
dignity on another.6 By it the community testifies that it
hands over to God one of its members to be either banned"
or dedicated.7 And by the laying on of his hand, the sacri-
ficer dedicates each victim, as his own property, to some
higher object, that object, of course, varying according to the
intention with which he offers the sacrifice. Thus in the

1 Also the fact that whoever touches it becomes holy, that is, has to be slain ;
and in this connection we may mention the person among the Romans over
whom were spoken the words " sacer esto " (E'lp''), Lev. vi. 11, 20 Din-
2 Lev. vi. 10. 3 Lev. iv. 12, 20, vi. 16, 23.
4 In Lev. vi. 10 it is said that the Minchah is most holy, like the sin-offering
and the guilt-offering. The priest must eat the sin-offering, just because what is
most holy destroys every one but himself (x. 12, 17, xiv. 13). Even one on
whom the blood spurts must wash himself, and the vessel in which it is pre
pared must be also cleansed or broken. But that is because it is " most holy,"
Lev. vi. 20, 22. Were the blood unclean, it could not be brought into the
presence of God. And just where that is so in the very highest degree must
the flesh as too holy be burned (ver. 23).
5 So Num. xxvii. 18, 20, 23. ° So Lev. xxiv. 14
7 So Num. viii. 10, 12.

392 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
case of a sin-offering he dedicates it as a means of atonement
for himself, in order that it may be the bearer and instrument
of his repentance. But if he meant to lay his guilt upon it,
and if that were indeed allowable, there would at any rate still
have to be some distinct oral confession of sin. Indeed, even
in that case the victim would only be described as that by which
the sinner wishes to lift off the sin he has confessed, not as that
which is now to be considered the bearer of this sin. Besides,
in the law the death of the victim does not constitute the atone
ment. It is merely the means by which the life (blood) of
the victim is appropriated to God. It cannot therefore be
regarded as in any sense a vicarious punishment. Whatever
is devoted to God must die, that which is under the ban
as well as the first-born,1 the thank-offering as well as the
burnt-offering. And only after the killing is over, is the blood
brought as an atonement before God; and that not as a life
that has become unclean and guilty, but as something fit for the
presence of God. Finally, Lev. v. 1 1 is conclusive. For if the
bearing of punishment by the victim were the leading idea, then
in no case, not even in a case of poverty, would a vegetable
offering be allowable. That this is possible, proves that the
essence of the act is not the death-penalty, but the gift.2
Hence this " transubstantiation-theory " is in every case
untenable, however well it may appear to agree with a few
somewhat obscure expressions 3 and with the holy horror oi
what has been employed to atone for sin. Still less tenable

' Ex. xiii, 13, 15.
2 Lev. v. 11. The saying in 1 Sam. xxvi. 19, which has a genuinely archaic
ring about it, should also be compared, " If it be Jehovah that hath stirred
thee up against me, let Him smell a Minchah ! "
3 Thus the very expression ")23 has forced its way deep into poetry. Cf. the
beautiful passage, Ps. xlix. 7, 8. No man can by any means redeem his
brother, or give to God a ransom for him (Ex. xxx. 12). In B. J. xliii. 3, 4,
God promises to give to Cyrus as ransom for Israel the distant lands of the
south, i. e. without metaphor, to bestow upon him, as his reward for setting
Israel free, the empire of the world. In both cases the root-metaphor is the
ransoming of slaves (ma njp).

THE MEANING OF THE SACRIFICES. 393
is the theory of Keil, that " the soul of the victim,
and therefore of the man who offers it, is brought by the
sacrifice into gracious fellowship with the Lord, and that
the blotting out of sin and the sanctifying of the person
pardoned is represented by the way in which the flesh of the
victim is treated." For it is clear that the victim is devoted
to God as a gift of penitence, and received by Him in death
and fire. Its blood, as the bearer of the soul, " atones " for
the soul of the sinner. The victim in its death is the
medium of the sinner's penitence, not the symbol of the
sinner becoming purified.
Accordingly we may consider the view of the writer of the
law to have been as follows. When God is really angry with
His people or with an individual, He demands satisfaction.
In many cases this is to be got only through the working out
of His anger. Then the guilty person falls under the ban, is
destroyed out of the land of the living ; x or if the real culprit
is no longer alive, his posterity is smitten because of their
family connection with him ; 2 just as the leaders of the people
may, in their representative capacity, be punished instead of
the whole community.3 In such cases, then, the anger of
God does not pass away till it has been executed. Only
when God in His goodness and mercy allows Himself to be
appeased by intercession or by sincere repentance on the part
of man, can such a doom be averted. And assuredly since
the days of the great prophets the Israelites never again
quite forgot that the God of Israel has no pleasure in willing
the death of a sinner.4
1 Din ; where this is not strictly carried out, the anger of God falls upon
those who are too slow in executing Hi3 commands, who have permitted the
land to continue polluted ; cf. Josh. vii. 26, viii. 26, x. 1, 28, 37, 39, 40 ; Judg.
i. 17 ; 1 Sam. xv. 33 ff, xxviii. 18 ; cf. 1 Kings xx. 42 (2 Kings xxiii. 20).
2 2 Sam. xxi. 5ff. ; Ex. xx. 5 (2 Sam. xii. 18).
8 Num. xxv. 4 (the reverse in 2 Sam. xxiv. 13 ff.).
4 Cases like 2 Sam. xxi. 6 do not occur any more in later times. Even
2 Sam. xxiv. 18 ff'. testifies to the idea of possible sacrificial atonement for sin ;
cf. Ezek. xviii.

394 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
But when it is not a case of divine anger, that is, when a
man has erred through weakness without any contempt of
covenant statutes, it is quite a different matter. Then it is
not a question of averting God's anger or of its working
itself out. But for breaking the statute the sinner has to
make such satisfaction as has been provided for in the
covenant itself, and been graciously accepted by the covenant
God. This satisfaction is the sin-offering, which is a ransom, a
redemption.1 Hence the root-idea of the propitiatory sacrifice
is that the sinner acknowledges his sin, seeks reconciliation,
and gives actual expression to his repentance by surrender
of his property. It is an acknowledgment that God is right
and the sinner wrong. It gives to the offended majesty of the
divine claim a satisfaction which, it is true, is only of value
because God accepts it, because He is willing to be reconciled,
Accordingly, the law lays no stress on the intrinsic
value of the sacrifice. That human sacrifice is quite ex
cluded from such cases as we are now considering, ia
self-evident. But even where ancient Israel saw in it a
means of defence against God's anger,2 its application is
absolutely excluded by the law. And even animal sacrifice is
kept within the limits of symbol. No hecatombs fall in
Israel by way of atonement. Single victims are enough,
varying according to the sinner's position in the ranks of
the holy people, according to the degree in which the holi
ness required by God has been violated. If need be, the
meal-offering, the smallest of all sacrifices, is sufficient.
And the specially atoning element, the blood, God has given
to man for this very purpose. Man does not, by his gift,
extort reconciliation from God. Nor does God satisfy His
1 1B3 i most plainly in Ex. xxi. 30, xxx. 12 ; Num. xxxi. 50. The last
passage, like Ex. v. 3, is remarkable as giving utterance to the ancient feeling
that " inexplicable good fortune " must be expiated, lest it bring some judgment
in its train ; cf. Num. xxxv. 31-34 ; 2 Kings xii. 17.
2 Micah vi. 7 ; cf. 2 Kings iii. 27. The constantly recurring worship of
Moloch.

THE MEANING OF THE SACRIFICES. 395
anger by punishing in place of the guilty, the innocent
who have had no evil intention. But in His mercy He
accepts the gift of repentance and atonement, and even puts
it into the hand of man, so that the holy act of reconcilia
tion may be accomplished in the right and proper way.
In a sacrifice of atonement, as soon as the sacrificial act is
fully performed, the blood becomes the real centre of the
ceremony. With it the priest covers the sinner, that is, as
the servant of God who holds uninterrupted intercourse with
Him, he leads the unworthy one back into fellowship with
God, makes him, by means of the victim's blood, fit for His
holy presence, and thus brings it about that pardon comes to
the sinner through God's acceptance of his sacrifice. Hence
the priest brings the blood direct into the presence of God ;
and the higher the sinner stands among the covenant people,
the more solemn is the ceremony. According to the Hebrew
view, as well as the Greek,1 the blood is the mystery of
life. " In its soul, that is, in its blood, ye shall not eat any
animal," is the prohibition already laid upon Noah in regard
to eating animal food.2 And the law forbids the eating of
blood under pain of death, " for the soul of the flesh is in the
blood ; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an
atonement for your souls : for it is the blood that maketh atone
ment (through the soul) ; for the soul of all flesh is its blood
(in its soul). " 8 At all events the meaning is perfectly clear.
Because the blood represents the soul-life of the animal, it
belongs absolutely to the Lord of creation. It is entrusted
to man only for the most holy use, viz. to serve as a means
of dedication. Since a living animal is the noblest object in
1 According to Homer, by drinking blood souls change from shades into
beings who speak and feel. Odys. xi. 50, etc. (cf. Verg. Aen. ix. 348 f.;
Hippocr. Dogm. ii. ; Cicero, Tusc. i. 9).
2 Gen. ix. 4 ff. Human blood is absolutely sacred, and demands vengeance
wherever it is shed.
3 Lev. xvii. 11, 14 ; of. Deut. xii. 23. That the words within brackets are
glosses, is also shown by the Septuagint.

396 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
creation, it is in itself a suitable gift for God, especially
because it comes as property into close connection with man.
Hence the essence of this offering is the life of the victim, the
sanctuary of nature, the blood. When it is brought to God
the animal is wholly surrendered to Him, the offering is
complete, and thereby its object is also attained, viz. recon
ciliation. This and nothing else is certainly the real meaning,
even in an expiatory sacrifice, of the sprinkling with blood, —
the appropriation to God of the animal's life, the accomplish
ment of the penance demanded by Him through the sur
render of that sacred thing, the mysterious centre of life.
This blood, given to God, forms, as it were, the robe in which
the priest arrays the sinner so that he may appear before
God.1 1 In the instance given, the holy sacrificial blood is also sprinkled along with
oil upon the offerer himself in order to sanctify him. In the Passover and in the
making of a covenant it is the mysterious means of consecration. Ex. xii. 23,
xxiv. 8 ; cf. Lev. xiv. 5, 14, 20. Riehm, who is in essential agreement with the
view here advocated of the significance of the ritual connected with the sin-
offering, would add to it a single feature. His idea is that the same working of
the divine anger which reveals itself along with His mercy, in the destruction
of the wicked, in the ban that falls upon guilty families, likewise finds expres
sion in the sin-offering, when the body of the victim, by the offering of which the
sinner is brought into a right relation with God, is destroyed by this consuming
zeal of God as " a thing under the ban," whether by being eaten, a duty which
is laid upon the priests, or by being burned outside the camp, in which case the
uncleanness of the victim makes the person unclean who has to perform this act
of destruction. It must be conceded to Riehm that in the dread of eating the
flesh of a sin-offering, and in the uncleanness of the priest who on the day of
atonement has to burn its flesh, a feeling of abhorrence is manifested for the
animal that has been put to this mysterious use. But the inferences which
Riehm draws manifestly go far beyond the scope- of the few passages on which he
founds. In the Old Testament, as among all ancient peoples, the ideas of being
"most holy " and of being ' ' banned " are closely akin. And to touch what is
"holy " is as dangerous as to touch what is " banned," and can be done only by
those who have been specially sanctified. Hence the dread ; hence, too, the burn
ing with fire when the priest may not eat the flesh. Hence, too, the carrying of it
outside the camp, because all contact with what is most holy would bring guilt
upon the people. But if the victim were an object of God's destroying curse,
then the priests could not eat it, nor would it be burned in a clean plaoe ; nor
would the guilt-offering, when a bloodless one, be wholly appropriated by the
priests like every other meal-offering (Lev. ii. 9, v. 13, vi. 10). And when so
much stress is laid on the one passage (Lev. xvi. 28) in which a purification is
enjoined after the burning of a victim, it is forgotten that purification must

is?. 397
5. What we have just stated makes the meaning which
the word "iB3 has in sacrificial law perfectly clear. In the
language of living piety, the word was chiefly applied to
an act of God. He " covers " the sins of His people, that is,
He forgives them in virtue of His covenant grace as soon as
the heart of the people that has been turned away from Him
is again turned towards Him, as soon as ever the people are
in circumstances that accord with the covenant.1 In that
case God never thinks of continuing to punish, of allowing
His anger to work itself out. He does that only so long as
His people do not return to Him, and have not put away
that which He cannot endure in them, since He is the holy
guardian of righteousness, who cannot bear with iniquity.2
In like manner, it is also said of the sinner that he " covers "
his guilt or the punishment of it when by some means or
other he obtains forgiveness.3 And outside the religious sphere
altogether there is the phrase " to cover, with a present,
the face " of one who has been insulted, that is, to induce him
by means of a present to take no further notice of the insult.4
In all these cases the word means " to forgive " or " obtain
forgiveness," and has nothing to do with sacrifices. Outside the
law of sacrifice, the word is only rarely used of men " covering
the people or its sin." It is so used when Moses by his
intercession induces God to forgive 6 the people ; or when the
representatives of the community obtain forgiveness for the
people by re-establishing law and order,6 or by proving that
take place even after a besprinkling with sacrificial blood (Lev. vi. 20), which is
nevertheless regarded as expiatory, but not as unclean. Every victim, too, even
in the act of being killed, was considered ' ' most holy." This word consequently
cannot include the meaning of "banned." Everything is most holy which is
absolutely and under pain of divine wrath withdrawn from ordinary use (the
whole sanctuary is so, Num. iv. 4 ; cf. iv. 15, 16).
1 Isa. vi. 7, xxii. 14, xxvii. 9 ; Ps. lxv. 4, lxxix. 9 ; Jer. xviii. 23 ; Ezek.
xvi. 63 ; Deut. xxi. 8 ; Dau. ix. 24 (with double b and the ace. and with 5JJ).
2 Num. xxxv. 33 ; 2 Sam. xxi. 3 ff. So God covers the land when He takej
vengeance on its enemies, Deut. xxxii. 43.
3 -g j xlvii. 11. 4 Gen. xxxii. 21 ; cf. Prov. xvi. 6, 14.
5 Ex. xxxii. 30, 1)12. " Wum- xxxv- 33-

398 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
the community repudiates the crime in question,1 or by
giving expression through some deed of zeal to the judgment of
God:2 or when Aaron in the holiness of his office averts by
prayer the anger of God ; 3 or when the congregation of Israel
itself, trembling at some mysterious outbreak of divine wrath,
offers a ransom, by way of humbly redeeming itself from this
wrath, which may have been called forth by too great pro
sperity, and as an acknowledgment of the justice of God.4
The language used in the sacrificial laws is altogether
different. Here the question is not about a religious relation
ship at all, but about a ceremonial. Only such events are
dealt with as occur within the existing relationship of grace.
The necessity of the " covering " arises, not from God's wrath,
but from His holiness, in presence of which weak flesh is not
in itself sufficiently worthy, and still less so when it has
sinned. Hence it is always said that the priest, as such,
"covers" the Israelite, or even that he "covers" the sacred
vessels, which would be profaned by the people's unworthi
ness,6 and that he does, as a rule, by means of sacrificial blood.
Not always, however. For even a bloodless sin-offering has
the same effect ; 6 even the holy anointing oil may serve as
a covering.7 Where vessels are in question, the covering simply means
1 Deut. xxi. 1 ff. For this rite is nothing more than a solemn oath of
purification according to an antique custom, and in no sense a substitutionary
slaying of the victim.
2 Num. xxv. 13. 2 Num. xvii. 11, 12 ; cf. viii. 19.
4 Ex. xxx. 15 ; Num. xxxi. 50 (nolin). For a thoroughly antique view of
God, cf. Lev. x. 6 ; Num. i. 53, xviii. 5 ; Ex. xii. 13, xxx. 12. From His
august touch, which is therefore fatal to any ordinary person, the priests protect
themselves by washing, Ex. xxx. 20 (Deut. iv. 33).
6 Ex. xxix. 36, xxx. 10 ; Lev. xvi. 16, 18, 20, viii. 15 (xiv. 53) (1)12, b)l 133).
Lev. xvi. 10 is a striking passage. There the text must either be corrupt or
this goat is dedicated to a holy purpose. (H. Oort would, according to Lev.
xiv., conjecture that the goat that was to be let loose was sprinkled with the
blood of the one sacrificed. ) The accusative with "|Q3 is rare ; still it is found ai
in Lev. xvi. 20, Ezek. xliii. 26, xiv. 20, in quite the same sense as b)l and 1)12'
The word stands without an object in Lev. vL 23, xvi. 27.
6 Lev. v. 11 ff.; Num. v. 15. 7 Lev. xiv. 18, 29.

ibs. 399
purification, consecration (B*1!i?, "'D'?),1 a ceremony under
gone by persons and vessels alike before being employed
for any holy purpose. The eye of God, which should rest
with delight on the abodes of revelation as absolutely holy,
must not be grieved by seeing them lose their sanctity through
being touched by " a people of unclean lips." 2 By means of
the consecrated blood or the holy anointing oil, stronger means
of symbolical purification than mere water, the priest sym
bolically restores their purity and " covers " these places, that
is, makes their uncleanness invisible to the eye of God.
The matter is not quite so simple when it is a question of
the community or its individual members. If the sin-offering
alone had this effect of " covering," one would have to conclude,
on the analogy of what has been just said, that the sacrificial
blood takes away the stains of sin. To speak without a meta
phor, because God by accepting the blood of the sacrifice declares
the sin forgiven, the blood which the priest sprinkles upon
God's sanctuary acts as " a covering " for the guilt of the sinner,
that is, as a covering for his person. At any rate, everything
done by the priest in connection with this sin-offering, even his
eating the flesh of it, points to this purpose of " covering." 3
But the phrase is used also of the burnt-offering and the thank-
offering,4 and of all three kinds of sacrifice in common.6
Hence the meaning must be a somewhat more general one.
Man as flesh, that is, because in contrast with the holy
God he is, as a creature, weak, and therefore also, on his moral
side, impure, — for, according to the Hebrew view, the two are
inseparable, — is never in his natural condition so perfectly
consecrated as to be fit to draw near to Israel's King ; just as,
in the view of the ancient East, no subject was ever fit to
1 Both words alternate with 1B3. Ex. xxix. 36 ; Lev. xvi. 18, 30 ; Num.
vi. 11, viii. 6-21 ; Ezek. xliii. 26.
2 Isa. vi. 5; cf. Job xiii. 26 ; Ps. xix. 13. cxxx. 3, cxliii. 2, etc.
* Lev. x. 17.
4 Lev. i. 4, xvi. 20, 30, xii. 7, 8, xv. 15, 30 (Ezek. xiv. 15 ; 1 Sam. iii. 14).
6 Lev. xiv. 18, 29, xvi. 24 ; Num. xv. 25.

400 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
appear without ceremony in the presence of his sovereign
lord. God's presence would annihilate him.1 He must be
shut out from it.2 Accordingly, when he wishes to appear
before God, in order to show his loyalty or his gratitude, or
when, being polluted or weighed down by special trans
gressions, he has to seek the forgiveness of this God, he
requires (1) one to introduce him, that is, the priest, who,
as God's servant, has the right of access to Him ; (2) a
consecration or purification, which the priest performs upoD
him in order that God may disregard his unworthiness.8
This consecration, this " festal robe," is lent him by the
gift with which he appears — in the great majority of cases,
by the holy blood of the sacrifice. By this means, therefore,
the priest " covers " him, consecrates him, so that he can
now apply the gift he has for God to the purpose which
he has in his mind.4 Where there is sin, this is, of course,
specially necessary. For, in that case, to the universal un
worthiness of man there is added the special stain caused by
violation of the law. In these cases, therefore, it is specially
necessary that the blood be brought into the presence of God.
Consequently the need of " covering " is due, not to God's
wrath, but rather to God's holiness. And this " covering " by
the priest invariably denotes the bestowal of that consecration
which gives the person access to God, so that he may adore
Him, thank Him, obtain from Him the forgiveness which He
has, in His covenant, promised to him who sacrifices. To
this correspond, in the New Testament, the robes of the
saints, sprinkled and washed in the blood of the Lamb.
6. The regular development of the sacrificial ritual is
shown us by the law, in Numbers, regarding feast-days.5
1 Isa. vi. 5, 7 ; Judg. vi. 22 ff. and often.
2 In fact, every member of the community who is called out for service in the
army must pay, according to Ex. xxx. 11-16, a half-shekel as 1S3, in order, as
it were, to cover his unworthiness.
3 mr\> i&b ; Lev. iv. 26, xix. 22. 4 Cf. Ex. xxx. 20, washing.
5 Num. xxviii. 3 ff.

THE CYCLE OF SACRIFICES. 401
The principal sacrifice is the daily burnt- offering, morning
and evening. On the Sabbath this is doubled. On the new
moons — that is, on the first of each month — there is a
specially solemn burnt-offering, with a sin-offering in addition.
On the feast-days there is a still more elaborate burnt-offering,
which, however, becomes less elaborate as the feast goes on,
with its meal-offering and its drink-offering, and the sin-offer
ing which remains always the same. By adding to these the
burnt-offerings, meal-offerings, drink-offerings, and thank-offer
ings, whether presented as free-will offerings or in fulfilment
of vows, as well as the sin-offerings and the guilt-offerings
called forth by special occasions, one gets a complete picture
of the sacred acts of sacrifice prescribed by the law.
The way in which the various kinds of sacrifice are com
bined is specially instructive. Thus, in the joyous festival at
the dedication of the altar, a burnt-offering and a meal-offering
were combined with a thank-offering. The community assure
their God of their loyalty, gratitude, and joy. In the same
way, when a Nazirite breaks his vow, the guilt-offering,
which he pays as a fine, and the sin-offering, by which he
seeks forgiveness, are both combined with the burnt- offering
as an act of public worship. But when his vow has been
successfully kept to the end, then, in addition to the sin-
offering, by which he asks forgiveness for any offence he may
have unwittingly committed, and the burnt-offering, which is
required as an act of worship, the Nazirite presents to God a
thank-offering, with its proper meal-offering and drink-offering:
for the period of abstinence successfully completed. The
whole theory of sacrifice is shown with admirable clearness in
the consecration of the priests, and in Aaron's installation
into office. The basis of it is the sin-offering. Secret sin
and unworthiness must be expiated before there can be any
question of filling a sacred office. Then, as one already
pardoned, the priest presents a burnt-offering in token of his
loyal homage to the great God of Israel. Only then, when
vol. I. 2 c

402 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
this duty has been discharged, can he give expression to his
gratitude for the high and honourable office God has graciously
bestowed upon him. The thank-offering is presented, and the
community of worshippers gathers to a joyous meal round
the table now dedicated to God.
The day of atonement1 includes the whole cycle of sacred
acts. Whatever of pardonable sin, not expiated by particular
acts of sacrifice, still stains the holy community, and conse
quently also its holy things, has to be taken away from it
on that day. On the 10th day of the seventh month, and
therefore before they begin the joyous feast of Tabernacles,
the whole people must prepare themselves, by fasting and
prayer, for the great atonement. On that day alone does the
law demand "the mortification of the flesh."2 The high
priest does not wear his gorgeous official dress, but the white
robes of purity and consecration.3 The blood that is to
expiate the people's sin must be brought directly into the
presence of God, because the fullest expression must be given
to the thought of atonement, because the innermost sanctuary
must be cleansed from the stains with which it is defiled by
the presence of a sinful people. He first offers a sin-offering
for himself and the people. Enveloped in incense, he carries
the blood before the holy mercy-seat, and besprinkles it
therewith. Thus atonement is made for Israel,, and its sin
is taken away. Its holy things are consecrated ; it stands
there as a holy community in which God can dwell. His
gracious presence in Israel is once more undisturbed. The
second goat, which has been presented by the people for an
expiatory purpose, but is not used as a sacrifice, can now be
dedicated in order to carry the burden of the people's sins,
laid upon it by confession, as being now forgiven and
forgotten, away into the wilderness, beyond the consecrated
circle of the camp, into a land where there is neither salva-
1 Lev. xvi. 1-34.
2 CD: nay, Lev. xvi. 29, 31 (xxiii. 27, 32 ; Num. xxix. 7). 3 Ver. 4.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 403
tion nor mercy. The feeling of horror at the impurity of sin
is so strongly expressed by this ceremony that the persons
who have to do with the burning of the animal sacrificed,
and with the driving away of the living one, are regarded
as polluted, and have to be washed before they regain the
holiness necessary for fellowship with Israel.1
The sin of Israel being thus taken away, the high priest
can again put on his royal robes, in which, symbolical as they
are of the presence of the God of light, he appears among the
community as the representative of their divine King. Then
a burnt-offering, the expression of religious consecration, is
presented; and then, too, is lighted that part of the sin-
offering which is consumed by fire. Last of all, there comes
the feast of Tabernacles, the most joyful of festal seasons.
In order rightly to understand this remarkable ceremonial,
we must first clear the way by considering one particular
question, which, in itself, might be more suitably discussed at
a later stage. On the day of atonement the congregation
brings two goats for the purpose of atonement.2 For these,
lots are cast at the door of the sanctuary, " one lot for
Jehovah, and the other lot for Azazel." 8 The one on which
the lot of Jehovah falls is then slain as a sin-offering.
The other they bring before God " to make atonement over it,
to send it away for Azazel into the wilderness." 4 Then, after
the sins of the congregation have been confessed, this animal
is made the bearer of all the sins of the now reconciled
Israel, and is led away into the wilderness by a man who
is thereby made unclean himself, and there it is let loose
" in a solitary land." 6
What, then, is the meaning here of the enigmatic word
Azazel ? 6 While Philo,7 without intending to give an exact
explanation, paraphrases the passage : " The one goat is given

1 Lev. xvi. 26, 28.

a Ver. 5.

8 Ver. S.

4 Ver. 10.

« Vers. 20-23.

9 bimy.

7 Ed. Mg. i. 498.

404 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
to 'the fugitive creature,' and the lot which it received is
named in the prophecy ' sent away,' because it is persecuted,
expelled, and driven far away by Wisdom," many of the
moderns, following the Versions, have seen in the word Azazel
the name of the animal itself. The goat would in that case
be called " he who is to be got rid of," " to be sent away." x
But it is impossible that this can be the meaning. When one
lot falls to Azazel, it cannot mean that the animal itself gets
the lot ; but it must denote some power to which it is allotted.
Besides, if that were the meaning, the lot itself would deter
mine which goat was to become Azazel. Certainly the
expression " to send it away for Azazel into the wilderness "
cannot mean " to send it into the wilderness so that it becomes
Azazel."2 Still less can the word be taken in an abstract
sense as meaning " for sending away," or even " for a
propitiation." Not only is this contrary to the whole forma
tion of the word, but it would be impossible to understand
how this goat, which does not bring about propitiation by
dying, should be the very one designated as " bringing pro
pitiation," and how a lot " for Jehovah " could be the same as
a lot "for propitiation." To translate the word Azazel by
" remoteness " or " wilderness " is contrary to the laws of
language, and quite irreconcilable with ver. 10.
Consequently we must think of some powerful being to
whom this animal is assigned, and to whom it is sent with
the now forgiven guilt of the reconciled people — not as a
sacrifice, but as a symbolical representation of the fact that
there is no longer any guilt in Israel. This being must be
conceived of as strange and unholy. One's interpretation will
greatly depend, it is true, on the view one takes as to the
time at which this law originated. If the law were a very
old one, containing a remnant of Semitic mythology, then
1 From blV, Jjc.
"• The construction is different in Ex. xxi. 2, ^an? NV

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 405
we should unquestionably have to think of TV, W, and consider
the word to be a form of the Semitic name for the devastating
war-god. In that case we should probably have to assume
that it is not a compound of ?K, the name of God, but a word
with the final syllable b-^-. But if the law dates from the
Exile, there is no reason why the word should not be put into
the series of forms with which the later language was wont to
name angels and demons. In Enoch,1 Azazel occurs along
with Semjaza, Urakibaramgel, AkibSel, Tamiel, Bamuel, Danel,
Ezeq^el, Saraqujll, Asael, etc., as one of the sons of God who
defiled themselves with women ; 2 and he is represented as
bound in the wilderness with iron chains of darkness.3
There has long been 4 an inclination to discover an allusion
here to the Egyptian custom of making similar symbolical con
signments to Set-Typhon, who, as a god of the sea, which
drives back the Nile, was hostile to the Egyptians, and, as the
antagonist of Osiris, was the god of the victorious foreigner.
But that is not probable. Set is not the god of the wilder
ness. He was in the olden time a god highly honoured in
Egypt, and it never became a universal habit to regard him
as an enemy. Azazel is rather an Aramaic (Babylonian ?)
name for an unclean and ungodlike power, which has its
abode in the wilderness, in the accursed land outside the
sacred bounds of the camp. This ceremony is no more
contradictory of pure monotheism than is the doctrine of
Satan or the doctrine of angels. This ordinance exactly
corresponds on a large scale with what is laid down on a
small scale in Lev. xiv. 1 ff. and 49 ff. In the latter passage,
when the leprosy in a house has been cured, of two pigeons
presented as a sin-offering, the one is actually killed, the
other, after being sprinkled with the blood of the sin-offering,
is let go alive, as a sign that the uncleanness of the house has
been taken away. In like manner here, after the great
1 Chap. x. 4. 2 Gen. vi. s The form is evidently Aramaic.
4 Even Spencer, Hengstenberg (following Plutarch).

406 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
propitiation for the people and the sanctuary, one of the
dedicated victims is sent away, laden with the sins of the
people, to the powerful being which has its abode outside " in
the world," beyond the holy land of mercy, not as a sacrifice,
but as a proof that in the holy land there is no longer any
unexpiated guilt. Consequently this animal, too, is unclean.
He who has led it away must purify himself.1 It is a
picture similar to that which the prophet Zechariah sees,2
when, after the acquittal of the high priest, and therefore of
Israel itself, before the angel of Jehovah, sin is carried away
out of the pardoned land into Babylon, the land of sin.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE CLOSING ERA IN THE HISTORY OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION.
1. Although the victories of Alexander the Great altered
the outward condition of Israel, they certainly had no very
great effect on the religious development of the people.
Instead of Persia, Egypt at first became the ruling power ;
but however much Israel seems to have suffered in secular
matters, it nevertheless retained its religious independence.
But what had begun to develop since the time of Ezra, was.
now to show itself more and more distinctly.
The consciousness of inward emptiness, and the feeling that
the Spirit of Jehovah had departed, kept on increasing. No
prophet now arose in Israel.3 The Sacred Scriptures began
to be closed, because, — as Josephus tells us, certainly in the
spirit of this period, — where there was not a succession of
prophets, there was no longer any security for the genuinely
divine character of the Scriptures. The more the Deity was
conceived of as transcendental and inactive, the more purely
supernatural must its revelations and the monuments of them
1 Ver. 26. " Chap. v. 3 Ps. lxxiv. 9.

THE GREEK AGE. 407
have appeared in comparison with the religious literature of
the present. The third division of our Canon, indeed, had
necessarily to remain in a kind of intermediate position, and
cannot have been absolutely closed. Psalms could scarcely
be excluded when once they had got into the liturgy
and become congregational hymns. The admission of the
book of Esther into the Canon is readily explained by the
popular character of its subject, and by its connection with
a favourite festival. The writer of Chronicles, if he does
not belong to an earlier generation, was the classical repre
sentative of the mood in which the ruling classes now looked
at the past history of Israel. Finally, from its mysterious
character and its enigmatic form, Daniel was particularly
suitable for adoption into the Canon, as being a pseudonym
ous book which threw itself far back into antiquity. This
adoption it secured owing to its great affinity with all the
moving forces of this epoch.
With Greek supremacy, however, Greek culture, which was
in many respects superior, began to make its influence felt.
There was an attempt, first from Egypt by intellectual means,
and afterwards from Syria by violence, to make the religious
life of Israel as a nation amalgamate with Hellenic cul
ture, which seemed at that time able to appropriate every
thing. Now the main effect of these efforts was just to
make the Jews cling all the more resolutely to what was
their own. As warriors and martyrs they steeled themselves
to a heroic joy in their faith. Opposition to everything
foreign grew apace ; more and more emphasis was laid
on their own sacred peculiarities. So far, therefore, contact
with Hellenic culture only made Israel more determined to
become purely " Jewish." But at the same time, at least
among the Jewish community in Egypt, where in the second
century the translation of the Holy Scriptures was begun,
the way was prepared for an approach to Greek civilisation
which afterwards had the most important consequences, not

408 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
only for the Jews of the Dispersion, but also for the mother
country. Even in Palestine there was a considerable party
which, it is true, resolutely upheld the princely position of
the high priest, the rights of the Law, and the splendour of
the national sanctuary, but which in other respects did not
reject Hellenic culture, with its joys and its charm, and
would have gladly contented itself with a hierarchy under
an " enlightened " secular government. The origin of the
Sadducees closely resembles that of the Pharisees.
2. The heroic war of independence, in which Israel
victoriously defended the integrity of its religion and morality,
and also gained, for a time at least, civil independence, had
certainly very important effects on the religious life of the
people. The spring of sacred song began to flow afresh.
Faith in the power of the kingdom of God to overcome the
world fired the hearts of the people with a new glow. They
turned to the future with growing hope. Once more their
pictures of the latter days were painted in glowing colours,
and caught in some mysterious way the tone of ancient
prophecy — as is shown by the book of Daniel, and, not very
long after, by the oldest portions of the book of Enoch. A
priestly kingdom having been successfully established which,
like David of old, overthrew with the sword the hostile
neighbour tribes, and compelled them to adopt the forms of
the theocratic State, Messianic thoughts necessarily woke
into newness of life, and the newly-dedicated sanctuary on
Moriah became more and more a centre around which the
faith of those myriads gathered who, in the east and the west,
in the south and the north, were turning to the God of Israel
and waiting for His salvation.
But the Jewish element, too, had to revive, with all its
peculiarities more sharply defined than ever. Secular cul
ture, even the most beautiful and most humane, that of the
Greeks, was known to be at heart hostile to Jehovah. Hence
the national and religious characteristics of Israel stood out

THE AGE BEFORE CHRIST. 409
in sterner and more passionate opposition than before to
everything foreign. And the feuds in Israel itself, which
in those terrible struggles for existence had grown into
deadly enmity, left indelible scars. Full and hearty unity
of faith and practice was gone for ever. Lastly, sacred
forms which had been the watchwords of those grand times,
and for which the noblest had shed their blood, — circumcision,
undesecrated sacrifices, the refusal to eat unclean food, — had
thereby attained an importance among the people which
could not be kept up without the merely external side of
religion being made unduly prominent. The Asmonaean
princes themselves would, we may presume, have been well
content with the position of warlike despots, to whom their
dignity as high priests brought a welcome addition both of
glory and influence ; and the priestly aristocracy were less
keenly alive to Israel's hopes than to the laws on which their
own power rested. But the people and their religious teachers
clung with all the fervour of their souls to the holy forms
and hopes of Israel, and were ever ready to risk for these
their earthly all.
3. In the interval between the close of the Old Testament
Canon and the rise of Christianity the current ran so strongly
in favour of these particular tendencies, that productions
of this age cannot, as a rule, be used as a means of gaining
a direct knowledge of the revealed religion of the Old
Testament. Where the essentials of the old faith are
retained, as in the circles of Palestine coloured by Pharisaism,
it is due to sheer conservatism. Zealous scribes endeavoured
to dig out the treasures of the ancient sacred literature,
certainly not without great arbitrariness of procedure and
many a development foreign to the spirit of the old religion,
as is necessarily the case with a piety growing always more
formal, and in a generation tending to become " theological."
A zeal for legality, fostered by priests who were developing
more and more into a legal caste, helped to hide the spiritual

410 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
elevation of the old religion behind sacred forms, encouraged a
" righteousness '' very different from that which the prophets
taught, and made the grand and suggestive acts of public
worship which the law prescribed into a service still more
magnificent indeed, but at the same time more and more
one of mere outward form and ceremony.
But even in Palestine piety could not escape from influ
ences tending to make the old religion move along lines
which were in many respects alien to its true spirit. Evi
dently the Pharisees themselves, as a school, did not in their
treatment of Scripture and in their eschatology escape the
influence of Hellenistic development. And the Essenes en
grafted still more firmly on the ancient stock of their
holy religion an ascetic mysticism utterly foreign to it.
Their decided spiritualism completely volatilises the essential
freshness of the Old Testament religion, just as there is in
the mysticism of all ages a tendency to modify doctrine and
thus remove the barriers that separate historical religions.
But least of all do the Sadducees agree with the religion
which reached its highest development in the prophetic age.
By their refusal to acknowledge the national and religious
kernel in the religion of Israel, and by their restricting them
selves to the development of legal morality, they approximated
of necessity to the higher forms of heathenism. And since
the pious among the people retained their connection with
the religion of their fathers in the long run only through the
medium of theology, they must necessarily have adopted many
elements alien to the true spirit of Old Testament religion.1
But in the Greek world, and especially in Egypt, the old
religion underwent a still more decided modification, through
the influence of a composite Greek philosophy, which, in turn,
was not without effect on the mother country. By allegorical
use of the Greek translation of the Scriptures, the letter of
which was vouched for as correct by a doctrine of magical
1 Cf. Wellhausen, Pharisceer.

THE HIGH PRIEST. 411
inspiration, the secrets of a speculative philosophy predomin
antly Greek were read into the Old Testament. Belief in a
God unconnected with actual Being, except through the
" powers " comprised in " the Word," took the place of the
vigorous and healthy naturalism of the Old Testament. The
body, being looked upon as the original seat of sin, was
despised. This system was rounded off by a spiritualistic
doctrine of immortality, and by a monkish withdrawal from
the world. And these principles were sown broadcast over
the Jewish world by a body of scribes both numerous and
gifted. This period accordingly, although historically of the utmost
importance for understanding the soil in which early Christi
anity found itself, and with which it had to reckon, is not in
any sense a stage in the development of the revealed religion
of the Old Testament. Anything new which would be a real
advance in the spirit of the old, this religion is no longer able
to produce. And yet it is no longer sufficiently strong and
vigorous to keep, whole and pure, what has been already won.
Beligious zeal is "not according to knowledge." The great
merits of a religious and moral kind, which distinguish several
of the books of this age, do not compensate for the uncertainty
which everywhere pervades them in regard to the real essence
of the Old Testament religion. The two tendencies at work
in Israel since the eighth century, and always becoming, since
the days of Ezra, more sharply defined, are now accentuated,
and point clearly to their respective goals, to Christianity and
to the Talmud.
4. The only one of the old sacred figures prominent in
this age is the high priest; and he enjoys a dignity and
influence quite new. In one respect, it is true, he is not
what the ideal of the law pictures him. Hence important
decisions are postponed till there shall stand up a high
priest with Urim and Thummim,1 that is, till the high
1 Ezra ii. 63 ; Neh. vii. 65.

412 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
priest's office shall regain its ancient gift of prophecy. In
point of fact, however, the high priest had for the people a much
greater importance than ever before. The people recognised
him both as their chief and as their representative with God.
And worthily did he embody a present salvation when, in his
sacred robes of office, he bestowed upon the people the blessing
of their reconciled covenant-God.1 After the struggle for
independence the warlike high priests were, as kings and
priests, the real masters in Jerusalem "the holy." And
ingenious speculations were tacked on by Hellenism to the
idea of a mediator, which the law had embodied in the high
priest. For it the " Word " of God became the high priest of
the universe.2
In this age the figure of the prophet disappears from view.
In the Persian age one could already discern a gradual decay of
prophecy. And it is not improbable that artificial imitation of
the prophetic style of writing did not cease till Daniel's time.
But, in the sense of the olden time, such writers were not
prophets at all. They are in reality scribes of a peculiarly
imaginative cast of mind. And though the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah presuppose prophets and prophetesses in the newly-
revived Jerusalem, — and these, it is true, such as follow for
pay, in the interest of their respective parties, the old profession
of false prophecy,3 — that is neither a trustworthy historical
account nor one of any importance for the " Greek " age. Ere

1 Jes. Sir. 1. 1 ff.
2 Philo (ed. Gel., Frankf. 1691), 466 B, 509 B (where the edition of Mangey
is not specially mentioned, it is always this edition of Philo which is meant,
as I prefer, for external reasons, to use it wherever no importance is attached to
a more exact development of Philo's system).
8 Cf. the reproach in Neh. vi. 7 and the statement in vi. lOff. The question
whether this judgment is also, as Graf thinks, an expression of pique at a
resistance offered, not without justification, to the reform, conceived in a
Levitical spirit, which Ezra and Nehemiah carried through by force, may be
passed over here without discussion. But certainly he is right in this, that, in
a priestly state with the Pentateuch finally closed, prophecy had practically no
place at all. (The statements in Josephus, Bell. Jud. L 2. 8, ii. 8. 12, iii. 8. 3 ;
Antiq. xiii. 10. 17, are of a different character.)

PROPHET AND SCRIBE. 413
long the days arrive when it is said, " We see not our signs,
there is no more any prophet ; neither is there among us any
that knoweth how long."1 The Maccabean age waits, with
its institutions, for a trustworthy prophet who is to give the
final decision.2 And Daniel, with the literature to which his
book gave rise, however high he may stand as an inspired
guide, in an age of wild commotion, above the ordinary scribe,
is not a prophet at all, but an apocalyptic writer. According
to the book itself, Daniel is indeed represented as endowed
" with the spirit of the holy Gods ; " 3 but in his case, as in
Joseph's, everything really happens through dreams and their
interpretation. Indeed, it is from God that the heathen king
himself, like Pharaoh of Egypt, gets his significant dreams.4
Consequently the dress is artificial and transparent. The idea
of a vision has already become so mechanical that this book
thinks that it requires to be specially mentioned that Daniel's
companions did not see the vision along with him.5 Clearly, the
whole book is an artificial work, dated back to an earlier age.
The sopher,6 or scribe, now steps into the place of the
prophet. In earlier days the word denotes the civil officer,
next in importance to the rnaskir.7 It then describes the
professional dexterity of the " ready writer," who is specially
skilled in the practice of his art.8 In Jeremiah the false
prophets, too, are described by this word as writers.9 On the
other hand, Baruch, Jeremiah's disciple, gets the same title,
because he wrote down the prophecies of Jeremiah to the
prophet's dictation, and then read them aloud.10 But gradually
the word gets the more definite meaning of scribe, "one
learned in the Scriptures." In this sense it is even referred
back to patriarchal times, for Enoch appears, in the book
which bears his name, as " a writer of righteousness," who
1 ps# lxxiY. 9. 2 1 Mace. iv. 46, ix. 27, xv. 41.
3 Dan. iv. 5, 6, 15, v. 11, 14 (x. 11, 19).
4 Dan. i. 17, vii.-x. ; cf. ii.-iv. 6 Dan. x. 7.
e -,BD. 7 E.g. 1 Kings iv. 2f. (with T3TD).
8 Ps. xiv. 2, T>TO "I3D- 9 Jer- viii- 8- W Jer- xxxvi- 26-

414 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
announces their doom to the fallen angels, and, at their
request, draws up their petition for mercy.1 And the phrases
of the older books are used in a new sense. Thus Ezra is
called " a ready scribe in the law of Moses," 2 i.e. an accom
plished rabbi, a man specially well acquainted with the Law.
Since the time of Ezekiel and Zechariah prophecy had often
shown a natural tendency to pass over into an acquaintance
with Scripture. And in the artificial post-exilic prophecies
there are still clearer proofs of this transition. The larger the
Holy Scriptures became, the more writings there were by men
of outstanding authority, and specially inspired of God, the
more must the prophets that succeeded them, even when true
prophets, have felt constrained to present these treasures to
the people in a new form. Of the vanity that characterises
authors, and their itching after " originality," these men of
God knew nothing. The prophets of Israel desired nothing
more than to communicate to the people the will of Jehovah
as they knew it. Wherever they found that will well
expressed they gladly appropriated their predecessors' work.
And since the prophetic spirit could not but grow weaker,
the more the religion of the people got a one-sided Levitical
stamp, the more marked did this want of spiritual independence
become. But as long as true prophets continued to appear,
this weakness was always kept within certain bounds. How
ever joyfully men might draw from the sacred wells of the
older Scriptures, they still knew that they were entitled to
speak words direct from God, words which, being from the
same source as the older, were equally authoritative. To
prove the truth of their own declarations they needed no
written text. And they were not afraid to deal freely with
Scripture, and even to controvert individual misleading
expressions in it, and to correct them.
It necessarily became quite different when, in Israel, tha
1 In Dillmann's translation, xii. 8ff., xcii. 1.
2 Ezra vii. 6, 10 ; Neh. viii. 1, 9.

PROPHET AND SCRIBE. 415
consciousness of a prophetic call was felt only at rare intervals
or not at all. The change certainly was not sudden, but it
was inevitable. Even on Ezra the scribe the gracious hand of
God still rests. But all it now means is the providence and
help of God ; it is no longer the power which of old threw
the prophets into fits of ecstasy.1 As soon as men ceased
to feel the spirit which they discerned in the Scriptures as
a living force within themselves, they could no longer use
these Scriptures with freedom, or place anything of their own
beside them as of equal authority. The written word had the
seal of the divine spirit of revelation. It was therefore
authoritative. Hence the pious took God's instructions from
Scripture as from a spring rising far above them. Any word
or thought of their own was only right in so far as it could
find support in these Scriptures, either direct or by way of
inference. To contradict Scripture became something quite
inconceivable. At the utmost, one declaration of Scripture
might be modified and explained by comparison with another.
Thus out of the prophet there grew the scribe, a man who no
longer asks to be believed in virtue of a personal commission,
but solely because of the acknowledged authority of the Holy
Scripture upon which he bases his utterance. That scribes
were needed was a proof that, so far as the Old Testament was
concerned, religion had come to maturity. A religion which
is still developing has prophets, one that is complete has only
scribes. In like manner, and just about the same time in the
domain of Greek culture, poetry is gradually passing over
into philology and philosophy into scholasticism. Christianity
alone, by adjudging the Divine Spirit to all its adherents,
provided they are really such, permits the scribe to continue
a prophet also.
In the memory of Israel, the great typical figure of this
class is Ezra, the priest and scribe.2 The two offices are
1 Ezra vii. 9, 28, viii. 18, 22, 31 ; Neh. ii. 8, 18.
s Ezra vii. 6, 10 ; Neh. viii. 1, 9.

416 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
closely connected. Ezra's untiring efforts to build up, by
means of Holy Scripture, a nation that would continue, in
his sense of the words, a truly holy nation, make him the
most outstanding figure in the later spiritual history of
Israel. But a prophet in the real sense he is not, even in
the view of that age. " He had set his heart to seek the law
of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and
judgments."1 A special regard for the sacred statutes and
ordinances runs through his whole work.2 The theme of his
sermons is the ancient sacred history.3 He uses the " book
of Moses," which was written by the servants of God, the
prophets.4 The new covenant, into which he makes the
people solemnly enter, deals almost exclusively with the
Levitical side of the Mosaic law.6 But it is only in the great
schools of the Greek age that the scribe begins really to
flourish and grow to full maturity.
Henceforth the figure of the scribe does not lend itself to
any properly typical religious use. For it is not a figure by
which a religion can be either developed or completed. On
the contrary, it readily becomes, from the nature of the case,
a type of opposition to the true spirit of growth in a religion ;
because the work of a scribe is simply to hold fast what has
been received, to work out in a mechanical way and definitely
settle its religious contents. Nevertheless, from his personal
importance, and from the tendencies of the age being all so
akin to his spirit, the figure of Ezra actually came to be
idealised by the popular imagination. Though at first rightly
1 Ezra vii. 10.
2 Ezra ii. 36 f., 42, 65, 69, 70, iii. 8, 10, 12, vii. 7, viii. 15 ff, 24ffi, x. 18.
3 Neh. viii. ; cf. ix. 4 Ezra iii. 2, vi. 18, ix. 11 ; Neh. viii. 1.
8 Neh. ix. 38, x. 29 ff. Kuenen rightly lays emphasis on the fact that the
lines on which Ezra's reforms proceeded necessarily gave the scribe, from the
nature of the case, the upper hand even of the priest. For the living interests
of the people were less bound up with the religious acts performed in the temple
than with the network of laws which was spread over the whole life of the
people, and which, being contained in Scripture, required the hand of the scribe
to unravel it.

PROPHET AND SCRIBE. 417
represented as the person who finally succeeded in refounding
the State on the basis of the Levitical law, Ezra with his com
rade Nehemiah soon appears as the first and only founder of
the second Jerusalem.1 Next he becomes the prophet
Malaehi,2 and finally the wonderful head of the scribes, and
the inspired restorer of Holy Scripture and of the seventy
mystic books, the man who is taken up into Paradise like
Enoch and Elijah.3
The art of the scribe was, it is probable, practised mainly
in Levitical circles.4 This class becomes always the stronger,
the nearer we come to the close of the Old Testament
development ; and at last it gains the upper hand even of
the priesthood. In Daniel, the prophet himself is already
represented as also a scribe.5 And Hitzig seems to me to be
right in taking the DJP7'3B>p of this book,6 not in the usual
sense of " the intelligent among the people," but as meaning
" those who make the people intelligent." 7 For a comparison
of the passage with B. J. liii. 11, and the expression, "those
who make the people righteous," point decidedly in this direc
tion. Then the book already knows of a definite class of such
"teachers of the law." Qoheleth is thinking of the schools
of the scribes when he complains that of making many books
there is no end.8 And the prologue to Jesus the son of
Sirach relates of the author of the book that he had devoted
himself to reading the law, the prophets, and the other books
of the fathers, and had had enough of practice in it. Finally,
Jesus the son of Sirach himself shows a special predilection
for the scribes as a class, and is anxious to have them kept
1 2 Maco. i. 18 ff. (also in Enoch ; cf. Ewald, iv. 209 ff).
2 Targum to Mai. i. 1. 3 According to Ezra iv.
4 Neh. viii. 7, 13. The Levites expound the law that has been read aloud
Ezra instructs the heads of the people in it
5 £)an. ix. 2. * Dan. xi. 33 ff., xii. 3.
7 Ps. xxxii. 8, ci. 2 ; Prov. xxi. 11. In the book itself TOb'H oixmrs mostly
as intransitive, i. 4, .17, xi. 35, xii. 10 (ix. 13, 25) ; but, on the other hand, it
is transitive in ix. 22.
8 Eccles. xii. 12,
VOL. I. 2d

418 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
separate from the other classes.1 But the time when the
scribes were at the zenith of their power is really much later
than this. It was only the labours by which the Canon was
fixed, and the studies out of which the Mishna and the Gemara
arose, that gave this most peculiar figure its characteristic
stamp, and made it, from the Christian point of view, it is
true, not a type of the Bedeemer, but a type of the enemies
of the true fulfilment of salvation. The heroic scribes of the
final struggle against Borne show us figures which in them
selves might well have had the power to embody, as did the
Maccabaean saints, ay even as did the suffering servants of
God during the Babylonian exile, the highest thoughts of the
religion of redemption. But these men neither had nor
claimed to have the creative spirit of the olden time. They
are drier, more passionate and fanatical than the prophets,
whose inward assurance is based on the spirit and not on a
sacred text. The spiritual horizon of these workers is
bounded by the formulae of legal casuistry. They have no
lack of beautiful moral and religious thoughts.2 But they
live not in these, but in the sacred forms of the law as ex
pounded and " hedged in " by themselves.
5. Naturally, by the close of this period, Israel had fully
gained, in regard to the Sacred Scriptures, the object that
had been aimed at ever since the time of Ezra. The law of
Moses, made accessible to the people by being read in public,
regulated all the arrangements of daily life.3 The book of
Ezra itself refers to a word of the Lord by the mouth of
Jeremiah which had to receive fulfilment.4 Daniel makes
the writings of Jeremiah the subject of study ; the Thorah
and the other Scriptures are for him divine authorities of
long standing.6 The statutes of the law become the object of

1 Jes. Sir. xxxviii. 24 ff. , xxxix. 2 Pirke Aboth.
3 After the pattern of 2 Kings xxiii. 23 ff. ; cf. Ezra iii. 2ff., vi. 18 ; Neh.
viii. Iff.
'' Ezra i. 1. •> Dan. ix 2, 11.

HOLY SCRIPTURE. 419
the most earnest study and of the greatest love.1 Chronicles
already mentions the Psalter as Davidic and the Thorah as
Mosaic, and thinks of the latter as a text-book in the hands of
the Levites.2 The stories in the Pentateuch, from that of the
creation downwards, are made use of, from the standpoint of
the scribe pure and simple, for purposes of edification.3 In a
word, one notices a strong inclination to regard Israel's literary
inheritance as unique and inviolable, and therefore as having no
connection with any of the religious literature of recent origin.
By the middle of the second century this was an accom
plished fact. Jesus the son of Sirach already attributes the
pre-eminent position of the great men of the Old Testament
to their being the writers of the Canon. The twelve minor
prophets he already mentions as a unity. The Chokmah
literature he puts into close connection with the law-book,
and the sacred history he uses for homiletic purposes.4
Several chapters of the Wisdom of Solomon are really nothing
more than a commentary on the Pentateuch ; 5 while, on the
other hand, it builds up theological dogmas on Scripture texts
after the fashion of the rabbinical schools.6 Baruch already
quotes texts of Scripture as proof-passages.7 In Tobit are
found the laws regarding festival journeys and marriage,
applications of sacred history, and quotations from Amos and
Jonah.8 Judith gives us explanations of sacred history
already worked out in the style of legends, e.g. the flight of
Abraham on account of the idolatry of his family.9 The first
book of the Maccabees, which regards " the burning of the
1 Ezra vii. 10 ; Ps. cxix. (e.g. 1, 5, 8, 12, 16, 20, 23, 26, 30, 33-35, 40, 44,
47 f., 54-56, 60 f., 66, 70, 77, 80-83, 176, etc.) ; cf. Ps. lxxviii. 5, Ixxxi. 6, 8f., i
2 2 Chron. v. 13, vii. 3, 6, xx. 21, xxiii. 18, xxv. 4, xxix. 25, 30, xvii. 9.
3 Ps. xcv. 8-11, cv. 8-45, cvi. 8 to end, cxiv., cxxxvi. 6ff.
4 Jes. Sir. xvi. 7ff, xvii. Iff, xxiv. 32 ff, xxv. 32, xxxvi. 14, xxxviii. 5,
xl. 10, xliv. -xlix. incl. (xlix. 12).
6 Wisd. Sol. x., xi., xvi., xvii., xviii. 6 Wisd. Sol. ii. 23, xi. 17.
7 Bar. ii. 2, 21 ff., 29 ff.
8 Tobit i. 7, vii. 14, viii. 6ff.; cf. ii. 6, xiv. 6ff.
8 Judith v. 6ff., viii. 19 ff.

420 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Holy Scriptures " 2 as the climax of the persecutions, declares
that the Scriptures in the hands of Israel are a sufficient
consolation in distress,2 tells how at prayer these were
spread out before God,3 and delights to put the sacred stories
to homiletical uses.4 The second book of the Maccabees
takes the term " sacred book " in a very external sense,5
and often comments, as does the third book also, on the
ancient stories.6 In the book of Enoch, which, on the other
hand, regards knowledge and the art of writing as among
the original causes of sin,7 Holy Scripture is imitated in a
fashion very far from independent. The chief patterns that
keep hovering before his mind's eye are Ezekiel, Jeremiah,
and Isaiah.8 Time after time this book takes as its text
the stories in Gen. i.— vi.9 The Jewish Sibyl uses the Old
Testament just as a scribe would do.10
But it was especially among the community in Egypt under
the influence of the Platonic doctrine of inspiration that a
constantly increasing respect was paid to the Holy Scriptures.
They are raised more and more above the region of human
activity and limitation. Their contents are represented as
the pure word of God. Their authors must have been like
harps, mere instruments for divine influence to play upon.11
The sacred letter begins to be reverenced in a way which
makes it possible to transfer even to its Greek translation the
most extravagant ideas as to special action on the part of
God.12 And it was precisely this over-estimate of the letter
1 1 Mace. i. 59 ff. 3 1 Mace. xn. 9.
3 1 Mace. iii. 48. • 1 Mace. ii. 52 ff, iv. 9, 30, vii. 16.
6 2 Mace. viii. 23.
6 2 Mace. vii. 6, xii. 15, xv. 9, 22 ; 3 Mace. ii. 4ff, vi. 4ff.
7 Enoch lxix. 10 f. 8 Enoch xiv. 8ff., xciv., xcv.
f Enoch xxiv., xxv., xxxii. 3ff.
10 Cf. Hilgenfeld, Jud. Apok. p. 82.
11 Philo, ii. 516 A, 517 D, 518 B, 659 B, C.
12 The legend about the letter of Aristeas; cf. Philo, 657 Eff. ; Josephus,
Antiq. xii. 2 ff. In the fourth book of Ezra the working out of the doctrine of
inspiration and of legends is worthy of notice, xiv. 22 ff. ; cf. iii. 4ff., 20 ff.,
iv. 30, vi. 6, 38 ff., 49, vii. 48.

APOCALYPSE AND PROPHECY. 421
which in turn made it possible to discover behind the letter,
by allegorical forms and rules, hidden meanings utterly foreign
to the literal sense.1 A similar view of Scripture is also dis
cernible in the well-known maxim of the Palestinian rabbi,
"Be discreet in judging, train many scholars, put a hedge
round the law." 2 In the time of Jesus this view was found
wherever the word of Scripture was treated theologically.
The spiritually destitute age felt the power of the Divine
Spirit in the Holy Scriptures, and, being distinctly conscious
of its own weakness, it made, out of books from every page of
which the spirit of true religion breathed, an idol for its own
spiritual poverty. " For the laity the priest is becoming more
and more the only guide, and for the priest himself the sacred
book and the sacred letter" (Ewald).
6. Prophecy through the medium of a scribe we term
Apocalyptic.3 Prophecy did not change into this new form all of a sudden.
Already in the visions of Ezekiel and Zechariah the pictures
are, without doubt, mainly artistic, produced by a conscious
effort of the imagination, and reference is, of set purpose,
made to earlier prophecies. But this tendency is evidently
worked out in an altogether different fashion in Daniel, the
only canonical book which is of an apocalyptic character.
An apocalypse is a thoroughly arbitrary form of art.
It is the product of a time of sore distress, when people
are loth to acknowledge ignorance of the day and hour of
deliverance. Hence, as there is no longer any direct prophetic
certainty as to the divine will, they seek to get from Holy
Scripture, by clever exposition, calculation, and combination,
some clue to those judgments which they feel approaching.
The apocalyptic seer lets the history of God's people, as it
has developed down to his own day, pass before his spiritual
1 Philo, 116 A, 359 E, 576 C, 1087 ff., 1190. * Pirke Aboth i. 1 ff.
3 Smend, " Ueber jiidischs Apokalyptik " (Stade, Zeitschr. f. alttest. Wiss.
v. 223).

422 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
eye in a series of purposely mysterious pictures, and thus gets,
as it were, a " philosophy of history " from the standpoint of
Old Testament prophecy. But in order that this delineation
of history may be conceived of as a vision, as the form
requires, pseudonymity is almost indispensable. An ancient
name is taken, especially one famous in sacred legend, such
as Daniel,1 Enoch, Ezra, Moses, the Sibyls, etc. The his
torical panorama, with all its details, is then .represented as
a vision of the future unrolling itself before the eye of some
such prophet of the olden days.2 To the initiated, at the
time such books were composed, the various details were, of
course, clear and simple, and easily indicated the author's real
meaning. To the uninitiated they remained, as was intended,
sealed books ; and to after generations, able only to guess at
those details, they often present problems barely soluble.
But where the actual future begins for the author, the infer
ences from the historical development are of a very general
character, but accompanied with definite dates as far as possible
in accordance with old prophetic sayings. And as there is
no direct prophetic certainty, but only calculation and inference,
the picture of the future is wont to rise into the region of the
mystical, the superhuman, the supernatural.
To the superficial eye, it is true, the power of prophecy
seems stronger in the Apocalypses than anywhere else. The
intentional obscurity of the pictures, the mass of details hinted
at, in all of which the form of vision or ecstasy is invariably
maintained, — the wide outlook on the world of history, as was
quite natural in times when Israel's destiny could be settled
only in connection with the destiny of world-wide empires, —
all this produces the impression of a particularly high-pitched
prophetic activity. But in reality it is just the reverse.
Those details belong to the past, and are purposely handled in
1 Ezek. xiv. 14, xxviii. 3.
2 Gen. xlix.; Num. xxiv. ; Deut. xxxii., xxxiii.. etc., c,re already pieces of
this character.

THE DISPERSION. 423
such a way that the initiated easily recognise them as such.
For us, it is true, they are all the more frequently enigmas,
not merely because we do not know the individual occurrences
of those days, but also because we are not aware how the
authors dealt, for example, with chronology, and what view
of the events in question was then taken in pious Jewish
circles. The form of the vision, the mysterious emphasising
of infallibility and inviolability, are mere drapery, and are
quite in keeping with the pseudonymity. But the actual
sketches of the future are simply imaginative and magnified
reproductions of sacred prophetic utterances, or else con
clusions drawn from them in the spirit of theological pedantry.
Daniel is the true pioneer and the permanent model of all his
successors.

CHAPTEE XX.
SPECIAL PHENOMENA OF THE LATEST OLD TESTAMENT AGE
WHICH POINT FORWARD.
1. After the Exile a very considerable number of Israelites
had remained behind in the east and the north, not possess
ing sufficient faith to stake their all on the doubtful future of
the new Jerusalem, but, nevertheless, by no means inclined to
give up connection with the people of God altogether. There
was also, especially since the Greek period, a constantly
growing number of Jews scattered all over the then civilised
world engaged in trade and commerce, and some also in
slavery. All of these men were kept in touch with the real
centre of the holy people by means of the temple, the sacrifices
and taxes, the pilgrimages, and the Holy Scriptures. Now
these Jews of the Dispersion had in many respects an im
portant influence on the development of religion. In the first
place, they formed a natural bridge by which the true religion

424 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
could spread among the various nations of the world. In
these circumstances many a rough idiosyncracy which made
the national exclusiveness of Israel repellent to foreigners
got smoothed down. Under the influence of the full culture
of that age, monotheism and a pure morality necessarily
became for them the central thoughts of their religious con
sciousness. And whatever spiritual influence arose among
the Jews, whether a new philosophy of religion or a new
Messianic message, it had access at once to the great stage on
which the drama of the world was being enacted. In the second
place, a people was thus spread all over the world which, amid
the most diverse political and social surroundings, acknow
ledged a single spiritual centre. A kingdom of God was thus
prefigured which would have no material power, and which
would not force its members even into outward union. Thus
amid manifold other differences there arose a unity of faith
and morals. A world-wide religion of the true God was in
course of preparation. It was already possible to say that
among every people in every clime prayer was being offered
up to the true God. That may well be the meaning of the
beautiful passage : " For from the rising of the sun even unto
the going down of the same my name is great among the
nations ; and in every place incense is offered unto my name,
and a pure offering : for my name is great among the nations,
saith the Lord of hosts."1 The interpretation which takes
these words as a prophecy is quite untenable. Again, from
the whole tenor of Malachi's thought, and because the name
of the covenant God is specially mentioned,2 the idea that
the prophet is describing all heathen sacrifices as offered, in
1 Mai. i. 11.
2 Baudissin has lately explained it thus : "Among all nations there are true
worshippers of God whose service, although they worship God here under one
name and there under another, is given only to the true God, i.e. to Jehovah"
(p. 172). But such a conception appears to me to be too far beyond the horizon
of this prophet, and neither Zech. xiv. 9 nor B. J. xxvi. 13 presents, as Hitzig
thinks, any analogy to it. Both passages speak of the Israelitish belief in
Jehovah's sovereign rights over the earth, not of the value of heathen worship.

PROSELYTES. 425
the last resort, to the one true God, however beautiful and
grand it is in itself, cannot be meant here. The prophet is
pointing out, in contrast to the selfishness and petty avarice
of the inhabitants of the Holy Land in regard to sacrifices,
that far more valuable sacrifices are being offered all round
about to the great God who is proving Himself more and
more the God of the nations.
Most important of all was that community of the Dispersion
which, in Egypt under the suzerainty of the Ptolemies, gradu
ally rose to greater and greater prosperity. There Judaism
came into contact with Greek culture. Shem and Japheth
intermarried. There the Greek Bible originated. There a
philosophy of religion grew up which transferred to the Old
Testament religion, by means of allegorical exposition of the
Scriptures, which it held to be magically inspired, the abstract
philosophical conception of a spiritual God, and His manifesta
tion in the Word and in the powers, as well as the character
istics of monkish ascetism, the dualistic view of the material
world, and many other ideas of the composite Greek philosophy
of those days. But this is not the place to deal fully with such
questions. Suffice it to say, that this was a grand preparation
for the breaking down of national barriers, and for the religion
of Israel being transformed into a world-wide religion. It
foreshadowed a Messianic kingdom without political glory.
2. That foreigners should live among the people of Israel
and enjoy certain specified privileges in common with them,
is not an absolutely new phenomenon.1 In ancient times,
indeed, it is not so much a real religious change that is
thought of, as the simple fact of their becoming citizens and
adopting the customs of Israel. The middle books of the
Pentateuch refer, in most cases, to very late relations. But
even the legislation of Deuteronomy pays attention to these
1 Older literature : Leyrer in Herzog's Realencyclopddie, art. "Proselyten."
The treatises of Slevogt, Miiller, and Danz in Ugolino, Thesaurus antiq. sacr.
vol. xxii.

426 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
" strangers within Israel's gates." * Such persons were not
subject to all the restrictions of an Israelite, neither did they
enjoy all his privileges. But if one may judge from the later
development, they were bound to obey the civil laws, the laws
in regard to cleanness and uncleanness, the general regula
tions as to sacrifice, the Sabbath law, and the laws prohibiting
idolatry, blasphemy, and "abominable acts." They had the
right to sacrifice, were entitled to every facility for carrying on
business, and were, along with the poor and the Levites,2 most
warmly commended to the protection and the charity of the
public. Such strangers could in time, if there were no special
national or physical hindrances in the way, acquire the full
rights of citizenship. When they had done so by being cir
cumcised, they naturally had all the privileges of an Israelite,
e.g. the right to celebrate the Passover.3
In the post-exilic period, however, these relations became of
greater importance, and the laws by which they were regulated
were probably much more exact and definite. The dis
persion of Israel necessarily made the heathen nations better
acquainted with the true religion; and this, combined with
the waning influence of the old national religions, also made
them inclined in many cases to adopt this religion. In
supplements to the Old Testament, as, for instance, in Bel
and the Dragon, but especially in pseudonymous productions
which appeared under old heathen names like Orpheus and
the Sibyl, Hellenistic Judaism began to attack heathenism
and to seek proselytes. The exilic Isaiah in his day takes
notice of the aliens " who join themselves to Israel."4 Those
1 Deut. v. 14.
' Dent. xiv. 29, xvi. 11, xxiv. 19, xxvi. 11 ; cf. Ex. xii. 19, xx. 10, xxiii. 12 ;
Lev. xvi. 29, xvii. 8, xviii. 26, xx. 2, xxii. 18, xxiii. 22, xxiv. 16 ff, xxv. 6 ;
Num. xv. 14, 29.
3 Ex. xii. 48. Ancient Israel was not by any means a people that kept
itself very pure nationally. The history of the tribe of Judah, especially,
proves how readily, in earlier days, whole families belonging to another tribe
were taken in ; cf. e.g. Josh. xiv. 14.
* bii nta, B. J. lvi. 3, 6 ; Ezek. xlvii. 22 ff.

PROSELYTES. 427
who fear God are mentioned, in the Psalms, soon after the
return.1 The post-exilic prophets show that proselytism is
growing.2 But it was principally after the Maccabean wars of
independence that proselytes began to increase in importance.
In addition to the ever-growing number of conversions
through the power of the truth,8 the conversion, by force,
of the neighbouring peoples now commenced. The Idumeans
were compelled by John Hyrcanus, and the Itureans by
Aristobulus, to adopt circumcision. Pella was destroyed by
Alexander, because it refused to accept Judaism.4
The two ways by which the Pentateuch, as we have just
shown, allows strangers to enter into friendly relations with
the religion of Israel, were afterwards more exactly defined by
the Babbis. Those who become real children of the covenant
by baptism and circumcision are called " proselytes proper," 6
and undertake the full observance of the law. The others
are not circumcised, but have to pledge themselves to submit
to the more general ordinances of the law, as these have been
more definitely mentioned above. Only on these terms can
Israel tolerate their presence.6 For the Babbis, naturally, the
act of becoming a proselyte is no longer a semi-civil trans
action, but a religious act of fundamental importance — a new
birth.7 This increase in the number of proselytes is of great
importance for the religion of Israel. Although a narrow
barrier of external forms still limited the full right to citizen
ship in the kingdom of God, the idea of that kingdom was, at
least, being gradually freed from purely national limitations.
1 Ps. cxv. 11, 13, cxviii. 4. * Zech. ii. 11 ; cf. Ezra vi. 21 ; Neh. x. 28.
3 Joseph, c. Ap. ii. 10.
4 Joseph. Ant. xiii. 9. 1, 11. 3, 15. 4 ; xv. 7. 9 ; cf. Bell. Jud, xiv. 5. 3 ;
De Vita, xxiii.
'¦> p-ijjn i-|j. (The baptism of proselytes is mentioned by Justin c. Tryph.,
ed. Otto, ii. 48 f.)
6 On this subject, cf. Schiirer, Gesch. d. jud. Volkes im Z. J., 2nd ed.,
ii. 548 ff.
7 Talmud, Mass. Zenamoth ii.

428 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Henceforth it was not descent from the patriarchs according to
the flesh, but the religion of Israel and its forms, which was
the necessary condition of being a child of God, a member of
the kingdom of heaven. There had to rise before the eyes
of the saints a community of God all over the world ; and that
no longer a national Messianic kingdom, to which the other
peoples are submissively to do homage, but a Messianic
kingdom of a religious character, the membership of which,
with full possession of every privilege, is open to all who
accept the true religion. All the healthy impulses of this
age point to a bursting of Old Testament barriers, and to the
national religion becoming universal.
3. In these days the temple, although it had no sacred ark
of the covenant, was yet the object of a love and a pride, such
as the people as a whole had never lavished on the temple of
Solomon. Its pre-eminence as the one legitimate place of
worship for the people was now absolutely uncontested.1 In
the time of the second temple, sacred songs and psalms reached
the acme of perfection, not, indeed, in respect of originality and
vigour, but as regards delicacy of form, smooth and pleasing
diction, and a highly edifying tone.2 But, meanwhile, another
kind of holy place was coming into use and gradually growing
in importance. Even during the Exile dire necessity and the
want of a temple had forced the Israelites to hold religious
meetings beside streams of running water, where prayers
were offered, acts of purification performed, and the common
edification promoted. Whether such meetings ' had already
regular forms of worship and special buildings, may well be
doubted, At least the passages from Ezekiel, which are so
explained, may just as well be understood to refer to an
arrangement purely personal to the prophet.8 But when the

1 The temple of Onias never became so famous as to rival the holy place
on Mount Zion.
2 Cf. e.g. the Psalms with the inscription " A Song of Ascents.''
3 Ezek. viii. 1, xiv. 1, xx. 1.

TEMPLE AND SYNAGOGUE. 429
exiles returned the custom was kept up and gradually
extended. Houses of prayer were built in which the congregation met
on the Sabbath day for the purpose of reading the Scriptures
together and engaging in prayer. It had long been customary
to pray at stated hours,1 and to turn the face, while in the
act of praying, towards Jerusalem.2 The habit of reading the
law had been introduced by Ezra.3 These houses of prayer,
or synagogues,4 were very plain; not splendid places of worship,
but merely congregational meeting-houses. Nothing more was
needed than a book-press, a pulpit, seats for the congregation,
and lamps ; and the president, the elders, the beadle,6 in a word,
the officials, were freely elected from the congregation without
regard to Levitical descent or class privilege. It is of such
synagogues that the author of Ps. lxxiv. speaks when he
mourns over the burning down of these holy places all over
the land.6 Everywhere among the Dispersion these houses
of prayer were the centres of religious life.
The important bearing of this arrangement on religion is
self-evident. It was not merely that there had been dis
covered, quite apart from the regular centre of worship, an
external means of awakening a living religious life in the
community. It was the actual beginning of a method of
looking at the public worship of God quite different from that
of the ancient people. Public worship was understood by
ancient Israel, as by all ancient nations, to mean sacrifices,
solemn feasts, and acts of asceticism. It was different now.
For the great majority of the people, in their new surround
ings, real religious work took quite another form. For all
who lived at a distance from Jerusalem, the temple, with its
1 Dan. vi. 11 ; cf. Ps. lv. 18.
2 1 Kings viii. 48 ; Dan. vi. 10. " Neh. viii.
* nDSSn'^nS, <rova.yojyh, vrpottivxri, in Greek countries.
8 nDjan c'tn, D'Jpr, pn.
6 Ps. lxxiv. 8, pfcOIJVlD. In Eccles. iv. 17, the reference to sacrifice shows
that there the temple is spoken of.

430 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
beautiful service, continued to be the mysterious spot where
God was present and where atonement was made, the outward
expression of all the great ideas of religion, such as forgiveness
of sins, submission to God, and intercourse between Him and
His people. And this spiritual connection with the sanctuary
was faithfully maintained. But it became, all the same, more
and more symbolical. On the other hand, they had daily
before their eyes a worship without Levitical priest, without
sacrifice, without mystery or symbol, a worship the central
feature of which was the edification of the heart by means of
Holy Scripture and common prayer. Here, instead of a house
of God, there was a house of the congregation. The individual
Israelite had to consider his religion as the subject of his own
knowledge, and to exemplify it in his own person and spirit.
The liberty of speaking in turn prevented any sharp dis
tinction between priest and layman. In this way these
synagogues certainly helped more than anything else to
make a religion possible in which animal sacrifice and sacred
rites are given up and become mere types ; in which union
with God is maintained by means of His written word,
edifying discourse, and congregational prayer ; a religion in
which there is no priestly caste, but a ministry for the
teaching of the word open to men of every class.1 How
these synagogues served Christianity as the starting-point of
foreign missions is well enough known. But the synagogue
also turned the scale decisively in favour of the scribe as
against the priest, and in favour of the Pharisee as against
the Sadducee.
4. During this period the cycle of sacred seasons is
increased by various kinds of new anniversaries. However,
1 It is scarcely possible to imagine a direct change from sacrificial worship as
it existed before Josiah, that is to say, from the habit of including in sacrificial
worship everything that was done in honour of Jehovah in the various districts of
Israel, to the spiritual worship of Christianity. But even when one starts with
a single place of worship, it would be almost impossible without the synagogue
as a link of connection to understand the practice of early Christianity.

FEASTS. 431
none of these additional festivals is of any real importance
for the religion of Israel. It will be enough to mention them
in a word. Since the Exile, fasts, which are, however, looked
upon by Zechariah as useless, and at variance with the
grateful feelings of the people after the rebuilding of the city,
are held on the 9th day of the fourth month, on the 10th
of the fifth, on the 3rd(?) of the seventh, and on the 10 th of
the tenth.1 Owing to the habit, then coming into vogue, of
beginning the civil year with what was the seventh month of
the sacred year, the 1st day of the seventh month came to be
the civil New Year's Day.2 The feast of Purim, dating from
the Persian period, and probably itself of Persian origin,3 has
lustre shed upon it in the book of Esther by a popular legend ;
and perhaps it was just this which first commended it to the
Palestinian Jews. It fell on the 14th and 15th of Adad, a
month before the Passover.4 It became customary to
celebrate the feast of the Purification of the temple on
the 15th of Kislev.6 Other feasts, like the feast of the
Wood-carriers,6 the feast of the reading of the Law,7 the
feast of Nicanor,8 the feast of the Captured Fortress,9 and
the feast of Baskets,10 evidently never attained to any real
religious significance.
5. Decay of spiritual power inevitably results in a loosening
1 Zech. vii. 3, 5, viii. 19.
2 The harvest feast, according to Ex. xxiii. 16, xxxiv. 22 (1 Sam. i. 20 ; Isa.
xxix. 1, xxxii. 10), is the feast at the end of the year. Hence the New Year
can scarcely have been celebrated in Israel originally in the autumn ; Neh. viii.
2, 9-12 ; Joseph. Antiq. i. 3. 3.
3 The feast of the departed? Cf. de Lagarde, Abhandlgn. 163 ff. and else
where. 4 D'rnBn,",lD\ Esth. ix. 24-26, iii. 7 ; » MafSo^a/xJi kpipu, 2 Mace. xv. 37 (on
the 13th Adar, nriDK rMjm).
e lyxaivio,., JTan ns:n, 1 Mace. iv. 56, 59; 2 Mace. x. 6ff. (cf. Joseph.
Antiq. xii. 7. 7, fiw).
8 loXofop'mv, Joseph. Bell. Jud. ii. 17. 6.
7 Ezra (Greek) ix. 50 (?). 8 1 Mace. vii. 49 (13th Adar).
9 23rd of second month ; 1 Mace. xiii. 50, 52.
10 Philo, supplement to the treatise "De Septenario," by Mai (De Cophini
Festo, Milan 1818).

432 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
of the inner unity which binds together those who are engaged
in furthering the development of religion. Their differences
are accentuated till they end in the formation of sects, — a
clear proof that the real life has ceased to pulsate. No doubt
this phenomenon is witnessed even during the period when
canonical books are still being produced. This is very
easily seen by comparing Ecclesiastes with Daniel. In the
first book the author carefully avoids everything national and
theocratic, prophetic and positive, confines himself to the few
main principles of a moral religion of reason, and verges
on the utmost limits of doubt. In the other, the author
is all aglow with national and religious feeling, and possessed
with an inward passion for the realisation of Israel's hopes.
But he lays undue emphasis on sacred forms, exaggerates the
miraculous, revels in eschatological scenes, and has a most
exalted idea of prophecy. A period in which two such books
could be written and put into the Canon together must have
been already plunged in the gravest uncertainty by the
weakening of its spiritual power, and that, too, in the very
circles which gave religion its tone. The old antagonism
between prophetic and ethical literature is here carried in a
one-sided way the length of open rupture ; while the book
of the son of Sirach merely develops the old religious
philosophy of the common people in a more homely fashion
than before, the style being occasionally no higher than that
of a shrewd man of the world. And the whole history
of the Syrian wars is quite unintelligible, unless it is taken
for granted that the attempts of the Syrian king in favour
of the Greeks found even among the upholders of religion
in Israel a very strong party, accustomed to interpret the
Old Testament religion in a sense favourable to an amalgama
tion with the ethics and philosophy of the Greeks.
This tendency to divisive courses, partly, it is true, quenched
in blood during the frenzy of the War of Independence, began
to develop into more definite and tangible forms under the

sects. 433
Asmonaean rule. Not merely different schools of thought, in
other respects in essential harmony, but actual " sects," claimed
the religion of Israel as their rightful inheritance. In view of
the many difficulties of the question, a full description of these
sects cannot be expected in a brief incidental sketch like
this.1 We shall content ourselves with indicating, in a word,
the essential characteristics of each. The Sadducees 2 were
the priestly aristocracy of the sons of Zadok, who laid stress
on the Law and its observance, but not on the interpretations
of it current among the popular schools of learning. They
were hostile to everything like prophetic enthusiasm, which
might endanger the constitution of the State aud injure the
authority of the existing order of things. The Pharisees, on
the other hand, as the real leaders of the pious people, attached
more and more importance to the peculiar holiness of Israel
and to its national and religious aspirations.3 The com
munity of the Essenes4 represented a mystic and ascetic
spiritualism, a principle that acted like a solvent, and tended
to amalgamate with the Old Testament doctrines every
ascetic and mystical view in any way akin to them, — no
matter whether it can be historically proved that they were
under the influence of Greek-Pythagorean elements or only
of Alexandrian Hellenism, or whether kindred tendencies de
veloped simultaneously, but independently, in several different
1 Cf. especially Wellhausen, Die Pharisder und Sadducaer, Greil'swald 1874.
2 As to their history and position, of. Mishna, Masseceth Jadhaim (n3DO
DT1) iv. 6-8 ; Masseceth Niddah (n*ti n3DO) iv. 2 ; cf. Pirke Aboth i. 3 ;
Joseph. Ant. xiii. 5. 9, 10. 6, xviii. 1. 2, 4, xx. 9. 1 ; De Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 14.
3 On these cf. Joseph. Ant. xiii. 5. 9, 10. 6, 15. 5, 16. 2, xvii. 2. 4,
xviii. 1. 2 f. ; De Bell. Jud. i. 5. 2, ii. 8. 14 (iii. 8. 5, vi. 5. 4, where, according
to De Vita, xxxviii., ii., he himself develops Pharisaic principles) ; Matt.
ix. 11, 14, xii. 14, xv. 1 ff, xxii. 15 ff, xxiii. 13 ff. ; Mark vii. 3 ; Luke v. 17,
30, vi. 2, 7, xi. 39, 43, xviii. 11 ; John vii. 48, iii. 1, ix. 15 ff. ; Acts v. 34,
xv. 5, xxiii. 6 ff.
4 On these cf. Photius (ed. Beck.), 86a, 35 ; Philo, 876, 889 ff. ; Joseph. De
Vita, ii. ; Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 2-13 ; Antiq. xiii. 5. 9, xv. 10. 4 f., xviii. 1. 5, 2 ;
Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 17 (Philo, Fragni. in Euseb., ed. Mg. ii. 632 ff); Porphyr.
De Absl., ed. A. Nauck, 171, 9 ff, mentions only what Josephus says.
VOL. I. 2 E

434 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
religious fields.1 In addition to these, there is the Alexandrine
philosophy of religion, strictly so-called, which was thoroughly
steeped in the Greek spirit, and the theosophy just beginning
in the circles of advanced Pharisaism. The spirit of revela
tion that carried forward the development of the true religion
had no longer any living influence over the people. But
when life leaves a body, decomposition begins, and the unity
of that body is at an end. It was only the reaction against
Christianity, and the final victory of Pharisaism, after the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, that forced these various
schools to unite once more under the rigid uniformity of
dogma and statute.
6. The decay of religious power is also shown in the
possibility of a scepticism such as we see in Ecclesiastes.
The book of Job, it is true, already indicates how questions
and doubts of the gravest kind are calling for attention, and
declining to be simply waived aside by faith. These doubts
persist in developing in all directions, and, without being
really solved, are overcome only by the immediate influence
of trust in God. But in Job it is not, after all, a question
of real theoretical scepticism. The problem which is raised
there forces itself on the attention of every one as a
practical temptation. And however fearlessly the whole
truth regarding this problem is stated in Job, the believing
view of the world, it is clear, has still strength enough of its
own to gain the victory without the understanding being
really satisfied.
It is quite otherwise in this remarkable book. This will,
it is true, not be the verdict of any one who, like Vaihinger,
sees in its author, not a sceptic, but a profound dialectician,
cutting his way through doubt to certainty, through error to
truth, and to whom a future life and a final judgment are
1 Cf. Zeller (on the connection between the Essenes and the Greeks) against
Ritschl, who takes the universal priesthood as the starting • point, Theol.
Jahrb., ed. Baur und Zell. 1855, iii., 1856, iii.

SCEPTICISM. 435
absolute certainties. But such an one can hardly have felt
much of the terrible melancholy which runs all through the
book. The deeper one gets into the heart of this book, the
more strongly will one feel that the doubt expressed in it
is no mere dialectic show, but a doubt that is honestly felt,
and that does give way before the certainty of a moral order
in the world, but only after a hard struggle.
The problem of Ecclesiastes does not depend on a practical
temptation which assails an individual. It is a question of a
purely theoretical temptation, founded on a clear and inexor
ably real contemplation of the world of experience. Is there
any lasting eternal good at all ? Is not the moral and
spiritual world, with its demands and results, an illusion ?
Look where we may, no effort, no success, produces in the
long run a permanently satisfying result. Pleasure, power.
honour, ay, even wisdom, and the striving after spotless
integrity, are all vanity.1 An unalterable order of nature is
constantly ending, and as constantly beginning from the old
starting-point.2 Man, with his griefs and joys, his desires
and passions, stands amid it all a child of his age, dependent
in his inmost life on the course of nature.8 There is no new
thing under the sun ; 4 and to everything there is a season.5
There is no justice on the earth.0 Mere chance, not wisdom
or ability, determines a man's destiny.7 A little folly often
outweighs wisdom and honour.8 No effort can secure enjoy
ment even in this life. It can be taken only as a gift,
bestowed by God.9 And who guarantees a further development
after death ? 10 To be dead, and in the kingdom of the dead,
is worse than to live in the greatest misery ; there is no joy
! Eccles. i. 2, ii. 11, 17, 28, iii. 10, 19, iv. 7, xii. 8; of. ii. 1 ff, 8, 10 ; cf.
i 4 f., iv. 4 ; cf. ii. 5 f., iv. 16 ; cf. vii. 15 f., viii. 10 ; cf. i. 13, 17 f., ii. 12, 15.
2 Eccles. i. 4 ff., 9 ff, iii. 15. 3 Eccles. iii. 1-9.
* Eccles. i. 9. 6 Eccles. iii. 1-9.
" Eccles. iii. 16 f., iv. 1, vii. 15 f., viii. 14, ix. 1-4.
7 Eccles. ix. 11, x. 5 f. 8 Eccles. x. 1.
8 Eccles. ii. 25 f., iii. 12 f., v. 18, ix. 7 f. 10 Eccles. iii. 18ff.

436 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
there at all, and no feeling of any kind.1 Thus the book
comes to the most bitter despair about life in general.2 The
happiest is he who is never born.3 It is better to go to the
house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. The
day of death is better than the day of birth.4
In this way the book sounds all the depths of scepticism.
The chief pillars of morality and religion seem to be shaken,
and nowhere can any really triumphant and joyful faith be
discovered. Nevertheless the book has two sides, to which,
despite its peculiarities, its canonicity is probably due, and
which make it useful even to the Christian. In the first
place, its doctrine of the insignificance of all success end of
the pettiness of human effort, compared with the mighty
forces of nature, contains a truth which can elude no one who
has any depth of thought. A tone of sincere resignation and
practical wisdom pervades the book. In the next place,
scepticism in the sphere of practical morality is unhesitatingly
overcome. Though everything may be doubtful, and the
riddles of existence prove insoluble, the moral order which
God has ordained is the portion of man. Of that he may be
sure.6 And this practical wisdom of piety, although it may
not shield from every ill,6 is nevertheless an incomparable
good 7 as contrasted with folly.8 Even evil itself, if it tend
to discipline the heart, has its value.9 Wisdom, which is
sought for in vain along the path of subtle inquiry and self-
torment,10 lies open in the divine ordinances, and is to be had
for the taking. The sum of it is : "to take without anxiety and
self-annoyance the good with which God strews one's path of
life,11 and, even where one cannot understand, to believe firmly
1 Eccles. ix. 5-10. - Eccles. ii. 17, 20.
3 Eccles. iv. 2 f. 4 Eccles. vii. 1 f.
6 Eccles. xii. 13 ; cf. iii. 14, v. 6, vii. 18. d Eccles. ii. 14 ff, vi. 8 f.
7 Eccles. ii. 13ff, vii. 11 ff., viii. Iff., ix. 13 ff., x. 2ffi, 10ff., xii. 1.
8 Eccles. i. 17, ii. 12, 14, x. 2. 9 Eccles. iii. 14, vii. 3-5.
10 Eccles. vii. 18 f. 23 f., (of. Job xxviii. 11 ff.).
u Eccles. iii. 12 f., v. 17, vi. 2f., viii. 15, ix. 7ff, xi. 7, 9.

FOREIGN ELEMENTS. 437
that God ordains with equal wisdom 1 both evil and good ; to
be convinced that He has made all things good, that He has
created man upright and put eternity in his heart, so that
guilt and evil belong only to the creature ; 2 and finally, to
continue mindful of the divine ordinances of moral life, and
not forget that the God, who guides the destinies of all,
judges every human life according to this moral ordinance of
His."3 One may well assume that, although there may be in
Ecclesiastes an expression of a special personal opinion, it is
still on the whole in agreement with the later Sadducean
view of the world. The view of Ecclesiastes, too, that even a
bad foreign government, as such, is a benefit,4 is quite in
accordance with the opinion of the Sadducees, and the
warning against making many books and of overmuch
righteousness6 is probably aimed at the scribes and that
spirit of legality by which later Pharisaism is marked.
7. When the power of a religion is waning, resistance to
foreign elements hostile to its innermost essence must in the
long run become weaker and weaker, till at last a fusion is
effected. The books that are still being taken into the Old
Testament show, it is true, sufficient power of resistance to
whatever is foreign. If we do find in Chronicles and in
Daniel a certain tendency to develop the doctrine of angels
and devils in the direction of the Persian view, — in Daniel the
resurrection, in Ecclesiastes a sort of approximation to the
view of the world held by critical philosophy, — nevertheless
the traces are all very faint, and are rather hints as to the
1 Eccles. vii. 14. 2 Eccles. iii. 11, vii. 29.
8 Eccles. xi. 9 ff., xii. 14. That there is no question here of a future life and of
reward or punishment in it, is also shown by the context in xi. 7ff. and xii. Iff.
Besides, it could hardly contribute to the joy of a man's life on earth to be
reminded of the judgment. Reference to a future life, if the last sections of the
book are to be held as genuine, is absolutely incompatible with the eschatology
of the rest of the book. It is only the judgment of God as that is carried out
in a man's lot in life and in his death, as, e.g., Ps. i. 5, etc.
4 Eccles. v. 8 ; cf. Rom. xiii. 3. 6 Eccles. vii. 16 ; of. v. ] , 3, 4.

438 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
possibility of a foreign development than proofs of its
presence. This tendency shows itself with all the greater clearness in
the later books of Jewish religious literature which never
became canonical. The influence of the Greek schools of
philosophy is everywhere seen in the Jewish books which
originated in Alexandria, in the productions of those circles
out of which the Septuagint arose, to which are due the book
of the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the second book of the
Maccabees, and the translation of Jesus the son of Sirach, —
which have given us the pseudonymous literature of the
Sibyls, the Orphic songs, etc., — and which found in Philo
their classical representative. The effects of this composite
learning, combined with Oriental influences, and probably also
strengthened by direct contact with Greece, were widely felt
in the schools of learning in Palestine. The mystic theosophy
which is already visible in Enoch, which peeps out in the
Targums, and which, being nursed in the circles of the
Essenes and the Pharisees, grows into cabbalistic wisdom,
properly so called, rests on foundations essentially foreign
to the religion of the Old Testament. And the influence
of Asiatic legends accommodated to the popular view, is
plainly enough seen in the angelology and demonology of
the book of Tobit. Thus the most divergent foreign views
begin to flow in like a flood ou the religion of Israel.

3ND OF VOLUME L

T. & T. Clark's Publications.

THE NEW BIBLICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA.
' This Dictionary seems likely to take its place as the standard authority for biblical students
of the present generation.'— Times,
A DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE,
Dealing with its Language, Literature, and Contents,
including the Biblical Theology.
Edited by James Hastings, M.A., D.D., with the assistance of J. A. Selbie,
M.A., and, chiefly in the Revision of the Proofs, of A. B. Davidson,
D.D., LL.D., Edinburgh; S. R. Driver, D.D., Litt.D., Oxford; and
H. B. Swete, D.D., Litt.D., Cambridge.

To be completed in Four Volumes, imperial 8uo (of nearly 900 pages each).
Price per Volume : in cloth, 28s. ; in half-morocco, 34s,
(subject to the usual discount)

Tho Guardian says: (Vol. I.)— 'We offer Dr. Hastings our sincere congratulations on the
publication of the first instalment of this great enterprise. . .. A work was urgently needed which
should present the student with the approved results of modern inquiry, and which should also
acquaint; him with the methods by which theological problems are now approached by the most
learned and devout of our theologians.' (Vol. II.) — 'Dr. Hastings has brought out the second
volume of his great Dictionary in good time. . . . The critical articles seem to us to maintain the
same high level of excellence which we naturally expect from their distinguished writers. . . .
Dr. Sanday's article "Jesus Christ" will take rank as of the first importance for students of
theology." 'We welcome with the utmost cordiality the first volume of Messrs. Clark's great enterprise,
"A Dictionary of the Bible." That there was room and need for such a book is unquestionable.
. . . We have here all that the student can desire, a work of remarkable fulness, well up to date.
and yet at the same time conservative in its general tendency, almost faultlessly accurate, and
produced by the publishers in a most excellent and convenient style. We can thoroughly recom
mend it to our readers as a book which should fully satisfy their anticipations. . . . This new
Dictionary is one of the most important aids that have recently been furnished to a true under
standing of Scripture, and, properly used, will brighten and enrich the pulpit work of every
minister who possesses it. . . . We are greatly struck by tbe excellence of the short articles. They
are better done than in any other work of the kind. We have compared several of them with their
sources, and this shows at once the unpretentious labour that is behind them. . . . Dr. A. B. Davidson
is a tower of strength, and he shows ar his best in the articles on Angels, on Covenant (a masterpiece,
full of illumination), and on Eschatology of the Old Testament. His contributions are the chief
ornaments and treasure-stores of the Dictionary. . . . We are very conscious of having done most
inadequate justice to this very valuable book. Perhaps, however, enough has been said to show
our great sense of its worth. It is a book that one is sure to be turning to again and again with
increased confidence and gratitude. It will be an evil omen for the Church if ministers do not come
forward to make the best of the opportunity now presented them.'— Editor, British Weekly.
' Without question the most important contribution, to the second volume is Dr. .Sanday'a
article on "Jesus Christ." There is nothing iu English so full (it takes up fifty pages in double
column), so trustworthy, or so modern, and it makes the volume which contains it indispensable
to students.'— Journal of Theological Studies.
1 Will give widespread satisfaction. Every person consulting it may rely upon its trustworthy
ness. . . . Far away in advance of any other Bible Dictionary that has ever been published in real
usefulness for preachers, Bible students, and teachers.' — Methodist Recorder.

Full Prospectus, with Specimen Pages, from ali Booksellers, or from the Publishers.

T. Clark's Publications.

BY PROFESSOR W. N. CLARKE, D.D.
The Bookman says : ' Dr. OJarke's charm both of thought and expression secure a
welcome for anything he may write.'
1. An Outline of Christian Theology. Seventh Edition
now ready, post 8vo, price 7s. 6d.
' It is difficult to speak of this book in adequate terms without an appearance of
exaggerated praise. . . . Here at last the great vital truths of the Christian faith are
set along the lines of the highest thought of the liberal, reverent, modern mind, and
with consummate skill and fascinating interest. Theology is no doubt the queen of the
sciences, but, as usually presented, in somewhat austere, ponderous, antiquated guise,
has little human attraction. Here it is quick with human interest, answering to the
living thoughts of the living generation.' — Puritan.
2. What Shall We Think of Christianity? Crown 8vo,
price 2s. 6d.
' Dr. Clarke's " Outline of Christian Theology " had a reception rarely accorded to
an American book, and the sale is briskly proceeding. The new little book is written
in the same charming simplicity of language, and its thoughts are as great and simple
that it is likely to find an equally warm welcome beside its elder brother. There are
three chapters: (1) The Christian People; (2) The Christian Doctrine; (3) The
Christian Power.' — Expository Times.
3. Can I Believe in God the Father? Just published,
crown 8vo, price 3s.
'Dr. Clarke has here, as elsewhere, shown himself a master in the arts of popular
ising Christian apologetics.' — Christian World.

Recently Discovered Manuscripts, and Origin's Commen
taries on Matthew and John. Being an Additional "Volume to
' The Ante-Nicene Christian Library.' Edited by Professor Allan
Menzies, D.D., St. Andrews University. Containing : Gospel of
Peter (by Professor Armitage Eobinson) — Diatessaron of Tatian —
Apocalypse of Peter — Visio Pauli — Apocalypses of the Virgin and
Sedrach — Testament of Abraham — Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena
— Narrative of Zosimus — Apology of Aristides — Epistles of
Clement (Complete Text) — Origen's Commentaries on Matthew
and John, etc. In One Volume, 4to (pp. 540), price 12s. 6d. net.
1 It was a happy idea which occurred to the publishers of " The Ante-Nicene Library "
to supplement that series with a volume containing translations of the more important
discoveries of recent years. A judicious arrangement has been observed in grouping
the recovered treasures. ... It has been compiled with great care, and the Introduc
tions are short and to the point.' — Record.
The Ancient Faith in Modern Light: A Series of Essays.
By Joseph Parker, D.D., City Temple, London ; Principal T. V.
Ttmms, Eawdon College; Professor Medley, Kegent's Park College;
Principal A. Cave, D.D., Hackney College ; Samuel G. Green, D.D.,
London ; Principal K. Vaughan Prtce, New College ; S. Newth,
D.D. (late Principal), New College ; Eev. W. Brock, Hampstead ;
J. Guinness Eogers, D.D., Clapnam; H. E. Eeynolds, D.D. (late
Principal of Cheshunt College). In demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.
' These writers have passed their storms and found anchorage. They are the men
who do the world's best work ; healing work it often is, and will be here; saving work
it will even be, for there is no dulness or dissipation that would weary the youngest
reader. There is the living mind, fearless in face of the living problems of to-day;
and the young minds who come to this volume will find rest to their souls, for they
will come to the mind of the Master Himself.' — Expository Times.

T. & T. Clark's Publications.

The Christian Doctrine of Immortality. By Eev. S. D.
F. Salmond, D.D., Principal, and Professor of Systematic Theology,
Free Church College, Aberdeen. Third Edition. Demy 8vo,
price 14s.
' Dr. Salmond's " Christian Doctrine of Immortality" is an able, truth-loving, and,
from many points of view, comprehensive work. ' — W. B. Gladstone.
' This is beyond all doubt the one book on the transcendent subject of which it treats.
There is none like it — sound, frank, fearless, and yet modest in every page.' — The
Methodist Times.
' Principal Salmond has rendered a service which merits the amplest recognition.
Worthy of recognition are the courage which chose a subject bristling with difficulties,
the patience and resolution which have weighed, sifted, and disposed of these difficulties,
the method and scholarship which fit him to be a safe pioneer, the fairness of mind
whioh inspires confidence, the lucidity and completeness of treatment which tell of a
thorough digestion of the entire, multifarious material connected with the subject.
The volume presents one of the very finest specimens of biblical theology that we
have.' — Professor Marcus Dods, D.D., in The Bookman.
' The greatest work we have had for many a day on this great doctrine of Immor
tality.' — Expository Times.
' The book steps at once into the front rank, and even into the first place.' — Principal
Cave, D.D., in The Critical Review.
' This strong and impressive book has already, we believe, obtained a wide circula
tion ... its great and obvious merits.' — Guardian.
Life after Death, and the Future of the Kingdom of God. By
Bishop Lars Nielsen Dahle, Knight of St. Olaf. Authorised
Translation. In demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.
The late Eev. C. A. Berry, D.D., wrote: 'Messrs. T. & T. Clark have enriched
modern theological literature by the publication of this book. The volume is a careful,
scholarly, and evangelical treatment of the doctrine of "Last Things," and bears
evidence on every page, not only of close and prolonged study, but of the profound
piety and charming spirit of the writer.'
God the Creator and Lord of All. By Samuel Harris, D.D.,
LL.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in Yale University, Author
of 'The Self-Eevelation of God,' 'The Philosophical Basis of
Theism,' etc. In Two Vols, post 8vo, price 16s.
*** In this work Professor Harris develops the principle that the idea of God is not attained
by mere subjective thinking, but that Qod is known through His action revealing Himself in the
constitution and evolution of the universe, and in the constitution and history of man issuing in
Christ, and in the Holy Spirit bringing gracious Divine influence on men.
' Professor Harris is in touch with the most progressive, active, enterprising
theology of to-day. But he has not lost his hold of yesterday. He knows what the
youngest Ritschlian is saying ; he has not forgotten what Augustine 6aid before him.
The whole field of the history of theology is in his sight, and long labour has given
him possession of it. Tet he is as independent as if he had not read a book ; his clear,
rapid, forcible writing is a constant and most agreeable witness to his independence.'
—Expository Times.
Theologia Pectoris: Outlines of Eeligious Faith and Doctrine,
founded on Intuition and Experience. By J. M. Hodgson,
M.A., D.Sc, D.D., Principal of the Theological Hall of the
Congregational Churches of Scotland. In crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d.
' He has written out of the fulness of his heart, and his thoughtful book will doubt
less find a response in the heart of others.' — Scotsman.

T. & T. Clark's Publications.

UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF
The Rev. S. R. DRIVER, D.D., Oxford; the Rev. A. PLUMMER, M.A., D.D., Durham;
and the Rev. C. A. BRIGGS, D.D., New York.
1 The publication of this series marks an epoch in English exegesis.' — British Weekly.
The First Nine Volumes are now ready, viz. : —
1) Deuteronomy. By Professor S. E. Driver, D.D., Oxford.
Second Edition. Price 12s.
2) Judges. By Professor G. F. Moore, D.D, Andover, U.S.A.
Second Edition. Price 12s.
3) The Books of Samuel. By Professor Henry P. Smith,
D.D., Cincinnati. Price 12s.
4) Proverbs. By Professor C. H. Toy, D.D., Harvard. Price 12s.
5) Romans. By Professor W. Sanday, D.D., LL.D., and Eev.
A. C. Headlam, B.D., Oxford. Third Edition. Price 12s.
6) St. Mark. By Professor E. P. Gould, D.D., Philadelphia.
Price 10s. 6d.
7) St. Luke. By A. Plummer, D.D., Master of University College,
Durham. Second Edition. Price 12s.
8) Philippians and Philemon. By Professor Marvin R.
Vincent, D.D., New York. Price 8s. 6d.
9) Ephesians and Colossians. By T. K. Abbott, D.Lit.,
Trinity College, Dublin. Price 10s. 6d.
1) Prof. G. A. Smith (in The Critical Review) says : ' The series could have had no
better introduction than this volume from its Old Testament editor. . . . Dr.
Driver has achieved a commentary of rare learning and still more rare candour and
sobriety of judgment.'
2) Professor H. E. Etle, D.D., says: ' I think it may safely be averred that so full
and scientific a commentary upon the text and subject-matter of the Book of Judges
has never been produced in the English language.'
3) Literature says : ' The most complete and minute commentary hitherto published.'
4) The Bookman says : ' Must at once take its place as the authority on ' ' Proverbs.'"
5) Principal F. H. Chase, D.D., Cambridge, says: 'We welcome it as an epoch-
making contribution to the study of St. Paul.'
6) The Baptist Magazine says : ' As luminously suggestive as it is concise and sober.
The commentary proper is thoughtful, judicious, and erudite — the work of a master
in hermeneutics.'
7) The Record says : ' Dr. Plummer's work is, it need hardly be said, admirably
done, both in the introduction and in the commentary. Eeaders will peruse
with pleasure his treatment of the leading characteristics of the Gospel.'
8) The Scotsman says : ' In every way worthy of the series which was so well com
menced [in the New Testament] with the admirable commentary on the Romans
by Dr. Sanday and Mr. Headlam.'
9) The Expository Times says: 'There is no work in all the "International" series
that is more faithful or more felicitous. . . . Dr. Abbott understands these Epistlns
— we had almost said as if he had written them.'

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T. & T. Clark's Publications.

Cjtt International Cjjtfrtogital Jibrarg.
EDITED by
Principal S. D. F. SALMOND. D.D.. and Professor C. A. BRIGGS, D.D.

' A valuable and much needed addition to the theological literature of the English-
speaking nations.' — Academy.
The First Eight Volumes of the Series are now ready, viz. ;—
(1) An Introduction to the Literature of the Old
Testament. By Professor S. R. Driver, D.D., Oxford.
Seventh Edition. Post 8vo, price 12s.
(2) Christian Ethics. By Newman Smyth, D.D., Author of ' Old
Faiths in New Light,' etc. Third Edition. 10s. 6d.
(3) Apologetics ; or, Christianity Defensively Stated. By Professor
A. B. Bruce, D.D., Glasgow. Third Edition. 10s. 6d.
(4) History of Christian Doctrine. By Professor G. P.
Fisher, D.D., LL.D., Yale University. Second Edition. 12s.
(5) A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age.
By Professor A. C. McGifpert, D.D., New York. 12s.
(6) Christian Institutions. By A. V. G. Allen, D.D., Pro
fessor of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge, Mass. 12s.
(7) The Christian Pastor and The Working Church.
By Washington Gladden, D.D., LL.D. 10s. 6d.
(8) The Theology of the New Testament. By Professor
George B. Stevens, D.D., Yale University. 12s.
(1) The Guardian says: 'By far the best account of the great critical problems con
nected with the Old Testament that has yet been written. ... It is a perfect
marvel of compression and lucidity combined. A monument of learning and well-
balanced judgment.'
(2) The Bookman says: 'It is the work of a wise, well-informed, independent, and
thoroughly competent writer. It is sure to become the text-book in Christian
Ethios.'
(3) The Expository Times says : ' The force and the freshness of all the writings that
Dr. Bruce has hitherto published have doubtless led many to look forward with
eager hope to this work; and there need not be any fear of disappointment. It
has all the characteristics of the author's personality. ... It will render an
inestimable service.'
<¥) The Critical Review says : ' A clear, readable, well-proportioned, and, regarding
it as a whole, remarkably just and accurate account of what the course and
development of doctrine throughout the ages, and in different countries, has been.'
(5) The Literary World says: 'A reverent and eminently candid treatment of the
Apostolic Age in the light of research.'
(6) The Christian ItorMsays: ' Unquestionably Professor Allen's most solid perform-
ance; and that, in view of what he has already accomplished, is saying a great deal.'
(T) The Baptist Magazine says : ' We know of no treatise so comprehensive as this.
... In fact, there is scarcely a phase of pastoral duty which is not touched
upon luminously and to good purpose.'
(8) The Bookman says : ' We are surprised by the strength and brilliance of this book.'
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T. & T. Clark's Publications.

BEYSGHLAG'S NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
New Testament Theology; or, Historical Account of the
Teaching of Jesus and of Primitive Christianity according to the
New Testament Sources. By Dr. Willibald Beyschlag, Professor
of Theology at Halle. Translated by Eev. Neil Buchanan. In
Two Volumes, demy 8vo, Second Edition, price 18s. net.
' It is not only very able, but it is a truly valuable contribution to its subject, and no
one who takes upon himself to expound the deep things of God as set forth by the New
Testament writers should neglect to make an earnest study of it, and thus enrich his
ministration of the word.' — Professor A. S. Peake, M.A.
' Dr. Beyschlag has achieved so large a measure of success as to have furnished one of
the best guides to an understanding of the New Testament. . . . These pages teem with
suggestions. ... In the belief that it will stimulate thought and prove of much service
to ministers and all students of the sacred text it expounds, we heartily commend it to
our readers.' — Methodist Recorder.
' A book of much interest and importance, independent in conception and treatment ;
happy in seizing and characterising the courses of thought with which he has to deal ;
ingenious in combination, and acute in criticism; expressing the results which he
reaches, often with terseness and point, almost always with clearuess and vigour. . . ,
The work well merits translatiou into English.' — Professor W. P. Dickson, D.D.,in
Th.t Critical Review. WENDT'S TEACHING OF JESUS.
The Teaching of Jesus. By Professor Hans Hinrich Wendt,
D.D., Jena. Translated by Eev. John Wilson, M.A., Montreux.
In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s.
' Dr. Wendt's work is of the utmost importance for the study of the Gospels, both
with regard to the origin of them and to their doctrinal contents. It is a work of
distinguished learning, of great originality, and of profound thought. The second part
[now translated into English], which sets forth the contents of the doctrine of Jesus,
is the most important contribution yet made to biblical theology, and the method and
results of Dr. Wendt deserve the closest attention. . . . No greater contribution to the
study of biblical theology has been made in our time. A brilliant and satisfactory
exposition of the teaching of Christ.' — Professor J. Iveeach, D.D., in The Expositor.
' Dr. Wendt has produced a remarkably fresh and suggestive work, deserving to be
ranked among the most important contributions to biblical theology. . . . There is
hardly a page which is not suggestive ; and, apart from the general value of its con
clusions, there are numerous specimens of ingenious exegesis thrown out with more
or less confidence as to particular passages.' — The Critical Review.

Dr. R. F. Horton refers to Beyschlag's 'New Testament Theology' and Wendt's
' Teaching of Jesus ' as ' two invaluable books. '

Messianic Prophecy : Its Origin, Historical Growth, and Eelation
to New Testament Fulfilment. By Dr. Edward Eiehm. New
Edition, Translated by Eev. L. A. Muirhead, B.D. With an Intro
duction by Prof. A. B. Davidson, D.D. In post 8vo, price 7s. 6d.
' No work of the same compass could be named that contains so much that is instructive
on the nature of prophecy in general, and particularly on the branch of it specially
treated in the book.' — Professor A. B. Davidson, D.D.
' I would venture to recommend Riehm's ' ' Messianio Prophecy " as a summary account
of prophecy both reverent and critical.' — Canon Gore in Lux Mv/ndi.

T. & T. Clark's Publications.

The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. With a
Critical Introduction. By Eev. George Milligan, B.D. In post
8vo, price 6s.
' The author ventures to express the hope that the present volume will be found to
fill a place hitherto unoccupied at least by any English writer on the subject. For
while there are critical commentaries on the Epistle in abundance, and expositions, both
scholarly and popular, dealing with its teaching as a whole, he is not aware of any other
book in English presenting that teaching in systematic form.'— From the Author's
Preface. ' Any book with the name of Milligan upon it is sure of a ready welcome. . . . We
can unreservedly recommend this volume as a sensible as well as a fertilising study of the
outward features, but especially the inner thought, of this great Epistle.' — Expository
Times.
The Earliest Life of Christ ever Compiled from the Four
Gospels, being 'The Diatessaron of Tatian.' Literally
translated from the Arabic Version, and containing the Four
Gospels woven into One Story. With an Historical and Critical
Introduction, Notes, and Appendix, by Eev. J. Hamlyn Hill, D.D.
In demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.
The Bishop op Gloucester and Bristol writes : ' This is a work of very great
importance, and of unique interest. It has been given to the world in an admirable
form, and reflects the greatest credit on the able and conscientious Editor. The history
of the work, as told in a clear and well-written Introduction, will enable the reader to
appreciate the vast care and pains that have been bestowed on this singular recovery of
the first Harmony of the Gospels. The Notes are short, clear, and helpful ; and the
eleven Appendices of a practical value, which the general reader will as fully recognise
as the scholar and critic. Mr. Hamlyn Hill has performed the difficult duty of Editor
with conspicuous success.'
' Truly an excellent piece of work, which we commend most warmly to the student
and to the general reader. ... A fascinating volume.' — Church Bells.
A Dissertation on the Gospel Commentary of S. Eph-
raem the Syrian. With a Scriptural Index to his Works.
By Eev. J. Hamlyn Hill, D.D., Author of an English Version of
' Tatian's Diatessaron,' etc. 8vo, price 7s. 6d.
The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol writes : ' This work forms a valuable
appendix to Dr. Hill's English Version of the " Diatessaron." ... It is a monument of
patient research and intelligent industry, which deserves very hearty recognition.'
Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament
Greek. By Ernest D. Burton, Professor of New Testament
Literature and Interpretation, Chicago University. New and
thoroughly Eevised Edition just published. In large 12mo,
pp. xxii-215, price 5s. 6d. net.
' A valuable book. ... I venture to express the hope that arrangements may be made
to facilitate its circulation in this country.' — Professor W. Sanday, D.D., Oxford.
' For use in colleges, for ministers, and all who desire to arrive at the exact meaning
in English of the sacred text, this scholarly volume will be of the greatest service.' —
Methodist Recorder.
Sources of New Testament Greek ; or, The Influence of
the LXX. on the Vocabulary of the New Testament. By Eev.
H. A. A. Kennedy, D.Sc. In post 8vo, price 5s.
' Dr. Kennedy urges his case with a wealth of learning, the result of much patient
investigation on his part. ... A most valuable contribution to a very important
subject. His book will be a sine qua non to all ministers who can read the original.' —
Methodist Times.
' Dr. Kennedy has furnished us with a help to the knowledge of the Greek of the New
Testament, which was urgently needed, and which satisfies the requirements. No
investigation of the subject, either so thorough or so lucid, exists in any language.' —
British Weekly.

T. & T. Clark's Publications.

SGHULTZ'S OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
Old Testament Theology. The Eeligion of Eevelation in its
Pre-Christian Stage of Development. By Professor Hermann
Schultz, D.D., Gottingen. Authorised English Translation by
Professor J. A. Paterson, D.D. In Two Volumes, 8vo, Second
Edition, price 18s. net.
' Professor Paterson has executed the translation with as much skill as care. . . .
Readers may rely on his having given the meaning of the original with the utmost
accuracy.' — From the Author's Preface to the Translation.
' The book will be read with pleasure, and, it need not be said, with profit, not only
by professional students, but by all intelligent persons who have an interest in the Old
Testament. . . . Though externally popular and of singular literary finish, the author's
work within is a laborious and able study of the whole subject.' — Professor A. B.
Davidson, D.D.
' A standard work on this subject may be said to be indispensable to every theologian
and minister. The book to get, beyond all doubt, is this one by Schultz, which Messrs.
Olark have just given to us in English. It is one of the most interesting and readable
books we have had in our hands for a long time.' — Professor A. B. Bruce, D.D.

KAFTAN'S TRUTH OF THE CHRIST/AN RELIGION.
The Truth of the Christian Religion. By Professor
Julius Kaftan, Berlin. Translated from the German, under the
Author's supervision, by G. Ferries, D.D. With a Prefatory Note
by Professor Flint, D.D. In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 16s. net.
Summary of Contents : — Division I. Ecclesiastical Dogma — The Origin of Dogma
— Development of Theology — Orthodox Dogmatics — Bfeaking-up of Ecclesias
tical Dogma — Judgment of History. Division II. The Proof of Christianity
— Knowledge — The Primacy of Practical Reason — Criticism of the Traditional
Speculative Method — The Proof of Christianity — Conclusion.
' Eminently a work which the times require, and will be cordially welcomed by all
students of theology.' — Scotsman.
' Quite apart from the immediate question of obtaining a knowledge of the Ritschlian
theology at first hand, these volumes are welcome. For Kaftan is no imitator, but a
fertile and able writer. In the near future his view of theology, its essence and its
accidents, will exercise a deep influence in our land.' — Expository Times.
' One of the most important productions of the Ritschlian School of Theology, and ot
special interest for the way in which it treats the proof of Christianity as a something
"connected in the closest manner with the whole organisation of Christian faith and
life at a given time.'" — Critical Review.

The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times : Their Diversity
and Unity in Life and Doctrine. By Professor G. V. Lechler,
D.D. Third Edition, thoroughly Eevised and Eewritten. In
Two Volumes, crown 8vo, price 16s.
' It contains a vast amount of historical information, and is replete with judicious
remarks. ... By bringing under the notice of English readers a work so favourably
thought of in Germany, the translator has conferred a benefit on theology.'— Athenaeum.

T. & T. Clark's Publications.

GRIMM'S LEXICON.
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, being
Grimm's Wilke's Clavis Novi Testamenti. Translated, Eevised,
and Enlarged by Joseph Henry Thayer, D.D., Bussey
Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the
Divinity School of Harvard University. Fourth Edition, demy
4to, price 36s.
' The best New Testament Greek Lexicon. ... It is a treasury of the results of
exact scholarship.' — Bishop Westcott.
' I regard it as a work of the greatest importance. ... It seems to me a work show
ing the most patient diligence, and the most carefully arranged collection of useful and
helpful references.' — The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
' An exoellent book, the value of which for English students will, I feel sure, be best
appreciated by those who use it most carefully.' — Professor F. J. A. Hort, D.D.
' This work has been eagerly looked for. . . . The result is an excellent book, which
I do not doubt will be the best in the field for many years to come.' — Professor W.
Sanday, D.D., in The Academy.
' Undoubtedly the best of its kind. Beautifully printed and well translated, ... it
will be prized by students of the Christian Scriptures.' — Athenarum.
CREMER'S LEXICON.
Biblico - Theological Lexicon of New Testament
Greek. By Hermann Cremer, D.D., Professor of Theology in
the University of Greifswald. Translated from the German of the
Second Edition by William Urwiok, M.A. In demy 4to, Fourth
Edition, with Supplement, price 38s.
This Lexicon deals with words whose meaning in the Classics Is modified or changed In
Scripture, words which haue become the bases and watchwords of Christian theology, tracing their
history in their transference from the Classics into the LXX., and from the LXX. Into the New
Testament, and the gradual deepening and elevation of their meaning till they reach the fulness
of New Testament thought.
1 Dr. Oremer's work is highly and deservedly esteemed in Germany. It gives with
care and thoroughness a complete history, as far as it goes, of each word and phrase
that it deals with. . . . Dr. Oremer's explanations are most lucidly set out.'— Guardian.
' It is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this work to the student of the Greek
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BY PRINCIPAL A. CAVE, D.D.
An Introduction to Theology: Its Principles, Its Branches,
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