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Library of the
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The Books of
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Winkley Professor of g; ,
7 Biblical Theology >-: *

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THE KERR LECTURESHIP

The "Kerr Lectureship" was founded by the Trustees of the late Miss
Joan Kerr, of Sanquhar, under her Deed of Settlement, and formally adopted
by the United Presbyterian Synod in May 1886. In the following year, May
1887, provisions and conditions of the Lectureship, as finally adjusted, were
adopted by the Synod, and embodied in a Memorandum, printed ' in the
Appendix to the Synod Minutes, p. 489. From these the following excerpts
are here given : —
II. The amount to be invested shall be ^3000.
III. The object of the Lectureship is the promotion of the study of Scientific
Theology in the United Presbyterian Church.
The Lectures shall be upon some such objects as the following, viz. :—
A. Historic Theology —
(1) Biblical Theology, (2) History of Doctrine, (3) Patristics, with
special reference to the significance and authority of the
first three centuries.
B. Systematic Theology —
(1) Christian Doctrine — (a) Philosophy of Religion, (d) Com
parative Theology, {c) Anthropology, (d) Christology,
¦ (e) Soteriology, (/) Eschatology.
(2) Christian Ethics — (a) Doctrine of Sin, (b) Individual and
Social Ethics, (c) The Sacraments, (a?) The Place of Art
in Religious Life and Worship.
Farther, the Committee of Selection shall from time to time, as they think
fit,' appoint as the subject of the Lectures any important Phases of Modern
Religious Thought or Scientific Theories in their bearing upon Evangelical
Theology. The Committee may also appoint a subject connected with the
practical work of the Ministry as subject of Lecture, but in no case shall this
be admissible more than once in every five appointments.
IV. The appointments to this Lectureship shall be made in the first instance
from among the Licentiates or Ministers of the United Presbyterian Church
of Scotland, of whom no one shall be eligible, who, when the appointment falls
to be made, shall have been licensed for moire than twenty-five years, and who
is not a graduate of a British University, preferential regard being had to those
who have for some time been connected with a Continental University.

The Kerr Lectureship

V. Appointments to this Lectureship not subject to the conditions in
Section IV. may also from time to time, at the discretion of the Committee,
be made from among eminent members of the Ministry of any of the ' Noncon
formist Churches of Great Britain and Ireland, America, and the Colonies, or
of the Protestant Evangelical Churches of the Continent.
VI. The Lecturer shall hold the appointment for three years.
VIII. The Lectures shall be published at the Lecturer's own expense within
one year after their delivery.
IX. The Lectures shall be delivered to the students of the United Presby
terian Hall.
XII. The Public shall be admitted to the Lectures.

PREVIOUS KERR LECTURES
PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. T. &¦ T. CLARK
MORALITY AND RELIGION.
By James Kidd, D.D. Price ios. 6d.
THE CHRIST OF HISTORY AND OF EXPERIENCE.
By DAvid W. Forrest, D.D. Sixth Edition. Price 6s.
THE RELATION OF THE APOSTOLIC TEACHING TO THE
TEACHING OF CHRIST.
By Robert J. Drummond, D.D. Second Edition. Price ios. 6d.
THE SACRAMENTS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By J. C. Lambert, D.D. Price ios. 6d,
THE TESTS OF LIFE.
By Prof. Robert Law, D.D. Second Edition. Price 7s. 6d. net.

THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
UNDER THE KINGDOM

THE
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
UNDER THE KINGDOM

THE KERR LECTURES, DELIVERED IN THE
UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW
DURING SESSION 1911-12

Rev. ADAM G. WELCH, Theol. D.
author of "anselm and his work"

Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
1912

Printed by
i, Morrison & Gibb Limited,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
london: simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, kent, and co. limited.
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER*5 SONS.

DER THEOLOGISCHEN FAKULTAT
DER UNI VERS ITAT HALLE
FUR DIE (JUNI 1909) MIR VERLIEHENE
DOKTORWURDE
IN DANKBARKEIT GEWIDMET VOM VERFASSER

CONTENTS

Introductory .

The Stories of Je

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.
Prophecy before Amos

Amos

Hosea

Isaiah .

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

Deuteronomy .
Notes ....
Index of Scripture Passages
Index of Subjects .

PAGE 1

. 33
. 59
. 97
. 144
. 192
. 243
. 293
. 300

PREFACE.

A course of lectures on so large a subject as the Religion of
Israel under the Kingdom must necessarily omit, and the
only problem is not to omit anything essential to the general
picture. What, therefore, one elects to omit must be
determined by the view taken of the course of development
of Hebrew thought during the period under review. I have
sought to point out how, under the kingdom, prophecy with
its wider ideals and the nation with its narrower outlook at
first support each other, but finally separate, and how their
interaction makes each more conscious of its peculiar task
The omissions are determined by the line of treatment.
One omission a glance over the headings of the chapters
will at once show. There is no separate treatment of Micah
and Zephaniah, though these two prophets did their work
during the period of the kingdom. Because Micah supplies
little that is distinctive to the development which is the
subject of the lectures, I have thought it unnecessary to
overload the book with a special study of his prophecy,
which would only repeat ideas that are more powerfully
presented elsewhere. It is true that thereby the theory of
the development of Israel's religious thought loses the con
firmation of the support of ^an additional witness. Zephaniah,
again, has a much more distinctive message ; but, since his
thought forms one of the points of transition to the wide ideals
of Deutero-Isaiah, and thus leads to a new field, I have judged

xii PREFACE
it wiser to retain a monograph on his prophecy, and have
merely used his message to make clearer the conceptions and
to illustrate my view of Amos.
Another omission will appear to any student of the
book. The sacrificial system must have contributed to the
Religion of Israel many and deeply important elements.
I have not offered any separate treatment of the system,
though I have found it necessary to refer to it frequently.
We can best understand the influence of the sacrifices when
we determine the main lines along which the religious life
of Israel developed. I have sought to determine the leading
factors in t;hat main line of development.
It may be useful to state here that I believe the two
separate accounts of J and E were written under the early>
kingdom, possibly even under the united kingdom, and were
united as JE, while the Northern kingdom still existed.
More definitely than this it seems impossible to date them,
and into the reasons for assigning these dates it is unnecessary
to enter. Since, however, as I have developed in the Excur
sus following the second chapter, the accounts of Israel's
history and Israel's religion contained in them were produced.
through the united activity of the priesthood and prophets in
early Israel, they represent the faith in no individual or
personal form. They rather gather up the view held by the
best minds of the nation, and represent the stage at which
the religious thought of Israel had arrived. The three great
prophets follow ; individual and personal, they present their
view of God and His relation to man and Israel. Their
burden is the outcome of their personal experience, and in
the light of an intimate experience they judge the temper
and the institutions of the nation to which they are sent.
In Deuteronomy we come to another anonymous book, which
again represents the view of no individual, but that of the

PREFACE xiii
body of religious men who have learned something from the
prophets God sent them, and who seek, in the light of what they
have learned, to remould the national institutions in such a
way that these may more worthily express the prophetic
message. Their failure to grasp the essential content of the
prophets' message gives rise to the new movement of prophetic
activity and priestly ritual ; but that movement leads us into
the exile. JE, then, in its present form offers the consensus of
opinion of the religious leaders of Israel and embodies the
stage of religious thought at which Israel in its best minds
had arrived. The prophets presuppose it and advance from
it to a deeper and wider view of the relation between God and
man which it implies. The Deuteronomists built upon an
accepted position and sought to remould it in the interests of
admitting the prophets' criticism. Except the religion had
deep roots, it is impossible to understand Amos, Hosea, and
Isaiah. Except the foundations had been broadly based and
securely laid, it would have been impossible to build as men
built in Deuteronomy. I have endeavoured to make these
lectures a strict historical study of the period to which they
refer, and have deliberately refrained from entering into the
question as to what is implied in that position. But the
renewed study of the period has only confirmed my con
viction that the great figures Hebrew tradition set at the
beginning of its religious history are no mere reflexes of the
later development, and that behind JE must lie a great
past;. An adequate treatment of opposite views would have
swollen the book to huge dimensions and made it almost
unreadable to any except specialists : an inadequate
treatment would have been an impertinence to other
workers, I have thought it wiser to develop my own line

xiv PREFACE
of thought and leave it to justify itself, and only in the notes
to indicate opposite opinions. In the notes will be found
also sufficient guidance for many who care to pursue the
subject further or who find the positions in the text unsatis
factory, I have felt at times that the method seems unjust
to work of patient quality, since such work deserves the
respect of at least an attempted refutation. Yet one must
recognise that, where opinions radically differ, the best method
must be to state one's own conclusions with the grounds on
which they are held, and to acknowledge, as I heartily dOj
how much one has learned in spirit and in actual conclusions
from all honest work.
The method followed, of presenting my own view of
Israel's religious development in the lectures, has made it
necessary to increase the number of notes, and has determined
the way in which they are presented. Instead of placing
them at the foot of the pages, I have relegated the notes to
the end, because I believe that the actual text can be read
and followed without the distraction of being called off to
read a reference at the foot of the page. Those who wish
more than is given in the text will probably not resent
having to turn specially to seek it.
I have not acknowledged all my debt to previous workers
in this field of study, because, in a literature which has
reached huge dimensions, it was not always possible to
remember. But, whenever the debt was one of which I was
conscious, I have referred to its source, even at the risk of
overloading the notes with references to other books. What
has further prompted me to give such references is the
recognition that a student, who has worked over a great mass
of material, feels he has won a certain right, and even a duty,
of sifting out for the benefit of his successors what has seemed
to him of permanent value. Minor changes, in the Hebrew

PREFACE xv
text, however, have been given without the name of the
scholar who first proposed the emendation, because any good
modern commentary supplies the want. There is an old,
deep debt which I wish to acknowledge here — that to
Heinrieh Ewald. His results need revision, but his spirit is
imperishable. The Scripture references are to the chapters and verses
in the Hebrew Bible. Several Hebrew words are transliter
ated in the text, because there is no exact equivalent for them
in English, We can easily translate qahal as assembly, but
qahal means the assembly of men who are qualified to take'
part in deliberation through their being partakers in the
faith. It is better to be annoyed by reading qahal than to
be misled by reading assembly and carrying into our under
standing of the word the associations which cling to us round
the English word.
Finally, I have peculiar pleasure in acknowledging my
indebtedness to three old friends : to Rev. W. R. Thomson, B.D.,
for his patient interest in the lectures while they were in
preparation ; and to Prof. J, W. Oman, D.D., and Rev. B. R. H.
Mein, M.A., for their careful reading of the proofs and for their
suggestive and sympathetic criticism of the line of argument.
Glasgow, 1912.

RELIGION OF ISRAEL
UNDER THE KINGDOM.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Foe the subject of these lectures I have selected the Religion
of Israel under the Kingdom. I have omitted, however,
the great figure of Jeremiah, though chronologically he
belongs to this period, because with him opens a new
movement in Israel's religious development. When Jeremiah
begins the most fruitful part of his work, the shadow of
death is already over the Jewish State as a State : and, with
the passing away of the State, religion in Israel came to
possess the power and the limitations of a convent-bred faith.
Exilic and post-exilic Israel, in order to preserve its peculiar
treasure, turned its back on the world and deliberately cut
itself off from the movement of life which produced, among
much else, the Hellenic civilisation. Through this self-limita
tion it gained a great deal; to mention but one thing, it
created the devotional literature of the world. But men
cannot construe the religious life as a thing apart, and
strictly separate it from the problems raised by their life

2 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
in the outer world, without losing much for the faith itself.
The Church in its independent activity is necessary to the
wholesome life of the State ; but the State is equally useful
to the wholesome life of the Church.
Now it is this constant interplay between the religious
and the secular life of Israel which characterises the period
of the kingdom, and indeed makes the period unique in the
national hisjtory. How largely this is the ease and how much
is involved in it will, I hope, become clear through this study
of the religion of the period. Meantime it is to be observed
that the kingdom owed its inception to the faith. Though
the first impulse to the gathering of the tribes under one
leader came from the purely secular necessity of making head
against the Philistines, nevertheless the people found their
rallying point and their strongest support in their religion.
A prophet of Jahveh gave the sanction of the faith to the
first king, and ever afterwards the king was recognised as
the anointed of Jahveh. Thus in the blessing of Moses, a
very early document, the kingship is represented as a crown
ing gift from Jahveh (Deut. xxxiii. 5) ; and in another period
Jahveh is represented as having sanctioned the new governor
by bestowing His spirit on the king (1 Sam. x. 6, xvi. 1 3).
That this conception of the office is no mere reflex of the
glory of the Davidic house, but is regarded as something
which attached to the king as such, is to be seen from the
statements which represent the kings of Northern Israel, no
less than those of the house of David, as reigning in Jahveh's
name and deriving their authority from Him (1 Kings xi.
3 Iff..; 2 Kings ix. 3). The religion, which had originally
given the tribes the power to conquer Palestine and had pre
served them in their first settlement, became the "soul of their >
resistance to the risk of losing their identity in Palestine, and
lent its support to the unity of • the nation and the organisa-

INTRODUCTORY 3
tion representing this unity, which had been found necessary
to maintain the land they had won.
The first effect of the new unity which had come to the
people and of the success which attended their assertion of
it, was a confidence in their power and a new consciousness
of their distinctive part in the life of their world. How
strong was the impression which this period made on men's
minds is to be seen not merely in the extent to which the
story of the early kingdom bulks in their annals, but in the
verve with which that story is told. The annals of the later
kings are jejune; they rarely expand into a record which
contains human personality and interest. Only once in
Hebrew records is secular history told with the colour and
instinct for human personality which make us say that thus
the men acted and thought ; and this is in the time of Saul
and David. In all that story, but particularly in the story
of Absalom's rebellion, the Hebrew writers produce what on
the purely secular side can take its place among the great
literature of the world. The nation was reborn, and in its
new self-consciousness felt a keen delight in declaring what
it had done and learned.
But, further, in this period their faith came to them as
a new thing, since it was this which had given them their
unity and distinctive character, and the power to maintain
both against the world. This shows itself in many ways.
Dr. Gray has pointed out how the use of Jahveh in proper
names greatly increases at this time, and, what is specially
noteworthy, increases most in the royal circles.1 The
kingdom was peculiarly conscious of being under the pro
tection of Jahveh. The same close connection between the
quickened national life and the quickened religious sense
of the people makes its appearance in a still more significant,
because more intimate, way. I have said that the later

4 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
annals of the kingdom are apt to be jejune. It can be
added that they expand into something more than annals
only when they touch upon the life of some prophet. The
outstanding example of this is the cursory way in which the
reign of Jeroboam n., in spite of its great political and
social significance, is dismissed in the book of Kings, as
compared with the relatively full details which are given
of the reign of Ahab. It needed the intervention of the
religious interest to make the annalists condescend into any
detail as to the life-history of their kings, or to induce the
historian to expand the bald statements of the annalists.
In the early kingdom, on the other hand, when the religion
and the outward life of the nation poured themselves into a
common channel to seek a common end, men did not need
the intervention of a prophet to make them realise that their
God was guiding them in the aims they sought. They were
able to write their secular history as a part of the religious
record of the people.
In this period also they began to tell the story of how
they came to be what they were, because their new sense of
self-consciousness as a people roused their interest in their
own past. Yet their fresh sense of what their faith had
done to lend them a distinctive character and to give them
power to assert it, determined the form in which they told
their past. They told how they became a nation, and they
told the story with the deep consciousness that to their faith
they owed it that they were a nation at all. Because this
was the case, the record of their past history became alsp
the record of the faith to which they owed it that they
had any history. Their faith was no dry series of theological
tenets, it was the influence which had made them a nation
and had guided their history. When they wrote about the
faith, they must write about its work in the national life;

INTRODUCTORY $
when they wrote their national story, they must write about
the faith. To the period of the early monarchy we owe the two
accounts J and E, which relate the origins of the people and
the origins of the faith which made them a people ; and the
period when these accounts were put into their present form
helps us to understand the form itself. The first record,
therefore, with which we have to do in a study of Israel's
religion under the kingdom is found in these two accounts,
in which were gathered a number of stories concerning the
nation's past history. But it must be emphasised that what
concerns us is not the originals from which the accounts
have been derived. The stories themselves were old and
came from different sources. What these sources were and
what was the original form of the tales has been of recent
years the subject of painstaking examination. On the one
side, historical students, recognising in them the material for
the national history, have submitted them to historical tests
and, seeking to determine the original historical basis, have
used them for a reconstruction of Israel's history.2 On the
other side, theological students, recognising that they show
affinities with the mythology and religions of other races,
have sought to elucidate their origin with the help of
Comparative Religion.3
These questions as to the original form of the tales, the
source from which they were derived, and the date at which
their originals were composed do not directly concern us
here. What does concern us directly is the form into which
they were cast and the spirit which guided those who recast
them. The questions of origin are important on other
grounds, and have their bearing even on our present subject
of inquiry. It deserves/ however, to be emphasised that what
gave JE the influence it possessed and still possesses is not

6 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
that which it has in common with the other faiths : what
caused Israel to preserve the account and what formB its
charm to men still is its simple and direct presentation of
certain great religious truths which made Israel what it was
and which it was Israel's glory to hold for the world.
To recognise that the stories have come from many
sources and owe their origin to many minds and widely
separated dates is to recognise also the power of the men who
gave them their present form. For there is an impression of
unity "characterising the stories of the patriarchs which is
irresistible. The process of analysis has been carried on
with singular acuteness through many years, and emphasis
has necessarily been laid on the diversity of the elements
from which these final documents have been drawn. But,
after one has recognised the justice of the analysis, and has
convinced oneself of the diversity of the sources and the
many-coloured traditions which meet here, the tales in their
present form draw themselves together again and stand up
in their direct simplicity to convey a very definite impression.
It is this unity of impression, the peculiar contribution of
the editors, which is our concern.4
To recognise, again, that the stories originally held points
of contact with lower forms of faith, to reach behind their
present form and see how there is often apparent in them
a very different conception of the nature of God and of His
relation to the world from those which later prevailed in
Israel, is to recognise, the power of their religion in the men
who moulded and recast the accounts. They ventured to use
material which came to them from other sources and to
embody tales which show the influence of other faiths,
because of the vigour with which they held their own.
They show in this their confidence that their religion is
broadly human and can answer the human necessities and

INTRODUCTORY 7
.aspirations which found expression in these other faiths.
They could tell about Jahveh what men had told about other
gods, because Jahveh to them, was all that and more than
the other gods were believed to be. Israel has not yet gone
into the cloister, from which it looks with suspicion on a
world which lies under the power of the evil one.
Because this is so, the leading characteristic of these
editors is not the fidelity with which they collected and
transmitted all the material which came into their hands.6
What characterises them is an extraordinary power to select
what served their purpose, and to mould what they selected
with a plastic skill which is the greater because it hides
itself from view. There is nothing in the world which can ,
compare with the story of Joseph. The, men have taken
stories which often owed their origin to a different concep-:
tion of God and His relation to men, and, with a fearlessness
which could only come from a simple and living faith, they
have remoulded these so as to make them the vehicle for their
own conceptions of Jahveh and His dealings with Israel.

CHAPTER II.
THE STORIES OF JE.
Aftek what has been said in the introductory chapter, it will
be recognised that the first task is to grasp the broad general
convictions which underlie the early stories, of Hebrew tradi
tion, and which have given religious unity to the narratives.
We can recognise the difficulty of , the task and its delicacy,
but we cannot escape from its necessity.
Thus the document is unhesitatingly monotheistic, in the
sense that to its authors there is only one God whose will is
of any significance or whose favour need be sought. The
writers have no theory of the divine unity, but they are
worshippers of one God. That other nations acknowledge
other gods is of course known to them ; but what these gods
may be in themselves, or whether they have any real existence,
is of no importance. While Jahveh can make Himself known
to those who worship other gods (as in Gen. xii. 7), the other
gods have no relation at all to those who worship Jahveh.
Abraham is represented as having left his country in order to
seek out a new land at Jahveh's bidding, but what he left
behind him in the way of worship is not even thought of as
interesting. Jahveh's presence and Jahveh's promises content
him and reduce the past to a blank.
This assurance of there being but one God who is of any
importance explains the absence of all warnings against
idolatry. The later books are full of stern and repeated

THE STORIES OF JE 9
warnings against this sin. Thus Deuteronomy condemns to
death any one who seduces his brethren into idolatry (ch. xiii.).
They are also full of safeguards which are framed to prevent
the people from worshipping other gods. A great part of
the legislation of Deuteronomy has this aim in view. Yet
the world of this early book is heathen. Not only does
Jacob spend many years in Paddan Aram, and Joseph live at
the court of Pharaoh, but, when the patriarchs live in Pales
tine, they live among heathenism. Israel is not yet protected
from paganism by the possession of a land of its own or by
peculiar institutions which it has framed to embody and so
safeguard its faith. In spite of this it is not felt to be
necessary to say that the men remained loyal to Jahveh or
to praise them for so remaining ; the loyalty is taken for
granted, as though nothing else were possible. So strongly
does this run through all the narratives that the writers are
unembarrassed in describing, in connection with the heroes of
the faith, a tolerance which was inconceivable to a later age.
Joseph marries one who is not merely an Egyptian, but a
daughter of the priest of On (Gen. xii. 45) ; Jacob and
Laban, who do not acknowledge the same God, unite in a
sacrificial meal (Gen. xxxi. 54). When Jacob goes down
into Egypt, it is the Egyptians who refuse to eat food in
common (Gen. xliii. 32); and the author speaks of it as a
curious custom.1
Against the monotheism of the document it has been held
that the different places at which the patriarchs worship appear
to mark, not merely different manifestations of the one God, but
different Jahvehs ; and the fact that special names for Jahveh
emerge in connection with the local shrines has been used to
strengthen this impression. (We have nsT1 'n\ Gen. xxii. 14, cf.
ver. 8 ; '¦M 'n\ Ex. xvii. 15 ; Dipt? 'rv, Judg. vi. 24 ; P&OB" TipN pn,
Gen. xxxiii. 20 ; PN rT3 PN, Gen. xxxv. 7, cf. xxxi. 13 : we have

lo RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Jahveh called by different names, cf. DPiypN, Gen. xxi. 33, at
Beersheba.) It has accordingly been urged that, even as
there, were as many Baals as there were places at which a
Baalcult was practised, and as " the god Baal and the goddess
Astarte are mythological abstractions from the fundamentally
diverse Baals and Astartes of the local cults," 2 so Jahveh is
the abstraction from the local Jahvehs which were worshipped
at many shrines through the land. Even if it were proved
that this is the case, it remains true that the abstraction has
already been made. For Jahveh appears to Jacob in Paddan
Aram (Gen. xxxi. 13), and reveals Himself as the God who
had appeared at Bethel. At Bethel what Jacob saw was a
ladder, the top of which reached to heaven (Gen. xxviii. 12).
Jahveh may be expected .at this sanctuary, but, when He
comes to the worshipper there, He comes down. He is
a visitant, not the numen loci. As He may come to
Bethel, so He came down on Sinai (Ex. xx. 24, iii. 8,
xix. 11, 18); and though Sinai was long regarded as His
dwelling-place, ' even yon Sinai ' quakes when Jahveh arrives
(Judg. v. 5).3
All this implies that Jahveh is a free personality, who is
bound to no place, but is able to reveal Himself where He
will, and who is only determined by His own will when He
thus reveals Himself. The sacrifice of the worshipper is not
the means by which he draws the attention of his God or even
•attracts His presence : it is the means by which the worshipper
gives thanks for a revelation which has been of God's free grace
to him. Jahveh can make His will both known and effective
in Paddan Aram, in Palestine, in Egypt ; and wherever He
has made Himself known, His worshippers have found in
Him all they need. This is not theoretical monotheism,
which abstracts the thought of God and the other gods to
reason about the' divine nature ; but it is that worship of one

THE STORIES OF JE n
God without which the most finely reasoned monotheism is
apt to remain merely theoretical.
Jahveh is also spiritual, in the sense that His relation
to nature is that of a free personality. One prefers to say
His relation to nature rather than to the universe, because
the book does not bring Jahveh into a close connection with
creation, and does not conceive Him as holding a definite
relation to the world as a whole. Possibly the idea of the
world as a whole has not risen before the thought of the
writers ; certainly, if it has, it does not bulk largely in their
minds, for Jahveh's relation to the world is not conceived as
a relation to the world-whole, but rather as a relation to the
individual nature-phenomena and especially to the terrible
aspects of nature which have always attracted men's awe.4
Now, when Jahveh brings earthquake and storm, He always
stands behind the nature-phenomenon, and is never contained
in it. The very variety of events with which He can be
brought into connection is the sufficient proof that He is
identical with none. He sends pestilence (Ex. ix. 8, 2 Sam.
xxiv. 15), and causes drought (Gen. xii. 25-32); He rains
down fire (Gen. xix. 24), and is attended by earthquake
(Judg. v. 5). If Jahveh were conceived as the god of the
storm, it would be difficult to account for His association with
pestilence. The fact that He is associated with all these
natural events shows that He is contained in none, but is con
ceived as able to use each in order to fulfil His will. These
events, however, play a singularly slight part in the conception
of God which appears in the stories of the patriarchs. Jahveh
can manifest Himself through these phenomena, but in general
He manifests Himself to the patriarchs without them. If,
therefore, they appear as attending Jahveh in certain parts
of the story, it is a just conclusion that these phenomena
of nature which have always roused men's interest, especially

1 2 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
at a certain stage of their mental and religious development,
claimed the attention of the Hebrews also as subjects for
religious thought, were referred by them to the one God of
the people, and could not be conceived by them as escaping,
any more than aught else, from His control.6 The significant
matter is that they are always believed to be under His con
trol. Jahveh's relation to the cosmos, and especially to the
nature-phenomena, has not been a subject of reflection ; but
Jahveh's nature is so conceived and so thoroughly held aloof
from being contained in nature that the people are sure,
when the period of reflection comes, to follow the higher line
of theological thought.
The spirituality of Jahveh is also clearly shown in His
relation to the sanctuaries. A common reason assigned for
the selection of certain places as those in which a revelation
was granted to the patriarchs is that they were the centres
of a Canaanite cult, to which the Israelites, when they con
quered the land, attached themselves. The patriarchs are then
represented as having been brought to these places in order, as
it were, to sprinkle an alien sanctuary with holy water and carry
over to the uses of Jahveh sites and practices which origin
ally belonged to other gods. The theory has, in reality, little
foundation.6 The only places about which we definitely know
that they were alike patriarchal places of worship and centres
of a later cult are Bethel (Gen. xxviii. 19, cf. Amos v. 5, etc.)
and Beersheba (Gen. xxvi. 23-25, cf. Amos v. 5, etc.). But
Mamre (Gen. xviii. 1), Penuel (Gen. xxxii. 31), and Mahanaim
(Gen. xxxii. 2 f.) are all places where a revelation is reported
to have been given to the forefathers ; and none of these has
any except secular associations for later Israel. On the other
hand, Shiloh, the famous seat of worship during the early
kingdom (Judg. xxi. 19 ; 1 Sam. i. 3), Gilgal, which was
associated with Joshua's victories (Josh. iv. 19 ff., v. 2-9,

THE STORIES OF JE 13
cf. Hos. iv. 15 ; Amos v. 5), Gibeon, where Solomon had his
high place of sacrifice and received his dream (1 Kings iii. 4 ff.),
are all destitute of associations with the patriarchs. How little
Israel in this early period was tied by the associations of a place,
even when these associations were with its own past, is clearly
shown in the case of Shechem. Sheehem was a centre for
religious solemnities to early Israel (Gen. xxxiii. 18-20, cf.
Hos. vi. 9), but, though it was made the capital by Jeroboam,
(1 Kings xii. 1, 25), and so received a religious and a secular
importance, it was lightly forsaken by one of his successors
for the stronger post of Samaria (1 Kings xvi. 24), and
Samaria, which did not even exist in the days of the
patriarchs, became the centre of a worship which threatened
to rival that of Jerusalem. Further, it is certain that Israel
did not in all cases adopt the sites of the rival worship from
the Canaanites. Of recent years two places of Canaanite
worship have been discovered, and the high places at Taanach
and Gezer have been laid bare. Of Gezer, Prof. Macalister
states that the sanctuary must have been so large and im
portant as to form a landmark for all the district in which
it stood. Yet neither of these places even appears in the
patriarchal history.
When we find that most of the places in which Jahveh
is declared to have revealed Himself to the patriarchs have
no associations with any later worship, and that the only
places about which it is independently certain, that they
had associations with Canaanite worship are ignored in the
history, it is no unreasonable conclusion that what prompted
JE to locate the patriarchal revelations at certain places
was that these places were already by tradition connected
with these great names, and thus had associations with the
distinctive worship of Israel. This carries with it the further
conclusion that the writers conceived their God as able and

14 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
willing to reveal Himself under "conditions which He Himself,
and not any place, imposed. He was a free spiritual person
ality, who was bound to no one place.
Hence, when the representation of this early ideal came
to be framed into a law, it read (Ex. xx. 24), 'An altar of
earth shalt thou make unto Me ... wherever I cause My
name to be remembered, I will come unto thee.' Jahveh
does not dwell at, He comes to, the place of the cult.7
And what determines Him so to do is Himself. The law
makers not only retain 8 the primitive simplicity of the form
of worship, they frame it into a binding rule that there shall
be an earthen altar or at best one of unhewn stones ; and
their legislation seems a deliberate effort to avoid the
elaborate Canaanite sacrificial apparatus with its inevitable
suggestion of the god being confined there. The law was
seeking to make a safeguard to the spiritual conception of
Jahveh, but the spiritual conception was that which produced
the desire for a safeguard.
The spiritual conception of the God whom men worship is
purifying the relation between the deity and the worshipper,
for the soul of the worshipper is becoming the medium through
which Jahveh makes His will known. One hears, it is true,
of altars in many places and of the vnazzeba erected beside
the altar (e.g. Gen. xxxv. 14). One catches a glimpse of the
sacred well (Gen. xxvi. 25, 1 Kings i. 9), and the holy tree
(Gen. xxi. 33). It is not difficult to understand how, in an
age which had no clear doctrine of God's relation to the
world, the obscure processes pf the world's life were means
through which God could reveal Himself; and men who
still felt their life strangely akin to" the life which filled
the world, could look for the divine revelation in some
natural objects in which nature manifests her secret life.
That Israel could share these ideas is proved by the story

THE STORIES OF JE 15
of how David expected a revelation of Jahveh's direction in
the rustling of the baka trees (2 Sam. v. 24). But, though
this may have been originally present in the patriarchal
stories, it has almost wholly disappeared from them. The
patriarchs hallow the place in which Jahveh has appeared
to them : they do not consecrate any object which has been
the medium of this revelation. Abraham builds an altar on
which he gives thanks for the revelation of Jahveh, and by
which he seeks to commemorate so great an event (Gen. xii. 7).
Jacob sets up a mazzeba to distinguish the place in which he
has found God present (Gen. xxviii. 16)': yet the mazzeba itself
is so insignificant that, when he returns to Bethel (xxxv. 7),
he makes no use of it, but builds an altar. When Jahveh
reveals Himself again, Jacob sets up a new mazzeba to mark
afresh a place which has received a freBh distinction.9
The attitude which the document takes is seen most clearly
in the great figure which is set at the beginning of all the
national faith. This faith takes its origin in the soul and
in the resolution of Abraham ; farther than that the author
feels no need to go. The guidance which men need is not
ministered to them in the dim processes of nature or in the
stars ; the heroes of Israel's faith walk in the light of their
God's speech to them.
A£ less importance was attached to the outward means
and more to the condition of the inward spirit, as the medium
of the divine revelation was more and more felt tb lie in
the soul of the worshipper, the connection between the deity
and the place of worship became more loose. The outward
emblems became accessories instead of essentials for the
worship. Hence it is possible for the two accounts to take
different attitudes towards these emblems. E speaks of the
mazzeba as a natural accessory of worship ; J never alludes
to it at all. Both have reached the position in which the

1 6 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
relation between Jahveh and His worshippers can exist with
out such outward things ; but, while the one leaves it as a
thing indifferent, the other removes it as unnecessary or even
dangerous.10 Because thought had already been directed to
such questions and had brought into existence this body of
opinion in Israel, a later generation, which found that certain
emblems because of their resemblance to similar emblems
among the heathen were assimilating the Jahveh-worship to
the nature -religions, ordered their removal. Deuteronomy
could order the mazzeboth to -be removed and the asherim
to be hewn down (xii. 3), without making a violent breach
in the national religion, because the better religious thought
of the people had long outgrown them.
The same convictions are seen to govern the thought as
to what constitutes the relation between Jahveh and Israel.
Jahveh can reveal Himself to others besides the patriarchs,
and holds a relation, uncertain but real, to all men. Yet
He reveals Himself to Laban and Pharaoh only in the
interests of His own people. He holds a peculiar relation to
the founders of Israel, which is based, not upon their acts,
but on His free choice of them. In this also the spiritual
character of Jahveh is emphasised.
It is highly significant to note that, according to both
writers,11 this relation is not instituted, nor is it even
maintained by sacrifice. J does not regard sacrifice as a
rite peculiar to Israel, for he was able to accept traditions
which described Cain, Abel and Noah as presenting offerings ;
and so showed that he recognised sacrifice as something
which existed before Israel existed. While he represents
Abraham as building altars, he is accustomed to add that
there the patriarch called upon the name of Jahveh
(Gen. xxi. 33, xii. 8, xiii. 4). Evidently it was not the
sacrifice, but the calling on the name of Jahveh, which seemed

THE STORIES OF JE 1 7
to him to constitute the specifically Israelite element in this
worship.12 It were going too far to say that this implies a
rejection of all sacrificial worship ; it is not, however, too
much to say that the writer conceives the faith as having
originated in an act of Jahveh, and the relation between
Jahveh and His worshipper as one which could continue
without sacrifice ; for it is exactly this latter statement which
is made in the story of Joseph.13
The story is primarily concerned with a religious question,
for its insistent theme is the great truth pf the divine pro
vidence. Yet it is wholly silent as to sacrifice, and so far
as this representation of the life of early Israel is concerned,
the people at the period might have offered none. This
silence, of course, is partly due to the fact that the principal
action of the tale takes place in Egypt, and that Egypt
was not regarded as a fitting place for sacrifice to Jahveh.
The influence of this view of Egypt is proved by the fact
that, when the Exodus is claimed by Moses, he gives as its
motive that the people may go three days' journey into the
wilderness and there hold a feast to Jahveh (Ex. v. 1).
Evidently it was only in the wilderness that such a feast
with its attendant sacrifices could be rightly celebrated. Yet
how little force this had for the writer himself is indicated
by his silence as to whether this feast was ever held. The
broad fact remains that the life in Egypt, alike of Joseph
and the people, though it is without sacrifice, is not regarded
as destitute of the conscious presence of God. God reveals
Himself to Joseph there. God's providence protects and
guides the people there. The sons of Joseph, who have
never seen an Israelite altar, are claimed by Jacob for the
faith and blessed by him (Gen. xlviii. 5). Sacrifice is here
relegated into a subordinate position as an unessential part
of the Jahveh-worship. We understand better how Amos

1 8 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
found an audience when we recognise how, long before his
time, there was a body of opinion in South. Israel which
held this view of the cult.
E shows a different attitude, which is equally instructive.
He is interested in sacrifice and in the forms of worship at the
high places : he recognises mazzeboth and likes to tell when
and why they were planted.14. But both writers are at one in
the way in which they construe sacrifice. They regard it as a
gift,* never as a propitiation.16 It is not a sacrament in the
sense of being a means by which God's anger may be pro
pitiated, or by which He who has withdrawn Himself from His
people may be brought back. It is the acknowledgment on
the part of the worshipper of the grace God has bestowed on
him. Abraham sacrifices, after and because he has received
a promise (Gen. xii. 7). The strange rite, described in eh. xv.,
is placed after the divine promise, and construed as a mean's
by which God assures Abraham of His mercy.16 Abraham
is prepared to offer up Isaac, not as a means of renewing a
weakened relation between God and himself, but at the
bidding of Jahveh, i.e. as a recognition of their intimate
relation (Gen. xxii.). Jacob anoints the stone and builds
an altar at Bethel ; but both acts follow and signalise a
mercy which he has received (Gen. xxviii. 18, xxxv. 7),
and in the latter Jacob gratefully acknowledges how Jahveh
has made sure that the tie between them shall not be
weakened. This idea of sacrifice agrees with the fundamental virtue
which is urged by the writers, loyalty to Jahveh as Israel's
sufficient helper. Israel's sacrifices are the acknowledgment
of this allegiance. They are offered at the recurrent festivals,
when the nation comes to rejoice before Jahveh, ' none shall
appear before Me empty'; they are offered continually on
behalf of a nation which is about its daily work, like the

THE STORIES OF JE 19
' bread of the presence ' ; they were offered at the individual's
instance, when any man had special cause for a peculiar
gratitude, like the vows and freewill offerings. But they are
always thanksgiving: as men give tribute to their king, so
they offer their tribute to their heavenly King.
This conception of sacrifice as an acknowledgment of
mercy received means also that Jahveh is a free personality
who gives His grace to a people whom He has chosen and
who owes everything to Him. Israel does not Beek to control,
it lives under the free mercy of its God.
To do justice to this position, it is necessary to remember
that, though the sacrifice of propitiation does not appear in
JE, it does appear during the period at which the separate
documents must have been written. Such a sacrifice is
regarded as normal, when it is said in the case of Eli that
the guilt of his house shall not be atoned with sacrifice or
offering for ever (1 Sam. iii. 14), and when David asked
Saul ' if Jahveh has stirred up the king against his servant,
to present Him with an offering' (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). When
David's act in taking the census was believed to have brought
down plague upon the kingdom, the plague was stayed after
the king had offered sacrifice (2 Sam. xxiv. 25). When the
cause of another outbreak of the divine anger was discovered
by the prophet to be the sin of Saul against the Gibeonites,
seven of Saul's descendants were handed over to the Gibeonites
to be hanged up for a sacrifice before Jahveh (2 Sam. xxi. 1-9).
All these sacrifices are of the nature of offering something
which may act as a constraint on Jahveh, and in particular
the case of David with Saul points in the direction of the
propitiatory sacrifice being construed as something which in
some magic fashion acts on an anger which is capricious.
With all such elements in the national religion these two
documents will have nothing to do. The grace of God,

20 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
under which Israel lives and for which it gives thanks in
its sacrifice, is uncompelled.
That the writers were deliberately submitting sacrifice to
examination in the light of their ideas as to the God whom
they worshipped thereby is shown in the attitude which E
takes in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac. I do not
think it possible to set this amazing chapter, Gen. xxii., too
high, alike in its restraint of diction and in its spiritual
insight But, even because one realises how, like every work
of creative genius, it is inexhaustible and is always supplying
fresh thought to the new minds which study it, and to the
new generations which inherit it, one must be on guard
against importing modern ideas into its teaching. Our
interest is concerned with construing it as a historic
document which belongs to a special period of Israel's
history.17 Isaac, then, is to be offered by his father, not as a pro
pitiation for any sin (the view of child-sacrifice which is
taken in Mic. vi. 7),18 not as a means of averting the divine
anger from the State (as in 2 Kings iii. 27), nor yet as a
method of obtaining knowledge of the future (as in Deut.
xviii. 10), but simply as a gift to Jahveh, and a proof of
Abraham's close relation to Him. Accordingly, when Isaac
is delivered, a ram is provided in his place, for it is fitting
that the worshipper offer something of real value to his
God.19 Yet* even in the things which a man may offer in
gratitude to his God, he must construe his offerings in the
light of the nature of Him to whom they are offered ; and,
for no other reason than because Jahveh refused this thing,
because Jahveh is what He is, such a sacrifice is forbidden
to Israel. This is the unique feature in the story as a part of Israel's
religious history. Child-sacrifice disappeared in most of the

THE STORIES OF JE 21
faiths at a certain stage of their development, because softened
human manners revolted against it, or because the new sense
of the child's rights as an independent personality and not a
mere part of the family, made it seem unnatural. But men
generally kept, as it were in the back of their minds, the
sense that it was in itself an act of religion, and might in
special circumstances be again required. In ordinary circum
stances they substituted a doll for the child, or made the child's
death into a mock death ; but, because they believed that
their God had a right to and a pleasure in this thing, the
dark rite was always liable to return in its naked ugliness
in the day of personal distress or national peril. Behind the
delicate visions of Greek religion lurks the conception of God
which made the sacrifice of Iphigenia possible and natural;
Men, in their selfish terror or in their anxiety as to the
State, could use such means as this to propitiate their God.
And then a moralist like Lucretius could limn his picture
of the delicate and virginal flesh in the hands of men made
cowards by their superstition, and use this sacrifice as an
indictment against religion which alone in all the national
life tolerated so craven and so foul a deed. " Tantum potuit
religio suadere malorum." In that contemptuous anger of a
great moralist one feels the difficulty which troubled the life
of the ancient world, the opposition between a morality which
had grown sweeter and a religion which had not broken
away from practices that represented the lower and earlier
morality of the people.
Israel deliberately and consciously said that the God
whom it worshipped refused such an offering.
It may appear as though I have dwelt too long on the
attitude which these writers take to sacrifice, and as though
the detailed discussion were needless in connection with a
subject which may appear at most to be a side-issue. My

22 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
reason is double. On the one side, their whole attitude to
sacrifice implies thought on Jahveh's nature and on that
which constitutes Jahveh's relation to Israel, and the recog
nition of this forces on our attention strong elements in the
national religion which gave, the great prophets, in their
severe criticism of the cult, their point of connection. Such
a man as Amos becomes more easily understood. But, further,
when it is recognised how the relation of Israel to Jahveh
is. conceived as something which was not called into being
by the cult', and which could continue during a whole period
of the nation's existence without sacrifice, it is evident that
this relation was conceived as resting on a free act of Jahveh
Himself which Israel's sacrifices gratefully acknowledged. . It
were going too far to say that the writers polemise against
another view ; their account does not read like a polemic at
all. But it is only doing justice to their attitude to say that
they instinctively, revolt against that fundamental view which
underlies ail early propitiatory sacrifice and which brings it
into close relation to magical rites, the view, namely, that
man can control his God. Israel lives under the rule of a
God by whose free grace its life is sustained. Their whole
life, in other aspects than those which could be embodied in
the cult, was under His direction.
So the first thing which is understood of every true
worshipper of this God is that he acknowledges no other
allegiance ; his undivided allegiance is given to Jahveh.
Abraham separates himself from home and kindred and
commits himself to One who means well by him.. Jacob
may tolerate in his household certain idolatrous practices ;,
but, when he goes on pilgrimage to Jahveh, he buries all
these heathen emblems under an oak (Gen. xxxv. 4).20 David's
heart is perfect, because he worships Jahveh alone ; Solomon's.
heart is not perfect, for he suffers other gods to have a place

THE STORIES OF JE 23
at his court (1 Kings xi. 4). This is the primary virtue for
these early writers.
We undervalue its significance, because we build on it.
Since there is no other god who is likely to claim our
allegiance, we fail to realise how much allegiance to one god
has done for the moral culture of the race. But Warneck ai
has recently pointed out how large a space it occupies in the
faith of all recent converts from heathenism. They, are
capable of grave moral failure, and, like the early Corinthians,
are careless to visit with censure offences against the moral law.
The one offence which they will not condone, to be capable
of which is to be cut off at once from all Christian society, is
apostasy. There must be only one allegiance.
So it is with early Israel. They do not conceive this
as an obligation, they rather wear it as their privilege.
They are not teaching how Jahveh is a jealous God, and
so they do not fulminate against idolatry ; but they are
jealous of offering their service to any other. That means
that the sense of being in the power of one Will, which
means well by them, is a deliverance rather than a duty. It
has delivered them from the fear of the dark powers which
lurk in the processes of nature, before which man found
himself so helpless. It has unified their moral life to realise
that there is One above all these who has a purpose with
them. Man is little- and ignorant and weak ; but over him
is Jahveh who has a mind toward him. There is a sense
of strong contentment which breathes through the record of
early Israel, and which is the stronger because it contrasts
with the stories of Paradise, of Babel, of the Nephilim, with
their note of pessimism.
How men live, how they live together,, how they bear
themselves in the relations of their common life, are all
brought into relation to Jahveh, for Jahveh cares about these

24 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
things. Jahveh is, as we might say, becoming the guardian
of international ethics. He is invoked as witness of Jacob's
conduct toward Laban's daughters, when Laban is not present
to protect their rights (Gen. xxxi. 5 0 f.). He is the rewarder
of those who practise common humanity (Ex. i. 20 f.).
He holds a relation, vague and undefined, to all humanity,
so that the report as to Sodom and Gomorrah rouses Him
to inquiry into their conduct. When He comes down for
this purpose, visits Abraham, and passes on to the cities
of the plain, He tests both by their bearing to the two
unknown visitants who come asking for hospitality. That
for which Jahveh cares, alike in His chosen and in mankind,
that for the absence of which in Sodom He destroys the city,
is morality. Joseph puts away his temptation by the final
sentence, 'How shall I do this great wickedness and sin
against God ? ' (Gen. xxxix. 9).
j^ One can be the more sure that the question of men's
conduct to each other, the question of ethics, was present
as determining in part the relation between God and man,
if one puts away the idea that the early traditions regarded
the nation as the unit in religion — whatever that may
exactly mean — and could only conceive of Jahveh as holding
a relation to Israel. It is true that the persons brought into
relation to Jahveh are generally representatives of Israel, or,
like Abraham's servant, concerned with the fortunes of the
people. The same maybe said of Jahveh making Himself known
to Abimelech (Gen. xx. 3) ; that too is in the interests of the
nation's future. But this common thread, on which the tales
have been strung, has been contributed by those who collected
them, and shows the purpose which they had in collecting
them, namely, the purpose of telling how Israel arose through
the help of its God. Yet, since the stories were once told
independently of each other and of this common purpose,

THE STORIES OF JE 25
what is revealed in them as to God's relation to certain men
was told of His relation to them as men first and as repre
sentatives afterwards. When men heard the beautiful tale
of Abraham receiving the heavenly visitors, they heard it
first with no arrtire pemie as to how this was the relation
of Jahveh to' Israel, but they heard through it the message
' be not forgetful to entertain strangers,' for through a gracious
hospitality Abraham received heavenly visitors. " The story
of how God heard the voice of the weeping child Ishmael
is so touching simply because in it Jahveh has mercy on a
child : this God will also hear the weeping of our children." 22
The man who wrote how, after Jahveh opened Hagar's eyes
to see the well of water, she gave the boy drink, but did not
add that she drank herself, was writing about a mother and
wrote to the heart of all mothers. The collector who em
bodied the tale in the history was thinking of Hagar as the
mother of a race, and of Ishmael as the representative of a
people. That gave the reason for his retaining it, but no
more* He could use, in order to describe Jahveh's relation
to Israel, such stories of human pathos and virility, and
adopt them without losing any of their rich human qualities.
That the morality of Israel at this early stage is primitive
is only what we might expect. To take but one illustration :
Jacob shows many of the Hebrew characteristics — shrewdness
which degenerates into cunning, foresight which takes refuge
in lying — and yet he is none the less under the peculiar care
of Jahveh. Nay more, the stories are told with a verve
which shows that these traits were relished by men who
recognised themselves in their national heroes. But it is
noteworthy that some of the stories were evidently raising
scruples in this direction, for in some the more unworthy
elements have been modified in the interests pf a higher
morality. Abraham's falsehood, in one variant of the story as

26 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
to Abimelech (Gen. xx. 12), is represented as a mental reserva
tion. Personally I do not think this improves the situation ;
but I have found a number of Christian people who think it
does, and am willing to suppose that this was a reason for
the change. Jacob's dealings with Laban have evidently
roused uneasiness, for his wives first and then Laban himself
are required to justify his conduct (Gen. xxxi. 14-16, 43 f.,
xxxii. 1). Again, when one passes to the story of Joseph, there
are few things which display a subtler knowledge of the
shades of moral growth than the account of Joseph's dealings
with his brethren. Their weakness and their strength, the
care with which the denouement is brought about, not so as to
surprise or to satisfy the desire for a rounded-off tale, but so as
to satisfy the moral sense, the recognition of how the brother
hood which makes a nation is only indissolubly knit when the
members are brought together into a moral unity, the recog
nition of the worth of repentance, the fine knowledge of the
power of forgiveness, all these traits give evidence of a
thought devoted to the springs of conduct which is -amazing
at any time. With this story before us, it is impossible to
speak, lightly of the moral development of early Israel.23
Early religion everywhere has put justice and right under
the care of the god of the nation, and every code of social'
conduct has been represented as the expression of the will
of the national deity and has been placed under his protection.
This, which was true of all the nations of the time, is also
true of Israel. But, even as we have seen how Jahveh was
thought to care for the conduct of men as men, and not
merely as Israelites, so the writers show that social morality '
has been thought of as something larger than tribal mceurs.
The early tradition has one robust trait of true morality, it
has no sense that the forefathers must, in relation to the rest
of the world, be blameless. Foreigners are given a superiority

THE STORIES OF JE 27
in this respect over Israel (cf. Abimelech and Abraham).
Jacob is represented as having cursed two of his sons, Simeon
and Levi (Gen. xlix. 5-7), for a wrath which was cruel against
the foreigner. It was a later age which sought to justify their
conduct (Gen. xxxiv.) : the earlier morality was wider than
patriotism. Jahveh has a concern with the morals of the
world, for He visits Sodom to see whether it is as evil as He
has heard (Gen. xix.). Yet Sodom has not sinned against Lot,
nor is its presence imperilling the chosen seed. Its offence
is against Jahveh (Gen. xiii. 13).
One general characteristic of these stories, as the editors
have brought them together, deserves notice, because it is
unique in the record of Israel's religion. The faith which /
they embody is that of a nation which is quietly confident of
its place and its future, which is free from inward divisions
save such as it can transcend, and which is reconciled with
life, because behind its effort is the will of God, whom it
serves with a happy and whole-hearted allegiance. This
attitude expresses itself in scattered .sayings like those which
describe Abraham as the friend of God, or say of Moses that
Jahveh spoke with him face to face. Although -in these
sayings we hear the wistful words in which a later generation,
conscious of the division between itself and its God, described
the happier relation of the past, they catch and embody the
spirit which pervades the account and reaches its culminating
point in the assurance of the Joseph-stories : ' Ye meant
it unto me for evil, but God meant it unto me for good.'
There is a divine Providence which governs the tangled
affairs of this world, and even its moral conflicts, and which
is unlimited in its power to bring about its own ends. There
is only one Will in the world which it concerns Israel to
know ; and this Will is not recognised as a mere intervention
in the course of the world, or known through the difference

28 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
between what it brings to pass and the ordinary events of
life. God reveals His will in a course of events, of which
man is the reverent spectator, not in any single event which
stamps itself as divine through standing apart in quality or
character from the rest of life. And about this will it is
Israel's happy confidence that they know it and can do it.
There is the quiet sincerity of men who are reconciled with
life because they believe themselves in the hands of One
whonrthey serve with a complete allegiance and who means
well with them. Men are still only conscious of the liberty
and enlargement which this sense of having to do with a
mightier will than their own brings with it : they have not
yet learned either their own impotence to fulfil all the
demands of Jahveh, or the inward conflict which such an effort
brings with it. Abraham receives a revelation and is com
petent to fulfil it all. The demand is simple and outward:
the response is instant and complete. Man's will is free and
strong enough to do what his God requires.
Never again do we catch this note in the main line of
Israel's religion. The nation was caught up into the world-
movement without, and was divided against itself within. It
had to fight for the faith that there was any world-purpose
at all, and, in the effort to assert what this world-purpose
claimed, it became divided within. The prophets spoke to
the nation, but found that only the faithful would listen.
'Rejoice not, 0 Israel, exult not like the nations,' said
Hosea (ix. I).24 And Israel never could rejoice again with
the naive gladness which breathes through its early records.
Under the stern discipline of experience and the teaching of
the prophets, this hopefulness of heart passed away from the
people as a people to give place to something deeper. Some
one has said that the records of Genesis form an epic, while
the later records form a tragedy. That is no inadequate

THE STORIES OF JE 29
description, for the people as a people was never again
reconciled with life.26

Excursus on the Authoks of JE.
The most probable supposition as to the source of these
stories is that they received their present form in one or more
of the priestly circles and at one of the leading shrines. This
would account for the fact that the patriarchs are frequently
brought into connection with places at which a later organised
worship existed : the writers made use of the stories which
were current at these sanctuaries. It may, however, appear
to militate against such a view that it requires us to suppose
that a document like J, which shows a comparative indifference
to all sacrifice, originated among the priests, whose business,
we are apt to conceive, was to carry on the sacrifices. It is
necessary, therefore, to recognise that both the character and
the work of the priesthood underwent a profound change
during the course of Israelite history.
On the one hand, the early priesthood had much less to
do with the offering of sacrifice than came later to be the case.
The sacrifices in the early period were more simple in themselves
and less elaborate in their accessories, and they seem to have
been frequently performed by the housefather or by the head
of the clan. Saul offered sacrifice for the people, and was not
rebuked for his act in this connection (1 Sam. xiii. 8-14 ; cf.
xiv. 32-35). Solomon arranged the sacrifices which were
offered at Gibeon, and in Jahveh's name blessed the people
who were gathered there (1 Kings viii. 5, 55). It may be
said that Saul and Solomon were kings and that the character
of their office gave them a peculiar position, so that their
being allowed to perform sacrifice does not carry with it as
an inevitable conclusion that this was a layman's function.
But Micah (in Judges ch. xvii.) sets apart one of his sons as
priest in the new sanctuary which he has instituted. It
seems natural that the owner of the sanctuary with all its
appurtenances should appoint the priest who shall take charge

3 b RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
of this ; "but it also seems natural that he should appoint any
one whom he can find. When a wandering Levite makes his
appearance, Micah is well content to put him in charge of
the sanctuary, but, while he feels surer of the character of his
worship now that he has a Levite as his priest, he as evidently
did not think that the presence of one of his sons as priest
would invalidate all its character. When, again, the Danites
went out to find a new settlement, they congratulated them
selves on having secured a descendant of Moses whom they
could, take with them to supervise their tribal sanctuary
(Judg. xviii. 19, 30). But there is no reason to suppose that
they would have abstained from sacrifice altogether if they
had been unable to find such an official representative.
The priests at the great sanctuaries officiated, as in the
case of Eli and his house in Shiloh, at the annual and stated
festivals, but seem to have been counted unnecessary for the
minor sacrifices. It was only when sacrifice and holy place
came to be provided with a theory as to that which gave
them efficacy that official ministrants became essential.26
On the other hand, a leading function of the early priest
hood was to pronounce the law and to issue legal decisions in
the name of Jahveh. In the Blessing of Moses the chief task
of the priests is to teach Jacob Jahveh's judgments and Israel
Jahveh's law (Deut. xxxiii. 1 0). Their chief glory is to have
fulfilled this function without fear or favour, while their
functions in connection with sacrifice are put in the last place.
And that Jahveh's law which the priests announced was not
a series of merely ritual precepts dealing with the correct
method of offering the sacrifice is proved by the cases which
were referred for decision to the local sanctuary. Causes
which were found too hard for the elders in the gate were
brought before Jahveh (Ex. xviii. 19). When a Hebrew
servant accepted bondage for life, he did it at the sanctuary
(Ex. xxi. 6). Eli says, that ' if one man sin against another,
God shall give judgment on him ' (1 Sam. ii. 25). The case
was referred to the priests, who decided according to the
ancient law, or, when the law was uncertain or the case novel,

THE STORIES OF JE 31
administered the oath of purgation in the name of Jahveh
(Ex. xxii. 10), or employed the holy lot.27
It agrees with the view represented in the Blessing of Moses
as to the relative importance of sacrifice and law in the func
tions of the priesthood that the earliest code of Ex. xx.-xxiii.
shows the same proportion. Ex. xx. 23-26 contains the law
as to personal and clan sacrifices, and is content to reserve
the altars for Jahveh alone and to ordain that they shall be
simple, probably as a contrast with the high places of the
Canaanites. Ex. xxiii. 14-19 ordains the three great festivals,
in which the priests must have held a more prominent place,
since these were more formal and were performed at the
greater • sanctuaries. The rest of the code is devoted to
questions of personal and tribal law.
Throughout the Hebrew literature this sense that the
priests have, as a large part of their function, the task of
guiding the people in connection with questions of justice is
never absent. Hosea is specially severe on the priests of
Northern Israel because they have failed to do this very
thing (iv. 1-8, v. 1) ; whereas when he speaks of the debased
cultus, he addresses himself, not to the priests, but to the
whole people. Even so late as Mai. ii. 1-6, the good old
days were the days when the priest had the law of truth in
his mouth and unrighteousness was not found in his lips.
Because this is the case, it is natural to expect that the
prophets, who were also deeply concerned with righteousness
and its divine sanctions, should be found in close connection
with the priests. And this is exactly what we find. The
early prophets live at Ramah in Mount Ephraim (1 Sam. xix.
18) ; Bethel (2 Kings ii. 3) ; Gibeah in Benjamin (1 Sam. x.
5, 10) ; Jericho (2 Kings ii. 5) ; Gilgal (2 Kings iv. 38). At
all these places there was also a bamah, i.e. a sanctuary with
its priesthood, to decide causes in the name of Jahveh, so that
prophet and priest are brought into a local association.
Samuel comes to the high place in order to bless a special
sacrifice (1 Sam.ix. 13 ; cf. ch. xvi.). He began his ministry
as a prophet at Shiloh when he was still in the service of

32 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
the ark there. An instructive hint regarding the close relation
between the prophets and the priesthood is to be found in the
incident of the Shunammite woman. She has resolved to
carry her case to the prophet. Her husband expressed
surprise that she should, in the middle of the harvest-time,
break off work for such a purpose, though it is neither new
moon nor sabbath (2 Kings iv. 23). On one of these major
festivals when even harvest-work would have ceased, evidently
the man would have counted it natural had she gone to consult
a prophet. Here it is clearly taken for granted that the pro
phet was visited in connection with the holy days of the cult.
So we find even the later prophets, in some cases priests them
selves, in other cases supported by the priesthood. Jeremiah
was of priestly stock ; Ezekiel was a priest ; Isaiah lived on
at least friendly terms with the leading priests of Jerusalem.
The priesthood, during the troubled years before the
kingdom arose, must have formed the centres of local justice ;
and, since the religion was the great influence which pre
served a community of aim among the tribes, they must
have been the chief supporters of the national life. At the
festivals, which were celebrated at the sanctuaries, the people
found not merely their religious, but their national sense
quickened; and on every occasion when they sought a de
cision from the priest at the sanctuary they found themselves
one in their mutual obedience to a law which was construed
as the will of their national God. At these centres of the
national life and the religious sense of the community the
early prophets, who were the assertors of the individual and
distinctive character of Israel's national life, and who were
also the vehement opponents of all that conflicted with
the social and moral life of their people, could still find
themselves at home. When these considerations are duly
weighed, one can understand how there was no more natural'
place than the great sanctuaries for a literature like this of
JE, in which the religious and national aims of the people are
still in harmony, and which breathes the spirit of a national
self-consciousness based on broad and generous ideals.28

CHAPTER III.
PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS.
Men have always found it easier to proclaim their faith in
the will of their God as the sufficient guide of human life
than to determine how this will is revealed for men's guidance
and who are the fitting instruments for the supreme discovery.
Yet the sincerity with which they utter the profession of their
faith must always be measured by the sincerity with which
they seek to answer the instant questions it raises. We have
seen how religious men in Israel, when they wrote the story
of the nation's beginnings, expressed the joyous confidence
that the strength of all the past had lain in their fathers'
obedience to Jahveh's will with them. How sincerely they
faced the demand which was latent in this great profession
is seen in the rise to prominence and influence of the prophet,
for the specific task of the prophet was to reveal and to
declare to the nation the will of Jahveh concerning the
present and the future.
Throughout the period of the early kingdom prophecy is
the one articulate voice of the Hebrew faith. I say ' articu
late voice,' because, though the sacrifices were frequent and
universal, and though their influence on the religious life of
the people must have been very powerful,1 they had not yet
become the medium through which the distinctive character
of Jahvism could express itself. At their best, the sacrifices
were tolerant of the higher ideas of God and His relation to
3

34 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
His people, and could be interpreted in the light of the
thoughts a devout worshipper brought to them ; at their
worst, they were also tolerant of the lower ideas. But of
themselves the sacrifices did not supply the means by which
the specific religious faith of Jahvism could find its voice :
they could only offer a means by wjhich the higher thoughts
of Jahveh's nature might in time to come be brought
home to the minds of common men. For the distinctive
character of the faith it is necessary to look to the prophets,
and it is therefore necessary to consider for a little the origin
of the prophetic movement in Israel.
The origin of Hebrew prophecy has been sought among
the Canaanites ; and in some of its phenomena the movement
shows great similarity to kindred religious movements among
Eastern peoples. The ecstasy into which a prophet some
times fell, the use of music to excite or soothe the prophet's
spirit, the trance which occasionally accompanied his revela
tion, can all be paralleled with like phenomena in other faiths.
But there are two considerations which warn against drawing
too large conclusions from these admitted facts. The one is
that the supposed explanation resolves itself into no explana
tion at all, since at best it is to seek to explain what is
better known by what is less clearly known. However regret
fully we must acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge
as to the origin and history of Hebrew prophecy, we yet
know more of its aims, its products and its history than we
know of any similar movement among the Canaanites. For
all practical purposes of useful comparison nothing is known
about Canaanite prophecy. And the other consideration is
that the appearance in connection with Hebrew prophecy of
certain outward phenomena, which can be paralleled, — not
merely from Eastern but from Western nations,— not merely
from the eighth century B.C., but from the second century

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 35
A.D., — suggests that these outward and attendant appear
ances belong to certain forms of religion which, because they
answer to common human needs and widespread conceptions,
are apt to appear whenever a people has reached a certain
stage in its development. But these phenomena are cap
able of being associated with very different fundamental
principles in the religions of the peoples in which they
appear, and they develop very differently according to the
inner principles that inform the religion of which they
form one of the manifestations.2 It is not the outward
phenomena prophecy has in common with the mantic in
another religion which are of peculiar significance for the
knowledge of Israel's religion : it is the aims to which these
phenomena were made subservient, in obedience to the spirit
of the religion of which they were a transient manifestation.
Nor does the derivation of the name which came to be
applied to the Hebrew prophet give much help in determining
his specific task.3 The nabhi may be simply the outpourer,
who gives out what the God, with whom he holds communion,
has supplied to him. But the divine communication may be
a judgment on the past, a direction for the present, or a
prediction of the future. It may be any of these according
to the character and the power of the God in whose name
the prophet speaks, or according to the aim which sends the
prophet in search of the divine guidance. To determine the
nature of his function, we are thrown back on the inner spirit
of the religion of which prophecy is one manifestation ; and
we must find this in what prophecy set itself to do, and, as a
matter .of fact, did do, in Israel.
How little the Canaanite religion contributed to the
essential features of prophetism may be concluded from the
fact that the prophet appeared most prominently in Israel
when the people united, under the inspiration of their religion,

36 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
to cast off the foreign yoke; Samuel roused Saul to a sense
of the national need, and though Samuel in the early account
is not brought into close connection with the prophetic
schools, he sent Saul to them.4 Evidently the national
cause found its strongest support in these circles. In the
same way the later redaction of Barak's victory represented
Barak as powerless till he had come into contact with
Deborah the prophetess (Judg. iv. 8), and so expressed its con
viction that the physical force of the nation found its soul
and its rallying cry in the national faith as represented by
the prophets.5 The prophet was regarded as one of the
influences which united Israel against the foreigner and
supplied the national cause with its inspiration. And Amos
at a later date counted the rise of prophets in Israel a gift
from Jahveh (ii. 11), as real and great a gift as when Jahveh
gave Israel the land of the Amorites.6 These facts carry
the conclusion that Hebrew prophecy had its essential roots
in the Jahveh-faith, and that the surest conclusions as to
its aims and convictions can be gained through the examina
tion of its own methods and results.
Now the primary characteristic which marks all Hebrew
prophecy is its claim to be able to foresee the future and to
foretell something of what Jahveh was about to do in Israel
and in the world. In a very early period, the attitude of
Saul's servant, so soon as he knows that there is a ro'eh
in the neighbourhood, shows the popular estimate of the
prophet's function. And, while it is true that Samuel puts
the whole matter on a higher plane, while he quiets Saul's
anxiety as to the strayed asses in order to leave him free to
devote his attention to the larger question of the nation, and
while he predicts what is to happen to Saul in order to bring
him into contact with the men who have the national cause at
heart, he does yet, in point of fact, claim the knowledge that

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 37
the asses have returned and foretells what shall happen to
Saul on the following day. These matters are brought into
connection with Jahveh's purposes for Saul, and through Saul
for Israel ; but, so far as they serve that end, they are regarded
as within the knowledge of the prophet.7 What thus marks
prophecy in its beginning characterises it during all the
period when it remained a living force within the national
life. There are individual cases, such as that of Nathan,
where this feature of the prophet's work sinks out of sight
and allows his other functions to appear with much greater
prominence. But these cases occur in connection with
prophets as to whose life-work we are somewhat meagrely
informed. Wherever the life-history of a prophet, as e.g.
Elijah or Eiisha, is more largely detailed, wherever his
utterances, as e.g. those of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, are more
liberally reported, this element, in his work not only appears,
but appears in the foreground: For Amos is able to say
about the prophets : ' Jahveh will do nothing without reveal
ing it to His servants, the prophets ' (iii. 7). Deuteronomy is
able to make the test of whether Jahveh has sent a prophet
to consist in the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of his predictions
(xviii. 21 f.). Deutero-Isaiah is never weary of insisting that
the proof of the greatness of Jahveh who is restoring Israel
lies in the fact that He foretold long ago what He was about
to do (xii. 21 f., xliv. 7, 26 ff., xlv. 21). The prediction of
the future is a constant element in Hebrew prophecy.
The day is past when it is legitimate to rationalise such
a primitive belief as this ; and what is necessary is rather
to seek to recognise what it represented in the early
thought of Israel. For one thing, it meant that Jahveh was
conceived as a free personality, who is not contained in any
of the natural phenomena of the world, but who can control
them all. Because this is so, even such purely contingent

38 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
svents as earthquake or pestilence, famine or war, appear
among the matters which a prophet can predict. Gad offers
David the choice between seven years of famine, three months
of defeat, and three days of pestilence (2 Sam. xxiv. 13). He
can offer these in the name of Jahveh, because they are at
Jahveh's command to fulfil His ends. All these things are
to Israel in the hands of its God, and so thoroughly in His
hands that, since He brings them to pass (Amos iv. 6 ff), He
can also let it be known when He means to bring them to
pass (vii. 1-3, 4—6). The Hebrew makes no distinction
among events ; all things, even contingent events, are in the
hands of one great Will.
Again, the prophet's power to foresee the future .means
that Jahveh governs all things in order to bring about
His own purpose ; and , this purpose is especially working
itself out in the history of His own people. Jahveh has
a purpose, and He can order events in such a way that
they shall remove what is hindering it, as in the' case of
Sodom and Gomorrah, or in such a way that they shall
further those who serve it, as in the case of Joseph. His
intervention in human life is not capricious, and, because it is
not capricious, He does not conceal it, but reveals it through
His prophets. To know how irresistible this divine purpose
is, and to know oneself a sharer in dt, is to have a buoyant
confidence in life. To see beforehand what Jahveh is bring
ing to pass is to be prepared for it and able to welcome it.
But, when one sees how, even in so simple a story as that of
Samuel and Saul, the prediction of contingent events is made
subordinate to the greater aim which is beyond, one recognises
how behind prophecy lies this dictum of faith in Jahveh's
government of His world, within which nothing falls out that
He has not- known.
It is illuminating as to what this means to recognise that

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 39
the same phenomenon appears in early Christianity. That
too came upon a distracted world as the discovery of how
the universe is not divided between warring powers, but is
controlled by one Will towards one issue, which men believed
they saw. Tatian gives, as the final appeal which Christianity
made to him and which determined his conversion, its
fiovapxia,6 i.e. its sense of the unity of the world in the
hands of an infinite and spiritual and gracious power. Men
who accepted this were reconciled with life as something
which in the end meant good for them. Forthwith there
sprang up in the early Church the prophets. And that
these prophets were conceived as able to foretell the future,
and in that future purely contingent events, is shown by
the example of Agabus, who foretold a famine (Acts xi.
27 ff), and predicted the captivity of St. Paul (xxi. 10 f.).
St. Paul himself was able to declare that no loss of life
was to attend the storm which befell him on his way to
Rome, but that the ship was to be cast on a certain island
(xxvii. 22—26). The prophetic phenomena soon died out of
the early Church, largely because the Church had a deeper
sense of that which it supremely concerned men to know as
to the future. But this deeper sense in them was largely
the outcome of the travail of the Hebrew faith, as it sought
to know what it behoved God to reveal. All this was one
part of what prophecy in its history had to learn and
teach. Into this, of course, it is impossible to enter here : but it
is important to mark that from its beginning prophecy claimed
to know what Jahveh was about to do in Israel and for
Israel; that this claim was the expression of its faith
in Jahveh as a free personality, who was governed by no
caprice but who had a purpose to fulfil in the world ; and
that all which it was necessary for Israel to know of His

40 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
purpose Jahveh should reveal in His own time through His
servant, the prophet.
In so far as Israel believed that it was possible to learn
the will of Jahveh, a will which determined the future
and governed the present, Israel was not different from the
other, nations. Every nation which has any real faith in its
god's care of its fortunes, has also believed in the possibility
3f learning its god's will in order that it may satisfy his
demands. The difference has shown itself in the methods by
which they believed that the god's will could be learned ; for
the method of reaching the knowledge of the divine will
implies a view of the nature of the god and of his relation to
his worshippers. The rise of prophecy in Israel is the proof
of how spiritual the nature of Jahveh had become, since the
weight is laid upon the soul of man as the medium of
Jahveh's revelation. Hence prophecy, from the beginning, —
and with greater clearness as it grew conscious of itself and
6f its functions,- — made an instinctive protest against rites
which existed in other nations and some of which had already
existed among its own people.
Thus the rise of prophecy coincided with a revolt against
witchcraft and necromancy : and its later development made
this protest more reasoned and conscious. Saul already sought
to put down all such practices in Israel (1 Sam. xxviii. 9) ;
the earliest legislation abruptly commanded ' thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live '(Ex. xxii. 17); and Deuteronomy
enters into a catalogue of such rites in order to set them
under the ban (xviii. 9-13).
The attraction these rites exercised on men's minds arose
from the fact that they offered a means by which men might
wring from the gods a knowledge of the future. But, as they
were practised in Israel, they also contained an acknowledg
ment of the gods of the underworld, who were able to reveal

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 41
the future because they controlled it.. Hence they offended
on two sides the instinct of the prophets. They did violence
to the monarchic element in the Hebrew faith. Exodus forbids
a witch to live, because her offence is one against the religion
of Israel ; Deuteronomy shows that these practices are heathen
and imply the worship of another god, for it closes the
denunciation of them with the statement: 'thou shalt be
wholly devoted to Jahveh thy God' (ver. 13). But, besides
this revolt against necromancy as a form of idolatry, there is
present the revolt against the idea that, even when they are
practised without an idolatrous reference, it is possible through
these rites to control Jahveh. At the bottom of necromantic
arts lies the belief that man, through knowledge of the divine
name or through other secret knowledge, may control the
gods and compel them to his will. And, as Jahvism in the
interests of religion put aside propitiation, so it put aside
necromancy. Religion to it meant that Jahveh came when
He willed, and in His loving kindness made known what His
people needed to know. Deuteronomy, not content to de
nounce necromancy, proceeds to point out how the nation's
own religion satisfies by the prophet the want to which such
practices appeal (vers. 14 ff). And what is thus expressly
stated in Deuteronomy — namely, the needlessness of such rites
in Israel — is already referred to in the early saying which is
put into the mouth of Balaam (Num. xxiii. 23) : ' there is no
enchantment in Jacob, neither is there any divination in
Israel ; at the right time it is said to him what God doeth.' 9
Here the superstitious rites are not so much forbidden as they
are recognised to be needless. Israel lives under the guidance
of the sovereign will of One whose august and irresistible
purpose is made known whenever it is necessary. The higher
means by which God's will can be learned is thrusting into
the background and treating with contempt the baser method.

42 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
And this attitude of contempt is emphasised in connection
with Saul's visit to the witch of Endor. Evidently witchcraft
is recognised as possible : there are witches, and their power
is real. But, when the woman by her arts succeeds in bring
ing up one from the realm of the dead, she brings up
Samuel, the prophet who, while he lived, had taught the
king the will of Jahveh. And he comes back only to repeat
what he had said in his lifetime ; for in the dim world of the
shades there is only one will which governs all things, and
when men pierce into the secrets of that country and think
to escape from Jahveh, they find Him again and hear the
same message. The futility, rather than the sin, of such
means of learning the future is the salient feature of the
story. Jahveh offers His guidance through more worthy
means. As JE taught that, because Jahveh is spiritual, He
is to be found, not in outward emblems but in the soul of
man, so prophecy claims for man the power to declare the
will of God.10
A further result of the rise of prophecy was to drive
into the background the method, common hitherto, of in
quiring as to the will of Jahveh through the priestly lot.
The urim and thummim were in the hands of the priests,
and formed a means by which cases which were too hard
for decision in the ordinary way were directly referred to
Jahveh. In Deut. xxxiii. 8, a very early document, the
possession of these means of learning the divine will is
referred to as forming the peculiar glory of the priest
hood. The sacred lot is also found in use during the
period of Saul (1 Sam. xiv. 37 ff.) and David (xxiii. 9 ff.).
From this time it disappears, and its disappearance coincides
with the rise of prophecy.11 The change which came over
Israel's custom at this time has been noted by some one
who inserted in the account of Saul's visit to Samuel the

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 43
remark, ' Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire
of God, thus he spake, come and let us go to the seer, for
he that is now called a prophet was beforetime called a
seer' (1 Sam. ix. 9). The glossator wished to explain to
readers of the Book of Samuel that they will best understand
the position and the functions of the seer in early Israel if
they remember that these were practically the same as those
which belonged to the prophets of their own time. But he
further noted, as something which began in the time of
Samuel and continued into his own, that men in Israel turned
to seers or prophets for direction and forsook the habit of
consulting Jahveh through the oracle.12 The opposition
between prophecy and the oracle could never be so sharp
as the opposition between prophecy and necromancy, for the
men who used the oracle inquired of Jahveh by its means.
But prophecy, with its more spiritual conception of the rela
tion between God and man, thrust intoxthe background the less
spiritual medium by which God's will was learned.
Still more significant is the way in which prophecy
quietly removed the ark from the position which it had
hitherto occupied. I call this more significant, because,
while the sacred lot was a means of consulting the divine
will which was common to Israel and the other nations, the
ark was a specifically Israelite emblem which had associations
only with Jahveh. The fact, therefore, that prophecy puts
the ark into a subordinate place forms the proof that pro
phecy brought not merely the means of accentuating the
distinctive features of Jahvism, as over against alien rites
and foreign emblems, but a development and clearer con
sciousness of itself within the national religion.
Now the ark was construed as the throne of the invisible
Jahveh ; and its presence was regarded as the guarantee
of that more august presence.13 Hence its loss to the

44 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Philistines seemed to many to imply the utter downfall of
the' nation's hopes : the glory of Israel is gone when the
ark of God is taken (1 Sam. iv. 22). But the remarkable
feature about the whole story, and the one which has received
least attention, is that the loss of the ark implies nothing
of the kind. After the ark has been taken, and long before
its recovery seemed in the least degree likely, the nation
has rallied itself, and rallied itself on its religion in the person
of its prophets. Samuel is able in the name of the faith
to appeal successfully to Saul, and so to all Israel. The
religion, in the person of the prophet, has not fought down
the idea that Jahveh could be bound to the presence or
the absence of a box. It has done a much greater thing :
it has proved that it, can stand without this crude emblem,
and so proved it unnecessary.
From this time forward, so far as its original sense is
concerned, the ark disappears out of the national life.14
Saul, who has found his inspiration in another source, never
troubles to, inquire about it. It reappears under David, for
the new king, wishing to mark his final triumph over the
Philistines, and to gather into his new capital some of the
older associations of the religious and national life, brings
it up to Jerusalem. But, despite the prodigies which attend
its transference, it disappears in its old form of the. throne
of Jahveh. So wholly has its original meaning been for
gotten, and so utterly have its earlier associations faded away,
that Deuteronomy was able to use it as the place beside
which the decalogue was stored. When an emblem is made
into a chest for holding something else, it is dead. Prophecy
first made the ark unnecessary and then used it to hold its
own symbol of God's guidance of Israel.
In prophecy the religion has found a means of self-
expression, which has quietly made impossible many of the

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 45
old methods through which Jahveh and Israel were brought
into relation. The spirit of man has become the lamp of
the Lord. But what qualified the prophet to be, what 1 Sam. ix. 6
calls him, the man of God kut e^o^nv ? Here we are left
in an uncertainty, which is not confined to us but which
evidently obtained within Israel itself, for the existence of
what are called false prophets can only be explained through
the recognition that prophecy was divided within itself, if
not as to its functions, at least as to its qualifications.
There could not have been false prophets, exercising the
influence they did exercise, had prophecy been able to set
up a criterion which could infallibly try the spirits, whether
they be of God.
The prophetic gift was closely allied with and attended
by certain mental and even physical conditions. It was
allied with music, the most non-moral and emotional of the
arts. A prophet calls for a musician, and, when the musician
plays with his hand, the spirit of Jahveh comes upon the
prophet (2 Kings iii. 15).1S The prophets, into whose company
Samuel sends Saul, are accompanied by instruments of music
(1 Sam. x. 5 ff.). Evidently the prophet was in the habit of
at least making himself more susceptible to the divine
revelation by this means. The prophetic condition was also
at times accompanied by a trance: the tardemah or deep
sleep into which Jahveh cast Abraham before a revelation
(Gen. xv. 12) seems to have resembled the mesmeric sleep.
Men who were under the .power of the spirit behaved wildly
and were capable of tearing off their clothes and exposing
themselves. Such behaviour was apparently so common that
the young captains of Jehu's camp, when a prophet visited
him, asked their leader with a jeer what this madman had
to say to him (2 Kings ix. 11). Hosea says (ix. 7) that the

46 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
man who hath the spirit is mad ; and while he says this to
show how men who desired to evade the prophet's rebuke
excused themselves for their neglect, the choice of the phrase
proves that there was enough in the behaviour of some of
the prophets to justify their attitude. These and similar
phenomena are enough to show that Hebrew prophecy, so
far as the attendant conditions which stimulated it and which
followed it were concerned, had a great deal in common with
the aberrations which have always accompanied religious
excitement, especially among Eastern peoples.
On the other hand, it is important to recognise that
such conditions were never counted essential to a prophet's
equipment, and were never appealed to as the guarantee
of the truth of any individual prophecy. Even early prophets
like Gad, Nathan, Micaiah ben Imlah, Elijah, make no use
of such methods.16 In connection with Elijah, indeed, they
seem to be expressly set aside. The prophets of Baal cry
and cut themselves with knives and dance wildly round the
altar. The prophet of Jahveh mocks them, because such
conduct is befitting to men who have to do with a god who
may need to be awaked. But Elijah himself stands with
outstretched hands beside the altar he has restored, and prays
to Jahveh in ordered and articulate speech (1 Kings xviii.
28, 36). It is impossible to resist the impression that the
contrast between the two attitudes is conscious and
deliberate.17 Nor are such conditions appealed to as the guarantee' of
the truth of the message which the prophets announced.
When prophecy became conscious of itself, Deuteronomy gave
two criteria for distinguishing a true prophet. The fact that
two are given is the proof of the difficulty in which the
question was involved. But, while the tests differed in other
respects, they agreed in this, that they laid weight, not on

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 47
the condition of the prophet, but on the content of his 1
message (xiii. 1-5, xviii. 20-22).
It would appear that Israel had not, especially in the
early stages of prophecy, advanced beyond the idea that the
proof of the presence of the divine is to be found in some
thing outside or beyond the sphere of the common life, and
that men are most likely to reach a higher revelation when
their common faculties are least active. Man was most
likely to be a fitting vehicle for a divine influence when
in trance or dream his pwn personality had sunk out of an
active into a passive state, and when the outward world,
with its confusing and seductive impressions, had ceased to
control him. Man could find God when, under the influence
of music, he was stirred by an excitement which carried him
beyond his ordinary unimpressionable existence. But have
nineteen hundred years of Christianity, with the Incarnation
as their central theme, succeeded in changing that fundamental
bent of the human mind, or in substituting a nobler criterion
for revelation ? Two conceptions of the spiritual life, which
are fundamentally different, have generally co-existed in
every higher religion. There is no need to deny the presence
of the lower idea in Israel's prophecy: what alone is of
much significance is to detect the presence of the higher and
to recognise how upon it the emphasis was increasingly laid.
For this, the best method is to find the task which
prophecy undertook, and the spirit in which it fulfilled its
task. Now the first task which prophecy fulfilled for Israel
was, as we have seen, to give to the national uprising which
the king led the inspiration of religion; the second task
was to criticise the kingdom which in a measure was its
own creation. The spirit in which prophecy fulfilled this
task is to be gathered from the principles in the light of
which it sought to control the kingdom.

48 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
It was the national faith, speaking through prophecy,
which gave the kingdom power to assert itself. . Yet the
kingdom also represented a secular necessity. Since the
kingdom represented the new consciousness of its own power
on the part of the nation, it was sure to develop along its
own lines. And further, since the kingdom brought the
nation more closely into contact with all the other nations
by which it was surrounded, and had the inevitable result of
exposing the people, to new foreign mfluences, these influences,
which were alien to the spirit of Israel's distinctive past
and its religion, were sure to gain new force through the
very institution which had owed its origin to the need for
asserting Israel's independent existence. So soon as the
institution developed along lines which were, or seemed, in
consistent with the aims of the religion, it roused the
suspicion and the opposition of the prophets, in whom this
religion had its mouthpiece. In all this side of their action
the motive of the prophets was, not the accidental good or
ill success of the kingdom, but the view they held of the
religion to serve which they conceived that the king had
been anointed in Israel.
s*s* It is necessary to develop this view at some length. It
has become almost an axiom since Wellhausen 18 promulgated
it that the prophets were the , stormy petrels of the Hebrew
State ; that they appeared in their support of or conflict with
the king whenever the State was threatened with external
calamity ; and that their function was to interpret the purpose
of Jahveh in connection with the calamities which were
already threatening the kingdom.
The theory, however, does not correspond with the facts
of the history. On the one hand, there were troubles which
threatened the very existence of Judah, on which Jeremiah
looked with perfect calmness;19 on the other hand (and

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 49
this is of special interest to us, since the facts dealt with
fall within the period of the early monarchy), there are many
cases in which a prophet intervenes although the kingdom
is at peace. The earliest appearance of a prophet in the
reign of David was at a time when the king had so far
reduced his realm to peace that he could remain in his
capital and leave the war, which was no longer a war of
self-defence but one of conquest, to be conducted by his
general. When - Solomon had brought his kingdom to a
peculiar pitch of outward security and inward organisation,
a prophet appeared, not to declare the imminent trouble
from without nor to explain any impending catastrophe, but
to appeal to elements within the nation and support Jeroboam
against the king.20 The house of Omri, the first royal house
which succeeded in making Northern Israel a recognised
power beyond the limits of its own territory by waging
successful war against Damascus, roused the vehement
opposition of the prophets : and Ahab, the ablest, so far as
political capacity is concerned, of that able house, was con
demned by Elijah and Micaiah ben Imlah. Elijah rose to
confront Ahab when the king's power was so firmly assured
that he could ally himself with the royal house of Phoenicia ;
Micaiah ben Imlah prophesied his ruin when Ahab was
strong enough to assert his authority over the transjordanic
territory, and was planning a campaign in order to assert
this authority. The case of Micaiah ben Imlah is peculiarly
instructive in this connection. When Ahab reluctantly
consented to consult the prophet as to the campaign against
Ramoth Gilead, the king's reluctance was due to his recogni
tion of Micaiah as one who was in permanent opposition to
the royal policy (1 Kings xxii. 8). Evidently the prophet's
judgment on Ahab rested on some conviction which had
formulated itself before the troubles on the frontier, and
4

So RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
therefore expressed an opposition to the king's policy that
was based ohj something more fundamental and permanent
than the accident of the troubles with Syria. In all these
cases the prophet was prompted in his intervention by reasons
which were quite apart from the threat of impending calamity.
The impending calamity holds at best a secondary place.
There are, however, a number of cases in which the
prophet appeared at a time when calamities were threatening
the State. The mistake of those who have regarded the
prophets as only intervening .in the time of external calamity
is that they have construed the double effect of a common
cause as cause and effect. The common cause which roused
the prophet into activity, and which was liable to bring the
kingdom into novel peril, was the increased strength of king
and kingdom. The proof that this is the common cause is
to be found in the fact that, even when this new strength
did not bring the kingdom into outward peril, it frequently
disclosed elements within the nation which of themselves
roused the opposition of the prophets.
It is easy to see how the kingdom, because of the new
se.lf-consciousness and centralised power which it gave to the
nation, was sure to bring Israel into collision with its neigh
bours. So long as the people remained a mere collection
of separate and mutually suspicious tribes, they were a
negligible factor in the confused politics of Western Asia;
but so soon as, having found a common head, they dared to
seek a united and independent line of action, they drew on
themselves the jealousy of their neighbours. An early
illustration of this is to be found in the life-history of David.
While David was no more than the head of a little princi
pality which was confined to Judah, and while he was at
war with Ishbaal, the leader of the Northern tribes at
Mahanaim, the Philistines left the petty kinglets to neutralise

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 51
each other by their mutual animosity. But, so soon as
David had been recognised as the king of all Israel, and had
made Jerusalem the capital of his kingdom, the Philistines
attacked him. The new strength of the kingdom led directly
to its dangers.
It may not, however, be so obvious at first sight why
the increased strength of the kingdom, in itself and apart
from all external dangers, should have called forth the
jealousy of the prophets. Yet the kingdom, whenever it
succeeded in asserting its independent existence, was com
pelled to enter into relations, even to form alliances, with
the States by which it was surrounded.
Now every such alliance in the ancient world brought
with it religious sanctions, since to enter into alliance with
a foreign power implied a certain recognition of its god.
Even a less formal relation than an alliance threatened
religious intermixture. Its success and growing strength
forced the nation into relations to and compromises with a
world which was heathen, and, if not vinto the adoption, at
least into the tolerance of alien rites. Such a situation
instantly roused into activity the strongly Jahvistic prophets,
whether the king's alliance was a sign of his vigour or of
his defeat. Within the nation itself, moreover, the change was equally
great and influential. The king and kingdom in Israel
introduced a wholly new state of affairs. The centralised
government changed the whole centre of gravity in the
administration of justice. Old Israel had been governed by
the tribal elders, who sat in the gate and administered a law
which was bound upon all the members by the sanction of
its common recognition. The strength of this older morality
with its simple forms of administration lay in the fact that,
although it was primitive and undeveloped, it represented a

52 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
law which all men acknowledged and which drew its sanc
tions from being thus acknowledged by the whole community.
Its weakness lay in this, that, based as it was on the commune
and the tribe, it fostered that disintegration of Israel which
left the people at the mercy of a strongly organised power like
the Philistines. The king met the weakness of this political
condition, since he gathered the tribes into a unity and beat
back the invaders. He inevitably gathered round him a
body of men who were under his sole authority, a standing
army which may have been small, but was of superior
training (1 Sam. xiv. 52), and officials who owned him as
their master. With the new security of the country and
the entry of Israel into the comity of the nations came
also trade : and this introduced a new element into the com
munity. Alongside the burgher, possessed of his own land
and amenable to the commune, from the life of which he
could not separate himself, arose a body of landless men who
held the real power. Some of these were foreigners, like
Uriah the Hittite, and the Carites and Pelethites who formed
David's bodyguard (2 Sam. xx. 23), or like the chamberlain
who earned Isaiah's bitter contempt (Isa. xxii. 1 5—1 9). Into
the hands of these men the real power was passing, and yet
they were not bound by the sanctions of the old. morality,
but looked to the king, as the source of their authority and
the giver of the only law which they acknowledged. To
whom was the king, as the head of this new social organisa
tion, responsible, after he had delivered the nation ? " The
crucial problem of political constitutions is to counteract the
selfishness of a governing class." 21 The difficulty lay before
Israel of finding new forms for a truly national justice, which,
through representatives whom all acknowledged, could check
the selfishness of such a class of men as now governed
Israel.22

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 53
The change had come with the coming of the kingdom :
and, whenever the king was strong enough to make his
centralised power break in upon the older tribal arrange
ments, the change was felt most sharply, This is the reason
why the king early roused the watchful jealousy of the
prophets, apart from and even in the absence of any outward
crisis in the condition of the nation. Prophecy realised that
an institution which was not merely the expression of
Israel's national strength, but the creation of its national
faith, had not been called into existence in order to make
it possible that a few men, who had been given new power
thereby, should use their authority to ignore justice.23 Hence
from the beginning the prophets appear as the curb on a
lawless power and on the side of the oppressed and the weak.
And each prophet appears as such in the name of Jahveh.
He does not speak in the name of a law which has already
been recognised, for the difficulty of the situation was that
there was no such law which received an equal recognition
by all. He speaks in the name of the outraged Jahveh, who
is the ultimate guardian of all justice and right. Nor does
he come as the representative of any class who have received
a special training or who are possessed of an esoteric know
ledge : he comes from among the people, and speaks, as
one to whom Jahveh has revealed Himself, to men about
whom he can take it for granted that they acknowledge the
authority with which he comes. His very coming, therefore,
makes it clear that the God in whose name he comes was
regarded by all men in Israel as having for His peculiar
care the justice and righteousness which are present or
absent in Israel.
Thus Nathan appears in David's palace to condemn the
king for the invasion of the rights of one of his subjects.
The king has used his power to trample on the rights of one

54 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
"who is weak, and who, as a foreigner, was peculiarly subject
to the royal will.24 Elijah appears before Ahab to condemn
the king for having invaded the right of Naboth. Ahab,
who was himself an Israelite and who recognised the power
of old custom and privilege in Israel, gave up all thought of
further action in the matter when he learned that Naboth
had refused the vineyard. It was at the instigation of
Jezebel, who came to Israel .with the petty conceptions of the
power of the king which prevailed in heathenism, that he
ventured to permit the act which brought the instant anger
of the prophet.
In both these cases we discover the prophet taking action
when the king was in the very plenitude of his power,
not when the kingdom was exposed to external danger. He
acted on motives which were supplied by prophecy itself and
did not come to it from without. In the view of the prophet,
the kingdom had been called into existence to serve the ends
of Jahveh in and with Israel. So soon as, therefore, the king,
in his self-confident strength, began to act from the point of
view of one who served his own selfish ends, the prophet
intervened. The movement did not find its motive from
without, but from its consciousness of itself and its mission
to express the mind of Jahveh, the national God, who sustains
justice and righteousness among His people.25 Jahveh, as
the God who has given Israel its land and the kingdom as
the means to defend its land, is the only God whom Israel
may in any way acknowledge. Israel's pride and strength
is to obey the will of its Maker, a will which is righteous
and just, in the sense in which men recognise justice and
¦righteousness in their relations to one another. Hence the
State which serves Him must have a moral basis, and the
.prophet who is His mouthpiece must protest against anything
which saps- that moral basis. From the beginning, these were

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 55
the ruling principles for which, without clear consciousness
of all that they implied, prophetism had stood : but the full
purport of these principles came to clearer expression in the
time of the king who offended against them both. With
Elijah, the most majestic figure in the Bible, and his contest
against Ahab we enter on a new, because a more conscious,
stage of religion.26
Ahab entered into alliance with Tyre, and, to make the
alliance the stronger, he not only married into the royal
house, but built a temple to the Tyrian Baal in his capital.
He himself had no wish to forsake the national God, for his
two sons Ahaziah and Joram, even his daughter Athaliah,27
bore names compounded with Jahveh. He maintained about
his court four hundred prophets of Jahveh and consulted them :
his objection to Micaiah ben Imlah was not that he was a
prophet of Jahveh, but that he was a prophet who never
foretold anything except evil. Ahab seems to have thought
it possible to patch up a compromise by which the worship
of Jahveh and of Baal could be practised together in Israel.28
But Ahab also, in his strength and merited popularity, ven
tured to outrage the national sense of justice. Encouraged
by his wife, he began to assimilate the kingdom to the baser
conceptions of heathenism. It is impossible that the incident
with Naboth was the only case in which this came to expres
sion : the incident is quoted because it was the particular
one which forced Elijah to take action.
Against one side of the royal conduct, Ahab's tolerance of
an alien worship, certain elements in Israel lifted up their
head. The Rechabites protested against the worship of Baal
in the name of Jahveh's sole sovereignty in Israel : and Jehu,
as was natural in a man of his type, sought and found in
them. his support. But as a prophet, Elijah protested against
both tendencies on the part of the king: and his action

5 6 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
proves the wider character of prophetism. Apparently his
first overt act was against the king's outrage to justice ; but
he protested against the two parts of the royal policy,
because . he saw that the two belonged together. To him
Jahvism and Baalism represented hopelessly incompatible
principles. He did not protest against Baal as a foreign
god whose worship endangered Israel's nationality, for he
was no vehement assertor of Israel's nationality. He
was not zealous for an intellectual monotheism, though his
attitude at Carmel shows he had reached a position which
cannot be distinguished from monotheism. His scoffing
reference to Baal proves this, for a god at whom men
scoff is as good as non-existent. But he protested with
all the vehemence of a passionate nature against the wor
ship of a god whose character was fundamentally opposed
to all that claimed his reverence in the God of his own
worship. Jahveh and Baal, between whom the people stood hesi
tating, were incompatible because they represented principles
which imply conduct. The fundamental convictions for which
the two divine names stood were of such a nature that
they determined also everything for which the kingdom and
the nation of Israel stood. Both of them could not be
justified : and the nation was at the parting of the ways,
where it must determine how its future was to be shaped by
the character of the god it elected to worship. For Elijah
himself, Jahveh was ethical in the sense that He demands, in
those whom He wills to protect, justice and righteousness.
To reject this demand was practically to ignore the. will
which had brought nation and kingdom into existence for its
own purposes.
Elijah failed, for Jezebel was able to expel him : and it
was Jezebel who did expel him. She, who was devoted to

PROPHECY BEFORE AMOS 57
Baal, was as clear-sighted as Elijah to recognise that any
compromise was impossible.
The prophet withdrew to Horeb, the place from which
the nation, strong in its single-hearted devotion to Jahveh and
confident in the sense of His powerful protection, set out to
take possession of the land in which it was to fulfil the
purpose of the God who called it into being. And here he
received a new revelation of Jahveh's purpose with His
nation. The revelation is contained in three great theophanies
— wind, earthquake, and fire 29 — which declare what Jahveh is
about to do. When the prophet, who is privileged to know
what Jahveh is about to do, goes out to hear what these
things mean, he learns in the sound of the thin silence that
Jahveh is about to bring the whole existing order in Israel to
an end. In three crushing, calamities,30 which correspond to
the fire, earthquake, and storm, the kingdom of Ahab is about
to fall, and to fall through the self-manifestation of Jahveh.
Since the kingdom has ignored Jahveh and His purposes with
it and through it, and since it is no longer a fit instrument
for His will, Jahveh reveals His purpose to shatter it where
once He revealed His purpose for it.31
As to whether this means the passing away of Israel
nothing is said here. But the prophet had already received
the revelation in the desert that there remained seven thousand
in Israel, all the knees that had not bowed to Baal and all
the lips that had not kissed him. These cannot share the
fate of the sinful kingdom, since that which brings its fate on
the kingdom is the self-revelation of the Jahveh whom they
have worshipped ; and it is a legitimate inference that the
prophet receives his revelation not merely for his personal
consolation, but for the guidance of his future work among
these very men.
But what is evident here is that to Elijah Jahveh is a

58 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
power independent of the kingdom and of the nation. He
brought it into being, and can continue, though it should
cease. The Kingdom of God is something which stands
above the empirical kingdom of Israel : its aims are not
exhausted in Israel's aims, its issues are not confined to
the issues of Israel's national life. Not merely can prophecy
rise up to rebuke an apostate king in the name of Jahveh :
it can contemplate without utter dismay the collapse of the
kingdom itself in the interests of this larger aim. "If
Jahveh triumphs over Baal, Elijah has reached his purpose,
though Israel in the process may need to vanish into an
insignificant remnant." 32 The will of Jahveh which is
revealed through the prophet once created this kingdom,
but it did this to serve a wider end. When Israel fails to
fulfil, or even to seek, this end, the will ' of Jahveh, revealed
anew to the prophet, sweeps the kingdom out of its way.
And all this was revealed to Elijah at a period when Ahab. .
seemed secure through his alliance with a foreign power like
Phoenicia — so secure that he ventured to interfere with the
old customs of his kingdom. The movement of prophetism,
which here reached, its clearer self-consciousness, was motived
from within and drew its strength from its own conceptions
of the aims befitting a nation which owed its being to Jahveh,
and the ideals befitting the king who within this nation, was
called the anointed of Jahveh.

CHAPTER IV.
AMOS.
Of the personal life and history of this great prophet and
great man almost nothing is known. It is not even certain
whether he was a native of the Northern or of the Southern
kingdom ; x for, while he began his work at a festival in
Bethel, his appearance there may have been due to the recog
nition on the part of a native of Judah that the centre of
gravity for the national life lay in Samaria, or merely to the
desire of a native of Northern Israel to speak to his fellow-
countrymen. What, however, we do know is that he was a
man of the people (vii. 14), who had no connection with the
official religious class. And this, in view of the religious
ideas with which he is at home and with which he evidently
expected his hearers to be familiar, gives us a singular im
pression of the high level of religious thought and of its
richness of content in the minds of common men in the
country. The period of the prophet's activity was the reign of
Jeroboam n. in Israel. There is no sign in his prophecy of
the internal anarchy which followed the death of this strong
ruler, or of the resultant sense of weakness on the part of
the kings who followed Jeroboam, which sent Israel to seek
alliance, now with Assyria, now with Egypt (Hos. vii. 11).
The people, especially the governing class, were confident of
their own strength (vi. 1, 13). Yet there are indications
59

60 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
which point to the period having been one of grave, though
unexpressed, unrest. The Syrian wars had resulted in parts
of the national territory beyond Jordan having been torn
away (i. 3, 13). Though the loss had only been for a time,
it left an uneasy thought that the holy land had been in
the possession of strangers. But, while the wars between
Israel and Damascus were the source of recurrent anxiety,
the troubles which attended Northern Israel were due to
its internal condition rather than its external relations.
Northern Israel was peculiarly exposed to the conditions
which, by breaking up the simpler tribal organisation,
were introducing new difficulties and setting new prob
lems before all who were responsible for its government.
The Northern tribes broke off from the Davidic kingdom
when Solomon attempted to centralise the government at
Jerusalem ; but, by the very irony of circumstances, they
relieved Judah from perplexities which they themselves could
not evade. For the kingdom of Jerusalem now became
practically, the tribe of Judah; and the king, representing
the head of the elans, carried over to his office all the old
sanctions and maintained the old relations. At the same
time, the little isolated kingdom, which had not much occasion
for direct dealings with foreigners, was delivered from the
difficulties which attended the adjustment of its relations to
heathen neighbours. On the other hand, the Northern tribes
had no sooner rebelled against the centralising tendencies of
Solomon than they found themselves face to face with the
necessity of creating a strong central authority within their
own territory. Damascus was at their door and had risen to
new power and new ambitions. The same cause which had
made Saul's kingdom a necessity for Israel made the Northern
kingdom an inevitable thing ; and the Northern tribes had
to face the necessity of calling into existence a centralised

AMOS 6 1
authority among a people whose sense of tribal independence
had been strengthened through having successfully asserted
itself in the rebellion under Jeroboam I. It was also necessary
for them to enter into some relations to their heathen neigh
bours. Not only did their territory touch Damascus and
Phoenicia, but one of the great trade-routes of the world ran
through the centre of their country along the plain of Esdraelon.
If they had tried to close it, and so remain aloof, force would
have burst it open. When they sought to use it for their own
purposes, the men who -were enriched by trade formed a new
and difficult element in their social organisation, since these
men were cut off from all old ties and earlier allegiance.
In Northern Israel there were present all the elements of the
new time which were making the problem before Israel so
difficult and so urgent.
It added to this perplexity that the perpetual menace
of Syria had never left the kingdom at peace. The central
authority was weak in itself, since it owed its existence to a
revolt against all centralised power ; and it had been too
hard pressed by the exigencies of national defence to find
time, even if it had had the desire, to attend to the task of
strengthening the administration of justice and of discovering
the fit means of enforcing justice among the citizens. The
powerful men in the kingdom were using the wealth and
influence which they had won through real services to the
State, to serve their own selfish ends ; and they were able to
ignore or bribe into silence the weakened organs of justice.
There was no counterweight to their power in the central
government, for the weak rulers could not do without their
support. It is a common condition of every period of great
social change ; and it is still possible to recognise its character
in the strong invectives which Amos levels against the powerful
men in the State.

62 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
How deep the sense of discontent was, which this condi
tion of affairs brought with it, is to be seen in the cry for
justice which rings through the utterances of the early
prophets. In men who, like Amos, belonged to the commonsj
the people found their voice and representatives, as in the
religion which these men represented they found the sanction
for their complaints.
The feeling that matters were not right in the body
politi© was strongest in the men who, because they were
religious men, looked for a moral basis to society. Amos
speaks of a class of men who were at ease in Samaria, because
they could make their own profit from such troubled times,
and describes them as those who laugh the idea of the day of
the Lord down the wind, yet by their very conduct bring the
year of violence nearer (vi. 3).2 But he spoke also of the
devout in Israel as those who desired the day of the Lord
(v. 18). Such men felt that matters were going badly with
Israel, and they looked for a cure in some act of intervention
by which Jahveh was to prove alike His presence and His
power. They were ready to listen to and to support a
prophet who declared that the day of the Lord was at hand.
That the court was conscious of this ferment and very uneasy
as to its possible issue is proved by Amaziah's conduct when
Amos appeared at Bethel. He tried to frighten the prophet
into silence, but he also hurried off a messenger to bid Jero
boam be on his guard. The discontent had found its voice,
and the king and his vizier were conscious of the risk. How
real the danger was, the house of Jehu was little likely to
ignore, for they owed their throne to a similar movement
among the people.
The time was one which called for a prophet. " The
place M the prophet is in a religious crisis where the ordinary
interpretation of acknowledged principles breaks down, where

AMOS 63
it is necessary to go back, not to received doctrine, but to
Jahveh Himself. The word of Jahveh through the prophet
is properly a declaration of what Jahveh, as the personal
King of Israel, commands in this particular crisis ; and it is
spoken with authority, not as an inference from previous
revelation, but as the direct expression of the character and
will of a personal God, who has made Himself personally
audible in the prophet's soul." 3 The time called for such a
man, and in God's providence it brought one of the great
men of history.

The message which Amos brought to the men Of his
time was that of the near approach of the day of the Lord.
Jahveh was about to intervene in the affairs of His world,
and He had made known to His prophet that which , He
was about to do.
Primarily this intervention concerned Israel, all Israel.
Amos spoke about, and he spoke to, the whole family which
Jahveh brought up out of the land of Egypt (ii. 10, iii. 1 ;
cf. ix. 7). When he described the catastrophe which was to
result from God's intervention, he gave as its scope the
land from the entering in of Hamath unto the brook of
Egypt (vi. 14) ; 4 and that land was the whole of Palestine.
Amos, as was natural in a public speaker, was not always careful
in his use of the name Israel and did riot merely employ the
term of the Northern kingdom. Yet it deserves notice that,
when he spoke to Amaziah at Bethel of how Jahveh had
measured Israel's sin with a plumbline (vii. 7),' this followed
the statement that Jahveh had twice before threatened
Jacob (vii. 1—6). That the prophet made a distinction be
tween Jacob and Israel points to his being conscious of how
his work at Bethel was part of a larger commission ; and that

64 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Amaziah, when he told the disturber of the peace that this
sort of thing could not be tolerated in Israel, bade him flee
away and prophesy in Judah, shows how those who heard him
speak recognised that Amos' message concerned the Southern
as well as the Northern kingdom. Had the threat contained
in the prophecy been one which was confined to Israel proper,
Amaziah could only have ordered silence to this disturber of
the peace. But what he says to Amos practically amounts
to the statement that this sort of thing will not be tolerated
where Jeroboam is king, and that the prophet may go away
across the border and exercise his function there.
The oracle of ii. 4 f., in which an express judgment is
launched against Judah, is generally recognised, on other
grounds, as a later addition. But the commentator who added
these sentences only brought out more clearly how, either in
his own judgment or in the judgment of the men of his own
time, Amos' prophecy was not regarded as being directed
exclusively against North Israel. Either he failed to recognise
that (in ii. 10, iii. 1, vi. 1) Amos showed how his judgment
was directed against the entire people who owned a common
origin and revealed a common sin, or he desired to make
explicit a feature of the prophecy which seemed to deserve
a stronger emphasis from the beginning. But, whatever may
have been the motive which led to the insertion of the two
verses, the fact that they were inserted proves that Amos
was still regarded as having a message for all Israel.
Further, the intervention of Jahveh concerned more than
united Israel, for it included the nations which were Israel's
neighbours. When the prophet swept round the horizon
and described how the wrath of Jahveh began at Damascus
(i. 3-5), passed on to Philistia (6-8) and Tyre (9 f.), included
Edom (11 f.), Ammon (13-15) and Moab (ii. 1-3), and then
centred upon His own people, he no doubt brought home

AMOS 65
very vividly to Israel the responsibility of its privilege as
Jahveh's people. But he also showed how in his own view
and in that of his contemporaries the power of Jahveh was
such that He held in His hands the control over the fate
of these nations, and he showed that he expected as the
outcome of the divine self-manifestation an intervention in
the concerns of these nations as well as of Israel. The
offence of the peoples which are threatened is not one which
they have committed against Israel: it has been against
Jahveh and His order in the world which He controls.
Jahveh is directly concerned with them, and not merely
concerned with them so far as they influence Israel. The
fate which is to befall them has the same motive and source
as the fate which is to befall Israel, and is therefore as sure as
the fate which is to befall Israel.5
The reason why Amos selected these nations was that
they represented the world as Israel knew it, the world in
which Israel had grown accustomed to live. He chose the
peoples N.E., S.W., N.W., S.E., of Palestine as the repre
sentatives of this order, and he anticipated an intervention
by Jahveh which was to subvert all this apparently so secure
and settled order of things. An instructive parallel, which
makes clearer what guided Amos in his selection of the
nations against which he uttered doom, is to be found in
the prophecy spoken by a great moralist of a later date.
Zephaniah also prophesied the near approach of the day of
the Lord, and in ch. ii. announced the scope of the
judgment which the day was to bring about. It was to
fall upon the land of the Philistines (vers. 4-7), Moab and
Ammon (8-11), the Ethiopians (12), and Assyria (13-15).
The horizon here has widened to correspond with the altered
circumstances of the time. New peoples have come within
the view of Judah, and old peoples have disappeared.
5

66 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Zephaniah wrote at a time when not merely Samaria but
Damascus had been swept away by the Assyrian conquests,
and so the Northern horizon was occupied for him by Assyria
instead of Damascus. Ethiopia was known as the land which
had sent messengers to the court at Jerusalem (Isa. xviii.),
and so the limits of the South were extended to a land with
which Judah had been brought into connection. But, while
the outlook has widened, the conception remained the same.
Jahveh was about to intervene in the world, and His inter
vention would change the settled order to which men have
grown so accustomed that they think it unalterable. Each
of these prophets set this thought in the conditions of his
own time, and described it in terms which made it vivid to
the minds of his auditors. North and south, east and west,
the face of the settled world was to be changed, because
Jahveh was about to manifest Himself. Each of these
prophets, because he was commissioned to his own people
and because his primary interest in what he announced was
in its cause — the anger of Jahveh over sin — insisted on the
meaning of the day of the Lord to the people to whom he
was sent, and on the purpose Jahveh had in the thing
which He was about to do. But both of them declared
that the judgment was one which was to include not merely
their own people, but the world of their own time. They
used concrete terms instead of abstract, but they anticipated
a world-judgment, which was to overturn the entire arrange
ment of mortal affairs which seemed to men so stable.
Again, this judgment is described in terms which merit
a closer observation. When Amos spoke directly to Israel,
he used terms which were fitted to bring the purpose of
Jahveh close to the conscience and life of the people ; and
there is a restraint in his language which is the natural
outcome of his strong moral aims. But, especially in his,

AMOS 67
general references to Jahveh's work and in his representa
tions of its effect on the nations, he used language which
shows the presence of another conception which he was
turning to this peculiar end. Thus he speaks of Jahveh's
intervention by a fire which is sent on Hazael (i. 4), on
Gaza (i. 7), on Teman (i. 1 2), on Rabbah (i. 14), on Moab (ii. 2);
and when he describes the threatened judgment which passed
away from Israel on his entreaty (ch. vii.), he speaks of how the
Lord God called to contend by fire which devoured the
fhom or ' great deep,' and would have eaten up the land
(ver. 4).6 The fire of Jahveh, meant here, cannot be a fire
of conquest, for there is no fire of conquest which devours
the great deep ; and to say that the great deep need mean
no more than the Mediterranean Sea does not increase its
inflammability. The fire of JahVeh can only be the fire
of the world-catastrophe.
There are other indications of the same view. When Jahveh
shall vindicate His purpose in the world, He is described as
doing it through an earthquake (viii. 8, ii. 13-16),7 or by an
eclipse which He shall bring over the face of the sun (viii. 9).
And when the judgment does arrive, Amos, though he is
insisting on its effect within the land of Palestine, describes
its range as absolute. Those who seek to escape from it
shall find themselves powerless: though they climb to
Heaven, Jahveh shall bring them down; though they dig
deep to Sheol, His hand shall take them (ix. 2); though
they hide in the sea-bottom, He commands the serpent there,
and it shall bite them (ix. 3).
All this implies a view of Jahveh's power as absolute,
since He can use everything for His own purposes. He is
able, when He asserts His sovereignty over the world, to
make all things serve His will, since there is nothing which
is beyond His power.8 But the statements imply also that,

68 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
since Jahveh in His day is about to use such instruments,
and since men in His day are conceived as seeking for
such refuges, the day of the divine self -manifestation is one
in which He is about to manifest His sovereignty over the
world. Unless Jahveh's purpose is to make clear His
government of the world, it is difficult to understand why
He is represented as employing these means in His day.
It is true that these larger statements with the concep
tion of Jahveh which corresponds to them do not occur in
connection with the matters which Amos is most eager to
press upon the consciences of his fellow-countrymen. When
he speaks of Jahveh as having to do with the heathen
powers, he clothes his statement of Jahveh's action in
vague and tremendous threats (i. 2, 4, 7, 10, 12, 14, ii. 2).
When he speaks of the visions which he received before he
came forward as a prophet to Israel to declare to his people
their sin, he makes use of them (vii. 1, 4). And when he,
as it were, lets himself go in a philippic on the fate of Israel
without describing the sin which has brought this fate
(ix. l-8a), his language is peculiarly full of them. But
whenever he is dealing directly with the conditions of the
people, their duty and their sin, these forms of expression
disappear. That is as much as to say that these conceptions
form the background of Amos' thought and show what he
holds in common with his contemporaries. When he came
as a prophet to Israel, he did not come with a new message
as to Jahveh's power, but as to Jahveh's character and as to
the purposes for which He brought His power into evidence.
The prophet and the people were in agreement in their view of
the power which Jahveh possessed, so that it was no unfamiliar
thought to them that the day of the Lord should imply a
world-catastrophe. The sayings which imply a relation
of God to the world are in the background, because they

AMOS 69
represent what the prophet held in common with his con
temporaries ; but the moment he brings forward his specific
message of how the day of the Lord implies a judgment on
Israel, they cease to be prominent.
But, further, these general utterances which imply a
relation of Jahveh to the world are coloured by, are even
saturated in, old mythological ideas. The fire of Jahveh
which devours the fhom, the serpent in the sea-bottom, the
roar of Jahveh from Mount Zion, are phrases which can only
be rightly interpreted when it is recognised how behind them
lie ideas as to the cosmos and Jahveh's relation to the
cosmos which are much older than Amos and which are not
even peculiar to Israel. They have their analogies in other
faiths, and, from the fact that they are so readily employed
by Amos, prove that the thought of Israel was influenced by
ideas which the people held in common with the other nations.
The source of these ideas may be traced with more or less
certainty; but, whatever may be their source and their
associations, the phrases which embody them in Amos have
a certain colourlessness which implies that they have lost
the deflniteness of application which once attached to
them. Thus Amos speaks (i. 2) of how Jahveh shall roar
from Zion and utter His voice from Jerusalem, and of how
as a result the pastures of the shepherds shall mourn and
the top of Carmel shall wither. Most commentaries on the
passage are content to state that the divine theophany is
here described under the figure of a thunderstorm, and to
suggest how this may imply that Jahveh was originally a
god of the nature-forces, and in particular was brought into
close association with thunder and lightning. Yet I under
stand that thunderstorms do not, as a matter of fact, arise in
Palestine over Mount Zion; and it is certain that, even if
they did, their effect could never have been to make Carmel-

70 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
top wither or to ruin the pastures. Evidently the figure of
the withering Carmel and the languishing pastures has been
taken from another description of a theophany which repre
sented Jahveh's coming under the image of a blasting desert-
wind. Such a wind was a familiar and dreaded visitant on
the cultivated land. The two representations are natural in
themselves, especially ¦ in Palestine ; and both are used
separately in other parts of Scripture of the divine action.
But men do not mix such figures together till the
phrases which describe them have become so colourless with
frequent use that they have ceased to convey a definite
impression. Amos, in fact, is using stock phrases.
If it be said that this verse is late,9 the same impression
is conveyed by i. 14, where it is said that Jahveh shall
kindle a fire in Rabbah, which is to devour its palaces with
shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day
of the whirlwind. Here the fire of Jahveh which devours
the thom (vii. 4), the tempest and war are confused' together
hopelessly. Again, one has to say that men — and especially
a man of Amos' individuality of mind — do not heap together
phrases like this, so long as the figures which the words
represent convey a definite impression. The more confused
the picture is, the more clear does it become that this
method of representing Jahveh's work has grown colourless
because it is merely traditional. The serpent in the sea-
bottom may once have been a rival power to the God of
order ; but Amos is able to speak of it and use it in his
prophecy, because already the Hebrew faith has outgrown
the risk of his reference to the sea-serpent being misunder
stood. In the same way the faith has so moved away from
the conception of the God who can only reveal Himself
through nature-forces, that a prophet can employ this tradi
tional phraseology without danger.

AMOS 7 1
As to the origin of this conception of the world-cata
strophe and the source from which the language in which
it is embodied has been taken, two suggestions have recently
been made. Meyer 10 holds that it was derived from Egypt,
and quotes some interesting and suggestive descriptions of
the appearance of prophets to announce the end of the world-
order at the court of Egypt. Gressmann u believes that the
original from which Israel borrowed is to be looked for among
the Canaanites, whatever its ultimate source may be. This
is not the place to inquire as to whence the conception was
derived, or even as to whether it is necessary to suppose that
it was borrowed at all.12 But it is interesting and valuable
to recognise that, before it could be borrowed, if it was
borrowed, it must have had its point of connection with
Hebrew thought. I say with Hebrew thought, rather than
with the thought of one man like Amos, for it is evident that
it was not in his view of the scope of the judgment, nor in
his view that it came from Jahveh, that Amos differed from
his contemporaries. The very vagueness of his language
points to the fact that he was using terms which were
familiar to the men of his time, and that he, a man of the
people, had received the conception from the same sources
as those by which it reached them. Before the thought
could take possession of men's minds, and especially before
it could be transformed by a prophet, it must have had its
appeal to the stage of thought which the people had reached.
Now this eschatology, even in its crudest form, stood
for the truth that the world was one and was governed by
one purpose. It stood for the possibility of the emergence
of the eternal order within the world of time. Behind this
world, which seems to men so enduring, lies an eternal order
which may break in upon this, whenever God wills. What
men expect to break in depends on what they believe of the

72 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
God at whose order it comes. I do not stop to ask how
far such a conception in one form or another is essential to
every real religion ; but I wish to insist how apt the minds
of men in Israel were either to formulate such a scheme of
thought at the present stage of their history or to borrow it
from outside and mould it to serve the uses of the faith
which they held. They had learned to believe that there
was only one Will which sustains and governs all things.
They had learned to conceive of God as spiritual in the
sense that He was not contained in, but above, the world
and all it held. They thought of God as will, and the very
nature of will is that it should realise itself. This es
chatological conception of the emergence of the spiritual
order was the natural form in which such a faith should
embody itself.
Gressmann seeks to prove 13 that in its earliest form the
conception of the world-catastrophe was unethical and belonged
to those cosmological theories as to the relation of God and
the universe with which the heathen religions were so greatly
concerned. This may be the case, so far as its appearance
in these other faiths is concerned. But there is no evidence
that it circulated in such a form even among the minds of
the men in Israel who were least affected by the prophets'
thoughts. So far as our evidence as to the thought of Israel
during Amos' period carries us — and beyond that we have no
right to pronounce — the conception of the world-catastrophe
seems to have united in the minds of religious Israelites with
their conviction of how Jahveh held a peculiar relation to
Israel. They believed that Jahveh had the power to inter
vene and realise His purpose at any hour ; they also believed
that, since they were His people, His intervention must be
for the benefit of those who were His own. All, therefore,
who saw how bad the state of affairs was within the nation,

AMOS 73
were longing that Jahveh should make no delay, but. speedily
usher in His day ; and they were ready to listen to a prophet
whose commission it was to declare that this day was at'
hand. Where Amos differed from the religious men of his nation
was not as to the scope which the divine intervention must
take, but as to its character and its issue. Because of his
knowledge of the nature of Jahveh, the emergence of the
eternal order within the sphere of time meant to him the
revelation of the moral order of the universe. To those who
listened to him he declared not only that Jahveh was about
to arise speedily, but why He was to intervene. He was
about to assert the moral basis which is the basis of every
thing, and when that manifested itself, it meant ruin to the
world of things which Amos knew.
This is the new. thought which is present in the prophet's
announcement. He comes forward to announce a catastrophe
which shall involve all the nations that make up the world
with which Israel has to do. The idea of this, as within
the power of the God whom they worship, cannot have been
foreign to the thought of those who listened while he spoke.
They may have listened, with awe indeed but with a certain
satisfaction, to the roll of judgment as it swept round their
horizon. And the contentment with which they listened
to the prospect of other men's ruin, may have hidden from
their eyes the reason given for the prophet's pronouncement.
All this made Amos' crashing close the more tremendous
when he declared that the unique reason which made the
divine intervention necessary, made it certain that it could
not spare the people on which Jahveh had lavished His
ineffectual care.
One result of this change in the prophet's conception of
the day of the Lord as being governed by moral ends is that

74 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
instinctively he begins to revolt against the representation
of it as coming through mere natural forces. I have already
pointed out how Amos uses phraseology which was evidently
the common method of describing the divine theophanies
through earthquake and fire, through whirlwind and thunder.
But it is all colourless and confused. When he is dealing
with the appearance of Jahveh on the wider scale, he still
makes use of it. But when he comes forward to speak to
his own nation of a God who is judging their acts, and when
he has to address himself to men's conscience, all this does
not appear at all. One cannot say that the prophet discards
it : one can only say that he finds himself unable to use it.
The idea of Jahveh, as governing the world and controlling
Israel for spiritual and moral ends, is making it impossible
for a prophet to use readily the older language which described
the divine theophany.14 Amos has borrowed his stereotyped
language from older conceptions ; but he has really outgrown
what lent it its force, and he is turning to the idea that the
means of Jahveh's intervention must be moral agents, even
as the ends for which Jahveh intervenes are moral ends.
But the means which Jahveh may employ to make His
purpose known, occupy a quite subordinate position to the
prophet. What it concerns him that his people should learn
is. the nature of the divine purpose. The day of the Lord
is the day in which Jahveh makes Himself known in the
world. Because, says Amos, Jahveh is what He is, and
because Israel is what it is, the result of this self -manifestation
can only be one. The searching and dreadful enemy of Israel
is its God. The prophet is not concerned as to the instru
ment by which their ruin is to be brought about; he is
only concerned as to the source from which this ruin is to
come, and as to the reasons which make it sure.
Because these are the matters which he is diligent to

AMOS 75
press upon the attention of his people, Amos is wholly vague
in his description of the instrument for Israel's ruin, and of
the nature of that ruin.
Thus Amos never mentions Assyria, though, if Assyria
had been in his mind, there was no reason why he- should
not have spoken about it openly. There is, however, a good
reason why Assyria should not have been in his mind, and
this is that Israel, at the time when the prophet wrote, had
nothing to fear from the Assyrians. During the whole of
Jeroboam's reign Assyria had no power and little influence
in Western Asia, because the nation was fighting for its own
life against the Medians and against Chaldia or Urartu, a
people which occupied the country around Lake Van.
Adadnirari iv. and his son Shalmanasar iv. were compelled
to lead campaign after campaign against these enemies, and
so far were they from being always successful that on one
occasion at least the prince of Chaldia penetrated within a
few days' march of Nineveh arid threatened the heart of the
Empire.15 It was not until after many years of fighting that
the Assyrians were able to capture Arpad, 740, and make
it the basis for future operations in Western Asia. Here,
in 738, Tiglat Pileser iv. or Pul received the tribute of
Menahem ; but during the reign of Jeroboam n. there was
no danger from the Assyrian Empire.
What governs the prophet's thought is not the means by
which the judgment shall be effected, but the source from
which the judgment is to come.16 The enemy whom Israel
has to fear is its offended God. Amos is no politician, who
watches anxiously the growing power of the Assyrian Empire,
or who has observed the disunion and weakness of the petty
powers of Western Asia : far less is he a clever agent busy
with propaganda work in the interests of Nineveh.17 He has
come,18 because Jahveh has made known to him that He is

76 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
about to manifest Himself in the sphere of this world. The
God in whose name Amos comes* can use what instruments
He pleases in order to fulfil His ends, for Heaven and Sheol
are within His power, and it is His to wield all the forces of
nature. He is not only the one real force behind all else in
the world, but He is a free personality, who is not bound to
any nation. It is true that He has entered into a special
relation to the people of Israel, but that relation rests on a
free choice by its God (iii. 1 f.), so -that Israel is an instrument
for a purpose which is greater than it has conceived. Jahveh
is about to intervene in such wise that all the world shall
know it, but His intervention must be specially clear in the
very nation in which He once made known His purpose.
What that purpose is, and why, when Jahveh asserts Himself
anew in the world, His self-manifestation must lead to this
that He can no longer support the nation He once chose to
set His name there — that is the burden of the prophet's
message. But what instruments Jahveh may choose to
chastise the nation and to fulfil His larger ends is beyond the
prophet's message, because He is concerned with the primary
issue ; and this has made him a dogmatist of the reality of
conscience and the God of conscience.
It is, again, instructive to compare Amos' attitude on this
subject with that of Zephaniah. The later prophet, as has
been said, foretells a day of the Lord which is to befall the
Philistines, Moab and Ammon, Ethiopia and Assyria. Now,
the general view has prevailed that, as Amos' prediction was
prompted and motived by the peril from Assyria, so Zephaniah's
prediction arose from the appearance of the Scythians on the
borders of Palestine. Then the order, in which he grouped
the peoples on which the judgment was to fall, is taken to
indicate the route along which the threatened invasion is to
come. According to this view, the invaders were to come

AMOS 77
from the North ; and, after dividing themselves into two
bands, one of which followed the route of the Philistine coast,
while the other marched down the eastern side of Jordan by
way of .Ammon and Moab, were to reunite for an attack on
Ethiopia.19 But two difficulties have always lain in the way
of this explanation. The one is that, so far as we know,
Palestine really had as little to fear from the Scythians in
the time of Zephaniah as it had from the Assyrians in the
time of Amos; and, in fact, did not suffer at all from their
incursions. The other is that the route proposed, by way of
the Maritime Plain and the east side of Jordan at the same
time, was in the highest degree unlikely, and that, even if it
had been followed, it would fail to explain why Nineveh was
placed by the prophet alongside Ethiopia, which on this
theory was the goal of the whole march.20 In reality
Zephaniah was following Amos. Like him, he foresaw the
day of the Lord, and was engrossed by the fact that it was
a day in which Jahveh manifested His righteous order in a
world which greatly ignored Him. But what instruments
Jahveh might use was of slight importance to the prophet.
What it concerned him to bring home to the conscience of
Judah was that the eternal order, which is an order of perfect
righteousness, was breaking in upon the world-order which
men knew.
The same vagueness which characterises Amos' description
of the instrument Jahveh is to use, characterises also his
description of the ruin which is to result from the judgment.
In two passages he speaks of it as captivity (vii. 17, v. 27).
But captivity to Amos means no more than the reversal of
the work of Jahveh on behalf of His people. Thus the
Syrians are threatened with captivity to Kir (i. 5), out of
which Jahveh once brought them (ix. 7). Israel also shall be
led captive out of its land, which was once the land of the

78 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Amorites and the giftof its God at the conquest (ii. 9 ff.). In
both cases Jahveh is about to undo His work on behalf of
these nations.21 When Israel is further threatened with a
captivity beyond Damascus (v. 2 7.), what is implied is that in
this day of the Lord they shall wander farther than they did
when Eiisha stirred up Hazael to harry .them, and shall be
flung beyond the limits of their political horizon into the
unknown. It confirms the impression that Amos is not thinking of
literal, captivity to notice that anPther picture of the ruined
nation appears in his prophecy. A nation shall, afflict them
throughout their land (vi. 14), sparing none (ii. 14-16), and
wrecking their homes (iii. 1 5). The virgin of Israel is fallen,
the city that went forth a thousand shall have a hundred left
and that which went forth a hundred shall have ten left
(v. 2 f .) : there is something after the overthrow. When Jahveh's
judgment is finished, city and country are filled with wailing
(v. 16 f.) : some are left to wail. It is a pitiful remnant ; — ' as
the shepherd rescueth out of the mouth of the lion two legs
or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be rescued '
(iii. 12); — but it is a remnant, left in the land, on which
Jahveh may yet have mercy should it recognise the meaning
of His chastisement and turn to seek Him (v. 15).
It is impossible to get from the prophecy a clear picture
of the nature of the calamity which is to befall Israel, and to
see whether it is to be captivity Pr a wasting war : all that is
made certain is that the nation is to cease from being a
nation. The reason for this uncertainty is that Amos has
come burdened with a different message, which does hot
require for its reception either in the .prophet or in his
hearers any definite knowledge of the calamity which is to
bring Israel's national life to an end.
It is equally impossible, and for a similar reaspn, to frame

AMOS 79
any clear picture of Amos' view as to the future of Israel.
The prophet does not believe that any action on the people's
part can avail to turn back the impending catastrophe. He
himself has ceased to pray that this may be turned back, for
he knows that the divine patience has been exhausted. His
business is now to announce the immitigable purpose of
Jahveh. But this does not imply that the divine purpose is ex
hausted in the day when Jahveh intervenes to shake down the
order of things men know. While Jahveh makes an end of
the sinful nation and breaks the instrument which has failed
Him, He makes also a new beginning. Every intervention
on the part of Jahveh has that as its result ; and, while its
first result is to shake down everything which is opposed to
it, it means finally the emergence of the divine order, for
Jahveh is the everlasting Creator of new things.22 When
Jahveh chastised the nation, it was in order that they might
better learn His will : when He brings the national life to
an end, it is still that His will may be better known and done
in the world.
And so, if the poor remnant which remains from the over
throw turns to Him who smote them (v. 15), it may be
that they shall find a place in the new thing which Jahveh
is bringing to pass. Amos adds no more than this, not
because the call to repentance is not seriously meant by
him,23 but because he does not have the charge to announce
the new thing Jahveh is about to create, and so cannot tell
what place the remnant may find there.
The remnant of whom Amos speaks is very different from
the remnant of Isaiah. The later prophet, when he came to
utter his specific message, gave this title to the men who in
evil times and amid many ' troubles clung to faith in their
God and His will, and to such . men Isaiah could naturally

80 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
promise a sure place in any new thing which Jahveh was
bringing to pass. But the remnant of Amos is the poor
refuse of the people who escape because they are negligible
(iii. 12). Because their capacity to learn, from what they have
experienced is so uncertain, the prophet's promise to them
can only take the form of a ' may be.' Yet if they can in the
new order which Jahveh creates learn the lessons of the
awful' past, and serve themselves heirs to the divine purpose,
they may be used as their fathers, before they became a
nation, were used to serve that will which alone endures in
the world.24 Again, Amos does not dwell upon the future of his people,
because it is not necessary for the specific work he has come
to do. Neither the instrument which Jahveh shall use for
His judgment, nor the course which the judgment shall take
in Israel, nor its ultimate issue in the nation, is that which
the prophet is commissioned to reveal. What he announces
is the source from which the judgment comes, its irreversible
character because He is what He is, and the fact that it is at
the door, Jahveh has dropped His plummet down the wall
(vii. 8): from the time when 'He chose to make known His
verdict, the issue in the people's life was clear.
II.
What, therefore, Amos believed himself commissioned to
declare was that Jahveh was about to intervene in the world-
order, that this intervention was to issue in the overturn of
the established order, and was in particular -to visit Israel
because Jahveh chose it and knew it. He believed that his
commission had come to him through direct personal divine
revelation, and has stated this in plain terms (iii. 7). But,
because his whole attitude is so little that of the mystic,26 we

AMOS 8 1
are justified in asking, and are even compelled to ask, what
brought him to this conviction. And Amos himself gives at
least a glimpse into the working of his own mind. He states
how, before he came forward to announce the imminent
catastrophe, he had not failed to be interested in the destiny
of his nation and in the purpose of Jahveh toward it. When
Jahveh was about to contend with the people by fire and by
locusts (vii. 1-6), Amos prayed for them, not on the ground
that their penalty was unmerited, but on the ground that the
people was small. ' And the Lord repented and said : this
shall not be.' What stops the prophet's mouth at the third
intimation of the divine uprising for judgment can only be
his conviction that the divine patience is now exhausted.
But that which exhausts the divine patience is the enormity
of the people's sin. Either this has increased, since the hour
when Amos prayed for them, or the prophet has seen more
deeply into its nature. In any case it is the people's sin
which brings the interference of its God.
It is therefore too strong a statement to say 26 that Amos
reasoned back from his own certainty of an immediate
judgment to the greatness -of the national sin. His very
language does not agree with this conception. We know
how men are apt to write, we know as a matter of fact how
the post-exilic men did write, when they concluded from an
adversity which was either announced or in progress, to a sin
which caused it. They pile up commonplaces to describe a
sin which is not a burden on their conscience but a conclusion
from their theology, but they do not write in words which
bite on the conscience like the words of Amos. His detailed
account, his singularly personal view of that in which their
sin consists, his concrete description of certain sins which are
prevalent among certain classes, all point to the fact that he
was conscious first of how fatal these things were to the
6

82 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
nation. And thus, while it is true that the perception of the
national sin, the conviction of the near end to the people and
Amos' sense of his commission as a prophet, hang so closely
together that it is difficult to say which is prior in the
prophet's mind, the much greater probability lies on the side
that he had seen behind all this human order an eternal
order, the nature of which was righteousness, which might, at
any hour God willed, manifest itself in this world. And
when the people had so defied the will of their God as to
make His choice of them futile, Jahveh must intervene for
His self-vindication and for the vindication of the purpose He
had in choosing them at all.
Jahveh, according to Amos, holds a relation to all the
nations : He brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the
Syrians from Kir. Jahveh is a free, self-determining power
who can make of any people His instrument. But Jahveh
has entered into a peculiar relation to Israel, such as justified
the prophet in saying in the name of God, ' You only have I
known among all the families of the earth ' (iii. 2).27
In this the prophet's view and that of the people largely
coincided. It was no new thing to them that Israel's
relation to Jahveh rested on the fact of the divine choice of
Israel to be His people, for the prophet and the people were at
one in the opinion that Israel belonged to Jahveh (vii. 8, 15,
viii. 2). In its own estimation Israel was the chief of the
nations (vi. 1), and this self -estimate was due to their con^-
fidence that so mighty a God had elected them (iii. 2), and had
given them their place. To be His choice was to occupy a
privileged position. Their cult in itself was not the final
source of the people's confidence : the final source of their
confidence lay in this, that Jahveh had chosen them and had
once intervened on their behalf.28 Hence the more devout
among them longed for the day of the Lord (v. 1 8). It had

AMOS 83
been already, the day in which their God revealed Himself
to create His people : when it came again, it would deliver
them from all their troubles, and reveal to the wondering
nations and to hesitating men what God can do for
His own.29
Amos, also, based everything upon the initial act of
Jahveh's choice, but he saw it from a different point of
view. He did not insist on the time when the special
relationship to Israel was formed, where it had its inception,
under what conditions it took its rise. In part this may be
due to the fact that he takes it for granted that these things
were known to the people already ; but far more is it due to
his desire to point out what these things imply. Jahveh
brought the people out of Egypt, He led them through the
wilderness, He cast out the Amorites before them (ii. 10,
v. 25) ; He gave them for their guidance nazirites and prophets
(ii. .11). All these things proved that Jahveh held a peculiar
and intimate relation to this people. All He has done for
them was a deliberate and sustained act of self-conscious
will, . and as such, revealed in the very nature of things a
purpose. Everything Jahveh has done for Israel and in
Israel, ¦ He has done for .something more than Israel's sake :
He has poured out His benefits on this people that thereby
He may make known what He is, and may mould Israel into
an instrument of His will. What Jahveh's purpose was could
only be learned through the humble and constant recognition
of the nature of Him who had thus revealed Himself in His
acts for Israel's sake. For this also Jahveh had provided,
since, no sooner -had He given Israel a place in the world,
than He raised up nazirites and prophets to make clear the
will of the God men were to serve there (ii. 11). To know
and serve the will of their God was the very reason for their
possession of the land, and therefore, while the Philistines came

84 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
from Caphtor and knew not why, Israel was led to Palestine'
and told the reason of their coming. But they thought to
keep the land and to stifle the voice of the prophets (ii. 12).
When Israel failed to learn from His benefits, Jahveh sent
calamities upon them ; and the calamities were meant for the
same end as the benefits, to hold the people to the fulfilment
of the will of their God (iv. 6-13). But the people have not
been willing to learn through these deeds which have taken
place in their midst. Jahveh had the right to expect from
this nation a recognition of His signal conduct toward them ;
and He had not found it (ii. 9 f., iii. 2).
Their sin, accordingly, is treachery to the common purpose
which bound God and people together, and by it they have
dishonoured His holy name which has been revealed in and
through them.30 It is not merely a God who is identified
with perfect righteousness whom they have flouted : it is
Jahveh, who chose them to set His name there, and who
meant to perfect good in this one nation. All the relations
of their common life in Palestine were meant to be the means
by which Jahveh's nature and will were made known ; and
these profaned relations are now their condemnation. The
prophets He raised up they have silenced, the nazirites He
sent they have led to break their vows, the land He gave
they have defiled, the gracious relations of men to one
another in their mutual life, which was interdependent and
all-dependent upon Him, they have made hideous. The
nation no longer expresses anything more than any other
nation which' Jahveh guides, as He does the Syrians and
the Philistines. Nay, it expresses something less, for it is
an embodied failure.
Jahveh is about to make a new beginning. Prepare to
meet thy God, 0 Israel (iv. 1 2), in this new self -manifestation
of Himself in the world. The catastrophe which is about to

AMOS 85
come is no slow process working itself out through the
inevitable issues of a broken law : it is Jahveh who is
rising up to shake terribly an earth with which He has
borne too long, and who will especially shake down this
,proud nation which was there to- express His will and which
failed even to realise its mission. Jahveh gives up His
relation to His people, and in doing this He is just, so just
that He can summon the nations to see His deed and to be
the witnesses of His justice (iii. 9). In this representation of
Jahveh as judge and accuser, and of the nations as the
witnesses of His act, is expressed the recognition of how
Jahveh is compelled to do this thing by an inner necessity of
His nature. Even these aliens must acknowledge how He can
do nothing else than the thing He now does, surrender the
nation which He made. The wounded love of God, who has
spent so much and whose patience is at last exhausted, must
now make its way in the destruction of the nation which
has failed Him.31 Jahveh is not here the judge who vindi
cates His law; He is the Ruler and Sustainer of all who
vindicates Himself.
It is when one recognises this great idea which possesses
the mind of Amos, the idea of a God, who has Heaven and
Sheol at His command, and who disposes of the nations to fulfil
His righteous ends in the world, involving the idea of a nation
which has the self-confidence and the grave humility of those
who believe themselves chosen to serve an almighty will,
and who seek to make that will real in all the relations of
their national life, — it is when one recognises this that one
can best measure the prophet's attitude to the cultus. It
seemed to him a relatively small thing, so that he never
formulated any consistent theory about it.
This assertion of course needs justification, and the justifi
cation lies in the different positions which the prophet adopts

86 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
in the matter according to the men whom he is addressing.
In one passage (ch. viii.) Amos addressed the men who were at
ease in Israel, — the class in every community and in every
age which is most easily recognised. It is a difficult task
to reconstruct the piety of a dead generation, because the
unseen world of a man's aspirations and prayers is a great
thing. It is never difficult to reconstruct the attitude of
the worldling, because his world is small, and, whether he
deals in wheat or in iron, whether he measures by the
ephah or the ton, he wants these things for the same petty
ends. He is the most unvarying, because the most common
place, eleinent in every civilisation. Amos saw him, rebelling
against the cultus, because it formed a restraint on his appe
tites : ' When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell
corn, and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat ? ' (viii. 5).
We know the man who frets against Sabbatarianism, not
because its observances are in his judgment superstitious, but
because he prefers to play golf rather than go to church, or
thinks it a pity that the day of rest should interfere with his
opportunities of making money. In speaking to such men, the
prophet did not stop to inquire into the origin of sabbath and
new moon, or to ask as to the legitimacy of their presence in
the religious life of Israel.32 Seeing how these forms of the
cultus offered the boon of rest to the hard-worked poor,33
he joined their neglect with the practice of making the ephah
small and the shekel great in his vehement indictment against
the wealthy and powerful in Israel. Because the observance
of these days could help forward the ideal which was in his
mind, and because the neglect of them was due to a contempt
for the spiritual and moral principles which formed the basis
of the national life, he condemned the men who ignored the
regulations of the cult.
When, however, Amos is speaking in ch. vi. to the same

AMOS 87
class in the community, he has nothing to say about their
undue observance of a ritual form of worship. The reason
may simply be that men of this type never need to be warned
against undue observance of formal acts of worship, because
they are - rarely so interested in worship as to abuse its
outward forms.
The men, before whom Amos brings in ch. v. the question
of the origin and worth of the sacrifices, are in a very
different case. They are those who desire the day of the
Lord. They are men who are conscious that the relation
of Israel to Jahveh is unsatisfactory, who are therefore not
at ease, because they desire some manifestation of the God
whom they worship. Meantime, until Jahveh intervenes to
show Himself more clearly, they eagerly offer sacrifice to
propitiate their God and to show their devotion to Him.
Amos declares that when the day of the Lord comes, it
will in no wise turn to their contentment. They are ill
at ease now ; but to desire the day of the Lord is like
fleeing from Scylla to fall into Charybdis (v. 19). For
Jahveh, when He comes, will come to judge and sweep
aside the very means they use to serve Him : He hates
and despises their feasts and offerings (v. 21-23). There
was a day of the Lord in Israel, when He led them through
the wilderness and smote the Amorites before them ; but
that was a day when Jahveh gave them no commands as
to the sacrifices they should bring and the method in which
these should be offered (v. 25).
Now the verse is very difficult to interpret. Plainly,
when Amos asked this question specifically of the devout
men of his time, he did not believe that an elaborate
sacrificial system dated from the Exodus ; for, if the men
had been able to retort that their fathers worshipped after
the punctilious and divinely commanded fashion which is

88 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
set down in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, the prophet's
rebuke would have lost all force. But this does not make
it much clearer what he does mean ; for, if we are to under
stand that he believes that no sacrifices at all were offered
in the wilderness, his view is simply incorrect : and J, who
makes sacrifice not only as old as the desert but as old as
the race, has a true historical vision compared with the
prophet.34 What Amos seems to mean is that then the nation were
in such a relation to Jahveh, so consciously dependent on
Him and so much an instrument for carrying out His work,
that they could rejoice in His immediate presence. The day
of the Lord, then, so welded them together in joyous readiness
to seek Him and the land where they might serve Him, that
sacrifice fell into a comparative insignificance. So insignifi
cant was it in comparison with this other sense of their unity
with their God that it could be said that Jahveh gave no
command about it at all. But now it bulks to them as
though it were everything, for it is conceived by them as the
chief means by which they seek to realise their dependence
upon their God and to fulfil His will. They have substituted
this comparatively trivial affair for the greater thing which
Jahveh had in view when He made them a nation. And
so now, when Jahveh manifests Himself, ye shall take up
all these things which ye have made for yourselves, and I
will sweep you away, you and your means of worship together,
into captivity.35
The same attitude, more of impatience with such minor
matters than of condemnation, is seen in iv. 4 f. The
section is generally set down as an isolated fragment of a
longer passage which once dealt with sacrifice, but without
sufficient reason. Amos bids the people multiply their
sacrifices and increase their tithes, because this is the kind

AMOS 89
of thing which they understand — ' this liketh you.' He bids
them play at the little regulations in which they delight,
and go into detail as to the exact kind (leavened or un
leavened), as to the exact quantity (every three days), of the
offerings they bring. And then, abruptly checking himself,
he flings up over against all this the thought of Jahveh
which is engrossing his own mind and bringing an awe
over his own soul. Jahveh has given them famine and
pestilence, drought, blasting and mildew. He has complete
command of all these things and has used them for the
discipline and guidance of the nation. This God, so mighty,
so terrible, Israel is about to meet, when He comes to renew
all things in the world, and their only thought of how to
meet such a God is that He will be interested in questions
about tithes and offerings.
' Seek Me,' he says in another place ; ' seek not unto Bethel,
go not unto Gilgal ' (v. 5). Amos, again, is not considering
whether the sacrifices at Bethel are legitimate or illegitimate.
He is contrasting the God of his own wonder and love, whose
great acts the people remember as the ground of their con
fidence, with the God whose nature is thought of as being
contented with the meticulous and pettifogging services
which are offered at these shrines.
In all this Amos leaves it uncertain whether his meaning
is that the sacrifices which the people practise are hateful
to God in themselves, or are only hateful because they are
being made the substitute for a worthier service, and so are
hiding from men's . eyes the neglect of righteousness. But
he shows a certain impatient disdain of the whole subject
which seems to suggest a negative attitude, not only to the
ritual of his own day, but to any ritual of any day.
The power of a routine to express man's submission to ,
an eternal law, a submission which is constantly renewed

9b RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
because the need for it can never pass away, the value of
a ritual to express a gratitude which men ought to offer as
they remind themselves of the presence of Him to whom
their gratitude is due, the gracious uses of an ordered service
which does not leave a man to the natural longing and
aspiration of his heart, but expresses the limitations which
God's will' must impose even on men's aspirations, from such
thoughts Amos hurries away to his thought of Jahveh's
mightier purposes which, as these are wrought out on a
different plane, need a different temper of mind to recognise
them. Part of this was due to the fact of his being a great
personality who had seen one thing which it was his business
to bring home with all his power to the conscience of his
own time. Part of it is also due to the fact that Amos
was riot commissioned to reveal a distant future after the
divine act of intervention, and think of how the gratitude
men felt to their God and Protector was to embody itself
directly. He came to declare that Jahveh was about to
overturn all the settled order of things in Israel; and it
could be no part of his work to foresee the task which the
Deuteronomists were to undertake.. The distinction, however,
which Amos made between the different parts of the cult
shows a deeper departure from the national religion. He
blamed the neglect of those parts of the ritual which seemed
to him to have a moral basis and to supply a spiritual appeal.
The question as to the origin of these did not concern him
at all : what interested him was their capacity to check
men's greed and to teach men brotherhood. He also poured
contempt on certain forms of ritual worship, because in them
he saw nothing except a corrupt worship, capable of drawing
men's attention away from the greater claims of God on their
conduct. So soon as he took this attitude, he showed how
he was losing hold of merely national religion and moving out

AMOS 91
to the position of a universal faith. The national religion
had always insisted, national religion generally does insistj
the revived national religion of Deuteronomy insisted afresh,
on a cultus which preserves the historic continuity of a
people, which embodies the common ideals and aspirations
which have guided its past. The moment the prophet
insisted that the primary justification for any act of the
cultus was that it embodied human ideals, answered to
ethical ends which were for all humanity and recognised
the moral needs of man as man, he parted so far with
national religion and was on the way to a world-faith.
What is thus shown in the prophet's attitude to the
cultus is equally present in his view of moral evil. On one
side, it is true, he speaks of sins rather than of sin, and of
sins of deed rather than of sins of habit; and so he has
not, as Hosea has, the weary and heavy sense of how sore a
thing it is for men to repent. But, while in this respect
Amos is external in his view, it is necessary to emphasise
how he never appeals to any law,36 not even in addressing
Israel which must have possessed some law. What he
demands from Israel is righteousness as between men who
are bound together as servants of the one God ; and the men
to whom he insists most in this demand are the powerful
who were most tempted to ignore it. The terms in which
he speaks of this^— mishpat and tsdhaqah, i.e. judgment and
righteousness — are never used in the sense of a formal
righteousness, nor is failure to fulfil them construed as the
transgression of a formal statute. They are used in the
wider sense in which they include all morals.37 " The right
eousness which is to flow like a stream through the life of
the people is to him not like any formal affair, nor is it
the merely external application of prescribed principles and
customary or ordered claims: it is righteousness in the

92 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
absolute meaning of moral power, the respect for personality
in fellow-members of the one people which is the pre
supposition for the free and happy activity of all for the
welfare of the community, which excludes the misuse of
one's own power and the pursuit of private advantage to the
disadvantage of another." 38
In all this Amos is appealing to that which is the founda
tion of all law in any community. He expects to find it espe
cially in the men who form the community of Israel, because
they have lived together through the same history, have
experienced a common discipline and have learned to work
together under the inspiration of a mutual faith. But he
does not expect to find it only in Israel. To him it is a
presupposition that everything he claims in the name of
Jahveh expresses a native sense of right which dwells in
every man, and that everything which infringes such a claim
is in a real sense unnatural. The patent proof of this is that
he does not hesitate to condemn the acts which have dis
honoured the other nations, though these acts have no
reference to Israel, and to denounce upon these nations the
judgment of Jahveh in the day of His intervention. It does
not occur to Amos that these nations have no knowledge of
Jahveh's nature or claims. He condemns their conduct, as
one who knows that the standard to which he appeals will
be acknowledged by them, and needs no rule other than the
instinctive pieties of the human heart to enforce it. Good
is not merely a concrete and positive thing, enforced by regu
lations and guarded by penalties: before it has become this,
and before it can become this, it is something which expresses
the inner nature of man and of God. God and man are thus,
all unconsciously it may be, set together as possessed of an
inward unity of nature ; and this nature which is common to
God and man is served by all that is in outward nature.

AMOS ' 93
For God uses the outward world, its catastrophes and its
blessings, to enforce the purpose which He is bringing to light
in man ; and in particular God moulded the outward world
that He might manifest His purpose in the world through
Israel. The position implies that nature is sacramental, and
involves great consequences, which are not in the line of the
prophet's thought. Rather Amos thinks of nature as the
mere background to the life and work of man, and so think
ing, has broken absolutely with every form of religion which
finds its ultimate authority in any of the outward events of
nature. Within the universe is the world of man with his
intimate relation to God, within mankind is the little world
of Israel with its clearer knowledge of what this relation
implies, within Israel is the prophet who is God's gift to
interpret His purpose to His people. The high value Amos
sets on prophecy is not denied but really affirmed in the
scene at Bethel. His reply to Amaziah does not imply that
he refuses to have anything to do with the prophets.39 The
priest at Bethel acted like the ordinary official : he sent a
message of warning to Jeroboam which was his recognition of
the power and danger of the prophets, and then he turned to
get rid of his inconvenient visitor. He bade Amos run away
and earn his bread at this kind of thing in Judah, where the
authorities might tolerate such practices ; in Israel the royal
power was too strong to let men imagine they could draw
any profit from their prophesying. Amos retorted that this
kind of thing was irrepressible. It is possible to control
men who earn their bread by prophecy and to bring the
prophetic schools into leading-strings. But remember that,
when you have succeeded in this, prophecy will break out
somewhere else. See, I was earning my bread at my ordinary
business, when Jahveh came to me and drove me out to say

94 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
what I have said and must repeat. As for you, who think to
control prophecy by your police regulations, your wife shall
be a harlot in the city. When Jahveh has something to say
to the world and to His own people, He will find a man to
say it: so immediate and sure is the relation of Jahveh to
the soul of. man. And when Jahveh has pronounced the
thing which shall be, its coming is irreversible. It is the
same conception of the prophet, as one who is irresistibly
cPmpeJded to prophesy, which appears in iii. 8 : ' Jahveh
hath spoken, who can but prophesy ? ' When Jahveh has
something to reveal, He cannot fail to find a mouthpiece.
In the same way prophecy is as great a thing to Amos as
the destruction of the Amorites. Jahveh sent both. It was
a great thing that Israel should have received its land as a
gift from its God ; but it was a greater thing that the people
should know through the prophets what God meant for them
when He gave them the land. The Philistines came up from
Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir, blindly serving a will
which they were not privileged to know. Israel came up out
of Egypt ; and, because God gave them not only a land but
prophets, they knew what their God had for them to do;
their great sin consisted in the fact that they silenced this
voice of God.
In all this the prophet to Amos is the interpreter of
God's will through the relation to God, which is not confined
to him but which in him reaches its full and highest expression.
And what is of chief significance to Amos is, not the great
events of Israel's history, but the interpretation of them
through the men whom Jahveh raised up in His people.
This, which was implicit in the earlier prophet's thought,
Isaiah made explicit in his offer of a sign to King Ahaz (see
p. 161, infra).
On the other side, the attitude which Amos took implies

AMOS 95
that he has in essence broken with a national religion. . The
inward unity of nature, which the prophet takes for granted
as the constant bond between God and man, is not confined
to Israel or to the prophet the divine mouthpiece within
Israel, for Amos has presupposed its existence in the king of
Moab. Not only does the sin of the nations deserve and call
for the direct intervention of Jahveh ; but, even when Jahveh's
intervention is concerned with the peculiar sin of His own
people, the nations can be called on to recognise and approve
its justice. From this it was but a step to conclude that,
since the nations had this initial relation to Jahveh, the
divine intervention must concern them also, not merely in
the sense that they mutely suffer from it, but that they can
learn its meaning to them. And in Zephaniah, the great
continuator of Amos' thought, we find this conception dimly
breaking through for the first time.
The judgment which Amos conceived himself commissioned
to pronounce was a world-judgment, and not merely some
thing which was to befall Israel. The religion which he held
was based on a universal ethic, and was not merely a national
religion. The two sides of his thought hold together; and,
when they are grasped together, it becomes clear that the
great leader of the prophetic thought of Israel was not groping
about to find what Assyria might or might not do, to point
out the feebleness of the forces which stood against the
coming of the world-empire, or to explain the meaning of his
people's defeat at the hand of Assyria. He came to declare
what Jahveh must do, because of his knowledge of what
Jahveh was. Jahveh had a purpose which concerned the
whole world. Because this purpose was not something which
Israel had conceived for itself, but was the expression of the
nature of Him who controlled all things, it must one day
stand up on the earth and manifest itself as the one enduring

96 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
reality in this changeful and uncertain universe. And when
it did manifest itself, it must become the touchstone to test
all mortal things, but especially to test the work of this
nation, the one reason for the existence of which was that it
was chosen to be the instrument of the divine purpose.

CHAPTER V.
HOSEA.

Any attempt which is made to put the thought of this
prophet into systematic, shape requires always to keep in
mind three things.
The first consideration is the state of the text in which
Hosea's utterances have come down. It is wise not merely to
recognise in , a general way, but to keep continually in mind,
that the text is exceptionally bad. A great deal can be done,
and much has been done, by brilliant suggestion, to restore the
book to what appears its original condition. But every such
suggestion rests^and the more apparently valuable it is the
more surely does it rest — on some preconceived idea of what
Hosea is likely to have said, or even on some idea formed
from other study of what was probable in the way of religious
opinion at the period at which the prophet wrote. Now,
when such a text, reconstructed unconsciously at the secret
dictation of a theory, is afterwards used to support the very
preconception which led to the reconstruction, the common
ness of this reasoning in a circle does not make the practice
more legitimate. Only texts which are clear can be used as
proof. The second consideration is the character of the oracles.
They are generally brief, and never, except perhaps in ch. ii.,
develop a subject, but bear the stamp of utterances flung out
7

98 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
in the heat of the moment to meet a particular situation. In
this they show the character of the man who uttered them,
as a man of strong emotions who thought as it were in jets
and who uttered impressions. These impressions came through
the influence of certain conditions of the life around him,
which possessed his mind often to the exclusion of everything
else. Now these conditions, which so deeply influenced
Hosea's thought, are often unknown to us, and our ignorance
ought to make us careful against being too sure in any
pronouncement on the doctrine of the prophet. When Hosea
speaks of the princes making themselves sick with the heat
of wine on the day of our king (vii. 5), he seems to refer to
some incident which was as well known to his hearers as it
was to himself, but which is wholly unknown to us ; yet the
character of the incident has much to do with the judgment
he passes on those who were concerned in it. When he
reproaches the priests for being a snare at Mizpah and
spreading a net at Tabor (v. i.), he refers to conduct on the '
part of the priests of Northern Israel which, were it known to
us, would make much clearer his attitude to this official class.
His references to political dealings with Assyria and Egypt
(v. 13, viii. 9, xii. 2) leave us sure as to the fact but wholly
uncertain as to the reasons which prompted such conduct ;
yet it is possible that the reasons may have had something
to do with the prophet's hatred of the act. Why Gilead
should be singled out as a city of them that work iniquity
(vi. 8), whether the priests committed actual or spiritual
murder on the way to Shechem (vi. 9), what was the place in
which Ephraim dealt treacherously with Jahveh (vi. 7),1 we
do not know ; yet it is evident that these local events and
temporary conditions roused the prophet to strong protest.
Now a man who is roused to action or speech by the circum
stances of his own time is peculiarly liable to be misunder-

HOSEA

99

stood by a later generation which does not know intimately
the conditions which prompted his utterances. Hosea spoke
with passion to meet a situation which he saw : his auditors
heard his words and construed them in the light of the
actions which he condemned and with the limitations that
were necessary. But we are always apt to lift his broken
utterances out of relation to these conditions, to apply them
universally, and to believe that in what he says about a
certain set of circumstances we have his whole mind on the
subject with which he was dealing.
The third consideration which needs to be borne in mind is
that we have no right to conclude that the book, as we have
it, is chronologically arranged : we cannot say that the oracles
are arranged at all. When it is said, e.g., that the prophecy
reaches its climax in the denunciation of doom on Israel in
ch. ix., and when this conclusion is used in order to exclude
the possibility of Hosea having prophesied a restoration of
Israel to the divine grace, what underlies this is the assump
tion that ch. ix. represents the final utterance of the prophet
on the fate of his nation. Yet there is no justification for
the assumption, since it is quite as possible that this so-called
climax represents, not the final conclusion of the prophet, but
an earlier denunciation which was modified in the light of a
wider experience. Ch. iv., again, states that it is useless to
denounce the nation as guilty, since the commons have been
misled by their teachers, the priests. It is possible to see in
this an early conviction on the part of the prophet, which
gave place to the later opinion that people and priests were
equally guilty : it is also possible to understand it as the
expression on the part of an older and graver man that
much may be condoned to the erring, because misguided,
populace. But it is not legitimate to conclude that with
this conviction Hosea began his ministry, merely because

ioo RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
the chapter stands at the beginning of his book, there being
no reason to assume that the oracles are in chronological
order. In particular, this deserves to be insisted on in connection
with chs. i. and iii., the chapters which relate Hosea's ex
periences with his wife. The mere fact of these two chapters
following one another closely in the book must not prevent
the recognition of how the revelations they contain may
have been separated by a considerable interval of time, and
represent a deepening experience on the part of the prophet.
Hosea did not begin to speak as a prophet, only after all the
bitter and gracious experience of his marriage had been
gathered in.2 His first child by Gomer bears a prophetic
name, but . the name contains no reference to his wife's
unfaithfulness. Because this is so, the followirig oracle con
tains no reference to the people's faithlessness, but merely
confines itself to denouncing woe on the kingdom for the sin
of the house of Jehu. The two other children are given
names which directly refer to convictions which sprang from
Gomer's unfaithfulness : and in the symbolic names the
prophet represents the woman's desert and the nation's
desert because of their conduct towards those whose names
they bear. But ch. iii. speaks of a new subject, the atti
tude of the prophet, as determined not by Gomer's conduct
toward him, but by what his love to her prompts. This
it is legitimate to construe as the outcome of a later period
in Hosea's life, when he had learned a higher thought of
his relation even to an unfaithful wife, with all therein
implied as to the meaning of Jahveh's relation to Israel.
The mere fact that the chapters are contiguous in the
present form of the book does not shut out the possi
bility of this interpretation, for there is no just ground to
believe that the oracles are arranged in order of time, so that

HOSEA 101
all Hosea's prophecies in chs. iv. ff. came after his experiences
with his wife.
When the experience which qualifies a man for his
prophetic function is one which is not exhausted in one great
moment, but which by its very nature grows, it is inevitable
that the prophetic message itself should change and develop.
When Amos saw a basket of summer fruit, he needed no
more than the explanation of what this implied for the
people of Israel : with his faithful delivery of the message
the experience of the prophet, so far as this revelation was
concerned, was closed. But when Hosea was called to be
a prophet, he was summpned through a human relation
ship which was not and could not be definitely closed. It
was in itself a growing and changing thing, which unfolded
its implications to the patient heart; and, being such, it
implied that the prophet's revelation grew in depth as he
himself came to know all that was meant for him by the
life into which he had entered.
Volz has insisted 3 that this conception is mistaken, and
that no more is implied in i. 2 than that Hosea was com
manded by Jahveh to marry a woman who was already
profligate in life, in order to point out to the people by this
object-lesson what its real relation to Jahveh was. But, to
say nothing of the difficulty of a prophet conceiving such
a marriage to have been directly ordered by God,4 the view
breaks down on two sides. It destroys the analogy between
Israel and Gomer ; for Hosea does not think or speak of
Israel as having been faithless before its union with -Jahveh
— he blames Ephraim for having become unfaithful after
Jahveh brought it into His house, the land of Canaan.
And it is impossible to understand how such a deed could
arrest the attention of the people. Volz thinks that the
startling marriage of a prophet with a woman of known bad

102 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
character could not fail to. rouse the people's interest and to
force them to ask its meaning. But, if we are to be just
to the language of i. 2, Hosea was not publicly recognised
as a prophet before his marriage ; and it is not easy to see
how the marriage of the unknown son of Be'eri with a
profligate woman would incline his countrymen to listen to
anything which he now had to say in the name of God.

II.
All that is known as to the personal character and
history of Hosea is based upon the statements in his book.
He was the son of an otherwise unknown man, Be'eri, and
he married a woman, Gomer, who bore him two sons and
a daughter, and whose faithlessness to him was a principal
factor in his mission as a prophet. The latter statement
has been questioned ; but, while there is a great deal which
points in the direction of a symbolical interpretation of the
marriage, the fact that the name Gomer obstinately resists
every effort made to turn it into a parable seems to show
that we have here to deal with a real woman and a tragedy.
Perhaps Hosea was not unwilling to make it possible to turn
the whole transaction into a symbol, because he was more
eager to have men recognise and ponder the divine truths
which by this means were conveyed to him, than linger too
long over the tragedy of his home life, which he only related
because it was the means by which he reached the truths for
himself. It may be concluded that he was a native of Northern
Israel, not merely because his chief interest lay in Ephraim
and several of his references to Judah as apart from Ephraim
are suspicious on critical grounds, but because he shows an
intimate knowledge of the condition of the kingdom of the

HOSEA 103
ten tribes. He is not content to expose the internal
corruption of his people and to detect the sources from which
this sprang: he refers to the places where the corruption
was most in evidence, and in connection with them he
denounces acts which must have been known to his hearers,
but to some of which we have lost the clue (x. 13—15,
x. 9 f., ix'. 15—17). He speaks about the hasty, panic-
stricken resolutions of the natural leaders of his people like
one who has watched what he describes and who has seen
its effects. And that he spoke of a life which he shared,
not of something with which he was merely associated as
an onlooker, is supported by the general tone of his prophecy,
for in his sharpest denunciations he has neither scorn nor
bitterness. To some extent this is due to the character of
the man, but in part it is also due to the fact that he felt how
intimately the corruption of the national life was bound up
with instincts and desires which were not in themselves evil.
He spoke like one who saw the source from which the worst
sins of the people arose, and who, while he condemned it,
condemned it with sympathy.6
Duhm6 held that Hosea was a priest. One would
wish to believe it. His continual interest in the cultus and
his sense of how the corrupt cultus was sapping the very
foundations of morality become more explicable on this
supposition, and his condemnation of the cult in itself and
of the entire public conduct of the priests becomes also more
trustworthy. It might be argued that the fact of Amos
having been a man of the type which is never very de
pendent on a cultus, and therefore cannot really estimate
its value, makes his sweeping judgments on that for which
it stood in his time a little suspicious. One must have
seen a thing from the inside and loved it before one has
the full right to condemn it. But, while there is enough

104 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
in Hosea's book to make us sure that he had seen from the
inside the work of the priests, both in connection with the
sacrifices and in connection with their judicial functions, there
is not enough to compel us to suppose that he was pro
fessionally identified with them. The prophets were, as we
have seen, intimately associated with the priesthood- — so
intimately that there is no need to postulate, more for
Hosea. The period of the prophet's activity falls a little later than
that of Amos, but before the outward collapse of Samaria.
The beginning of his work dates from the time when the
house of Jehu was still upon the throne, for his earliest
prophecy (i. 4) was directed against this dynasty. Since
Zechariah, Jeroboam II. 's son, was only able to maintain
himself for six months (2 Kings xv. 8), and since with his
fall the house of Jehu came to an end, it is just to conclude
that Hosea began to prophesy while Jeroboam was yet on
the throne.7 The terminus ad quern of the prophet's work
is a little more difficult to establish,8 but there is no suffi
cient reason for referring any utterances of Hosea to a period
later than that of Israel's independence. This, however,
does not imply that the ruin of the State was not already
in process and that some part of it had not become apparent.
The feeble kings who succeeded each other after the death
of Jeroboam il, none of whom was able to maintain his seat
on the throne, were equally impotent to secure the internal
unity of their kingdom and to preserve it against, its external
enemies. The greater part of Hosea's work accordingly fell in a
period when the: central authority was weak ; and some of
the results of that anarchy shine through the pages of his
book. The petty kings, who ruled so long as their party held
together and who represented no more than the intrigues

HOSEA 105
of the hour, maintained themselves by dependence on the
foreigner or by appealing to the passions of their supporters :
they were kings whom Israel made, not Jahveh. With this
breakmg down of the royal power went the last stay for
decent justice. The kingdom had weakened the older system
by which justice was administered among men in Israel ; and
now, when the kingdom itself was weak, the judges it could
not check did what pleased them. Every greedy appetite was
loose in Israel : the people was masterless, and losing every
ideal which could make it a nation.
Hosea, like Amos, came to announce an intervention of
Jahveh, in which the God who had once revealed Himself for
the creation of this nation was to reveal Himself anew in its
history. The interest of Hosea, however, as we shall have
occasion to notice more clearly later, was almost wholly
confined to the action of Jahveh within Israel, so that the
divine intervention, as implying a judgment upon the nations
and a convulsion which affects their fate, does not appear in
his thought as it does with his predecessor. But the idea of
a wider divine intervention, implying a catastrophe which was
to embrace more than his own land, is fundamental in his
prediction. Thus he describes the Lord's controversy in terms
(iv. 1—3) which resemble the language of Zephaniah, and pre
dicts it as bringing about a change in the whole animate
creation. No ordinary convulsion, such as a drought, far less
a conquest by the foreigner, can make the fishes of the sea
suffer : this convulsion is to affect the brute creation as well
as mankind. And when he represents the new order which is
to follow on the divine intervention, he speaks of how Jahveh
shall remodel the relations, not merely of men to each other,
but the relations of Israel to the world in which it lives, so
that the people shall dwell at peace with the beasts (ii. 18—20),
and both man and beast shall rejoice in a new fertility of the

1 06 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
earth where they live together (ii. 23 ff). To this it will be
necpssary to return later. Meantime, it is important to
recognise that the appearance of the conception of the world-
catastrophe, in such different forms and in two prophets of so
different character as Amos and Hosea, proves the idea to
have been widespread in this period.
Moreover Hosea, as little as Amos, is- watching the slow
and irresistible rise of the Assyrian power or drawing con
clusions as to Israel's powerlessness to resist an invader from
the increasing anarchy in Israel. To him- also the one adver
sary whom Israel has to fear is Jahveh : ' I will be unto
Ephraim as a lion ... I, even I, will tear ... I will carry
off, and there shall be none to deliver' (v. 14). But who or
what is to be the instrument for the divine purposes he no
where states.
It is true that he has much to say about Assyria and
Egypt as powers that are to chastise Israel, and that he ex
pressly mentions Assyria, while Amos nowhere introduces that
nation. He mentions together Assyria and Egypt (ix. 3,
xi. 5,9 11); he speaks sometimes of Assyria alone (x. 6),
sometimes of Egypt (ix. 6), as lording it over Israel. But
the fact that the prophet mentions the two powers together
makes it impossible to suppose that, when he spoke at one
time of Egypt and at another of Assyria, he was dealing in
each separate prophecy with a different historical and political
situation, and foretelling now one, now another, of these
powers as the final instrument of the divine wrath on Israel.
Thus he announced (ix. 6 10) that, when the people were driven
from their wasted country, Egypt was to gather them up and
Memphis to be their rendezvous ; but in the same breath he
declared (ix. 3) that Israel was to eat unclean food in Assyria.
These two verses cannot indicate a different historical and
political situation. And, when it is noticed that the threat

HOSEA 107
of chastisement from one or both of these nations is joined to
the fact that Israel sought help at their hands instead of from
Jahveh, their true helper, it becomes clear that the prophet
meant to say that they shall be bitterly disappointed in the
saviours to whom they have turned in the hour of a need
which their God sent in order to teach them to turn to Him
alone. Whenever Hosea announced the final overthrow of the
people, he announced it as something which was to be carried
out by Jahveh Himself (v. 14, vii. 12, viii. 13, ix. 12,
x. 10). The God who gave them their land was to cast them
out of it ; and, as Hosea did not stop to dilate on the means
by which God conquered the new land for His people, he did
not interest himself in the means by which God was to cast
them out. It was enough to say that the source from which
their chastisement came was Jahveh Himself.
Hosea's mention of the world-powers has a different signi
ficance. The prophet is constant in his recognition that sin
brought its own penalty and carried, wrapped up in it, its own
catastrophe. The people have sinned in that they who owed
everything to Jahveh have preferred another lord than Jahveh,
and have sought another protector beside Him (v. 13, etc.).
They shall have their wish : they shall be abandoned to an alien
government. It matters nothing to the prophet whether their
lord was to be Egypt or Assyria, any more than it mattered to
him whether they offered their allegiance to Egypt or Assyria.
It" was enough that they had turned to serve another than
Jahveh : and it is enough that He means to abandon them to the
lord whom they have chosen. Assyria and Egypt have become
symbols. The fact that Hosea sometimes employs the two
names in the same passage, and the other fact that he shows
a preference for Egypt in this connection, though Egypt was
not interfering in Palestine during this period, and was not

108 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
therefPre likely to be a danger to ,the nation, are the proof
of the meaning he attached to these two names. Israel was
to return to the condition out of which Jahveh brought them.
No longer Jahveh's bride, nor suffered to dwell in the Lord's
land, they shall live without the means which brought them
into relation to the God to whom they owe their existence
(iii. 4, ix. 3 f.). ' My God will cast them away . . . and they
shall be wanderers among the nations ' (ix. 1 7).
What interested Hosea was not the form of Israel's
chastisement, nor the means by which it was to be brought
about : it was the fact that this was to be the deed of
Jahveh, and that, when it was done, they sank back into
the condition from which He alone had been able to call
them. To Him they owed their national existence and their
distinctive character : when they forgot Him, they returned
to the grey, insignificant heap out of which they came.

III.
The commanding thought in Hosea is the love of God
to Israel. To this love Israel owed its existence as a
nation: 'I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt J
(xii. 10); 'When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and
from Egypt I called My son ' (xi. 1 ; cf . also xiii. 4, ii. 1 7).
Israel's existence as an independent nation coincided with,
and was due to, the act of God's love which created it.
The love which prompted this deed was free, and Hosea
did not think of seeking a reason for it. Once he quoted
from a temple song of Bethel (xii. 4— 7)11 which described
the divine care for the patriarch ; but he did riot use this
in the fashion of a later generation, to insist that Israel was
loved for the father's sake. Jahveh was gracious, as one is
gracious to a child who owes everything to the care without

HOSEA 109
which it cannot live (xi. 3). When Jahveh found Israel in
the wilderness, they were as delightful to Him as grapes to a
thirsty wayfarer (ix. 1 0). No motive is pffered here for the
love of God, for it was the divine love which brought Israel
into the wilderness : what is said is that, while they were
there, dependent on His sole power and knowing no other
allegiance, they were delightful to Him.12
But this initial act on Jahveh's part did not exhaust the
divine care. When the time of childhood with its weakness
and dependence was past, Jahveh brought the people into His
land and gave it a place, and with a place an opportunity.
The land was His land (ix. 3) and all its gifts were His -gifts
(ii. 10 f.). With the settlement in Canaan began the period
of marriage, when the people, no longer in its childhood,
was called to live in Jahveh's house and to bear His name.
Here was its opportunity to own Him as the Lord of its
life. This is the explanation of the apparent discrepancy
between the conception of Israel as a child and as a wife,
which has led several exponents of the prophet to question
the originality of 'My son' in xi. 1, on the ground that
Hosea construes all the relation of Israel to Jahveh as that
of a bride to her husband. In reality, Hosea believes and
teaches that Jahveh did not merely love Israel when it was
full grown, and did not choose the nation already in its
proud independent strength to bear His name. The divine
love gave the people everything — being, place, and name.
Israel to Hosea was not an independent power, to which
Jahveh elected to enter into an intimate relation, and
which could therefore assert an independent position and
certain rights over against the claims of its God. The
prophet conceived Israel as owing its very being to a love
which, when it had brought the nation into existence and

no RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
cherished it into strength, added this also, that it chose the
people to bear Jahveh's name before the world.13
Hosea has only one title for God : he calls Him by a
proper name, Jahveh, the name which only Israel knew and
which Israel bore as its proud ' distinction. He was Israel's
maker (viii. 14), Israel's God (ix. 1). The deeds of Jahveh on
which the prophet dwelt were the deeds He wrought for
Israel. He called the people out of Egypt (xi. 1); He
taught, them to go (xi. 3) ; He was their God from the land
of Egypt (xii. 10). He gave the nation a land (ix. 3, 15) and
their priests a law (iv. 6). Their institutions were of" His
appointment and bore His sign. Because the priest had
rejected knowledge, Jahveh rejected him from being His
priest (iv. 6). The sacrifices were Jahveh's offerings (viii.
13). The prophets were His prophets, sent to hew the
people by the words of Jahveh's mouth (vi. 5). Their
kingdom was meant to be an expression of His will, for the
fault which is found with the kingdom is that they have set
up kings, ' not by Me ' (viii. 4).
These are not merely the acts of Jahveh on which
Hosea dwells : they are the only acts on which He dwells.
One is conscious throughout of a different horizon from
that of Amos in his speech as to the nature and the
work of Jahveh.14 There is here nothing of the God who
brought up the Philistines from Caphtor, as well as the
Israelites from Egypt ; and there is no thought of a relation
of God to the world which can conceive the sins of the nations
as being, equally with those of Israel, transgressions against
Jahveh. It would be a mistake to conclude that Hosea
conceived the power of Jahveh as more limited than Amos
had done. To him also Jahveh's power, when it is put forth
on behalf of His people, is absolute : He could bring Israel
out of Egypt ; and He would restore the brokeft order of the

HOSEA 1 1 1
world in the end (ii. 20 f.). But the interest of the prophet
lay in a different direction. What dominated his thought
was what Jahveh has shown Himself in Israel, and is about
to show Himself in Israel.
The world-powers were but great shadowy things which
God used for His purposes on Israel. They were not even
judged ; they were merely used for an end which they could
not know. To Hosea the nations were lumped together as
the go'im (viii. 10, ix. 1), who have nothing distinctive save
their common difference from the chosen people. Already
the nations have come to mean the heathen.
Hosea had the conception which gave, and, it may be added,
which will always give, its just strength to every particularist
movement like Pharisaism. What interested him was no
theoretical monotheism, framed in the interests of a theory,
and therefore apt, like many products of the intellect, to
become barren. What engrossed all his thoughts was the
historic religion which had made his nation what it was,
which had given it a different genius from all the other
nations among which it lived, and the loss of which would
mean the loss of a great thing from the world. He did not
speak of a God who was Lord of heaven and earth, but of
One who had come into contact with this people, who,
revealed Himself through the deeds which had made the
people's history and through the institutions which moulded
its life. He believed that Israel in a unique way knew
Jahveh, and that this knowledge was in itself the proof
of the greatness of His love for it.
IV.
Hence Hosea personified the nation. He thought of it
in the light of the mission it was chosen to fulfil, and of the

ii? RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
end it was to serve in the world. .'It was Jahveh's bride to
bear His name before men.. . He thought of the nation as a
unity with a soul of its own which ought to pursue one
purpose, and which therefore could be endowed with a
personal will (iv. 16, vii. 11, x. 11). He thought of its in
stitutions, not as arrangements to satisfy temporary needs, but
as means to fulfil divine ends and to satisfy a personal will.
Israel's history in all ,its phases, since the day its God
created it, showed one unique reality:, it was the history of
God's love to it — a love which chose the nation in order that
it might serve one end. The motive for that love was not
to be found in anything which Israel had done ; for Israel was
not, until this love created it. And as the motive for this
love lay in the nature of God Himself, it was unchanging in
the end for which it acted. As Hosea saw the history of his
people thus in the light of a love which urged it continually
to a great end, history became to him symbolic. Each fact
in the people's history is to him translated into something
more than a bare fact, and " each fact of the past is at the
lame time ... a prophecy of the future." 15
The great facts of Israel's past history became symbols
of spiritual realities. Through them the eternal order mani
fested itself in the world, because in them was embodied
the relation which existed between Israel and its God.
Because of this, Egypt, with a return to which Hosea
threatened the people, was not primarily the historic
kingdom on the Nile ; nor does it help us greatly in the
interpretation of the prophecy to know the exact relations
which existed, at the time when the prophecy was written,
between the courts of Samaria and Memphis. For Israel
to return to Egypt was to' revert to the beginning, to go
back into the earlier relation to Jahvehj before He made
Israel His own. Hosea said the same thing in different

HOSEA 1 1 3
terms when he prophesied (ix. 17) that they should be
wanderers, landless and masterless, among the nations, or
when he denounced upon them the doom that the Assyrian,
whom they had chosen to be their lord instead of Jahveh,
should be permitted to work his will upon them (xi. 5).
Because Hosea saw the people like a moral personality,
whose task it was to fulfil the end which the divine love set
before it, he saw also only one sin. He could not write of
three transgressions and of four, because of which Jahveh's
wrath came upon His people. However widespread the
ramifications of their evil were, and however varied its forms,
they all sprang from a common root. The people have been
unfaithful to Him to whose love they owed everything.
God made them a nation : He gave them a land, a law
and prophets. He gave all these things for the definite end
that the people which owed Him everything might be His
bride and, living in His house, might bear and continue His
name in the world. But the first use Israel made of its
sense of independent power was to turn from Him. They
came to Baal Peor, and, at the very threshold of the land in
which they were to live as Jahveh's bride, they consecrated
themselves to Baal (ix. 10).16 They ascribed the new land,
with its blessings of corn and wine and oil, to the baalim
and not to Jahveh (ii. 7). From that moment they could not
use these gifts for the purposes for which Jahveh gave
them; and they became abominable, like that which they
loved (ix. 10). _
As Hosea stood in wonder before the unmerited love of
God to Israel, so he stood in amazement before Israel's sin.
This failure to acknowledge the divine love, which was the
source of all their other shortcomings, was something he
could not fathom. He spoke of it wonderingly — this
whoredom which is found in Ephraim (vi. 10). It was in-
8

1 14 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
gratitude : ' I have strengthened their arms, yet do they
imagine mischief against Me ' (vii. 15). It was folly : ' Ephraim
is like a silly dove without understanding' (vii. 11). It was
treachery : ' Ephraim compasseth Me about with falsehood
and the house of Israel with deceit ' (xii. 1). But, whatever
form it took, it was in itself so inexplicable, and withal so
deeply rooted, that Hosea could speak of it as though it
presented an insoluble mystery to Jahveh : ' 0 Ephraim,
what shall I do unto thee ? ' (vi. 4).
In this there is a difference of tone between Amos and
Hosea. Throughout his book Amos reasoned with Israel,
like one who spoke to a public conscience and occupied
common ground with those whom he accused. Hosea com
plains that those to whom he speaks lack knowledge of God
(iv. 1, 6) and know neither the nature nor the will of Him
whom they are seeking to serve. It was not that he took
the attitude of one who brought a wholly new message as
to Jahveh's will, for he reproached the people with having
despised knowledge and with having forgotten the torah of
their God (iv. 6). Because their ignorance was Voluntary,
it was blameworthy. Jahveh accused them on the very
ground of their ignorance (iv. 1), for what caused their ig
norance was their perverse conduct (iv. 11 ff). The more
detailed have been the instructions their God gave, the more
slight has been their attention to them (viii. 12).17
The prophet stood over against them, as one to whom
their position was incomprehensible : he was overwhelmed
by the mystery of their ingratitude.

But, further, because Hosea saw the life of the nation as
that of a great personality, he saw also how the fundamental

HOSEA 1 1 5
attitude of neglect of Jahveh perverted all the relations of
this life and the institutions in which the national life em
bodied itself. The whole life of Israel had fallen away from
Jahveh. The moral rottenness of the kingdom and the
priesthood, which made these great institutions a weakness
and a curse, sprang from the religious attitude of the people
itself, so that the means for sustaining the national life only
revealed through their moral decrepitude the failure of Israel
to fulfil its high and wondrous function.
It is from this point of view that we must interpret all
Hosea's judgments on the several institutions of the nation
and on the conduct of those who guided its policy and
declared its justice. Even those judgments in which at first
sight he seems to be speaking of merely political questions
have this religious source. Israel owes everything to its
God. He gave it its distinctive life and the land in which
that life was to be lived. He made it His bride, that it
might continue to bear His name among the nations, proudly
acknowledging that it owed everything to His love. For
Israel in the time of its perplexity to rely on political alliances
was to deny the power or the care of its God. The prophet
returns to this complaint again and again. Once (vii. 11) he
seems to speak as though it were the inconstancy of the
people in turning now to Assyria and again to Egypt, and
the folly of such an inconstancy, which roused his anger.
But other passages of his book prove that his anger would
have been equally aroused though the people had chosen
resolutely a single ally, and that his indignation was due to
their having sought an alliance at all. When Ephraim goes
to Assyria, it is as though he hired lovers — i.e. it is a sign of
his unfaithfulness to his one Lord (viii. 9). ' When Ephraim
saw his sickness, and Israel his wound, then went Ephraim
to Assyria, and sent to the great king ' (v. 13).18 Israel owes

1 1 6 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
its all to Jahveh, who has set the people in Palestine to
fulfil His own ends. For the nation to go in days of peril
to Assyria for help is to question the power of Jahveh to
maintain what He has given and to continue what He has
begun. Further, when Israel ascribed its possession of the land
to the baalim, it gave the products of that land to the
service of the baalim (ii. 10, 14).19 When Israel turns for
aid to another power, and holds its land at the will of Assyria
or Egypt, it must hold it to serve the bidding of its master.
Its unique character, as holding everything from Jahveh to
serve Jahveh's will, is lost. It becomes mixed among the
nations (vii. 8), only one among the many, possessing no dis
tinctive position and bearing no distinctive testimony. ' Israel
is swallowed up : now are they among the nations as a vessel
in which there is no pleasure ' (viii. 8). Hosea is not there
uttering a prophecy of banishment : he is describing an actual
condition. When they hold their land at another's will, and
are bound to do the bidding of the new master whom they
acknowledge, they have lost the distinctive character of
Jahveh's bride which they had when Jahveh set them in this
His land to serve no will save His. From this point of view,
it is a matter of indifference to Hosea whether Assyria pro
tects them or betrays its dependents : their attitude to the
foreigner has made them his servant, and to become his
servant is to cease 'to be Jahveh's bride.
It is, of course, necessary to remember that in this, as in
much else, we often fail to appreciate that alien and distant
world. For us, alliance with a foreign power, even when the
nation which seeks the alliance is in need of help, leaves the
inner ideals of the dependent people uninfluenced, except in
subtle ways which are difficult to trace. But in that early
time, dependence on the foreigner inevitably brought with it

HOSEA 117
some recognition of the religion of the superior State. Hosea
was the less likely to ignore this, because he lived and worked
in Northern Israel at a time when men presumably had not
forgotten the effect of Ahab's alliance with the kingdom of
Phoenicia. Yet it is equally necessary to recognise that this
supplies only an element in the prophet's thought, and that to
him reliance on a foreigner in itself carried with it a question
ing of the power of Jahveh. Men who turned for help to any
other than the God who had called their nation into life,
proved thereby their distrust of the power of their God to
continue His own work. That it must also bring with it the
inevitable tendency to assimilate all their life to the type of
life which ruled in the kingdoms to which they looked for
help was a real danger, but was merely an aggravation of the
original offence.20
Again, the people's failure to recognise that it held every
thing as a gift from Jahveh and as a means of serving His
will, showed itself also in Israel's trust in its own power.
This was the ground of Hosea's strong polemic against the
kingdom. There is no justification for the opinion that Hosea in
his attack on the kingdom meant the Northern kmgdom as
contrasted with the Davidic dynasty,21 and so was the first to
voice the later conception which represented the division of
the kingdoms as schism. The foundation of the prophet's
view thus represented has been sought in the fact that he
regarded united Israel as the bride of Jahveh, and so was
bound to regard the division between North and South as a
great sin. Fortunately, there is no trace of such an idea in
Hosea's book, and we are spared the necessity of ascribing to
the prophet the grotesque opinion that a bride could be
divided into two, or that, if the poor creature could so divide
herself, her act implied disloyalty to her husband.

1 1 8 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Nor is there any justification for the opinion that Hosea
condemned the kingdom on principle, as something which
implied the rejection of the direct rule of Jahveh over Israel,
and that by taking this position he helped to introduce the
so-called theocracy. The chief support for this view has been
found in the statement of the prophet that the Israelites
sinned since the days of Gibeah (ix. 9, x. 9), in which passages
the days of Gibeah are taken to mean the time when Saul
was elected as king. But while it is true that Saul resided
at Gibeah, he is not said to have been elected as king there
in either account of the election which has been preserved :
in one account he was chosen at Mizpah (1 Sam. x. 17—24),
in the other at Gilgal (1 Sam. xi. 15). If, therefore, Hosea
meant by his use of the ' days of Gibeah ' to refer to the
-election of the first king, he must be charged with having
chosen a singularly ambiguous phrase. And it is of even
larger significance to notice that the prophet regarded the
apostasy of the people as having come into existence from the
time of their settlement in Canaan (ix. 10), not from the time
of their new organisation in the land. Evidently . the new
institution of the kingdom was regarded by him as having
merely quickened into stronger life seeds that were sown long
before its date.22
To Hosea, the kingdom was the institution in which, on
one side, the national life culminated. Because it embodied
the national ideal, it ought to have expressed more clearly
than any other institution the people's dependence on Jahveh,
and, as a matter of fact, it does express most clearly their
hopes and aims. Now it was the ruling class, with the king
at their head, who were leading Ephraim to rely on the
foreigner, and so to prove their distrust of Jahveh's power.
Among them lawlessness and insolent pride and injustice
came to their amplest expression. The princes of Israel23

HOSEA 1 1 9
have become no better than petty filchers of their neighbours'
fields (v. 10): they have made their position into a mere
means of self-aggrandisement. As Hosea looked at the con
dition of the centre of government, his spirit was filled with
weariness and loathing to watch the whirligig of palace
revolutions which were destitute of any principle and only
represented sordid ambitions or petty passions.24 The help
lessness of the kings who won to power by such means
was patent to all thoughtful men : ' the king, what can
he do for us?' (x. 3; cf. also xiii. 10). Their dis
tracted counsels, as they turned for help in their efforts at
supporting themselves against their rivals, now to Egypt,
again to Assyria (vii. 11), were evident.
In the impotence which had befallen them Hosea saw
the divine judgment. Jahveh had overturned their kings, as
He foretold the ruin of the house of Jehu (i. 3-5), in order that
men might learn to turn to Him for help. But their first
act was to proceed to elect a new king (vii. 7), the impotent
puppet of their own passions. Their kingdom, so far as it was
the outcome of their self-confidence and fed their self-reliance,
was an evil thing. In this sense Hosea said that they have
set up kings, but not by Jahveh (viii. 4). But that it was
only in so far as it was the outcome and the evidence of the
national temper that the office roused the prophet's alternate
scorn and" anger is seen in the way in which he always united
the condemnation of the king with that of the people and
passed so frequently from the one to the other (cf. especially
viii. 4). This institution, in which one side of the national
life found its expression, partook of the corruption which was
in their hearts and showed most patently their real aims. It
was a kingdom as Israel had made it ; and it embodied, in its
neglect of God's will for His nation, Israel's radical rebellion
from its Lord.

1 20 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Of the same character as Hosea's attack on the kingdom'
is his indictment of the priesthood. Here also the , prophet
attacks, not the priesthood in itself, but the priesthood as
Israel has made it, and therefore as showing the lowered.
morale and debased ideals of a people which has forgotten
Jahveh. Hence, the priests are united with the court in an
indictment of the national life (v. Iff.;25 cf. ch. viii.). These
two institutions, which are such potent factors in the thought
of the people, are also born out of its inward life and betray
the fundamental aims on which it has set its heart. They
are at once the outcome of its perverted ideals and the most
powerful means through which these ideals are further
perverted. To understand the prophet's anger and disgust at the
conduct of the priests, it is necessary to recognise that Hosea
regarded the priesthood not merely, not even primarily,
as the official representatives of the cult, but as having to
do with the administration of justice,26 and therefore as
fulfilling the task of holding up before the people a divine
law which concerned itself with right conduct. How strongly
this view of the functions of the priests determines the
prophet's sense of . their importance in the national lif e and
his condemnation of the way in which they have misled
the men among whom they held these functions is to be
seen in the fact that Hosea regarded them, equally with
the court, as possessing mishpat — i.e. as having the right and
the duty of declaring judgment (v. I).27 Accordingly, he
was able to speak of their failure in fulfilling their functions
as having resulted in deep moral and social confusion.
Again, in ch. iv., Hosea showed what he regarded as
having been the function of the priesthood in Israel. The
people were destroyed through lack of knowledge ; and the
fault lay at the door of the priests, because, theyy having

HOSEA 121
put away such knowledge from themselves, caused it to die
out in the nation (ver. 6). They must expiate their fault, for
Jahveh will cause them to cease from being priests unto Him.
It was their business to declare the divine torah or law ;
and how greatly Hosea construed that torah, both in itself
and in its influence on the people, is best seen through his
making it parallel to the knowledge of Jahveh. That a
prophet could not have spoken in such terms of the priestly
torah, if he had believed it to be primarily concerned with
mere regulations of the sacrificial cult is evident, just as it is
clear that, if he had thought of the multitude of the toroth
(viii. 12) as prescribing the meticulous details of the offerings,
he would not have thought of Jahveh as their source. The
torah of the priests was one great means by which the divine
will expressed itself for the life of Israel.
Instead of declaring the divine law, the priests, says Hosea,
' eat the sin of My people, and set their heart on their iniquity '
(iv. 8). Now the sin of the people was its calf -worship (cf.
not only Hosea passim but Deut. ix. 21), in which the un-
spiritual worship which failed to understand the real nature
of Jahveh came most clearly to expression. And what the
prophet meant was that their incomes, made secure by pander
ing to a lower type of religion, blinded them to their duty of
upholding that torah of Jahveh which really expressed His
nature, and which it was their distinctive function as His
priests to declare.28 They have turned from this task to
the easier and more gainful business of conducting the
debased cult, because thereby they win their support from
a people which desires a form of worship that involves little
moral claim.
Not only have they, as a class, acted thus, and by so
doing encouraged the people to set the claim of justice in
Jahveh's name lower than an easily performed ritual, but

122 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
iri their personal conduct they show how lightly they are
able to sit to all moral claims. They have grown so shame
less that they murder on the way to Shechem and commit
lewdness (vi. 9) ; they are a snare at Mizpah and a net spread
on Tabor (v. 1). Evidently Hosea is referring to some
scandalous conduct on the part of the priesthood which was
well known to the men of his own time, and into which he
feels it unnecessary to enter further. The men do not
acknowledge in their own lives the law which it was their
business to teach to Israel. Their function was to represent
the law of God which was Israel's distinctive heritage and
through which Israel in the land that its God gave proved
the sincerity of its obedience to Him. They have been
content to let Israel's distinctive glory pass.
Hosea, however, did not attack the priesthood in itself.
To him it was the means through which, as one of the great
institutions which embodied the national life, the distinctive
character of that life could have come to expression. By it,
the knowledge of God as requiring justice and truth, loyalty
and faithfulness, would have revealed itself. Through it,
Israel would have voiced its sense that Jahveh was the
supreme judge in its perplexed social and moral questions.
But the priesthood, as Israel had made it, — like the kingdom,
— only showed how radically the nation had parted with all
real obedience to God. ¦
To Hosea, who personified the nation and who saw it
serving a common end, as it had its origin in a greater will,
every institution within the nation, in which the national
life expressed itself, ought, to bear a distinctively Israelite
stamp, and, since everything which was distinctive of Israel's
life came from its God, ought to be marked by that which
expressed Jahveh's will. Yet these institutions could not
exhaust the prophet's conception of the relations which existed

HOSEA 123
between man and man in Israel and between Israel and Jahveh.
He regarded Israel and Jahveh as forming one family, the
bond of which could not be expressed in any covenant,
drawn out in legal terms, because its bond was mutual
hesed. Hesed on the side of Jahveh is that sure and
unmerited goodness to which Israel owes everything: it is
the divine generosity, what we call the grace of God.
Hesed on the side of Israel as a community is, first and
fundamentally, the grateful recognition of its debt, with the
resultant loyalty which springs from the acknowledgment
that men owe everything to a God who had His own purpose
in all He has done for them. It is what Dr. G. A. Smith
has called leal love — a love which issues in loyalty. But,
because of this, which marked off the nation as having its
peculiar mission and place, all the members of the com
munity formed a family, and hesed governed their relations
to one another as well as their relation to their God.'
•Hosea's idea of kindness between man and man in Israel did
not so much spring from the idea that this human relation
was something which their God had commanded, and through
the practice of which the people could prove their loyalty
to their divine lawgiver : it was something more intimate.
Israel was not merely the dominion of Jahveh, where He
was King and where His rule was absolute : it was God's
family, and, on that account, the bond which united
Israelites to one another was like the bond which united
them to their God. Their relations to one another were
something more natural and spontaneous than could be ex
pressed by obedience to a law: they were full of the same
kindness which governs men who have been brought up in
the same household, and who therefore have common
memories and a mutual aim. Hosea could speak (iv. 1)
,6f there being 110 hesed in the same breath in which he

124 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
spoke of there being no knowledge of God in the land. And
it is useless to ask whether by hesed in the passage he
meant loyal love to Jahveh or kindness to fellow-Israelites;
The two for the prophet belonged together and implied one
another. There could be no real love to God which did
not "bring with it love to all who were one's brethren in
Jahveh's house. In this, as in so much else, Hosea must
be judged as primarily a prophet. It has often been noted
that (in iv. 2) he seems to speak like one who was already
acquainted with the second table of the decalogue, for the
sins which are there enumerated have a striking resemblance
to the sins which are forbidden in the code. Yet, however
this may be, it would be a mistake to suppose that he was
basing, his appeal on the decalogue. In the same way his
work, like that of the other prophets, led to the sense of
the need for a clearer statement of what constitutes the
moral obligations of men to one another, and was sure to
issue in the effort to frame a worthier law which could em
body his requirements. But his conception of the relation
went deeper than any legislation can ever reach, and dealt with
matters which could never and can never be embodied in any
code. He was speaking of that fundamental relation of men
to God, and of those profound and simple realities which
are needed as the common property of a people, if any code
is to have a sanction for them.29

VI.
Hosea's profound sense of how the life of Israel was a
unity, every part of which and every institution in which
must express the will of God who called it into being,
governed also his attitude to the cult. He could not treat it
lightly as an unimportant thing in the way in which Amos

HOSEA 125
did. He saw what in its degradation it had done and was
doing to pervert the mind of the people and to tear at the
very vitals of the State. But he saw also what, if it had
been purified, it might have done and might still do to
impress the minds of the worshippers with the nature and
will of the God whom they worshipped.
The searching nature of the examination to which he
submitted the worship, and the persistence with which he
returned to the question, prove how deeply he was impressed
by the power which the cult had over the minds of men.
He returned to it again and again, to show how it debased
men's minds, and how it was a cause of the divine anger :
and in so returning he proved his respect for it and his
sense of its influence.
His condemnation of the cult of his time runs along two
lines, which are not easy to separate, for the simple reason
that the tendencies which he blames could not be kept apart,
but fed one another. He reproached Israel with indulging
in a syncretistic form of worship. When he said that Israel
multiplied her altars according to the multitude of her fruit
(x. 1), he probably referred to the way in which the nation's
increased prosperity had led to greater pomp in its worship ;
but when he added that now their heart was divided (ver. 2),
he could not mean that all these altars were in honour of
Jahveh, but must mean that some were reared to alien
worships. He declared (ix. 1) that Israel had gone a whoring
from its God ; and this, according to the prophet's idea of
Israel as the bride of Jahveh, meant that the people were
worshipping other gods. And these sayings support the authen
ticity of the verses in ch. ii. which describe Israel as having
turned on their arrival in Canaan to the worship of the
baalim, and iii. 1 which condemns them for their idolatry.
Hosea found in the cult as Israel practised it a syncretistic

1 26 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
worship in which Jahveh was but one, though still perhaps
the chief, among the gods whom the people acknowledged.
To him, such a worship was unfaithfulness on the part of
Jahveh's bride.
But Hosea also found a worship offered to Jahveh which
was not to be distinguished in character from that which was
offered to other gods. The sense of Jahveh's unique and
lonely character — creator and supporter of the nation — had
grown dim to His worshippers, and they found it natural to
render Him a worship such as was offered to the other gods.
The line between these two criticisms of the cult is difficult
to draw in theory, because it must haVe been difficult to draw
in fact. Whenever the sense of Jahveh's solitary greatness
was lost, the people had less difficulty in associating other
gods with Him in their reverence and in assimilating the
worship due to Him to the worship offered to another god.
And then the similarity of the rites helped in turn to blur
the distinction and to bring Jahveh down to the level of
other deities. Where one feels most clearly the crossing of
the two lines of thought is in connection with Hosea's con
demnation of the calf-worship in Samaria. It is possible
that the people found in the calf a symbol of Jahveh, and
believed that, in doing it reverence, they were offering their
adoration to Jahveh Himself. But Hosea was not content to
say that the calf was an unworthy symbol of the God whom
Israel worshipped. He said it was from Israel, and a work
man made it (viii. 5 f.), and so proved that it held to him no
point of contact with a real worship. The worship which
men could offer to such a thing, or even through such a thing,
had no association whatever with the worship which was due
from Israel to its own God. Israel's attitude to this, however
it was construed, had nothing in common with the attitude
into which Jahveh brought His people. " By this judgment

HOSEA 127
he proves the depth of his religious insight, for the whole
history of religion shows that no truth is harder to realise
than that a worship, morally false, is in no sense the worship
of the true God" (cf. Matt. vi. 24, vii. 22).30
Of all this worship Jahveh was about to make a clean
sweep. It was rooted in the land, and took hold of men's
minds from the time when they came into possession of the
land. Accordingly, one of the reasons why Jahveh must cast
them out of the land was to get rid of it all. The only
means to separate them from the worship which has become
a part of their national life was that, in the national over
throw, the high places should be cast down, and the thorn
and the thistle come up on their altars (x. 8). Jahveh must
cast His people out of His house (ix. 3), and cause all their
offerings to Him to come to an end (ix. 4).
But this implies no rejection of the cultus in itself.
Nothing is more significant of Hosea's attitude than that he
pronounced the absence of all worship a penalty, even the
supreme penalty (ix. 4). Their bread shall be for their ap
petite, it shall not come into the house of the Lord : that was
to be the result of their being cast out of Jahveh's house, and
was more grievous than any mere expulsion thence. ' What
will ye do in the day of the solemn assembly ? ' (ix. 5). All
acts of worship, private and national, are to cease, because
Jahveh has broken off relation to His people ; and the life of
the nation was thereby to become so much meaner a thing.
They shall go with their flocks and their herds (evidently
the means of sacrifice) to seek the Lord ; and they shall not
find Him : He has withdrawn Himself from them (v. 6).
Hosea, as he thought of all this, thought of their life as a
people, not merely as having lost something, but as having
lost a great thing — the means of expressing how absolute
was its dependence on God's mercy, and how deep was its

1 2 8 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
gratitude for His care. God was to Hosea the giver of the
nation's life ; and its life only remained at its highest when
it retained the means of directly owning and renewing its
dependence on Him.
One touches here a matter in which Hosea's sense of the
divine love and of the gratitude which responds to such love
gave him a new recognition of the worth of the cult. The
Pharisees were puzzled — and since their time all the men
whose religion is decently regulated and embodied in duties
are. puzzled — by the woman who poured the ointment on her
Lord's feet. They did not feel for themselves the need to do
anything which was so spontaneous and so individual ; they
did not know the ache in the loving heart until it has uttered
its gratitude. A cult which gave room for this because it
knew the wonder of the love of God, which marked the daily
thanksgiving for a recurring mercy, and yet which left
opportunity, through the vow and freewill offering, for the
additional gift a man brought in his hour of relief or joy,
has been apt to remain a difficult element in religion to
all such men. Because to Hosea God was Israel's faithful
Creator, because Israel's relation to God was that of grateful
dependence, the prophet knew the value of the offering which
man or nation brought in order that they might say openly
and simply to their God how their hearts were quick with an
emotion they could not fully express but could not stifle.
He knew how each act of worship in which men owned them
selves servants of their God's will and dependents on His
bounty determined the temper of the spirit toward God and
man. And it was finally a new temper which Hosea desired
to see in Israel — a temper which would make certain things
impossible, but which would make certain other things real.
So it was characteristic of Hosea that he did not say
that Jahveh refused the offerings of the people, but declared

HOSEA 1 29
instead how Jahveh had more pleasure in the knowledge of
His will than in burnt-offerings (vi. 6). All who press the
early part of the verse, and read out of Hosea's great saying,
' I will have mercy and not sacrifice,' an absolute rejection of
sacrifice,31 ignore the fondness of the Hebrew writers for such
antithetic statements, and, it may be added, apply a criterion
to the language of the Old Testament which they never think
of applying to the words of the New. Jesus spoke on one
occasion to His disciples of their customs of hospitality, and
bade them, when they invited anyone to their homes, take
special care not to invite the rich or their personal friends.
He added that, if they did invite such men, a dreadful thing
might happen — those who were invited might invite their
entertainers in turn. Yet the evangelists who reported these
sayings had no difficulty about relating how their Lord sat at
rich men's feasts and accepted the invitation of a man like
Zacehseus ; nor do most readers feel much difficulty about
recognising the purpose of such language.
When Hosea prophesied that the people was to be driven
out of the land, he declared that thereby men were to learn how
powerless were the baalim, to whom they had ascribed the corn,
wine and oil, to maintain Israel in the possession of these
gifts (ii. 5 ff.). The offerings to the baalim were to cease.
Yet men were to be unable to offer these things to Jahveh,
who had broken off His relation to them (ix. 4). Their
common life was to be unblessed by the ascription of all
that sustained it to God's mercy. Hosea was content to
say that in a better time men's gifts should be spiritual : men
shall take with them words, when they return unto the Lord,
and shall offer Him the fruit of their lips (xiv. 3).32 What
their Lord desired was the allegiance of their heart. The
offerings they brought were an insult, because their hearts
were given away from Him. When they learned how good
9

1 30 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
and how life-giving" a thing it was to acknowledge His hand
in all and to depend on Him for all, they would learn also
how dear to their God was a people which came with empty
hands and a grateful heart.
It is easy to see how Hosea's attitude, though he himself
was far away from such thoughts, supported the effort which
was made to purify the cult. His conception of God was
that of One who had entered into specific relation to Israel :
his conception of Israel's position in the world was that of a
nation which was separate from all the rest^ and separated
through its religion. The worship Israel offered must embody
not merely something which was distinctive from that of the
other nations, even as Jahveh to whom it. was offered was
unique ; it must also embody the great historic facts of the
divine love to Israel which made the distinction. His view of
the people was that of a nation which was bound together by
great memories, disciplined by common victories and defeats,
and advancing to a common end. His view of its religion
was that of a faith which expressed these common factors.
His insistence on the right knowledge of God tended
in the same direction. For he had arraigned the worship
offered in his own time on the ground that it expressed
no right knowledge of the God to whom it was offered, and
that it therefore made God like any of the heathen deities
which the other nations served. Inevitably; when men laid
his teaching to heart, they must seek to mould the great
ritual acts by which the nation expressed its devotion to its
God into forms which would embody true conceptions of
Jahveh's nature and will.
His attack on the old ritual held a real sense of its
influence and value, and therefore was fitted to lead men
to seek, not its rejection, but its purification. And he in
sisted on the great truths in every historic religion which

HOSEA 1 3 r
have always underlain its ritual acts, and which have
made them so gracious and so helpful an influence in the
individual and the national life. In this respect he was one
of those who did most to prepare the way for Deuteronomy.
While, however, it is true that Hosea's teaching supplied
a great deal to the practical movement for reform, it would
be a mistake to imagine that the Deuteronomic reform
exhausted his expectation of his people's future, or grasped
the deepest elements in his thought. His thought took a
wider and profounder range, and had a far-reaching influence
on the finest minds in Israel.
He grew up in Northern Israel, familiar with its history
and its traditions. His mind is steeped in the stories of its
great past. He lingers over names, as all men do to whom
names bring up pictures : Gilgal, Shechem, Gibeah mean to
him what Flodden or Bothwell Bridge means to a Scotsman.
He loves the traditions which tell of the nation's past, and
does not disdain to repeat the songs that were in the mouths
of his fellow-countrymen when they came on pilgrimage to
their national shrines and felt their unity in a common history
and a common faith (see vi. 1-3, xii. 4 ff.). Not only is his
mind stored with the memories of Israel's past, it is also at
home in the spirit and temper of the record which had been
written by E, the Northern historian, to preserve and interpret
that past. His conceptions correspond with the great
spiritual convictions which give its peculiar power to E's
record. To him Jahveh is a free personality, who can
reveal Himself where and how He will, and who, out of His
grace, has revealed Himself to make . Israel His own. His
view of Jahveh as the giver of everything which has"
made Israel a nation, his view of Israel as the grateful
recipient of its God's goodness, as needing no other
protector and owning ~no other allegiance, are essen-

132 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
tially the convictions which lend a gracious and simple
dignity to the early stories. He thinks of sacrifice as the
means through which the people acknowledges the divine
mercy, and gives constant expression to its humble and glad
recognition of Jahveh's sufficient care. Because it embodies
so great a thing, he is as much interested in it as E had
been. For him the priesthood has in charge the task of
declaring the divine will as to how men shall live together
in the land of their God's gift. The nation is to him a
nation because it belongs to Jahveh who made it. Since
every part of its national life can express its allegiance and
reveal its loyalty, no institution in Israel can be insignificant.
Such was the nation as Jahveh meant it to be, and as
in the best minds of its own past it had conceived its purpose.
Hosea has grown up in the atmosphere of these great ideals.
And to him, in his manhood, came an experience which
taught him with new vividness and depth what is involved
in such a relation as is implied to exist between Israel and
its God. He loved a woman, and, loving her, gave his name
and his honour into her keeping. When he found that she
had been false to him, he did not need to dissolve the
relation between them. It was dissolved, for she had given
her heart away from him.
In the light of what he has learned through his own
pain, Hosea sees his nation as it is. , He sees how it has
fallen away from everything which made its past great or
which could guarantee its future. He probes each form of
the national life, and finds that all reveal the same radical
failure. The kingdom, which was to have been ruled by
the anointed of Jahveh, is equally impotent and base,
because it serves no end save its own. The priesthood,
through which men were to learn Jahveh's will in their
perplexities, is a means by which the priests, who in their

HOSEA 133
own lives flout any divine will, mislead a willingly misguided
people. The life men live together in Palestine, in which
they ought to have manifested their sense of the grace which
sustains them all, has no mercy and no loyalty. The people,
in everything which makes it a people, has departed from
its God. Jahveh was about to intervene, and, when He intervened,
He did not need to bring to an end the old relation between
Him and His people. It was at an end through the people's
own act. Jahveh, when He intervenes, will simply lay bare
what is true. He must withdraw all His gifts, the proof of
His love, from the nation which has given its allegiance to
another than Him. Israel shall be swept out of the land,
without king or priest, sacrifice or law. It cannot dwell in
its Lord's house while its heart is not His.
Both Amos and Hosea, in their view of the divine
intervention, have the idea of necessity : Amos, the
necessity of God's purpose in His moral character ; Hosea, the
necessity of God's love. It may be added that, because both
prophets construe necessity as a moral necessity, they have
no place in religion for a mere cosmic process. The inter
vention of Jahveh is the act of Him who, in His free
personality, governs the world for His own ends, Jahveh,
said Amos, must vindicate Himself, lest His purpose in the
world come to nothing. Jahveh, said Hosea, must vindicate
Himself, lest love itself be profaned.
Hosea, as thoroughly as Amos, is beyond a national
religion, but he has reached his position by a very different
road. Amos reached it through his conviction of God's
presence with man as man. To him God and humanity were
in too real a relation for a religion which expressed their
relation to be reserved for one nation. The basis of man's
moral life was his relation to God : religion must be as

134 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
universal as the relation. Hosea reached his conviction
through his insight into the depth of the relation which is
implied in all true religion. All Jahveh's gifts to Israel were
the outcome of His love, and consequently implied more than
a mere outward gift, Jahveh cared for Israel so greatly that
He called it His bride, and set His honour and His name
upon it. All the acts of Israel's religion were the evidence
of a gratitude which exulted in the divine care and loyally
responded to the divine love. As such, they implied a joyous
self -surrender. Without self-surrender the acts in themselves
were empty of all significance. Because he believed that all
the forms of the national life revealed self-reliance rather
than self-surrender, Hosea had condemned kingdom, priest
hood and cult in Israel. They no longer expressed the loving
confidence on the people's part that Jahveh, His care and His
will, were sufficient. In reality, however, no nation, made
up of diverse elements and gathering into itself varied tradi
tions, can ever exercise such self-surrender as to the prophet
constitutes the essence of true religion. Only the individual,
and the society constituted on the basis of acceptance of such
a relation, the Church, can fulfil so great a function.
It is frequently said that Hosea discovered the individual.
If the statement is interpreted to mean that there was before
his time no individual piety in Israel, and that the nation
was conceived as the unit in religion, what has already been
stated of the JE stories (see p. 24, supra) is conclusively
against it. Hosea drew his own personal religion from the
relation which these stories express as existing between the
Israelite and his God. To him also Jahveh is Israel's sufficient
helper: to him Jahveh claims every Israelite's undivided
allegiance. But the' prophet, through his personal experience,
has so learned the depth of this relation, has realised it as so
intimate and powerful a factor in all parts of human life, has

HOSEA 135
recognised it to be possessed of so tender and searching a
power, that no forms of the national life can adequately ex
press it. Hence it is no accident that he has no promise of
the Messianic King ; and the absence of such an expectation
has a far deeper cause than any view which he held of the
kingdom. His view of religion was of a nature which made
it impossible that it could be embodied in terms of the national
life at all.
The true successors of the deeper thought of Hosea were
not the Deuteronomists. They were, as we shall see, strongly
influenced by the prophet ; but their failure to break with
the remnants of heathen thought was due to their failure to
grasp all that was implied in his convictions. The true
successors of the Hoseanic thought were Isaiah in his doctrine'*-"
of the remnant and Jeremiah in his expectation of a new '
covenant. Both of these prophets recognised that religion was
so great and so deep that it could only be cramped and mis
understood when men sought to pour it into forms borrowed
from the national life, which carried with them not only the
inevitable suggestions from man's relations in outward society,
but the corrupting power on religion of these associations.
Man must give himself to God, satisfied to. serve His will
alone, finding his freedom and his joy in his complete surrender.
No less a reality than the glad acceptance of such a divine
service must form the bond of their new society.
Because Hosea saw that the relation between Israel and
Jahveh was already dissolved through the people's act, He
declared that, when Jahveh intervened, the result must be to
cast Israel out of the land and^ to take away the privileges
jwhich^ came from its God's love. Yet this could not be the
end. In the tragedy of his own home, he had found that
this could riot be the end for him : and what God gave him
grace to do, God would not fail to do Himself. He had been

1 36 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
unable to leave the woman who had once borne his name,
and he had been unable to do that because the burden of the
Lord was upon him. His God gave him grace enough to
stoop and seek again the wife who had betrayed him, to
transmute the misery and shame of his private life into a
sacrament of love. It was his burden now to believe and
declare that Jahveh's love was no less wonderful and rich.
Jahveh, who had stooped to make the life of Israel His own,
would stoop again to renew the relation which the people had
broken. Beyond the divine intervention, with the overthrow
of all the national life which resulted from it, he saw God
bring forth a new thing.

VII.
What was Hosea's view as to the future of his people ?
He believed, like Amos, that Jahveh was about to intervene
in the order of the world. He believed that the issue of the
day of the Lord was a moral one ; and as he looked round on
the state of the nation to which he belonged, he sadly acknow
ledged that there was nothing which could endure this sudden
and awful glory. Israel must fall, because there was no truth
nor mercy nor knowledge of God in the land.
The fate which was to befall the people was irreversible
and imminent. Hosea has been sent to announce, not to
avert it. No repentance on the part of the people could
turn it back — at least Hosea did not ask for repentance on
the ground - that by this means the fate which was im
mediately pending could be turned back. The penalty was
irreversible ; such repentance as men could offer and were
wont to offer was null.33 They had not the knowledge of
God's purpose with them which could make their repentance
fruitful; and Jahveh was about to intervene in order to

HOSEA 137
make clear to a careless generation what His eternal purpose
was. Only after that could their repentance be of any avail.
The overthrow was so imminent that Hosea, in his agony
over his nation's fate, could only pray that it might be
quickly past : ' Hither with thy plagues, 0 death, and thy
destruction, 0 Sheol' (xiii. 14).34 Beyond this prayer there
was only one other petition the prophet could urge. Since
the desolation was so near and so dire, there was one last
grace which Jahveh could grant them and all who loved
them — that their children on whom it was to fall might be
few. ' Give them, 0 Jahveh : what wilt Thou give them ?
give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts ' (ix. 14). He
besought God for this last mercy.
Yet even here, where Hosea had declared that ' though
they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them,
that there be not a man left' (ix. 12), he added at the
conclusion how the outcome of their God having cast them
away should be that ' they shall be wanderers among the
nations' (ix. 17). That is to say, the destruction cannot be
complete. The doom pronounced is the same as that which
is uttered over them in xii. 1 0 : Jahveh shall reduce them to
the condition of the nomads, a folk without king or land or
cult (cf. iii. 4). And when one notes how ch. ix. begins
with the declaration that they are to be cast out of the
Lord's land, one must recognise that Hosea is declaring that
Jahveh was about to revert to the beginning, when He made
them a people. The trial He made of them has failed: in
the land which was His gift, where He gave them a law,
prophets, priests, a kingdom, they have failed to serve Him.
He will bring His hand over them, and restore them after
fearful suffering to their first condition.
It has frequently been urged that, if Hosea foresaw and
predicted a happier future for the people, he turned the edge

*38 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
of all his threats. The contention is only just, if the prophet
did not mean to declare a real judgment. But it is a, real
judgment which he pronounced, arid one which was irrever
sible : so awful were its penalties that Hosea prayed there
might be few children to suffer from it. Any- better future
was to come only after the judgment had run , its course ;
before the better , future could dawn, Jahveh must intervene
in a great act of self-manifestation which meant ruin for His
people. Neither Amos nor Hosea preaches repentance in the
sense of asking for a change on the part of the people which
may avail to- avert the calamity. Both of them come to
predict the calamity, but both of them predict it as some
thing which 'comes from Jahveh directly, and which implies
a manifestation of what He is. Hosea believes that the
earlier manifestation of Jahveh has revealed His unmerited
love to Israel. What, therefore, is left to the people in the
great day when Jahveh rises up to vindicate Himself in the
world? Nothing, except what created them, as a nation
at the beginning — the wondrous mercy of God. But that
was left.
Hosea has no doctrine of the remnant in Israel which
is to survive the divine wrath. He does not, like Amos,
represent the few who remain as the negligible survivors ; nor
does he, like Isaiah, speak of the survivors as those who,
having faith, have all the promise of the future, • That is
because he approaches the question from a wholly different
standpoint. To him religion consists, not in anything which
man has done or can do, but in something which God has
done, in which man finds his certainty as to what God will
always do. Hence he is continually dwelling on how God's
act in interfering for the people's sake implies ' more than a
mere isolated act, since it implies something of an eternal
character on God's side. God has, as it were, committed

HOSEA 139
Himself in His deed : He cannot leave it and go pn to do
something else.36
Hosea believed that once already Jahveh had intervened
in the world-order, and that His intervention had resulted in
the creation of the nation of Israel. Once the eternal order had
made itself apparent in the sphere of this world and under
the conditions of time, in the great deed by which Jahveh
called Israel into being. Therefore, in the simple and
wondrous processes of Israel's history, in the slow, quiet
means by which ; a nation grew, in the institutions which
helped its growth, in the pieties and reverence which gathered
round its sacrifices and its homes, there was something of
eternal significance. Love, unmerited and free, prompted
Jahveh to build up this little people and to value its simple
response to His loving-kindness. Now the end of God's
work is one, though its methods may change.
Because Israel's chastisement was to come, not from Assyria,
but from the hands of God, its meaning was not exhausted
in the ruin which it brought. God was dealing with His
people, and because it was God who was dealing with a
people whom He created and to whom He gave His name,
it could learn from this act on His part. In ch. xi, Hosea
develops how Jahveh tried kindness with Israel, and how He
has resolved to change' His method : His compassion is turned
to anger (ver. 8). But He has not changed His nature : He
has only changed His method.36
Hence the punishment which fell and was still to fall
upon them had a pedagogic purpose. When they learned
how Assyria could not heal, their wound (v. 13),' they should
discover the inevitable result of seeking help from any other
than Jahveh. When the impotence of the king they made
not by Jahveh (xiii. 10, vii. 1—7) was patent to everybody
(x. 3), they should discover the fruitlessness of their own

14o RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
counsels. When the calf of Samaria which was the work of
their own hands was carried away as a present to the great
king, they should be bitterly ashamed of their devices (x. 6).
When they .were cast off out of their land, they should learn
how it was Jahveh, not the baalim, to whom they owed the
land originally (ii. 5). The punishment was all the outcome
of a love which in itself was unalterable.37
Once Hosea believed that, at the divine prompting, he
could .not put away from him all anxiety as to his wife,
though she had been unfaithful to him : ¦ Jahveh said unto
me, Go, love again a woman who loveth another ' (iii. 1). The
emphasis lies on ' love again.' He proceeds to describe how
he could not take her back into their old mutual relations,
but must live with her as though they were no longer husband
and wife. The measures which his love prompted him to take
are comparatively unimportant ; what is important is that he
must take some attitude toward her which expresses his un
changing affection. The measures too must vary according to
the woman's attitude. But the significant thing was that, so far
as he was concerned, his relation to her could not be broken
off even by her unfaithfulness. This woman, who had borne
his name, could never be to him like any other woman. She
had borne his name before the world; she had borne him
a child. Her misery appealed to him, as the misery of
another woman could not. Her shame was in some measure
his shame. And so God's anger could not exhaust the divine
purpose with Israel, for the relation between them was based on
God's love. There could be a new beginning, for what made
the first beginning was still there. And Hosea saw it to be
possible that his countrymen — landless, kingless wanderers
among the nations ; having nothing but words to offer to their
God — might bring their words, and might offer Him the only
thing which was left them, the fruit of their lips. And He,

HOSEA 141
who desired mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of Him
more than burnt-offering, would give them a future, even
as He had given them their past. Jahveh, who had all
power, was about to assert His rule in the world by an
intervention in all human things. But Hosea had learned
how power over a wife was governed by moral considerations ;
and he believed that power over a world also must be
governed alike in its ultimate ends and in the means it
employs to gain its ends by spiritual considerations, and
the most enduring of these was love.
If, therefore, the people can learn from its discipline, and
cast away its reliance on the foreign powers, on its own
strength, and on its false worship (xiv. 4), Jahveh will be to
it all that He has been in the past (xiv. 5 ff.).38 The wilder
ness, into which God has led Israel, and in which it has
renewed its dependence for everything on Him, shall become
what it was before, the door into a great future (ii. 16-18).
When men have learned to look to God for all they need,
they shall find the meaning of His discipline and the suffi
ciency of His blessing (xiv. 9).39 It is in Jahveh that
Israel's life is found : when Israel knows this, He who has
afflicted it will make the people blessed.
But Hosea's expectation for the future contains more than •
the mere statement that Israel is to renew its life in Palestine
with a quickened sense of dependence for all things upon its
God. As he predicted an intervention of Jahveh in the world-
order, he believes that, after it has come to pass, there shall be
a new earth, made new by the presence of its God. Jahveh
shall make a new covenant, not with Israel, but on behalf
of Israel with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of
heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground (ii. 18).
Now, so far-reaching a promise, as will be pointed out later in
Isaiah (p. 185, infra), has larger suggestions as to the thought

142 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
of the prophets. What we would insist upon here is that
Hosea is expecting, as the outcome- of the divine interven
tion, a change in the constitution of the world ; for a cove
nant between reconciled Israel and the beasts can only come
about through a change, not merely in the character of
Israel, but in the nature of the beasts. The wild creatures
shall cease to molest a people which is living in the world
where God has made all things new. That the prophet is
thinking of a new world is equally evident in the second
half of the verse, where the' promise is given that Jahveh
will ' break the bow and the sword and the battle out of
the land, and will make them (Israel) to lie down safely.'
Here it is frequently thought that Hosea expects no more
than peace for the land of Israel, in order that the people
may dwell quietly. But how is that peace to be brought
about ? If Hosea expected that Israel was to dwell among
the heathen, then, as Gressmann points out,40 it is an ex^
traordinafy view of the future Utopia to prophesy peace
for Israel, when all the weapons of war are removed out of
its land and the people is left defenceless against its enemies.
Either we must translate haaretz as the earth, and conclude
that Hosea anticipated the removal of all warlike weapons,
or, translating haaretz as the land of Palestine, we must
suppose that Hosea looked for a day when the heathen
powers should cease altogether, and when the disappearance
of the weapons from Israel's land would mean the same
thing as the disappearance of them from the whole earth.
Then his prediction of the disappearance of sword and bow
and battle meant that brotherly love should so govern all
the conduct of Jahveh's people that the weapons of strife
would disappear. In either case, we must recognise that
here also Hosea is foreseeing something which concerns, not
Palestine alone, but the world ; and that he foretells, in the

HOSEA 143
day of the consummation, the emergence of a new order
not merely between men but between beasts and men.
But the new order is to stand upon the earth, which
becomes the earth of the redemption. And, because this
is so, the earth shall offer its best to those who shall belong
to this new order (ii. 2 3 ff, xiv. 7 f .). A renewed earth and
a reconciled humanity are the full expectation of the prophet.
Mankind was to take all these things as a gift out of the hand
of God, to use them in His presence and with the sense that
they could serve Him thereby." Mankind becomes the high-
priest of nature, using its gifts fully and joyfully, and thereby
offering them to God. It is easy to see how such an
expectation gave rise to the somewhat sensuous expectation
of a later day. Israel of a later date became more con
scious of the flesh, so that it looked for the full Kingdom
of Jahveh as something which could only be realised apart
from the flesh : thereupon the despised flesh took its re-<
venge by turning into sensuousness the great hopes of the
early prophets. Hosea was not suspicious of the flesh or
of the rich earth with its gifts. These were God's gifts.
And God's kingdom, when it came to fruition, would come
on earth, and would bring with it corn and wine and oil.
Flesh and blood were holy, and were recognised as such, for
a prophet looked that God's kingdom in the consummation
would be, on earth. Yet he knew it could not be on this
earth, where man and beast lived in constant antipathy, where
earth gave nothing without pain : it must be on a renewed
earth, the earth of the redemption, where love held complete
sway.

CHAPTER YI
I ISAIAH.

In the year that King Uzziah died, the greatest prophet of
the Old Testament saw the Lord, and, seeing Him, saw also
his own life-work as a messenger to his nation of the nature
and will of Him who thus intervened to make His purpose
in Israel known.
He whom Isaiah saw was the Holy One, high and lifted
up. Before Him the seraphim veiled their faces, arid the
fulness of the whole earth was His glory ; yet He sat throned
in the temple of Jerusalem, and He chose a man to be the
messenger to Israel of that which He was about to do. The
combination is characteristic of the prophet's whole attitude.
No other has so deep a sense i of the unique majesty of God
and of the creaturely vanity of man : ' Woe to them that
go down to Egypt for help, and stay on horses, and trust
in chariots, because they are many ; and in horsemen, because
they are very strong ; but they look not unto the Holy One
¦of Israel, neither seek the Lord ! Yet He also is wise, and
will bring evil, and will not call back His words ' (xxxi, 1 f .).
Such a sentence proves how to its writer Jahveh is outside
the old categories and belongs to a special sphere, not merely
as a power in the world which must be reckoned with, but
as the Power who is behind all and who by His word
dominates all.

ISAIAH 145
Whenever Isaiah speaks of the objects of men's worship,
it is enough for him to say that they are the work of men's
hands (ii. 8, 20), and so partake of the character of those
who made them. He is fond of a word which describes
the pettiness of the things men worship ; they are elilim
(DV'PN), at once godlings and nothing. 
But, when Isaiah speaks ofC,God as holy, he does not at
first go beyond a conception which is common to the Hebrew
faith and to the faith of their neighbours.1 Amos repre
sented Jahveh as swearing by His holiness (iv. 2) and as
swearing by Himself (vi. 8), and so showed that to him
the divine holiness meant the divine essence. God, so far
as He is holy, is separated in everything which makes Him
God from man in his fugitive and creaturely existence, so
that the word included every characteristic of the Godhead
which distinctively belonged to Him.2 It is a mistake to
suppose that the divine holiness was, at this stage of the
religious thought of Israel, reserved for the peculiarly ethical
quality which the word now bears ; but it is an equal
mistake to forget that the phrase was used with a sufficiently
wide connotation to include this as well as every other quality
which is divine. The sense of the word in its general use
was wide enough to include all the attributes which are
assigned to the Godhead ; its peculiar significance to each
prophet must be determined by the divine characteristics
on which he laid stress as of special importance.
When, therefore, Isaiah spoke of God as holy, he used a
phrase which was familiar and which carried a broad general
sense. But, whenever Isaiah speaks of the God of his own
adoration, he uses a phrase which he was the first to employ
in Israel : he calls Jahveh the Holy One of Israel. He, of
whose transcendent majesty the prophet speaks so greatly
and so often, whom men call holy when they think of His

146 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
majesty, not only holds a relation to all the world, but has
entered into a peculiar relation to Israel. He sat throned
in the temple and protected Zion. Because of this peculiar
relation Isaiah has something to say, for Jahveh made him a
prophet to speak to this people, which belonged to Jahveh.
There is only one purpose the presence of which gives
reality and meaning to the universe : the fulness of the whole
earth is Jahveh's glory. Yet God's purpose is not fully
revealed in the world, but is free and, as such, has intervened,
and can intervene again, whenever God will. That the idea
of Jahveh's will as free and self-revealing is fundamental to
the thought of Isaiah is evident, because it was this which
made him a prophet. Jahveh came to him to change the
whole current of his life, and, by changing the current of
his life, to make him a messenger of the intervention of
Jahveh in the people's life. When the prophet speaks at
the moment of his call of how he dwells among his own
people, and in accepting the divine commission accepts it
as a commission to speak to his own people, he expresses
his sense of how the intervention of Jahveh is for the sake
of Israel first and is made known to Israel. The Holy One
of Israel, who once intervened in the world to call this nation
into a peculiar relation to Himself, is about to intervene
again ; and, before He does so, He makes known through a
prophet what He is about to do. The will of Jahveh is not
merely manifested in the order of the world, of which man
is a reverent spectator ; it is free, and reveals itself directly
to a man.
The leading characteristic of the divine intervention,
and so of the purpose which commands it, is ethical. The
proof of this is to be found in the reaction which the divine
revelation produced in the prophet. He cried at the sight
of God, ' I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a

ISAIAH 147
people of unclean lips, and mine eyes have seen the Lord.'
Here it is necessary to remember that " in Hebrew idiom a
man's words include his purposes on the one hand, his actions
on the other, and thus impurity of lips means inconsistency
of purpose and action with the standard of the divine
holiness." 3 When Isaiah declares himself and his nation to
be of unclean lips, he means that because of their unclean-
ness they are unfit to bear the close presence of their God ;
but when he gives this reason for his being undone, he shows
how far he is removed from the earlier naive idea which
expected the death of a mortal from the vision of God.
The reason lies in his moral unfitness. What makes the
prophet's meaning the clearer is that Isaiah, as has been
pointed out, is elsewhere so conscious of- the gulf which
separates man in his creatureliness from God in His majesty.
Yet the divine majesty is not the deepest thing in his
thought of God, for, when he realised how God had deigned
to speak to him, it was not his community in mortal weakness,
but his share in human sin, which appalled him. The title .
' holy ' left it open to each prophet to attach to the divine
nature what seemed to him of chief significance : this was of
chief significance to Isaiah.
The ultimate purpose of the divine intervention is re
demptive. No sooner has the prophet uttered the cry in
which he confessed his unworthiness than he received the
divine restoration, and received it without the use of any
machinery save the simplest. It is not wise to press too
far the fact that the means of atonement came from off the
altar ; but it is necessary to note that, when Isaiah finds his
reconciliation through the glowing stone from off the altar,
the place given to the altar, along with his seeing his
vision within the temple, goes to show that the sacrificial
system had been a real factor in his religious life, and could

148 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
riot be thrust aside by him as useless in the life of other
men. Some one has said that Isaiah made the act and the
means of his forgiveriess very easy, with the underlying
suggestion that the prophet made it much too easy. To
Isaiah redemption was easy because it was the outcome of
God's intervention in human life, and so had, behind it all, the
divine purpose. When God came to mankind, it was finally
to heal and to create a new thing. Jahveh is about to reveal
Himself in the life of His nation, and in order to do this, He
makes use, as He has always done, of a prophet. But now
for the first time the prophet acknowledged himself a part
of that life which was unfit to endure the self -revelation of
God, and was himself reconciled before he undertook to speak
for God. The note which was struck there was novel and
far-reaching. There ' was nothing which corresponded with
it on the part of any among Isaiah's predecessors. Elijah
counted it his melancholy pride that he was alone in the
testimony he bore for Jahveh, and that he alone in all Israel
, had been faithful. ' The Lord appeared unto me,' said
Amos, ' and said unto me, Go, prophesy against My people
Israel ' : 4 and so it was Jahveh and Amos over against a
disobedient nation. The prophet and people were not one in
the need of a common mercy. The means through which
Hosea's revelation of God's love came set him apart, from the
people, not a sharer in its unfaithfulness, but a judge of its
faithlessness in the light of that which he had suffered, a
preacher of God's mercy in the knowledge of a mercy he
could not himself refuse. But Isaiah had identified himself
with his own people in a common inability to bear the close
presence of Jahveh, and, owning himself to be a sharer in
their guilt, he had received reconciliation. Thereafter, he
who was himself received back to the divine favour was
commissioned as the messenger of God's purpose to the

ISAIAH 149
people, so that his right to speak in the name of Jahveh
rested on the truth that God had redeemed him. He knew,
as the ultimate basis of his own religious life, that the final
purpose of the divine intervention in human life was re
demptive ; and what was at the foundation of his own
experience of God's will to him coloured all he had to say as
to God's will for any man.
These great truths, which are found in vi. 1—8, and
from which verses 9-1 3 must be separated,6 make up the
sum of Isaiah's message to his nation : he has offered himself,
and has been accepted as the messenger in the name of Jahveh.
His first commission, is fulfilled in the conviction that he
goes out in the name and at the bidding of God, who is about
to manifest Himself in the world, and who has made known,
through His self-manifestation to His servant, the purpose
of that which He is about to do. But Isaiah's sense of how
Jahveh is free and self-revealing, and of how His will is ever
making itself realised afresh in the order of the world,
made it impossible that he should go out with one specific
message which could be summed up in so many words.6
There is no final message to one who is the messenger of
a self-revealing God, and who has but newly lived through
an experience by which the divine self-revelation has changed
his whole life. Isaiah is commissioned to interpret Jahveh's y
dealings with His nation in the light of that knowledge of
the divine character and will which has come to him through
Jahveh's dealings with him. But the truths he has received
are so great that they must be reconciled in themselves, and
their application to the nation's life must be interpreted from
year to year. Isaiah accepted the task, as God's prophet, to
seek, in the best way he might, to fulfil this mission.

I 50 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
II.
His first impression, as he faced his life-work, was that
of the hopelessness of the thing which he had been called to
do. This is the meaning of vers. 9—13, from which the last
clause of ver. 13 must be omitted.7 He knew the work to
be urgent, since it was one to which God had commissioned
him, and since it was one which the people greatly needed ;
but he felt how hopeless it was that he should succeed in it.
' Go and tell this people, hear ye indeed but understand not ;
and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this
people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and
understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.'
That is not the final message which any prophet could bear ,
to his generation, since it cuts away the roots for any real
utterance. It might be interpreted as the fragmentary be
ginning of a longer speech in which the prophet called for re
pentance, and used this method of drawing the attention of
his hearers. But, since the words are not associated with any
further speech, and are definitely brought into connection with
the prophet's call, such an explanation is not satisfactory.
The verses represent the cry of a young man, who came after
Amos and Hosea, who saw that outwardly at least they had
failed, and who could not anticipate anything but a like
failure for any words which he might utter.8 The effect
of the messages of his predecessors had been to make the
condition of the men to whom they spoke worse, since after
the prophets had spoken those who heard them sinned against
the light. Isaiah had no right to expect a better result from
his efforts, and he felt, at the beginning as though he were
commissioned to fight a hopeless battle. What could he do,
what could he say, more than had already been done and

ISAIAH 1 5 i
said to his people ? The outcome of all his work must be
what had been the outcome of their work— to make men worse
instead of better, through making their sin more deliberate
and conscious.
What makes this clearer is that the prophet's earliest
utterances move so plainly along the lines which had been
laid down by Amos. Before Isaiah came to himself he said,
in the few oracles which have been rescued from his first
period, practically the same things which Amos had said.
Thus he began his ministry to united Israel.9 In so early
a speech as ii. 6-22 he addressed himself to the house of
Jacob, which corresponds to the whole family that Jahveh
brought up out of Egypt (Amos iii. 1). The nation to both
prophets was one in its origin and in its guilt. But more
definitely, in the parable of the vineyard, Isaiah described
the house of Israel as the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts,10
the men of Judah as the plant of His delight (v. 7). The
whole nation is included within the mercy and the judgment
of its God.
The recognition of having a message to the united
people does not, however, imply that the early judgments
were not peculiarly directed against Northern Israel. In
this respect also Isaiah closely followed his predecessor.
Amos spoke to the whole family which came up out of
Egypt, but turned his attention practically to Northern Israel.
Isaiah said, ' The Lord sent a word against Jacob, and it hath
lighted on Israel ' (ix. 7) ; the purpose of Jahveh's word was
wider than the place of its first activity, but the storm centre
was Samaria, which even to the prophet of Judah was still
the centre of gravity of the people.
But the scope of the divine intervention in judgment is
not confined to Israel. When Jahveh arises, it is to shake
terribly the earth (ii. 21); the day of the Lord, when it

1J2 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
arrives, is to involve the humiliation of everything which is
high and lifted up ; and among the lofty thirigs which shall
be brought low are included not merely the works of mari
which have revealed and increased human pride, but the oaks
of Bashan, the cedars of Lebanon and all lofty mountains
(ii. 12—17). Since the lofty mountains are joined to the oaks
and cedars, it is clear that we are here in a region of thought
which excludes the idea that the oaks and cedars are to be
cast down, because they have ministered to Israel's pride
through being built into palaces and long ships. The day of
the divine self-revelation which can produce such results
cannot be directed only against Israel, nor can it be carried
out by any conqueror.11 Isaiah is still moving in Amos'
thought of the world-catastrophe.
Hence in all these early oracles, except v. 25— 30,12
there is no mention of the instrument by which Jahveh is to
bring about His judgment.13 In the parable of the vine
yard (v. 1-7) and in the oracle as to the day of the Lord
(ii. 6—22) both the nature of the judgment and the instrument
by which it is to be effected are left as vague as they were
left by Isaiah's predecessor.
Hence, too, the outcome of the divine judgment is to be a
mere negligible remnant. When the ruin of Northern Israel
had taken place, all that should remain of the kingdom was
to be like the leavings which men do not take the trouble to
gather when the harvest is complete (xvii. 6).14 What makes
this more significant is that it disagrees so fundamentally
with Isaiah's later conception of the remnant. The remnant
here does not consist of the few marked out for salvation by
their attitude to Jahveh, but is, as in Amos iii. 12, the two
legs and piece of an ear which the shepherd does not stoop to
^pick up.
The young prophet has not yet come to himself. He

ISAIAH 153
has taken over from his predecessor the older conception of
the day of the Lord as a world-judgment. It represents to
him the general overturn of all the settled order of things when
Jahveh manifests Himself to shake terribly the earth. Isaiah
has come forward to take up the work and the word of Amos,16
but already he has taken up both with a difference. There
is a restraint in -the use of the language which describes
the divine theophany., and there is an omission of older
methods of describing it, — alike in its appearance and its
results, — which prove that the prophet is farther away from
the cosmologieal conception of the judgment. The older
element is present, but still farther in the background than
it was in the earlier prophet. Already the effect of his early
vision with its strong ethical content has made Isaiah in
stinctively turn from certain elements in the older thought
of the world-judgment. He has his own message of the
character and the will of Jahveh who is intervening in men's
lives, because he has his own experience of that which Jahveh
has done for him.

7 3JT IIL
In 743 the kings of Northern Israel and Syria entered
into a league for mutual defence against Assyria, and sought
to coerce Ahaz of Judah into joining the coalition.
From this period Isaiah had nothing more to say to
Northern Israel ; it had leagued itself with the foreigner, and
should share his fate. He added to his original oracle, in
which he had denounced woe on Samaria, v. 27—30. Israel,
which has cast in its lot with heathenism, shall fall before
the enemy which it has so greatly dreaded that it forsook its
'trust in its divine helper in order to take refuge under the
protection of Damascus. Damascus, in which it put its trust,
shall be powerless to deliver itself. Israel trusted in the

1 54 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
heathen, and by the heathen it shall fall. Isaiah dismissed
the Northern kingdom in these few words, and henceforth
has nothing to say concerning it. But from this period Isaiah
turned to Judah with his own message, which grew ever
clearer to himself. He came down to meet Ahaz, leading
by the hand his little son, Shear-jashub — a remnant shall
return — and so he came, no longer like Amos with a message
of denunciation, but with an offer of reconciliatiori in the
foreground of his utterance.
Of recent years it has been erected almost into a dogma
of criticism that Isaiah is merely the prophet of denuncia
tion ; it is impossible to read such a commentary as that of
Marti without recognising that all the utterances of the
prophet are construed in the light of the preconception that
he can say no more. Wherever a hint of something more
than judgment appears, it is counted sufficient to say that
Isaiah has no such message to deliver, since he predicts
nothing but catastrophe ; and forthwith the offending phrase
is cut out, to be flung into the scrap-heap of the exile.
But such a position makes it impossible to understand why
Isaiah, in his first and most significant public appearance, went
to meet Ahaz leading Shear-jashub by the hand. Neither the
appearance of the child nor his importance in connection with
his father's work can be excised. The child must be left
there, but the theory which interprets vi. 9—13 as the sum
mary of Isaiah's message, and sees in the verses rightly
enough no prophecy of restoration, has no explanation to
offer as to why the prophet called his son ' a remnant shall
return,' or as to why he took a son with such a name to
meet Ahaz. Far less can it show why his presence should be
significant of the occasion. The boy is left with no connection*
either with the experience from which Isaiah's life-work as a
prophet sprang or with the later mission of his father. Now

ISAIAH 1 5 5
both the explanation and the origin of the name are to be found
in the fundamental truth of Isaiah's own religious life and of
his prophetic commission. He knew himself to be in a right
relation to God, because he had received the divine forgive
ness ; he was conscious that he had something to say to his
nation as to Jahveh's purposes with it, because his own com
mission rested on the divine mercy. No man who holds this
truth as the source of his religious life and his religious work
can be a mere prophet of denunciation. It may take a long
time for so fruitful, because so simple, a verity as to the
ultimate purpose of God to work its way into the whole of
a man's thought about God and man ; but it is too funda
mental and too moving a reality to be anything other than
active in all a man has to say.
Isaiah had given the boy his name before ever the
Northern coalition had been formed. When, because a bond
with the heathen practically implied apostasy, he dismissed
Northern Israel from his hope as having thereby forsaken
Jahveh, he. came to Ahaz, not to denounce a catastrophe,
but to plead that his own people of Judah might yet, before
it was too late, set itself right with the God who was about
to manifest Himself in the world. He came to plead as one
who knew how possible and how life-giving it is to sur
render to the divine direction. But withal he came with a
boy whose name meant that a remnant shall return, because
// he knew how inward a thing the surrender is which con
ditions all forgiveness, and how little any man can predict
who shall finally submit to that discipline.16
And this note of something more than denunciation,
which Isaiah struck at the beginning when he took his own
definite way, is always present. There is one considera
tion which deserves more weight than it has yet received
— that Isaiah, has persistently been accepted as the prophet

156 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
of hope. It is impossible to ignore that men in a later
period added many glosses and even lengthy passages to the
earlier prophets, and that, in particular, additions which
promise a happy future to the nation have been inserted at
the conclusion of some of the prophetic books. But if
Isaiah is to be construed as a mere prophet of denunciation,
and if every utterance which hints at the great future is to
be excised from his writings, it is necessary, not to cut out
a few passages from the conclusion of the separate books
of which his prophecy is composed, but to remove sentences
here and hints there. If all these are glosses, it is necessary
to ask why they came to be scattered so liberally over the
oracles of this particular prophet. It is necessary to . seek
an explanation why. the great prophecy of the restoration in
Deutero-Isaiah was added to his book as though that were
its natural place. It is no longer enough to say that this
was done in the exile. Even in the exile, men were guided
by some reason and by some sense of fitness in the way in
which they dealt with their holy writings. And it is the
persistence with which prophecies of restoration have been
added, if they were added, to Isaiah above all the earlier
prophets, which demands an explanation.
If Isaiah foresaw only the destruction of Jerusalem, and
so long and so often, so vehemently and so expressly, foretold
no more than this, it is difficult to believe that men in
the time of the exile, some hundred or hundred and fifty
years after his death, were able to celebrate him as the
representative of the opposite view. It is not difficult to
conceive that they misinterpreted the spiritual conceptions
which underlay the prophet's view of the future and which
conditioned it all ; it is even easy to understand how men
who lived through the amazing and unexpected deliverance of
Jerusalem from Sennacherib made this a reason for vulgar-

ISAIAH 157
ising the "prophet's hopes for his city ; but it is difficult to
believe that they could turn the drift of all his utterances
into the direct opposite of that for which he stood.
The deliverance of Jerusalem, so unlooked for arid so
signal, was calculated to drive out of men's minds the threats
of destruction and to lead them to soften down some of the
utterances of the earlier prophets as to the penalty which was
to come on the guilty city. But that their natural inclina
tion knew definite limits and could not go so far as to change
the whole drift of a prophet's utterance is proved by the way
in which Micah's prophecy was remembered. Micah had
foretold (iii. 12) that Jerusalem should be ploughed as a field ;
and, even after the deliverance under Sennacherib, the oracle
was living on in the minds of the citizens at the period' of
Jeremiah (xxvi. 1 7 ff). It is just to ask why they remembered
Micah's words with such exactness and with such an impres
sion of awe, if Isaiah, living in the city, had spent his whole
prophetic lifetime in uttering similar threats. They retained
accurately the sense of that for which Micah had stood, and
felt that he- had come forward distinctly as a prophet of
judgment. And the fact that they thus singled him out
and passed over his mightier contemporary, can only be
explained on the supposition that they were conscious of how
Isaiah stood for something different.
What Isaiah foretold was different from the conception of
the men of the exile. Judgment was as deeply embedded in
his prophecies as in the utterances of Amos and Micah ; but
Isaiah stood for something more than bare judgment, and in
their own way men recognised it. However much they failed
to grasp the full scope of, the " something more,' and especially
the significance of the terms on which it was promised, they
recognised that Isaiah held an ampler sense of the divine
purpose than others. He was emphatically the prophet of

158 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
hope. They had no hesitation about developing hints as to
restoration which appeared in his oracles ; and they felt it
in no wise incongruous to add the great prophecy of the re
storation from exile at the close of his book. So doing, they
recognised that Isaiah stood for the amplitude of Jahveh's
purpose as something which was not exhausted in judgment.
And this was no accidental part of his message, but was rooted
in his own religious experience and in the event which had
made him a prophet at all. He must speak of Jahveh's
intervention, however sharp its first effects might be, as
having its ultimate issue in redemption because it had
redeemed him. And therefore he came to his meeting with
Ahaz, leading the boy who expressed in his name the
prophet's conception of the .final purpose of the God in
whose name he spoke.
The situation of Judah was critical, since the little nation
could not long offer resistance to such an enemy as now
menaced her. Ahaz and his advisers saw no way out of
their danger except by throwing themselves into the arms
of Assyria, and meantime, before Assyria came to their
relief, putting the capital into such a position of defence as
would ward off the first attack of the allies. The scheme
was neither foolish nor unpatriotic, and Ahaz, in forming it,
was not the weakling he has so often been represented as being,
any more than Ahab was the feeble fool who is frequently
held up to derision. To say that, by casting himself into the
arms of Assyria, Ahaz invited that nation to interfere in the
politics of Western Asia is to ignore the fact that Assyria
was interfering in those polities already, and that the reason
for the Syro-Ephraimitic league having been formed was its
interference. To say that, by his action, Ahaz furnished
Assyria with an excuse for intervention at some later date in
Judah is to forget that Assyria did not wait for anv excuse

ISAIAH 159
before it took what served its ends. The Northern powers,
who formed their coalition before Assyria came, had a juster
sense of the nature of their enemy, the ravenous ambition of
which was not governed by little lawyer-like considerations as
to whether it could find a plausible excuse for pushing its way
to the Mediterranean. And when Ahaz is represented as being
prepared to sell the independence of his country, of which
Isaiah came forward as the vindicator, it is fair to remember
that the king was in the situation in which he was compelled
to choose between dependence on Damascus and .dependence
on Assyria, and that he may be excused for thinking that
the more distant superior was likely to interfere less than
Damascus and Ephraim with the peculiar customs and the
religion of his people.
Probably the course which Ahaz followed was the wisest
which could be planned in the circumstances, and certainly
it was justified by its results. As a politician, Ahaz must
be judged by his success, and he succeeded in preserving
Judah during a singularly difficult period from the fate which
befell Northern Israel. When the news of the fall of
Samaria reached Jerusalem, Ahaz may justly have congratu
lated himself on having chosen the politic course he did
choose, at the time when Samaria sought to coerce him into
a policy which cost the Northern kingdom itself so dear.
With such considerations as these > Isaiah's message to the
king had nothing directly to do ; it was not primarily a
political, but a religious declaration he brought. In these
great events which were happening, or about to happen, the
prophet saw the evidence of the coming of a far greater
event — that divine intervention in the world which it was
his business to announce. He came with the greater urgency
because he believed that Northern Israel was now doomed
through the course which it had chosen, and he pressed his

160 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
message on Ahaz in the hope that his own people might yet
be the remnant of salvation. In his view, the only enemy
from whom any evil was to be feared by Judah was Jahveh,17
who was about to reveal Himself, and the first duty of the
nation, governors and governed alike, was to set themselves
right with Him.
But Isaiah found the king, counsellors, and people with
their minds preoccupied by the anxiety over the Northern
coalition : ' their heart was moved, as the trees .of the forest
are moved with the wind ' (vii. 2). Because of this consum
ing anxiety, nothing of all that it was the prophet's aim to
press upon their attention could really reach their minds ;
and they would remain unable to listen so long as their
preoccupation continued. Isaiah's first business was to
remove this anxiety ; and in the name of God he bade
Ahaz know that there was nothing to be feared from the
allies. Damascus and Samaria were ' two stumps of smoking
firebrands ' (vii. 4) ; the kingdoms were smouldering out,
according to Jahveh's irreversible counsel. To this pre
diction there is no condition attached, either in its first
statement or iri its restatement in viii. 1— 4,18 arid what
makes its repetition in the latter passage more significant
is that Isaiah confirmed his first prediction, even after Ahaz
had refused to listen. The rescue of Judah from the danger
which thus threatened was not dependent on their faith or
their want of faith.
Yet it was not the mere certainty of the collapse of the
hostile coalition which Isaiah announced. He announced it
in order that the message might calm men's minds and leave
them free to accept the greater truth which lay behind.
What lay behind the bare fact was that Jahveh was
He who thus protected His people, and through this event
gave them the proof of how His hand controlled the destiny

ISAIAH 161
of the nation. The event which was to deliver Judah was
of His ordering. If men in Judah could see that, they
would see so much more than the bare collapse of the
league ; for they would see the hand of Him who had
brought it about, and by their trust in Him they would
be established anew (vii. 9). But so long as they did
not see that, they would see in the fall of the league no
more than a casual incident in the world's history, which
had no spiritual significance ; and, turning back to their old
attitude to Jahveh, they would be established on no surer
foundation thari before.
Therefore Isaiah urged Ahaz to ask for a sign (ver. 11) —
i.e. to demand something which would be, even to him, the
sufficient proof that Jahveh's hand was in all this business.
Let him claim something which would be the incontestable
proof that he was dealing with God, and that God was
intervening to deliver Judah for a larger purpose of His
own. The sign which Isaiah offered was not to be a sign
that the prophecy as to the fall of Damascus and Ephraim
was to come to reality. For that the only sure test was to
wait until the predicted event came to pass. The sign was
to be the guarantee that the. event was coming to pass
through Jahveh's intervention, and so was part of His wider
purpose with Judah.19 IV.
Ahaz refused the prophet's request. Though his refusal
in itself and in the reasons he gave for it has the appearance
of great reverence, and though it is along the line of our
thought as to the attitude men should take toward God, it
is necessary to remember how apparently reverent acts may
spring from an irreverent source. What kept Ahaz back
was not his disbelief in Jahveh's power or- will to give such

1 62 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
a sign, should it be necessary : his ideas on these matters
were the same as those of Isaiah. What kept him back
was his unwillingness to have the intervention of God proved
at all. He was already in treaty with Assyria, and expected
the defeat of the coalition through the alliance he hoped to
make; and he had no taste for a sign which, making it
evident that Jahveh did have a controlling hand in Judah's
affairs, must involve a complete change in his entire policy.
Isaiah knew this -.. and, since to him the supreme concern
was that Jahveh was intervening in the order of the world,
since Jahveh meant to intervene whether Ahaz recognised
the fact or not, he came forward with the promise of
Immanuel, which was the sign.
There are two points in connection with the promise of
Immanuel which are fundamental for its being rightly under
stood. The one is that the sign must have been of such a
nature as to give the guarantee of how the events which
were befalling Judah were no mere accidents, but were the
outcome of Jahveh's intervention for His own ends. This
was the character and this was the purpose of the sign
which Isaiah urged Ahaz to request ; and this was the reason
why the king refused it — he wished to see no more than
the hand of Assyria in his deliverance. The prophet's whole
interest was gathered up in the one desire to convince his
nation that they were in God's hands, and that their attitude
to Him was their commanding concern. Ahaz revolted
against the sign, because he instinctively felt that the con
viction as to Jahveh's power being seen in the matter would
play havoc with all his plans and method of government.
But to Isaiah the king's unwillingness to recognise the divine
intervention could not turn back what Jahveh was about to
do'. God was intervening, and was to give the sign of' that
transcendent fact.

ISAIAH 163
The other point is that the character of the sign was
inevitably changed in its relation to Ahaz and his court
from the moment when he refused to welcome it and all
that it implied. Had the rulers of Judah been able and
willing to welcome the intervention of their God, they would
have been set fast as a nation as they had never been before.
But, since they wilfully shut their eyes to Him who was
thus acting in their history, and since they were afraid to
realise His impending intervention, God's intervention would
produce the overthrow of all their schemes. Their indifference
could not turn back Jahveh from doing that which He was
about to do ; Jahveh would still act as He had purposed to
act. They had had the opportunity through the prophet to
set themselves right with the great purpose which was about
to realise itself in the world : they had been summoned to
welcome, it and to serve it. But, since they had refused
to do this thing, Jahveh, when He came to do His own
work, would need in the first place to overturn them and
their counsel. Immanuel, ' God with us,' meant first, as
Isaiah says in ch. vii., God against Ahaz and his court.
Jahveh, said Isaiah, was about to intervene in the world-
history, and especially in the history of the nation which
held a peculiar relation to Him. He was about to send the
heavenly child, Immanuel. It is possible, though we cannot
say it is more, that the prophet was referring to an expecta
tion which was current in his time of the birth of a heavenly
child, and that by ' the maiden ' who was to be his mother
he meant the maiden of whom all knew.20 The expectation
is often said to be borrowed from a Babylonian oracle or
prophecy which was current in the Judaean world, but this
is unproved and of itself very unlikely.
I offer no opinion on this view, except such an opinion as
is within the right even of those who have no first-hand

1 64 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
knowledge of the Babylonian records. But it must be
apparent that there has not as yet been offered any convincing
proof of the existence of such an expectation in the Baby
lonian world. Yet what is needed to justify us in supposing
that Isaiah made use of a story from- a Babylonian source
is more than the evidence that a few persons in Babylonia
held an esoteric view as to the coming of a world-redeemer :
we need an opinion so deeply rooted and so commonly held
among a large circle that it could transplant itself and lay
hold of minds in an alien race. It is not the casual opinions
which have influenced a small circle that are generally able
to spread from one nation to another. And to suppose that
Isaiah had heard of such a hope cherished by a few in Baby
lonia, and that he used it among a people who had never
even heard of it, is to conceive him as uttering something
like a conundrum to those who listened to him.
Besides, I think we are learning to open our eyes to the
fact that the world of Jewish thought was richer in its ideas
and more varied in the colouring given to these ideas than it
has hitherto been customary to recognise. The conceptions
of Amos, a man of the people, speaking to the commons in
terms they could understand, show the presence of elements
in the early thought of Israel, which are the sufficient proof
that the nation had appropriated and transformed, had even
evolved, cosmological and theological theories of far-reaching
suggestiveness. If, then, the idea is not due to Isaiah him
self, the more likely supposition is that the expectation
existed in Judah. But if Isaiah adopted, and did not
create, the conception, he acted as Amos did when he took
up the idea of the day of the Lord — i.e. he took it over
because it could in some measure express his own thought ;
and he remade it, so that it might more adequately express
his thought. He accepted it as the means by which- he

ISAIAH , 165
could express that intervention of Jahveh in the affairs of
this world, that emergence of Jahveh's purpose among the
purposes of men, that breaking in of eternity on time which
is a postulate of faith, and especially the postulate of a faith
which, like that of the prophets, held fast the idea of a
personal God, whose will is free and self-revealing. Isaiah
took this because it expressed, more adequately than the
phraseology of Amos could, his sense of how Jahveh, as a
moral being, made use of moral agents for the realisation of
His purposes on the earth. He has moved away from the
day of the Lord with its thunder and shaking of the earth,
and he has grasped how, to fulfil an end which is personal
and ethical, personal and ethical means must be employed
by his God.
God's purpose is not checked by the incapacity of Ahaz
to welcome it, for God will find His own agent to fulfil
His own ends. Because these ends .are His own, because the
court had the opportunity to set themselves right with them
and have refused, the birth of Immanuel implies first a
sifting within Judah itself. The remnant is not to be, as
Isaiah once hoped and by his plea to Ahaz sought to bring
about, the house of Judah after Ephraim had gone over to
the enemy. The first thing Jahveh must do in order to
make Judah the land of Immanuel must be to overthrow
all for which the house of David now stands. In ch. vii.
Isaiah pronounces doom on the court and their plans, and
foretells how, through the disobedience of the court; the land
over which they rule shall suffer in the invasion which is
to take place.21
But Immanuel is the agent of Jahveh, whose intervention
is at hand, and he fulfils the purpose of God — a purpose the
character and content of which the prophet has learned.
Because he is this, and because the revelation of Jahveh's

r66 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
will brings with it more than a destruction of whatever
is opposed to Him, the advent of Immanuel implies more
than mere ruin to Ahaz and the State. His mission has a
positive content, because He is sent by One whose glory is
the fulness of the whole earth.
On this side of the meaning of the promised child Isaiah
insisted in ch. viii.22 He came before the people with his
second son, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, ' spoil speedeth, prey
hasteth,' some time after he had failed to convince Ahaz.
He began his oracle by quietly waving Syria and Ephraim
aside (ver. 4) as of no significance iri connection with the
fate of Judah at all. What alone was of significance was
the action of Jahveh Himself and the attitude which men in
Judah took to their God. What threatened the future of
Jerusalem was not the existence of a party in the capital
which was in favour of the coalition powers : 23 it was the
sinful opposition to the rule of God in the world. The men
of Judah, so far as their rulers are concerned, have refused
the waters of Siloah that go softly — i.e. they have refused the
peace of the divine protection.24 The danger which threatened
from the Northern coalition has brought to light a deeper, even
a fundamental opposition : their fear before a passing peril has
led them to grasp at any succour except the succour of Jahveh,
and so has revealed their want of faith in His sufficient help.
To chastise them, Jahveh is about to bring upon them the
waters of the Assyrian deluge, which shall overflow all the land,
covering it and rising up even to the neck — but no farther.
It shall not be permitted to go farther, for the invader is being
brought by Jahveh to serve His purpose, and His purpose is
not satisfied by the destruction of Judah. The land over
which the waters burst is Immanuel's : and therefore, though
all the nations from the remotest parts of the earth were to
gather themselves together against it, they can do no more

ISAIAH 167
than what is permitted to them ; and if they attempt
to go beyond this, they shall be broken in pieces. Their
mission, as their power, has been strictly limited by Him
whose purpose they serve.25 Already Isaiah had asked Ahaz
to believe that it was not Rezin nor Pekah nor Tiglath Pileser
who governed history, and had assured him of how behind all
these was a mightier will. Now he said again that any of
these powers, or all of them together, were but instruments in.
God's hands, and, if they were to lift themselves up to go a
step beyond what Jahveh purposed, they should be brought
to nought. Whoever could, instead of wavering in hesitating
fear between these leagued powers, stay himself upon the
God who controlled them all, would find in God his sufficient
sanctuary. This message of Isaiah was no longer intended for the court
and the royal house, but for the men who were like-minded
with the prophet. So far as Ahaz and the court were con
cerned, Isaiah had shot his bolt (in ch. vii.), and had no
more to say than what he had already said. Jahveh has
hidden His face from them (viii. 17). But all who could
accept the prophet's message, had a message of hope sealed
and secured to them (ver. 16). Isaiah and his children were
signs and wonders to Judah. The boys expressed the two
messages which were yet one : , Shear-jashub, the message as it
affected Ahaz; Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the message as it affected
the followers of the prophet. The world was in the hands of
God, who was about to manifest Himself anew ,there. To
those who refused to accept and submit to God's will, the
result could only be that the divine intervention would sweep
them away ; but such as were content that all things, . them
selves included, should be in God's hands, could wait with
patience through a dark time when Jahveh was hidden from
the rulers of the State, and could rest confident of a future

1 68 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
which Jahveh Himself should secure to them. Spoil sp'eedeth,
prey hasteth : but the men who rested their hopes on Jahveh
were secure.
The situation became more definite after the collapse
of the Northern league, because the policy of Ahaz seemed
justified by circumstances, and the king was able to show
more clearly his opinion of the prophet's counsel. Isaiah
now surrendered all hope that Judah was to become the
remnant of the return, and formulated more clearly his own
hopes in ch. xxviii.26
The situation of the prophet at the court of Ahaz through
out his ministry, but more particularly at the period with
which we have to deal, is much better understood when we
dismiss from our minds the idea that he was of high social
position, and able to make his way into the council-chamber
of the king with a certain authority. He went out to meet
Ahaz in a public place, as Amos went to confront Amaziah
at the sanctuary of Bethel ; and, like the Northern prophet,
he represented the interests of the common people and found
his principal support among them. Because he had some
support from the commons, and because no one knew how great
their support might be, Ahaz and the court were compelled
to temporise and to treat him with a cautious deference
so long as the danger from the Syro-Ephraimitic coalition was
imminent and the help of Assyria was uncertain. But so
soon as their plans were complete, and their alliance with
Assyria made them able to ignore the enthusiast with his
influence over the commonalty, they showed their real attitude
towards him (vers. 8 ff). As they boast in their new con
fidence, neither death nor Sheol can hurt them now, far less a
prophet with his outworn saws of which they are heartily
weary. Isaiah began his oracle by stating that it had been his

ISAIAH . 169
task to pronounce doom on Samaria for its pride and sensu
ality, a doom which has been fearfully verified in its defeat
at the hand of Assyria (vers. 1-4). He had hoped then that
Judah, having learned from the catastrophe, might become
the remnant (ver. 5) on whose behalf Jahveh would intervene,
and whose future Jahveh would secure through men who,
filled with the divine spirit, sought worthily to provide for
the outward and inward needs of the State.27 But the actual
leaders of Judah were as bad as those of Samaria : they were
worse, for they refused to go to school with the prophet and
learn from the disaster which had befallen the sister State.
The relief which had come to them through the fall of
Samaria made them feel as though they had at last escaped
from the prophet's school (ver. 10).28 But Jahveh will send
them to a harder school to learn the old lessons through, their
personal disaster : ' By men of strange lips and with another
tongue will He speak to this people.' Assyria their deliverer
shall be their master, (ver. 13).
They counted themselves secure because of their alliance
with Assyria; they had bargained with the destroyer, and
were safe even against death and Sheol — no power could hurt
them any more (ver. 15).29 Isaiah returned to his persistent
refrain. The danger to Judah did not come from Syria or
Assyria, but from Jahveh. All their schemes were lies, be
cause they ignored Him and His presence in the world.30
" Rely on anything you please : rake earth and the under
world to find guarantees for your security. Rest is only
ordained for those who trust in Jahveh (ver. 16); for
the others there is a consummation, and that determined."
Jahveh is about to rise up to manifest Himself, and He shall
not only break their covenant with Assyria, but shall use
Assyria as the instrument of their chastisement. If they
had had to do merely with Ephraim and Assyria," their clever

170 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
little arrangements might have sufficed to meet the situation.
But they have to do with Him who orders both Ephraim
and Assyria, and a league with Assyria is too small a thing
to cover Judah in the great day, when Jahveh is rising up to
deal with men. ' The bed is shorter than that a man can
stretch himself on it ; and the covering narrower than that
he can wrap himself in it. For the Lord shall rise up '
(ver. 20).
# Again, however, Jahveh's intervention was too vast and
far-reaching to be exhausted in the chastisement of the scornful
rulers and the ruin of the sinful State. God's purpose has
more than negative content; even while it swept away
what seemed to them so secure, it must bring spmething.
In Zion Jahveh was laying a foundation (ver. 16). Since
Isaiah represented and thought of this as being laid, it must
have meant to him something other than the old State
with its relation between Jahveh and the people. Had
Isaiah meant no more than the renewal of the old rela
tion, he must have confirmed the rulers in their idea that
everything would yet go well. But Jahveh was bring
ing about in Judah a new thing. Because it was new, it
carried with it the dissolution of the old (vers. 17 f.). The
fact which guaranteed the permanence of the new foundation
— namely, that it was after the divine plan and was securely
founded on Jahveh's will — made it certain that all who had
rejected that will for the establishment of their State must
be swept away. But, because this new thing was of Jahveh's
ordering, and so served His eternal counsel, its own continu
ance was sure. Its future was as clearly determined as
the consummation, since both rested on the same eternal
cause. He who belie veth shall not be ashamed.31
Isaiah has given up empirical Judah. The remnant on
whom the future of the divine Kingdom rested, consisted

ISAIAH 171
no longer of the people as a people, but of those who could
stay themselves on Jahveh alone and who, after He had mani
fested His will in the world, would find a place of His ordering
in the new condition He was to bring about.32 The remnant,
therefore, cannot be described as either an ideal thing or a
real, because to Isaiah's mind it was both. It was already
present in the men who were like-minded with the prophet
and who accepted his teaching as to Jahveh's will : these
were the lowly of God's people (xiv. 32) and the disciples,
who received the sealed instruction of the prophet (viii. 16).
Yet the remnant was also ari ideal, the future of which none
could measure, since Jahveh Himself would give it continuance
and such outward success as pleased Him.

In all this Isaiah was no calculating politician, who had
a shrewder view than his contemporaries of the weakness
of the Northern coalition and the permanent power of
Assyria. To him the power of Assyria was a temporary
thing. Assyria had a place in the divine purpose for the
world, but its place was strictly limited. It had been
ordained for judgment, but judgment was Jahveh's strange
work (xxviii. 21). What was according to Jahveh's eternal
nature, and must therefore finally come to pass, waB some
thing for which Assyria could only be a preparation. That
Assyria had any place at all in the divine purpose was
guaranteed to it merely through the work which it performed
on Israel : but without its work on Israel it had in itself
no place in the consummation of all things or in the final
disclosure of the divine will ; and therefore, when its work on
Israel was completed, its support from Jahveh should cease.
There must come a day when that for which Assyria was

172 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
ordained was completed, and then the nation, which in itself
held no share in the divine counsel, must pass away.
Isaiah had been content in his earlier oracles (chs. vii.,
viii., xxviii.) to predict that the chastisement which must
precede the consummation was coming through Assyria..
But when Samaria had fallen, and when the power of the
Eastern colossus was making even the hearts of the faith
ful faint with fear, he bade them recognise how Assyria also
was in Jahveh's hand (ch. x. 24-34, 5-1 9).33 The two
oracles were delivered after the fall of Samaria (cf. ver; 11),
when Assyria was already Judah's Northern neighbour. In
the earlier (vers. 24-34) the prophet went straight to the
matter which was causing men's hearts to tremble — namely,
the ease with which Jerusalem could be attacked, now that
all the buffer states had fallen. He described, as though it
had actually taken place, the swift and unhindered march of
the Assyrian armies along the backbone of the hill country
(vers. 28— 3 2).34 The power which held Samaria was able,
whenever it would, to shake its hand at the mount of the
daughter of Zion. Over against this picture the prophet
represents the equal ease with which Jahveh could over
whelm the invader : ' Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
shall lop the boughs with terror : and the high ones of stature
shall be hewn down, and the lofty shall be brought low.
And He shall cut down the thickets of the forest with
iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one ' (vers. 3 3 f .).
Up till this time, Isaiah continued in a later oracle
(x. 5-1 5),35 Assyria's march had been unchecked (5-9), and
it had brought down nations, not a few. The reason was
that there was no strength nor endurance in the kingdoms
which it attacked. So far as these nations were concerned,
they were doomed to fall, since they had no place in the
consummation (ver. 6), not even such a temporary place in'

ISAIAH 173
bringing about the consummation as was allotted to Assyria.
Assyria, therefore, could find no resistance to its onward
march in Carchemish or Calno; but Jerusalem stood in a
different position. In Zion Jahveh was laying a foundation
for His new order (xxviii. 16), and, so soon as Assyria came into
contact with Zion, the conqueror reached the limit of his
power.36 Assyria, like Judah, was in God's hands. Though
Assyria should come up over the whole land, it could only
come to do the work which was appointed for it by Jahveh
(xiv. 24—27). This work, so far as Judah was concerned,
was to remove everything that went counter to the divine
purpose : but, when Assyria had fulfilled this task, its power
would be brought to an end by Him who used it for His
purposes. But Jahveh alone had the right and the power to set
limitations to the instrument which He had summoned. He
alone knew when its work was finished, and He must be free
to determine the hour when He was to bring it to an end.
He was using Assyria for His own ends, and, since its power
came from Him, to resist it implied resistance to His will.
Only from this point of view is it possible to construe
Isaiah's language as to the movement for liberty and the
leagues to which the desire for liberty gave rise among the
peoples of the West. When these attempts at freedom are
judged froto the -political standpoint, it is not easy to see
either their folly or their hopelessness. Northern Israel
may have misjudged its ability, with or without the help
of Damascus, to resist Assyria ; but its failure to gauge the
strength of the Eastern colossus ought not to lead anyone
to close his heart against admiration for the gallant stand
which, during three long years, Samaria made against the
whole weight of the Assyrian empire. We are not sunk so
low that we cannot give our admiration to men who in an

174 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
evil time staked everything and died for liberty — else the
Greeks, who never forgot Thermopylae, are our masters.
And the further fact that the little capital, with all its allies
beaten down, was able to make head for three years, is the
sufficient proof that the leagues against Assyria which were
so continually revived in Western Asia were not so inept as
they have often been represented.
Isaiah is looking at the whole matter, as usual, from a
point of view which is qiiite apart from the political. Judah,
he said in xvii. 12—14, did not need to look for help : Jahveh
intended to break Assyria, but at His own time and in His
own way. To seek for another helper was to distrust the
divine support. Again, in the year of King Ahaz's death,
which coincided with a period of political weakness in
Assyria,37 ambassadors came from Philistia to invite the
court at Jerusalem to join a league for, freedom. Isaiah
counselled that the messengers should be sent back empty-
handed (xiv. 28-32) ; but his counsel had nothing to do with
the political exigencies of the situation; and took no account
of the duty of Judah remaining loyal -to its suzerain power.
Philistia, he said, was doomed; so far as the cities of the
maritime coast were concerned, Assyria was irresistible, for
these cities, like Carchemish and Calno, had no hold on anything
which could guarantee them continuance against the rod of
Jahveh's anger. So far as they were concerned, therefore, ' Out
of' the serpent's root shall come a basilisk.' But Zion was
secure and- needed no protector, because Jahveh had laid His
foundation there; and whenever it pleased Him so to do,
He would intervene for the deliverance of those who trusted
in Him. 'The Lord hath founded Zion, and in her shall
the afflicted of His people find refuge.' ,
The same attitude appears in the later oracle (ch. xx.),38
which deals -with the effort on the part of Ashdod to form a

ISAIAH ,175
league against Sargon. We do not know whether Hezekiah
had shown any inclination to join the league ; but, from
the fact that Isaiah took the trouble to issue a formal
warning to the people, it seems likely that either the
court or the inhabitants had a hankering in this direction.
All that we do know with certainty is that Hezekiah did
not suffer chastisement from the Assyrians, and so, whether
because of the warning of the prophet or because of other
reasons, cannot have gone very far in allying himself with
Ashdod. Isaiah, therefore, did not feel it necessary to say
any more than that against adversaries such as formed the
alliance Assyria was irresistible : Philistia must fall. Assyria
had further and greater work from Jahveh , to fulfil, and
could not be prevented in its task by a people which had
not even been commissioned for such limited work by God.
Since, however, the attitude of Jerusalem and the court
was different from what it had been in the time of Ahaz,
Isaiah had no need to assure his people that their strength
lay in Jahveh.
Still more instructive was Isaiah's message when an
embassy arrived from beyond the rivers of Cush (xviii.
' 1— 5).39 Let them return, for Jahveh Himself will choose
His own time to intervene against Assyria. The prophet
had nothing to say about the fate which was to befall Cush
or as to the practical issues of the league which was proposed.
All he urged was that his people must not set its hand to
do a work which was Jahveh's work and for which He must
choose His own time. At present He was still, but, when
He chose, not when the people pleased, He would lift up
the signal for the nations to see. ' For Judah to take its
fate into its own hands was to seek to force Jahveh to take
action before His appointed time.
And when finally Hezekiah was tempted to take part in a

176 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
coalition with Egypt, Isaiah urged the same attitude (ch. xxxi.).
But, though he spoke scornfully of Egypt as a feeble stay,
it was not Egypt's weakness which prompted him to insist on
his nation abstaining from the alliance ; it was because the
Egyptians were men and not God (ver. 3). To trust in them
was to forget Jahveh, and the issue of seeking any helper other
than Jahveh must be that, when Jahveh stretched forth His
hand, both he that helpeth should fall and he that is holpen
should stumble.' To identify oneself with the heathen was
to share their fate in the day of Jahveh's intervention.
Jerusalem had no need to seek human help. What Isaiah
contended against was every human alliarice, for the Assyrian
was to fall by the sword, not of man (ver. 8). Jahveh was
about to intervene and break the instrument He had used
for a time ; but it was Jahveh who was to intervene, and
who was to intervene at His own time and in His own way.
When He did intervene, He would guarantee a place and a
continuance to those who trusted in Him, and who proved
their trust by the simple fact that they did not attempt to
make a place for themselves.
Assyria's power over the world' had a meaning. As the
colossus overthrew one nation after another, it proved how
each of them had no place in the eternal order.40 As Judah
groaned under the oppressor, Judah could learn how Assyria's
power had a meaning for them also. It was the divine
chastisement for their neglect of God's will. But, when
Assyria's work was complete and the people had learned
- their lesson of repentance, Jahveh was to cease from this,
His strange work. He shall show the lighting down of
His arm, and through His voice shall the Assyrian be broken
in pieces (xxx. 27-33). For endurance does not belong to
Assyria, it belongs to those who have faith.
Isaiah took exactly the same attitude in the invasion

ISAIAH 177
of Sennacherib. Only in one point did he go a little beyond
the position which he had previously taken up. Himself
convinced of the fact that the retreat of the Assyrian from
before the walls of Jerusalem was the signal proof of how
the world was in the hands of Jahveh, full of the sense of
how the invader had been turned by the power of Him who
had intervened to' show forth His purposes, Isaiah hoped
that the whole city might turn to their God and the -remnant
become identical with the nation he loved. The changed
temper of the court under Hezekiah probably had some
thing to do with quickening his new hope. But he confessed
his bitter disappointment in xxii. 1-14. He saw how men
in the hour of danger turned to think of their defences, and
in the hour of their relief gave themselves up to feasting ;
he saw the joy at their deliverance become no reverent
recognition of the will of the God who delivered them, but
a vulgar debauch. And he said that their iniquity was
bound upon their hearts, while they lived. But it is forcing
the language of the prophet to say that in this he sur
rendered all hope of Judah and had now no expectation of
even a remnant ' being found there. The cry was no more
than the cry of a prophet who had hoped for more out of
an outward event than any such event has ever been capable
of bringing, and who -said that the humanity for which he
wrought was hopelessly frivolous, and that frivolity was
bound on men's hearts till their death day, even when
God was doing some of His mightiest works before their
eyes. In principle, however, Isaiah said there what he had
always said. Assyria was Jahveh's instrument, to prove the
emptiness of everything which had no hold on the divine
purpose, and to chastise the nation which ought to have
held fast by its God. But this task, and this task alone,
12

178 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
was what gave Assyria a place in a world where God
was revealing Himself; and when its temporary task was
done, Assyria itself could find no place in the consummation
of all things. Only those found a place who could see God?s
hand in all human affairs and who could trust themselves to
His leadership and protection.
Stark (Das Assyrische Weltreich) thinks that the con
viction as to the transitory character of Assyria- and the
permanence of Judah was not from the beginning in Isaiah's
mind, but emerged through the prophet's experience of the
real character of Assyria and Sennacherib. He believes
that there was a double invasion of Judah by Sennacherib,
and that the sight of the ruthlessness and faithlessness of
the great king during the first invasion convinced Isaiah
that Assyria could only endure for a time. I can see no
need to base so large a change in the prophet's view on a
reconstruction of the historical situation which, while it is
plausible, remains always unproven. And, while my con
viction — that the view of Assyria as an irresistible instru
ment in Jahveh's hands is not inconsistent with the view
of Assyria as doomed to fall — is supported by my opinion as
to the date for ch. xxviii., which is not shared by all nor
likely to be accepted by all, it is not based upon any change
in the date of certain chapters. Fundamentally it rests on the
fact that Isaiah never thought of Assyria as anything else ex
cept an instrument for one specific task. When that task was
completed, Assyria had no place in the consummation. Only
those had a place in the consummation who had faith — a con
viction which Isaiah uttered very early in his ministry. A
nation like Assyria could not exercise the faith which to the
prophet was an essential for endurance. Assyria could only
imagine about itself that it was there to work its own will
(x. 7, etc.) ; and this vain imagination on its part was the

ISAIAH 179
sufficient proof of how it, equally with the court of Ahaz,
had no abiding place in the Kingdom which Jahveh was
bringing in. What alone had continuance was that which
could serve the mighty will of God-1— i.e. a Judah on which
Assyria had produced the result for which God used that
nation, a Judah humbled and disciplined by the recognition
of its God's irresistible purpose.

VI.
Again, in all this Isaiah came down on the empirical
world of his own time with a teaching which was not the
outcome of his view as to the political situation in which
Judah stood among the world-forces of the day. Jahveh had
a Kingdom' which He was about to establish in the world by
a transcendent act of self-manifestation. Isaiah, in the hope
that Judah might as a nation hold its place in the new
creation, urged Ahaz and his court to think of this first, and
to set their kingdom right with the purpose of the God in
whose name .he spoke. He offered them a sign of how
Jahveh' was behind the forees of the world and controlled
them all. When the court refused to think of such things
at all, and gave their whole attention to escape from the
difficulties of their present situation, Isaiah bade them know
that their neglect could not hinder the divine Kingdom.
Only now it must come in spite of them ; and finding them
in its way, must sweep them aside, Assyria, in which they
trusted for escape from their perplexities, was to be the
means of casting down their pride. But the Kingdom of
Jahveh was of too great and positive a content to be brought
about by Assyria, even as it was too sure a thing to be
frustrated in its advent by Ahaz's refusal. It was to come
through the means of One whom Jahveh was to raise up for

180 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
its realisation, and it was to come to the lowly in the land,
who could welcome it and wait for it.
Since Jahveh's self-revelation had always a positive
content, it could not be exhausted in the destroying work of
Assyria, or even in bringing the instrument of chastisement
to an end when its work was done. It must manifest itself
in blessedness for those who have through all clung to
faith in their God. Isaiah turned to those who shared his
convictions, and in the two Messianic prophecies of chs. ix.
and xi. told them the nature of the new thing which Jahveh
was about to bring in.41 The teaching in the chapters was
fundamental to Isaiah's conception of the divine nature, for
to him Jahveh's purpose was no mere reaction against the
sin of man. Jahveh, whose glory is the fulness of the whole
earth, and who brings about a new thing wheriever He mani
fests Himself, had brought about a new thing in the prophet
whom He chose. The content of the chapters was also in
close agreement with his conception of the methods of the
divine government. Jahveh, whose purpose was ethical, used
no longer the outward forces of nature to bring His will to
pass, but did His work through men. Assyria was His
instrument for chastisement,, and the divine child was His
means for guiding His own. The institutions of men, and ,
especially of Israel, had a new value, for Jahveh could use
them for His ends. He could appear to Isaiah in the temple ;
and His new state was to be constituted afresh through good
men, who knew the purpose which they gladly served (i. 26 f.).
The ¦ prophet saw that what stood in the way of the
higher thing he hoped for his people was not merely Ahaz
as an individual, or the court which Ahaz had gathered
round him ; it was the whole conception of all for which
Judah stood in the world, which embodied itself in the
attitude and temper of its rulers. The worldly kingdom' with

ISAIAH 181
its worldly aims was perverting Judah, so that the nation
could neither see nor welcome Jahveh's purpose with them and
through them. Therefore the kingdom, with all it represented,
must pass away. The deliverer could not come to Judah, as
Judah was. Only after Judah has learned through sore
discipline, which has humbled men's pride,42 can the great
future dawn. The new scion shall spring only from the
stump of Jesse (xi. 1). The old kingdom must go to make
room for the new thing which Jahveh is bringing to pass.
But, when room has been made for the new thing, a new
thing there shall be. A King, who has been sent by Jahveh,
shall reign in Judah : 43 the new Kingdom which is to be set
up is the emergence of eternity in the sphere of time. The
outward sign of Judah's independence, which was once raised
up to make possible the people's continued existence as a
state, shall now correspond with its inward commission ; and
the opposition which has troubled all the prophets between
the outward and the inward shall cease. What the nation
was meant to be when Jahveh called it into being shall be
represented by its King whom Jahveh has set over it. He,
who has been sent by God, shall be in sympathy with the
true ideals of the nation which God called into being.
There is no mention of the work of the King in safe
guarding the nation. He has no mission to defend the
people or to break the power of the oppressor. Jahveh shall
do that, before He sends the righteous ruler (ix. 3). For this
people which is now His,, disciplined after His chastisement,
Jahveh will provide a place in the world to do His work ;
and out of it He will raise up one who will fulfil the task in
Judah which is Jahveh's task. The King is to be at once a
scion of the stock of Jesse and one on whom God's spirit
rests, for the purified nation can provide one on whom God's
spirit is to rest as thoroughly as it ever did on any of the

1 82 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
heroes of Israel's past. He shall do the work in Judah which
is allotted to Him, while Jahveh will fulfil His part in
guaranteeing a place for a kingdom which serves His will.
The view of the relative functions of the Messianic ruler and
Jahveh is thus in close agreement with Isaiah's first message
to Ahaz. The prophet promised in Jahveh's name the over
throw of the allied enemies, and urged Ahaz to bring himself
and his kingdom into a right attitude to Jahveh, in the
confident expectation that a nation which thus set first the
will of its God could count on Him to give it a sufficient
place in the day of the divine self-manifestation. When
Ahaz failed him, Isaiah declared that the land was Immanuel's,
and therefore, in spite of its imminent chastisement, could not
be utterly overwhelmed, since Jahveh Himself would intervene
to save it. Now he looks beyond the day of the divine self-
manifestation, and declares what is to be its outcome in the
work of Immanuel in the new land Jahveh has given. In
both cases, Messiah is not He who shall smite the nations
with the rod of His mouth : Jahveh will see to that.
In the close correspondence between the early prophecy
of Immanuel and the promises of chs. ix. and xi. I find an
answer to the difficulty which has perplexed Kautzsch and
others — namely, that the Messianic promise seems so isolated
in Isaiah's message and never reappears. It appeared early
iri a form suited to the situation of the king to whom it was
first addressed, and reappears in a fully developed form here.
But, further, the feature common to the prophecies of Im
manuel and the scion from Jesse's stock, which gives Messiah
no part in the victory over the nations, is the explanation, of
the note in chs. ix. and xi. which has been described as life-
weariness. It is said that such an expectation of the direct
divine intervention as that which is embodied in these oracles
dan orily be the expression of the mood of a people which was

ISAIAH 183
weary of strife, which could no longer anticipate for the
Messianic King the power to break the oppressors of Israel,
and which therefore looked away from earth to a divine
Helper. What has been thus taken for life-weariness is really
Isaiah's triumphant confidence in Jahveh's direct government
of His world. Assyria shall fall, not by the hand of man :
Messiah shall not bring in the consummation, for it is Jahveh
by his direct action who gives His people their place.
To understand Isaiah's view of Messiah, we must recognise
that the Old Testament has no clear doctrine by which the
Spirit of Jahveh was distinguished from Jahveh Himself.
" God, when influencing persons, is called the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God is not something less than God, it is God.
And the Spirit of God, i.e. God in a person, remains distinct :
He suffers no confusion or composition with the spirit of
man." 44 That anyone wears divine titles is but the sign
of His nearness to Jahveh and of sharing His counsel.
Jahveh's Spirit rests upon him to equip him for the work to
which he is sent. Thus Jahveh's Spirit clothes itself in Gideon
to deliver Israel ; and so long as he is acting in that capacity,
he is doing Jahveh'B work, and what he does is done by Jahveh
Himself. In like manner the Spirit of Jahveh rests upon
the scion out of the stock of Jesse to make him a true ruler
of the people. That there is one out of the royal stock on
whom Jahveh's Spirit can rest is a proof of how the nation,
and especially the humbled royal house, have learned through
their discipline. But the true government of the people in
the consummation of all things is the work of Jahveh ; so
long as the Messianic King does this, he is doing Jahveh's
work among His people.
The general conception of all the prophets was that for
salvation only one thing was necessary, but this thing was
absolutely necessary — namely, the direct presence of God among

1 84 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
His people. " Isaiah gave a special expression to the general
idea. Jahveh was to manifest Himself in the King Messiah
(xi. 1 ff.) on the side of His nature which was essential to the
national well-being ; and when He fully manifested Himself
as the ruler of the nation, he was to do it through Messiah
(ix. 1 ff). . But to Isaiah the Messianic Kingdom in Israel was
the full Kingdom of God. He did not, as we unconsciously
do in our thought of the Kingdom, conceive of it as having
elements which went beyond earth and time and which could
only be realised "outwith the limitations of the flesh. Isaiah
thought of it as coming to fruition within time and on the
earth. In order that this might be, there was need for a
supreme intervention of Jahveh : the divine Kingdom must be
set up through God's direct action, and could only endure
through God's presence. Where we look beyond time for that
presence of God which brings the fulness of the Kingdom in a
world free from the limitations of earth, Isaiah expected the
Kingdom to be set up through God coming down to the
earth.45 Hence it is to insist on only one side of Isaiah's picture
to say with Wellhausen 46 that here we have " poetry but no
utopia, no world-embracing golden age." Certainly it is true
that the greatness of the divine gift to Judah consists in its
simplicity. The mighty King who, though endowed with
heavenly gifts for his functions, yet springs from Jesse's stock,
is represented within the limits of Isaiah's time. He is
righteous, he makes justice something which even the lowly
can enjoy, he slays the evil-doer with the breath of his mouth :
and all this he does, not to the ends of the earth, but on
My holy mountain — i.e. in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.
The representation seems to contain nothing which was not
within the reach of any king who had ever sat on David's
throne.

ISAIAH 185
But there is one feature of the representation which
shows that the prophet had in view, as the issue of the divine
intervention, something more than a righteous nation, subject
to a divinely appointed king and full of social righteousness.
' The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall he
down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion shall graze
together ; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow
and the bear shall be associates _ . . and the lion shall eat
straw like the ox.' 47 If no more were said than that the
wolf should lie down with the lamb, it might be possible to
understand by it merely that the oppressor and" the oppressed
shall now live in peace. But the reason given for the
peace, that the food of all the creatures shall then be equally
innocent, proves that we are in the presence of a type of
thought which conceives the outcome of the divine interven
tion very differently from the way in which we do.48
It has often been noted that this feature in Isaiah's view
of the future bears a similarity to the creation story (Gen. i.),
where the beasts, before man fell, are said to have lived in an
idyllic condition, because they all lived on vegetable food.
It has, however, been counted sufficient to note the similarity
and to say that the future is to reproduce the blessed past and
to mean the return of the Golden Age. Yet, since we do not
know when Gen. i. was written,49 we have not the right to take
it for granted that Isaiah's picture was based on the other ; and,
even if he did borrow, we need to ask why one special feature,
which implies that there is a , disorder, not merely in man's
life and man's social relatioris but in the whole animate
creation, laid so strong a hold on Isaiah's mind. For that is
what the picture means. When God's Kingdom came to pass
on earth, it was to put right more than a human disorder, it
must redress the order of nature. No strong moralist has
ever failed to realise how hard it is to bring nature within

1 86 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
any scheme of human morality, and Isaiah was less likely to
pass it by because, like all his fellow-countrymen, he lived
closer to nature than we. The desert was at their door, and
in the desert the sirocco has always killed without regard to
moral considerations, and the lion pulls down the shepherd
who is giving his life for the sheep.60
Isaiah's expectation that, when God came to dwell with
men on earth, all the . disorder of nature was to cease, is the
proof of how there had arisen in the mind of one who saw the
world as governed by one supreme will to one sovereign end,
and who looked for the divine intervention in the whole world-
order, the sense that more needed to be set right than the
relations of men to each other. God, who was to make new
conditions for His faithful people, was to make them not
merely by breaking the rod of the oppressor, but by renewing
the earth, the fulness of which was His glory. The prophecy
is the witness of Isaiah's recognition of how much there was
which needed renewal. It . is at the same time the witness
of how he, like Hosea, was looking for a reconciled humanity
which was to dwell on a renewed earth.
But it is also the witness of how the idea of Isaiah is
still the conception of Amos, only purified and raised to a
higher level. The divine intervention which he came to
predict, and which it was his to foresee, was an intervention in
the world-order. It was the breaking in of eternity on the
world of time. And, since the eternal order was an order of
morality, it could be brought about by moral agents, and had
for its final issue no mere destruction, but a new and perfect
order of moral harmony alike in the kingdom of Judah and
in the whole universe, which was in God's hands.

ISAIAH 187

VII.

As a practical measure, and as a policy for the State of
Judah during those troublesome and eventful years of its history,
the attitude urged by Isaiah meant that Judah was to cease from
the idea that it could guarantee its future by struggling for a
place among the world-powers. The leaders of the little
community ought rather to look to it that better order
and justice governed in their internal affairs (i. 26), and that
their worship was made more worthy of the God to whom
it was offered (i. 10-17).61 Then they could look for
ward with quietness to the coming intervention of Jahveh in
the affairs of the world, because Jahveh's intervention would
be for the very ends for which their State and kingdom stood,
and would give them the place they needed to make these
ends valid and significant before the world. The first business
of the king was not to hunt for alliances from without, while
he left the inner life of Judah to become the same in
character as that which was found in the other heathen
kingdoms. For Judah to do that was to sink its distinctive
character — the character which, according to all the prophets,
belonged to the nation, because Jahveh called it and made it
His own people ; the character which, according to Isaiah, gave
it the assurance that Jahveh would not let it perish in the
consummation of all things.
Here the prophet was the true patriot. His view of the
national life was that it possessed something distinctive and
characteristic, since it was in the world to embody Jahveh's
will and to realise Jahveh's rule in Judah. When it became
such, it would become something which would gather the
pride and the love of the whole people, and something which
would also possess endurance.
Isaiah looked for that endurance from a signal act <of

1 88 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
intervention by which their God was to take action on behalf
of the faithful. He expected that, for a people which set
its heart unitedly on these great and real things, its God
would rise up and give them a place in the sight of the sun.
Jahveh was about to assert Himself in the world-order ; and
when He did, He must assert also the place of a people
which was His in that order.
We naturally look in a different direction for the vindi
cation of the great prophet's hopes, for we haVe learned even
more than he of the power of faith. Trust in Jahveh, he
said, and His intervention, when it arrives, can bring you
orily good. Men defined that good as national independence
arid outward security. But when men in Judah had learned
to set their will to do the will of their God and to see the
few things which greatly matter for a great life, they were
sure to hold to it independently of every shock of time and
circumstance. Captivity came to them and the loss of all
outward position ; but captivity could not alter their spiritual
possession. It was something which was independent of
outward circumstances, which could be asserted in any circum
stances, and which remained their inalienable heritage. They
could cling to it as something which was in their very consti
tution and make of mind. If it pleased Jahveh to give
them a very different position in which this was to be
asserted from that which they expected or which their great
prophet may have promised, they could still, in the circum
stances in which it was God's will that they should live, con-,
tinue to assert it. For even Assyria, which robbed them of
their independence,, and Babylon, which robbed them of their
country, could not rob them of the faith which made God
their heritage and His presence their hope. Therefore the
successor of Isaiah, who looked for God's intervention on
behalf of the people soon, was the great figure of Daniel,

ISAIAH 1 89
who in captivity looked for a city which hath foundations,
and put Babylon, its threats and its promises, under his
feet. But here Isaiah, like his predecessors Hosea and Amos,
had broken with national religion, for he made the condition
of continuance something which implied and required no
national forms. He asked for faith from the rulers of Judah.
It was the one essential for true religion, and it was sufficient
for continuance. When the people, as a people through its
accredited representatives, proved itself incapable or unwilling
to exercise faith, Isaiah had broken with empirical Judah:
The future belonged to the men who could exercise faith :
and the new society, to which' continuance- was promised,
must be constituted on that basis. It must be a Church, the
society of the like-minded ; not a Nation, the collection of the
heterogeneous. The meeting between Isaiah and Ahaz is one of the great
events in the Old Testament history ; but it is more, " it
is typical for -the battle of faith, not only with want Of
faith, but also with the actual world."52 The course of
conduct which the prophet recommended might have led
to something which, from the point of view of the politician,
was much worse than the condition which threatened Judah :
it might have resulted in the immediate ruin of the kingdom.
But Isaiah had come to believe that the kingdom, as it
was then constituted and with the aims it represented, was
not worth keeping, and that its disappearance might only
have led faith to see more clearly the things which were
worth keeping, and to hold them with a firmer hand. The
battle of faith with the actual world is not merely to claim
and fight for an outward condition which faith desires or
which it counts necessary in order to be able to do its
appointed work. The battle of faith is often that of accepting
untoward conditions, of not being turned aside by them from

190 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
its true ends, and of proving how even in the most untoward
conditions it can meet the world with a high heart.
We are so impressed with the duty which lies upon the
Church of seeking to change the conditions of the outward
world that we are apt to call a man like Isaiah who saw a
different task a quietist, and to pass away from him as thotigh
he could have nothing to say to us.
Isaiah sought to turn Ahaz to the duty of making his
kingdom an instrument of God's will on the earth, and then
leaving the outward world in God's hands. When his effort
was vain and his protest failed, he did not become a politician
nor did he try to set up a party to overturn the Assyrian
alliance into which Ahaz had brought Judah. True to his
convictions, he accepted the course of events, and taught his
followers that men could live by faith even under conditions
against which they had vehemently protested. His counsel
was that under the condition of vassalage to Assyria men
should do the work which lay to their hand and leave the
ordering of outward events to God who was behind them.
They must not plot to change their outward condition, which
was beyond their power, but give their full attention to that
which was put within their power by their God. In His own
time God would order, what seemed to Him necessary for the
full outcome of their task.
And when the Church has succeeded in altering, in the
outward condition of the world, in its economics, its war,
its social organisation, many things which have greatly
hindered and do still hinder the coming of the Kingdom, there
will always remain, in the unchangeable conditions of this
strange world in which God has been pleased to set mankind,
enough to make the task of faith which Isaiah counselled—
namely, the acceptance of the conditions which men cannot
change and the humble ordering of the lives which by God's

ISAIAH 191
grace men can change — a great and enduring reality. And,
above all, there will remain enough to make us sure that
the consummation is something which God only can give.
For when the world has been so ordered that it gives all
its best, man is still a ¦ great creature : et inquietum cor
nostrum, donee requiescat in Te.

CHAPTER VII.
DEUTERONOMY.
Into the perplexing and much-debated question of the
composition of this book it is not necessary to enter here ;
but one may venture to express the opinion that none of
the solutions which have been offered is entirely satisfactory,
and that the last word on the question has not been spoken.
While this, however, is the case, it remains true that there
is an unmistakable similarity of tone in all- the literary
outcome of the Deuteronomic school, whether that is repre
sented by the legal and hortatory sections of Deuteronomy
itself or by the additions made to the historical books by editors
who revised them in the light of the ideals of the school.
The remarkable unanimity of outlook and aim which reflects
itself in the language suggests that we have to do with a
body of men who have passed under one common influence
and who were able to represent, not the individual opinions
of the few, but the general attitude of religious men in
Israel. The remarkable disappearance of their influence in
the writings of Israel and the rise of what is justly described
as the priestly school not only support this opinion, but
suggest how in the new conditions to which Judah was exposed
at the time of the exile, fresh questions of religion and, duty
emerged and broke up the earlier temporary unanimity. For
a little time, however, Judah gathered itself to express " the
views of divine truth and duty " which prevailed in its midst,
and the result was Deuteronomy.

DEUTERONOMY 193
That a great part of the material which has been
incorporated into the book was old is probable in itself, since
any code of law which is to be accepted by a community
must contain what the community through its past experi
ence has learned to value ; and the fact has been brought
out by the careful studies of Stark, Steuernagel and Puukko,
But, since the old material was placed in a new setting and
is used to embody a new aim, it is legitimate to neglect the
question of the sources from which individual laws came and
to insist on the new light in which the Deiiteronomists placed
even their traditional material.
To my mind, the community, of outlook and aim , extends
over chs. v.-oci., so that I regard these chapters as no mere
hortatory introduction which owes its origin to another hand,
but as an integral part of the book. And, while the
historical introduction in chs. L— iv. has been expanded
(notably in ch. iv.), it has been expanded by a writer who
was so thoroughly possessed by the spirit which governs the
rest of the" book, that positions which appear in these
chapters may at least be, justly appealed to in support of
positions which appear in the body of the book. Chs. xxvii.,
xxix.ff, however, have a very different character, and have
not been used as witnesses to the aims of the Deuter-
onomists.

The reason why a reform which appealed to the whole
people and represented the aims, of all religious men in the
community could be carried through in Jerusalem is found
in the fact that in Judah the alliance, in the sense of
community of ideals, between prophecy and priesthood had
always been closer than it was in Northern Israel. The
revolt against Ahab and Baalism was carried out in the
"3

194 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
North by the prophets, and, so far as we know, received no
support from the priests; but the similar revolt against
Athaliah, who sought the same ends as her father in
Jerusalem, was led by the priests (2 Kings xi.). The priests
of the capital were less under the control of the court.
Jeroboam I. appointed to the priesthood men who were not
of the sons of Levi (1 Kings xii. 31 ff.), and who were there
fore directly dependent on the royal will. While David made
his sons priests, these were associated with Zadok and Abia-
thar (2 Sam. viii. 17 f., xx. 25), who represented an older and
independent tradition. Apparently, too, while abuses existed
in the cult at Jerusalem and throughout Judah, these were not
so profound as those which rende'red the cult of the Northern
kingdom half-heathen. Hence neither Isaiah nor Micah
dwells so long or so severely on the debasing influence of the
national worship as do Amos and Hosea. Hence, too, Isaiah
was able to see his vision of Jahveh under the forms of the
temple worship ; it is no exaggeration to say that Hosea
could never have conceived Jahveh as employing for His
self-revelation any of the forms of worship at a Northern
sanctuary.1 This community of ideals in the prophetic and priestly
circles at Jerusalem has brought it about that the Deuteronomic
reform was the work of all who were interested in the religious
life of the nation, and represented a sincere effort to bring the
great prophetic teaching into contact with the life of the nation
as a whole through the means of its religious institutions. If
the prophets' work had failed to create some forms of national
worship which, however inadequately, could embody their
teaching as to God's nature or to remould the older forms so
as to express these ideals, their work would have passed with
little result. The reformers realised that the great words i of
the prophets could never become the common property { of

DEUTERONOMY 195
the nation till they passed from being words into customs,
which men practise before they understand them, and which
mould their thoughts before these have become conscious.
We all limit our conception of the ideal unduly by thinking
of it only as that to which we aspire, and by forgetting the
appropriated ideals which, having sunk down into our habits,
influence us the more deeply because we do not and can
not trace their influence. " Truly the East is eternally the
mother of religions, for the reason that she has assimilated
as ordinary social functions what the West holds to be only
the duty of officialism or the message of the Church."
Again, the reformers realised that the words of the
prophets were spent in the air, so long as in many villages
throughout the country rites were being practised which in
their fundamental principles contradicted the aims of the
prophets. All the prophets had declared that Jahveh was
about to intervene in the nation's life, and that on this inter
vention must follow a national overthrow. They had declared
that the reason for the overthrow was to be found in the
people's sin, prominent in which were its debased cult and
its ^ unworthy institutions. The reformers, who aimed at
securing the continuance of their people, were compelled,
among the means by which they sought that end, to regulate
the worship, the value of which was proved by the fact that
its abuse had roused Jahveh's anger. Because they knew how
much the sacrificial worship meant for the life of their nation,
they could not leave aside the needs which it satisfied, since
they knew that the sure outcome of. their neglect would
be that the abuses connected with it must continue. The
inarticulate common soul of the people -had no other way in
which it could express itself except through its religious
ritual; for the literature, as the sources from which the
stories in JE were borrowed reveal, needed much editing

196 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
before it could purely serve the faith, and the prophet by his
very nature was an occasional and fugitive voice. No religion,
which has ever, functioned as a religion, has remained as a
theism which accepted and commanded no acts of worship
save good works of a social type. The reformers were seek
ing a means by which the people's sense of their relation to
their God might be worthily expressed, and they found the
test of its worthiness in the ideals as to Jahveh and His
relations to Israel on which the prophets had insisted.2
But, further, the teaching of the prophets directly led
to some reform. They had all believed arid insisted that
Jahveh, the source and vindicator of the eternal moral ideal,
was also the historic God of Israel, who had intervened in
historic acts to create a nation, which must express in all its
life His will. ' You alone,' said Amos, ' have I known of all
the families of the earth' (iii. 2). Hosea taught: 'When
Israel was a child, then I loVed him and called My son out
of Egypt ' (xi. 1). Isaiah insisted that there was a purpose of
Jahveh which Israel must count it. its glory to serve. Jahveh
had come into a relation toward His people which was ex
pressed "through concrete outward acts : the life- and worship
of His nation must in definite outward form correspond with
this reality.
Hence the Deuteronomie religion is no teaching, . of
abstract truths, or rather it is more, for it is coloured through
and through with the sense that He in whose name these
truths are announced stands in a peculiar. historic relation to
the people of Israel. The decalogue, which prescribes the
universal duties of humanity, is introduced by the statement
of the right Jahveh has to prescribe these things to this people
(v. '6)j and has no hesitation about setting the ritual observance
of the sabbath, with its historic associations (Vers. 12-15),
among the universal and eternal laws. The nature festivals,

DEUTERONOMY 197
with the joy at harvest and vintage and firstfruits, are
provided with historic references by which the people are to
remind themselves how the land with all its outcome is
Jahveh's gift (xvi. 1-17). The annual ritual of xxvi. 1-11,
which is unique in Deuteronomy and is prescribed as the act
of every private Israelite, is so framed that thereby the
.offerer owns himself to be part of a nation which holds a
peculiar relation to God.
We are apt to be content to say that such legislation was
necessary, since by no other means could the mass of the people
be permeated by the quiet leaven of its faith, The faith of
the prophets, we think, must come down to colour the little
observances of life. But this hardly does justice to the atti
tude of the men who framed the new code. Neither to the
prophet nor to the priest of ancient Israel did the faith come
down when it took cognizance of these things. Jahveh,
their God, once gave them their land, "their law, their priest
hood, their kingdpm, their prophets. Nothing they did' in
their land, nothing their institutions expressed, could be in
significant any more.
Deuteronomy, therefore, is the effort to remould the
national life and the national institutions in order to. make
these the worthy means by which men might express their
sense of the will and nature of their God — -a will and a
nature which the f ramera of the code have learned to know
better through the prophetic teaching.
Only when one recognises this fact can one understand
the incomplete character of the Deuteronomic legislation.
As it stands, the book does not present a code which covers
the whole field of the people's life, and from which, therefore,
it is possible to determine the nature of that life, either on
its religious or its social side. If we were to take the book
by itself and attempt on the basis of it alone to build up a

198 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
picture of the government or worship of ancient Israel, we
should soon find how great are the gaps in the system.
Thus there is no law concerning the king which can deter
mine how he was appointed or what were the exact functions
he fulfilled. So far as Deuteronomy is concerned, he might
really have no functions to fulfil : the law-book merely says
what he must not be and what he must not do (xvii. 14—20).
Even when it is said that he must act after the rule given by
this law (vers. 18-20), and so an apparently positive definition
is given of his duties, all that is meant by the command is
that he is not to be like the kings of the other nations.
" There are given only the modifications which this institution,
borrowed from D^iirrpa (all the nations) in Israel's neighbour
hood, is to experience, when it is transferred to the people of
Jahveh."3 In the same way, the legislation as to the
sacrifices does not prescribe how the priests are to be found
or how they are to be instituted into their functions ; it takes
it for. granted that there are priests already in existence, and
that they know both their duties and the way in which these
shall be fulfilled. Illustrations of the same character could
be multiplied, but these two, which deal with men and matters
that were of the highest importance to the welfare of the
State, are sufficient to show how everywhere the code is
drafted hy men who are basing their work on a system which
is already in existence and in action.
It is no sufficient explanation of this fact to say that the
book is meant for the people, as over against the public
functionaries, whether civil or religious. The statement is
true, but does not recognise the full facts of the situation.
For , when it is said to the people that their king shall not be
a foreigrier, the command takes it for granted that the people
have some means of making their will known in conriection
with the appointment of the king, and that they know how

DEUTERONOMY 199
to do it. • When the people are bidden bring their causes for
judgment to the judge who shall be in those days (xvii. 8 ff.),
the rule again takes for granted an existing system, according
to which the judges are appointed, If the chief distinction
of Deuteronomy were that it is meant to direct the people,
one might expect that, exactly on the points which closely
concerned their daily life, they would receive direction as to
how they should act. Instead, one is everywhere confronted
by the fact that there is a system which is in force and
which is well known, and that Deuteronomy only interferes
at. certain points in this established system.
Again, the Deuteronomic legislation is singularly sporadic.
It touches, here and there, on questions of ritual and of social
legislation, on matters of marriage, on the royal power, on
conduct in war. On none of these subjects does it present
a full view such as would enable a reader to determine from
the book alone the attitude of old Israel on the questions
involved. And not only are points in connection with a
larger question selected, but there is no apparent system
in the selection of the particular matters on which the book
insists. Some of the details seem to a modern reader trifling
or even irrational. Many of them, running out as they do
into formal precepts, give an air of ritual prescription to the
law in which they occur. They seem on certain occasions
pointless, and at others singularly incapable of being brought
into a system.4 It is only when one recognises that these
are generally the points where the Deuteronomist desired to
lay special emphasis or to alter some previously existing rule
that one understands this phenomenon.
If we can group these together, and see that they show
one definite aim which gives the reason for their having been
selected, we shall both bring better order into them and grasp

200 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
the aim which has dictated apparently heterogeneous and
sporadic acts of legislation. The. recognition of the fact that
they are generally changes dictated by one general aim, and
not a complete legislation, makes it easier to discover the
bent of the men who framed the law, Since they were work-.
ing over a previously existing system with a definite purpose
of amending it, they found it necessary to alter certain
regulations and to emphasise certain others which brought
out their aim, but they were also able to leave untouched a
great deal, which required no amendment and was already
in force. And what they did do will show to a careful
student still more clearly what they aimed at accomplishing
in their new legislation than if they had framed a legislation de
novo which covered the whole field of their nation's activities.
There is, of course, a serious risk of mistake to be recog
nised in such treatment of the book, and the risk is. double.
Construe the legislation of Deuteronomy as essentially a means
of safeguarding the nation against certain, dangers by insist
ing on. certain sides of its worship and its life, and it becomes
largely a protest and a stricter definition. It is a protest against
forms of idolatry and heathen ritual which were threatening
the religious life of the nation through effacing the distinctive
character of the Jahveh?worship. " Not a. few details which
to the modern eye seem trivial or irrational disclose to the
student of Semitic antiquity an energetic protest against the
moral grossness of Canaanite heathenism." But, unfortunately
for our purposes, Canaanite heathenism as it existed then has
passed away. We do not know it, we only build it up
through hints and rituals and analogies from other kindred
faiths; and we therefore run the risk of misunderstanding
the protest, because we know so little of that against which
the protest is made.
Further, if in certain points Deuteronomy seeks to bring

DEUTERONOMY 201
out more clearly sides of the Israelite faith which needed a
stronger, emphasis and to remove certain features of the
popular worship which had proved :a snare, we are again in
the, difficulty that we do not know thoroughly the pre-
deuteronomic worship, and faith. We have to recognise that
just because Deuteronomy did its work, that against which it,
protested has passed away. And we have to face the fact
that we may blunder, since we may, e.g., regard as a new
piece of legislation what ' is more correctly construed as an,
insistence _ on something which was already present but
which needed to be .brought more sharply forward,
We must take the risks, recognising that here as every
where else no conclusions are perfectly sure. And recognising
the limitations of our knowledge, we must, be careful to, deal
in broad lines and along general principles.

II.
Deuteroriomy opens its series of regulations by contrasting
the covenant which it contains with the covenant which was
made with the fathers (v. 3). What it has to declare is a new
thing, the greatness of which consists chiefly in this, that , it is
of such a nature' that it could be briefly and clearly .made
known to the whole people. Jahveh uttered it, speaking face
to face with them as a people. Because it is the utterance
of. Jahveh, its character rests primarily on the character of
the God who utters it. Arid since it is a covenant, its
influence for good or ill on the people is determined by
whether they can remain constant to its primary requirement, :
whole-hearted allegiance to Him,
Hence, through chs. vi.-xi. the book proceeds to develop
these themes in a form which is really a hortatory commentary
on the three first commandments of the decalogue. That there

202 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
is to be no other god in Israel, is at once the content of • the
first commandment and the content of the section (vi. 1-15) ;
the section which follows (vi. 16-25) proceeds to show how
on this primary truth rests the whole future of the nation.
There is to be no intercourse with the inhabitants of the land
into which Jahveh is bringing Israel, and, in order to avoid the
danger which attended all such intercourse, the emblems and
idolatrous customs of these nations are to be utterly destroyed :
on this rests the certainty that Jahveh will deliver over the
nations, in spite of their superior power and their superior
numbers, into the hand of Israel (ch. vii:). When the people
have won their land, they must be careful to remember that
the land is Jahveh's gift, and to avoid the pride of heart and
the following other gods to which forgetfulness might tempt
them (ch. viii.). The choice of Israel by Jahveh did not rest
on their righteousness any more than on their numbers : the
people are His instrument to blot out the wickedness which
has offended Him in the Canaanites. Since they have been
chosen out of God's mercy, they must be heedful to requite
it by their obedience (chs. ix., x.). And all this concludes with
a promise of success and strength, which is based on the
faithfulness of their God (ch. xi.).
What is here developed and emphasised is that the
people have a unique character, which rests on their rela
tion to their God. Jahveh is alone in His power; to
Him belong the heavens and the earth. He is unique in
His character, and He has made this known to Israel, and
to Israel alone. He has a purpose which takes a wider
sweep than all His dealings with His own nation, yet He
has made Israel in order that it may serve His purpose.
Israel, which is His creation and His instrument, must
preserve its peculiar characteristics. Its relation to the
other nations is determined for it by the truth, that to it

DEUTERONOMY 203
alone has Jahveh any direct relation. Its worship must be
determined by the principle, that nothing suggestive of the
worship of other gods may find place in its ritual.
What is thus affirmed in broad, positive, general terms
required to be developed into distinct prescriptions as to
what was permitted and forbidden in the life of the nation.
In particular it implied, because of the condition in which
Judah was then placed, the careful abolition of every rite and
emblem which had any association with the other faiths,
whether the older faiths of Palestine or the religions of
the surrounding peoples. Here is the point of connection
between chs. v.-xi. and xii.— xxvi., between the hortatory
section which develops the positive side of Jahveh's char
acter and relation to His people and the laws which safe
guard these life-giving truths by prescribing in detail what
must be avoided in Israel. The aim is expressed in the
most general terms when it is said that, once the Israelites
are settled in Palestine, they shall not inquire saying, ' How
do these nations serve their gods, that I may do likewise ? '
(xii. 30). This is no rule against idolatry, the worship of
other gods : it is a rule against the transference of heathen
methods of worship to Jahveh. The God of Israel, because
He has His own character, which has been stated in chs. v.-xi.,
cannot be worshipped by rites which have an alien origin,
and which inevitably bring with them the suggestion of the
nature of the god in whose honour they were originally
instituted. The broad general statement is accordingly developed in
great detail. If the general principle be grasped, the sporadic
appearance of the details disappears, since they are seen to
subserve a common aim.
Idolatry is forbidden on pain of death (xiii. 7-12, 13-19);
even though a prophet should recommend it (2-6). Israel

204 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
is further forbidden to. plant an asherah beside Jahveh's altar
(xvi. 21) or to erect a mazzebah (xvi: 22), These emblems,
which were once innocently employed, have proved them
selves mischievous, since they : carry with them something
of the character of the gods to whom they were first, erected.
Religious prostitution is forbidden (xxiii. 18 f.). A eunuch is
.refused admission into the qahal (xxiii. 2), because self-castra
tion was a heathen rite, and a man who was thus mutilated
brought into the worshipping assembly the sign of < his
allegiance to another god. Men shall not wear women's
clothes, nor women those of men (xxii. 5) : the custom was
part of the ritual of certain Eastern faiths- — as, e.g.t that of
the bearded Astarte of Cyprus.5 The Israelite shall, make
no baldness for the dead (xiv. 1) : the practice originally
implied sacrifice to the gods , who governed the under- world.6
All necromancy is forbidden (xviii. 9-20), both because the
custom implies the recognition of another god than Jahveh
(ver. 13)7 and because Jahveh has provided for this need
of His people by His prophets (vers. 14 ff.). The amulets
are purged of their heathen taint and transformed into
phylacteries (vi. 8 f.). .
.. The .insertion of the laws as to clean and unclean animals
(xiv., 3—20) is to be explained from the same rehgious point of
view.8 Every question iri connection with these laws has .
not been determined,9 but the, general: principle is clear
that the animals the use of which was forbidden to the
Hebrews had been or were still holy in other rituals, so that
anyone who employed them in Israel detracted from' the
people's holiness to Jahveh (xiv. 21). It is of course possible
that the habitual abstinence from such food came to create-
an aesthetic feeling of disgust at its .use. Thus the Church
during the mediaeval period forbade the Use of horse-flesh,
because the ritual eating of the horse formed part of the

DEUTERONOMY 205
worship of the god Thor ; and so successfully did the disgust
at the forbidden food plant itself in men's minds that it was
able to survive the reason for its adoption and to create an
instinctive abhorrence for a wholesome and clean food.10 In
the same way the Israelites may have contracted a facial
disgust at pig, which has survived all the religions which
sacrificed the pig. But the basis was religious, and
Deuteronomy was legislating in the direction of keeping
Jahveh's character and worship unique.
Again, in the interests of the purity of the faith, severe
restrictions are laid on the intercourse of Israel with its
heathen neighbours : Israel is forbidden to enter into any
treaty with the Canaanites or to intermarry with them
(vii. 1^4).
The legislation on the former subject runs out into the
impossible command that the Israelites shall exterminate
the' Canaanites (xx. 16-18); but, though it casts the warning
into an archaeological, and therefore an extreme, form, it
recognised and guarded against a contact by which >the
religion had always been infected. Every treaty with a
foreigner in ancient times involved some recognition of
an alien god, and this was especially the case where the
treaty implied the political subordination of one nation to
another. When Ahaz' of Judah met his Assyrian suzerain
at Damascus and brought back the pattern of an altar
which he had seen there (2 Kings xvi. 9-16), his act was
not prompted by mere aesthetic admiration for a new style
of bhurch furniture: it was the recognition of his having
entered into relation to the god of Assyria as well as to
its king.11 Where nation and national god were conceived
as living in a common life, alliance with a foreign nation
implied some recognition of its god. Israel is forbidden to
bring Jahveh into any such relation: there is none with

206 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
whom He, who is supreme and unique, may enter into any
alliance. It must not, however, be supposed that the extreme
foi-m into which the legislation on this subject was cast
implies that the attitude Israel was required to take was a
theoretic ideal based on the past and representing the ideals
of men who were thinking back on old mistakes. In the
form in which we possess them, the laws must have been
framed at a period when at least Northern Israel was
peopled by settlers from the heathen countries of the East,
and when no part of the little country of Judah was free from
the influence of imported foreigners. The danger was the
greater at the time, and the influence of these settlers more
powerful, because the religious customs of the strangers were
practised by men who were supported by the conqueror.
The Israelite is not to suffer himself to fall into the sense
that the political supremacy of the heathen carries with it
their moral and religious dominance. He is to preserve
against them the consciousness that his faith was once that of
the dominant people, and that Palestine is Jahveh's heritage.
That the interest in the question, however, was purely
religious, and that the precept against entering into close
relations with the foreigner was no race-hatred based on
difference of nationality, is proved by the attitude which
the Deuteronomists take to the gerim, or uitlanders. These
settlers of foreign race within the land, who have found
asylum in Israel or are passing traders,12 carry with them
no real peril to the distinctive religion of the country where
they have made their home. So far are they, therefore, from
being molested on the ground of difference of race that they
are commended repeatedly and urgently to the charity of the
people, and in this respect are set on the same level with
the widow and the orphan. And the motive for their mild

DEUTERONOMY 207
treatment is drawn from the religion itself, in which they
can take no part save to benefit from its mildness.13
Again, the rule against intermarriage with the Canaanites
recognises another influence which must have deeply infected
the Jahveh-faith. Rachel, sitting on the teraphim which she
had brought with her from her father's house (Gen. xxxi. 34),
must have been a frequent figure in every Hebrew household
in that period of national intermixture. The influence which
women can and do exercise, even in a religion, perhaps more
especially in a religion which, like the Hebrew faith, was
peculiarly fitted for men, does not need any emphasis. But
here again the interest of the legislators is not in the purity
of the race but in the purity of the faith, for they permit mar
riage with a beautiful captive (xxi. 1 0 ff.) after the girl has
been separated from her heathen customs. It is the solitary
character of Israel, separate from the nations, which they
would safeguard; and they would safeguard it because its
solitary character is the expression of the character of the
God it worships. Israel is Jahveh's bride, to bear His name,
and His only. III.
To attain its end, Deuteronomy insists upon two special
reforms which are often put forward as the leading character
istics of the legislation, but which are really corollaries from
its fundamental principle and the means of making this'
dominate the actual life of the people. These reforms are
leading characteristics in the sense that they were the visible
and tangible results of the legislation, and, as such, they
caught men's eye and came to be represented as though they
were the main matters at which the reformers aimed. We
can only be just to their work when we recognise that the
outward reforms were only means to a greater end.

2b 8 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
The first of these was the nationalisation of the worship;
the second was its centralisation at Jerusalem.
What I mean by the nationalisation of the worship is
that a deliberate effort was made to suppress the local sacri
fices of clan and family,14 and with this end in view it was
determined that private sacrifices • should only be permitted
at the central sanctuary, where they were under more careful
regulation. The historian who relates the introduction of
the Deuteronomic law marks as the outstanding feature of
the passover which was celebrated -by Josiah that it was
celebrated, not by the people in their own homes, but by
the United nation at Jerusalem, and he adds that such a thing
had never before been seen in Israel (2 Kings xxiii. 21—23).
When Deuteronomy represented its nationalised and central
ised cult as being a return to the conditions which prevailed
under Moses, it was fundamentally in the right. The
scattered clans which made up the Israelite invasion were
only bound together by the tie of their religion, and this
religion must have had its centre for their worship.16 But
the conquest, gradual and piecemeal as it had been, made
it necessary that, if the worship was to be practised at all,
it must be practised by the several tribes at local sanctuaries.
We knPw how difficult it was in later times for the men
of Galilee to reach Jerusalem because of the intervening
Samaritans, and can Understand how impossible it must have
been, when the plain of Esdraelon was occupied by a belt
of strong Canaanite cities, for the Northern tribes to keep in
touch with a religious centre in the South. To support this
outcome of the temporary condition of the people came also
the older conception of the clan as a society for all the
purposes of common life, among which worship was reckoned
as the chief,16 The ' change was inevitable and wholesome,
for the religion, in the condition of the people* could not have

DEUTERONOMY 209
continued at all had it not been able and willing to use such
centres as were within its reach. But the tribes, coarsened
by the conquest and scattered among the heathen, were
peculiarly exposed to the danger of borrowing elements from
the worship which was practised around them. The syn
cretism of the pre-prophetic period had its strongest support
and its deepest roots in the local sanctuaries.17
Deuteronomy seeks to gather up these local sacrifices
and rites into a truly national worship. It cuts at the
roots of the family and tribal sacrifices when it forbids the
offering of sacrifice elsewhere than at the central sanctuary
(xii, 13—19, 27). But it does more than merely forbid. It
provides the great festivals, which had their close association
with the spring sowing and the harvest, and which, being
common to all men, brought the people into contact with
their heathen neighbours, with motives taken from the his
tory of Jahveh's dealings with His people. The people,
when they, come together to worship their God, are to come
to a shrine which has associations with their national life
and with that alone ; and they are to worship through forms
which continually impress upon them the unity of their
historic life as a people. Even when the private man comes
to offer his personal recognition of Jahveh's bounty to him,
he does it through a ritual in which he recounts how he
belongs to a nation with a past which is great because it is
full of God's grace (xxvi. 1—11).
It is not without significance that, whenever the re
formers insisted on the great festivals as national affairs in
which the whole people were to take their part, they so
continually added the statement that the widow and the
orphan, the ger and the Levite shall have their share. At
ch. xvi. the males of the community are to appear three
times in the year at Jerusalem for the festivals, but these

2 io RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
others shall have their share in the local rejoicing (xvi. 11, 14).
The ordinary tithe is to be taken to Jerusalem and there
consumed by the household, with the Levite receiving his
portion (xiv. 22-28); but a special tithe for the third year
is ordained (vers. 28 f.), in which not only the Levite but the
widow, the fatherless, and the ger shall receive a portipn. - It
is easy to see that the local celebrations had drifted into
the hands of little close corporations of the tolerably well-
bo-do, who contributed to their expense ; and that there
was growing up a body of people who, through their poverty
and their inability to contribute to the common rejoicing,
were being practically shut out of any share in the national
worship. Amos represented one of these local festivals as
having degenerated into a mere junketing on the part of the
well-to-do, burghers, who cynically ignored the rights of the
poor (ii. 7 f .). The reformers are seeking to emphasise through
the religious rites the human brotherhood of all Israelites.
They would have even those who are unable to contribute
much to such celebrations take part in them. The nation, as
a nation and in all its parts, is to offer its common worship.
And just as the poor and the gerim have their portion in
the common worship, so they have their part in the common
teaching. They shall hear the meaning and have the oppor
tunity to learn the purpose of the rites to which they are
admitted (jsxxi. 10-12).
In aU this, Deuteronomy was seeking to embody one
of the great truths on which prophecy had insisted, how that
which made the bond of the national life was -the people's
common dependence on Jahveh. Its dependence was to find
expression in rites which united the entire nation in their
celebration, and which were also distinctive of the people as
a people. The second practical reform by which Deuteronomy

DEUTERONOMY 211
sought to preserve the peculiar character of Israel's worship
was the centralisation of the cult at Jerusalem. I place
it here because, though it was outwardly the most significant
act of the reformers and the act which made the largest
change in the habits of the worshippers, though it also
brought with it momentous results in the doctrine as well
as in the religious habits of Israel, it was at first a piece of
practical legislation rather than a change which implied any
conviction. It was a means of enforcing their fundamental
principle, but was never regarded as a principle in itself.18
It has sometimes been said, and is often carelessly
repeated, that the insistence on the part of the Deuteronomists
on the unity of God brought with it as its logical consequence
the recognition of the unity of the place of worship — the
one God, it was felt, must have but one sanctuary.19 But
there is no necessary connection between the unity of God
and the unity of the place in which He may be worshipped ;
and, fortunately, the Deuteronomist never says that there is.
How the regulation was regarded, and how relative was the
value set upon it by those who framed it, can be clearly seen
from the fact that the code has admitted in one place what is
apparently an extract from an earlier law, in which more altars
than one are regarded as admissible (xvi. 21). Had the unity
of the place of worship been construed as a principle, it is hard
to understand why such a sentence was allowed to remain.20
And a further indication of the authors' point of view
appears through the wa'y in which relaxations are admitted
in the application of their new rule. If Jerusalem was too
far from the place where the worshipper lived, he was at
liberty to alter the method of his worship (xii. 20 ff).
Evidently the fact that his act of worship could not be
performed at the central sanctuary did not in itself make
his act invalid. Because of the subordinate importance of

2 1 2 RELIGION OF ISRAEL TJNDER THE KINGDOM
the regulation, no penalty is prescribed in the case of a man
who may disobey the law of the central sanctuary, while
the penalties which are to be inflicted on anyone who wor
ships another god than Jahveh are severe and detailed.
The reformers are clearly conscious of the difference between
a principle and a regulation, a law and a priestly ordinance.
The situation became materially different in later Judaism,
as soon as sacrifice was provided with a theory which made
not only the central sanctuary, but the priesthood and ritual
which could orily exist at such a sanctuary, an essential for
worship. In the later Levitical legislation Jahveh and Israel
are far more widely separated than in Deuteronomy ; and
the sanctuary has become a holy place in the sense that
Jahveh has separated it from common places, and has ordained
the means by which alone the people can approach Him
there. In order that worship in any place may be legitimate,
there is need of a complicated ritual and an official priest
hood, since Jahveh's holiness is so construed that for an
ordinary Israelite to approach Him anywhere without elaborate
regulations and the mediating priesthood would have disastrous
results. " On this theory the ritual of the sanctuary is no
artificial system, devised to glorify one holy place above
others, but the necessary scheme of precaution for every local
approach to God. Other sanctuaries are not less holy . . .
they are places where His holiness is not revealed, and there
fore are not and cannot be sanctuaries of Jehovah at all. If
Jehovah were to meet with man in a second sanctuary, the
same consequences of inviolable holiness would assert them
selves, and the new holy place would again require to be
fenced in with equal ritual precautions. In the very nature
of the covenant there is but one altar and one priesthood
through which the God of Israel can be approached." 21
It is a legitimate thing to ask whether the prescription

DEUTERONOMY 2 1 3
of one particular place of worship does not bring with it as
an inevitable consequence the demand for some theory to ex
plain why sacrifices offered elsewhere are invalid : and it is
an interesting question to resolve how the Priestly Code
shows the growth of the theory. But the limits of our field
of study make it impossible to enter fully into either line
of discussion. All that it concerns us here to' notice is
that the theory of sacrifice, which of itself makes the
one sanctuary a necessity because it bases its existence on
principle, is not yet present in Deuteronomy : the worshipper
can come to the altar and lay upon it his gift.22 The regula
tion as to one temple was the practical means by which it
was sought to remove the people's worship from places which
were contaminated with heathen associations and degraded by
foul rites, but it was no more.23 The reformers took this
method of cleansing their worship, because Jahveh demanded
a worship which embodied His character.
Now the fact that the legislation as to the people's
worship gathers round certain great principles, that it seeks
to emphasise certain convictions as to Jahveh's character
and His relation to the people, that it adopts means to safe
guard the faith from the perils which experience had proved
to be very real, deserves attention from another side. It ex
plains, to my mind, how the men who promulgated it were
able, despite the great change it caused in the nation's habits,
to present it with the just sense that it was Mosaic. There
can be no question but that, when they put it into the mouth
of Moses though at a later period than the code of Horeb,
they claimed for it his authority. There can also be no
question but that Israel's religion was profoundly altered
from the date of the Deuteronomic code.
I have already pointed out how the centralisation of the
cult was really no novelty, but represented an older practice

214 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
which had the sanction of belonging to the time of the unity
and youth of the people. It was a return, when circumstances
made a return practicable, to a custom which had all the claims
of antiquity. But this is a formal and outward thing, which
only points to something more fundamental. When one
reads the ritual prescriptions of Ex. xxxiv., which are
earlier than Deuteronomy, one recognises how the weakness
of the early code on one side and its strength on another is
the absence of positive legislation. I mean that it embodies
so little of that which constitutes the essential character of
the God whom the people worship. Sacrifice is to be offered
to Jahveh, and to Him alone. To Him the people owe their
land and their existence as a nation ; to Him, therefore, they
bring their grateful homage, as they would bring their
offerings of homage to their king, and as the heathen bring
their homage to their gods. The occasions of making the
offering are the natural" occasions when they recognise how
much they owe to Him who gives all good gifts. The vintage
feast, the harvest thanksgiving, celebrated at the seasons when
Jahveh has blessed them, are the natural times when their
gratitude demands expression. But the outward forms in
which this gratitude expresses itself have not been exactly
prescribed, and are little different from the forms in which
Canaanite and Moabite acknowledge their dependence upon
their gods. What makes the difference in the worship is found,
not in its outward form, but in the thoughts of him who offers
it. " To a people which ' knows Jahveh,' this unambitious ser
vice, in which the expression of grateful homage to Him runs
through all the simple joys of a placid agricultural life, was
sufficient to form the visible basis of a pure and earnest piety.
But its forms gave no protection against deflection into
heathenism and immorality when Jahveh's spiritual nature
and moral precepts were forgotten. The feasts and sacrifices

DEUTERONOMY 215
still run their accustomed round when Jahveh was practically
confounded with the Baalim and there was no more truth or
mercy or knowledge of God in the land (Hos. iv. I)."24
Now Deuteronomy in all its prescriptions as to the ritual
seeks to safeguard the worship, and thereby the faith which
that worship expresses, by removing from it everything which
has a peculiarly heathen provenance. It is of the nature
of exactly that positive legislation which was wanting in
Ex. xxxiv., etc., and it is this on the ground of an ex
perience of the danger to which the popular worship was
exposed through the want of such legislation. The prophets
have made clear how Jahveh has come to be one among the
heathen deities, and have pointed to the ritual as one of the
most powerful influences in hiding Jahveh's distinctive char
acter. The reformers seek to supply a form of ritual which
shall safeguard the people from this abuse.
All this is capable of being construed as a legitimate
and inevitable development. Clearer definitions in religion,
whether they arise along the line of positive ritual prescrip
tions or along the line of creed definition, are not the arbitrary
outcome of priestly ingenuity : they arise from the danger of
heresy. Men began to define their creed as they began to pre
scribe their ritual, not because they were perversely inclined
to depart from simpler statements or simpler practices, but
because they felt themselves compelled to safeguard the
faith. When one regards the matter from this side, one is able,
I think, to understand why the Deuteronomists could legiti
mately call their legislation with all its changes and new
developments Mosaic, just as the Nicene fathers could call
the creed which they framed Christian and could claim for it
the authority of the apostles. I do not, of course, wish to
express any opinion on the final validity of either the one

216 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
development or the other : all I wish to do is to insist that
both are equally explicable and equally justifiable.

IV.
The basis for the peculiar character of the nation and its
worship is found by the Deuteronomist in a historic act of
Israel's God : to him, as to Hosea, the fundamental thing in
religion is that which God has done. But the God who has
entered into relation to Israel is the ruler of the whole world.
The truth is deliberately and explicitly taught (iv. 35, 39,
vi. 4, vii. 9, x. 17); but it has passed too deeply into the
minds of the writers for its influence to be proved merely by
a few statements in their book. Thus it is the conviction
that God, to whom belongs illimitable power, has deigned to
enter into relations to a little people, and out of -His free
grace has elected it, which forms the foundation of the
people's confidence in their future and governs their attitude
towards their future.25 And it is this conviction which gives
the motive for the $o/3o? ical fieydkr] xaP^ (Matt, xxviii. 8)
which are expected to characterise the people's temper of
mind, as they characterised the disciples after the Resurrection.
Fear and joy are not the two poles round which Israel's mind
is to move : fear and joy are blended together, because the
great deeds which prove Jahveh's power are the deeds which
He has wrought on their behalf (x. 21). The conviction
of the Almighty as Israel's God is the basis for all the
Deuteronomic ' ethics.26
The Deuteronomist, then, sets in the forefront of all that
determines the relation of the people to their God the
historic fact of their choice by Jahveh (iv. 7, vii. 6 f., x. 15,
xiv. 2 ; cf. xxvi. 18 f.). That this, with all it implies, should
be the case is to be a marvel to them (iv. 32 ff.), for Israel is

DEUTERONOMY 217
the least of the nations. The land they hold is God's gift
(xi. 31, etc.), and they are to say, in the annual ritual of the
firstfruits (xxvi. 1-11), that their life, individual and national,
is based on the reality of their God's mercy.
The divine mercy, manifested in the two historic acts of
the Exodus and the conquest, which made them a nation and
gave them a land, is so unchangeable that even the rebellion
of the people could not turn it back (ch. ix.). The
Deuteronomist expresses the unchangeable character of God's
mercy by saying that Jahveh entered into a covenant with
His people. Now the covenant has a double sense in
Deuteronomy, but the sense which concerns us here is that
it expresses how Jahveh has entered into definite and enduring
relations with Israel. The writer speaks of three covenants
which Jahveh made with Israel : the covenant with Abraham
(vi. 10, vii. 8), the covenant at Horeb (v. 2), the covenant at
Moab (v. 3) ; but he also speaks of the covenant as a sort of
abstract thing which stands behind every historic evidence of
it (xvii. 2, xxxi. 16, 20 ; Josh. vii. 11, 15, xxiii. 16 ; Judg. ii.
1, 20; 1 Kings xix. 14; 2 Kings xvii. 15, 35, 38).27 He
thus expresses his sense of how, in the great acts of grace
which emerged on the field of history, was revealed the nature
of Him who therein manifested Himself. There is a saving
purpose in Him who created the nation for His own ends
which gives sureness to Israel's relation to its God. He who
made it a people is its God, with whom men can. from year
to year enter into quiet and glad relation. They have a calm
ground of confidence for their prayers. Their gratitude is
acceptable to Him, and the firstfruits which express their
gratitude come up on His altar. They worship One who is
not a God of caprice, for they know His mind toward them.
Accordingly, Deuteronomy lays no stress on the de
liverance from Egypt by itself and does not refer to it as

2 1 8 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
an isolated fact, in the way Amos and Hosea do. That
initial act is represented as a mere preliminary to the
permanent relation in which Israel stands towards its God.
And, because the, relation is thought of as permanent, the
nation is naturally conceived to. have a continuous life.
The writer identifies the men at Moab immediately before
the entrance into the holy land with the men at Horeb, both
in v. 2 f., where he speaks of the introduction of the law, and
in his historical introduction (i. 6, 19 ff, 26 ff.). He pays,
therefore, no attention to the death of the generation in the
wilderness, but, treating this as a mere episode in the con-.
tinuous life of the people, speaks as though it were the same
men who received the law at Horeb and who listened to
Moses' charge at Moab.28 Tt is a nation now existing, of men
who live under the control and protection of the God who
delivered their fathers. They are identified with the men of
that great past because they have received and are to
perpetuate its tradition and its truth. . And so, when the
writer says at the conclusion of his beautiful and expressive
ritual, ' Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God '
(xxvi. 1 7 f .), he is filled with the sense of how each worshipper
is the member of a nation that lives under the one eternal
covenant. Each act of its organic life in its worship is the
act of men who thus take up and serve themselves heirs to
their past. Above all, each act in which a man in Israel
shows himself conscious of God's mercy to him and of God's
will for him is something in^which he avouches himself anew
the heir of the life that has sustained all his nation's history.
A httle deed of ritual renews the sense of their organic life,
and expresses afresh their historic identity and their corporate
unity. And it expresses this through their sense of serving
the will of Him who is the eternal God.
I think every Christian man knows that sense in the

DEUTERONOMY 219
Holy Communion, and the power of a simple ritual in which
something is done which has only been done by men who
own a common faith. I think every Christian man under
stands the significance of the prayer in the Fourth Gospel :
' Neither pray I for these alone, but for those who shall believe
on Me through their, word.' The Church, in a symbolic act
of its corporate life, feels the centuries vanish in the presence
of something which God has done for men, and serves itself
heir to a life which is not of to-day nor of yesterday, for it
has been in all the generations which have done this in
remembrance, and shall be in all the generations which do it
to the end.
The intensity of the conception of the people as an organism,
the pulse of whose corporate life is a united and conscious
effort to fulfil God's will, appears most clearly in ch. iv.29
There the people are represented as having received their
historic life through an act of God. But the life which
has come from Him has been called into existence to fulfil
His purpose. The people therefore receive directly from the
God who has created them the ten words which express His
will for them. Moses, God's representative among them,
receives order to give the < commandment which issues from
the law men have heard and from the relation to God it im
plies (vers. 1 3 f.). The final source of all their life as a com
munity is the will of their God,30 and the final rule of all
their conduct is His will. Their God, the source of their
national life and the giver of their land, is also the source
and guardian of their law. And even as His first act as the
Creator of their national life was to bring them where they
might hear and accept the ten words of the law and acknow
ledge their obligations to fulfil the law, so the constantly
repeated motive in the book is that the life and success of
the nation in the land of Jahveh's gift are bound up with

220 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
the observance of His law. No one is exempt from this
obligation. The king, who has hitherto been a difficult
element in the national life and a disturbing influence in its
religion, must be a member of the nation which is conscious of
this purpose (xvii. 15), and in his relation to the law he is
but another subject who is definitely bound to its observance
(xvii. 19).31
Now the nation, when it loyally fulfils its side of the
covenant, and when it has thus become the fitting instru
ment for serving Jahveh's purpose in the world, can rely
on Jahveh to fulfil the promise which is implied in His
initial deed on its behalf. He who, after He made it a
nation, gave it a land in which His will might be done,
will guarantee it still the necessary conditions for doing
His work. This is the explanation of the Deuteronomic
rules for war — both of their presence in the book and their
character. They presuppose a nation which is quick to learn
and patient to observe all its God's will. Out of a people
which has taken this attitude comes the army which is its
temporary instrument for a particular purpose. But, when
such preliminary requirements have been fulfilled, Israel can
expect the protection of Him whose will it has prepared itself
to do. For the nations to be at enmity with Israel brings
with it in the event of war a sure overthrow (xx. 4, 13,
xxi. 10, xxiii. 15, xxviii. 7 ; cf. also vi. 19),32
Since the victory is in God's hands and He guarantees
deliverance from their enemies, the Deuteronomic regulations
as to war in ch. xx. and ch. xxiii. are not so much regulations
as to the right method of conducting warlike operations as
they are the means of retaining Jahveh in the midst of a
camp to which He then makes victory sure (cf. i. 42). ¦ When
the warriors are met together, and before the officers have
done anything to order the array, the priest is to make

DEUTERONOMY 221
proclamation as to the certainty of Jahveh's support. The
camp must then be purged of all who have insufficient faith
in the divine support, and who are therefore unfit instruments
for the war. After this all who are newly married or who
have made a recent purchase of oliveyard or vineyard must
be sent nome. Either their minds are too greatly possessed
by worldly affairs, or they have other commissions from God
to execute : in either case, they too are not thought capable
of doing this work for God's service in Israel. Then, and
only then, when the warriors are made such as Jahveh will
use for His ends, because they absolutely rely on His help,
can the officers proceed to their subordinate business of
discipline (xx. 1-9). When the men are in camp, they must
carefully remove from their tents everything which is and
everyone who is ritually unclean (xxiii. 10-15). That the
motive which underlies this is not hygienic, as we are apt
to think, is proved no less by the fact that the man who
has been troubled by nocturnal emissions is put outside the
camp till he has been ritually purged, than by the definite
statement that through retaining any ritual uncleanness the
warriors may offend the eyes of Jahveh, who walketh in their
camp. The purpose of it all is to keep Him whose, presence
guarantees their instant victory.
Further, the war itself must be conducted on methods and
for aims which are approved by Jahveh. While they are
actually engaged in war, they shall not cut down the fruit-
bearing trees, God's gifts to His creatures (xx. 1 9 f.). After
their victory has been won, they shall employ it in such
fashion as to serve the interests of the faith. They may
keep the booty, including the women and children, of all
cities which are distant from them (xx. 10-15), but, when
the cities are Canaanite cities and their continued existence
would form a peril to the religion, they must put them

222 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
under the ban (xx. 16—18). For it was Jahveh's intention
to root out these cities utterly (i. 28-30, ii. 12, 24, iii. 6,
21 f., iv. 38, vii. 1-4, .16-24, viii. 20, ix. 1-5, xi. 2,3-25,
xii. 30, xviii. 12, xix. 1, xx. 16—18, xxxi. 3-6). To suffer
them to continue would be to sin against Jahveh (xx. 18).
The victory which Jahveh gives must be employed for
Jahveh's ends.
Everything here is regarded, not from the point of view
of. practical warfare, but from the point of view of religious
dogma.33 Behind the legislation lies the theologumenon :
' The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to
deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee'
(xxiii. 15). Jahveh uses Israel as His instrument to do His
work ; and all for which Israel need provide is to make
itself a fitting instrument for this work. The warriors, their
camp, their methods of war, their uses of victory must be
such as satisfy Jahveh's claims ; thereafter He will give
them victory.34
What we have in such a theory — for it is a religious theory
— is the construction which was put upon the teaching of Isaiah,
especially when that teaching had, as its historic sequel, the
amazing „ deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib. The
Deuteronomists, in their own way and with their own mis
understanding of its central conviction, were seeking to express
Isaiah's doctrine of how the first business of the nation was
to obey Jahveh's will and leave Him to secure the place and
the conditions in which that will was to be done. No doubt
the Deuteronomists were a little ready, as in truth we are all
a little ready, to define the conditions which they counted
necessary for the full discharge of their divinely appointed
duty, and to take it for granted that what they believed to be
thus necessary must equally appear necessary to the Almighty.
We all claim pur necessary conditions, as ' though we knew

DEUTERONOMY 223
all the purpose of God and the only means for its adequate
fulfilment. It needed the defeat under Josiah at Megiddo
and the exile to teach Israel, and especially the Deuterono
mists, that men have not to dictate to their God the con
ditions of life which they count necessary, but to accept
those which He Himself lays down for them and serve
Him there.
But, when one has recognised all such difficulties, and
when one further acknowledges how grievously the reformers
failed to grasp the essential thought of Isaiah, there remains
the great conception of a nation which is filled throughout
with the sense that it has its own character to preserve
and its own work to fulfil, and which is more interested
in these things than in asserting its place in the world.
The latter concern it leaves to the unseen Providence who
governs all our outward fate ; the former it turns to con
sider with its whole heart. And,, apart from any view we
may have of the intervention of Providence in this world
for the preservation of the men who seek to fulfil His will,
we do know that those are most likely to find the conditions
practicable and tolerable who realise that they have a mission
to fulfil in any conditions and a duty to do whatever their
circumstances may be. Perhaps the world has seen more
than enough of institutions which are so eager about suitable
means for doing their work that they forget the work itself
which it is theirs to fulfil in any conditions and by any means.
But the certainty and completeness of the divine
protection, in which Jahveh fulfils His covenant with His
people, rest on the willingness of Israel to fulfil its side. The
covenant is mutual, and Israel must perform what its God re
quires. One part of the obligation has been already dwelt on
— namely, how it implies the recognition of Jahveh alone and
the safeguarding of the cult from all recognition of other gods.

224 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
But this is not the major part of what Jahveh requires. His
nature has been revealed in His great act of love to His
people : He is One who loveth justice and dealeth justly.
The recognition of Him as their God must include justice
in men's relations to one another, and above all mercy.
I say above all mercy towards their fellow-Israelites,
because it is here that Deuteronomy shows itself to have
imbibed the teaching of Hosea, as supplementary to that of
Amos. As thoroughly as Amos, the book recognises the
revealed will of God as the norm of all the people's conduct
and the test of its obedience. There is but one rule, the will
of God. But the sense of Jahveh as prescribing His law
from without and as coming from without to test the people's
obedience is softened at every point. His will is rather
the mainspring of the people's life. Men in Israel cannot
recognise what they are without knowing what He has done
for them. The thought of their common life is indissolubly
united with the remembrance of His work and His will.
They are regarded as free and able to do all He requires ;
but what He requires is always insisted on as their good, and
so the requirement loses its harshness .as a demand and is
conceived of as a guide and support. Where they fail, they
may hope in His compassion, for their experience in the
desert has proved how the broken threads of the national life
can be re-knit on their repentance. All these are elements
taken over from Hosea and powerfully used as motives for
making the nation realise itself as set in the world to fulfil an
end which expresses itself in the social life and its forms.
Further, the cult is recognised as the means for quickening
that dependence on Jahveh and that gratitude to Him for His
benefits which are the most potent means for purifying their
social life. But it is being already recognised as not so much
an end in itself.

DEUTERONOMY 225
The Deuteronomic legislation as to sacrifice was sure to
result in a diminution of its amount and in a lessening of its
importance. When the law of the one sanctuary was
enforced, it inevitably brought with it that the local rites and
festivals which had hitherto bulked so largely in the life of
the people, and which so greatly represented their religious
life, were either brought to an end or took on a new non-
religious character. When the harvest festivals, instead of
being celebrated in connection with the returning seasons
and at the local centres, were celebrated at Jerusalem
and supplied with new motives, the local celebrations came
to have an altered meaning and specially lost their religious
reference. One cannot doubt that the Israelites continued
to have harvest festivals and to make merry at their sheep-
shearings — no legislation has ever altered or will ever alter
the natural inclinations of men in the turn of a hand. Only
the people took part in these celebrations without the re
ligious practices which had once attached themselves to them.
It is frequently said that, when the reformers made this
change, they made a severance, even an unhappy severance,
between the secular and the religious life of the nation.
Perhaps the men who say these things forget or have never
known how little of religion there is apt to be in junket
ings to which a holy character is imputed by the practice
of little perfunctory rites, the very meaning of which has
been long forgotten. Apart, however, from the fact that the
reformers were glad to see these things go because of their
connection' with the Baal rites, one may venture to say they
were content to see such services diminished in number.
For to them these were not the real means through which
Jahveh was honoured ; and their existence had inevitably
tended to make Israel think they were.
But more suggestive than any thing . else of the relative
15

226 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
position the reformers ascribed to the rituahstic practices
which they retained or commanded and the social righteous
ness which they also regarded as the will of Jahveh is the fact
that they so frequently base the observance of the ritual on
motives taken from humane considerations. Deuteronomy,
e.g., orders the one-day rest in seven, and insists on it, not
as something based on Jahveh's action at creation, but as
based on Israel's own experience of an unbroken week of
toil (v. 12—15). It is a precarious inference to conclude
that the story of creation was unknown to the writer, and
that he was therefore unable to use the motive taken from
Jahveh's rest on the seventh day. Even if he had known
the story, it is doubtful whether he would have used it,
The fact that Deuteronomy uses the one motive and the
Priestly Code uses the other shows the different attitude
of the two codes. The cult to Deuteronomy has an ulti
mate end in the quickening of devotion to God and in so
making a nation which is eager to do His will. To see
the end for which the cult is there is of more importance
to the authors than merely to prescribe it as an arbitrary
order from Jahveh.35
When men offer their thanksgiving to Jahveh for an
abundant harvest or a plentiful vintage (xii. 12, 18, xvi.
11, 14), it is as important to share the fruits with the poor
as to present them before Jahveh. In the ritual concerning
the firstfruits nothing is said about the amount which iB to
be laid on the altar, but the amount to be given to the poor
is stated to be the tithe (xxvi. 2, 12). That is the conception.
of the prophets as to religion. Jahveh does not claim much
for Himself except a grateful and obedient heart, and accepts
the offerings as the evidence of that gratitude. He regards.
as a true act of piety the fulfilment of the claims which a
fellow-Israelite urges on the compassion of the worshipper.36

DEUTERONOMY 227
Where anything enters that may imperil the faith,
the punishments are severe and unhesitating. No ties of
nationality (xiii. 12-18), no bond of blood (6-11), shall
prevent the people from inflicting the last penalty on any
one who would turn them from Jahveh. But, where the
men are thought of as seeking together to serve their God's
will, they are also conceived as forming one household.
There breathes through the book a tone of singular
tenderness and respect for those who are fellow-Israelites ; and,
while this attitude is claimed in a positive command, it is
also taken for granted as natural. A man is thought of as
needing to harden, his heart if he has no compassion on his
needy neighbour ; his first instinct is to have and to exercise
compassion. So native to men in Israel is God's will for
them. In all this Deuteronomy was seeking to fulfil the work
of the prophets. The prophets had brought into constant
prominence how the divine grace to Israel involved certain
demands and how these demands were for social righteous
ness, rather than for more frequent offerings. They had urged
a conversion of the people, but had left vague what the con
verted people were to do. To help forward a complete reforma
tion, the reformers sought to state in definite and easily
grasped laws what exactly constituted the content of Jahveh's
claims. Hence the Deuteronomists set the general statement
of the decalogue in the foreground, as the foundation and
the norm for all other legislation. In chs. v.-xi. they
developed and emphasised the truths of the divine spirituality
and of the intimate relation between Jahveh and Israel
which were contained in the first three commandments. In
chs. xii.-xxvi. they sought to modify the legislation which
already governed Israel's Mfe, in order to safeguard these
truths, and in order to develop the laws as to men's bearing

228 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
to each other, which were contained in the later rules of
the decalogue. They were carrying on the work of the
prophets in thus applying great principles, which they
believed to form the foundation of a true reformation, but
which seemed too vague and distant from actual life to be
easily grasped by the nation whose good they sought. The
law they thus emphasised was not meant as an opposition
but a supplement and application of the work pf the
prophets. The laws as to the cult were meant to safeguard
the uniqueness of the character of Jahveh, in whose name
the prophets spoke. The laws as to social conduct were the
development of principles on which the prophets had insisted
as having their foundation in the divine will.

But Deuteronomy shows itself also under the influence of
the prophets in several attempts at social legislation which
represented a conservative reaction and an effort to preserve
conditions which were inevitably passing away. We have
seen already how the prophets represent the element in
Israelite society which clung to the old, because it stood for
a moral order, and, instead of always seeking to reach a new
moral basis for the new conditions, hankered after a condi
tion which could not return.37
It is impossible to enter into this question in full detail,
but it is necessary to show its influence. When Deuteronomy,
e.g., forbids the removal of a neighbour's landmark (xix. 14),
it is seeking to maintain the old communal life with its
basis in the perpetual possession of the land by one family.
Now that life, with all it implied, was doomed. Even if
there had been no conquests by the foreigner to sweep
away the native owners of land, the rise of trade in the

DEUTERONOMY 229
towns would have made such a regulation futile. When
some men are eager to buy, and the owners as eager to sell,
no law will prevent land from changing hands. Then the
commune must give place to the state.
The most interesting and instructive illustration, however,
is to be found in the law against usury (xxiii. 20 f.). In the
old communal life of Israel, when the country , was self-
centred and its trade was of the meagrest, borrowing was
only resorted to in case of real need. A villager might find
himself through God's visitation in temporary necessity, or
might need an advance of money to give a dowry to his
daughter or to meet the expenses of his father's funeral.38
In such circumstances, a loan was the means by which he
was enabled to fulfil his obligations as a citizen. To advance
a needy man money was, for a wealthier fellow-citizen in the
little commune, an act of brotherhood, an acknowledgment
of a common relation to each other and to God : to exact
usury in those circumstances put the act outside of such
considerations. From this point of view Deuteronomy regards
all lending of money ; and from this point of view one sees
not only the delicacy, but the full meaning, of the command
that the creditor shall not go into the debtor's house to take
a pledge (xxiv. 10—13). His loan is meant to maintain the
other's self-respect ; and the very way in which he makes
the required advance shall not hurt his brother -man's
self-respect.39 But it is obvious that, as soon as the communal life was
broken up, the old relation of debtor and creditor could not
endure, and indeed ought not to endure. So soon as men
wanted money on loan, not in order to enable them to fulfil their
duties to the community but in order to make more money
with it, the situation as between debtor and creditor was put
outside the old relations. The men who borrowed money

230 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
for such purposes, and were able to borrow it without interest
because the law forbade usury, were simply enabled by
their religion to exploit the generosity of their neighbours.
The inevitable result was that the law became a dead letter,
for, so soon as there were men who were willing to give
interest in the hope of making more, and other men who had
money to lend, there were all the materials present for
explaining away the law.40
' The Deuteronomists failed to see that the old conditions
had wholly passed away and that the new condition which
had come to light demanded a fresh casting back on prin
ciples which were to be applied in the new condition instead
of a reinforcement of rules which were equitable only in the
old state of affairs. The legislators did not show themselves
alive to the full breadth and difficulty of the situation.
They were in a position when Israel needed, because of the
change in its outward and inward situation, a legislation
which faced all the facts, and so made possible a morality
which could guide men in view of them. Deuteronomy was
content to enforce rules which were a guide in conditions
that were rapidly vanishing, and to cling to forms of morality
which could no longer contain and support the enlarging life
of the nation.
The strength of Deuteronomy does not lie here, but in
its recognition of that which gave weight to the older customs
and dignity to the earlier conditions. The reformers recogn
nised and emphasised how a nation, which was made up of
self-seeking men who owned no authority and felt no
community of life with their fellows, was not a nation but
a congeries of atoms. They held by the old because it
represented a life that recognised and had found a moral
basis. And even in clinging to the forms of that old life,
and so imperilling the real growth of the State, they warned

DEUTERONOMY 231
men that they lost much when they lost the sense of a
nation which had a common aim and with a common aim
ultimate moral sanctions.
What preserved the Deuteronomic legislation from be
coming a mere conservative reaction was that it recognised
the unity of the nation in its traditions of God's grace,
in its common worship of Him who was still gracious, and
in the mutual duties which sprang out of these. There
was a body of men in Israel who represented no more than
a conservative reaction, the Rechabites. So far as we can see,
these men held by the old because it was old, and consequently
repudiated the new civilisation which was growing up in
Palestine. For a little time they were in alliance with the
prophets, who partly represented such a reaction; but the
two, who had formed an accidental alliance for a single
purpose in Ahab's time, soon parted company. The
Rechabites had no definite positive principle which could
build up a new habit of devotion and morality. And so,
with the legislation of Deuteronomy, we practically hear
no more of the Rechabites.41 They vanished from Israel's
religion, as men must do who represent no more than the
past when a movement which can preserve the best of the
past for the uses of the future, and is not therefore afraid
of the future, takes possession of the life of a nation-
So far as the question between it and the Rechabites was
concerned, Deuteronomy, because of the positive elements in
its thought of God and of men's relations to each other
through their common relation to God, held the future.

VI.
It does not fall within the scope of a series of lectures
which seeks to deal with the religious development of the

232 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Hebrews under the kingdom to offer a thorough criticism
of the work of the Deuteronomists. To understand adequately
the movement they originated — and only on a clear under
standing can a thorough criticism be based — a student must
see its results for good and for evil, and must seek to
recognise all it called forth, both in the men who continued
it and in those who reacted against it. Even to begin such
a task, it would be necessary to determine, and to give
reasons for so determining, the attitude Jeremiah took to
the Deuteronomic school. As is well known, opinions differ
on the question whether the first great prophet, who arose
after Deuteronomy, continued or reacted against its influence.
Then, if it could be proved, as I believe it can, that Jeremiah's
life-work is best understood as the effort to insist upon
principles which were and are essential to true religion, but
which the reformers had neglected, it would be necessary
to trace, in Jeremiah the reaction against, in Ezekiel the
continuation of, their work.
Yet, while it is true that only the later period makes
clear the inevitable outcome of the principles on which the
reformers worked, and thereby helps us to see the principles
themselves, and that a criticism which cannot take full
account of the development runs the risk of being premature,
it is equally true that the work of the three preceding
prophets supplies a criterion for judging the law-book, and
that the law-book must be tested by whether it succeeded
in giving due weight to the truths concerning what constituted
true religion which the inspired leaders of Israel had seen
and declared. And, since there can be no question as to
Jeremiah being the next in the great line of prophetic
inspiration, it is equally true that, only when we seek to
measure how far Deuteronomy represents Amos, Hosea and
Isaiah, can we hope to find the means of deciding Jeremiah's

DEUTERONOMY 233
attitude to the law. There is the greater reason for submitting
Deuteronomy to such a test, because it was the amount of
the prophetic teaching which its authors had made their
own, and the fearless way in which they had removed
practices abhorrent to the prophets, that made their work
a reform at all and lent it its indubitable power. Their
merits were very great, and their influence lasting — it is,
for example, singularly suggestive to notice how frequently
the Lord quoted from Deuteronomy. Their merits and their
influence sprang from the prophetic teaching, which they
had first assimilated and were seeking to bring within the
reach of common men in Israel. If the prophets had not
preceded them, they would never have had the insight to
see their nation's need or faith enough to seek to satisfy
its need. It must, however, be added that they failed to grasp
the commanding thought of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah ; and,
because they so failed, they only perpetuated in a subtler
form the conflict of principles and ferment of irreconcilable
convictions, which had called for the appearance of the
prophets and had made their work a necessity for purifying
the religion of Israel. Because this is the case, it is not
unjust to borrow a sentence from the late Dr. Davidson's
lectures to his class and say that Deuteronomy and Pharisaism
were born into the world together.
The fundamental error of the Deuteronomists, the irpmrov
yfrevSo'; running through and tainting all their work, was
that they saw nothing higher than a national religion. Amos
had seen Jahveh as holding a relation to man as man, and
had conceived the relation of Jahveh to Israel and to the
prophet in Israel as the culmination of an initial and funda
mental relation. He had declared that Jahveh must intervene
to manifest the basis of the world-order, and that the first

234 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
result of the day of the Lord should be to sweep away all
the national life of Israel which had failed to fulfil its allotted
function. In the consummation, men, no longer Israelites
but men, should repent and find their place with Jahveh on
that simple condition. Hosea had seen how religion de
manded self -surrender, no more and no less, and had predicted
the disappearance of every profaned form in the nation's
life, because no one of them revealed such self-surrender,
when Jahveh arose to make manifest how simple and how
searching was His requirement. In the consummation
nothing was needed except the love of God with the answering
love of man. Isaiah had given up empirical Judah, and
proclaimed how Jahveh was laying in Zion a new foundation,
the communion of the souls who trusted in Him for every
thing. The men who had faith, and only they, had endurance
and all the promise of the future. All the prophets had
agreed in the prediction that Jahveh was about to intervene
in order to create a new order, or to reveal the old order —
to them it was the same, because Jahveh's was the eternal
order. They had defined the relation of men to the new
order when it came with varying degrees of clearness ; but
all had agreed that, before it came, the national life must
pass away, and that after it came, the national life need not
be restored. Now the Deuteronomists, when they sought
to reconstitute religion in Israel at the warning of the
prophets, worked with the nation as their basis, not the
faithful. In some form or other -they made the people of
Israel, as it was, an essential, because they founded everything
upon it.
Hence Jahveh's intervention in the world has no meaning
for them, save as a threat or a warning to hasten their
work. The conception of the divine intervention, which
runs through all the prophetic thought, stood for the truth

DEUTERONOMY 235
that the world was one in a common divine purpose. Jahveh
came to the world, because it was His. He could not fail
to be concerned with it all. But the only form in which
that great thought appears in Deuteronomy is that the God
of Judah is also the God of the whole earth. Jahveh, the
God whom Israel has known and to whom it owes everything,
is conceived as the universal God. The Deuteronomists are
stout "monotheists ; after their day no other doctrine on the
nature of God will ever lay real hold on the higher religious
thinkers of Israel. But they are inclined to think with
humble and glad satisfaction that the God of their nation
is also the God who controls and guides all things, and so
thinking, they are inclined to carry up into the government
of the universe the regulations of Judah. Certainly all these
regulations need to be purified and safeguarded, but it is
sufficient to purify and safeguard them. What men have
done in Judah has a certain a priori right, after being duly
purified, to be made of the essence of religion.' The prophets
would have altered the initial statement, and with the change
have brought in a different emphasis and atmosphere. To
them the God of the world was the God of Judah. Therefore
religious men may not require, dare not require, anything
more in Judah than what God requires of man. They must
widen their faith to recognise that God can have a relation to
all men, and must widen their forms of religion into some
thing which can hold mankind. They may not venture to
demand anything except what all men are required to offer,
a true and living morality, a surrendered heart and faith.
Deuteronomy is as sure as any prophet that Jahveh is alone,
and construes His power as greatly as ever a prophet could :
but it always returns to construe His power as demanding
from men an obedience to the regulations Judah is prepared
to obey.

236 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
Accordingly, the Deuteronomists took over some of the
rites of the purely national worship, such as the passover and
the tithes. They were careful' to purge all the rites they
took over from every element which brought into them an
association with heathenism. They were diligent to prescribe
where the rites should be performed and after what forms
they should be observed. They provided some with motives
taken from the history of Jahveh's dealings with His people,
and restricted all to Jahveh alone, insisting that they should
be carried out at His altar and on His holy days. But,
however the rites were safeguarded and purified, they had
their final justification in the fact that they were forms of
Israel's worship, and had their real roots in- thoughts of Jahveh
and His relation to human life which were wholly alien to
the prophetic thought. They were allowed to continue in a
purified form, because they were already there. The weak
ness of the position is seen most clearly in the rules as to
war (described on p. 220). It is impossible to conceive any
of the prophets either formulating or tolerating customs
which embodied so external a method of , retaining JahVeh
within the camp. Prophecy had made the ark of Jahveh
unnecessary by breaking with an external guarantee of His
presence. The importance assigned to a casual and natural
pollution proves how the reformers either were only able, or
were content, to sprinkle with holy water customs and rites
which were deeply embedded in the habits of the people, but
which had no point of essential connection with the prophetic
religion and can have no place in a universal faith. It is
true that Deuteronomy shows very few cases of the kind;
but, when once the door was opened, many similar practices
slipped in. A great mass of ancient ceremonial and formal
ritual began forthwith to find its way back. Rites which had
been practised at the early shrines, and were still dear to the

DEUTERONOMY 237
hearts of the worshippers, quietly returned. They were all
altered more or less. It was forbidden to celebrate them at
any other than the one shrine, or with other than the one
intention. They were stripped of their grosser forms. All
of them had a connection with the nation's past, and were
dear to men who had long practised them. They could still,
it was thought, be used, with slight modifications, with fresh
interpretations, and above all with adequate safeguards, in
the reformed worship of Israel. One cannot but recognise
that the prophets would have regarded them all from a
different standpoint. These rites, they would have said, have
no vital connection with human life, as God desires man's
life to be. They have no real roots in the conception of the
relation between God and man, which all the prophets had
exulted to enjoy and to reveal.
Only when the influence of Deuteronomy with this bent
arising from its fundamental failure to grasp the essence of
the prophetic thought is thus recognised can it be understood
why the code, despite its real effort to purify the popular
worship after prophetic ideals, was immediately followed by
the great development of ritual prescription. Deuteronomy,
through its interpretation of what is allowable and necessary
in worship, stimulated the movement, which is represented
by Ezekiel and the authors of the Priestly Code.
Even the break which the reformers made with the
nature-festivals as nature-festivals, and their effort to supply
motives drawn from the historic past of their- nation and
Jahveh's grace to it, tended in the same direction. The
reason, as the justification, for the step was that thereby the
festivals were separated from the association with Baal-worship
and from the customs which ascribed the land and its gifts to
Baal. Without doubt, the harvest and sheep-shearing must
have been celebrated in a sufficiently lewd way. Yet the

238 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
thought these rites dimly expressed was no mean thought.
The God who openeth His hand and satisfieth the desire of
every living thing, to whom the young lions cry when they
suffer hunger, is a great God. That the need of the world is
its first prayer — a prayer which does not go unheard — is a
wide thought. The Deuteronomists had no real hospitality
for such thoughts. Once, it is true, they showed that some
thing akin had touched them. They prescribed in xxvi. 1-11
a »wholly new act of ritual, and connected it with the first-
fruits. They added that every man in Israel, who brought
his thanksgiving, should own himself akin to Abraham, > a
wandering stranger, whom Jahveh blessed with the knowledge
of Him who had given him everything. The little ritual has
a wide and human reference. So it could not stand against
the trend of the rest of the code. It never struck deep roots
in Israel's life, and at a later date, when the influence of the
code had made itself felt, was quietly dropped. So far as I
know, it was the only part of the Law which was ever
dropped. To the Deuteronomists all were Israel who were of
Israel, They sought to build up a reformed and new
society in Judah. They sought nobly to' provide it with
a divine sanction and a mutual bond, so that men might
know themselves interdependent and all - dependent on
their supreme Creator and Lawgiver. But the new founda
tion they laid in Zion consisted of the men who were
circumcised, and who were willing to submit to the outward
regulations of a faith their leaders had laboured so patiently
to define. In taking that position, it has been already
pointed out how they ran counter to the fundamental
contention of the prophets whom they were endeavouring
to obey. The prophets were leading men out to the position
of a world-faith, because they required no more than what

DEUTERONOMY 239
they knew, through God's presence with them, to be essential
to true religion. Deuteronomy went back to a national
faith, for the basis of their future was laid in Israel, as
it was. It only remains to suggest how the basis, on which the
new order was founded in Jerusalem, explains the attitude
towards it of the great prophet, who had watched the work
of the reformers. Before the results involved in their
position had revealed themselves in their full development,
Jeremiah, with the sure insight of prophetic inspiration,
went straight to their false foundation. He too said that
Jahveh was about to intervene in the world and to lay bare
what was of eternal validity. When He came, He would
enter into a new covenant with His people. The new
society, which was to enshrine the relation of God to man
and to build up the new order in obedience to its God,
was to consist of the men who were circumcised in heart.
The basis for the divine and enduring life was not the
accident of having been born into Judaism: it was the
birth into faith and a new obedience. All the order men
were painfully rebuilding in Jerusalem was worthless, nay,
it was noxious, because it was hiding from their eyes what
was of true significance. When Jahveh intervened, He must
sweep it away, because it rested on an accident, which had
no value to the Ruler of the world.
Jeremiah was more strongly opposed to the State than
any of his predecessors, because the work of the Deuterono
mists had lodged the State in religion and had made it seem
essential to the existence of religion. It is not, therefore,
to be wondered at that the responsible men in the capital,
who had accepted the ideals of Deuteronomy, felt instinctively,
even before the prophet had clearly formulated his expecta
tion of the future, that he was disloyal to the existing

240 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
commonwealth. Men's instincts are often amazingly shrewd.
He was radically disloyal to the fundamental principles on
which the men of his time were painfully hoping to build
up their new state. They believed that, through giving it
the sanctions of religion, they were making it such as must
guarantee the protection of their God. He, on the other
hand, declared that all their action was serving to distort
the nature of true religion and of real morality. When
Jahveh intervened to manifest the reality, He must show
how little worth preserving was their state. Jeremiah's
attitude was much more radical than the mere declaration
that nationality was indifferent in religion, for Deuteronomy,
by making the nation the basis of religion, had made such
an attitude on the part of a prophet impossible. Since men
were pronouncing the nation an essential, he was compelled
to say that they were making it a hindrance, and that the
first act of Jahveh must be to remove the hindrance.
Jeremiah, therefore, sent his well-known letter to the
captives in Babylon, bidding them cease to fret over the
question of their exile and a possible return. Instead,
they were to seek the peace of the country to which in
God's providence they had been carried captive. The letter
was no mere epistle of sympathetic interest, bidding men
make the best of untoward circumstances and seek to
accommodate themselves with a second-best. It was a
rehgious pronouncement, a real part of the prophet's
Gospel ; and the men who preserved it among the prophetic
writings showed their insight into its profound importance.
Jerusalem, the holy land, the temple, the sacrifices were
not essential to men who had faith in God ; and the
spoiled and captive faithful had the opportunity in Babylon
to show how unessential they were by quietly doing without
them all. They were to live under the alien sky, to which

DEUTERONOMY 241
in God's providence they had been consigned, and to prove
that no loss of the outward forms of their nationality could
make unreal the divine care and the divine guidance.
They still kept everything which was essential to their
religious life, since they had faith.
Men said at Jerusalem, ' The Temple of the Lord, the
Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these.'
They said it with a new fervour, since the Deuteronomists
had purified the Temple and had glorified all its services.
To all who favoured the reform and accepted it as final,
the Temple was sure to seem an essential, not because it
was the one place of lawful sacrifice and they could not
conceive religion without sacrifice, but because it was the
centre of the national worship, and they had made the basis
of the religion they so greatly served the circumcised nation.
Jeremiah counts no form of the national life an esseritial;
he has no care for the Temple; like Hosea, he has no
reference to the Messianic King. He is compelled to attack
every form of the national life, because it has been made
a means for distorting the essence of true religion. He
founds his new society on what is universal, the circumcised
heart.

16

NOTES.

CHAPTER I.
1 Dr. Buchanan Gray, Studies in Hebrew Proper Names, pp. 259 f.
2 Cf. inter multos alios, Ed. Meyer, Die Israelites, und ihre
Nachbarstamme ; H. Winckler, Geschichte Israels; M. Gemoll,
Grundsteine zur Geschichte Israels ; B. Stade, Geschichte Israels.
3 Cf., e.g., J. Skinner, Critical International Commentary on
Genesis; H. Gunkel, Genesis in the Handkommentar, and more
recently and in more popular form, Die Urgeschichte und die
Patriarchen; Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten
Orients. 4 This unity which marks the stories in their present form is the
characteristic on which Dr. Orr in his Problem of the Old Testament
has laid a deserved emphasis.
6 This is the characteristic of the editors which Gunkel singles
out as their prime virtue, Komm. zu Genesis, pp. lviiif. He has
modified this position in Die Urgeschichte etc., pp. , 7 f ., but does
not seem to go far enough in recognising the plastic power of the
editors in selecting and remoulding their material. When he says,
e.g., very truly, " Der Grundgedanke der ihnen vorschwebte war :
darzustellen wie Israel, aus den Volkern erwahlt, aus Agypten erlost,
mit dem Jahvegesetz beschenkt, und dann nach Kanaan gefuhrt
worden ist : dies Volk ist Jahves Eigentum, Statte seines Gesetzes,
durch ihn Kanaans Herr," he has admitted as to outward form what
must carry conviction as to inward principles. For this implies
in the writers some recognition of what distinguished Israel from the
nations, of the power of Jahveh who could redeem from Egypt, of
what constituted the Jahveh law; and these inward principles must
not only have governed the choice of the tales but have modified the
form in which they were presented.

244 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM

CHAPTER H.
1 Contrast how Daniel and the Hebrew children are held up for
commendation because of their loyalty to the outward observances of
their religion.
2 Stade, Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments, p. 52 ; cf. also
Stade in ZATW vi. 303.
3 It deserves note that the two places where the writer is most
careful to mark that Jahveh is more than the numen loci, Bethel and
Sinai, are the two places which were most apt to suggest the opposite
conception. In particular Bethel was the centre of a cult which had
a local limitation.
4 This may seem too strongly stated in view of the way in which J
introduces the story of Abraham by the series of stories of the Creation
of man, the Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel. Here Jahveh is
viewed as having a relation to man as man, and to the world as a
whole. But, on the other hand, it is remarkable how in these stories
there is a different spirit from that which characterises J's other tales.
The conception of God is anthropomorphic to a degree which is re
markable in any circumstances, but which is peculiarly remarkable when
it is contrasted with the conception which pervades the series'of stories,
combined in the Joseph-cycle. The pessimism also which has often
been noted in the stories, the sense, not of man's fugitive life, but of
his degradation and debasement, is very different from the sense of
how man does his work in happy reliance on the divine help which
pervades the stories of the lives of the patriarchs. One is forced to the
conclusion that, while these traditions have been taken over, because
they were not inconsistent with the general tendency of the rest of the
work, they do not represent the deeper thoughts of the editors ; and
one can only conclude that these editors had not turned their own
minds to the relation of Jahveh to the universe, since they were able
to accept traditions which otherwise were so singularly divergent from
their own point of view.
5 Compare and contrast Gressmann, Der Ursprung der Israelitisch-
jiidischen Eschatologie, pp. 118 ff.
6 Compare the discussion, from a very different point of view, in
B. D. Eerdmans, Alttestamentliche Studien, ii. 29 ff.
7 If it should be objected that this need mean no more than that
Jahveh dwells at Sinai, but promises to come from His abode to

NOTES 245
meet His worshipper, it needs to be remembered that at Sinai He is
carefully represented as having come down.
8 ' Retain,' because the use of the word 3"in, sword, for a metal
tool points to an earlier time at which the law was promulgated, a
time before the people were settled in Canaan and had possessed
themselves of chisel and hammer.
9 When the patriarch promises to pay tithe at this place, it is
not because this was the only place where it was lawful for him to
pay tithe, it is because his return will prove that Jahveh has preserved
him during his journey. For such a signal mercy a peculiar acknow
ledgment was due. The fact that the payment of Jacob's tithe at
Bethel is made, not habitual, but the special recognition of a special
grace, militates in my opinion against the idea that the story was meant
to supply the foundation for the payment of regular tithes at Bethel.
One does not base a regular custom on the fact that an ancestor
practised this on one occasion and for a special reason. Besides, there
is no ground for believing that the custom of the tithe was peculiar
to Bethel : Amos iv. 4 f . speaks of it as though it were a common
feature of the cult at Bethel and at Gilgal.
10 It confirms this view to notice that, while E mentions the naVD
and their use, he is silent as to the D^ICN. Evidently these latter
emblems were felt by him to have a more purely heathen reference
than the D3XD.
11 It is only with this representation of the early religion that we
are here concerned. That there were other elements in Israel's
religion at this period which laid a stronger emphasis on sacrifice is
more than probable.
12 When Dr. Skinner (Comm. on Genesis, p. 1) says that after
all an altar is of no use except for sacrifice, and that therefore J here
recognises the worth of sacrifice, the retort is just against the position
of Luther (Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, pp. 140 ff.),
who holds that J polemises against altars and the whole sacrificial
cult ; but the remark fails to do so much justice to the attitude of J
as is implied in Dr. Skinner's later statement, on p. 246 : " It is, however,
a singular fact that in J there is no record of actual sacrifice by the
patriarchs on such altars.''
13 The position taken in the Joseph-episode is the more convincing
as to the attitude taken by* its editor because it is evident that these
stories have been more freely handled than, e.g., the stories which
had. gathered round the names of Jacob and Moses. Dealing more

246 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
freely with his material, he has been able to show his own attitude
more clearly.
14 The difference in this respect between the two accounts agrees
with the view which makes E a native of Northern Israel. The
Northern kingdom practised a cult which was less severely puritanic
than that which prevailed in the South, and Hosea shows the sense
on the part of a prophet of the danger which the use of semi-heathen
emblems brought of assimilating the character of Jahveh to that of
the Baalim.
16 Dr. Skinner (Comm. on Genesis, p. 157) finds a propitiatory
sacrifice in Noah's offering after he has left the ark. But the guilt
of that generation was regarded as atoned for in its death : Noah alone
had found grace in the eyes of Jahveh, vi. 8, and having discovered
how great this grace was, he acknowledges it in his offering.
It is significant that Noah's sacrifice is one of the elements in
which the Biblical account of the flood agrees with the Babylonian
story. In that story there was a special reason for the sacrifice being
propitiatory, because the majority of the gods were regarded as
angry over any man having escaped from the flood. They had
intended that the deluge. should destroy humanity; and the one man
who has escaped from the calamity through the help of Ea offers a
sacrifice to propitiate the anger of the other gods. The Hebrew
account makes Noah's escape due to the divine mercy, and so trans
forms the meaning of the sacrifice. Hence it is not safe to press, as
Dr. Skinner (ad loc.) does, viii. 21, and insist on the sweet-smelling
smoke as implying propitiation.
It is equally significant as to where the Hebrew account lays the
emphasis that the feature of the narrative which has found no parallel
in the Babylonian stories is that which describes Jahveh as setting
His bow in the clouds. The new race takes its point of departure
from the divine mercy, and that mercy prompted the deliverance of
Noah and gave him a new pledge of its continuance after he had
escaped. Here, as in so much else in JE, the divine mercy is un-
compelled. 16 1 say ' construed ' because the rite appears to have had
originally a very different meaning, and its present position seems
deliberately chosen.
17 In his view of this chapter, Gunkel greatly underestimates how
the incident is related by E not of anyone in general, but of Abraham,
the founder of the faith, and how it is told of a son on whom the

NOTES 247
fortunes of this faith hung. Skinner also seems to lay too slight
weight on this fact, which becomes more significant when one reads
E's account consecutively. Recognising how E begins his whole story
with Abraham and yet how little he has to say about Abraham, one
realises that he must have had special reason for saying just this
thing, that Jahveh who brought Abraham to Palestine refused to
accept the sacrifice of his son.
Gunkel's further view, that the incident was once connected with
a shrine at Jeru'el (which he reads instead of Moriah) in the vicinity
of Tekoa in S. Judah, and was meant to bring out how child-sacrifice
was not permitted there, seems peculiarly weak. One cannot but ask
why E, the Northern historian, took so much interest in the customs
of a shrine in the Judsean desert; and one asks this with greater
wonder, when it is remembered that we have no other ground for
believing that there ever was a shrine at this particular place.
See Procksch's discussion in Das nord hebraische Sagenbuch,]). 342.
18 Because the sacrifice of Isaac is a nrro, an offering of thanks
giving, I cannot agree with those who set the chapter late. There
is no other period where it is appropriate. Stade (Biblische Theologie
des ATs., p. 244) refers it to the time of Manasseh. But we know
from Mic. vi. 7 that men, probably at the period of Manasseh,
brought such an offering as a propitiation. There is no hint of pro
pitiation or of the need for it in Gen. xxii. The attitude as to
sacrifice is so different that it is difficult to conceive what could
induce a later commentator to insert a chapter which did not meet '
the situation.
Further, when Stade, referring to Von Gall (Alt Israelitische
Kultstdtten, pp. 112 ff.), states that the chapter was directed against
the practice of child-sacrifice which characterised the cult of a high
place at Sichem, he makes the date of Manasseh's reign for the
chapter much more difficult. In the period of Manasseh the high
place at Sichem must have been swept away with the fall of Northern
Israel, and Von Gall's airy dismissal of this difficulty does not in the
least meet it. If Mic. vi. 7 is to be trusted, the place of such
sacrifices in Manasseh's reign was Jerusalem; and to represent it as
forbidden at Sichem, which had then sunk into insignificance, seems a
fantastic form of amusement, rather than practical legislation.
When one retains the early date of Gen. xxii., one understands
better Jeremiah's attitude on the question of child-sacrifice. He
refers to it several times, e.g. xix. 4f., only to say quietly that

248 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
this never came into Jahveh's mind. It is as though he said to his
compatriots that the question needs no discussion, for Israel is long
past the position in which it was even conceivable that Jahveh could
require such a thing.
19 There may, of course, be present the other thought, that through
the gift to Jahveh, especially of the firstfruits, men consecrate the
whole, and so make of what is retained for their own' use a permitted
and pure employment. (Cf. Stade, Biblische Theologie des ATs.,
p. 158.) But the substitution of the ram shows that this is at least
not the dominant idea of the passage.
ft20 Note the contempt with which the teraphim is treated in the
story of Jacob's flight from Laban. It can be stolen, and stolen by
a woman ; and after she has stolen it, she sits upon it to conceal it,
though she is in a condition of impurity which debarred any
worshipper from access to holy things.. Evidently the teraphim is
not construed as presenting any danger to the faith.
21 See The Living Forces of the Gospel, translated by Rev. N.
Buchanan. 22 Gunkel, Komm. on Genesis, p. L. See this whole passage, one
of the finest pieces of work Gunkel has contributed on Genesis.
23 Cf. also 1 Sam. xxiv. 20 ; 2 Sam. iii. 39.
24 Read PJH ?X instead of pij £>«.
25 Gressmann has drawn attention to some of these features in the
account of JE, and speaking of them as though they were confined
to Genesis, has insisted that they demand an explanation. I wholly
agree with him that the naivete of the stories is conscious and in a
high degree artistic, and that this characteristic implies a singular
degree of culture in the nation which could give them their present
shape. But when he suggests (Der Ursprung, p. 129, note) that
the stories were probably borrowed from the Canaanites and prove
how the Canaanites were already so far advanced in culture that a
touch of rationalism was beginning to steal over their earlier and
cruder faith, I can see no support for the view. The character is not
confined to the Genesis-stories, but is apparent also in Exodus ; within
Genesis it is most apparent in the Joseph-cycle. Now these are the
stories which are most remote from the influence of Canaan and most
closely concerned with the peculiar history of Israel. That is to say,
this characteristic lies in the main stream of the religious thought of
Israel. And when one notes further how it is the presence of these
elements in Israel's early faith which makes the rise and influence of

NOTES 249
Amos and Hosea explicable, one is forced to conclude that this was
the peculiarly Israelite possession. What these facts seem to point
to is that Israel was accurate when it said that the faith had a
history long before the people came to Canaan, a history long enough
to impress upon it its own peculiar character. These things make it
necessary to recognise the tradition as to the life-work of Moses.
26 See the discussion on Deuteronomy, p. 212, infra.
27 Cf. C. G. Montefiore, Hibbert Lecture*, pp. 64 ff. ; W. R. Smith,
Prophets of Israel2, pp. 100 ff. ; Wellhausen, Israelitische und Judische
Geschichte®, pp. 28 f. ; A. Loisy, Religion of Israel, pp. 127 f.
28 Professor Oman has drawn my attention to an interesting
parallel in Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth
Century. Jusserand holds that the English habit of wandering to
sanctuaries acted like the modern press in creating a general national
sentiment, and so fostered a free national life very early. When one
thinks thus of the sanctuaries and festivals in early Israel, one finds
an additional reason why Amos made his appearance at Bethel, and
why the royal official took fright at hearing this dangerous voice.
See my view of the incident, p. 62, infra.
CHAPTER III.
1 How powerful one can learn from the beautiful picture of
Hannah in 1 Sam. chs. i. f.
2 Winckler has a wise word of caution against too great readiness
to conclude, from the existence of similar rites or similar laws in
different nations, that one of these must have borrowed from
the other. It is generally concluded, he says, that " if one finds
two similar phenomena, the one must spring from the other. The
carefully drilled philologist and the painstaking student never take
into account that the vast majority of these significant phenomena
(Grossen) have been lost to our knowledge. If two men look alike,
they must always be father and son ; the possibility that they are
brothers is not reckoned with. All eggs are believed to spring
one from the other" ("Arabisch Semitisch Orientalisch," in MY AG,
1901, p. 189).
3 On the meaning of the word KH33 see Stade, Biblische Theologie
des ATs., p. 132; and Konig, Geschichte der ATlichen Religion,
p. 107. W. R. Smith, Prophets2, p. 390, points out how it is likely
that this was a loan-word, which dated from the time of the Hebrew

250 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
settlement in Canaan ; but he emphasises how, if this is the case,
the etymology pf the word becomes comparatively unimportant.
It may be added that, since according to 1 Sam. ix. 9 K'OJ came
in to take the place of the older Hebrew word nxi as the title
of the prophet, this makes it likely that the word, not the person
with his peculiar functions whom the word described, was taken
from the Canaanites. If it was only the word which was taken
over from the foreigners, its etymology is comparatively negligible.
When the later Hebrew writers, therefore, are able to speak of Moses
as a prophet (Hos. xii. 14; cf. Deut. xxxiv. 10), and to describe
Abraham as a prophet, the statement may be an anachronism, so
far as the word is concerned. But in so describing the great founders
of their faith, they do but say that the essential thing which lay
in prophetism was latent in the religion from the beginning.
4 Smend, ATliche Religionsgeschichte, p. 81, states that Samuel
had nothing to do with the Q'tP3J, and that the idea of a connection
between him and them is only found in the later account of
1 Sam. xix. 18 f. But this ignores how, as soon as Samuel has
anointed Saul, he predicts not only that Saul will meet a company
of prophets, but that he will prophesy among them (x. 5f.). After
that, he is to do as his hand finds ; but the connection between
the national uprising and the D'KUJ is plain.
5 From this point of view one must interpret the attitude of the
Book of Judges. This speaks of the national heroes, who fought
for Israel's independence, but who were by no means edifying
examples of Israel's religion, as endowed with the Spirit of Jahveh :
even so questionable a leader as Samson was a nazirite. The Spirit
of Jahveh is regarded as resting on each leader of the national cause
in order to equip him for this specific task, which was the first
necessity for Israel and for the faith.
6 Stade, Biblische Theologie des ATs., p. 67, also held that the
D'fcOna were not derived from Canaan'. But, when he based this
view largely on the fact that Amos regarded the prophet as a gift
from Jahveh, he was on surer ground than when he used the
presence of the Rechabites to prove the originality of the Hebrew
prophecy. The alliance between the prophets and the Rechabites
was too brief, and too much connected with one situation in
N. Israel, to permit us to drafr general conclusions as to their
similarity of spirit.
7 So the story of Samuel's childhood, 1 Sam. iii., represents the

NOTES 251
first revelation to the boy as a revelation concerning the future of Eli's
house. The account must be fairly early, for it connects revelation
with dreams obtained by sleeping within the temple (vers. 1-3), yet it
regards prophecy as involving some knowledge of Jahveh's action in
the future, and, it may be added, connects this prediction as to
the future with a judgment on the present.
8 The exact quotation of Tatian's words makes the matter even
more clear : iw o\<ov to fiovap^tKov, Oratio ad Graecos, xxix. 7.
He is describing his conversion.
9 If nj?3 be retained in the text, compare for its use in the
sense of 'at the right time' or 'at the due season' (R.V.), Ps. civ. 27.
The true reading, however, may be injJS, i.e. at its time. For
7JJS !"ID read ?VSi\ HD. This praise of Israel, as needing no en
chantments to learn the will of its God, occurs alongside the praise
of the people, as having 'the shout of a king ' (ver. 21). The combination
makes it likely that the passage dates from the early kingdom, when
the nation was confident in its new sense of national power under
its head, and in its quickened sense of being guided by those to
whom God's will was made known. Contrast how in 1 Sam. iii. 1
it is said that the. word of the Lord was rare in the days which
preceded the kingdom. The whole incident of Balaam is singular
and noteworthy, especially when it is recognised that the story dates
from the period of the early kingdom. (Gressmann, Die alteste
Geschichtsschreibung, ad loc, though he construes the shout of
a king in a very different sense, allows that the story is of this
early date.) For here all heathen necromancy is mocked at : the great
sorcerer who has been brought at large expense to curse Israel cannot I
see what his she-ass can see ; is only kept from destruction by the
'superior knowledge of his ass ; and, when he does speak, can say no
more than that which Jahveh allows him to say.
10 It is instructive to notice that necromancy never struck firm roots
in Israel, but existed only in corners, so long as prophecy, with its
emphasis on the spirit of man as the medium of revelation, remained
a living force in the nation. On the other hand, the Babylonian
Talmud is tainted with this belief, and the Book of Tobit shows not
only a strongly developed angelology, but a belief in magic among the
Jews. Men still believed in the need and worth of learning their
God's will, but they had ceased to believe that the sure means through
which the divine will could be learned was the soul of a man.

252 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
11 Stade, Bibiische Theologie des ATs., p. 129, noted the fact, but
offered no explanation.
12 Cf- A. B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy, p. 47. What
ground Gressmann has for stating (Die alteste Geschichtsschreibwng
und Prophetie Israels, p. 29) that " the account makes a sharp distinc
tion between seers and prophets " I wholly fail to understand.
13 I think Dibelius in Die Lade Jahves has proved that the ark
was regarded as the throne of the invisible Jahveh. On this throne
the God of Israel takes His seat, especially when the people are
engaged in war. Thus in its early form . it goes out at the head of
the marching host (Num. x. 35), and Jahveh is invoked to rise, up for
His people against His enemies. As soon as Israel makes good its
footing in the land, it appears at Shiloh (1 Sam. iii. 3 ; cf. i. 3), where
the conquerors have asserted themselves. When the people try to
make head against the Philistines who are threatening to possess them
selves of the holy land, they turn back to that which had guaranteed
their earliest victories (iv. 3). Its appearance in the camp seemed
to make sure the presence of the conquering Jahveh among the
Israelites ; the Philistines are afraid of the God whose coming has
put new courage into their enemies (iv. 7). The ark, therefore, is a
specifically Israelite symbol, and is particularly the emblem of Jahveh
of the hosts of Israel.
For another, view of the ark than that of Jahveh's throne, see
Kautzsch, Bibiische Theologie des AT., pp. 53 f. Kautzsch seems
to me to lay too much stress on the meaning of aron as a chest : after
all, we can only gather what sense a nation attaches to a word from
the way in which it uses the word ; and, if' this word is only used in
the sense of throne, it is a precarious inference to say that it ought to
have been used in some other sense because of its etymology and
original meaning.
14 Kraetzschmar, Die Bundesvorstellung im AT, p. 215, says that
"the ark, at the period when the time of rest for Israel arrived,
disappeared from its position and vanished, never to reappear in the
Temple." This fails to recognise the most significant point in- the
record, that the ark disappeared as a motive force long before the
time of rest, indeed at the very period when Israel was at death-grips
for its national existence with the Philistines. When it did reappear,
it reappeared with all its influence gone, because the religion had
found a new means of self-expression, which made the ark a mere
accessory. Even David, who brought it into Jerusalem, thinks its

NOTES /s 3

presence with him in his flight from Absalom superfluous, and sends
it back to Jerusalem (2 Sam. xv. 23-29). The priests who bear it are
of more value to him in the capital as spies than the ark would be, if
it were retained in his camp.
15 It deserves notice in passing that this is said, not of Elijah, but
of Eiisha : and Eiisha is recognised even in the Books of Kings as
occupying a lower plane than his predecessor.
16 The writer of 1 Sam. xviii. 10 states that, when an evil spirit
from Jahveh came upon Saul, the king prophesied. The natural
conclusion is that the behaviour which attended the prophetic
excitement was a matter of such indifference to him that he had no
difficulty about ascribing it to an evil spirit from Jahveh.
17 When the writer adds that Elijah girded himself and ran before
Ahab's chariot, it is noteworthy that this is separated from the
revelation, and so accentuates the more the serenity of the prophet's
conduct when he acted as prophet. The act which was possible
under the excitement of the moment is added as a mere accessory.
The prophet's authority has been acknowledged and his message
delivered before this act which accompanied its assertion.
18 Cf. Israelitische und Judische Geschichte6, p. 112.
Cf. also Cornill, Der Israelitische Prophetismus2, p. 135. The
latest and extreme statement of this opinion is in C. F. Kent, The
Sermons, etc., of Israel's Prophets, p. 10, who says : " It is noteworthy
that a prophet never appeared in Israel's history unless there was
some great national, social or moral need ; and conversely, there was
never a great crisis which did not call forth a prophet or prophetess."
19 See the discussion, from a different point of view, in Giesebrecht,
Grrundlinien fiir die Berufsbegabung der AT. Propheten in Greifs-
walder Studien, pp. 49 f.
20 Ahijah's prophecy has undergone a later revision, but this does
not alter the evident truth that some of the prophets supported
Jeroboam (1 Kings xi. 26 ff.).
21 J. Morl'ey, Diderot, vol. ii. p. 145.
22 As Cheyne, Introduction to Isaiah, 1893, p. 5, expressed the
situation : " the old morality based on the tribal and family relations
was going out, and the new morality based on a sense of national
Unity was not yet fully come.''
23 Frequently the prophets appear as the purely conservative force
in Israel, and defend old tribal customs which had no merit except
that of being old. Thus Samuel appears as one who blames Saul

254 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
for not having fulfilled the ban on Agag (1 Sam. xv. 32 f.), and
supports a custom against which the higher feeling of the nation was
already revolting. Gad denounces the wrath of Jahveh on David for
having taken a census and ignored in this fashion the ancient
separate existence of the tribes (2 Sam. xxiv. 11). (Note how unwilling
Joab, who is no devotee, is to undertake the task.) A great part of
the support which Elijah received in his first opposition to Ahab arose
from his having defended the right of the Israelite burgher to his
ancestral land (1 Kings xxi.). But that the prophetic movement was
no mere conservative opposition to the inevitable change which came
over Israel when it passed from being a collection of tribes into a
united monarchy, is shown by the way in which it continued to
regard the kingdom, the outward evidence and means of this change,
as a gift from Jahveh, and by the fact that it formulated its Messianic
ideal in the shape of a King who shall rule in the spirit of Jahveh.
Only those can regard the prophets as the opponents of all progress who
construe progress as, an increase of wealth and organisation, without
regard for the ethical basis on which this progress is founded and the
ends for which the wealth and centralised power are being used.
That the prophets, in their insistence on the need for an ethical basis
in the new condition of society, idealised the past and clung to some
parts of the nation's past without sufficient warrant is only what may
be expected from men in their position. But the wider elements in
the movement prove that they clung to the past, not merely as
something which they understood and loved, but as something which
contained an ideal of the commonweal which was profoundly en
dangered by the rise of a lawless governing class.
24 In connection with this incident, it is necessary to recognise
that David is not condemned for the injury he has done to Bathsheba,
or for the immorality, in the narrower modern usage of that word,
which he has practised. The point of the parable of the ewe lamb
was that David had taken possession of the wife, who was the
property, of Uriah. This brings the incident into closer relation to
Elijah's assault on Ahab for having outraged the rights of Naboth.
25 The recognition of how prophecy from the beginning stood for
a God, who was national, but whose purpose of righteousness the nation
was in some measure called to serve, makes it easier to understand
why prophecy flourished so greatly and sprang up so early in the
Northern kingdom. There the elements which roused the prophet
were present in their .greatest force. The tribal customs which gave a

NOTES 255
moral basis to the community were strongest in the kingdom which
had rebelled against Solomon because he had interfered with them in
the interests of the central power. The new disintegrating forces,
which broke .up this older morality but which failed to supply a law
on the new basis of a widened morality, were also present in their
strongest influence. The kingdom of Ephraim was, further, exposed
to foreign influences in a way in which and to a degree to which the
little inland state of Judah was not. The king of Israel must enter
into some relation to the States by which he was closely environed.
When the kingdom came into the hands of a powerful dynasty, such
as the house of Omri, all these elements and new forces came to their
full strength. Accordingly, it is under Ahab, the ablest ruler of that
house, that prophecy came to its earliest and clearest self-expression.
20 Cf., for the significance of Elijah, Wellhausen, Israelitische
und Judische Geschichte6, p. 76.
27 ' Even ' : because it was less usual for women to bear names
which were compounds of Jahveh.
28 It would further appear that his religious attitude led to a
recrudescence of Baal- worship among the people, for it is difficult to
believe that the mere maintenance of a royal chapel for Baal could
have produced so wide an apostasy as sprang up at this time. The
prophets of Baal whom Jezebel supported account for the number of
prophets with whom Elijah had to deal at Carmel ; but it needs more
than the personal entourage of the queen to account for the large
number of Baal- worshippers whom Jehu butchered. It is not necessary
to lay any stress on Elijah's statement that the nation had gone over
wholly to Baal, because a man of strong and individual convictions is
always apt to think that men who do not advance to positions which
he sees to be involved in certain principles have abjured those
principles themselves.
29 Inter alios, A. B. Davidson, The Called of God, pp. 176 ff.,
takes the sound heard through the silence as the theophany to Elijah,
and interprets this revelation in its contrast with the storm, earth
quake, and fire as a condemnation of the methods followed by the
prophet on Carmel. But the fire, earthquake, and storm are the
theophany ; and, when the voice interprets this to the prophet who
is to make it the burden of his message to the people, it interprets
what Elijah has witnessed as the continuation, not the reversal, of
Elijah's method. There are to be three great catastrophes, correspond
ing with the fire, earthquake, and storm, which are to befall the nation.

2 5 6 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
What is meant by saying that Jahveh was not in the earthquake,
etc., is that Jahveh was not embodied in these, but was the spiritual
force behind them. Cf. Skinner, " Books of Kings " in the Century
Bible, pp. 239 ff., and p. 74, infra.
30 It is possible, as Guthe, Geschichte Israels, holds, that the
detailed orders as to anointing Eiisha, Jehu and Hazael did not
originally stand in this place, for it was in connection with such
statements that later writers were apt to make explicit in the light of
later events what had originally been left vague. But, though a
detailed statement may well have taken the place of a vaguer threat,
the addition need not have altered the character of the statement.
And, if the details are to be ascribed to a later hand, the fact that
such a writer saw in the several calamities which afterwards befell
the land the outcome of what had been revealed to Elijah, but goes
to prove that the original formed a threat.
31 This reason for locating Elijah's vision at Horeb seems more
likely than the reason which Gressmann, Der Ursprung etc., p. 99, offers
— namely, that in Elijah's view Jahveh was only to be found at Horeb.
Elijah had already received revelations in Palestine, and, in the
authority which came from having received them, had confronted
Ahab. In Die alteste Geschichtsschreibwng, pp. 269 f., Gressmann
seems to have resiled from the idea that Jahveh in Elijah's view was
only to be found at Horeb. He now acknowledges that the time
of Moses was the ideal for Israel, and that Elijah, in going to Horeb,
was consciously seeking to revive the ideas of Moses.
32 Wellhausen6, ad loc. cit.
CHAPTER IV.
1 The saying with which his prophecy opens (i. 2) is of much too
general a character, especially in the mouth of a prophet,, and of
much too isolated a character in the prophecy, to carry the conclusion
that he who uttered it must have been a native of Judah. Amos
called himself a herdman and a dresser of sycomore trees (vii. 14), and
the place where he acted as a herdman is given as Tekoa (i. 1). Now
" Tekoa is much too cold for sycomores to have ever grown there "
(Driver, Joel and Amos, p. 208), and "the sycomore was formerly
very plentiful, especially in the low lands " (G. E. Post, art. " Syco
more " in DB). It is likely that the prophet was a native of the
Maritime Plain and a dresser of sycomores there, but that he also at

NOTES £57
times found employment in the highlands of S. Judah. The clumsy
phrase of the later introduction (i. 1), which describes him as ' among
the herdmen of Tekoa,' seems to point to the fact that this was not
his regular work, but the employment he was following when the
inspiration of his life found him. If he came from the foothills on
the borderland between Israel and Judah, this would make it more
natural for him to realise the unity of the nation, and it would
explain ¦ why ¦ Mount Carmel bulked so large in his imagination
(i. 2,-ix. 3).
2 Read rOB> for rots', and compare for the parallels year and day
Isa. xxxiv. 8, lxi. 2, lxiii. 4.
3 W. R. Smith, Prophets2, p. 82.
4 Read, with Wellhausen, D^VO for nmyn. My reason for ac
cepting this change is that the description of the scope of the calamity
occurs in a chapter which begins by announcing a woe to them that
are at ease in Zion and to them that are secure in the mountain of
Samaria (ver. 1), and which proceeds to declare how at Jahveh's com
mand the great house shall be smitten with breaches and the little
house with clefts (ver. 11). No better explanation of ver. 11 has been
offered than that which sees in the great house Northern Israel, and
in the little house Judah; cf. how Isa. viii. 14 speaks of the two
houses of Israel. So read, the chapter becomes a unity, and in it the
prophet addresses the whole nation, alike in the denunciation of woe
and in the scope of the ruin.
If, comparing 2 Kings xiv. 25, we retain the reading ' brook of
the Arabah ' and understand it of the territory of Israel proper under
Jeroboam n., then Marti's objection (Comm., p. 198) to the mention
of Zion in ver. 1 as ' ganz ungehorig ' is valid, and it will be necessary
to remove the phrase without any evident reason for its having been
inserted. Probably, as Wellhausen suggested, DMSD was changed into
rmjn by someone who saw that Judah escaped from the ruin brought
by Assyria, but who did not see that his knife must cut deeper and
remove the sentence in ver. 1. As so often happens, we have to
balance probabilities ; but the greater probability lies with the reading
which offers a reason for the change.
5 That a judgment did befall Israel hot long after the prophet had
spoken must not be allowed to blind our eyes to the fact that the
judgment which Amos foretold did not exactly come to pass as he
expected it. Thus Tyre was not conquered at this time (i. 10), nor
17

2 5 8 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
did the Syrians return to Kir (i. 5). Yet these events were foretold
by the prophet on the same ground on which he foretold the destruc
tion of Israel — namely, the anger of Jahveh against their sins.
6 Read pnn for pipn.
7 In ver. 13 read PSO and plBH for ffJ>D and pij?n.
8 Because this is fundamental in Amos, there is no valid reason
for assigning the nature-passages to a later date. It is true that
these passages show little connection with the context in which they
stand. But Amos has a habit of being very abrupt in his transitions.
And it deserves notice that, the more the want of connection between
the verses and the context is pressed, the more difficult does it
become to understand why a late exilic author should have gone over
the prophecy and sprinkled these great sayings into the body of the
book, as if out of a pepper-pot. It seems more likely that the
original author should have introduced them, in spite of their want
of close cohesion, than that some one at a much later date should thus
have dropped them in. Though the suspicion cast on the nature-
passages seems unjustifiable, I have not appealed to them in the text,
because they are so generally suspect. Duhm's supposition that they
have come in from the margin is possible; but the margin with
Duhm, Anmerkimgen zu den Zwblf Propheten, has come to play the
part of a deus ex maehina.
9 The verse recurs almost verbatim in Joel iv, 1 6, but has there
shed its incongruous connection with the top of Carmel and the
pastures. It is natural to conclude that the borrower has felt the
incongruity of the description of the effect, or wrote at a time when
Carmel was no longer part of the land occupied by Israel. He has
retained only the grandiose sentence as to Jahveh's appearance.
Accordingly, while one hesitates to pronounce with any confidence
that Joel has borrowed from Amos or Amos from Joel, the greater
probability is that, if there has been any borrowing at all, the passage
in Amos is the original.
10 Die Mosesagen und die Leviten in Kleine Schriften, p. 349,
Halle, 1910, and Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, pp. xvi,
451 ff. The texts are to be found in a very accessible form in
Altorientalische Texte und Bilder herausgegeben von H. Gressmann,
pp. 204 ff.
11 Der Ursprung der Israelitisch-judischen Eschatologie. This
volume is of peculiar value for every Old Testament student, and at

NOTES 259
present for New Testament students also. I take this opportunity
of expressing my debt to Gressmann for having thrown fresh light
on a great deal that was puzzling in the early prophets.
12 There are obvious difficulties in the way of both theories as to
the source of these conceptions ; but it is better to leave these to be
stated and considered by students whose knowledge of Egyptian and
Canaanite religion is more at first-hand than mine. It deserves, how
ever, to be emphasised (and for its emphasis, as for its recognition,
no special knowledge of these religions is necessary) that the
permanent significance of the idea of the world-catastrophe is not due
to its ultimate source or to its original form, whatever these may
have been, but to the new content which has been given to it by the
Hebrew prophets. So long as the conception possessed only its early
content, it remained without great influence; and it would either
have passed into oblivion with those who first framed it (as in the
case of the Canaanites, if it can be proved that these ever held the
conception in any form), or would have been recovered from the dead
records of an early religion (as in the case of the Egyptians), and
presented itself to us as one of the inscrutable things which stir
men's curiosity in connection with perished religions. Even if Israel
borrowed the framework, Amos has so filled it with a new content
that it could not die, but remained a living force in the thought of
his nation and of the world.
And this leads to a further observation. The Egyptian parallels,
as they have been translated by Dr. Ranke, are unhappily very
fragmentary, and so few in number and so isolated' in their peculiar
character among the remains of early Egyptian literature, that there
is need for great caution in estimating their value* But two of
them (on pp. 207 ff. of opus cit.) show the presence of that idea of
the world-cycles which in one form or another appears with a
constant persistence in all Eastern thought. After the divine in
tervention with its resultant cataclysm, the world is to return to
its original condition and to resume the form from which it came ;
yet it only returns to run the same course, and so, after another
cycle, to suffer a similar cataclysm. The conception is familiar in its
grandiose form in the Babylonian representation of the world-cycles, each
of which is under one of the stars. Into this scheme Hebrew thought
introduced the idea of development, because of its strong grasp of the
personality and the will of God. Since the world-cataclysm was the
outcome of an act of God, who was realising His will in the world, each

260 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
intervention on God's part marked a stage in advance. The universe
did not return on itself to run the same course anew, but each fresh
beginning must be based on the gain and loss of the past, in which
also there was something of God's mind. History had a reality in it,
and humanity grew, as a man grows, learning from the past. Hence,
when the priestly legislation at a much later date framed its great
scheme of the course of the world, marked by four acts of the divine
intervention, in Adam, in Noah, in Abraham, in Moses, it probably
borrowed the fourfold scheme from the Babylonian world-year. The
universe, like the world, had its spring, summer, autumn and winter.
But this legislation announced no mere reversion to the beginning,
when the course was run. Each stage was marked by a clearer un
folding of the divine nature, which is expressed by the change in the
divine name. Arid each stage was marked by resultant institutions,
the Noachic laws, circumcision, the Mosaic ritual and legislation,
which embody this better knowledge. Behind the course of the
world, to Hebrew thought, was a personal God, who in His care for
man brought something of Himself to light ; and therefore each world-
age was distinguished by a new revelation and a new covenant, a
deepened knowledge and a deepening relation.
I think this thought of how the world was an organism, with its
inevitable higher view of history, was one great contribution of the
Hebrew to the world's thought. So far as I can see, even Greek
thought never broke away from the Eastern conception of the world-
cycles until it had been fertilised by the infusion of this Hebrew
contribution. Here, in Amos and Hosea (on whom see p. 133, infra),
we find the instinctive revolt from the Eastern conception, and recog
nise that its source and cause was the strong sense of personality,
human and divine, which characterised all the faith of the prophets.
13 Cf. Der Ur sprung, p. 148 and passim.
14 The same thing appears in the story of Elijah. He is com
missioned to announce a divine intervention which is to shake down
the sinful kingdom, and he receives a theophany. But, when the
storm, earthquake and fire pass before the prophet, it is added with
a simple but notable deliberation that Jahveh was not in any of
these nature-phenomena. The old methods of describing a theophany
are still employed, but they are used with a certain uneasiness and
a sense of their being inadequate to express the nature of Jahveh.
16 Lehmann-Haupt, Israel, pp. 80 ff. and 88 f. ; Armenien einst
und jetzt, i. pp. 219 ff.

NOTES 261
16 Cf. Stark, Das Assyrische Weltreich, pp. 9,f.
17 So Winckler, KAT\ pp. 170 f.
18 Cf. Montefiore, Hibbert Lecture, 18922, pp. 150 f.
19 A modification of this general view represents the overthrow
of Ammon and Moab as the result of the backwash of the victors
when they returned northward after their conquest of Egypt.
20 The latter difficulty has led to the usual resource of relegating
certain passages, especially those concerning Nineveh, Moab and
Ammon, to the exile. But these passages are exactly those which
are most difficult to explain on the theory of an exilic or post-exilic
origin. Why refer to Nineveh at all, when Nineveh has fallen and
Babylon is the oppressor 1 Why is Edom omitted, while Moab' and
Ammon are mentioned? The exilic and post-exilic authors, with
their well-known hatred for Edom, were least likely to omit Edom.
A. B. Davidson (Cambr. Bible, " Zephaniah," p. 99), because of these
difficulties, declared "no principle is to be detected in the order
any more than in Amos i.," and so at least recognised the singular
correspondence between the points of view of the two prophets. '
As my concern with Zephaniah is merely to illustrate Amos,
I have not given references for the opinions which are stated above.
The student can now (1912) find them carefully and succinctly stated
by Dr. Smith in the International Critical Commentary ou Zepha
niah. I cannot refrain from expressing the opinion that Dr. Smith
is more conscious than many of his predecessors of the difficulties
which attend the opinion that Zephaniah was prompted to his pro
phecy by the threatened incursion of the Scythians, and, is sorely
embarrassed by the order in which Zephaniah marshals the nations.
2* In the same way Hosea predicts (viii. 13) that Israel shall return
into Egypt, whence Jahveh called them (xi. 1). Jahveh, who made
them a nation, is about to undo His work. See the discussion (on
p. 107, infra) as to Hosea's attitude.
22 Here it is that the nature-passages are so suitable to the
fundamental ideas of the prophet.
23 So Smend, Religionsgeschichte, p. 191.
24 I have omitted all reference to ix. 8b ff. in the picture of the
national future, because, while there are elements in this which
appear old and may even date from Amos, the passage has received
so much alteration, that it is practically useless for determining the
early view.
In particular, there is one matter in which this passage occupies

262 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
a totally different position from Amos. It counts it necessary to
predict a restoration of the people as a people. Now, though Amos
is uncertain as to the fate of the remnant, his uncertainty is not due
to the fact that the national life has come to an end. Even in such
a condition the pitiful remnant is not out of all possible relation
to Jahveh. The nation was never the ' unit of religion ' to Amos,
for the remnant might find its place in that which Jahveh was about
to bring into being on a condition which has nothing to do with
the vanished forms of their national existence — the simple condition
of repentance. In this as in much else, Amos was away from the
national, and at the position of a universal religion.
25 Even Stade (Bibiische Theologie des ATs., p. 220) acknowledged
how little the prophet's attitude of mind agrees with the idea of
revelation having come to him in ecstasy. I quote Stade in this
connection, because he held a strong view as to the close association
between Israelite prophecy and the Canaanite or heathen mantic, and
was therefore specially inclined to see evidences of ecstasy in the
conduct of the prophets.
26 As, e.g., Smend in his Religionsgeschichte, p. 188, seems to do.
Nowack, Die Zuhunftshoffnungen Israels in der Assyrischen Zeit,
p. 40, has recently expressed himself with greater caution : " Diese
letzteren (cc. 1. 2, in Amos), die scheinbar widersprechen, sihd,
genauer betrachtet (wie Giesebrecht hervorhebt), ebenfalls ein Beweis
dass die Reflexion auf die Siinde erst die Rechtfertigung der als
drohend erkannten Katastrophe aber nicht ihre Ursache bildet."
Now the real thing we need to know is how and why Amos
reached the conclusion that the catastrophe threatened Israel although
it was Jahveh's folk. Evidently it was here that he broke away
from the expectation of pious men in Israel. The only ground I
can see is that he recognised the cause of the catastrophe in the
character of Jahveh and in the presence of sin, greater even than
that of the nations, within Israel.
27 Cf. W.' R. Smith, Prophets2, pp. 137 f.
28 Cf. Lohr, Untersuchungen zum Buche Amos, pp. 32 ff.
29 To say that Jahveh and Israel were conceived, as god and
people in all the period were Conceived, as inseparable, and that
Amos was the first to teach that Jahveh might suffer the nation to
perish without perishing Himself (so Nowack, p. 20), is to set the
religious condition of the nation and of the whole period too low.
Other nations could and did believe that their god in his anger

NOTES 263
suffered them to be defeated by their enemies. There were cases
in abundance of tribes and peoples which had been blotted from the
page of history, and it is difficult to understand why men were
unable to conclude about these that their gods had been too weak
to defend or too angry to support them. As a matter of fact, the
priesthood of Babylon ascribe the collapse of their capital and the
rise of Cyrus to control over Babylonia to the anger of Marduk.
Cf. Noldeke, Aufsatze zur persischen Geschichte, 1887, p. 22, and
see the inscription itself in the Cyrus cylinder, Keilinschriftliche
Bibliothek, iii. 2, pp. 121 ff. The king of Moab who sacrificed his
son on the wall (2 Kings iii. 27) evidently believed that his defeat
at Israel's hands was due to the anger pf his god, whom he therefore
sought to propitiate.
But in heathenism either such an act on the part of the god
was the, outcome of the dreadful will of one whose nature was
beyond his worshipper's comprehension, and was therefore atoned
for by equally inscrutable rites ; or it was, as is expressly stated in
the Cyrus cylinder, the outcome of certain sins against the cult
of Marduk. Amos believed that he knew the reason for Jahveh's rejection
of His people, because he knew the nature of the God whom he
worshipped. Jahveh's act was no capricious exercise of the divine
power, it was motived by a purpose into which men could reverently
inquire, and Israel in particular could find its reason in the purpose
Jahveh showed Himself to have with them in, all His past relations
to them- This, not the idea that Jahveh could reject the people, was
the new element in the prophet's thought.
30 Cf., from a different point of view, W. R. Smith, Prophets2,
pp. 137 L Cf. also Valeton, "Amos and Hosea," in Echternacht's
translation, pp. 27 ff.
Here is the point of connection between Amos' conception and
the later idea of the covenant-relation between Jahveh and His
people. Amos, as is natural in a prophet, speaks of a common
purpose : the later law-makers naturally speak of a covenant.
31 Cf. Smend, Religionsgeschichte, pp. 198 f.
32 This is the more noteworthy, because Hosea (ii. 13, 15) reckons
new moon and sabbath among the wh^sn W and so seems to regard
the observance of these days as having had a heathen origin.
33 That this is the point of view from which Amos regards the

264 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
days of festival is supported by the fact that Deuteronomy finds a
motive for the seventh-day rest in the humanitarian thought, of the
needs of the poor (v. 14 L).
34 Cf. Baethgen, Beitr&ge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte,
p. 181 n. When Baethgen,. however, suggests that Amos arrived at
his conclusion as to the non-existence of offerings in the desert,
because in his view the material for offering was wanting there,
I see no justification for burdening the prophet with so false a view
of facts, or so limited a conception of Jahveh's power to supply the
want, had He counted it necessary, i
I5 In v. 26 the centre of. the verse' is hopelessly corrupt. But
whatever DDTlpK 3313 DS^PV |V3 riKl D33PD ni3D DN may be inter
preted to mean, they are things which the people made for themselves.
Then the last clause of- ver. 26 stands in strong contrast with ver. 25 :
Israel made these things out of their own heads without instruction
from Jahveh. Israel shall take them up, these self -chosen means
of worship; and Jahveh will sweep them away, means of worship
and worshippers together, iuto the outer darkness.
36 Cf. Duhm, Die theologie der Propheten, pp. 116 f. ; Montefiore,,
Hibbert Lecture, 18922, pp. 122 f.
87 How wide and informal is the sense in which np"l¥ is construed
in early prophecy can be seen from the fact that Hosea makes it
interchangeable with 1Dn (xii. 7, x. 12 f. Cf. Mic. vi. 8).
By his broad attitude in this matter Amos escapes from the
reproach of being one who looked with suspicious dislike on all the
new movement of his time and who aimed simply at bringing back
the severer conditions of a primitive period. That he does show
dislike to the new luxury' is certain, and that part of this; may be
the outcome of his desert habits is probable. But he desires the^
old, because of the greater brotherhood it showed among men who
felt themselves united in a common task, i.e. because it had a moral
basis. 38 Kleinert, Die Prof eten- Israels in sozialer Beztehung.
39 There is no ground for the statement that Amos puts away
.the suggestion of his being a prophet 'mit Entriistung,' to quote
only one of the unwarranted additions which are made to his reply
to Amaziah from Valeton, p. 92. In one form or another that
suggestion is continually slipped into the prophet's answer.

NOTES 265

CHAPTER V
1 The presence of DE', ' there,' in vi. 7, and the local references
in the following verses, are the sufficient proof that in D1K3 is the
corruption of some place-name. Yet the place-name which is sug
gested can at best only be the result of conjecture.
2 The first clause of i. 2, VE/ina mrf "la^ rfenn cannot be used
justly to prove anything. The abruptness of the clause, the difficulty
of construing it in the situation in which it stands, the pisqa by which
it is marked off from what follows, and the fact that a "ia^ in the
sense of ' speaking to,' is common in the late prophecy of. Zeehariah,
while in the following clause of i. 2 px "\2i is employed, all
these things make it likely that the clause is an addition: 'Here
beginneth the prophecy of Hosea.' It may have stood in front of
the text of the book, before i. 1 had been prefixed as. a title, in order
to mark off the oracles from what preceded them in a roll.
8 In the Zeitschrift fiir WissenschaftUche Theologie, ,1898,, pp;
321 ff. I have said nothing about Volz's view developed there that
Hosea regarded the land, not the people, as the bride of Jahveh t
because I really do not understand what it means.
4 Volz has not turned the force of this objectipn by insisting
that the ancient prophets considered themselves mere will-less in
struments in the divine hands, for the difficulty does not lie in con
ceiving a man to have obeyed such an order (men have done worse
things to please, their kings), but in a prophet conceiving of Jahveh
as having issued the order,
5 Cf. A. B. Davidson, Biblical and Literary Essays, p. 83.
6 Theologie der Propheten.
7 There is no reason to question the authenticity of the early
prophecy (i. 4). On the one hand, the fact that, so far as we know,
the bow of Israel was not broken in Jezreel, makes it unlikely that a
later editor introduced so definite a statement as this. On the other
hand, the prophecy is thoroughly in keeping with Hosea's style.
His doom on Israel, as we shall see, is expressed symbolically, — he is
fond of representing how all sin carries with it its penalty, —and this
prophecy means simply that, where the blood cried for vengeance
(2 Kings x. 5-11), it should not cry in vain.
8 Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients,

266 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
p. 301, has drawn attention to the fact that " in an inscription which
relates the events of the year 733 Pul declares he has incorporated
into his realm all the towns of the house of Omri, has carried captive
their inhabitants, and has only left Samaria." This corresponds with
the statement in 2 Kings xv. 29, where it is said that Pul carried
captive all the inhabitants of the Northern parts of Israel, and stripped
Galilee of its population. If, then, we could suppose that part
at least of Hosea's book was produced after this invasion, we should
have a good reason for Hosea's frequent use of Ephraim instead
of Israel, since Israel had practically become Ephraim. Winckler,
Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament3, p. 264, gave the
same reason for Hosea's use of the expression Ephraim. And then
some of the results of the Assyrian attack, such as the captivity of
the calf of Samaria (x. 5 f.), must be interpreted, not as mere threats
on the prophet's part, but as representations of a ruin which has
already begun, and for which Hosea is finding a reason in the just
anger of Jahveh.
On the other side, however, it must be recognised that Pul's
invasion was the outcome of the coalition on the part of Syria and
Israel against Judah, which formed so signal a part of Isaiah's
ministry : and it is difficult to realise how, if this coalition had taken
place in Hosea's period, he could have remained silent about it ; still
more difficult to understand why, while he refers to treaties with
Egypt and Assyria (vii. 11, viii. 9, etc.), he nowhere mentions Syria,
with which, according to this view, Israel stood in much closer con
nection. Further, while Hosea speaks of Israel as Ephraim, he speaks
of Gilead and Mizpah in the transjordanic district as though they
still belonged to Israel (vi. 8, v. 1 ; contr. Mic. vii. 14) ; and
he always addresses himself to a nation with the self-conscious
ness of a nation, not to a city with its dependent tribe. Again,
while Assyria is frequently referred to in the book, it is never
referred to as a nation with which Israel is in hostility, but always as
one which Israel seeks to gain as an ally. The approaches made by
Israel to Assyria are all regarded as voluntary on Israel's part — a
situation which ceased to be possible after the collapse of the Syro-
Ephraimitic coalition and the emergence of Assyria in Western Asia
as a conqueror.
9 In xi. 5 read x? as i? and add it to the final clause of xi. 4.
The verse reads : ' He shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria
shall be his king.'

NOTES 267
10 Read D3"}Pljl : in this way one obtains an excellent contrast
to the gatherings at the festivals of ver. 5.
11 1 take xii. 4-7 and 13 f. to be extracts from the versified
temple-legends which were current in the mouths of those who fre
quented the sanctuary at Bethel. Hosea takes up the songs and
turns them to his own purposes. This view is shared by Van
Hoonacker, Les Douze Petits Prophetes, q.v. ad loc. When Duhm,
Anmerhtngen zu den Zwolf Propheten, ad loc, selects these verses,
regards them as having formed a late poem, and suggests that, in
the representation of the angel as begging with tears for a release
from Jacob, the writer was following a midrash on Gen. xxxii., he
seems to fail to recognise that such a conception of the attitude
of man to the divine representative is one which was little likely to
prevail at sp late a period. Further, it is somewhat difficult to
understand how the poem came to be written on the margin of Hosea
and then incorporated into the text. What was the point of attach
ment 1 Did the author merely use the margin of a prophetic text
because he happened to have no other parchment on which he could
write his productions ?
12 I cannot agree with Kraetzschmar, Bundesvorstellung des ATs.,
who thinks that Hosea differs from Amos in finding a reason for
the historic proof of the divine love.
13 One must recognise that Hosea's idea of the marriage between
himself and his faithless wife does not exhaust the entire relation
between Jahveh and the people. This relation could only represent
one part, since a man who marries a woman marries one who is
already in a very different position from that in which every Hebrew
set nation or individual before God. In fact, one must be on one's
guard against being hag-ridden by metaphors.
14 Those who are compelled to reject the nature-passages from
Amos must recognise that the later glossator who added them showed
a singular fineness of judgment in selecting Amos' prophecy as
the suitable place for their insertion. I confess that it shows a
niceness of discrimination which is not much in evidence in the
undoubted interpolations of the later glossators.
15 W. R. Smith, Prophets2, pp. 165 f.
16 Read ?j?a for riE/a.
17 Read 'rnri 3h. The text implies that the laws which
embody the divine will for Israel are still in course of being

268 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
promulgated, and that the relation between the • people and its Gpd
is close and constant. Jahveh's directions are not regulations which
have been once uttered and despised, but Jahveh is now speaking
through His agents, and finding no attention.
18 Read ?&nb» for rrfln'1 and 31 'abo for an* apO
19 There is no necessity for changing pjjab itsty. The phrase
is parallel to nyrf* &6 sOiTi : the people not only failed to recognise
these things as a gift from Jahveh, they even used them for an
alien worship.
20 This remarkable feature of. the prophetic teaching— it appears
in Isaiah as well as in Hosea — is to me inexplicable, unless we
can posit some early conception of the jealousy of . Jahveh, and some
conception of the close relation between worship offered to Jahveh
and a type of life in the nation offering that worship.
21 The view, so far as I know, was first propounded — it certainly
was strongly held — by Duhm, Theologie der Propheten, pp, 100, 133.
22 For a. full and careful discussion of Hpsea's attitude to the
kingdom, see Valeton, Amos und Hosea in Echternacht's Translation,
pp. 163 ff.
The following are all the passages in which Hosea refers to
the kingdom : —
i. 4 f . means, not the kingdom in principle, but the house of
Jehu with its specific crime,
iii. 4. Where the people is to be chastised by being stripped of
king and princes, the emblems of its strength. '
v. 1. The existing kingdom and priesthood are condemned for
what they have done.
v. 10. The princes are like land-grabbers — the existing princes.
vii. 3 ff. contains a description of the anarchy to which the nation
has reduced itself.
vii. 16. 'Their [existing] princes shall fall by the sword.'
viii. 4 refers to the present, in which ' they have set up kings, but
not by Me.' The context shows there is no reference to
anything beyond the present.
ix. 9. ' They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days
of Gibeah.' The context contains no reference to the
kingdom.
15. 'All their prinpes are revolters.'
x. 3. ' The king, what can he do for us 1 '

NOTES 269
x 7. 'Samaria's king is cut off.'
9. 'Thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah.'
15. 'The king of Israel shall be cut off.'
xiii. 10 ff. 'Where now is thy king?'
So far are these texts from implying a rejection of the kingdom
in itself that several of them (iii. 4, x. 7, 10, xiii. 10 ff.) point rather
to the loss of the king as the proof that the nation has lost a source
of national pride and hope.
23 Read PXnB»
Note that Hosea does not accuse these men of being land-grabbers.
He says they are like these, or no better than these. So one might
accuse a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland of 'being like a gombeen-man
without actually meaning that he lent out money to the peasantry.
24 In spite of the deplorable condition of the text, this is clearly
the general sense of vii. 1-7.
25 In v. 1 omit b*CW\ rV3 la^pn. The prophet is not, in the
following verses, addressing the people, but the rulers.
26 See the Excursus which follows Chapter II.
27 The sense of t32t?D in Hos. v. 1, as meaning not that the
divine judgment is about to fall on the priesthood, but that they have
the duty of, declaring judgment, is determined by Deut. xvii. 11,
where the priests are said to teach the law to the people and to
declare t3BE>D in connection with every judicial question which has
been found too hard for the local judges. It has frequently been
supposed that DBE'D is used by Hosea, notably in vi. 5, in the sense of
judgment falling on evil-doers, and to construe v. 1 in the same sense
of a judgment. But even in vi. 5, the passage of Hosea which seems
to support most clearly the translation of tiBE'D as judgment or
penalty, ,t2SE,D may mean — and, I think, is best construed as — My
claim. Hosea says there that Jahveh made His claim on the people
clear : He hewed them by the prophets ; He slew them by the words
of His mouth ; His claims on His nation went forth like the light (cf .
Jer. v. 4 f.). And the close parallel between the passages in Hosea and
Deuteronomy, — especially when one remembers how this is not the
only place where Deuteronomy shows itself deeply influenced by
Hosea, — along with the fact that in Deuteronomy the priest and judge
are associated in the function of resolving hard cases of judicial
decision, seems to make it clear that it is this function of the
priesthood on which Hosea lays stress.

270 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
28 1 cannot accept the interpretation of iv. 8 according to which the
priests are regarded as having positively encouraged sin in order that
they might receive a larger revenue, since the major part of all sin-
offerings fell to the priesthood. Even if one could believe in such
coarseness of mind on the part of the official heads of religion at any
time, I do not see, if the priests were thought of here as merely super
intending the cult, how with the best will to do it, the thing could be
done. How, if they merely superintended the sacrifices, did they
encourage sin in order to have more sin-offerings 1
Besides, the position requires us to posit a development of the
ritual sin-offering in early Israel, for which there is no proof, It
would be too much to say that the sin-offering did' not exist, but it is
not too much to say that in the worship, which prevailed in Northern
Israel offerings for sin held a very subordinate place.
29 W. R. Smith, Prophets2, pp. 161 f., excellently contrasts with
Hosea's attitude the primitive conception according to which David
says to Jonathan, ' Thou shalt show kindness to thy servant, for thou
hast brought thy servant into a covenant of Jahveh with thee'
(1 Sam. xx. 8). In that temper of mind there is need for a
covenant, because without it no mutual faith can be expected on
either side. Hosea conceived the relation between Israelites as one
where mutual faith could be taken for granted, and where men can
live, as they do in a home, without the need for a code to define
their rights and duties. Any law which defines these relations is
accepted and recognised as inadequate to satisfy.
30 W. R. Smith, Prophets2, p. 177.
It is right to recognise that Hosea does not appeal to the second
commandment and condemn the worship at Samaria on the ground
that it is contrary to the fundamental law of the decalogue. But
his attitude proves nothing as to the existence or non-existence of
that commandment at his time, a question which must be determined
on other grounds. He was a prophet, not a legalist; and as a
prophet he was down at the roots of spiritual religion out of
which the second commandment took its origin and from which it
will at all times draw its peculiar power.
31 Thus Kautzsch, Bibiische Theologie des Alten Testaments,
pressed the first clause of the verse, and decided that the second clause
must be read, ' the knowledge of God, not burnt-offerings.' It is only
necessary to say that, from the point of view of strict Hebrew idiom,
the ordinary rendering of the second clause as 'more than burnt-

NOTES 271
offerings' is perfectly legitimate. The emphasis a reader lays on
the first or the second clause .depends on his conception of the
whole attitude of the prophet. Kautzsch is governed by his idea
that the early prophets rejected the sacrificial worship entirely: I
hope my text, with its discussion of Hosea's general attitude, proves
that another view is reasonable and just. I cannot but think that
this view at least faces the fact that the sacrificial worship came
to a new position and a previously unknown power in the religion
of Israel after the work of 'the early prophets. The view represented
by Kautzsch seems to me to make the utterances of the prophets
by-products which produced on one great and fundamental issue
very little effect.
32 Read "HB for D*1B.
33 1 read vi. 1-3 like xii. 4-7 as part of a temple-song which
was used at one of the great festivals. Hosea takes up the song, in
which their view of Jahveh's character and of the means of satisfying
Him is embodied, and develops it in his own way in the later verses.
Construe the verses thus, and it can be easily understood why Hosea,
in the following verses, deals specially with the priests who had their
place at the great centre of worship, where the song was in use.
34 The last clause of ver. 14, 'repentance is hid from Mine eyes,'
makes it clear that we must read the earlier clause as a threat, not,
' where, O death, are thy plagues % '
35 It is here, in the idea of God having, as it were, committed
Himself in any act of intervention, that I find the point where the
Hebrew thought instinctively revolted against the conception of the
world aeons already referred to under Amos on pp. 259 f.
36 Meinhold, Studien zur Israelitischen Religionsgeschichte,
believes that, with the rise of the Assyrian power about 738,
Hosea's attitude altered. The prophet, feeling that Jahveh could
not cast Israel wholly away, began to speak of banishment instead
of absolute ruin. To this period Meinhold would therefore assign
chs. viii.-xi. In these chapters, he thinks, it is Assyria, not Jahveh,
who is the enemy ; and it is Assyria who is to bring the Israelite
state to an end (x. 14 f., xi. 5). Assyria is no longer the helper to
whom they turn for assistance, but the source of their ruin. Yet,
though they shall go into captivity, it shall not be for ever.
Here one welcomes the recognition that Hosea's position was likely
to change. Because his marriage with Gomer was so potent a
factor in his work as a prophet, his message was sure to develop

272 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
as that marriage changed in its results for him. I agree with
Meinhold that we must set ch. iii. much- later than ch. i., and that,
since - the prophet's effort to win back his wife is later than
the unfaithfulness which she showed, the thoughts as to - God's
final purpose with Israel, which are so closely connected with
the prophet's inability to cast away his wife, are late. In the
prophecy chs. iv.-xii. there probably are different positions which
correspond to this change.
But I can see no proof that it was the mere fact of Assyria's
appearance on the horizon which changed the prophet's view. In
ix. 3-6 Hosea dwells more on Egypt than on Assyria; in viii. 13,
indeed, Assyria is not mentioned at all; in ix. 17 Hosea is satisfied
to say that Israel shall be wanderers among the nations : in all
these, Assyria is not in a special position as the instrument of the
divine anger. The absence of any statement that Assyria shall
be the instrument of their punishment is as remarkable in these
chapters as in all., the earlier chapters ; and. there is as strong an
insistence on the; truth that the real enemy is Jahveh Himself.
I think one must look for the explanation of a change in the
prophet's mind to his deeper and graver thought over what was
implied in the belief, which was fundamental to all his thinking,
that Israel owed its being to the love of its God.
37 It deserves notice that Nowack, Die Zukunftshoffnungen
Israels in der Assyrischen Zeit in the Festgabe fiir Holtzmarm, p. 43,
has resiled from the position he took in his Commentary, and now
declares the vers. 16-18, 20—25 in ch. ii. to be, with slight exception,
Hosea's. Now the interest of this position for the present question
is that one reason, which prompted Nowack in the Comm. to reject
the verses, was that they brought so strongly to the front the pedagogic
purpose of the divine chastisement; and Nowack felt himself com
pelled to say that Hosea, having only ruin to predict, could not regard
the penalty as pedagogic. Even after these verses were cut out, that
element in the prophet's thought is present in the chapter; but
undoubtedly it comes more powerfully to the front in the verses
which Nowack now feels himself compelled to restore.
38 1 see no reason to doubt the authenticity of ch. xiv., excluding
ver. 10. The oracle, is thoroughly Hoseanic in tone and temper.
The prophet foresees a time when his countrymen shall abjure their
reliance on foreign help, their self-confidence, and their worship of
images (in ver. 5). These are the three leading forms in which their

NOTES 273
fundamental sin of departing from Jahveh appeared and on account
of which the prophet denounced the anger of God. The vagueness
of the expression, ' neither will we say any more to the work of our
hands- ye are our gods,' which leaves it open to construe the clause as
idolatry in the sense of worshipping strange gods or as the worship of
Jahveh through images, agrees with the way in which Hosea repre
sents the popular worship (see p. 126 supra). And the view of Assyria
as the nation from which Israel expects help is only possible before the
date of the Syro^Ephraimitic league : after that Assyria was the enemy.
39 Read for WTiBM VWJ> 'OK JianBteK! TW]> 'ON— 'It is I who
afflicted, and I will render him blessed.' The emphasis is on 'I.'
When Israel has learned how all its past has been guided by Jahveh,
it will lay the emphasis on Jahveh for all its future.
40 See Gressmann, Der Ursprung der Israelitisch Jiidischen
Eschatologie, pp. 194 f. I think Gressmann has failed to recog
nise the fact that Hosea has nothing to say as to the place of the
heathen powers in the new order of things. Here, as through his
entire prophecy, Hosea is the particularist. The heathen powers are
vague, shadowy things which are only thought of in connection with
their influence on Israel. It is probable that, since he held this view, he
had no place for them in the consummation and conceived them as non
existent. But it is no more than probable. When Gressmann says, as
over against the idea of the weapons being taken away from Israel
alone, " viel richtiger und zweckdienlicher ware es, die Riistungen der
Feinde zu vernichten, und man begreift nicht warum der Prophet
nicht dies Wunder erwartet haben sollte, da ja auch die Entwaffnung
Israels auf die Tat Jahves zuriickgefuhrt werden muss," he takes it
for granted that in Hosea's view the heathen continue in the con
summation. Do they? Is it. not possible that Hosea is merely
describing the new condition of the new world, where only the recon
ciled endure, and that he is describing it as a condition which is
so governed by the hesed he found wanting in the Israel of his own
¦time that the weapons disappear 1 Such an expectation is quite in
line with all the rest of his prophecy.
CHAPTER VI.
1 The monument of Eshmunazar speaks of the holy gods, as
though this were a familiar title of the gods of Phoenicia. See Cooke,
North Semitic Inscriptions, p. 31 (1903).

274 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
2Cf. W. R. Smith, Prophets^ pp. 224 f. ; Smend, AT. Re-
ligionsgeschichte, p. 150 et passim.
3 W. R. Smith, Prophets2, p. 231. Thus Jerusalem is said to
be ruined and Judah to be fallen, because their tongue and their
doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of His glory (iii. 8) ;
they have set themselves, alike in the inward and outward drift
of their lives, against the divine Will which upholds all things.
4 Read py instead of ?K in vii. 1 5, because of the way in
which Amos quoted the words of Amaziah in ver. 16 : 'Thou sayest,
prophesy not against Israel, and drop not ' thy word against the
house of Isaac'
5 I owe the first suggestion that vers. 9-13 are in no sense
the final message which Isaiah was commissioned to deliver to my
friend, Prof. Stevenson of Glasgow University ; but, while I acknow
ledge my debt to him for a suggestion which he developed along
his own lines, I have no wish to make him responsible for the con
clusions which are here drawn from it.
6 Cf. some valuable remarks on the subject in Duhm, Theologie
der Propheten, pp. 83 f.
7 The final clause of ver. 13 is made suspicious through its absence
from the LXX, and is quite incompatible with the preceding clauses.
It is impossible to interpret "ijn in any other sense than that of
utter destruction. To nj?3 a vineyard is either to stub out the
old vine roots or to burn them out : the true reading of Ex. xxii. 5
makes it likely that the latter was the general sense. In either
case, it is to make so clean a sweep that the old roots cannot revive.
Probably the final clause of ver. 13 owes its origin to the period when
vers. 9-13 had already come to be interpreted as the summing-up
of Isaiah's message to his people. Some one, who recognised that
the verses did not, as a matter of fact, cover the whole scope of the
prophet's message, felt it necessary to add a clause which was right
in substance. When one sees that vers. 9-13 are not such a summing-
up, the omission of the clause becomes of less importance.
8 Giesebrecht, Beitrage zur Jesaja-kritik, pp. 87 ff., and Dillmann,
Jesaja6, p. 54, regard these verses as the later impression of the
prophet, after he had encountered Ahaz (ch. vii.) and failed to turn
the king from his purpose. Then we are to understand that Isaiah
put the impression, which had come to him through his failure to
convert Ahaz, as to the judicial blindness of the people into the
form of the statement that this had been Jahveh's purpose from the

NOTES 275
beginning, as Hosea said that he married a wife of whoredom after
Jahveh's command. The interpretation makes Isaiah turn his com
mission into the direct opposite. He went to meet Ahaz with the
divine commission to plead with him for the recovery of the nation ;
but, when he found the people unwilling to listen, he declared that
Jahveh sent him, not to convert them, but to harden their hearts
(cf. Meinhold, Studien, p. 90 n.). That in itself is hard to believe
without more sufficient proof . than is offered. But it further ignores
how in chs. vii, f. it is not the people but the court who are rejected
for their obduracy, while here it is the people as a whole which is
regarded as deaf to the divine call.
9 I cannot agree with Hackmann, Die Zukunftserwartung des
Jesaia, pp, 72 ff., in the view that ' this people ' (vi. 9) means Northern
Israel, and that therefore Isaiah's first oracles are directed exclusively
against Samaria. The prophet who said that he dwelt among a
people of unclean lips could not turn to direct his commission of
judgment against a people among whom he did not dwell. And this
consideration, which is of a somewhat a priori character, is supported
by the actual tenor of the earlier oracles as cited in the text.
10 Note in passing that ' the Lord of Hosts ' is a favourite title
of Jahveh in Amos.
11 In his early volume, Die Theologie der Propheten (1875), p. 159,
Duhm noted this characteristic of the prophet's thought : " Judgment
with Isaiah is not a series of chastisements, but one distinct
catastrophe " ; and again, " Es ist eine Art jiingsten Gericht dieser Tag
Jahvehs." He failed, however, to notice how all the citations brought
to prove this position were taken from the early oracles, and from
those which were specially directed against North Israel. It is the
weakness of the treatment of Isaiah in that volume that there is no
adequate recognition of the different periods of the prophet's activity.
In his Comm. on Isaiah, ad loc, Duhm recognises the unethical
character of a judgment which included lofty mountains, but fails to
explain the presence of this feature in a prophet whose characteristic
quality is so different. Cheyne also, in 1895 (Introduction to the
Book of Isaiah, p. 16), recognised how, in ii. 6-22, Isaiah "rises
completely above local and national circumstances, and idealises the
national almost into a universal judgment (not Yahwe and Israel,
but God and man fill up the painter's canvas)." The description is
just so far as it goes, but the fact that the oracle is early, and is
that from which the prophet begins, is ignored;

276 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
12 This oracle is now generally taken as the concluding strophe
of ix. 7-x. 4, but no adequate reason has been offered for its
displacement. It is possible that its separation from the rest of the
oracle is due to the fact that ix. 7-x, 4 in its original form existed
without it, and hence without any definite mention of the Assyrian
as the instrument of the divine judgment. The oracle of v. 25-30
belongs to a later date, and was therefore rightly separated from the
longer oracle, which in form it so closely resembles,
13 Cf. Meinhold, Studien, p. 98.
14 Translate, not as in R.V., but literally : ' And there shall be
left therein only gleanings.'
15 Even in form Isaiah is deeply influenced by the earlier prophet.
The tremendous series of calamities which he pronounces against
Samaria (v. 8 ff. and ix. 7-x. 4) is like the picture of one woe
following upon another which Amos also employed. Stark, Das
Assyrische Weltreich, p. 47, notes the similarity in form between
Isaiah and Amos, but has failed to note the similarity in thought.
16 I cannot agree with those who think that the reason why
Isaiah appears with a message only about the remnant is that he
now recognises that Northern Israel is doomed, but that he still
hopes Judah may take up the great heritage, and so become
the remnant. The boy was already able to walk beside his father
vwhen the prophet went to meet Ahaz. That means that his birth
and the gift of his name dated from the period before Isaiah had
given up all hope of Israel's return. The name must find its ex
planation in the earlier source of the prophet's own experience.
¦ 17 Cf. Stark, Das Assyrische Weltreich, p. 55.
18 The failure to recognise the unconditional character of the
prophecy as to the collapse of the two powers runs all through and
greatly spoils Giesebrecht's admirable article on the Immanuel
Weissagung in St. u. Kr. (1888).
19 To understand Isaiah's attitude in the matter — how, i.e., he
could venture on such an offer to Ahaz — it is necessary to remember
that he believed that the impending defeat of the Syro-Ephraimitic
allies had been revealed to him by Jahveh. If Jahveh could make
known, for the establishment of His Kingdom in Judah, what He
was about to effect within a few years, He could also condescend
to make it indubitable that this was the outcome of His counsel.
- 20 The older idea that the article before riD?y is used in the
sense of the species, as in Eccles. vii. 26, is still maintained by Duhm,

NOTES 277
who has not altered the position he took in Die Theologie der Propheten,
p. 163 n. He holds that what is meant by the prophecy is that
women, — any woman in Israel, — after the Syrians are gone, shall call
their children Immanuel, and that this is a sign to Ahaz in the
sense in which the worship of the people at Mount Sinai was to be
a sign to Moses (Ex. iii. 12). Then 'God with us' to these
women means ' God against us ' to Ahaz. Here I think Duhm is
right in recognising the two leading elements in the prophecy — namely,
that Isaiah is not offering a guarantee of the collapse of the coalition ;
and that, through Ahaz's refusal to believe, the character of the
sign becomes judgment instead of salvation for those who are like-
minded with the king. But Duhm ignores that the birth and naming
of the child are to fall, not after the Syrians are gone, but before
the collapse of the coalition (vii. 16). Evidently the foreign land is
to be forsaken between the time when the child is born and the
time when he knows how to distinguish between sweet and bitter.
This was exactly the time when ' any woman ' in Israel was least
likely to call her child Immanuel, and when, if she had done so,
her action had been least a sign to Ahaz. The worship at Mount
Sinai was a sign after it had happened; this naming of the child
before the Syrians had withdrawn is of a totally different character.
If, however, we read, as is now generally acknowledged, riDPJJn
as ' the maiden,' and therefore as distinguishing some special maiden,
— either one who is present, or one who is well known to all who are
present, — there are three interpretations possible : —
1. It is possible to refer 'the maiden' to 'some one of the
royal harem who was then known to be with child, and to see in
the promised son Hezekiah. Apart from other difficulties, this
explanation breaks hopelessly to my mind on the fact that the
judgment is uttered against the royal house (ver. 13). Isaiah is
denouncing here the house of David, which through Ahaz has set
itself in the way of opposition to Jahveh.
2. Meinhold has recently taken up the view of Gesenius that
the maiden is the prophet's wife, and in the interest of his theory
reads nsap pf ver. 14 as nsnp — I will call. Then the promised son
is the prophet's own child. Meinhold falls into new perplexities
in connection with his explanation, because he holds that ny?V
means a marriageable girl, virgo intacta; and these perplexities he
labours to remove by the supposition that Isaiah may have had
a subordinate wife, or may have been a widower, remarried at this

278 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
time. But apart from this, the explanation has this difficulty that,
according to it, the sign which the prophet offered to Ahaz melts
away into nothing more than the foreknowledge that the child of
whose approaching birth Isaiah is well aware is to be a son. Yet
since on this interpretation it is not of the remotest consequence
whether the child was a son or a daughter, and since PN130J7 could
as well be predicted of a daughter, as of a son, the niK really melts
away in our hands into nothing.
' 3. We may return to the earliest interpretation, i.e. the Messianic.
I call this the earliest interpretation because I believe that ver. 15,
so puzzling in. its present situation, is really a gloss which means
that the heavenly child shall eat heavenly food. How difficult- the
verse is, unless it be interpreted as a gloss, can be seen through a
comparison with ver. 22. There the eating of butter and honey
is declared to be the result of the devastation of the land, and is
the sign of the extent to which that devastation has been carried.
At ver. 15 such a sense for the expression is pointless, since ver. 16
makes the birth of the child mark the date when the coalition against
Judah shall collapse. If we put aside the verse as a gloss, then
the whole chapter becomes a unity, which expresses, as over against
ch. viii., the aspect of the advent of the heavenly child toward Ahaz
and the court, who have refused to take the right attitude towards
Isaiah's promises.
G. W. Wade, The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (1911), ad loc,
practically agrees with this position, and adds that nDPJfn may be
a figurative expression for Judah. The suggestion is very attractive,
since then we should have an interesting parallel with the scion
out of Jesse's stock, but it lacks sufficient support in Isaiah's attitude
to empirical Judah. t I think that Wade is still troubled in his
interpretation by failure to recognise how Immanuel has nothing
to do with the overthrow of Syria and North Israel. This makes
him unable to recognise that in this chapter Immanuel may mean
nothing but a threat against Ahaz.
On the whole question, see the article on Immanuel, admirable,
so far as it goes, by A. B. Davidson in the Dictionary of the ¦¦ Bible,
ii. pp. 454 ff.
21 If in this chapter the niE>K T,pD of ver. 17 and all ver. 20
are original, as I see no sufficient reason to doubt, there is .here
another illustration of how Isaiah has moved to the position that the
agents of Jahveh are moral and intelligent agents. The vague threat

NOTES 279
of his early period (ii. 6-22) has disappeared, and so has the threatening
on inanimate things. But while Jahveh is to use Assyria to chastise
the nation which put its trust in such a helper, that is the entire
place given to Assyria here. The world-power is not to be the means
of doing anything more than chastising the foolish people who trusted
in its protection.
22 It deserves notice that the only reason for the existence of the
oracle is that it presents the meaning of Immanuel from another side.
If the chapter contains no more than a repeated denunciation of
judgment, it remains inexplicable why it is added at all immediately
after ch. vii. and why it has been provided with a solemn introduction.
To cut out vers. 9 f. (with Giesebrecht, St. u. Kr., 1888) as a late
addition, and so to reduce the oracle to a prediction of ruin, is not
only to ignore the, deliberate way in which it is introduced and
attached to the name of another of Isaiah's sons, but it is to ignore
the contrast between ' this people ' of ver. 6, who have refused the
waters of Siloah, and 'ye' of vers. 11 ff., who are said to have
no fear. The oracle begins with the prediction of judgment to the
ruling class, who have already chosen their lot, and passes into a
promise of help to those who have not followed them; and it is
exactly this new feature of Immanuel which justifies the existence of
the chapter.
23 At viii. 6 read 15BD DTDD, 'despond before,' instead of E>iE>0
TIK, 'rejoice in.' There is no reason to suppose that any party
existed in Jerusalem which favoured an alliance with Damascus and
Samaria ; the relations between Jerusalem and these powers had not,
prior to the time of Isaiah, been of such a nature as to encourage
such views.
24 Cf., on the language of ver. 6, Giesebrecht, St. u. Kr. (1888),
p. 223. 25 To find a proof that vers. 9 f. must be a later addition in the
fact that only after Assyria had actually invaded Palestine did any
prophet see a conquering army made up of many subordinate and
tributary nations seems like solemn trifling. Surely it was possible
for a prophet, especially such a prophet as Isaiah, to say that, though
the whole world were to league itself together, it could do no more
than God by His counsel had before ordained should be done. And
that is really all the verses say, and they say it after a vivid and
concrete fashion.

280 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
26 It has greatly confirmed my opinion as to the date to which
ch. xxviii. must be assigned to find that Meinhold in his Studien also
places it in the period after Ahaz had disappointed the prophet's
hopes. There is nothing in the ' covenant with death and Sheol ' (ver. 15)
which compels us to assign the oracle to the time when Hezekiah was
thinking of entering into a treaty with Egypt against Assyria : the
phrase has far more of the character of a proverbial expression which
means that the men counted themselves secure against any danger.
Men who had leagued themselves with Assyria could use the proverb
about their situation, especially after Assyria had justified their
confidence by its overthrow of the threatening coalition.
The description of the courtiers as scornful men (ver. 14) and of
their attitude to the prophet (vers. 8 ff.) agrees best with what may
well have been the tone of Ahaz and his court after the successful
issue of their league with Assyria had relieved them from any need
to show deference to the words of Isaiah. It does not agree with the
tone of the court under Hezekiah.
27 To cut out vers. 5 f. as a later addition leaves ver. 7 hanging
helplessly in the air. ' But these also ' of ver. 7 refers back to the
remnant which Isaiah had hoped to find in Judah. The prophet
then sets their actual condition in the following verses over against
what had been his hopes for them and through them. Vers. 5 f.
are indispensable in the connection.
28 IV? IV lp? lp has no esoteric meaning, and its sense does not
therefore depend on its translation. The words are monosyllables
such as have always been used for teaching children ; and any
monosyllables might have been selected by the prophet to convey his
meaning. 29 Ver. 18 makes it clear that the covenant with death and Sheol
of ver. 15 means their agreement with the power from which their
destruction was to be feared. When it came, they boasted to them
selves, it could not overwhelm those whose covenant with it secured
them from its ravages. But, says Isaiah, your destruction is to come
through the power with which you are leagued, and through whose
help you count yourselves safe.
30 This is the sense of ver. 15 : 'we have made lies our refuge, and
under falsehood have we hid ourselves.' Isaiah's opposition to an
alliance with Egypt is never based on the idea that to intrigue with
Egypt implies treachery to Assyria, their overlord. Hence there

NOTES 281
is no reason to construe the making lies a refuge as a reflection on
their treachery.
31 In ver. 16 read Bfa* for tPW. * T
32 In all probability, the section x. 20-23 has fallen out of place
and ought to follow on xxviii. 22 : its unsuitability in its present
position Jias been long recognised. When it is restored after xxviii. 22,
there is a clear meaning to the difficult phrase of x. 20 which states
that Israel shall no longer stay upon its smiter. Isaiah says that,
after the chastisement from the very power in which they have
trusted for deliverance, Judah shall learn to look away from Assyria,
in which they have put a vain reliance, to Jahveh.
The reason which led to the section being misplaced may be that
an editor, interpreting the covenant of ver. 15 as referring to
Hezekiah's overtures to Egypt, has referred ch. xxviii. to the series of
chapters (xxix. ff.) which deal with this period, and, then, recognising
that x. 20, with its reference to Judah's trust in its smiter, can only
be understood of Assyria, has transferred the section to ch. x., which
deals with Assyria and the position towards Assyria.
33 The close connection between x. and xxviii., alike in language
and in idea, was noted long ago by Ewald, and was further developed
by W. R. Smith, Prophets2, p. 433. , This is an additional confirma
tion of the early date to which ch. xxviii. ought to be assigned. As
already stated, I think vers. 20-23 of ch. x. go with ch. xxviii.
34 It is now certain that Sargon never undertook such a march,
and that Isaiah is not describing something which actually happened.
The route described was not the route which an invader whose base
was at Nineveh was ever likely to take, since it was waterless and
barren. 35 Since the fall of Carchemish referred to in ver. 9 took place
in 717, the oracle which speaks of it as a thing of the past must
have been uttered some years after the fall of Samaria.
36 It is possible that the clearer knowledge of what Assyria
meant — of its boastful and cruel power, of its insolent disregard for
all human rights, of its contempt for every national pride and tie —
has lent colour to the prophet's language and vigour to his denuncia
tion ; but it is not necessary to suppose that it has done more.
There is no reason to suppose that, when Isaiah saw what the conquest
of Assyria implied, he changed his view of its future and of the
attitude which Jahveh must take towards it. In principle Isaiah
says no more than what he has already said in ch. viii. and ch. xxviii.

282 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
— that Assyria is in the hands of Jahveh to serve His purposes.
Already he had said that it would overflow the land up to the neck
- — but no farther, because the land belongs to Immanuel. But the
sight of this apparently irresistible invader, who robbed, the treasures
of the nations with the ease with which a boy robs a bird's nest,
may have threatened the faith of those who had accepted the prophet's
teaching. He felt it necessary to say to them that there were
limits to its power.
37 According to Cheyne, the date was about 720, the death year
of Shalmanasar iv. ; according to Meinhold, it was rather the year
when Tiglath Pileser died. It is sufficient for the purpose of my
text to note that it was a year when Nineveh had lost one of its
warrior princes, and also the year when King Ahaz, who had never
swerved in his submission to Assyria, died. In these circumstances
Philistia had a double reason to hope that Judah might join the
league. 38 The date is probably 713-711.
39 Vers. 6 f. are a later addition. The date is about 705.
40 Isaiah, like Hosea, is a particularism so far as the heathen world
is concerned. He has no sense of the divine law as something which
reveals itself even to the hearts of the nations, like Amos. Instead,
he has the sense of the divine purpose which uses the nations for its
ends and which chooses whom it will. Hence his one idea of the
heathen world is that it, through Assyria fulfils Jahveh's purpose on
Israel but can have no place for itself in the world-plan. Hence also
Messiah is to be on David's throne to establish the kingdom (ix. 6),
not to govern the world. The first prophet to hint that the nations
may learn and profit from the great act of divine self-manifestation
which uses them for its ends is Zephaniah ; and Zephaniah is much
nearer Amos than Hosea. All the men who emphasise the side of
religion which implies a peculiar grace to one nation are apt to fall
into difficulties over the question of election.
41 In connection with the debated question of the Isaianic
authprship of these chapters see the recent statement by Nowack,
Die Zukunftshoffnungen Israels in der Assyrischen Zeit, pp. 49 f.
Nowack, in his usual careful and cautious fashion, sums' up with the
statement that there is .nothing in' the language or ideas of these
oracles which makes it impossible to suppose that they were written
by Isaiah. I refer to the discussion of the question here, not merely
because it indicates that from the linguistic point of view the

NOTES 283
much more definite position I have taken in the text is at least
legitimate, but because Nowack throughout his discussion of the
oracles insists on a view which seems to me peculiarly valuable and
opportune. He insists on the fact that in the exilic and post-exilic
period the idea of the Messianic Kingdom had already an established
place in the minds of the people, and yet that the period of the exile,
when the kingdom had irreparably passed away, was the time when
the Messianic hope was least likely to attach itself to the kingdom.
Hence it is necessary, in order to account for its presence in the
form of the king among the exiles, to suppose that the Messianic
Kingdom was already familiar to them in some widely impressive
shape. To relegate the prophecies which attach the Messianic hope
to the kingdom into the period of the exile is no answer to the
difficulty, but merely raises a fresh difficulty.
42 The text at the close of ch. viii. and the beginning of ch. ix. is
hopelessly corrupt, and it is useless to add another to the many
attempts at reconstruction, for enough remains to make it clear that
it is the people who have walked in darkness who are to see a. great
light (ix. 1), and that the peace of Messiah's government is only
possible after Jahveh has broken the rod of the oppressor (ix. 3).
Isaiah has not changed from the view he held when he foretold that
the waters of the river were to overflow the land, even up to the
neck (viii. 8).
43 It is unnecessary now to discuss the meaning of the terms in
which the coming child is described in ix. 5, since it is generally
allowed that the terms employed make it clear that he is to be
no mere earthly sovereign. It is, however, useful to note how entirely
the fact that this salvation is. of the Lord agrees with Isaiah's
attitude to every proposal of an alliance of Judah with the rebels
against Assyrians power. The two views express the same idea
from different sides, and support each other.
44 A. B. Davidson, Isaiah in the Temple Bible, pp. xvi f .
45 Here is the point of attachment for the later doctrine of the
resurrection. Since the dead, who died for the faith, must have their
share in the consummation, and since the consummation is a kingdom
on the earth, those who are asleep in the earth must awake and arise
on this earth, not in heaven.
46 Israelitisclve und Judische Geschichte6, p. 129, n. 2.
47 Read D^h for lOnDl and read rWjnnn.
~ J T V T : ¦
48 It is an insufficient explanation of the prophet's attitude to

284 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
say, as e.g. Wade in the Westminster Commentary on Isaiah, p. xxxviii,
that the prophets "were poets as well as prophets, and like the
poets of every age and race they projected their own emotions outside
them and felt that human joys and sorrows were shared by the
physical universe about them." For the prophets attached their view
to a new intervention of Jahveh : and it is the reason why they felt
this in connection with Jahveh's self-manifestation that we need to
find. When Konig, Geschichte der ATlichen Religion, pp. 332 f., says
that the kernel of the prophetic predictions as to the completion of
the ^Kingdom of God is to be found in its religious-moral character, he
emphasises what is perfectly true. But when he draws the conclu
sion that such a prophecy in Isaiah is not closely connected with
this kernel, he leaves it either as an unexplained accretion to the
prophet's picture or as an alien element in his thought. What
we want to know is why a prophet who holds so strong an ethico-
religious position as Isaiah has admitted it to the prominent position
which it holds.
49 The account belongs to PC, but it is generally recognised now
that the fact of a certain account appearing in PC does not necessarily
mean that it is as late as the longer record of which it came to make
up a part.
50 The very limitation of this idea to an apparent detail like that
of the food of the beasts is an illustration of what it meant to the
prophet. Voltaire insisted that the ruin of Lisbon through an earth
quake made it impossible to believe in the existence of any moral
Governor of the world, because there he believed he saw a nature
which ignored all moral considerations. Isaiah could not predict the
cessation of all the baneful ruin wrought by nature, because he did
not need to. To the Hebrew prophet the earthquake and the storm,
the whirlwind and the blight, were not the outcome of nature but
direct acts of God, the instruments He used to chastise His people.
When God dwelt among a reconciled people, these things ceased
at once, because the need for them had passed away. The point
which he did press was the point where to him the world-order
seemed to be in conflict with the supreme will which governed all
things. 61 Isaiah does not enter into the detailed attack on the social evils
of Jerusalem which is to be found in Amos or in his fellow:country-
man Micah; nor does he so frequently or so violently attack the
*•

NOTES 285
debased cult as Hosea did. He counts it sufficient to demand that
the -court shall acknowledge Jahveh, or to say that the people
through their leaders have spurned His counsel. No doubt this is
partly due to the fact that Isaiah approaches the whole question of
the national guilt from a different angle, and views Jahveh's relation
to His people as that of Judah's supreme ruler. Yet I cannot but
feel that this does not exhaust the situation. Isaiah leaves the
impression of speaking as one who can take it for granted that men
in Jerusalem know something of what allegiance to Jahveh implies in
the direction of brotherhood and seemly justice within the State.
And the attitude which Ahaz in ch. vii. felt compelled to take to the
prophet seems to indicate that Isaiah had behind him this recognition
— an uneasy recognition on the part of the king. Either the work
of the earlier prophets had produced some effect, or there was in
Judah a deeper sense of how distinctive and fundamentally ethical
the Jahveh-religion was.
52 Smend, Religionsgeschichte, p. 227.
CHAPTER VII.
1 On the difference of the religious views entertained by the official
representatives of religion in Northern Israel and Judah see Kautzsch,
Bibiische Theologie des Alten Testaments, pp. 273 and 275.
2 Others — e.g. Kautzsch, Bibiische Theologie des Alten Testaments,
pp. 233 f. — see in the Deuteronomic attitude to the sacrifipes a much
more negative view than that which is here expressed. Apart from
the more general considerations in the text, I cannot understand how
a code which puts into the forefront of its practical legislation a
change in the habits of the people as to their place of sacrifice and
a change in the position of the priesthood can be regarded as taking
a merely negative attitude to the sacrificial system.
3 G. Sternberg, Die Ethik des Deuteronomiums, p. 64. Cf . also
W. R. Smith, OTJC2, p. 365.
4 "It (Deuteronomy) does not embrace a complete corpus of
either the civil or the ceremonial statutes that were in force when it
was written : it excerpts such as were, in the author's judgment,
most generally necessary for the Israelite to know, and best adapted
to exemplify the moral and spiritual principles which it was his main
anxiety to see practically recognised in Israel" (Driver, Comm.,
p. xxvi).

286 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
5Cf. W. R. Smith, OTJC2, p. 365.' Probably the strange
laws of xxii. 9-11 owe their presence in the code to some heathen
practice of which, at present we have no knowledge. For another
suggestion as to their origin see Stade, Bibiische Theologie des ATs,
p. 146. 6 Jer. xvi. 6 refers to this practice, as though no blame
attached to it. Perhaps the fact of the custom having a heathen
origin had died out of the' popular mind, as the origin of such customs,
especially those connected with birth and death, is apt to do ; and
the prophet, who recognised how little real significance attached to
the act, was not troubled by its persistence. One may compare how,
at a later date, when the connection of the eunuch with a heathen
rite was lost and eunuchs were known as servants in the royal courts
of the East, Isa. lvi. 3 ff. expressly permitted such poor creatures to
enter the pnp. This change, deliberately made in the existing law,
proves how, so long as prophecy lived in old Israel, men were not
afraid to go behind the letter of their law and frame new regulations
which conserved its spirit.
7 Because this practice, did involve the deliberate acknowledg
ment of another power than Jahveh, it was never able to come to a
modus vivendi with the Jahveh-faith.
8 W. R. Smith, OTJC2, p. 366.
9 It is, e.g., uncertain why so large a number were forbidden, and
how the lawful came to be defined by the principle which separated
them from the unclean. Probably the different clans had come into
contact with different forms of worship, and had contracted a religious
aversion to the use of the animals employed in the rituals which
they knew. When, therefore, the practices of the several clans were
codified into a law which was to govern all Israel, the number of
animals forbidden to the worshippers of Jahveh was greatly increased.
Steuernagel (Comm. on Deut., p. xvii) on literary grounds pro
nounces xiv. 3-20 an addition dating from the time of the exile, but
gives no reason for its insertion. Here, it is true, our ignorance of the
rituals of Canaanite religion leaves us uncertain as to whether all
the forbidden beasts were actually used in such worship ; but the fact
that Ezekiel (ix. 10), writing from the exile, blames the community of
Jerusalem for the ritual use of forbidden beasts, and that a post-
exilic prophet (Isa. lxvi. 3, 17) speaks of such practices in Jerusalem,
points rather to such rules having been framed for use in Palestine
itself.

NOTES 287
10 The same thing is true as to the hygienic reasons for avoiding
such food. Prof. Ramsay (The Revolution in Constantinople and
Turkey, p. 199) is of opinion that the motions of the Turks at
prayer form an admirable calisthenic exercise ; but no one, Prof.
Ramsay least of all, would suggest that Mohammedans adopted them
for that reason. There is as little justification for seeking a reason
for the forbidden animals of Israel in the wholesomeness or unwhole-
someness of their flesh.
11 Cf. Lehmann-Haupt, Israel, p. 93 ; Kiichler, Die Stellung des
Propheten Jesaia zur Politik seiner Zeit, pp. 21 f.
It deserves attention that here the Deuteronomists, with their
sense of the distinctive character of Israel's religion, came into contact
with and were aided by the new stirring of national characteristics
and the deepened recognition of the worth of nationality which
showed themselves after the collapse of the Assyrian power.. The
Assyrians, who had outraged every national feeling and had trampled
on every national religion, had roused in the little peoples whom they
had overwhelmed a new sense of the worth of the nationality of which
they had been deprived and for which many of them had fought to
the death. Gunkel (Die Urgeschichte und die Patriarchen, p. 11)
admirably compares the situation with the patriotic uprising of Europe
after the fall of Napoleon, and points out how, not only in Israel
but in , Egypt, men were seeking to build up again the old things
which Assyria had ruthlessly cast down.
12 Cf. Bertholet, Die < Stellung der Israeliten und Juden zu den
Fremden. 13 On the ground that, so long as Judah was living within its
own land, there was no need to determine the .attitude of the
people towards the HSJ the foreigner proper, as contrasted with the "\if
Steuernagel (Comm. p. xvii) cuts out passages like xiv. 21, xv. 3,
xvii. 15, xxiii. 21, which refer to the 'H33)and relegates them t6 the
period of the exile. The position fails to recognise ' how totally the
situation had already been altered at the time when Deuteronomy was
framed. Northern Israel was largely peopled by foreign settlers, and,
after Sennacherib's conquests, even Judah was no longer free from
them. The fact to which Steuernagel draws attention, that some of
these passages have the appearance of being additions and are easily
separated from the context, may be due to their having been framed
by the Deuteronomists to meet this new situation ; but • it must

288 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
always be remembered, in dealing with a sporadic code like Deuter
onomy, that the connection between successive laws is inevitably loose.
14 Cf. A. Loisy, The Religion of Israel, p. 176.
15 To represent the Israelites before the' conquest as united by
their religion but not possessed of any common sanctuary is to think
of them as having reached a higher conception of the spirituality of
religion than I can see just ground for supposing. The tabernacle of
the wilderness has been assimilated to the temple by the piety of a
later generation ; but its existence as the centre of the worship of the
nation in the early period seems necessary.
16 On the clans as Kuitgenossenschaften consult Stade, Bibiische
'Theologie des Alten Testaments, pp. 39 f., and' the literature there
referred to. I cannot but think that Stade underestimated the proofs
of and the necessity for a faith which united the tribes at the period
of the conquest; but I recognise that to this result his view of the
conquest and of the process by which the nation of Israel was built up
inevitably led. Our- views part company earlier than here, and there
fore we construe the phenomena of the history from a different angle.
It is said in the text that religion was reckoned as the chief of the
necessities of common life for which the clan provided. Another
necessity for which the tribal community provided was the adminis
tration of local justice through the D^pt and the priests at the
sanctuary. And here, in the clash between the clan morality with
its local officials and the new morality which was necessary for the
unified kingdom (which has been already referred to, pp. 51 f .),- one sees
the same process taking place in the more secular field which takes
place in religious worship, in Deuteronomy. The period was one of
a necessary centralisation on all the lines of the national life.
17 It is not without significance that even in the rudest time the
people showed themselves conscious of the risk which their situation
involved. Now, says Micah in the period of the conquest of the
country,. I know that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a
Levite to my priest (Judg. xvii. 13). And the Danites are prepared
to bribe a suitable officiant to come with them to their new settlement
(Judg. xviii. 19).
18 Cf. Driver, Comtn. on Deut., p. fix: "The law of. the single
sanctuary is not an end in itself, it is but a means, propounded
(xii. 2 ff.) for the purpose of securing the same end."
19 Cf. Wellhausen, Abriss der Geschichte Israels und Judas in
Erstes Heft der Skizzen und Vorarbeiten (1884), p. 18.

NOTES 289
20 This conclusion is just, though one should accept Steuernagel's
opinion (Comm., ad loc.) that this law came from a different author.
It has been admitted into the code, whatever be its source ; and the
Deuteronomists could not have admitted it had the unity of the
sanctuary been a principle with them.
21 W. R. Smith, OTJC2, pp. 245 ff. See the whole section,
which is peculiarly suggestive and valuable.
22 That one who offered his sacrifice could still approach the
altar and personally lay his gift upon it is apparent still through
the ritual prescription of xxvi. 1 ff. It is not necessary to prove
the fact here; I can refer the student to any good modern
commentary. 23 The writers who edited the historical books from the Deu
teronomic point of view lay great stress on the fact that certain
kings did not observe the law commanding the destruction of the
high places, and so seem to place the rule as to the central sanctuary
much higher than I have placed it in the text. Even if we must
allow that they intended to make this single act the measure of the
good or ill conduct of Israel's former rulers, we have always with
us the type of man who fastens on an outward characteristic of a
great reform, and judges the past by whether this outward form
has been correctly observed or not. Church History is full of
illustrations of the harm which easily-learned criteria as to ritual
and doctrine have done to little men.
But I see no reason for burdening the editors with such a mis
conception of a great movement. They may simply have used this
convenient phrase as a useful method of marking how certain kings
in Israel were not in the line of progress which culminated in the
reform of Deuteronomy. Church History is full of warnings against
being too ready to conclude that men were little, even when they
fastened on what seems a little thing to us to-day. These men
may have seen .that the centralisation of the worship stood for a
great thing,, a thing much wider than itself..
24 W. R. Smith, OTJC2, pp. 346 f.
25 Cf., for the proof of this, p. 220, infra.
26 Cf, Sternberg, Die Ethik des Deuteronomiums, pp. 28 f.
27 Cf. Kraetzschmar, Die Bundesvorstellung im alten Israel,
pp. 142 f. ; and Valeton, ZATW, xii. p. 251.
28 Cf. Driver, Comm.. on Deuti, pi Ixix. The fact of the writer
sometimes speaking as though those who stood at Moab were identical
19

290 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
with those who received the law at Horeb has been used as a proof
of a difference in the point of view which implies a different author^
ship. The position is precarious. The book is much too -strongly
marked by the desire to express great truths in the form of symbol,
and the writer is too willing to bend historic facts in order to
enforce religious truths to leave one quite secure about such a matter-
of-fact method of dealing with his statements. Hosea had already
personified the nation as the recipient of the divine favour and the
preserver of the divine purpose ; and in these matters Deuteronomy
is saturated with Hosea's thought.
29 This chapter is the one which shows the clearest evidence of
having been expanded at a later date. Had these views, therefore,
¦been confined to ch. iv,, one would have felt a hesitation about
ascribing them to the reformers who drafted the code. But,, since
they appear in other chapters of the book, I feel no difficulty in
supposing that they have been more articulately and clearly embodied
by a later writer of the same school, to whom we owe ch. iv. in
its present form.
' 30 Cf . Sternberg, Die Ethik des Deuleronomiums, pp. 1 1 ff.
81 For an interesting comparison and contrast with the code of
Hammurabi cf. Kleinert, Die Profeten Israels in sozialer Beziehung^
p. 76. 32 In such a position, far more than in isolated texts, is seen how
fundamental to the thought of Deuteronomy is the conception of
Jahveh as the God and Ruler of the whole world : cf. p. 216, supra.
33 Hence it is easy to understand why there is no mention of
the king in connection With warfare, although the king at the
beginning was elected from the people as the leader in war (1 Sam.
viii. 20).
Behind all this lies the earlier conception which made the war
of Jahveh appear as an uninterrupted practice of the religious cult,
for which see Kautzsch, Bibiische Theologie des Alien Testaments,-
p. 77, and more particularly the careful study of F. Schwally,
"Semitische Kriegsaltertbiimer," Der Heilige Krieg im alien Israel.
But, while this older idea explains the expulsion from the- camp of
those whp have contracted a ritual uncleanness, and while it may
once — probably did once — supply a different motive for sending home
the men who were newly married (see Marti. Comm., ad loc), it
would be unsafe to conclude that the Deuteronomists, when they
continued some of the older practices, continued them with the

NOTES "¦' 291
old motives. They supplied new motives for the observance of the
sabbath law, and were quite capable of supplying new motives for
the law of war.
34 Scotsmen are irresistibly reminded of the procedure at Bothwell
Bridge and Dunbar, when their Presbyterian forefathers were eager
to purge out the malignants in order that the army might be
rendered a fitting instrument in the hands of the Lord, with whom
they had entered into a covenant. It was of God's mercy to Israel
that the lesson followed soon, even as it was of God's peculiar mercy
to Scotland that the defeat at Bpthwell Bridge was not delayed.
The situation is the more suggestive and interesting, because the
Scots were also working on the conception of the covenanted nation,
and of a covenant so external that they believed it possible to force
it on reluctant England, and valuable after they had so imposed it.
35 Cf. our Lord's attitude to the sabbath law.
The motive supplied by Deuteronomy for , the keeping of the
Sabbath seems to me later than that of the decalogue in Exodus^
simply because it is social and not religious, and because it avoids
the naive anthropomorphism of " the divine rest on the seventh day;
Even if the present form of the decalogue in Exodus is due to the
Priestly Code, the author has gone back to the earlier idea because
it can better serve his underlying conception.
36 Cf. Wellhausen, Israelitische und Judische Geschichte6.,
pp. 135 ff.
37 It is an interesting parallel to note how, when the industrial
revolution took place in Britain which altered the old relations in
which masters and servants had stood, men like Ruskin and Carlyle
turned to glorify the old order which had a moral basis they could
understand, and shrank from the new order which had not yet evolved
the moral basis without which they recognised that it could produce
little beyond confusion. How much we have lost with all the ' pro
gress' of the past fifty years, and how much need there is for a
new moral basis to our new economic conditions, it is not necessary
to state. 38 "It is assumed (in Ex. xxii. 25) that no one borrows money
except for personal distress, and all interest is conceived as usury :
Ps. xv. 5" (W. R. Smith, OTJC2, p. 350).
39 Thus the Koran forbids all usury: " Allah has permitted sale but
prohibited usury" (Sura ii. 276; cf. iii. 125). The Arabic tradition
bears witness that the taking of interest was already forbidden in

292 RELIGION OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM
the older religion (cf. Hejcl," Das ATliche Zinsverhot, pp. 12 f.).
Now the conditions of early Arabic life were very similar to those
which prevailed in early Israel.
40 See Buhl, Die socialen Verhaltnisse der Israeliten, pp. 97 ff.,
but compare more particularly an interesting study of the question,
J. Hejcl, Das Alttestamentliche Zinsverhot.
The author is embarrassed by the fact that his church (he is a
Roman Catholic) has forbidden usury in the same broad terms as
Deuteronomy did; But this only adds to the interest of his pam
phlet, since it suggests the difficulties which have attended and
always must attend the effort to make binding on the consciences
of men in all time regulations which were the outcome of a high
moral purpose, but were fitted only for the conditions which prevailed
in one particular time.
41 They appear again in Jeremiah's prophecy (xxxv. 1-11), and
it is interesting to notice the attitude which the prophet, because he
is a prophet, takes to them. He holds them up to the men of his
time as an illustration of faithfulness to a little thing in order
to rebuke his people's faithlessness in a big thing. One feels that
there is a touch of sympathetic patronage in Jeremiah's attitude
to this little company, who cling with pathetic loyalty to a little
prescription which they have received from the past, but who have
ho real sense of its place in the larger life of the community.
Jeremiah's attitude is the natural attitude of a man who knows he
has hold of a large movement fruitful in positive content toward
a thing which has stopd for a great deal but has outlived its
meaning.

INDEX OF SCMPTUKE PASSAGES.

Genesis.

Genesis — c&ntintud.

PAGE

PAGE

i.  185

xxxix. 9  24

vi. 8 .

246
xii. 25-32
. 11
viii. 21
246
xii. 45
9
xii. 7.
• 8,
15, 18
xliii. S2
9
,xii. 8.
16
xlviii." 5
. 17
xiii. 4
16
xlix. 5-7
. '27
xiii. 13
27
XV. .
18
Exodus.
,xv. 12
45
xviii. '1
12
i. 20f. . . . . .24
-xix. .
27
iii. 8 '.
. 10
xix. 24
11
iii. 1Z
. 277
xx. '3 .
24
v. 1 .
. 17
xx. 12
26
ix. 8 .
11
xxi. 33
! 10, 14, 16
xvii. 15
9
xxii. ".
18, 20, 246, 247
xviii. 19
. 30
xxii. 8
.9
xix. 11
. 10
xxii. 14
9
xix^ 18
. 10
xxvi.'23-2f
12
xx. 24
: 10, 14
xxvi. '25
14
xx. 23-26
. 31
xxviii. 12
10
xxi. S
; 30
xxviii. 16
15
xxii. 5
: '274
xxviii. 18
18
xxii. 10
. . • f31
xxviii. 19
12
xxii. 17
. 40
xxxi.' 13
.9, 10
xxii. 25
: 291
xxxi. 14-16
26
xxiii. '14-19
. 31
xxxi. 34
207
xxxivi
. 214, 215
xxxi. 43 f.
26
xxxi. 50 f.
24
Numbers.
xxxi. 54
9
xxxii.
267
x. 35 : . . . '. ¦ 252
xxxiii 1
26
xxiii. 21  251
xxxii.' 2f.
12
xxiii. '23 ..... 41
xxxii.' 31
12
xxxiii. 18-5
iO
13
Deutekonomy.
xxxiii. 20 .
9
xxxiv".
' 27
i. 6 : . . . . .218
xxxv. 4
22
i. 19ff.  218
xxxv. 7
'. 9,16,18
i. 26 ff.  218
xxxv. 14
14
i. 28-30
. . 222
'93
294

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

Deuteronomy — continued.

PAGE

i. 42  220
xiii. 13-19 .
ii. 12 .
. 222
xiv. 1 . . .
ii. 24 .
. 222
xiv. 2 . . .
iii. 6 .
. 222
xiv. 3-20 .
iii. 21 f.
. 222
xiv. 21
iv.
193, 219, 290
xiv'. 22-28 .
iv. 7 .
. 216
xiv. 28 f. .
iv. 13 f.
. 219
xv. 3 . . .
iv. 32 ff. .
. 216
xvi 
iv. 35 :
. 216
xvi. 1-17 .
iv. 38
. 222
xvi. 11
iv. 39
. 216
xvi. 14
v. 2 .
. 217, 218
xvi. 21
v. 3 .
. 201, 217
xvi. 22
v. 6 .
. 196
xvii. 2 . . .
v. 12-15 .
. 196, 226
xvii. 8 ff. .
v. 14 f.
. 264
xvii, 11
vi. 1-15
. 202
xvii. 14-20
vi. 4 .
. 216
xvii. 15
vi. 10
. 217
xvii. 18-20
vi. 16-25
. 202
xvii. 19
vi. 19
. 220
xviii. 9-13
vii. .
. 202
xviii. 9-20
vii. 1-4
. 205, 222
xviii. 10
vii. 6f.
; 216
xviii. 2 .
vii. 8 f.
¦„ 204
xviii. 13 .
vii. 8 ;
. 217
xviii. 14 ff.
vii. 9.
. 216
xviii. 20-22
vii. 16-24
. 222
xviii. 21 f. .
viii. .
. • . 202
xix. 1 .
viii. 20
. 222
xix. 14
ix.
. ' 202, 217
xx. 1-9 .
ix. 1-5
. 222
xx. 4
ix. 21
. 121
xx. 10-15 .
X.
: . 202
xx. 13
x. 15.
. 216
xx. 16-18 .
x. 17.
: . 216
xx. 19 f. .
x. 21 .
. 216
xxi. 10
xi.
. 202
xxi. 10 ff. .
xi. 23-25
. 222
xxii. 5
xi. 31
.. 217
xxii. 9-11 .
xii. 2ff.
. 288
xxiii. 2 .
xii. 3.
. 16
xxiii.l0-15t
xii. 12
. 226
xxiii. 15
xii. 13-19
. 209
xxiii. 18 f. .
xii. 18
: . 226
xxiii. 20 f, .
xii. 20 ff.
. 211
xxiii. 21
xii. 27
: . 209
xxiv. 10-13
xii. 30
. 203, 222
xxvi. 1-11 . 197, 2
09, 21
xiii. .
9
xxvi. 2
, ,
xiii. 1-5
. 47
xxvi. 12
, ',
xiii. 2-6
: : . 203
xxvi. 17 f. .
xiii. 6-11
. 227
xxvi. 18 f. .
. ,
Xiii. 7-12
; . 203
xxviii. 7 .
Xiii. 12-18
; .227
xxxi. 3-6 .
. %
Deuteronomy — continued.
PAGE
. 203
. 204
. 216
204, 286
204, 287
. 210
. 210
. 287
. 209
. 197
210, 226
210, 226
204, 211
. 204
. 217
'. 199
. 269
. 198
220, 287
¦• 198
. 220
. 40
. 204
. 20
. 222
. 204
41,204 . 47
. 37
. 222
. 228
. 221
. 220
. 221
. 220
205, 222
. 221
. 220
. 207
. 204
. 286
. 204
. 221
220, 222
. 204
. 229
. 287
. 229
', 238, 289
. 226
. 226
. 218
. 216
. 220
. 222
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

295

Deuteronomy— continued.

xxxi. 10-12
xxxi. 16 .
xxxi. 20 .
xxxiii. 5 .
xxxiii. 8 ,
xxxiii. 10 .
xxxiv. 10 .

iv. 19 ff.
v. 2-9
vii. 11
vii. 15
xxiii. 16

ii. 1 .
ii. 20 .
iv. 8 .
v. 5 .
vi. 24
xvii. .
xvii. 13
xviii. 19
xviii. 30
xxi. 19

1. .
i. 3 v
ii. 25 .
iii.iii. 1 .
iii. 1-3
iii. 3
iii. 14.
iv. 3 ,
iv. 7
iv. 22
viii. 20
ix. 6 ,
ix. 9
ix. 13
x. 5 ,,
x. 5f.
x. 6 ,
x. 10.
x. 17-.24
xi. 15.
xiii. 8-14
xiv. 32-35
xiv. 37 ff.

Joshua.

Judges.

1 Samuel.

210
217217 2
4230
250

12 12
217217217

. 217
. 217
. 36
10, 11 9
. 29
. 288
30, 288
. 30
. 12

, 249
12, 252 30
250
251 251
252 19
252 252 44
290 45
43, 250 31 31
45, 250 2
31
118 118 2929 42

1 Samuel — continued.

PAGE
xiv. 52  52
xv. 32 f. .
254
xvi. .
31
xvi. 13
2
xviii. 10 .
253
xix. 18
31
xix. 18 f. .
250
xx. 8
270
xxiii. 9 ff. .
42
xxiv. 20 .
248
xxvi. 19
19
xxviii. 9 .
40
2 Samuel.
iii. 39 . ' . . . .248
v. 24 .
15
viii. 17 f.
194
xv. 23-29
253
xx. 23
52
xx. 25
194
xxi. 1-9
19
xxiv. 11
254
xxiv. 13
38
xxiv. 15
11
xxiv. 25
•
19
1 Kings.
i. 9  14
iii. 4ff.
. 13
viii. 5
. 29
viii. 55
29
xi. 4 .
. 23
xi. 26 ff.
. 253
xi. 31 ff.
2
xii. 1
. 13
xii. 25
. 13
xii. 31 ff.
. 194
xvi. 24
. 13
xviii. 28, 3(
. 46
xix. 14
. 217
xxi. .
. -254
xxii. 8
. 49
2 Kings.
ii. 3  31
ii. 5 .
. 31
iii. 15
. 45
iii. 27
20, 263
iv. 23
. 32
iv. 38
. 31
ix. 3 .
2
ix. 11
. 45
296

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

2 Kings — continued.

x. 5-11
xi.xiv. 25
xv. 8 .
xv. 29
xvi. 9-16
xvii. 15
xvii. 35
xvii. 38
xxiii. 21-23

i. 10-17
i. 26 f.
ii. 6-22
ii. 8 .
ii. 12-17
ii. 20 .
ii. 21 .
iii. 8 '
v. 1-77 .
8ff.25-30 27-30

v.v, V,V,vi. vi. 1-8
vi. 9 .
vi. 9-13
vi. 13
vii.
vii. 2 .
vii. 4 .
vii. 9.
vii. 11
vii. 13
vii. 14
vii. 15
vii. 16
vii. 17,
vii. 22
viii. .
viii. 1-4
viii. 4
viii. 6
viii. 8
viii. 9 f.
viii. 11 ff.
viii. 14
viii. 16
, viii. 17
ix.ix. 1. .
ix. 1 ff.

160

20

Isaiah,

PAGE 265
194257104266 205
217217
217 208

. 187
180, 187
151, 152, 275, 279
. 145
. 152
. 145
. 151
. 274
. 152
. 151
. 276
152, 276
. 153
. 66 ff.
. 149
. 275
149, 150, 15,4, 274
. 274
ff., 165, 167, 172, 274, 285
. 160
. 160
. 161
. 161
. 277
. 277
. 278
277, 278
. 278
. 278
166, 172, 281
. 160
. 166
. 279
. 283
. 279
. 279
. 257
167, 171
. 167
180 ff.
. 283
. 184

Isaiah — continued.

ix. 3'.
ix. 5 .
ix. 6 .
ix. 7 .
ix. 7-x. 4
x. 5-9.
x. 5-15
x. 5-19
x. 6 .
x. 7 .
x. 9 .
x.{ll .
x. 20.
x. 20-23
x. 24-,34
x. 28-32
x. 33 f.
xi.xi. 1 .
xi. 1 ff.
xiv. 24-2,7
xiv. 28-32 .
xiv. 32
xvii. 6
xvii. 12-14.
xviii. .
xviii. 1-5
xviii. 6f.
xx. xxii. 1-14
xxii. 15-19.
xxviii.
xxviii. 1-4.
xxviii, 5
xxviii. 5 f.
xxviii* 7
xxviii, 8 ff.
xxviii, 10
xxviii.- 13
xxviii. 14
xxviii. 15
xxviii. 16
xxviii. 17 f.
xxviii. 18
xxviii. 20
xxviii. 21
xxviii. 22
xxx. 27-33.
xxxi. .
xxxi. 1 f.
xxxi. 3
xxxi. 8
xxxiv. 8
xii. 21 f.
xliv. 7, 26 ff.

168

181, 283
. 283
. 282
. 151
. 276
. 172
. 172
. 172
. 172
. 178
. 281
. 172
. 281
. 281
. 172
. 172
. 172
180 ff.
. 181
. 184
. 173
. 174
. 171
. 152
. 174
. 66
, 175
. 282
. 174
. 177
. 52
ff., 172, 178, 280
, 169
. 169
. 280
. 280
168, 280
. 169
. 169
, 280
169, 280, 281
169, 170, 173, 281
. 170
, 280
. 170
. 171
. 281
. 176
. 176
. 144
. 176
. 176
. 257
. 37
. 37

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

297

Isaiah — continued.

Hosea

— continued.

PAGE
PAGE
xiv. 21 ,
»
„
. 37
v. 13
08,
107, 115, 139
lvi. 3ff. .
. 286
v. 14
., 106, 107
lxi. 2
. 257
vi. 1-3 .
.. 131, 271
lxiii. 4
. 257
vi. 4 .
.. 114
lxvi. 3, 17 .
,
. 286
vi. 5 .
. 110, 269
vi. 6 .
.. 129
vi. 7 .
b
98, 2,65
Jeremiah
vi. 8 .
„
98, 266
v. 4f.
. 269
vi. 9 .
.'
13, 98, 122
xvi. 6
xix. 4 f.
xxvi. 17 ff.
xxxv. 1-11
•
. 286
. 247
. 157
. 292
vi. 10.
vii. 1-3
vii. 3 ff.
vii. 5 .
vii. 7.
•
. .
., 113
., 139, 269
. 268
. ,98
. 119
vii. 8.
. 116
Ezekiel.
u
vii. 11
vii. 12
59, 1
12, 114,
115, 119, 266
. 107
ix. 10
Hosea.
-
. 286
vii. 15
vii. 16
viii. .
viii. 4.
. 114
. 268
. 120
110, 119, 268
i.
.
«
. 100
viii. 5f.
. 126
i. 2 .
.
101
102, 265
viii. 8.
. 116
i. 3-5.
,
,
. 119
viii. 9.
9,8, 115, 266
i. 4 .
104,
265, 268
viii. 10
. Ill
ii. 5 ff.
129, 140
viii. 12
r -
. 114, 121
ii. 7 .
•
. 113
-iD9r«*-
viii. 13
107,
110, 261, 272
. 110
ii. 10 f.
¦
viii. i.4J_,  "
~
ii. 13.
,
«
. 263^
ix. r
. 99, 137
ii. 14,
.
,
i-rliie
ix. 1 .
28,
111), 111, 125
ii. 15 .
.
. 263
ix. 3 .
106,
109, 110, 127
ii. 16-18
.
„
141, 272
ix. 3f.
. .108
ii. 17 .
.
. 108
ix. 3-8
. 272
ii. 18-20
,
.
. 105
ix. 4 .
. 127, 129
ii. 20.
,
.
. 141
ix. 5 .
*
° *
.' 127, 265
ii. 20 f.
,
,
. Ill
ix. 6 .
. 106
ii. 20-25
,
,
. 272
ix. 7.
. 45
ii. 23 ff. .
*
,
106, 143
ix. 9 .
. 118, 268
iii. t
,
,
. 100
ix. 10
109, 113, 118
iii'. 1 .
125, 140
ix. 12
, 107, 137
iii. 4 .
108,
137,
268, 269
ix. 14
, 137
iv. ,
0
,
99, 120
ix. 15,
. 110, 268
iv. 1 .
.
114,
123, 215
ix. 15-17
, 103
iv. 1-3
. 105
ix. 17
108,
113, 137, 272
iv. 1-8
m
. 31
x. 1 .
. 125
iv. 2 .
,
. 124
x. 2 .
, 125
iv. 6 .
110,
114, 121
x. 3 .
119, 139, 268
iv. 8 .
¥
,,
121, 270
x. 5f.
. 266
iv. 11 ff.
g
,
. 114
x. 6 .
. 106, 140
iv. 15
. 13
x. 7 .
. 269
iv. 16
.
. 112
x. 8 .
. 127
v. 1 . 31,
98, 1
20, 122,
266,
268, 269
x. 9 .
. 118, 269
v. Iff.
. 120
x. 9 f.
,
. 103
v. 6 ,
4
.
. 127
x. 10.
. 107
v. 10 .
•
.
119, 268
x. 11,
» ,
. 112
298

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

x. 12 f.
x. 13-15
x. 14 f.
i. 15.
xi.
xi. 1 ..
xi. 3.
xi. 4 .
xi. 5 .
xi. 8 _
xi. 11
xii. 1
xii. 2 . t
xii. 4-7
xii. 7
xii. 10
xii. 13 f.
xii. 14
xiii. 4
xiii. 10
xiii. 10 ff.
xiii. 14
xiv. .
xiv. 3
xiv. 4
xiv. 5
xiv. 5 ff.
xiv. 7 f.
xiv. 9
xiv. 10

iv. 16

Hosea — continued. PAGE
. 264
. 103
. 271
. 269 139
108, 109, 110, 196, 261
. 109, 110
. 266
106, 113, 266, 271
. 139
. 106
. 114
. 98
108, 131, 267, 271
. 264
108, 110, 137
. 267
. 250
. 108
. 119, 139
. 269
. 137, 271
. 272
. 129
. 141
. 272
. 141
. 143
. 141
. 272

Joel,

Amos.

258

i. .

. 261, 262

i. 1 .

. 256, 257

i. 2 .

68, 69, 256, 257
i. 3 .
. 60
i. 3-5 .
. 64
i. 4 .
67, 68
i. 5 ,
. ,77, 258
i. 6-8 .
. 64
i. 7 .
67, 68
i. 9 f. .
. 64
i. 10 .
. 68, 257
i. 11 f.
. 64
i. 12 .
' . ' 67, 68
i. 13 .
. 60
i. 13-15
. .64
i. 14 .
. 67, 68, 70
ii 1-3
* 64
Amos
— continued.
PAGE
ii. 2 . . 67, 68
ii. 4f.
. 64
ii. 7 f.
. 210
ii. 9 ff.
78, 84
ii. 10 .
. 63, 64, 83
ii. 11 .
36, 83
ii. 12 .
. 84
ii. 13 .
. 258
ii. 13-16
. 67
ii. 14-16
. 78
iii. 1 .
63, 64, 151
iii. 1 f .
. . . 76
iii. 2 .
82, 84, 196
iii. 7 .
•37, 80
iii. 8 .
. 94
iii. 9 .
. 85
iii. 12
78, 80, 152
iii. 15.
. . 78
iv. 2 .
. 145
iv. 4 f.
. 88, 245
iv. 6 ff.
. 38
iv. 6-13
. 84
iv. 12
. 84
v.
. 87
v. 2f.
. 78
v. 5 .
^;
. 12, 13, 89
v. 15 .
78, 79
v. 16 f.
. 78
v. 18 .
62, 82
v. 19 .
. . 87
v. 21-23
. 87
v. 25 .
83, 87, 264
v. 26 .
. 264
v. 27 .
77, 78
vi.
. 86
vi. 1 .
59, 64, 82, 257
vi. 3 .
. 62
vi. 8 .
. 145
vi. 11
. 257
vi. 13
. 59
vi. 14
63, 78
vii. 1
. 68
vii. 1-3
* 38
vii. 1-6
63, 81
vii. 4
, 67, 68, 70
vii. 4-6
, 38
vii. 7
. 63
vii. 8
80, 82
vii. 14
. 59, 25,6
vii. 15
82, 27.4
vii. 17
. 77
viii. .
. 86
viii. 2
. 8,2
viii. 5
. - 86
viii. 8
. *.i«
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

299

Amos — continued.

viii. 9
ix. I-80
ix. 2 .
ix. 3 .
ix. 7 .
ix. 85 ff.

iii. 12
vi. 7 .
vi. 8 .
vii. 14

Micah.

Zephaniah.

. 67
. 68
. 67
67, 257
63, 77
. 261

. 157
20, 247
. 264
. 266

65, 76

ii. 1-6
xv. 5
civ. 27

Malachi.

Psalms.

Ecclesiastes.

vii. 26

.

.

St.

Matthew.

vi. 24

,

-

vii. 22

.

• . .

Acts.
xi. 27 ff.
,
.
xxi. 10 f.
,
xxvii. 22-
-26
.
PAGE 31
291251
276 127 127
216
39 3939
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

Abel, 16.
Abiathar, 194.
Abimelech, 24, 26, 27".
Abraham, 8, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24,
25, 27, 28, 45, 217, 238, 246,
250, 260.
Absalom, 3, 253.
Adadnirari iv., 75.
Adam, 260.
Agabus, 39.
Agag, 254.
Ahab, 4, 49, 54 f., 117, 158, 193, 231,
253, 254, 255.
Ahaz, 153 f., 158 f., 161, 168, 179,
189, 205, 274, 282, 285.
Ahaziah, 55.
Ahijah, 253.
Amaziah, 62 f., 93, 168, 264, 274.
Ammon, 64, 65, 76, 261.
Amorites, 36, 78, 83, 87, 94.
Amos, general, 37, 101, 145, 164, 196,
263.
personal history, 59, 256.
period, 59 f.
addresses all Israel, 63.
the nations, 64, 92.
world-judgment, 66 ff, 106.
never mentions Assyria, 75, 95,
106.
captivity in, 77 f.
remnant, 78 f., 262.
future of Israel, 79.
no mystic, 80.
sin of Israel, 81, 84, 91 f.
Israel's relation to Jahveh, 76, 83 f.
estimate of prophecy, 36, 83 f. , 93 f.
and the cult, 22, 85 ff., 103, 210,
249.
covenant, 263.
conservative, 264.
prediction of future, 37.
ethics, 73 f., 76, 84 f., 91 f., 95. 300

Amos', universal religion, 7*9, 90 f., 95,
133, 189, 233 f., 262.
and JE, 17, 22, 71 f., 249.
and Hosea, 91, 101, 106, 110, 114,
124, 133, 138, 260, 261.
and Isaiah. See under Isaiah.
and Zephaniah, 65 f., 76 f., 282.
and Deuteronomy, 218, 224, 232 ff.
Amulets, 204.
Animals, clean and unclean, 204,
286 f.
Arabah, 257.
Ark, 43, 236, 252 f.
Arpad, 75.
Ashdod, 174.
Asherim, 16, 204, 245.
Assyria, 59, 65, 153, 265 f., 282, 287.
See Nineveh.
in Amos, 75, 95, 106.
in Hosea, 106, 115, 119, 139, 271.
in Isaiah, 158, 166, 169, 171, 278,
279, 281.
Astarte, 10, 204.
Athaliah, 55, 194.
Baal and Baalism, 10, 46, 55, 113,
116, 125, 129, 140, 193, 225,
237, 246, 255. See also Canaanite.
Baal Peor, 113.
Babylon, 240, 261, 263.
Babylonian records, 163 f., 246, 259,
262 f.
Balaam, 41, 251.
Baldness for dead, 204, 286.
Bamah. See Sanctuary and Canaanite.
Ban, 254.
Barak, 36.
Bashan, 152.
Bathsheba, 254.
Beersheba, 10, 12.
Bethel in JE, 10, 12, 15, 18, 31, 244,
245.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

301

Bethel, Amos at, 59, 62, 63, 89, 168,
249.
in Hosea, 93, 108, 267.
Both-well Bridge, 291.
Bride, Israel Jahveh's, 109 f., Ill f.,
115 f., 117, 126, 132, 134, 207,
267.
Cain, 16.
Calf-worship, 121, 126, 140,
Calno, 173, 174.
Canaanite, sanctuary, 12, 31.
prophecy, 34 f., 46, 71, 250.
religion, 200, 248 f., 259, 286. See
also Baalism.
extermination of, 205 ff.
Caphtor, 82, 84, 94, 110.
Carchemish, 173, 174, 281.
Carites, 52.
Carmel, Elijah at, 56, 255.
Amos, and, 69, 257, 258.
Census, 19, 254.
Chaldia, 75.
Church, in Hosea, 134.
in Isaiah, 189.
in Jeremiah, 239.
Communion, the Holy, 219.
Covenant, in Amos, 263..
in Hosea, 141.
early, 270.
in Deuteronomy, 201, 217.
in Jeremiah, 135, 239.
in Priestly Code, 260.
the Scottish, 291.
Cultus, in JE, 16 ff.
in early Israel, 29 ff.
in Amos, 85 ff. See also Amos.
in Hosea, 124 ff. See also Hosea.
in Deuteronomy, 195 f., 224 ff.
of North, and South compared,
193 f.
Cush, 175. See also Ethiopians.
Cyrus, 263.
Damascus, 49, 60 f., 64, 66, 78,
153,. 160, 205, 279. See also
Syrians.
Daniel, 188, 244.
Danites, 288.
David, 3,15, 19, 38, 42,-44, 49, 50,
52, 53, 194, 252, 254, 270.
house of, 2, 117, 277.
Day of the Lord, 62 f., 65 f., 72 f., 76,
" 82, 8,7, 151 f.,, 164, 275.
Deborah,, 36.'- ,
Decalogue, 44, 124, 196, 201, 227, 270,
291.

Deutero-Isaiah, 37, 156.
Deuteronomy, general, 37, 40, 41,
44, 46, 90.
composition of book, 192 f.
a reform, 193-97.
, relation to prophets, 194 ff., 227 ff.,
233 ff.
legislation incomplete, 197 ; sporadic,
199.
Israel, unique, 202 ; united, 219 ;
a brotherhood, 210, 224.
no idolatry, 203 ; no intercourse with
heathen, 205 ; the gerim, 206,
209.
Jahveh, Almighty, 216 f., 220.
Covenant, 201, 217.
Cult, 195, 224 ff, 285.
Festivals, 209, 237 f.
nationalises, 208 f., and centralises
worship, 210.
how Mosaic, 213 f.
laws of war, 220 ff. ; of usury,
229 .ff.
only national religion, 91, 231 ff.
and Amos, 218, 224, 232 ff.
and Hosea, 130 f., 196, 216, 218,
224, 232 ff., 290.
and Isaiah, 196, 222, 232 ff.
and Jeremiah, 232, 239.
and Ezekiel, 232, 237.
Edom, 64, 261.
Egypt, in Hosea, 59, 106, 112, 115,
261 272.
in Isaiah, 144, 176, 280, 281.
Egyptian prophets, 71, 259.
Eli, 19, 30, 251.
Elijah, 37, 46, 49„ 54, 55 ft, 148, 253,
254, 256, 260.
Elilim, 145.
Eiisha, 37, 78, 253, 256.
Ephraim, use of in Hosea, 266.
Eschatology, 71 ff.. See under Day
of the Lord and Interven
tion. ¦
Esdraelon, 61, 208.
Eshmunazar, monument of, 273.
Ethics of early Israel, 25 f.
of JE, 23. f., 26..
of Amos, 73, 81, 84, 92, 95..
of Hosea, 113 f., 132 ff.
of Isaiah, 146 ff, 165, 180 f., 185 f.
of Deuteronomy, 216, 223 f., 237 ff.
Ethiopia, 65, 76, 77. See also Cush.
Eunuch, 204, 286.
Exodus, the, 17, 87, 217.
Ezekiel, 32, 232, 237, 286.

302

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Faith, iu Isaiah, 161, 167, 171, 178,
188 ff, 234.
in Jeremiah, 240.
Festivals, 18, 30, 32, 196 f., 209 f., 225,
237, 249, 263 f.
Gad, 38, 46, 254.
Galilee, 208, 266.
Gaza, 67,
Ger, 206, 209, 287.
Gezer, 13.
Gibeah, 31, 118, 131, 268 f.
Gibeon, 13, 29.
Gibeonites, 19.
Gideon, 183.
Gilead. 98, 266.
Gilgal; 12, 81,-89, 118, 131, 245.
Gfo'im. See Nations.
Golden Age, 141 ft, 185.
Gomer, 100, 101, 102, 271.
Grace of God, 19, 22, 41, 108 f., 122 f.,
131, 135 f., 217, 224, 246.
Greek religion, 21, 260.
Gressmann, 71, 142, 248.
Hagar, 25.
Hamath, 63.
Hammurabi, 290. ,
Hannah, 249.
Hazael, 67, 78,. 256. See also Damascus
and Syria.
Heathen. See Nations.
Hesed, 123, 264, 273. See also
Hezekiah, 175, 177, 277, 280, 281.
Holiness, 145 f., 147, 204, 273.
Hope, in Isaiah, 154 ff.
Horeb, 57, 213, 217, 218, 256, 290.
Horse-flesh, 204.
Hosea, general, 28, 37, 45, 246, 275.
difficulty of book, 97 ff.
personal history, 100 ff., 131 f.
period, 104, 266,. 271 f.
intervention of Jahveh, 105, 133,
136, 139, 141 ff.
Egypt in. See Egypt.
Assyria in. See Assyria.
love of Jahveh, 108 ft, 115, 117,
123, 131 f., 135 f., 139, 141.
sin, 91,107, 113 ft, 132 f.
and the kingdom, 117 ft, 268.
the priesthood, 103 f., 120 ff.
the cult, 124 ff., 132, 143.
remnant, 138.
future of Israel, 136 ff.
universal religion, 133, 234 f.
the nations, 111, 142, 273, 282.

Hosea, the Church in, 134.
andJE, 131 f., 248 f.
and Amos. See Amos.
and Isaiah, 135, 141 f., 148, 150,
186, 189, 194, 268, 282, 284 f.
and Deuteronomy, See Deuter
onomy.
Idolatry, 8f., 41, 125, 203.
Immanuel, 162 ff., 182, 276 ff., 282.
Individual piety, 24 f., 134, 162 f.
Intercourse with heathen, 115 f., 153 f.;
205 ff.
Intermarriage, 207.
Intervention of Jahveh, in all prophets,
195, 234 f., 284.
in Elijah, 57, 260.
in JE, 11. f.
in Amos, 63, 73, 80 ff., 259.
in Hosea, 105, 133, 136, 139, 141.
in Isaiah, 144ff., 151, 159, 162 f.,
170, 186, 187, 284.
in Jeremiah, 239.
Isaac, 20, 247.
Isaiah, general, 32, 37, 52.
call, 144 ff. ; holiness, 145, 147.
redemption, 147 f., 157 f.
early message, 150 ff.
prophet of hope, 154 ff.
and Ahaz, 158 ff., 168 f.,,179 f., 189 f.
sign, 161 f., 276.
Immanuel. . See Immanuel.
Assyria in. '.See Assyria.
no politician, 171, 174, 179, 190.
quietist, 190.
true patriot, 187.
faith. See Faith.
remnant, 79, 135, 152, 170, 276.
kingdom of Israel, 180, 189.
Kingdom of God, 183 ff.
Messiah, 163, 180.
Golden Age, 185.
cult, 147, 180, 194.
universal religion, 189, 234.
and Amos. See under Amos.
and Deuteronomy. See under
Deuteronomy.
and Hosea. See under Hosea.
Ishbaal, 50.
Ishmael, 25.
Jacob, 9, 15, 1.7, 18, 24, 25, 26, 27,
,245, 248, 267.
Jahveh, in proper names, 3, 55, 255.
the only God, 8f., 39, 41, 56, 67 f.,
71,82, 92, 106,133, 144 ff„ 211,
235.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

303

Jahveh, not numen loci, 9ff,, 244.
relation to nature, 11,J37, 69, 93 ; and
cosmos, 69ff., 105f.,141ff., 151ff.,
184 ft, 234 f., 244, 259 f., 275.
revealing Himself through man,
14 f., 40; 93 f., 134 f., 146, 149. '
relation, to Israel, 16, 38, 57 f., 82 f.,
93f., 108ffi, 112, 182,145 f.,170f.,
201 f., 216 ff.
as Will, 23, 27, 38, 72, 83, 146,
164 f., 219 ff.
ethical nature, 23 ff., 53 ff., 65, 73 f.,
77,. 85, 91 ff, 95 f., 120 f., 124,
133f., 146, 164, 185, 219 f., 227 f.
Holy One of Israel, 145.
of Hosts, 275.
free personality, 10 f., 19, 37 f., 76,
82, 131, 149, 165, 259 f.
JE stories, origin and sources, 4 f.
editors, 5 ft, 29 ff, 195, 243.
monotheism, 8, 23.
the sanctuaries in, 9 f., 12 ff.
Jahveh's nature and power in, 10 ff.,
14.
religious emblems, 15.
sacrifice in, 16 ff., 20 f., 246.
claim allegiance to Jahveh, 18,
22 f.
ethics in, 23 f.
confidence in Jahveh, 23, 27, 246.
connected with sanctuaries, 32.
and early prophecy, 32, 54.
relation to Canaanites, 248.
and Amos. See under Amos,
and Hosea. See under Hosea.
Jehu, 45, 55, 255, 256.
house of, 62, 100, 104, 119.
Jeremiah, 1, 32, 48, 135, 232, 239 ff.,
247, 292.
Jericho, 31.
Jeroboam 1., 13, 49, 61, 194, 253.
Jeroboam 11., 4, 59, 64, 75, 93, 104,
257.
Jeru'el, 247.
Jezebel, 54, 56, 255.
Jezreel, 265.
Joab, 254.
Jonathan, '270.
Joram, 55.
Joseph, 9, 17, 24, 26, 38.
Joseph-story, 7, 17, 26, 27, 244, 245,
248.
Josiah, 208, 223.
King, 2, 3, 36, 48, 53 ff.,'58, 132 f., 137,
181, 183, 198, 220.
Kingdom of Israel, 2 f. , 36, 47 ff. , 57 f. ,

60 f., 104 f., 117 ff., 135, 165 f.,
179 f., 251, 264 f.
Kingdom of God, 58, 179, 181, 184,
190, 284. •
Kir, 77, 82, 94, 258.
Koran, 291.
Law of Jahveh, 14, 30 f., 85, 91, 114,
120 ff., 124, 196ff., 243, 267f., 270.
Levi, 27.
Levite, 30, 194.
Lot, 27.
Lot, the sacred, 31, 42 f.
Mahanaim, 12, 50.
Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 166, 167.
Mamre, 12.
Manasseh, 247.
Mazzeba, 14, 15, 16, 18, 204, 245.
Medians, 75.
Menahem, 75.
Messianic King, 135, 180 ff., 241, 278,
282, 283.
Micah, in Judges, 29 f., 288.
prophet, 157, 194, 284.
Micaiah ben Imlah, 46, 49, 55.
Mishpat, 91, 120, 269.
Mizpah, 98, 118, 122, 266.
Moab, 64, 65, 67, 76, 95, 261, 263.
Movapxla, 39, 41.
Monotheism, 8f., 39, 41, 56, 67 f., 71,
82, 92, 105, 133, 144 ff., 211, 235,
290.
Morality. See Ethics.
Moriah, 247.
Moses, 27, 30, 245, 249, 250, 256, 260,
277.
Nabhi, 35, 249.
Naboth, 54, 254.
Napoleon, 287.
Nathan, 37, 46, 53.
Nations, 9, 16, 24, '26, 50 f., 64 f., 82,
85, 92, 94, 106, ff., 110 f., 142,
153 f., 171 ft, 182 f., 198, 203 f.,
205 ff, 220^ 273, 282.
Nature, phenomena in JE, 11 f.
in early prophecy, 37 ff., 260.
in Amos, 67, 93.
in Hosea, 141 f.
in Isaiah, 184 f., 284.
Necromancy, 40 ff., 204, 251.
New moon, 32, 86, 263.
Nieene Creed, 215.
Nineveh, 75, 77, 261, 281, 282. See
also Assyria.
Noah, 16, 246, 260.

304

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Omri, house of, 49, 255, 266.
Passover, 208, 236.
Paul, St., 39.
Pekah, 167.
Pelethites, 52.
Penuel, 12.
Pharisaism, 111, 233.,
Pharisees, 128..
Philistines, 2, 44, 50, 52, 64, 65, 76,
82, 83, 94, 110, 174, 175, 252,
282.
Phoenicia, 117, 273. See also Tyre
Phylacteries, 204.
Pilgrimage, 22, 249.
Prediction of future, 36 f., 276.
Priesthood in early Israel, 29.
its judicial functions, 30 f., 120,
269.
connected with prophets, 31 f. , 193.
in Hosea, 120 ff., 132.
in Deuteronomy, 198, 212 f.
Priestly Code, 213, 226, 237, 260, 284,
291.
Prophecy, voice of Jahvism, 33.,
its origin,. 34 ; name, 35..
as prediction, 36 f.
declaring Jahveh's will, 39 f.
and necromancy, 40.
and sacred lot, 42.
and ark, 43..
medium of revelation, 42, 251.
ecstasy, etc., 45 ff.
supports, 48, and judges kingdom,
50 ff.
has its own motives^ 54.
Prophets, their function, 62.
allied with priests, 31, 193.
false, 45.
no politicians, 75, 95, 106, 171.
in view of Amos, 83, 93.
conservatives, 228, 253 ff„ 264.
and the cult, 194 f.
in Northern kingdom, 254.
Propitiation, 18, 19, 22, 246,
Providence, Divine, 17.
Pul, 75, 167, 266, 282.
Qahal, 204, 286.
Eabbah, 67, 70.
Rachel, 207.
Ramah, 31.
Rechabites, 55, 231, 250-, 292..
Redemption, 147 ff.
Religion, national. See under Amos,
Hosea, Isaiah, Deuteronomy.

Remnant. See under Amos, Hosea,
and Isaiah.
Resurrection, 283.
Rezin, 167.
So'eh, 36, 43, 250, 252.
Sabbath,, 32, 86, 196, 226, 263, 291.
Sacrifice, in JE, 10, 16.
in early Israel, 19, 29, 33, 214.
Noah's, 246.
child, 20, 246 f.
in Amos, 87 ff.
in Hosea, 125 ff, 132.
in Deuteronomy, 198, 208 f., 214,
225, 236.
in P.C., 212, 236.
Samaria, 13, 59, 66, 104, 126, 151,
153, 159, 160, 169, 172, 173, 257,
275.
Samson, 250.
Samuel, 31, 36, 38, 42, 44, 250, 253.
Sanctuary, in. early Israel, 30, 208 ff.,
249.
centralisation, 211, 288, 289..
effect, 212 f., 225.
songs,. 267,. 271. v
Sargon, 175, 281.
Saul, 3, 19, 29, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 44,
60, 118, 250, 253..
Scythians, 76, 261.
Seer. , See Mo'eh.
Sennacherib, 156, 177, 178, 222, 287.
Shalmanasar, 75, 282.
Shear-jashub, 154,, 167.
Shechem, 13, 98, 122, 131.
Shiloh, 12, 30, 31, 252.
Shunammite, the, 32.
Sichem, 247.
Sign, 161, 162, 277.
Siloah, 166, 279.
Simeon; 27.
Sin, 81, 84„ 91„ 107, 113 ft, 132 f., 195.
Sin-offering, 270.
Sinai, 10, 244 f., 277.
Sodom and Gomorrah, 24, 38..
Solomon, 13, 29, 49, 60.
Spirit of God, 2, 183, 250.
Syria and Syrians, 77, 82; 84, 94, Ib3,
258. See also Damascus.
Syro - Ephraimitic league, 153, 166,
168,, 26.6, 273,, 276.
Taanach, 13.
Tabor, 98, 122.
Tatian, 39; 251.
T'hom, 67, 69, 70.
Tekoa,. 247, 256 f.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

3°5

Teman, 67.
Teraphim, 207, 248.
Theocracy, 118.
Theophany, in JE, 11.
in Elijah, 57, 255, 260.
in Amos, 69, 73 f., 260.
in Isaiah, 144, 153.
Tiglat Pileser. See Pul.
Tithes, 88, 226, 236, 245.
Tobit, 251.
Torah. See Law of Jahveh. '
Trance, 34, 45.
Tribal organisation, 51 f., 60.
customs, 228, 253 f., 286, 288.
morals, 26, 51, 253.
worship, 208 ff., 249, 288.
Tsdhagah, 91, 264.
Tyre, 55, 64, 257. See also Phoenicia.
Urartu, 75,

Uriah, 52, 254.
Urim and Thummim. See Lot, sacred.
Usury, 229, 291 f.
Utopia, 142, 184.
Uzziah, 144.
Van, Lake, 75.
Voltaire, 284.
War, laws of, 220, 236, 290 f.
Will. See under Jahveh.
Witchcraft. See Necromancy.
Zacehaeus, 129.
Zadok, 194.
Zechariah, King, 104.'
Zechariah, prophet, 265.
Zephaniah, 65, 76, 95, 105, 261, 282.
Zion, 69, 146, 170, 172, 173, 174,
234, 257.

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Washington Gladden, D.D., LL.D. Price 10s. 6d.
The Baptist Magazine says: 'There is scarcely a phase of pastoral duty which is
not touched upon luminously and to good purpose.'
Canon and Text of the New Testament. By Professor
Caspar Rene Gregory, D.D., LL.D., Leipzig. Price 12s.
The Scotsman says : ' A brilliant contribution to New Testament scholarship.'
The Theology of the New Testament. By Professor
G. B. Stevens, D.D., Yale. Price 12s.
The Ancient Catholic Church. From the Accession of
Trajan to the Fourth General Council [a.d. 98-451]. By the
late Principal Rainy, D.D., Edinburgh. Price 12s.
42
The Greek and Eastern Churches. By Principal W. F.
Adeney, D.D., Manchester. Price 12s.
Old Testament History. By Professor Henry P. Smith, D.D.,
Amherst. Price 12s.
The Academy says : ' The history of the little nation out of which was to arise the
Sun of Righteousness, is clothed with an added charm of actuality, as it is presented
in these sane and balanced pages.'
The Theology of the Old Testament. By the late Pro
fessor A. B. Davidson, D.D., LL.D., Edinburgh. Second Edition.
Price 12s.
The Bookman says : ' Contains the essence and strength of the whole work of one
whom the best judges have pronounced to be a leader in Old Testament learning.'
The Christian Doctrine of Salvation. By Professor G. B.
Stevens, D.D., Yale. Price 12s.
The Expository Times says : ' It is a great book upon a great subject. If preachers
want to fit themselves for a winter's work of strong, healthy, persuasive preaching,
this book will fit them.'
The Christian Doctrine of God. By Professor W. N. Clarke,
D.D., Author of ' An Outline of Christian Theology.' Price 10s. 6d.
The Baptist Times says : ' It is as masterly, as inspiring and helpful a treatise as can
be found in the famous series to which it belongs.'
History of the Reformation. By Principal T. M. Lindsay,
D.D., Glasgow. In Two Volumes.
Vol. I.— The Reformation in Germany, from its beginning
to the Religious Peace of Augsburg. Second Edition.
Price 10s. 6d.
Vol. II.— The Reformation in Lands beyond Germany.
"With Map. Price 10s. 6d.
The Times says : ' At last the English public possesses an adequate History of the
Reformation.'An Introduction to the Literature of the New
Testament. By Prof. James Mopfatt, B.D., D.D., Oxford.
Second Edition. Price 12s.

A Prospectus giving full details of the Series, with list of Contributors, post free
on application.

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