Pxtpa vol

45 RELIGION OF ISRAEL 705 officials of this kind reintroduced. It was quite outside the scope of his ideas that in the new Jerusalem the place of the national political head should be taken by a spiritual one—in fact, by a high priest. Ezekiel, then, retained a political head ; but the latter is, strictly speaking, only the guarantor for the regular performance of the cultus. It is scarcely right to speak of a sovereign prince. If this nd@st has a tract of land assigned to him at the eastern and western ends of the térimah, it is with the strangely distrustful remark added, ‘that my princes may no more oppress my people, but give the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes’ (45° 46!8), The prince, indeed, receives a further térd%imah from the peo le, levied on wheat, barley, oil, and sheep (45":) ; but in return he is to provide all the offerings for the congregation at the festivals, the new moons, and the Sabbaths, as well as the daily morning burnt- offering and meal-offering (46!5-). The one pre- rogative he enjoys is that of entering the vestibule of the east door (which is usually closed), that from its threshold he may bebold the preparing of his sacrifices by the priests, and may stand there and pray (44° 467). That Ezekiel does not think of ue nasi as the Messiah, is a fact that needs no roof. : (i) When we now ask, finally, What was Ezekiel’s own view about the fulfilment of his programme for the future ?, the answer must be to the follow- ing effect. A distinction must be drawn between expectations the fulfilment of which was in no man’s power (such as the elevation of the temple hill, or the producing of the temple spring, or even the bringing back of the ten tribes), and expec- tations within the range of human effort. ith these last Ezekiel was poeals in earnest, and he was fully justified by the further course of events. In some instances, it is true, the force of ancient usage was stronger than the theory of the pene, as, for example, in the case of the Feast of Weeks. Other prescriptions, such as the degrading of the former priests of the high places, evidently could be carried out only after severe conflicts and in a very much mitigated form. But, upon the whole, it remains true that we have now in P a rearrange- ment of the cultus approximating as nearly as ossible to the prescriptions of Ezekiel. Particu- arly convincing is the evidence for this which is furnished by the parallels in P to the special rules for the priests contained in Ezk 44". To all appearance, the priestly circles—and that, too, at different centres—had already begun during the Exile to reduce the ideas of Ezekiel to a cultus law. The fruit of these labours—varied, yet all inspired with the same spirit— was the great priestly book of history and law, the introduction of which gave to post-exilic Judaism the final stamp which it bears, not only in New Testament times but down to the present day. But here once more the truth is manifested that historical development is not always in a straight line. Right in the midst of the labours devoted to the codification of a priestly law in the spirit of Ezekiel we come once more upon a powerful ex- hibition of genuine Jahweh prophetism in the form of the so-called Deutero-Isaiah, to which we must next turn our attention. VI. THE SO-CALLED DEUTERO-ISAIAH. 1. It may now be regarded as finally established that with Is 40 an entirely new book commences, which nowhere makes any claim to be the work. of Isaiah. The compass of this so-called Deutero- Isaiah is still, however, the subject of Sener ees According to the view that at one time generally prevailed, it embraced chs. 40-66. But more and 706 RELIGION OF ISRAEL more ‘confirmation has been discovered for the | An absolutely harmonious plan of the Universe proposition already propounded by Eichhorn and reaffirmed by Kuenen, that a portion of these chapters can have been composed only at Jeru- salem after the return from the Exile. At first it was thought sufficient to separate off chs. 63-66 as a later addition, but finally it has become almost the general fashion to distinguish between chs. 40-55 as Deutero-Isaiah, and chs. 56-66 as Trito-Isaiah. The present writer is among those to whom this view commends itself as the correct one. It may be remarked that Is 40-66 is a strik- ing proof that questions of authenticity have little bearing upon the value of the religious and ethical contents—or, in short, upon the character as revela- tion—of an OT writing. The full meaning of the glorious book made up of Is 40-55 could be first appreciated and established only by those who taught men to understand it historically from the last years before the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus (538 B.C.) and the return of a portion of the exiles as authorized by him. 2. The book of the ‘Great Unknown’ would have had significance enough for his contempor- aries even if it had been nothing more than a book of consolation for the exiles, assuring them of the end of the captivity, return to the Holy Land, and a renewed dispensation of Jahweh’s grace. But it contains infinitely more than this. From an elevated prophetical viewpoint, which is scarcely reached again in the OT period, it brings the whole preceding history of Israel as well as its whole future under the scheme of an original, all-wise, saving purpose of Jahweh, which has for its object the whole world of nations. The barriers of national religion are here completely burst, and the foundation laid for a universal religion, and all this without the old Pruphetic ideas of the election and pre-eminence of Israel being given up. How these two apparently heterogeneous notions could be united, will have to be shown afterwards. The whole, solitary glory of Dentero- Isaiah we shall best appreciate 1f we compare it with Ezekiel or the nearly contemporaneous passages Dt 41% and 328. In Ezekiel’s future expectations there was no room for any share of the heathen in the salva- tion of Israel. In Dt 4-, again, the view is stated without any circumlocution that Jahweh has des- tined the heathen to serve the star-gods (i.e. prac- tically condemned them to idolatry), whereas He has chosen Israel to be His own possession. Quite the same notion is expressed in Dt 328 ‘Jahweh fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the gods’ [o7>x 32, LXX dyyédwy Oeo8, MT wrongly >yty ‘3a], t.e. He assigned to each of the (subordinate) gods a particular people, whereas He declared Israel to be His own heritage. 3. We have just described Deutero-Isaiah’s fun- damental notion of a Divine purpose of salvation, which is at present becoming plain—a purpose which includes all nations, and which at the same time solves all the enigmas of Israel’s history. It is primarily under this notion that we must sub- sume all the declarations from which our prophet’s very lofty conception of God may be gathered. The following have specially contributed to the elucidation of the controversy regarding Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah : Duhm, in his Commentary on Isaiah in the Kurzer Hdcom., Gottingen, 1892, 2nd ed. 1902 [holds that Trito-Isaiah commences with ch. 66]; Cheyne, Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, London, 1895 [places 561-8 58. 69 under Artaxerxes Il. or II. ; 6387-6412 about 850 B.c. ; ch. 66 under Darius Ochus]; H. Gressmann, Ueber die in Jes. cc. 56-66 vorausgesetzten zeitgeschichtlichen Verhdltnisse, Gottingen, 1899 [holds that chs. 56-66 are not a unity, but that they are all post-exilic and emanate from Judwa]; E. Littmann, Ueber die Abfassungszeit des Tritojesaja, Freiburg i. B., 1899 (Trito-Isaiah is held to embrace 56-636 (except 595-8 and perhaps 6618) as well as chs. 65 and 66 (except 662f-), and to emanate wholly from the period between 457 ard 445, prior to the arrival of Nehemiah ; on the other hand, 637 and 64 date from between 538 and 620). RELIGION OF ISRAEL implies the solity of God. Absolute monotheism here reaches its clearest and sharpest expression (431f- 446-8 45°t. 14.18) The continuous fulfilment of the plan presupposes His eternity (414 44°), un- changeableness (414 4314), and always equally full power (40*-), God’s omnipotence is proved, above all, by His creative work: He alone has stretched forth the heavens and formed the earth (401 22 % 425 44% 4512.18) in the fulness of His omnipotence and the strength of His might (407); it needed but His call, and these things were there (4878). He is the maker of all families of men from the beginning (414), and controls by His sovereign omnipotence the fortunes even of the greatest (40f-) nay, the nations are before Him only as a drop on [the side of] the bucket or a speck of dust on the balance (40!°-), How shall the individual ever contend with Him, the potsherd with the potter (459)? As in the first Isaiah, so here God is fre- quently called ‘the Holy One of Israel,’ and that, in like manner, in the sense of His absolute eleva- tion above everything creaturely and perishable, and hence, of course, above all stain and dishonour (4114; 16 433-14 ete.). The same attribute excludes absolutely any representation of God by images (40!8f-), and, in general, our prophet cannot suffici- ently emphasize the-folly and senselessness of idol — and image worship (cf. 41, and very specially the almost humorous description in 44° 46%), The holiness of God requires also that all His actings should have for their deepest motive the honour of His name (4811), He will not give His honour to another, nor His glory to idols (428), as if they had accomplished what was His work alone. 4. The scanty references to the means whereby God accomplishes His world-plan and saving pur- | pose, make mention, above all, of the prophetic | word. This has irresistible power (55!) and eter- 1 nal validity (408). In the exact pre-announcement 5 of the wonderful events that are passing (the mis- | sion of Cyrus and the impending deliverance of | Israel), our prophet sees one of the strongest eévi- dences of the solity and omnipotence of the God of Israel (41258. 4929 4310. 447t. 26f. 4521 461. 483. ian) : the idols, which are things of nought, can neither explain the past nor predict the future (417%), — E 5. Deutero-Isaiah, like the pre-exilic prophets | and the Book of Deuteronomy, traces the pre- | ferential treatment of Israel to its election (41%); | but this last is ascribed not simply to God’s love | for Israel, as might appear from 43%, Bt to the | special purposes which Jahweh wills to accomplish for the benetit of the whole world, by the instru- mentality of Israel, His servant (see below). On this account He has carried them all along from their mother’s womb (46?) ; and, when by their sin they provoked His Fe anger, He gave them, indeed, into the hands of their enemies (427% 50! 5127); but it was: not His intention that Babylon, the instrument of executing His vengeance, should — show herself pitiless against Judah (475). All the more on that account God regards the old guilt of the people as atoned for—nay, as doubly expiated — (402 51%), All the same, the coming deliverance — is nothing but the outcome of the free favour of — God; it has been brought about neither by sacrifice | nor any other merit on the part of Israel, which, | on the contrary, has sinned from the time of its | first father (Jacob) and deserved destruction in | consequence (432%: 481-48). But Jahweh blots out | their transgressions as a cloud (444). In view of all this, there is the less justification for Zion’s discouragement, and her complaint that she is forsaken and forgotten by God (40% 49%). As little as a mother is forgetful of her sucking | child has God forgotten the community of Israel | (49%), Nay, He is at once her creator and ber RELIGION OF ISRAEL husband, wno can never cast off the wife of his youth (5457), 6. The instrnment employed by Jahweh for the deliverance of His people and the further accom- plishment of His saving purpose, is Cyrus, of whom and of whose Divine mission the prophet speaks in such honourable terms that it has been suggested that he actually saw in him the Messiah promised by the earlier prophets. Jahweh Himself speaks of Cyrus as His ‘shepherd’ (44°), nay as His ‘anointed,’ whom He has taken by the right hand that He may cast down peoples before him, whom for Israel’s sake He has called by name (45!"), for whom He will make all his ways plain (45'), as the man of His counsel (46), whom He loves (4814). If the victorious career of Cyrus is to be thus interpreted, Israel has no more occasion for anxious fears, but may with full complacency look for the manifestation of the glory of Jahweh (40° 411), God ensures to the exiles a secure return; He gathers them from all quarters (43°"-), and outdoes even His own former mighty acts when He brought His people forth from Egypt (43'"). He fashions for them in the desert a road well constructed and free from danger (40° 42!6 43? 49f), makes abundant provision of water and noble trees (411% 4315 4821), and Himself leads them like a lovin shepherd (40! 522), All nature accompanies thes redemptive acts with a song of jubilation (42) 44° 4918 5512), The returned exiles shall be as a bridal ornament to Zion, the seemingly forsaken and sorely troubled, who shall now be astonished at the multitude of her children, and scarcely find room for them all (49! 54!-), For along with Jacob (Judah) shall return also ‘those who have been preserved of Israel’ (49°). Jahweh, more- over, shall once more reign as king over Zion (527), and all His gracious promises to David, the witness of His glory and the ruler of nations, shall be fulfilled to the whole people, who also shall draw to them foreign peoples—nay, peoples as yet unknown to them (55°-), All these other nations are brought to recognize that Jahweh has called Cyrus, and crowned him with victory, and to give the glory to the God of Israel (41'). As for Enuel itself, the outpouring of the spirit of God, which seals the truth that every individual is His special property (44°-), and makes them all true disciples of Jahweh (54'), brings about a wondrous renewing of the nation’s youth (40%). Moreover, the duration of this renewed ‘covenant’ is to be unlimited ; the brief period of God’s anger is to be followed by a time of eternal favour and blessing (4517 547®-), In the above orderly summary of the ideas of Deutero-Isaiah, which appear in the book itself, for the most part, in a scattered detached fashion, we have purposely passed over two state- ments, because they can in no way be brought into harmony with the other expectations of the prophet, and must accord- ingly be regarded as later additions— (a) According to 4115f, Israel is to become a new, sharp, many-toothed threshing-waggon, which goes so thoroughly to work that it crushes the very mountains and hills. This figure, of course, refers to the destruction of Israel’s foes. Now, it is true that our prophet has a threat against Babylon (471#-) ; she, the oppressor of Israel, has now in turn to take the ‘intoxicat- ing cup’ which Jerusalem had formerly to drink (5122f), But there is no indication of anything except that Cyrus is to execute the judgment on Babylon, while the other peoples are ealled to share in Israel’s salvation. Thus 4115f. belongs to quite tf decal sphere of ideas—thaf, namely, of Ezk 38f. and Mic (b) In 4922f., instead of the return of the exiles through the wilderness under the leadership of Jahweh, we have a bringing of them back by the Gentiles acting under Jahweh’s orders. It may be said that these two representations are not mutually exclusive. But in the statement that kings shall be the guardians of Israel and queens her nurses, nay, that they shall in humble Obeisance lick the dust of her feet (4923), we have the expres- sion of expectations that belong, not to Deutero-Isaiah but toa considerably later phase of Judaism. 7. But all this does not exhaust the ideas con- tained in this unique book. The most wonderful RELIGION OF ISRAEL 702 thing in it is the idea of Israel as the ‘Servant of Jahweh,’ who, in accordance with His eternal purpose, which transcends all human comprehen- sion, is destined to expiate, by his penal sufferings, not only Israel’s own guilt, but also that of the heathen world, and then to exercise a great mis- sionary vocation on the world of nations, that ‘all ends of the earth may see the salvation of the God of Israel’ (52°). Ever since Biblical study began, it has been felt to be a very difficult problem how the statements in which the Servant of Jahweh (mq 73y) is un- doubtedly to be understood of the people of Israel (418f 4219 4310 44if. 21 454 4820 ef, also the ‘servants of Jahweh’ in 54!”) are to be reconciled with those which, to all appearance, have an individual in view (thus in the so-called ‘Hbed Jahweh Songs : 421-4 [according to others, 42!-7], 491-6, 504-9 [with v.10], and 52-53"), Countless are the attempts which have been made to solve the problem in question, After Duhm, in his Commentary on Isaiah (Gittingen, 1892), assigned the ‘Hbed-Jahweh-Lieder to a different and later hand than that of Deutero-Isaiah, and hence pronounced them a subsequent addition to the latter, explaining them, at the same time, in the individual sense (as perhaps referring to Jeremiah), there sprang up a crop of similar hypotheses. The individual interpretation of the ‘Hbed-Jahweh-Lveder is supported also by J. Ley (Historische Hrkldrung des 2 Teils des Dene. Marburg, 1893 ; art. ‘Die Bedeutung des Ebed-Jahweh,’ etc., in SK, 1899, p- 163 ff.) and L. Laue (Die Ebed-Jahweh-Lieder im 2 Teil des Jesaja, Wittenberg, 1898 ; also in SK, 1904, Heft 8). Both see in the Servant of Jahweh ‘the Messiah of the future,’ as does also G. Fiillkrug (Der Gottesknecht des Deuterojesaja, Gottingen, 1899), only that he believes the Lieder to have been composed by Deutero-Isaiah himself. E. Sellin (Serubbabel, Leipzig, 1898) identified the Servant with Zerubbabel, who, he contended, actually assumed the crown, and in consequence suffered a terrible martyrdom at the hands of the Persians. In his Studien zur Hnistehungsgeschichte der jiidischen Gemeinde, i. -(Leipzig, 1901), Sellin substitutes for Zerubbabel some other descendant of David. Kittel (Zur Theologie des AT, ii., Leipzig, 1898) finds at least in ch. 63 the crucified Zerubbabel. Bertholet (Zu Jesaja 53, Freiburg i. B., 1899) refers 531-11 to the sufferings and death of the ninety year old scribe Eleazar (cf. 2 Mac 618#-), The composition of 5218-5312 by a different poet from the rest of the ‘Hbed-Jahweh-Lieder (whose authorship by Deutero-Isaiah is likewise denied) is maintained also by Laue (see above) and Schian (Die Hbed-Jahweh-Lieder in Jes. 40-66, Halle, 1895). It was the merit of K. Budde (art. ‘The so-called Ebed Yahweh Songs and the Meaning of the term Servant of Jahweh in Is 40-55’ in Amer. Journal of Theology, 1899, iii. p. 499ff. [in German, Die sogenannten Hbed-Jahweh-Lieder und die Bedeu- tung des Knechtes Jahwehs in Jes. 40-55, Giessen, 1900]) and K. Marti(Das Buch Jesaja, Tubingen, 1900) to recall the exegesis of these passages from the forest of hypotheses to a more sober consideration of facts. Their argument was strengthened on all sides by the very thorough discussion of F. Giesebrecht (Der Knecht Jahwes des Deuterojesaja, Kénigsberg, 1902), and it may be considered as henceforward a position that is not likely to be shattered, that even the so-called ‘Ebed-Jahweh Songs are the work of Deutero-Isaiah, and that their subject is Israel, with its call to serve a missionary function to the Gentiles. On the present occasion we must be content to say that, in the violent controversy which has raged since the year 1892, the explanation of the Servant of Jahweh as referring to the people rt eeets to us to have retained the victory. Once the fondness of Hebrew poetry and prophecy for far-reaching personifications of collective notions, and especially of bodies of people, is Soa eee and 531" rightly understood as spoken by the Gentiles, all the declarations about the Servant combine into one perfectly intelligible whole. The question seems to us quite an idle one, whether Deutero, Isaiah meant the Servant of Jahweh to be understood of the whole nation or only of the truly godly kernel of it, the ‘spiritual Israel,’ which fully answered the idea of a people of God. When the prophek has to speak of the election of Israel and its destined mission in the world’s history, his words naturally refer to the whole body of the nation, for it was this that was the object of election and of mani- fold guidance in the course of its history. But it is equally natural that, in the passager which have in view the representative suffering of the Servant 708 RELIGION OF ISRAEL and his missionary function, not those should be thought of who perish in the purifying judgment, but only the truly pious kernel of the people, who seek God and have penitent hearts. Nay, it is not an impossible position that the Servant, as a portion of the people, namely, that which is specially penitent and afflicted, should be opposed to the general body (49° ‘Jahweh that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and that Israel should be gathered unto him,’ cf. also v.§). But much more frequently and emphatically than this work on his fellow- countrymen is the missionary vocation exercised by the Servant towards the heathen world set forth. This is the central point of our prophet’s whole world of ideas. It is only from this stand- point that the problem either of Israel’s election or of her temporary rejection can be brought into harmony with the Divine plan of the world. The grievous sufferings of Israel were the indispensable condition of the salvation of the whole world. That even the Gentiles are from the first destined to entrance into the kingdom of God, is shown b the Divine call (4572) to all the ends of the eart to turn to Him and let themselves be saved, as well as by God’s oath that at last every knee shall bow to Him and every tongue swear by Him. But the instrument in proclaiming His salvation is His Servant, whom He has called from the mother’s womb (i.e. from the beginning), that He may be glorified in him (49'8). God has put His spirit upon him (421), given him persuasive elo- quence (497), the tongue of a proper disciple of Jahweh (504), that he may proclaim the true religion to the heathen (42'), and thus become a light to the heathen (42° 498), the founder of a covenant (n73) between God and men (428 498), And Israel is to await this call with all meekness and lowly submission (427%), True, there is not wanting a certain measure of preparedness of the heathen for the Servant’s gospel of salvation. Already the isles wait for his instruction (424)— nay, the nations must themselves recognize that Jahweh alone could have accomplished the mighty transformation wrought through Cyrus (41). But the decisive influence is brought to bear, finally, by the great sufferings of the Servant, and the patience with which he has submitted to every species of ill-treatment and mockery (50°). To their own extreme astonishment, the perception dawns upon many peoples and kings that the Servant of Jahweh—marred almost beyond recog- nition as a man, utterly despised, and maltreated to the uttermost—has, through his voluntary, patient sufferings, borne the punishment of others as a guilt-offering, atoned for their sins, and pro- cured salvation for them (52%-), This idea of a vicarious penal suffering of Israel for the Gentile world, in order to bring salvation to the latter, is so extraordinary and unique that one can easily understand how it has called forth all kinds of explanations, and that ever and anon voices are still raised in support of the contention that the direct referenee of this passage to the vicarious suffering of Christ (cf. 1 P 2”"4-) is the only one that meets the necessities of the case. And, as a matter of fact, the Church is entitled to see the complete fulfilment of this very remark- able prophecy only in the person of Christ. But nothing is taken from its significance in that direction through our interpreting the Servant of Jahweh, so far as the mind of the prophet was concerned, primarily of Israel. Only, we must be careful not to limit his meaning to the idea that the Gentiles, touched by the spectacle of the patience of Israel amidst all its sufferings, are moved to a ready acceptance of its message of sal- vation, and thus brought to adopt its religion; RELIGION OF ISRAEL for the prophet expressly emphasizes the fact that the Servant of Jahweh has fulfilled his high calling by bearing the sins of many and making intercession for the transgressors. He speaks thus of a high-priestly intercession performed by Israel, in conjunction with its vicarious sufferings. In this way he gives his readers a view into the depths of the Divine counsel of salvation, such as is offered by scarcely any one of his fellow- prophets—a view of the truth that the seeming disturbance of God’s saving purpose by man’s sin, and the sufferings introduced in consequence, are really made to serve the end of realizing His saving purposes. But from the beginning all other purposes have been subordinated to this one: ‘The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall fade like a garment... but my salvation shall be for ever’ (51°). Behind and above the temporary, perishing world there is another, which offers higher, eternal blessings. That the entrance to it should be open even to all the heathen, was a notion still beyond the hori- zon of any Israelitish mind of the time. But the prophet understood the word of his God: ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways; but, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts’ (55%), > VII. REMAINING EXILIC PROPHECIES, POST- | EXILIC PROPHECY, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF | APOCALYPTIC. i. THE SouRCES.—To the time of the Exile may, further, be assigned with some confidence Is _ | 21-0 and 13!-14%, and perhaps also chs. 34 and | 35, which are closely akin to Deutero-Isaiah. On the other hand, it is difficult to decide whether a portion of the later additions (noted below) te | pre-exilic Prophets are as early as the Exile. At | all events, this view is not sufficiently proved by — | the (very frequent) allusions to the gathering and — bringing back of the exiles. For, apart from the | fact that such expectations are more than once put | into the mouth of the earlier prophets from the | standpoint of fulfilment, and indeed for the pur- pose of softening their denunciations, the number | of Jews living in all quarters of the Diaspora even | after 537 and 458 was still very great, and the — To the earliest post-exilic period belong: Haggai — (520), Zechariah (520-518), and the Book of Malachi — (probably before 458), as well as Ob 1°?! and the | so-called Trito-Isaiah (Is 56-66, probably about | 440). To the beginning of the 4th cent. we assign | Joel and Jonah ; towards the end of the 4th, if | not in the 3rd or even the 2nd cent., we would | — place the so-called Apocalypse of Isaiah (Is 24-27) | and Zec 9-14. Of the additions to the older pro- | hets which cannot be more precisely dated, a not | inconsiderable portion may come down to the 4th | and even the 3rd cent. B.C. Passing over some | isolated verses, we give the following as almost | universally acknowledged later additions :— on Is 22-4 (Mic 41-4) 42-6 99 1020-28 1110198 131-14 | (see above) 187(?) 191825 211-10 (see above) 2315-18 QQ6. Tf. 17-24 3QI8-26. 27-33 (2) 315-8 39, 33, 34f, (see above). : Jer 314-18 101-16 1618-21 1719-27 9916-20 3010. 3]! §(2) 4 3138-40 3917-28 3314-26 chs, 46-49 (2) 501-518, m Hos 2'3 35(?; in any case, the words ‘and- David their king’) 1477" (?). Am 9"'8, Mic 41-4 5-8. (2) 11-18 "77-28, Hab 3. : a Zeph 24-18 314-20, | ae ee RELIGION OF ISRAEL ii. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.—Deutero-Isaiah’s ps heey of the freeing of the people by Cyrus been fulfilled in 538 after the conquest of Babylon. The edict of Cyrus granted permission to the exiles to return, and about 50,000, under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua the priest, availed themselves of it. But the condition of things in the home so eagerly longed for did not answer the high-flown expectations of the returned exiles. The foreign domination still continued, and all energy was paralyzed by poverty and failure of crops, as well as by the hostility of the Jewish, heathen mixed population, which had radually spread over the land during the Exile. ven if the cultus was resumed, immediately after the Return, by the re-erection of the altar of burnt-offering (Ezr 37), it was not till the year 520 that, thanks to the energetic stimulation of Haggai and Zechariah, the work of building the temple was taken in hand in earnest, and finished in 516. Evidently, these prophets expected the dawn of the Messianic age after the building was finished, and at the same time saw in Zerubbabel the ‘shoot of David’ promised by Jeremiah (Hag 25. 208. Zec 38 6Ut, where in all pee pitty, there was originally mention only of a crowning of Zerubbabel). These hopes, too, were completely deceived. We possess, indeed, only very scanty traditions regarding the history of the post-exilic Jewish colony down to the time of Malachi (Ezr 46-3), but the Book of Malachi itself shows that the conditions had rather changed for the worse since 516. The offerings naturally suffered from the continued poverty of the people (3°:), but no less from the unscrupulous character of the priests (18 33). The prophet also complains bitterly of the facile putting away of Jewish wives in order to contract new marriages with heathen women (2°t-), But the worst feature was the resigned, not to say despairing, disposition which had taken’ possession of the people. This showed itself in such blasphemous judginents as that ‘ Every one that doeth evil is well pleasing to Jahweh, and in such he hath his delight, or where is the God of judgment ?’ (2, and still more fully in 31). One can readily conceive how to the priestly circles in the Diaspora, which had been for long following in the footsteps of Ezekiel in laying down new regu- lations for the cultus (see below, § VIII.), it might seem that the time had come for them to step in. But even Ezra, the leader of a second band of exiles (B.C. 458), soon had the conviction forced upon him that it was necessary first to attend to other tasks than the introducing of the priestly legislation he had brought with him from Babylon. His Draconic zeal in dissolving the numerous mixed marriages so increased the hostility of the heathen and Jewish families thereby affected, that they obtained from Artaxerxes I. full powers to destroy the walls and gates of Jerusalem, which had been scarcely yet completed by Ezra. How thoroughly this process was carried out does not indeed geal from the timid allusion in Ezr 4%, but is clear enough from the documentary report of Nehemiah (13% 2! 31), The arrival of the latter at Jerusalem (445) had for its main result the solemn introduction of the priestly law- book (Neh 8, probably extracted in large part from the Memoirs of Ezra). Of the high significance of this act we shall have to speak in the next section. That all these occurrences, moreover, found an echo in prophecy is a priort probable, and is con- firmed especially by the contents of Trito-Isaiah. In this way the enigma in which Is66 was formerly involved is very simply cleared up, when it is recognized that there we have to do with a polemic against the Samaritans, belonging to the time of Ezra-Nehemiah. From the second visit of Nelie- RELIGION OF ISRAEL 709 miah to Jerusalem (Neh 134) in 482 [according to others, not till 412] OT tradition is silent till we reach the commencement of the Maccabee wars, even if a considerable portion of the above-men- tioned Prophetical literature may emanate from the intervening period. ili. CONCEPTION OF GOD, AND ETHICS. — The whole of the exilic and post-exilic literature with which we have here to do, bears almost without exception a secondary character, and—apart from the further colouring given to the hopes for the future—lives entirely upon the ideas of the older prophets, or simply takes these for granted. This comes out clearly in regard to the conception of God. The reason why the statements in this sphere are so scanty is that there was nothing to add to the message of the pre-exilic prophets. Belief in the solity and supramundane character of Jahweh is the common possession of the whole of this period. The apparent localizing of Him on Sinai (Hab 3%) can be regarded only as a poetical reminiscence of ancient descriptions, such as that of Jg 54. His omnipotence and omni- science are revealed in the creation of heaven and earth (Jer 10"); to Him nothing is impossible (32). The mighty Babylon is simply a hammer in His hand (517%). He chose Israel because He loved it, whereas He hated Israel’s twin brother Esau (Mal 1"); here there seems to be no attempt to trace the election to an ethical motive, asin Deutero-Isaiah. Jahweh shows Himself to be the father and saviour of Israel in a far deeper sense than Abraham or Jacob could claim to be (Is 6318 647). But the old conception of the national God, Jahweh, who has His eye upon Israel alone, has no longer any room left for it. Jahweh is great beyond the realm of Israel, His name is feared among the nations as that of a great king (Mal 1>- 4, Jer 10’); nay, the incense-offerings and pure gifts, which from the rising to the setting of the sun are offered by the Gentiles, have Him, strictly speaking, for their object (Mal 1")—a remarkable witness to the far-reaching influence of Deutero- Isaiah’s teaching! There is no longer any need for a polemic against the folly of image and idol worship ; Is 57*: is in all probability addressed to the half-heathen mixed population in and about Judah, and Jer 10' to the exiles who are en- dangered by their heathen environment. The supramundane character of Jahweh is not impaired by the frequent emphasis laid upon His accompanying the exiles, or His dwelling upon Zion (see below) ; for in the latter instance what is in view is, as in the conception of God in the pre- exilic period, the indwelling of His ‘glory’ (i.e. a manifestation-form of His person), which is not absolutely identical with His full being. The ‘angel of Jahweh,’ in olden times (see above, p. 638" tf.) a form of appearance of Jahweh Himself, is in Zec 14: (where he prays to Jahweh and is com- forted by Him) clearly distinguished as a serving angel from Jaliweh. In Zec 3! ‘the Satan’ makes his appearance for the first time, not as a mere. appellative= ‘adversary’ (as in Nu 22” [of the angel of Jahweh], 1 K 11% e¢ al. [of enemies in war]), but as a definite angelic being, who comes forward as the accuser of Joshua the high priest ; but this is no proof of the rise of a dualistic concep- tion of God. The Satan, who by the way cannot have been newly introduced by Zechariah, but is presupposed by him as long familiar to his readers, manifestly belongs (as he still does in Job 1®-) to the category of serving angels, only that, in his zeal as Jahweh’s prosecutor, he goes too far. Rather may we find in Is 247 an allusion to angelic feuds corresponding to those among the peoples of earth. But even in this very late theo- logumenon, with which we shall meet again when 710 RELIGION OF ISRAEL we come to speak of the Book of Daniel, the supremacy of Jahweh, who imprisons the rebellious ones, and only pardons them after a long interval, remains quite unaffected. The consciousness that they lived in an age of epigoni, as compared with the creative times of prophecy, betrays itself clearly in the repressed tone of the post-exilic prophets, and their very frequent use of the formula ‘thus saith Jahweh,’ as well as in Zechariah’s preference for the vision, the latter being no doubt in large measure simply to be regarded as a literary device. The same consciousness is manifested in the express appeals to earlier Prophetic oracles (Is 341, J] 3° [2%?]), and no less by the announcement of a messenger who is to prepare the way of Jahweh prior to the dawn of the day of judgment (Mal 3!; in v.% [45] the prophet Elijah 1s named as this forerunner). There were even yet required energetic instruments of God to bring about the great transformation. Finally, again, in Zec 13% the expectation is ex- pressed that in the Messianic age the prophets and the unclean spirit shall be removed from the land, and that any one who yet ventures to come for- ward asa prophet shall be put to death by his own parents. Here, of course, it is false prophets that are in view, but the whole form of expression shows that it is not considered possible that any others shall then be found. Like the conception of God, the ethical demands of the exilic and post-exilic prophets correspond exactly with those of their pre-exilic predecessors. At least in theory the justice of these demands is generally acknowledged, although the practice of the people still continues to supply occasion for bitter complaints (Is 56° 581- 59"-), As with Amos and Isaiah, the urgent call is to do right and justice and show pity to the poor, the widow, the orphan, and every class of afilicted ones (Zec Tiot. gist. Ts 56! 58°-, Mal 3°? [this last passage denouncing, however, also sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers]). Moreover, it cannot be contested that even in the early post-exilic period a mechani- cal theory of retribution shows itself—the notion of a direct succession of sin and punishment, right conduct and outward blessing (Zec 8!-). Thus the scanty harvest is, according to Hag 151%, the direct penalty for the people’s remissness in the work of rebuilding the temple ; according to 2'4- all offerings presented before the temple is finished count as unclean, and consequently inefficacious, but after that event all the richer an era of bless- ing shall set in. iv. THE CuLTus. —The few utterances about the cultus—we here leave out of account those that belong to the realm of eschatology—show again a certain falling away from the height of the true prophetical point of view (cf. above, p. 685). The law-book of Hilkiah, although marked by the prophetic spirit, had at the same time laid down such definite rules for the cultus that it was inevitable that a tendency should arise to _ attach value to the merely external performance of these. In addition to this, Ezekiel’s conceptions, with his total rejection of the past and his sketch of a radically new constitution of the cultus, must have permeated all Jewish circles to such an extent that long before the introduction of the Priests’ Code there had been produced a positively painful attention to matters connected with the cultus. It is true that even yet evidences are not lacking of a truly prophetical appreciation of ritual services. he description of the proper kind of fasting contained in Is 58%>® might well have come from Isaiah ben-Amoz himself, while Joel’s (21%) call, ‘Rend your heart and not your garments,’ recalls Jeremiah’s demand for a circum- cision of the heart. Similarly, the ideal of the RELIGION OF ISRAEL duties and the significance of the priesthood set up in Mal 25% must be pronounced a thoroughl worthy one. On the other hand, the way in wile Haggai and Zechariah make all blessing for Judah depend essentially upon the rebuilding of the temple (Hag 14, Zec 8""-), the emphasis laid w outward observance of the Sabbath (Jer 17! [ef, especially the motive urged in v.], Is 56%, 58"), the extraordinary value attached to the regular food- and drink-ofierings in the temple (JI 1% 1 16 914) _ all this is hardly in accordance with the view of the cultus held by an Isaiah or a Jeremiah. v. ESCHATOLOGY.—1. The edict of Cyrus had indeed brought freedom to a portion of the people, but had by no means introduced the great trans- formation of things contemplated by Deutero- Isaiah. On the contrary, the returned exiles had to struggle hard for their existence, and their lot could scarcely appear an enviable one to those whe had remained behind in the land of their ca; tivity. No wonder that men’s minds turned with all the more longing to the future as that which should finally bring all their hopes to pass. With attention ever more tense they listened for the signs which were to herald a movement among the nations and the birth-pangs of the Messianic age. Zechariah, indeed, in the first of his night-visions learns (18) from the heavenly horsemen, who have reconnoitred the earth, that the whole world is still at rest and quiet. But, when the angel reminds Jahweh that the seventy years of anger | have elapsed, comforting words, with the promiseof | happiness, are spoken to him. Haggai announces i as a message from Jahweh that within a short | time He will make the earth tremble and throw | all peoples into commotion (2%), But even — Trito-Isaiah has yet to complain (Is 59°) that Israel — has always hitherto waited in vain for light, and | he begs the heavenly ‘watchers,’ whom Jahweh | has placed over the walls of Jerusalem, to give | themselves and Jahweh no rest until He hasestab- | lished and glorified Jerusalem (62%). x 2. The great transformation is brought about, according to the ancient expectation (see above, — p- 691°), by the ‘Day of the LorD,’ the day of judg- | ment alike upon the sinners in Judah and upon | the nations hostile to Israel. Properly speaking, | it is only Malachi (37) that mentions the judg- — ment upon Judah, when the angel of the covenant, — like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s lye, tries and purifies the Levites and the people; the ‘great | and dreadful day’ (whose coming is preceded af the advent of Elijah to reconcile the fathers and | the children, and so to avert the curse from the | land, 45 [Heb 3%]) devours in its fury allaaian proud and all the workers of wickedness (4! [31)), B: whereas upon those that fear God the sun of right-— | eousness shall arise, and they shall come forth un- J] harmed and tread down the wicked (4% [3?]). In Joel it looks at first as if in the devastating of | oe the land by the locusts the precursors of the Day | of Jahweh have appeared, ‘a day of darknessand | gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness’ for | Judah (1'5 2'); but in 3! [278%] the outpouring } of the spirit on Judah precedes the advent of the | ‘oreat and terrible day.’ That is to say, the judg- | ment of that day overtakes only the heathen, The | latter (‘all nations’) are again the only subject of 4 judgment in the Valley of Jehoshaphat (3[4]™), | where Jahweh calls them to account ‘ for his peck | and his heritage Israel.’ So in Is 13°", although | the avenging host is sent out by Jahweh to make By the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners | upon it (v.%), the Day of the Lorp affects mainly — Babylon. [In 34°" it is a day of vengeance, a year : of retribution for Zion against Edom; also in Ob | 15% all peoples, but especially Edom, are visited | with vengeance on the Day of Jahweh. On tha : | | : | | ae | Hh ae nk ee PARE es -— = ka RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 711 other hand, in Zeph 2 (a later addition to the threatening against Judah in vv.!-%) the Day of Jahweh overtakes five different nations]. Finally, in Zec 14' the situation of Ezk 38 f. is implied, only that the onslaught of the heathen at first results in the capture and plunder of the city and the carrying captive of a portion of its inhabitants. But then Jahweh with all His holy ones [angels] fights from the Mount of Olives against those nations, while those who are destined for deliver- ance make their escape through a wide cleft in the same mount (v."), For other features in this pene Peephety, which, after the fashion of the te eschatologies, mingles quite disparate ele- ments, see below. The ancient theologumenon of the interweaving of the world of nature with the fortunes of the alae of God appears here also, in association with the Day of Jahweh, or in general as a mark of the Messianic last days, but in more striking forms. Thus we have usions to strange, fear- compelling, natural phenomena such as the darken- ing of sun, moon, and stars (Is 13°, J] 21% 8. (33t-] 3[4]}, Zec 14% [according to which, on the Day of Jahweh it shall be neither day nor night, but at eventide it shall be bright]); earthquakes (Is 13% 2418.) _nay, the dissolving of the host of heaven along with the heavens themselves (Is 344). On the other hand, according to Is 30%, when the Messianic age comes, the Tight of the moon is to equal that of the sun, and that of the sun to be multiplied sevenfold., 3. Apart even from the occasions when it is brought into connexion with the Day of Jahweh, the idea of vengeance upon the heathen nations occupies the forefront of expectations as to the future. Those nations in particular are specified which either aided to the best of their ability in the destruction of Jerusalem, or at least indulged in savage mockery and malicious jubilation over it. ° Among these the pre-eminence belongs to Edom (Is 345%, Ob 4, Jer 4977, Jl 4[3]%; also Am 14% was in all probability added after the Exile). Jer 48 is directed against Moab; Is 13%", and the whole series of threatenings contained in Jer 50f., against Babylon; Jer 46 against the Egyptians; ch. 47 against the Philistines; 491% against the Ammon- ites; Zeph 24, J1 4(3)!™, Zec 9' against almost all the neighbours of Israel. But no less frequent are the threatenings which are directed against the nations in general, and which contemplate the laying waste and depopulating of the whole earth (Mic 738, Is 241-)nay, the trampling down of the nations by Jahweh Himself as one treads grapes (Is 631#-) ; or the burning of them to lime (Is 33). Zechariah in the second of his night-visions sees four horns (118- [2)#-]), which represent the hostile powers in all four quarters of heaven that have scattered Judah ; but he beholds at the same time four smiths that are to cut off the horns. In his eighth vision, again, he sees (6'-) the war-chariots which drive out in all directions to execute the judgment. And the reason why Jahweh is sore displeased against the nations is because, when He was a little displeased (with Judah), ‘they of themselves helped forward the affliction’ (1'). Here the old conception that Jahweh employed the heathen as His rod of chastisement for Israel is almost forgotten, and we hear only of the offence of the heathen. In Mic 7%, indeed, the uilt of Judah is freely admitted, but this con- ession is at the same time coupled with the hope of revenge. Cf. also Is 8%, Jer 10 259%, Never- theless, all these threatenings do not prevent very different expectations regarding the Gentile nations from being expressed elsewhere. In all the passages discussed above, judgment apon the heathen is the condition of the gathering together and reuniting of Israel in the Holy Land. From all sides they are to stream : neither floods nor deserts can check them, for Jahweh Himself prepares the way for them and leads them (Is 35!" 1]14.), According to Is 27, they are gathered by Jahweh one by one from all quarters, and fol- low the call of the great trumpet that summons them home; cf. also Jer 30% 4627, Zec 1087. In a way altogether unique the deliverance of the captives is connected in Zec 94 10°% with vic- torious conflicts of Judah and Ephraim with the Ionians, 2.¢. the Greek world-power. As in Ezk 37%, the expectation is firmly established that the exiles of the Northern kingdom as well are to return (cf. Hos 27, Mic 2, Jer 3!8 504, Ob?8); of envy and jealousy betwixt Judah and Ephraim no more is heard (Is 11}%). A fawvourite expectation of the post-exilic period is evidently that the heathen themselves shall bring the exiles home, and thus play a ve humiliating réle. We already encountered this expectation in an addition to Deutero-Isaiah (Is 492H. see above, p. 707%, small type), cf. also Is 60 and v.%, According to Is 66, certain of those who have escaped Jahweh’s judgment upon the heathen are sent to the distant nations to brin reverently to Zion, as an offering to Jahweh, a yet banished Israelites. According to Is 60, foreigners shall then build their walls for the Judahites, and kings shall minister to them; according to v.4 (ct. also Mic 71), the sons of their former oppressors shall pay them lowly hom- age. They themselves are to be as priests, i.e. free from all secular employment; for the foreigners shall be their shepherds, farmers, and vine-dressers (Is 615). Of the same kind is the expectation ex- pressed in Is 14156, that the Israelites, after their arrival in the land of Jahweh, shall make slaves of the heathen that brought them home, and thus ‘they shall take them captive whose captives they were, and they shall rule over their oppressors.’ Elsewhere (Is 11}, Am 9”, Ob!) the subjuga- tion of the former vassals of the Davidic kingdom is thought of as the work of the already returned exiles. To quite a different order of thought be- longs the expectation (connecting itself with Ezk 38f.) that the mass of heathen peoples, gathered before the walls of Jerusalem, which they already look upon as a certain prey, shall be speedily de- stroyed through the sudden intervention of Jahweh (ef. Is 995. Tf. 3077 333. 2b. Mic quer. . Zee 122. [where also the princes of Judah co-operate in the destruction of the nations] 14!2- [where the terrible punishment inflicted on the assailants, and the im- mense booty that falls to Judah, are described)]) ; on the different expectation expressed in Zec 147, see preceding column. If we are right in assigning these passages to the post-exilic period, they can have in view only one coming final attack by the heathen peoples on Jerusalem. The frequent vacil- lation and obscurity of statement is due to their eschatological character, which can tolerate the close conjunction of heterogeneous elements, 4, If, in all the above expectations hostile to the heathen, we meet with a particularism which can be regarded only as a denial of the message of Deutero-Isaiah, there are, fortunately, not wanting numerous witnesses that his work had not been by any means in vain. Zec 2°(4) foresees many peoples attaching themselves to Jahweh, that they may belong to His people and dwell in Judah, According to 87°#, many peoples and nations shall come to seek Jahweh and entreat His favour; ten men of different languages shall lay hold of the skirt of one Jew, that they may go with them of whom they have heard that God is with them, But a merely external attachment is not all. The whole of the heathen are to stream to the moun- 712 RELIGION OF ISRAEL tain of Jahweh, there to receive instruction as to the manner of conduct He requires, and to submit to His judicial decisions; universal peace among the nations shall be the result (Is 227, Mic 4, Zeph 3°, Is 60%). In like manner, the feast of fat things which Jahweh, according to Is 258, will pre- pare on Zion for all peoples, must be understood as a sacrificial meal by which they are received into the fellowship of the people of God; v.?7 declares how at the same time the covering shall be destroyed which has hitherto been cast over all peoples, and has kept them from the joyful ful- filment of the will of God which is known even to them. According to Is 56°, not only foreigners but even eunuchs who have attached themselves to Jahweh and keep His Sabbaths, may present to Him in Zion sacrifices that shall be well-pleasing in His eyes, for His house shall be called ‘an house of prayer for all nations’ (v.7). But the victory over particularism reaches its culminating point in the remarkable prophecy of Is 19%, which contemplates the conversion of the Egyptians and their joining with Assyria and ahs in a common worship of the true God. It may be that Assyria is here only a symbolical name (for Syria), and that the special circum- stances of a late period (the 3rd, if not the 2nd, cent. B.C.) supplied the motive for this prophecy. But, in any case, it is an important witness that all the particularism of the later post-exilic period had not been able to quench the spirit of Deutero- Isaiah. The same remark applies to the Book of Jonah. The simple teaching of this much mis- understood, and therefore inadequately appreciated, little book, is that God in His mercy desires not the death of sinners, even among the eather! but that they should turn and live; and, further, that it is within His power to effect such a turning, in Hence it only shows a carnal disposition and a low desire for revenge, if Judah, instead of rejoicing in the conversion of the heathen, is filled with fury be- cause vengeance has not yet overtaken Nineveh (which here probably stands fer Babylon). Thus understood —and the closing words of the nar- rative imperatively demand this interpretation— this little book, too, represents the highest eleva- tion reached by the point of view characteristic of Deutero-Isaiah. 5. In what precedes we have brought together all the expectations concerning the heathen world. But the centre round which the expectations of this period revolve is always Israel, the ‘heritage’ of Jahweh (Is 19%). It is for it, above all, that the joyful message is meant, which comforts the mourners of Zion (Is 611); on it is accomplished the wondrous transformation, nay the conversion of all conditions into their opposite (Is 2917#-), and therewith the triumph of the patient and the poor among men (v.}%), The principal guarantee for all blessings of the Messianic age is found—as in the earlier prophecies —in the restored personal presence of Jahweh, or, to be more precise, in the indwelling of His ‘glory’ (Zec 2 6 88, Is 45 [where cloud and shining flame, after the purifying judgment is over, are meant to recall the fiery load in which Jahweh once accom- panied Israel on the wilderness march]). With His appearing upon Zion, He enters at the same time on the kingly rule over Israel, and judicial author- ity over all nations (Is 24 33” 24%, Jer 101, Ob 21, Zeph 3”, Zec 14°). Under His sway, the popula- tion (which in post-exilic times was long so small) is to multiply beyond measure (Zec 8°, Hos 2! [1!°)) ; the walls of Jerusalem must stretch far out (Mic 74, Jer 31%), nay even be dispensed with alto- gether, on account of the multitude of men and rattle (Zee 2°); for Jahweh Himself will be to opposition to all human expectation. RELIGION OF ISRAEL them as a wall of fire (v.%). Jerusalem is hence- forward holy: foreigners shall no more pass through her (J1 4 [3]!”), no oppressor shall again lord it over her, for Jahweh now with sleepless eye interposes Himself as the bulwark of His temple against all that comes and goes (Zec 9°; cf. also Is 6018). Nor is there any further need of the sun and the moon, for Jahweh is their unceasing light (Is 60). Corresponding to the glory of her king is the external glory, the renown and splendour of the new Jerusalem, and the happiness of her inhabit- ants. They are there as a boast and a praise among all the peoples of the earth (Zeph 3”) ; all nations shall praise their country as a delightsome land (Mal 3'2), Jerusalem as the pride and joy of all future generations (Is 60%). Zion, the city of the festivals, shall be like a secure habitation, subject to no change (Is 337°; cf. also Am 9%, Jl 4 [3]”"); Israel shall be like splendidly blossoming lants (Hos 146), Is 275; according to many, also fs 42), One and all, the inhabitants shall enjoy a long duration of life (Zec 84, Is 657% ”), surrounded by blessings, including fertility (Is 30%, Jer 317, Am 9}, JI 4 (3)'8); for they are ‘a family blessed by Jahweh’ (Is 65%). In the Poe peace they pass their days (Mic 44, Is 6017>)—a peace which extends even to the wild animals (Is 65”). But the heathen, above all, have to contribute to the splendour of Jerusalem. All their wealth is to flow to that city as a token of homage to the temple (Hag 27, Is 11!° 187(2) 2318 605! 44), their flocks are to be ayailable for the sacrifices (Is 60°), and the glory of Lebanon for the beautifying of the sanctuary (v.18). Thus then shall Israel ‘suck the milk of the nations, and suck the breast of kings’ (v.18), But it is not only upon endowment with the good things of earth that the happiness of the new Jerusalem shall rest. Prophecy does not forget higher, spiritual blessings, even if their limitation to Israel preponderates, showing here again a fall- ing away from the height reached by Deutero- Tsaiah’s expectations. The most important point, because it is the prerequisite for all other bless- ing, is the complete atonement for all the past guilt of the people. From the way in which Zechariah in his fourth night-vision (3!) hears the Satan simply commanded to be silent when he charges the people in the person of the high priest Joshua with their old guilt, it might appear as if the past judgments had sufficed of themselves to constitute a full atonement. But this is not the meaning of the prophets. On the contrary, Jahweh (v.4) must expressly forgive the people’s sin. The clothing of the high priest in clean garments is a symbolical action, declaring him (and with him the people) justified, but of course with the im- plication of the presence of a penitent frame of mind, such as is well-pleasing to God. In reality it is the grace of God which brings about the atonement, as is expressly urged in Is 124 33% and, above all, Mic 718, Thus Israel becomes a people who are all righteous (Is 60”), who are holy (Is 4%) to Jahweh (7.e. consecrated to Him as an inalienable possession)—nay, Jérusalem is to bear the honorific appellation, ‘ Jahweh is our righteous- ness’ (Jer 33%), It is only occasionally that the religious and moral regeneration of the people is traced to the bestowal of the Divine spirit; ef. Is 32)5% 5921, Zec 12%, and especially Jl 3™, although in this last passage the outpouring of God’s spirit upon all branches of the people, even male and female slaves, refers mainly to the be- stowal of the gift of prophecy. But the mental transformations described in Is 2974 33> are also, no doubt, thought of as due to the influence of tlie Divine spirit. 6. Amidst all this, however, it cannot be deniv? DO ic WORE ELT CNC RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 713 that the ‘legal’ religion, for which the way was laid by Ezekiel, and which became an actual fact during the period with which we are dealing, casts its shadow even upon the expectations regarding the time of consummation. The very command- ing part played by temple and cultus at present (see above, p. 710) is to be retained even in the Messianic future. It is true that embodiments of the Divine presence such as the sacred Ark shall then be readily dispensed with, because the whole of Jerusalem shall be called the throne of Jahweh (Jer 3%), But the temple hill, as the holiest and most important, shall tower above all others (Is 2”, Mic 4"), whereas, according to Zec 14°, the whole of the rest of the country shall be changed into a plain. Ezekiel’s prophecy (ch. 47) of the temple spring undergoes an advance in Zec 148 in so far as the living waters, starting from Jerusalem, flow down to both seas, east and west, and thus fertilize the whole land. The importance attached, again, to the performance of the cultus is evidenced not only by the expectation of gifts of homage offered to the temple by the Gentiles (see above, p. 712°), but also by passages like Jer 3318 21, in a8 FN the regular succession of Levitical an is put on a level with the succession of the avidic dynasty. According to Is 667, however, the priesthood is to be open also to the returned exiles (not, presumably, to the Gentiles who bring them home). The religious festivals present them- selves in a specially important light. The former fast-days shall indeed be transformed into-days of rejoicing (Zec 8'®-), but at every New Moon and at every Sabbath all flesh (in Israel) shall come to worship at Jerusalem and—here we have a strange expectation, due probably to a later insertion—to look upon the corpses of the apostate ones, ‘ whose worm dieth not and whose fire is not quenched’ (Is 66%"; on this passage see p. 714%). Zechariah (146#-), on the other hand, looks at every Feast of Tabernacles for a pilgrimage of all nations to Jeru- salem to pray before Jahweh and to join in the keeping of the festival: if any one neglects this, his land shall be punished with drought. The holiness belonging to the temple shall extend even to the bells of the horses in Jerusalem and the cooking-pots of the temple. It need not be pointed out that this notion of holiness cannot be explained from the usage of an Isaiah or a Deutero-Isaiah, but only from the mechanical and outward concep- tion characteristic of the ‘legal’ religion. 7. We have purposely left out of account until now that branch of the expectations as to the future which, according to a still prevailing opinion, oc- cupied the forefront of interest, namely, the hope of the appearing of the Messiah, the ‘shoot of David,’ predicted at the latest by Jeremiah (see above, p. 696°). Really, however, it cannot be said that this aspect of prophecy plays a promi- nent part in our period, unless the very important oracles contained in Is 9'6 and 11)-, as well as Mic 51#- (cf. above, p. 696%), are to be assigned to the post-exilic period. Leaving these pas- sages out of account, we find a direct allusion to Jeremiah’s (235%) ‘shoot of David’ in Jer 3314 (where, however, vv.2” 2! show that it is not one particular ruler, but a continuous succession of rulers of David’s line, that is thought of) and Zec 3° 612. Here ‘Shoot’ has already become a proper name, but one has no longer to look for his coming, since he is present in the person of Zerub- babel. All that is now needed is the revelation of his dignity as a signet-ring chosen by Jahweh (Hag 275), and his elevation to the throne of his fathers—an event which appears to be connected in We leave out of account Is 42, because there ‘shoot’ or ‘sprout’ [better ‘sprouting ’] of Jahweh can only mean, in view of the parallelism, ‘ that which Jahweh causes to sprout.’ Zec 6 with the completion of the building of the temple. We have already (p. 678") pointed out that the crowning there enjoined had in the original text not Joshua but Zerubbabel for its object. It is perfectly intelligible that, after the shattering of the hopes reposed on Zerubbabel, the high priest should have taken his place (v.14), especially as in the fifth of Zechariah’s night-visions (444) he is already reckoned as one of the two ‘anointed’ ones who stand before the Lord of the whole earth. In Is 11, which clearly looks back to v.!, we hear of the ‘shoot from the root of Jesse,’ which is to’ be as an ensign to the nations (¢.e. to indicate to them the way they are to go), who shall seek his favour and (by their gifts of homage, cf. above, p. 712°) enhance the splendour of his residence. In the whole of the following description, however, he is not mentioned again. The expectation of a king of David’s family is found also, beyond doubt, in the beautiful pro- phecy of Zec 9-, although he is there called simply ‘king.’ Jerusalem is to rejoice over him who returns home as a conqueror over all enemies, but mounted upon the animal ridden in times of peace, in token that henceforward he is to rule as a peaceful prince to the ends of the earth. The idea of the world-empire of the Messiah appears here with its final stamp, and indeed in a form which goes far beyond all prophecies uttered hitherto, . and to which there is no parallel except in pas- sages like Ps 28. Apart from the above prophecies, we meet only with quite general promises, such as that of the righteous rule of a king and his ministers (Is 32'), the choice of a common head over Judah and Israel at the advent of the Messianic age (Hos 2? [1!)); also the ‘breaker’ of Mic 2 means the earthly leader, but the real king at the head of the return- ing people is Jahweh Himself), and the rearing up again of the fallen tabernacle of David (Am 9"). The last-named expectation might, however, refer simply to the re-establishing of the residence and kingdom of David ; while in Zec 12° the ‘ house of David,’ which (in the joy of victory) is to be like the angel of Jahweh, stands simply for the aristocracy of the nation, A closer examination of all these passages always yields the same result, namely, that during this period the person of the Messiah is either of only secondary importance, or, if this be not the case, the réle it plays is far less religious than political. 8. Finally, we have still to mention some quite isolated expressions, which (like some even of those above mentioned) belong to the sphere of late apocalyptic expectations. We should hardly include in this category the promise of a new heaven and a new earth (Is 65!” 66”). For, although this promise plainly attaches itself to Is 51° (the annihilation of heaven and earth), Trito-Isaiah, as the whole context shows, is think- ing rather of the complete transformation of all conditions than of an actual new creation of the Universe. On the other hand, Is 25° contains an apocalyptic feature in the announcement that death shall be destroyed for ever, as does also 26 in the hope expressed of the resurrection of the godly dead. In the latter case the form of expression appears to the present writer to exclude a symbolical explanation of this resurrection as referring to the return from exile (as in Ezk 37!'-), ‘They that lie in the dust’ are those actually buried ; the mysterious dew descending from the starry region causes the earth to send forth the shades again. The detfiniteness with which the We leave the question open whether this clause, which suita neither the rhythm nor the contents of the two following clauses, belonged from the first to Is 258, 714 RELIGION OF ISRAEL resurrection hope is here put forward can cause us all the less surprise, seeing that the so-called Apocalypse of Isaiah (chs. 24-27) appears to belong to a period from which we possess other witnesses to this expectation (see below, on Dn 123). Else- where, throughout this period we find everywhere assumed the old conception of Shé’él (see above, p. 668"), the place whence no return is possible. Only, it is questionable whether the description in Is 14° of the conditions in the kingdom of the dead, after the analogy of the conditions that pre- vail in the upper world, is to be put to the account of bold poetical colouring or of a further develop- ment of the ancient and simpler conception. Tf the latter must be assumed, yet even in this pas- sage (especially v.%, cf. Ezk 32%) nothing more than an approach can be discovered to the doctrine of a separation between the good and the bad. On the enigmatic saying in Is 6674 (probably a later addition), cf. above, p. 713%. It would have to be regarded as a clear approach to the doctrine of the pains of hell if there were here any refer- ence to the under world at all, and not rather to the corpses of apostates lying before the walls of Jerusalem. 9. In what precedes.we have already had to notice a variety of passages which pass beyond merely eschatological expectations into the sphere of apocalyptic, in so far as their language is pur- posely obscure and veiled, nay enigmatic in form, partly perhaps with the well-founded intention of rendering it unintelligible to outsiders. But apoca- lyptic proper meets us in the extant literature for the first time in the Book of Daniel (c. 165 B.C.). Since this book has found entrance into the OT canon, we cannot pass it over entirely in our present exposition. In reality, however, it belongs to the category of post-canonical (apocryphal and apoca- lyptical) literature, and hence we refer for details to the article DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE IN THE APOCRYPHAL PERIOD (above, p. 272ff.); cf. also P. Volz, Jiidische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba, Tiibingen and Leipzig, 1903 ; W. Bousset, Die jiidische Apokalyptik, etc., Berlin, 1903; W. Baldensperger, Die messianisch, apokalyptischen Hoffnungen des Judenthums?®, Strassburg, 1903. The apocalyptic character of the Book of Daniel is already indicated by the command (8% 12°) to Daniel to keep the revelations made to him secret, and to seal the book till the time of the end. But it is seen most clearly of all in the contents of chs. 2. 7. 10 ff. Throughout these chapters events are predicted, some of which had happened within the author’s own experience, while others had long been things of the past : in chs. 2 and 7 the world- empires that succeeded the empire of Babylon, along with the ten kings of the fourth kingdom ; in 10ff. the conflicts of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, with numberless details; and, most of all, the terrible danger to the religion of Israel threatened’ by Antiochus Iv. Epiphanes (11°), The purpose is everywhere the same: the author means to encourage his countrymen to uncon- querable endurance amidst the severe persecu- tion to which their faith and their fidelity to the Law were subjected. With this view he shows them, by the example of the young Daniel and his companions (1°-), the blessing of unqualified obedience to the laws about food ; by the example of the three men in the fiery furnace (ch. 3), and by the example of Daniel in the lions’ den (ch. 6), he exhibits how for courageous confessors of the God of Israel wondrous deliverance is wrought, while punishment inevitably overtakes the despisers of this God (372f 430 530 625 (24). On the other side, the consolation he offers is based upon the prediction— veiled indeed in true apocalyptic fashion, yet on that account exact—of the end of the oppression. RELIGION OF ISRAEL It is derived (ch. 9) from a mystical interpretation of Jeremiah’s prophecy of a seventy years’ period of rejection for Jerusalem, the years being ex- plained as weeks of years. Even this instance of occupation with the long-canonized Sacred Writ- ings, in order to discover a secret sense, is @ char- acteristic mark of apocalyptic. It would be doing the Book of Daniel serious injustice to deny it all claim to a truly religious tone, and to see in it merely an embodiment of rigid zeal for the Law. Even if the beautiful con- fession of sins contained in 941® should have to be regarded, with may moderns, as a later addition, yet in 8" and 11 there is the implication that the advent of the final age is still kept back by the continuance of God’s well- merited anger against Israel. But elsewhere, it cannot be denied, the strict observance of the outward demands of the Law, especially those relating to the cultus, occupies the forefront of interest. To our apocalyptist what appears to be the principal misfortune in the re- ligious persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, is plainly the abolition of the regular morning and | evening burnt-otfering (84-18 113! [coupled in the | latter passage with the defilement of the sanet' by a heathen image]), while its reintroduction i the subject of exact calculation (81% 124), Considering the date of origin of the Book of Daniel, it is a matter of course that its conception — of God should occupy the level reached by the | writing prophets. It 1s remarkable, however, that — here already there should be such striking traces — of the etfort, which afterwards reached a climax | in the Rabbinical theology, to jealously guard the person of God from all direct contact with the | visible world, This explains the great multiplying of comparatively independent intermediate beings, | who hold converse with the apocalyptist, in order | to give him information (7/64 815% 971#, where, for — the first time, we meet with the name of an angel, | Gabriel ; 107-) ; or whom he beholds otherwise in | his visions, such as the countless myriads of 7 | (cf. also 8% 125%, and the mention of guardian | angels in 3% 6%), In the story of the madness of | Nebuchadrezzar (4!°-) it looks almost as if the rule | of the world was left to the ‘determination of the | watchers’ [certain superior angels] and the com- | mand of the ‘holy ones’; it is not till v.27 that | we hear of a ‘determination of the Highest.? No | less do the struggles of the nations appear to be — decided simply by angelic princes (nny) as the | guardians and champions of the various peoples;t | cf. 10¢, where probably we should see Gabriel in | the fantastically described figure of the champion of — Israel, who, with the aid of Michael,t one of the chief princes (10'-#!; in 12! he is called ‘the great prince who protects thy countrymen’), contends with the patron angels of the Persian empire and (v.”°) of Greece. The above-described tendency to keep the per. son of God at a distance appears to be quite con- tradicted by the description in 7°, where the ‘ancient of days,’ who takes his seat upon the throne to execute judgment, can be unders only of God. But apart from the fact that here we have to do with a mere vision, and that on the occasion in question personal action on the part of | God was indispensable, the description is confined | wholly to externals (clothing, hair of the head, | dazzling throne, and myriads of attendant opin | God is not once introduced as speaking. On the contrary, it appears asif the decision of the assessors} of the court (v.!°») were pronounced on the ground | In 1211f. there may be two later systems of reckoning | different from that of 814, | + Cf. what was said above (p. 709° £.) on Is 24218, % t Cf. the exhaustive monograph of W. Luecken, Michash | Gottingen, 1898. : RELIGION OF ISRAEL of the ‘ books,’ in which, presumably, the actions of the parties to be judged had been written down. This judgment evidently enters as a principal component into the eschatological expectations of the Broce peat. And its result is not merely to cast down the heathen world-empire personified in the God-blaspheming Antiochus Epiphanes, but to bestow the world-dominion for ever on the ‘ saints of the Most High,’ z.e. on the people of Israel (718t. alt. 27; cf., by the way, even 2"), In view of the express interpretation of the angel in 7°”, the figure who, dike a man, comes with the clouds of heaven, can be understood only of Israel, and not of a personal Messiah, of whom, strangely enough, the book contains no hint. On the other hand, it is the Book of Daniel (12?) that contains the tirst undoubted reference to the resurrection. Even here, however, what is looked for is not a general resurrection of a// the dead, but only a resurrection of many, including both the godly (to everlasting life) and the ungodly (to shame and everlasting abhorrence). The number of the first naturally includes Daniel himself (v.). That this last offshoot of Prop beey should now exhibit only faint traces of the true prophetic spirit, and should move rather on the lines of ‘legal’ religion, is onty natural in view of the fact that the latter had held almost unlimited sway for nearly 300 years at the date when the Book of Daniel was composed. In speaking of the Book of Daniel, and even in dealing with a not inconsiderable portion of post- exilic Eerleey, we have been compelled to antici- pate the order of the stages of development of the religion of Israel. Our next task will be to seek to realize more fully the nature of the ‘ Priests’ Code.’ VIII. THE PRIESTS’ CoDE (P). i. THE SOURCES. — Regarding the numerous uestions connected with the literary criticism of the stratum usually known as P, we must here be content with a few remarks. brought with him from Vath by Ezra, and which, in view of Ezr 7!! (‘the writer of the law of the God of heaven’), must at least have been edited by him. Whether this law-book of Ezra was identical with that recension which embodied the cultus laws in the form of a cultus history (cf. e.g. Ly 19%-, Nu 15#2-), and included also the historical parts of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua, we leave an open question. Only, we have no doubt on this point, that Ezra’s law-book was identical neither with the whole of the present Pentateuch nor with the whole of the present P stratum. For, in the one case, the occasional glaring differences between the laws in D and in P would have occasioned serious confusion ; while, The above (p. 713>) cited passage, Is 2619, which, by the way, perhaps belongs to the same period as Daniel, is by not a few explained of the political resurrection of the people. RELIGION OF ISRAEL 715 on the other supposition, it would be quite im- possible to account for the very frequent repeti- tions (for instance, the duplicate versions of the ordinances regarding the building and furnishing of the Tent of Mecting, Ex 25-31 and 35-40), as well as the partial divergences of the components of certain groups (for instance, in the so-called sacrificial torah of Lv 1-7). On the contrary, we can only conclude that the code of Ezra, which was originally harmonious, was subsequently en- larged by the products of other priestly schemes, and so finally (probably still within the 5th cent. B.C.) united with the older sources (J, E, D) into a single whole. ii, THE CONCEPTION OF GOD,—1. P’s conception of God can, properly speaking, be gathered only from the Creation narrative of Gn 1. For, as almost his whole interest is fixed on the prepara- tion for and the establishment of the Israelitish theocracy, little occasion presents itself elsewhere for descanting on the being of God. But in the story of Creation (cf. above, p. 666) we encounter such a transcendence of God in relation to matter, in opposition to all pantheistic intermixing of the two, and to every theory of evolution, that we may here pass by the much debated question of the dependence of the narrator on the Babylonian or the Phenician cosmogony. At most, a mytho- logical echo has survived in the allusion to a chaos (v.?) and the hovering (scarcely ‘ brooding’) of the creative spirit of God over the primeval ocean. But, even if v.? should be urged in opposition to the assumption of a creation ex nihilo, iliené would still be left the making of light, of the firmament of heaven, and, above all, of the stars, which are evidently to be thought of not as formed from pre-existing material but as called immediately into being. The absolute omnipotence of the Creator results of itself from the fact that His word of command is all that is needed to bring things into being according to His pleasure; while His absolute wisdom is manifested in the pro- gressive order of the creative work, culminating in man, the goal and the crown of creation; as well as by the testimony of the Creator Himself (v.21) that all He had made was ‘very good,’ 1.e. perfect. 2. This lofty conception of the living, personal, but at the same time purely spiritual, Giang product of perfected prophetism—shows itself elsewhere in P in his careful avoidance of all anthropomorphism. True, indeed, even he cannot entirely dispense with theophanies at specially important crises in the history of redemption; but he always con- tents himself with almost imperceptible allusions to the near presence of God (Gn 17? 354), or to the appearing of the ‘glory of Jahweh’ (see above, p. 639°f.) in the cloud (Ex 16, Nu 9 177 [16#2}). This glory appears to the Israelites upon the top of Mount Sinai like devouring fire (Ex 241”); its reflexion causes the skin of Moses’ face to shine, so that he has to cover his countenance with a veil (Ex 34”), But none of these passages venture on even a remote description of the being of God. Under these circumstances it is surely no accident, again, that in P we find no trace of intermediary beings between God and man, the sole medium of revelation being the word of God. Manifestly, the sending forth of angels, who had to be thought of all the same as wearing some bodily form, ap- peared to P as itself a degrading of the Divine sphere to the realm of the creaturely. 3. All the less can it be that, when man is said to have been created after the image of God and The fullest treatment of these questions is by H. Gunkel, Schépfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (Gottingen, 1894) ; and Frdr. Delitzsch, Das babylonische Weltschop/fungsepos (Leipzig, 1896). 716 RELIGION OF ISRAEL in His likeness (Gn 1%), there is any thought of a copying of the bodily form of God. Even if some- thing of the kind may have been intended in the heathen source which is assumed by many to have been used by the narrator, he himself would have indignantly repelled any such conception. Man is the image of God in so far as he, in distinction from all other living creatures, belongs to the realm of rational and moral beings, whose supreme head is God Himself. The idea that this Divine image was lost by a fall into sin is quite unknown to P. On the contrary, he expressly notes (Gn 5°) that it was transmitted by Adam, through the process of generation, to Seth (and his further posterity); and, even after the Flood, murder is declared to be an act worthy of punishment by death (9°), because it amounts to a destroying of the Divine image. A result of the position of pre-eminence held by man as the bearer of the Divine image is the dominion accorded him by God over the earth, and in particular over the world of animals (Gn 1%), For the exercise of this dominion men are capacitated by becoming fruitful and multi- plying in accordance with the so-called ‘ Creation- blessing.’ At the same time, however, they are at first (v.%) confined exclusively to a vegetable diet ; permission to use animal food (but to the exclusion of eating blood) does not come till after the Flood (Gn 9%-), 7.e. it is simply a concession to the corruption that has now set in, a perversion of the condition oneal designed by God. In His perfect creation slaughter could not have held sway from the first. iil. THE REGULATIONS OF THE THEOCRACY.— 1. That interest in the regulations of the theocracy by which the whole of P is dominated, makes itself felt already in the Creation narrative, in so far as the latter represents the Sabbath as blessed and hallowed from the beginning as the day on which God rested from His six days’ work (Gn 2°). The Flood is indeed, as in J, a judgment of God (64) on a wholly corrupt humanity, but at the same time furnishes the occasion for concluding a bérith (ef., on this so-called ‘covenant,’ above, p. 630°f.) with the new race of men descended from Noah. It consists in God’s promise that mankind is in future to be safe from the recurrence of de- struction by the waters of a flood, and in the binding of Noah (and in him of all mankind) to abstain from eating blood and from murder. The covenantal sign confirmatory of the Divine promise is the rainbow (91), 2. In the history of the patriarchs, which is dis- missed by P in a few very brief notices, there emerges prominently once more the concluding of the dérith with Abraham (Gn 17!#:), The Divine promise in this instance has reference tothe be- stowing upon the patriarch of a very numerous posterity, which shall include even kings, and to the assigning of the land of Canaan to Abraham’s seed as a permanent possession. On the other hand, Abraham is bound to an upright walk before God and to the adoption of circumcision as the outward sign of this second ‘covenant.’ It is clear that circumcision, which, as a very ancient practice of many nations surrounding [srael, must originally have rested upon other grounds (cf. above, p. 622°f.), is here brought under a specifically religious point of view. Since an uncircumcised person is ‘unclean,’ circumcision, as the taking away of a portion of the uncleanness, is a symbolical act of purifying. But this negative sense is supplemented by a positive one—an act of consecration. Circumcision is the rite whereby a child is received into the fellowship of the pure God-consecrated people, and it includes at the same time the obligation to conform to all the RELIGION OF ISRAEL Divine ordinances that are binding on this body. All these features (purification, consecration, en- gagement) impart to circumcision, as viewed by P, a sacramental character, which suggests com- parison with Christian Baptism. The cireum- stance that, according to v.!%, circumcision is to be performed also on every class of slaves, appears at the first glance very strange, in view of the par- ticularism with which P elsewhere insists on the sole claim of Israel to the name of a people of God, But it seems to him even more important that no unclean one shall be tolerated in the company of the clean, and hence he resorts more readily to the expedient of requiring that even foreigners who have come into external fellowship with Israel shall be bound to the Law by circumcision, and be thereby constituted full citizens of the Divine commonwealth. 3. Except for his detailed account of the purchase of the burial-place at Hebron (Gn 23), upon which he evidently means to base a claim on the part of Abraham’s posterity to the land of Canaan, P hastens rapidly over the history preliminary to the Sinai covenant, that he may dwell all the more fully on this third 4érith, whose duration is to be eternal, and whose sign is the Sabbath (Ex 31%), In the forefront stands (Ex 6%) the solemn revelation of the name ‘ Jahweh’ to Moses. This name is expressly said to have been then first communicated, d having re- vealed Himself to the fathers only as El-shaddat (‘God almighty’). No explanation of the name ‘Jahweh’ is given. Doubtless, the explanation — which underlies Ex 3 is assumed as long — familiar. But here already the promises of | Jahweh are enumerated, upon which the bérith at | Sinai is to be founded: the deliverance from the | bondage of Egypt, whereby at the same time — Israel’s election as the people of God’s own pos- | session is sealed, and the settlement of them in } Canaan in fulfilment of the sworn promise to the | patriarchs that this land was to be given to their | descendants for a perpetual possession. The obli- | gations, again, to which the people have to submit — themselves, in order to prove themselves worthy — of these Divine blessings and of the name ‘people of Jahweh,’ are laid down in the numerous ordi- nances which form the kernel of the so-called | ‘Priests’ Code.’ The latter name is not meant to | imply that this code is concerned only with pre- | scriptions for the priests—by way of opposition, | for instance, to Deuteronomy as a law-book for | the people. On the contrary, the majority of the | laws contained in it assume the form of communi- | cations which Moses by God’s command imparts to the people, But, as all strictly ritual actscan | be pertormed only by priests, and the laws have | reference very largely to the cultus, the designa- — tion of the whole as the ‘ Priests’ Code’ is per- | fectly justified. The realm of civil and criminal jurisprudence, which plays by no means an un- essential part in the ‘Book of the Covenant,’ comes into consideration in P only where speci- — fically religious interests are involved. 4. The fundamental notions on which the so- | called Ceremonial Law, independence onthe legisla- | tive programme of Ezekiel, is based, are extremely | simple. They amount essentially to the one idea — that in the domain of Israel, Jahweh’s own peo le, everything without exception belongs, and is thus consecrated, to Him alone. This holds good ac- | cordingly of all space and time, and of all pro- | On this side of the legislation, which we pass by here, the | 3 , ‘al reader may compare the following : W. Nowack, oa Probleme in Israel, Strassburg, 1892 ; E. Schall, Die Staatsver- Jassung der Juden, Leipzig, 1896; F. Buhl, Die soctalen Verhiltnisse der Israeliten, Berlin, 1899; G. Forster, Das mosaische Strafrecht in seiner geschichtlichen Bntwickelung Leipzig, 1900. ee sa edie Sa sali clia ate aa a a a at ta Mn el a RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 717 perty and life. The full logical consequence of this now would be, properly speaking, that man would have to renounce all use of what is God’s sole pro- perty—nay, that all life would have to be brought to Him in sacrifice. But this would make the continued existence of the God-consecrated people impossible. Hence God has so ordained it in His law that only a portion of the property in question is to be exclusively hallowed to Him and thus withdrawn from profane use. This due (¢ériémdah), levied upon the whole, gives symbolical expression to the confession that Jahweh is incontrovertibly Lord of everything. With this admission He is graciously satisfied; and by the sacred térdmah all the rest is also hallowed and its safe use pro- cured for Israel. But all the heavier is the vengeance that overtakes him who omits the pre- scribed hallowing and rendering of a portion to Jahweh, or lays his hands on what has already been hallowed. It will be our object in the fol- lowing survey to show what was the special portion of Jahweh under all the categories above referred to. (a) Holy places.—Jahweh is sole Lord of all space. But He contents Himself with requiring that a limited space be marked off and declared absolutely sacred. This space is the place where His ‘ glory’ dwells, and thus at the same time sup- lies the condition of approach to Him and of all inds of ritual proceedings. (a) The latter became possible for the first time after the construction of the one legitimate sanctuary, in the form of the ‘Tent of Meeting’ (commonly called ‘ the taber- nacle,’ German Stiftshiitte) at Sinai. Hence P nowhere — of the erecting of altars or the offering of sacrifices by the patriarchs, but the constitution of the sanctuary is the first and very minutely handled subject of the Sinaitic legis- lation (Ex 25' and 354%), The concentration of the cultus at one legitimate sanctuary, which Deuteronomy (12!) put forward as a new demand and which it carried through not without diffi- culty, appears in P as something that is self- evident and needs not to be specially enjoined. Nor does P, like Deuteronomy, regard the unifica- tion of the cultus as coming into force only after the termination of the conquest of Canaan [or, to be more precise, after the building of Solomon’s temple], but as a principle that was valid from the very first. The tent-sanctuary erected at Sinai is indeed, in view of its whole character, nothing but the Jerusalem temple projected back into the time of the wilderness Journeyings; but there are two considerations that forbid our speaking, in this connexion, of P’s account as pure fiction. In the first place, even the ancient tradition (Ex 337") knows of a ‘ Tent of Meeting,’ only that the latter is not a place of worship but simply the seat of an oracle, and that it stands not in the midst of but outside the camp. Secondly, the tent-sanctuary of P belongs to the numerous theories which owe their form, not to an actual tradition but to a religious postulate. Things must have been so ordered, it was argued, if they were to harmonize with the (much later, but) absolutely authoritative theories. Thus a delicate symbolical idea comes to be transformed into tangible history. Any one who straightway pronounces this a falsifying of history, shows that he has no notion of the peculiar character of the whole genus of literature known as the midrdsh (for it is to this realm that we must assign all this embodying of religious ideas in history, within the Ceremonial Law). See, further, art. TABERNACLE in vol. iv. The setting up of the sacred tent in the midst of the camp of ‘Ysrael naturally implies that Jahweh means to take up His abode amidst His people, if not in His real person, yet with a representation of His being (ef. above, p. 639°f., on the ‘ glory of Jahweh’). The special seat of His revealing presence, and consequently the most holy centre of the sacred spot, is the lid of the Ark of the Law in the dark adytwm of the tent (Ex 25%), Next to this ‘Holy of Holies,’ which, it would appear from Ly 16, could be entered only by the high priest, and even by him only on the Crea Day of Atonement, comes the ‘ Holy Place,’ which only the priests, not the Levites, might enter. These two spaces are surrounded by the fore-court, in which the priests, with the assistance of the Levites, attend to the sacrificial cultus. Between the fore-court, again, and the tribes of Israel which—three on each side—surround the court, the Levites are encamped. In virtue of the consecration which they have undergone, they are fitted to serve as a bulwark to the people against the Divine holiness, which threatens with destruction everything unclean that comes near it (Nu 1°), (8) The idea of a térdmah of the land being due to Jahweh as an acknowledgment that one owes the whole to Him, finds a further expression in the command to set apart 13 priestly and 35 Levitical cities, each with a piece of pasture-land round about it (Nu 35, Jos 21). The circumstance that these cities and the pasturage pertaining to them are intended for the use of man, does not exclude the possibility of looking upon them as a due paid to Jahweh. For in other instances as well (e.g. the thigh in meal-offerings) the ¢térdmah falls io the priests. This whole enactment, however, is intended simply to embody one of those theories spoken of above, without regard to the possibility of carrying it into practice. This is sufficiently ‘proved by the single fact that the territory of the twelve tribes, in each of which, in propor- tion to their size, a certain number of cities are to be set apart (Nu 35%), had long ceased to be under the control of the people, and that it cannot be proved that in the post-exilic period such a law was carried out even in the case of Judah, although priests and Levites may have fixed their abode by reference in those particular cities of Judah and Bentamits In favour of the view that we are here dealing with a mere theory, there is, finally, the further circumstance that several of the cities enumerated were situated so near to one another that the pasture-lands attached to them (extend- ing each to a distance of 2000 cubits from the city wall) would in many instances have over- lapped. The late date, however, at which this theory was constructed is evident from the way in which the Priests’ Code proper repeatedly (Nu 182%. 266?) insists that the tribe of Levi is to be compensated by the offerings of the people for having waived its claim to a share of the land: Jahweh is its portion. (y) A final embodiment of the idea of Jahweh as the sole owner of the land is found in a portion of the regulations about the Sabbatical year and the so-called great year of jubile (Lv 25). It is true that even the Book of the Covenant prescribes (Ex 23'-) that the land is to be allowed to lie fallow once in seven years, for the good of the poor and the beasts of the field. The motive there, however, is a humanitarian, not a theocratic, one; and, moreover, the rule is certainly not meant to apply to all cultivated land in one and the same year. Deuteronomy prescribes (ch. 15) only a remission The opening part of Lv 16 contains, indeed, primarily only regulations as to the precautions to be taken by Aaron to ensure his being able to enter the sanctuary without danger, and thus manifestly assumes the possibility of repeated entrances. This introductory passage was afterwards amal- gamated with the ritual of the Day of Atonement. Nu 187, again, implies that all priests may officiate in the Holy of Holies. 718 RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL ling of the doorposts with its blood) could be re- tained by P only through giving up the sacrificial character of the festival; for otherwise it could not have been celebrated except (as in Dt 16%) at the central sanctuary. In the case of the Mazz6th festival it is repeatedly emphasized that the strict prohibition of leaven was given at the very Exodus itself, thereby conferring upon this festival also the character of a theocratic memorial ordinance. With the Feast of Tabernacles (now an eight days’ instead of a seven days’ festival), which was bed ally the joyous feast of the fruit- and wine-gather. ing, the same result was reached by giving to the ancient custom of dwelling in booths during the festival the stamp of a memorial of the wilderness journeyings. This giving up of the original motive of the festivals, namely, the course of the various harvests, permits also of an exact dating of them. Thus the Pasaovel falls on the evening of the 14th Nisan, Mazzéth extends from the 15th to the 21st of the first month, Tabernacles from the 15th to the 22nd of the seventh month, while the Feast of Weeks falls on the fiftieth day after the offering of the firstling sheaf, which was always to be pre- sented the day after the Sabbath of the Mazzéth- week. Of new festivals we have: the Feast of Trumpets at the new moon of the seventh month [otherwise the New Moon, to which such import. | ance was attached in early times, is signalized in | P only by a multiplication of the officia re and ‘a Great Day of Atonement on the 10thday of the same month. Once more it is significant that the latter festival, which is undoubtedly of very late origin, and whose motives are purely theocratic, should have become the most important and the holiest of all. By the way, it is only in the case | of seven of these days (the Ist and 7th days of | Mazz6th; the Feast of Weeks; the Ist, 10th, 15th, — and 22nd days of the seventh month [but, accord- | ing to Lv 23%, also every Sabbath]) that a ‘holy | convocation’ of the whole people is required at the __ sanctuary—a demand which is intelligible only if | one thinks of the people as living in the neighbour- | hood of the airs as was actually the case | eine the first period after the Return from the } Exile. = All the festivals hitherto enumerated recurred | every year. But the underlying idea of all the — festal seasons made its way to a further realization | in the setting apart, as hallowed to God, of seasons | within larger divisions of time. This led to the | expansion of the idea of the Sabbath by the separa- | tion and hallowing of every seventh year as the | close of a year-week, and of the fiftieth year after | the termination of a cycle of seven year-weeks. | The celebration of these is based upon a renuncia- tion of the use of the soil. Since in this instance — the theory of sacred ¢ime is in the closest contact | with that of sacred space, we have already (p. 717%) | had to speak of the Sabbatical year and the great year of jubile. (c) The consecrated character of all members of | the people ; ‘holy persons’ in the narrower sense (Priests and Levites).—(a) The fact that Jahweh by © mighty acts ‘redeemed’ the people from the bond- | age of Egypt, constituted Israel the property of | Jahweh alone (Lv 254-5); and henceforward it — | was to be a people consecrated to Him, and thus — —in harmony with His superiority to every kind of stain—an absolutely pure people. This idea finds expression on the one hand in the purificatory | act of circumcision, and on the other in the numer- ous regulations about cleanness (cf. especially Ly | 11-15), which furnish instructions as to the pre: | cautions to be taken to avoid defilement, and as té the atoning acts necessary when Levitical purity | has been lost. In so far as these acts consist of | | of debts for the seventh year, again on humani- tarian grounds. On the other hand, Ly 25%" re- quires that every seven years adi land shall enjo absolute rest. ‘There is no more word of humani- tarian motives: the Sabbath of the land in the Sabbatical year denotes a consecration of the land just as the weekly Sabbath signifies the consecra- tion of a specified shorter period of time. But this consecration implies once more the solemn acknowledgment that the people have received the land only on revocable lease from Jahweh, the sole feudal owner, We have the express testimony of the history of the Maccabzean wars to the fact that the prescrip- tions regarding the Sabbatical year were carried into practice. On the other hand, Jewish tradition itself admits that the so-called great year of jubile, which fell every fiftieth A (after the complete lapse of seven Sabbatical, year weeks), was only counted but not actually observed. As a matter of fact, the carrying out of the prescriptions of Lv 25%, so far as this was possible at all, would have led to a total want of certainty as to all matters of property and a consequent paralyzing of economic relations. But the consistent theory of P’s legislation is indifferent to questions of practicability, and even to such considerations as that the year of jubile immediately follows a Sabbatical year and thus implies a second fallow year. All this appears to P insignificant com- pared with the principle which here (v.%) finds its most notable and clearest expression: the land (like every other possession), being the property of Jahweh, may not be sold. On the contrary, one man can marl to another only a certain number of harvests; the price is to be proportioned to the number of years which have yet to elapse before the next jubile year, when the property spontane- ously falls back to the original usufructuary of it, the proper feudatory of Jahweh. It is significant that, according to v.7-, the houses in a walled city do not pass back in the year of jubile into the hands of the seller. They are the handiwork of man, and, as such, do not belong to the feudal property of which Jahweh gives a lease. On the other hand, the houses in villages are, according to v.51, a part of the landed property ; hence they are redeemable at any time, and pass back in the year of jubile to their original owner. (6) Holy times.—Jahweh is Lord also of all time. Hence the employing of time in any pursuit that brings profit amounts to an encroaching upon God’s right of property. He permits, however, of such encroachment, upon condition that special portions of the whole time are set apart and ‘hallowed,’ i.e. withdrawn from profane use, as belonging to God. The essential point is thus abstention from work. It is ouly in a secondary way that P thinks of the spending of holy days in Divine worship or pri- vate meditation. On ordinary holy days it is only professional work that is forbidden le Bite ae ab etc.), but on the Sabbath and the Great Day of Atonement it is work of every kind (vv.). ‘The standpoint of P comes out, above all, in the motives he assigns for the festivals. The original agrarian character of these (cf. above, p. 662 ff.) still sur- vives—apart from the dedication of the firstling sheaf at the Mazzéth festival, Lv 23°%—only in the Feast of Weeks, as the occasion when the firstling loaves are presented. On the other hand, the Passover, as an independent festival, precedes the seven (formerly six) days of Unleavened Bread. Already inatatated: in Egypt (Ex 12"), it is meant for all time, in grateful remembrance of the sparing of Israel the night before the Exodus, when God smote all the firstborn of the Egyptians. The manifestly primitive form of the celebration (the eating of the lamb in the houses, and the besprink- —: : , Ae © RET EGR Belge hy "ht pd = Et af tAqieote RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 719 them more fully below in connexion with the sub- ject of sacrifice. But, besides these, we have to do here with the command to consecrate to God all the male firstborn (and therewith all the fur- ther offspring of the same womb), and, following out this idea, to redeem them by a prescribed per- formance from the condition of forfeiture to the Deity (Ex 131, Nu 18%), The same object is aimed at in the requirement of a poll-tax of half a shekel from every adult Israelite as a protective ‘covering’ of his life upon the occasion of the numbering of the people (Ex 30"). For this last is, as it were, an encroaching upon Jahweh’s sphere of sovereignty ; hence an express acknowledgment of His sole claim to the life of all persons is neces- sary, and this takes the form of a poll-tax (Heb. 753 ‘covering,’ ‘atonement’), which is of the same amount for A natural result of the same assumption is found, finally, in the injunction (Lv 25-) that Israelites, who from any cause have become bondmen, are not to be regarded and treated as real slaves, although in the Book of the Covenant (Ex 21') and even in Deuteronomy (15-) this is treated as quite possible. On the contrary, P demands that, as really the property of Jahweh, they are to rank only as hirelings or téshabhim (Lv 25%), and in any case are to go free in the year of jubile. (8) But, more clearly than in any way hitherto mentioned, the idea of a people consecrated to God finds expression in the organization of the priest- hood. Properly speaking, all male Israelites ought to discharge priestly functions, and thereby tes- tify their willing devotion to God. But for this an indispensable requisite is such a condition of purity as cannot possibly be maintained by every man amidst the duties of common life. Hence Jahweh has arranged for a permanent representa- tion of the people, in the form of the hereditary priesthood entrusted to Aaron and his sons. The restriction of the priesthood to the ‘sons of Zadok,’ demanded by Ezekiel (see above, p. 705°), was impossible for P for the reason that his whole legislation dates from Moses, and thus long before the time of Zadok. At the same time, moreover, the deriving of the priesthood from Aaron made it possible to recognize the priestly rights of certain non-Zadokite families.t But, in the main, P’s ‘sons of Aaron’ are just the Zadokites. In order to be able to approach God and present Israel’s offerings to Him without danger, the priests have to guard carefully against all defile- ment. In particular, they are not to incur defile- ment from any dead body (Lv 21'), except in unavoidable cases when the body was that of a parent, a brother, an unmarried sister, or one’s own child. Any bodily defect serves of itself to exclude from priestly functions, for one thus affected would ‘desecrate the sanctuaries of Jahweh’ (v.4). But the highest requirements in the matter of outward purity apply to the high priest, in whose person the idea of a personal representation of the poly people reaches its climax. He may not defile himself with any It needs no argument to show that the parallel it was once customary to draw between the OT and the Catholic concep- tion of the priesthood is quite a mistaken one. According to the latter, the priest acts the part of God over against the people, and hence in God’s name gives absolution and imparts lessing. On the other hand, in P the high Seale is nothin more than a representative—highly exalted and dignified, indeed —of the God-consecrated people. He represents it before God in every regard (see below). Any (ritual) short- coming on his part involves the whole people in guilt. As to the blessing of Jahweh, again, the high priest, like the other irda cannot impart this of himself, but must supplicate it of cf. Nu 623f., and especially v.27). t These have their genealogy traced not to Eleazar but to Ithamar, another son of Aaron. It may be noted that only one head of a family is named in Egr 83 as a descendant of Ithamar, rmamely Daniel. dead body, even that of father or mother, and is not to leave the sanctuary at all, that he may not (by contact with what is profane) ‘desecrate the sanctuary of his God.’ Moreover, his very cloth- ing shows (Ex 287%) by various symbols that he represents not only the holiness of the priestly people but also their kingly dignity. He wears a robe of blue and red-purple, and a golden diadem inscribed ‘ Holy to Jahweh,’ and upon his shoulder- piece and breastplate are the names of the twelve tribes engraved on precious stones. In short, in place of the pre-exilic chief priest, who is an official of the king, we have now the sovereign, hereditary high priest. At his death the claim of the avenger of blood upon the life of the man- slayer lapses (Nu 35%). This means simply that with the supreme head of the State ends the period of political life which began with his entry on office. In like manner the anointing of the high priest, at least according to the theory which represents him alone as anointed (Ex 29"; cf. Lv 48. 5. 16 g12 «the anointed priest,’ Lv 21 ‘the consecration of the anointing oil of his God rests upon him’) is undoubtedly thought of as a parallel to the anointing of the king. In the other theory, which makes all priests anointed, the thought is probably the ancient one (cf. above, p. 659° f.) of an imparting of the spirit as the result of the anoint- ing (Ex 40; on the other hand, in 297 and 30” the sprinkling of the priests’ garments with anoint- ing oil seems to be distinguished from the pouring of oil upon the head of Aaron in 29’). (y) As to the Levites, it is a very general error to regard them as priests of a lower grade, the rank and file, as it were, of the ‘ priestly tribe’ of Levi, from which the priests proper, with the high priest at their head, emerge as a special branch. But this is by no means the intention of P. The circumstance that it is from the tribe of Levi that the Levites are taken, is due to a Divine arrangement equall with the setting apart of the priests from Levi; it is not the consequence of the latter arrangement. On the contrary, the Levites are a selection from the people to represent them in connexion with the lower offices of the cultus. These offices ought to be discharged by the people themselves, or, to be more precise, by the firstborn who are consecrated to God. But here, again, the unavoidable absence of constant purity would have rendered such ser- vice impossible, seeing that the firstborn could not be kept from all contact with profane life. Hence, according to Nu 3#-, each of the firstborn is to have his place taken by a Levite. Now, as there were only 22,000 Levites available, whereas the number of the firstborn was 22,273, the extra 273 of the latter had to be specially redeemed from their obligation by a further payment of five shekels each. In this requirement P’s real view of the character of the Levites finds very clear expression. They are a ‘ gift’ of the people to the priests (Nu 3° etc.), to minister to the latter. According to Nu 8, they are, like all ‘ wave- offerings,’ assigned to Jahweh through laying on of hands (see below) by the Israelites; they are ‘waved’ [7.e., probably, led hither and thither, in place of being waved backwards and forwards in the hands, like other sacrificial gifts] by Aaron before Jahweh, and then fall, like all heave- and wave, offerings, to the priests as their property. Their installation is not spoken of, as in the case of the priests, as a consecration, but as an atone- ment and a purifying (Nu 8°21), In view of all this, we cannot speak of any priestly service rendered by the Levites. Nay, according to Nu The title so familiar to us, ‘ high (lit. ‘great,’ bined pest,” appears in Ly 2110 in the form ‘the priest who is greater than eee rah while in Ezr 75 we have ‘the priest [who is] the 720 RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 45, they are not to touch the sacred vessels upon pain of death, but to carry them only after they have been carefully covered up by the priests. It is true, however, that their superior condition of purity enables them to come nearer to the sanctu- ary than the profane multitude can do, and to serve aS a bulwark to the latter against the destroying holiness of God (cf. above, p. 717). (5) We have already (p. 658° f.) noted how even P recognizes also a kind of lay priesthood in the shape of the Nazirate undertaken for a fixed period of time. (d) The hallowed character of all property.— This principle finds expression partly in the ancestral custom of offering the firstfruits of barley, must, and oil (Nu 181), and partly in a number of sacrificial transactions. Every due paid from the products of the soil signifies that one owes the whole to Jahweh, and it is only when He has received His portion that the rest is hal- lowed and given over freely to the use of man. Amongst the regular ritual dues is included also the tenth paid in early times to the king, only that it is no longer, as in Deuteronomy (147), eaten at the sanctuary and given every three years to the poor, but is assigned to the Levites as a recompense for the service which they render in the Sanctuary as representatives of the people (Nu 1821f-), (a) But in P, as in the pre-Prophetic period, by far the most important place among gifts to God is held by the sacrifices. They, too, are in many instances the expression of the consciousness that man owes to God all blessings connected with his earthly possessions, and that he has solemnly to testify his gratitude for these. But this is not the only point of view. On the contrary, there were still at work here a number of motives, partly very ancient, whose presence in sacrificial transactions we have already had to note, although it is hard to say how far a consciousness of the original meaning of the ritual survives in the minds of ‘he authors of P. The idea of the sacral com- munion (ef. above, p. 661 ff.) still continues to find expression in the ipa pees of blood, as the most important part of all sacrificial transactions; and, indeed, the blood is brought always the nearer to God in proportion to the importance and holi- ness of the sacrifice. Thus the blood of the peace- offering and the burnt-offering is poured only round about the altar (Lv 15" 3?); whereas of the blood of the sin-offering the priest has to sprinkle a por- tion before the curtain which separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, to smear a por- tion on the horns of the altar of incense, and to our the rest upon the ground beside the altar of faurnbiotanng (Ly 4°. 16f 25), On the Great Day of Atonement the blood of the guilt-offering is actu- ally brought by the high priest into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled upon and before the lid of- the sacred Ark (Lv 16). But even the idea of the offering of food still plays a part (although, no doubt, a less prominent one) in P, as is evident from such facts as that—apart of course from in- cense—it is only what may be eaten that is to be offered, and indeed—as befits the holiness of God —only clean and unblemished animals ; that ever sacrifice must be seasoned with salt (the meal- offering with oil) ; and, above all, that every com- plete sacrifice includes not only flesh but an additional dish in the form of a food-offering, and a portion of drink in the shape of a wine- libation. But in all this we have not yet the answer to the most important question from the point of view of the history of religion, namely this: Wherein consists, according to P, the efficacy of sacrifice ? Is it effectual simply ex opere operato, or do other, specifically religious, points of view come into con- sideration? The reply to this question depends upon a correct understanding of the force of the so-called sémitkhah (n>20) or laying on of hands, and of the significance of the blood in the sacri- ficial ritual. In every species of bloody sacrifice the offerer has to take his stand before the door of the sanctuary and lay his hand upon the head cf the victim ae 14, here of the burnt-offering, with the addition ‘so shall it be accepted for him and pro- cure atonement for him’; 3783, of the peace- offering ; 44-15. 24. 29, of the peg at is the meaning of this ceremony of hand-imposition, upon which manifestly great weight is laid in the sacrificial ritual? It was natural to think of a transference of guilt, especiall as this is expressly witnessed to in Lv 167". There the high priest lays both hands on the head of the so-called ‘scape- goat’ (see art. AZAZEL in vol. i.), confesses over him all the transgressions of Israel, and then sends him away, laden with the people’s guilt, into the wilder- ness. Beyond doubt, the laying on of hands in this instance denotes a transference of guilt, but the ‘scape-goat’ is no sacrificial victim, and hence the whole parallel is unsuitable as an aid to explain- ing the ritual of sacrifice. Besides, the laying on of hands is practised also with peace- or thank- offerings, which are not presented for atoning pur- poses, as well as in connexion with the consecra- tion of the Levites (Nu 8°). The latter ceremony, in particular, permits of no other explanation than that the laying on of hands is an act whereby a renunciation of personal possession and a giving over with a view to sacrifice [or, in the case of the Levites, with a view to Peed Aor service in the sanctuary] is accomplished. Hence the comparison with the manumissio of Roman law is quite appro- priate. It is another question whether—quite apart from the meaning of the 1>7—there may not have been present, at toast in the guilt-offering, the idea of a surrender of the life of the animal in forfeited human life—in other words, the inflicting of a penalty upon the victim, and thereby accom- plishing a satisfactio vicaria. This view has been maintained all the more positively, because in the New Testament the sacrificial death of Christ is undeniably at times looked at from this viewpoint. Further, in Lv 17" it is expressly insisted that the seat of life is in the blood, and that God has ordained that blood be used at the altar to accom- plish propitiation, for ‘the blood atones through the life [contained in it].’ Here, surely, it appears to be clearly declared that the life of the victim is a substitute for that of the sinner. But this con- clusion is once more rendered impossible by the circumstance that then the sacrificial victim must have been regarded as laden with guilt and curse, and hence as unclean, whereas in reality it is — * Volz (art. ‘Die Handauflegung beim Opfer’ in ZATW, 1901, p. 93ff.) protests against the idea of the manumissio, and re- fuses to separate the 7’D0 of sacrifice from that of blessing and of installation in office (Nu 2718. 23, Dt 349). What is in view, he holds, is the conveying of a substance from one party to another— in the case of the sin-offering, the conveying of sin, uncleanness, and curse to the sacrificial victim. But how then could the flesh of the sin-offering have been counted most holy, and been directed to be eaten by the priests in a holy place (Ly 618f)? Volz meets this objection by supp that the sin-offering was meant originally not for Jahweh but for demons hostile to man, and that the 73°2D was then transferred from the sin-offering to the other offerings as well. On the other hand, Matthes (art. ‘Der Siihnegedanke bei den Siindopfern’ in ZATW, 1903, p. 97 ff.) rightly contends, in opposition to Volz, for different kin of hand-imposition. Bertholet’s proposal (Com. on Lv 14) to start from Lv 2414 and to explain the 75°Dp of sacrifice asthe ‘establishing of a solidarity between offerer and offering,’ comes in the end to the same thing as the manumissio interpretati only that, according to Bertholet, the fundameniel notion the communio is meant here again to find expression. lace of the — a I Ee OPT —s wr i eee ba taal p¥e OR A I) pe ll ok ai Nas om —_ can Me Ay ee RELIGION OF ISRAEL, treated as most holy and serves as holy food for the priests. In view of all this, in the mind of P there could be no other answer to the question as to the efficacy of sacrifice, but simply this: God has connected the accomplishment of atonement with the obedient discharge of the sacrificial prescriptions ; whoever fulfils these and gets the priest to perform the atoning usages, is forgiven de 4m. /26.:81-85 and oft.). The ritual, especially the prescribed presenting of the blood, is accordingly the indispensable con- dition of atonement, but is not yet exactly synony- mous with the latter. On the contrary, the for- giveness of sin flows from the grace of God exactly as in the Prophets, only that the latter regard the outward offering as a thing that may be dispensed with, provided the true penitent disposition is present, whereas, according to P, it is imperatively required that this disposition be accompanied by its outward manifestation in the shape of an offer- ing. Even from the point of view of linguistic usage, the difference between the prophetical and the priestly view of atonement is characteristic. According to the prophets (cf. above, p. 6897), God Himself covers the sin, i.e. He declares it invisible, so that the sinner is safe from the wrath of God, whereas, according to P, the priest covers the he of the sinner by means of presenting the lood [only in exceptional cases also through an unbloody offering, r; 57-7, so as to shield him from the destroying holiness of God. ‘ The circumstance that the process of atonement is primarily connected with the presenting of the blood, explains itself naturally as a powerful after- influence of primitive sacrificial usages, in which the sprinkling of the blood had a different significa- tion. The latter is no longer in the mind of P; for even the view is untenable, that the blood, being the seat of life, is regarded as the most precious gift which man can offer. At most, we might hold that P has still the idea of a symbolical (not real) satisfactio, or, in other words, the notion that, through the offering of the life of the animal, sym- bolical expression is given to the acknowledgment that, strictly speaking, the sinner’s own life is for- feit to God. But the main idea continues to be, as already noted, this: ‘thou shalt procure atone- ment in this and in no other way, because God has so commanded it.’ (8) The technical questions connected with the sacrifices may here be passed by. Their various degrees of value come out clearly in the order in which they have to be offered in all cases where a number of different kinds of sacrifice are combined. (i.) The first place is always held by the itiatory offerings, which include two species: the sin-offering (nxen) and the guiit- offering (onyx). The difference between the two is not very easy to determine from the descriptions contained in Ly 4f. Both are presented even in the case of unintentional and even unconscious offences ; but the guilt-offering (Lv 5%") has very largely to do with occasions when one has uncon- Ge rnaly (vv.4517) or consciously (v.2 [61"-]) inter- fered with the property of another, whether God or one’s neighbour, The guilt-offering (in the shape of a ram without blemish) is always coupled with resti- tution of what has been wrongly taken, with an additional fifth of its value. Of sin-offerings the holiest and most important are naturally those presented on the Great Day of Atonement (Lv 16), when the blood of the victims is brought by the high priest into the Holy of Holies, and thus into the immediate presence of the Divine form of manifestation whose seat is the sacred Ark. It is quite a unique feature that in this instance P introduces, along with the customary atoning medium of sacrifice, another, perhaps very ancient,