BiblicalTheologyOldandNewGeerhardusVos (continued)

BiblicalTheologyOldandNewGeerhardusVos (continued)

(at least not until comparatively late times) to expiate, but to effect a sacramental union, the parties partaking in the blood of a common life. This would in itself yield a quite suitable meaning here, as the berith might easily be conceived of as a life-union between Jehovah and Israel. While the idea is attractive, there are scarcely points of contact in the Old Testament for such a conception of the berith. The berith lies not in the sphere of mystical life; it belongs to the sphere of conscious assurance. Besides, the division of the blood into two parts and the separated use made of each does not readily lend itself to this theory, since on the basis of it, it would have been appropriate rather to unite most closely the application of the blood to Jehovah on the altar [vs. 6] and its application to the people [vs. 8]. The natural view to take of it is, that before the blood could act for the benefit of the people it had to do its work with reference to Jehovah, and this could scarcely consist in aught else than to make the prerequisite expiation.

The book which Moses wrote, and with reference to which the berith was made, contained all the words of Jehovah, or as vs. 3 expresses it, 'the words and the judgments'. Some say the words are the Decalogue and the judgments all that follows, up to the close of chap. 23. This is a possible interpretation, although it might be objected to it, that the Decalogue had been addressed to the people by Jehovah's own mouth. In favour of it speaks the difficulty of understanding 'the words' of 20:22–26, in case they are not understood of the Decalogue.

The berith had, of course, a national reference to Israel as a whole. This is implied in the summons to ascend addressed to the representatives of the people [vs. 1], and also by the twelve pillars built together with the altar [vs. 4].

Finally, the meeting with Jehovah at the conclusion of the ceremony must be understood in closest connection with the relation that had been established. The phrase 'the God of Israel' is highly significant here. Through the berith-making, Jehovah had become 'the God of

Israel' in this new profound sense. The vision spoken of is not an ordinary vision to impart knowledge. It is the fulfilment of sacramental approach to and unusual union with Jehovah. How different it was from the ordinary vision of the Deity is indicated by the words: 'And upon the nobles of the children of Israel, He laid not his hand'. Ordinarily it is considered dangerous or even fatal to get sight of the Deity. Through the berith this had now been changed. An anticipation of this we met before in the history of Jacob [Gen. 32:30]. That the vision had its limitations is implied in vs. 10b.

[3] The organization of Israel: the theocracy

Next we must consider the general organization of Israel that originated in this berith. This is usually designated as 'the theocracy'. This name for it is not found in the Scriptures, although it admirably describes what the Biblical account represents Israel's constitution to have been. Probably the term was coined by Josephus. He observes in regard to the governments of other nations, that some of these were monarchies, others oligarchies, still others democracies; what God set up among Israel was a theocracy. Obviously Josephus finds in this something distinctive and unique. This is correct as far as the great systems of civilization of that day were concerned. But it is not quite correct, if Israel be compared with other Shemitic tribes. The theocratic principle, i.e., the principle of the deity being the supreme authority and power in national life, seems to have been not uncommon among the Shemites. We may infer as much from the observation that Melekh, 'King', is a frequent Shemitic name for the deity. But while under ordinary circumstances this was a mere belief, it proved among Israel an undoubted reality. The laws under which Israel lived not merely had the divine sanction behind them in the general sense in which all law and order ultimately derives from God through general revelation by way of the conscience, but in the specific sense, that Jehovah had directly revealed the law. In other words Jehovah in person performed the task usually falling to a human king. And in the sequel also, Jehovah by supernatural interposition, when necessary, continued to act the role of King of the nation. This fact was so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the leaders of Israel that still in the time of Gideon and Samuel it was felt to forbid the setting up of a purely human kingdom. The union of the religious lordship and the national kingship in the one Person of Jehovah involved that among Israel civil and religious life were inextricably interwoven. If the union had happened to exist in any other person but God, a division of the two spheres of relationship might have been conceivable. The bond to God is so one and indivisible that no separation of the one from the other can be conceived. Hence the later prophetic condemnation of politics, not merely wicked politics, but politics per se, as derogatory to the royal prerogative of Jehovah.

Further it ought to be noticed that between these two concentric spheres the religious one has the pre-eminence. It is that for the sake of which the other exists. For our system of political government such an interrelation would, of course, seen a serious, intolerable defect. Not so among Israel. The chief end for which Israel had been created was not to teach the world lessons in political economy, but in the midst of a world of paganism to teach true religion, even at the sacrifice of much secular propaganda and advantage.

Nor was it merely a question of teaching religion for the present world. A missionary institution the theocracy never was intended to be in its Old Testament state. The significance of the unique organization of Israel can be rightly measured only by remembering that the theocracy typified nothing short of the perfected kingdom of God, the consummate state of Heaven. In this ideal state there will be no longer any place for the distinction between church and state. The former will have absorbed the latter. In a rough way the principle involved was already apprehended by Josephus. In the passage introducing the word 'theocracy' he observes that Moses, by giving such a constitution to the Israelites, did not make religion a part of virtue, but made all other virtues to be a part of religion. The fusion between the two spheres of secular and religious life is strikingly expressed by the divine promise that Israel will be made 'a kingdom of priests and an holy nation' [Ex. 19:6]. As priests they are in, nay, constitute the kingdom.

THE FUNCTION OF LAW

From the nature of the theocracy thus defined we may learn what was the function of the law in which it received its provisional embodiment. It is of the utmost importance carefully to distinguish between the purpose for which the law was professedly given to Israel at the time, and the various purposes it actually came to serve in the subsequent course of history. These other ends lay, of course, from the outset in the mind of God. From the theistic standpoint there can be no outcome in history that is not the unfolding of the profound purpose of God. In this sense Paul has been the great teacher of the philosophy of law in the economy of redemption. Most of the Pauline formulas bear a negative character. The law chiefly operated towards bringing about and revealing the failure of certain methods and endeavours. It served as a pedagogue unto Christ, shut up the people under sin, was not given unto life, was weak through the flesh, worked condemnation, brings under a curse, is a powerless ministry of the letter. These statements of Paul were made under the stress of a totally different philosophy of the law-purpose, which he felt to be inconsistent with the principles of redemption and grace.

This Pharisaic philosophy asserted that the law was intended, on the principle of merit, to enable Israel to earn the blessedness of the world to come. It was an eschatological and therefore most comprehensive interpretation. But in its comprehensiveness it could not fail being comprehensively wrong, if it should prove wrong. Paul's philosophy, though a partial one, and worked out from a retrospective standpoint, had the advantage of being correct within the limited sphere in which he propounded it. It is true, certain of the statements of the Pentateuch and of the Old Testament in general may on the surface seem to favour the Judaistic position. That the law cannot be kept is nowhere stated in so many words. And not only this, that the keeping of the law will be rewarded is stated once and again. Israel's retention of the privileges of the berith is made dependent on obedience. It is promised that he who shall do the commandments shall find life through them. Consequently writers have not been lacking who declared that, from a historical point of view, their sympathies went with the Judaizers, and not with Paul.

Only a moment's reflection is necessary to prove that this in untenable, and that precisely from a broad historical standpoint Paul had far more accurately grasped the purport of the law than his opponents. The law was given after the redemption from Egypt had been accomplished, and the people had already entered upon the enjoyment of many of the blessings of the berith. Particularly their taking possession of the promised land could not have been made dependent on previous observance of the law, for during their journey in the wilderness many of its prescripts could not be observed. It is plain, then, that law-keeping did not figure at that juncture as the meritorious ground of life-inheritance. The latter is based on grace alone, no less emphatically than Paul himself places salvation on that ground. But, while this is so, it might still be objected, that law-observance, if not the ground for receiving, is yet made the ground for retention of the privileges inherited. Here it can not, of course, be denied that a real connection exists. But the Judaizers went wrong in inferring that the connection must be meritorious, that, if Israel keeps the cherished gifts of Jehovah through observance of His law, this must be so, because in strict justice they had earned them. The connection is of a totally different kind. It belongs not to the legal sphere of merit, but to the symbolicotypical sphere of appropriateness of expression.

As stated above, the abode of Israel in Canaan typified the heavenly, perfected state of God's people. Under these circumstances the ideal of absolute conformity to God's law of legal holiness had to be upheld. Even though they were not able to keep this law in the Pauline, spiritual sense, yea, even though they were unable to keep it externally and ritually, the requirement could not be lowered. When apostasy on a general scale took place, they could not remain in the promised land. When they disqualified themselves for typifying the state of holiness, they ipso facto disqualified themselves for typifying that of blessedness, and had to go into captivity. This did not mean that every individual Israelite, in every detail of his life, had to be perfect, and that on this was suspended the continuance of God's favour. Jehovah dealt primarily with the nation and through the nation with the individual, as even now in the covenant of grace He deals with believers and their children in the continuity of generations. There is solidarity among the members of the people of God, but this same principle also works for the neutralizing of the effect of individual sin, so long as the nation remains faithful. The attitude observed by the nation and its representative leaders was the decisive factor. Although the demands of the law were at various times imperfectly complied with, nevertheless for a long time Israel remained in possession of the favour of God. And, even when the people as a whole become apostate, and go into exile, Jehovah does not on that account suffer the berith to fail. After due chastisement and repentance He takes Israel back into favour.

This is the most convincing proof that law-observance is not the meritorious ground of blessedness. God in such cases simply repeats what He did at the beginning, viz., receive Israel into favour on the principle of free grace. It is in agreement with this, when the law is represented in the Old Testament, not as the burden and yoke which it later came to be in the religious experience of the Jews, but as one of the greatest blessings and distinctions that Jehovah had conferred upon his people [Deut. 4:7, 8; Psa. 147:19, 20; cp. even Paul, Rom. 9:4, 5]. And in Paul's teaching the strand that corresponds to this Old Testament doctrine of holiness as the indispensable (though not meritorious) condition of receiving the inheritance is still distinctly traceable.

From the above it will be seen how distorted and misleading it would be to identify the Old Testament with law, negatively considered, and the New Testament with gospel. This would mean that there was no gospel under the old dispensation at all. The Pauline statements are sometimes apt to lead into this error. But they are not meant by the Apostle in this absolute, mutually exclusive sense. An illuminating analogy in this respect is furnished by the way in which Paul speaks of faith and its relation to the two dispensations. In Gal. 3:23, 25, he speaks of the 'coming' of faith, as though there had never been any faith before. And yet the same Paul in Rom. 4:16ff., speaks at length of the role played by faith in the life of Abraham, and how it virtually dominated the entire Old Testament system.

It is evident that there are two distinct points of view from which the content of the old dispensation can be regarded. When considered in comparison with the final unfolding and rearranged structure of the New Testament, negative judgments are in place. When, on the other hand, the Old Testament is taken as an entity by itself and as rounded off provisionally in itself, and looked at, as it were, with the eyes of the Old Testament itself, we find it necessary to take into account the positive elements by which it prefigured and anticipated typically the New Testament. And thus we find that there was real gospel under the theocracy. The people of God of those days did not live and die under an unworkable, unredemptive system of religion, that could not give real access to and spiritual contact with God. Nor was this gospel-element contained exclusively in the revelation that preceded, accompanied, and followed the law; it is found in the law itself. That which we call 'the legal system' is shot through with strands of gospel and grace and faith. Especially the ritual law is rich in them. Every sacrifice and every lustration proclaimed the principle of grace. Had it been otherwise, then the idea of positive, vital continuity would have to be abandoned. There would be conflict and opposition instead. Such is the Gnostic position, but it is not the view either of the Old Testament itself, or of Paul, or of the Church theology.

And yet again, we must not forget that this revelation and promulgation of the gospel in the Mosaic institutions bore, as to its form, a legal character, and differs, in this respect, from the form it exhibits at the present time. For even these gospel-carrying institutions were part of a great system of ordinances, whose observance had been made obligatory for the people. Hence there was a lack of freedom even in the presentation of and attendance to the gospel. The gospel was preached under the constraint of law and received under the same. It was not permitted to rise superior to the legal environment in which it had been placed. Only the New Testament has brought the full liberty in this respect.

[4] The Decalogue

The Decalogue strikingly illustrates the redemptive structure of the theocracy as a whole. It is introduced by the summing up of what Jehovah has done for Israel in delivering them from the house of bondage. Considering the time of its promulgation, we might even call it a brief résumé in advance of the whole system regulated subsequently in the detailed laws. But this would overlook the fact that one component element of the law, and that one much in evidence elsewhere, is absent from the Decalogue. It contains no ceremonial commandments. In a sense, therefore, it not so much anticipates as condenses, and in condensing eliminates and idealizes. It joins together the beginning and the end of the entire theocratic movement, the redeeming act of God, and the resultant state of holiness and conformity to the nature and will of God into which the theocracy is designed to issue. At the same time it gives these elements in a form that is adjusted to the practical needs and limitations of the people. Like the theocracy in general it hovers above the life of the people as an ideal never realizable, nor realizable at the then existing stage; and at the same time it descends into and condescends to the abnormalities of Israel.

This in some sense ideal and idealizing character of the Decalogue has not failed of observation by the evolutionary critics, and given rise to the opinion that it could not possibly be a product of the Mosaic age, which, as shown above, is assigned and must be assigned, from the critical premises, to a low plane of religious development. The historico-critical treatment of the Decalogue in recent times is interesting and instructive in the extreme. There was a time, when even advanced critics were inclined to make an exception for the Decalogue in the midst of their comprehensive denial of the Mosaic origin of the other Pentateuchal laws. It is true, this was conceded with certain qualifications. The second word, forbidding the making and worship of images, could not be Mosaic, because image-worship was considered inoffensive for a long time after the Mosaic age. And of the other words not the present extended form was derived from Moses, but a more simple and compact form containing the gist of the injunction.

The Wellhausen school has swept away even this modest remnant of conservatism. The main ground on which this revision of the view of the older critics is based lies in the ethical character of the Decalogue. Ethical ideas did not become central in the religion of Israel until the time of the prophets. Before their age (middle of the eighth century B.C.) the popular religion was centred in the cult, and of this the Decalologue contains nothing. Hence the present critical view that the Decalogue is the precipitate of the ethical movement of prophecy, possibly not composed earlier than the seventh century, perhaps during the reign of Manasseh.

It must be urged against this that the main burden of the prophetic preaching of ethics keeps in much closer contact with contemporary developments than the Decalogue. The prophetic message revolves round such things as the oppression of the poor by the rich, the corruptness of the administration of justice. These are things not even alluded to in the Decalogue. The situation to which the prophets address themselves, therefore, is much more concrete and complex than that contemplated in the Decalogue. And even if it were true that the Israelites of the pre-prophetic period did not look upon ethical things as the centre of their religion, it would by no means follow from this, that revelation could not have long before singled out the ethical as of supreme importance and in immediate need of attention. The Decalogue, on our view at least, was not the product of the religion of the people, but the revelation of God. The critical contention, here as in so many other points, holds good only when the philosophy of evolution is made the silent premise of the argument. More recently still, critical writers have begun to see again that the Decalogue breathes a different and more primitive spirit than the preaching of the prophets. It is proposed to return to the view of Mosaic origin, but in a modified form. Moses, it is now alleged, wrote seven of these ten commandments. The three denied him are the first, the second and the fourth. Only, it was not the lawgiver's intention to forbid the things mentioned in the other seven absolutely. He meant to forbid them within the limits of Israel. Outside of that circle the otherwise prohibited things were permitted. In answer to this it may be observed, that, while the words are primarily addressed to Israel, this was due entirely to the circumstance of the historical situation, and can never prove the existence in the mind of the legislator of a double standard, rendering a thing sinful when done to a fellow-Israelite, and condonable when done to non-Israelites.

OF WORLD-WIDE APPLICATION

The primary application to Israel in no wise interferes with a worldwide application in all ethical relationships. The pronouns and pronominal suffixes are in the feminine singular, because they are addressed to the nation of Israel. Certain features at first sight would seem applicable to Israel alone, for instance what is said of the deliverance from the Egyptian bondage. But these features are rare, especially in the text of Exodus. There are more of them in Deuteronomy; compare the motivation of the fourth word. Deuteronomy repeats the Decalogue for a hortatory purpose, which brings it into closer contact with the momentary situation of Israel. And, apart from this, we must remember that the history of Israel was shaped by God intentionally so as to mirror all important situations befalling the people of God in all subsequent ages. When Jehovah appeals to the redemption from Egypt as a motive for obedience, He appeals to something that has its spiritual analogy in the life of all believers. The historical adjustment does not detract from the universal application, but subserves it.

RELIGIOUS IN CHARACTER

The most striking feature of the Decalogue is its specifically religious character. It is not an ethical code in and by itself, resting, as it were, on the bare imperative of God. The preamble brings the affection to Jehovah, in view of what He has done redemptively for the people, to bear through a responsive affection upon their conduct. If we may apply the term 'Christian' thus retrospectively to the Decalogue, we should say, what it contains is not general but Christian ethics. Ethics is represented as the redemptive product; something else, lying behind, as the source. That there is implied, apart from this, a hegemony of religion over ethics, appears from the far greater volume of elaboration devoted to the four opening words, dealing with the specifically religious side. Our Lord recognized this, when distinguishing in the law between the first and second great commandment. In the light of this redemptive purport the negative form of most of the commandments likewise receives additional significance. Of course, this has a meaning in itself, altogether apart from redemption, in that it issues a protest against sin. But the very fact of God's issuing such a protest admits of the inference, that He will not leave sin in possession of the field.

It should be observed, however, that not all the words are clothed in this negative form of 'thou shalt not'. The fourth word, that relating to the Sabbath, has positive import. And the majestic appendix to the second word reaches down into the very depths of the love of God for His own, as well as of His jealousy towards them that disobey the law out of hatred of God. The charge, therefore, is not warranted that the Decalogue is a purely negativistic document, evincing no positive interest for what is good, merely opposing that which is evil. Our Lord implied that the law requires love towards God and man, and love is the most positive of all forces. The practical nature of the Decalogue, both on its religious and on its ethical side, is revealed in the way it addresses itself to concrete external sins. But this again is not meant to deny the organic unity of sin in its root. On the contrary, this unity is distinctly recognized in tracing the transgression back to the hatred of God. It is likewise implied in the last word of the ten, where the overt sins of killing, stealing, committing adultery, bearing false witness, are reduced to their one source of coveting, evil lust having its seat in the heart.

THE TEN WORDS

As to the distribution of the text of the Decalogue over the ten words various views are held. The text informs us that there are ten, but does not number them singly, for the system of dividing the text of the Old Testament into verses is, of course, not original. The Greek Catholic and the Reformed Churches consider the preamble as standing outside of the circle of ten. The first word then applies to the prohibition of worshipping other gods, the second to the prohibition of images, and so on to the end in the manner familiar to us. This division is as old as the time of Philo and Josephus. The Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches count as one what we reckon as the first and second words. Inasmuch as the number ten is required, this compels the dividing up of what we call the tenth commandment into the ninth ('thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house') and the tenth ('thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, etc.'). This is necessary because no other word lends itself to a similar division, except perhaps the fourth, and neither the Romanists, nor the Lutherans, want to count in the preamble. Still a third division, now common among the Jews, reckons the preamble as the first word. This would, of course, ordinarily yield eleven, but this result is avoided through taking the first and second together. The same numbering, with the preamble included was at one time resorted to by some critics, who had lost one word through assigning a later origin to the second word. Of these three plans the first deserves the preference.

The introduction cannot be strictly called a commandment. Still, this difficulty might be relieved by observing that the law does not speak of commandments but of words (Decalogue means 'ten words'). Probably however, 'word' is used in this connection for 'commandments', a meaning it not infrequently bears. The objection, therefore, remains. And it is strengthened by the fact that counting the preamble as one of the ten would cut its very vital relation to all the other words. Something can be said in favour of closely drawing together the first and the second words, as will be presently shown, but nothing speaks in favour of dividing the tenth word into two. It exposes, one might urge, to the objection of separating between house and wife as non-covetable objects, but this is more of an apparent than a real objection, because house here does not mean the mere building, but stands for the entire householdestablishment, including, of course, and that in the first place, the wife. Augustine was somewhat over gallant, when not perceiving this, he gave preference to the text of Deuteronomy, where the wife precedes the house. But, assuming that 'house' means 'household', no reason exists why this general term should receive for itself an entire separate word, and then in a next word the enumeration of its several constituent parts be made to follow. The structure of the Decalogue is not of that kind, as may be seen by comparison with the text of the fourth word. And Augustine has improved the matter only in a sentimental respect, for, with all due regard for the honoured position of the wife in the family, it would hardly be in keeping with the feeling of the Old Testament in such matters to give the wife a separate commandment all to herself, especially since her position in one respect had been already defined in the, on our reckoning, seventh commandment.

THE FIRST WORD

Our discussion of the several separate words confines itself to the first four. The following six, regulating the relation between man and man, belong to the department of Ethics. These first four words deal specifically with the relation of man to God. The first three form a group by themselves, protesting as they do, against the three typical and fundamental sins of paganism, the sin of polylatry, that of idolatry, that of magic.

It will be observed, further, that the first word is not a theoretical denial of the existence of other gods besides Jehovah. Neither is it, of course, an affirmation, either directly or impliedly, of the existence of other divine beings. It leaves this whole question to one side, and confines itself to the injunction that Israel shall have only one object of worship: 'there shall be no other god (or gods) to thee before me'. But if this, theoretically or legislatively considered, falls short of the abstract enunciation of the principle of monotheism, and reaches, logically speaking, only up to monolatry, it were pedantic to seize upon it, lawyer-like, as evidence of the lawgiver's intent to leave polytheism untouched. And yet precisely this the critics have been doing, when building on this innocent form of expression the view that Moses had not yet reached the stage of monotheism. When afterwards the dating of the Decalogue came down to much later times this exegesis involved its adherents in a somewhat serious difficulty. It seemed difficult to assume that the prophetic spirits who produced the Decalogue at so advanced a juncture should not yet have reached the standpoint of monotheism. The critics save themselves out of this impasse by saying that, although monotheism had been in process of development since the times of Amos and Hosea, it had not been explicitly formulated until the age of (pseudo-) Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. As for Moses, it becomes doubtful, on this hypothesis, whether he had reached the standpoint of as much as monolatry in his day, for the testimony of the Decalogue to that effect has fallen away.

All this is readily corrected by the simple reminder that the Decalogue, while law, is not law in the modern technical sense of that term. It takes no pains, by means of involved clauses and piled up qualifications, to stop up every loophole for misunderstanding or evasion. Moses was a lawgiver, not a scribe. The plane on which the matter is put by not raising the problem of abstract monotheism is in reality a higher one than would have underlain the commandment otherwise. To say: there are no other gods in existence, therefore you are shut up to serving me alone, motivates the allegiance of Israel to Jehovah less worthily, than to say, as the Decalogue actually does, 'I am Jehovah, thy God, who has brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me'. Besides the appeal to the sense of gratitude for deliverance received, there shines through also an allusion to the offended honour of Jehovah, in case other objects of worship should be placed by His side. The words 'before me' or 'beside me' express the indignity such transgression would offer to Him, subjectively.

THE SECOND WORD

There is some uncertainty in regard to the syntax of the second word. In the Authorized and Revised Versions the word 'likeness' is made dependent on 'thou shalt not make', and thus co-ordinated with the preceding object 'graven image'. The likeness, then, is something that can be made; it must be a manufactured object. Attention has, however, been called to the fact that the Hebrew word thus translated may also properly be rendered by 'shape', i.e., natural, non-manufactured shape, any one of the forms or likenesses nature offers. If this be adopted, and it seems to be favoured somewhat by the distinction of the 'shapes' in three groups—those in heaven above, those in the earth beneath, and those in the water under the earth—then plainly those shapes cannot be the object of the verb 'thou shalt not make', since they are not the product of human making.

Consequently the syntactical construction of the sentence must on this view be changed. It will have to read as follows: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, (and), as to the likeness of anything (prefixed accusative phrase of reference) that is in heaven above, etc … thou shalt not bow down thyself unto those, nor serve them, etc.' Two things are on this view forbidden: the worship of a graven image

(graven means 'made out of metal'), and the worship of any of the forms of nature.

It must be admitted that this new construction does not read very smoothly. On the other hand the usual interpretation labours under the difficulty of explaining satisfactorily why a 'graven' image should have appeared more objectionable than any other kind of made likeness. Still, it seems to be a fact attested also elsewhere in the Old Testament that graven images awakened a special aversion among the opponents of idolatry. Wellhausen thinks the difficulty can be removed by adopting as original the text of Deuteronomy which reads: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image of any of the shapes, etc.' But even in Deuteronomy the Septuagint and Samaritan versions have the 'and' before 'likeness': 'image and all likeness'.

More interesting and important, however, is the enquiry into the ground on which idolatry is forbidden here. The traditional exegesis of the second commandment is wont to find the reason in the spiritual (non-corporeal) nature of God, which causes every bodily representation to be a misrepresentation, and one moreover to the disparagement of God, because in the scale of being the incorporeal ranks above the corporeal, the so-called 'flesh'. While acknowledging the truth of this idea in itself, we cannot regard it as a completely satisfactory exegesis of the second word. On such a view of the motive the appendix ought to read, 'for I, Jehovah thy God, have no body'. Instead of this it is the jealousy that is warningly referred to. And 'jealousy' cannot here have the general significance of 'fiery zeal' which it has sometimes elsewhere, for that would not have made the introduction of the idea more appropriate in this than in any other word of the Decalogue. There must be a special reason why the making or worship of images awakens the jealousy of Jehovah. The word means conjugal zeal specifically, jealousy in the married relation. It implies that, when images come into play, for the monogamic relation between Jehovah and Israel, a polygamous, or even meretricious bond with other religious lords has been substituted.

The question before us, therefore, is why and in what sense imagemaking detracts from the undivided devotion of Israel to God, and places other divine objects of devotion beside Him. Now it is plain that this cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of the image being a symbolic copy of the Deity, so that after all the latter would be but all the more worshipped through the image. For us who think in modern terms admiration or even worship bestowed upon one's photograph could scarcely excite jealousy. It would be much more apt to give rise to selfish satisfaction. We must set aside this whole modern way of thinking about the matter, and endeavour to reproduce for ourselves the feelings with which the ancient idolatrous mind regarded and employed the image it possessed of its god. This is a far more complex thing than the formula of reality and symbol is able to express. While not easily described in its true inwardness, we may perhaps define it by subsumption under the category of magic. Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose. Magic is full of superstition, and, after a fashion, full of the quasi-supernatural, but it is void of true religion. Because it lacks the element of objective divine selfcommunication from above, it must needs create for itself material means of compulsion that will bring the deity to do its bidding. From the nature of the case these instruments of magical compulsion will indefinitely multiply. Taking these instruments for his practical use, man will further begin to feel that the powers habitually working through them are somehow subtracted from the deity and stored up in the forms of magic. Thus the magically manipulated image will inevitably tend to become a second god by the side of the original one, and will even tend to outgrow the latter in potency of usefulness. The image is not the symbol; it acts as the rival and substitute of the god. Thus the sensual representation of Jehovah by becoming mixed up with magic leads straightway to polytheism.

In so far, the Romanists and Lutherans correctly sensed that there existed an intimate connection between the first and the second commandment. Jehovah's retention of the exclusive right to Israel's worship became endangered as soon as images were introduced. It is not impossible that the 'graven image' refers particularly to Jehovahimages, and that the 'likenesses' or 'shapes' refer to alien deities. The former no less than the latter excites the divine jealousy, and both are referred to in the commandment, no matter whether this suggestion in regard to 'graven image' be correct or not. The first commandment enjoins the having of one God; the second strikes at the chief source of danger for the observance of this. Even in the double-faced meaning of the word 'idolatry' this connection of the two things still reflects itself; it means partly the worship of other gods, partly the worship of images. These facts are sure.

THE THIRD WORD

The transition from the second to the third word is a natural one, for we are here still in the sphere of magic. This time it is word-magic that is forbidden. It is not sufficient to think of swearing and blasphemy in the present-day common sense of these terms. The word is one of the chief powers of pagan superstition, and the most potent form of word-magic is name-magic. It was believed that through the pronouncing of the name of some supernatural entity this can be compelled to do the bidding of the magic-user. The commandment applies the divine disapproval of such practices specifically to the name 'Jehovah'. 'To take up' means to pronounce. 'In vain' literally reads 'for vanity'. Vanity is a quite complex term in which the ideas of the unreal, the deceitful, the disappointing, the sinful, intermingle. It designates a large sphere of paganism, which must have occupied a place also in Israel's past, and must have continually threatened to encroach upon the true religion. The use of the name Jehovah for such a purpose was particularly dangerous, because it seemed to lend the protection of legitimacy.

Although the antique and the modern may in this matter appear to lie at a great distance from each other, nevertheless what we call swearing and blasphemy is not essentially different from this ancient name-magic, and consequently falls under the condemnation of the third commandment. We must remember that originally the habit of swearing served a far more realistic purpose than at present. If it has become conventional, and therefore, as some would pretend, innocent, this is largely because the modern man has retained such a small amount of religion as to make him feel that swearing cannot at bottom be irreligious. In ages not so very long ago the employment of supernatural names for the purpose of execration and objurgation had a quite realistic intent. The names served to call out the supernal powers for injuring the enemy or for miraculously attesting the truth of a statement. It is from such practices that all our survivals of swearing have descended. And, even where the swearer professes to attach no real significance to his formulas, yet there still clings to the most thoughtless use of them always more or less of the feeling that it does not matter much if the name of a god, perhaps no longer believed in, can be harnessed to the service of man in the most trivial of affairs. This may be the pale shadow of name-magic, but it is in principle not different from the realistic thing. The core of the sin does not exclusively lie in its believed efficacy, but in the disrespect for God that is implied. It is, as all magic is, the opposite to true religion. Hence the emphatic condemnation: 'Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that pronounces His name for vanity'.

THE FOURTH WORD

The fourth word has reference to the hallowing of the seventh day of the week. This duty is based in Exodus (but cp. Deuteronomy) not on something done to Israel in particular, but on something done in the creation of the world. This is important, because with it stands or falls the general validity of the commandment for all mankind. Traces of a previous Sabbath-observance are not found in the Pentateuch [but cp. Ex. 16:23]. It is certain that the week of seven days was known before the time of Moses [cp. Gen. 29:27]. This mode of reckoning time may have had for its forgotten background the original institution of the Sabbath.

Outside of the circle of Special Revelation two views have been taken as to its origin. By some it is associated with the role played by the planets in astral religion. Saturn, being the chief planet, would have had the last and principal day assigned to him. According to others the seven-days-week is derived from the four phases of the moon, the twenty-eight days divided by four yielding seven. On either view the development would have been a transfer of the worship due to the Creator from Him to the creature. The Assyrians observed the seventh, the fourteenth, the twenty-first, and the twenty-eighth day of the month as a day of rest. This differed, however, from the Old Testament Sabbath observance in two respects: it was dependent on the phases of the moon, and the abstention from labour was due to the supposed ominous character of the day, which rendered working on it inauspicious.

It has been claimed that in two passages of the Old Testament the Sabbath is represented as of Mosaic origin, viz., in Ezek. 20:12; Neh. 9:14. But these passages mean no more than that the institution in its specific Old Testament form dates from the time of Moses. It must be remembered that the Sabbath, though a world-aged observance, has passed through the various phases of the development of redemption, remaining the same in essence but modified as to its form, as the new state of affairs at each point might require. The Sabbath is not only the most venerable, it is likewise the most living of all the sacramental realities of our religion. It has faithfully accompanied the people of God on their march through the ages. With regret it must be admitted that the beauty and comfort of this thought seem to have impressed themselves more deeply upon the Jewish than upon the Christian consciousness.

The principle underlying the Sabbath is formulated in the Decalogue itself. It consists in this, that man must copy God in his course of life. The divine creative work completed itself in six days, whereupon the seventh followed as a day of rest for God. In connection with God, 'rest' cannot, of course, mean mere cessation from labour, far less recovery from fatigue. Such a meaning is by no means required by the Old Testament usage of the word. 'Rest' resembles the word 'peace' in this respect, that it has in Scripture, in fact to the Shemitic mind generally, a positive rather than a negative import. It stands for consummation of a work accomplished and the joy and satisfaction attendant upon this. Such was its prototype in God. Mankind must copy this, and that not only in the sequences of daily existence as regards individuals; but in its collective capacity through a large historic movement. For mankind, too, a great task waits to be accomplished, and at its close beckons a rest of joy and satisfaction that shall copy the rest of God.

Before all other important things, therefore, the Sabbath is an expression of the eschatological principle on which the life of humanity has been constructed. There is to be to the world-process a finale, as there was an overture, and these two belong inseparably together. To give up the one means to give up the other, and to give up either means to abandon the fundamental scheme of Biblical history. Even among Jewish teachers this profound meaning of the Sabbath was not entirely unknown. One of them, being asked what the world to come would be like, answered that it would resemble the Sabbath. In the law, it is true, this thought is not developed further than is done in the primordial statement about God's resting on the seventh day and hallowing it. For the rest, the institution, after having been re-enforced in the Decalogue, is left to speak for itself, as is the case with most institutions of the law. The Epistle to the Hebrews has given us a philosophy of the Sabbath on the largest of scales, partly in dependence on Psa. 95 [Heb. 3; 4].

The Sabbath brings this principle of the eschatological structure of history to bear upon the mind of man after a symbolical and a typical fashion. It teaches its lesson through the rhythmical succession of six days of labour and one ensuing day of rest in each successive week. Man is reminded in this way that life is not an aimless existence, that a goal lies beyond. This was true before, and apart from, redemption. The eschatological is an older strand in revelation than the soteric. The so-called 'Covenant of Works' was nothing but an embodiment of the Sabbatical principle. Had its probation been successful, then the sacramental Sabbath would have passed over into the reality it typified, and the entire subsequent course of the history of the race would have been radically different. What now is to be expected at the end of this world would have formed the beginning of the worldcourse instead.

From what has been said about the typical, sacramental meaning of the Sabbath it follows that it would be a mistake to base its observance primarily on the ground of utility. The Sabbath is not the outcome of an abnormal state of affairs in which it is impossible, apart from the appointment of a fixed day, to devote sufficient care to the religious interests of life. On such a view it might be maintained that for one sufficiently at leisure to give all his time to the cultivation of religion the keeping of the Sabbath would be no longer obligatory. Some of the Continental Reformers, out of reaction to the Romish system of holy days, reasoned after this fashion. But they reasoned wrongly. The Sabbath is not in the first place a means of advancing religion. It has its main significance apart from that, in pointing forward to the eternal issues of life and history. Even the most advanced religious spirit cannot absolve itself from taking part in that. It is a serious question whether the modern church has not too much lost sight of this by making the day wellnigh exclusively an instrument of religious propaganda, at the expense of its eternity-typifying value. Of course it goes without saying that a day devoted to the remembrance of man's eternal destiny cannot be properly observed without the positive cultivation of those religious concerns which are so intimately joined to the final issue of his lot. But, even where this is conceded, the fact remains that it is possible to crowd too much into the day that is merely subservient to religious propaganda, and to void it too much of the static, God-ward and heaven-ward directed occupation of piety.

The universal Sabbath law received a modified significance under the Covenant of Grace. The work which issues into the rest can now no longer be man's own work. It becomes the work of Christ. This the

Old Testament and the New Testament have in common. But they differ as to the perspective in which they each see the emergence of work and rest. Inasmuch as the Old Covenant was still looking forward to the performance of the Messianic work, naturally the days of labour to it come first, the day of rest falls at the end of the week. We, under the New Covenant, look back upon the accomplished work of Christ. We, therefore, first celebrate the rest in principle procured by Christ, although the Sabbath also still remains a sign looking forward to the final eschatological rest. The Old Testament people of God had to typify in their life the future developments of redemption. Consequently the precedence of labour and the consequence of rest had to find expression in their calendar. The New Testament Church has no such typical function to perform, for the types have been fulfilled. But it has a great historic event to commemorate, the performance of the work by Christ and the entrance of Him and of His people through Him upon the state of never-ending rest. We do not sufficiently realize the profound sense the early Church had of the epoch-making significance of the appearance, and especially of the resurrection of the Messiah. The latter was to them nothing less than the bringing in of a new, the second, creation. And they felt that this ought to find expression in the placing of the Sabbath with reference to the other days of the week. Believers knew themselves in a measure partakers of the Sabbath-fulfilment. If the one creation required one sequence, then the other required another. It has been strikingly observed, that our Lord died on the eve of that Jewish Sabbath, at the end of one of these typical weeks of labour by which His work and its consummation were prefigured. And Christ entered upon His rest, the rest of His new, eternal life on the first day of the week, so that the Jewish Sabbath comes to lie between, was, as it were, disposed of, buried in His grave. (Delitzsch.) If there is in the New Testament no formal enactment regarding this change, the cause lies in the superfluousness of it. Doubtless Jewish Christians began with observing both days, and only gradually the instinctive perception of the sacredness of the day of the Lord's resurrection began to make itself felt.

The question can be raised, whether in the fourth commandment there is an element that applies to the Old Testament Church only. The answer depends on the precise construction and exegesis of the words. Is the distinction between six days of labour and one day of rest merely a matter of proportion, or is it likewise a matter of sequence? The latter view seems more probable. In so far, we shall have to say that in this element of prescribed sequence there is a specifically Old Testament feature in the commandment which no longer applies to us. But the general principle on which the sequence, both under the old and the new dispensations, rests has not been changed. Precisely because it remains in force, the sequence required a change when the New Testament had arrived. Besides this, there are other prohibitions in the law, which by the very fact of their having not been incorporated in the Decalogue, are shown not to be universally applicable [Ex. 16:23; 34:21; 35:3; Num. 15:32; cp. also Amos 8:5; Jer. 17:21]. Nor must it be forgotten that the Sabbath was under the Old Testament an integral part of a cycle of feasts which is no longer in force now. The type embodied in it was deepened by the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee. On the Sabbath man and beast rest, in the Sabbatical Year the very soil rests; in the Year of Jubilee the idea of rest is exhibited in its full positive import through the restoration of all that was disturbed and lost through sin. From all this we have been released by the work of Christ, but not from the Sabbath as instituted at Creation. In this light we must interpret certain New Testament statements such as Rom. 14:5, 6; Gal. 4:10, 11; Col. 2:16, 17.

[5] The Ritual [ceremonial] Law

The Ritual Laws: This is what by another name is called the ceremonial law. It forms an integral part of the Mosaic legislation. The elements composing it were not, however, necessarily introduced de novo at the time of Moses. Much of older custom was probably incorporated. Some have thought that the ordinances here prescribed did not originally belong to the structure of the theocracy, but were imposed upon the people as a punishment after their sin with the golden calf. This view has been held in two forms, a more innocuous and a more serious one. Several of the Church fathers, perhaps out of reaction from Judaism, embraced it. Later the Reformed theologian Cocceius adopted it. In both these instances this was not accompanied by a low or depreciating view of the content of these laws per se.

More serious was the form of the theory proposed by Spencer, stated previously in connection with the redemption from Egypt. Spencer joined, of course, to this view of the pagan provenience of the ritual practices a very sceptical attitude in regard to their typical significance. According to our previous interpretation of the structure of the theocracy it is precisely in these ritual institutions that the greater part of the gospel of Moses is enshrined. The rejection of them as not willed by God, therefore, de-evangelizes the Mosaic revelation to a large extent.

In more recent times the error in question has played a considerable role in the critical appraisal of the several parts of the Old Testament. The Wellhausen school derives many of the ritual customs from the Canaanites, and this again has for its background the extreme, wellnigh exclusive stress placed upon the ethical teaching, which is held to be alone of enduring value. The proof for this last interpretation is found in the general construction of the history of Old Testament religion by this school. By the older advocates of the view Scriptural authority was sought for its adoption. Such was discovered in the time of their introduction, namely, immediately after the idolatry with the golden calf had been committed. It is true that a chronological conjunction exists here. But there was no causal connection as the theory would have us believe. In fact the contents of this part of the law were communicated by God to Moses while he was upon the mount, and it was only after his return that he learned about what in the meanwhile had taken place. In the intent of the Lawgiver, then, the incorporation of all this in the religion of Israel could not have been an afterthought.

Sometimes Ezek. 20:25 is quoted in proof of the penal character of the observance of these things. The prophet here distinguishes between ordinances the Israelites had rejected and 'statutes that were not good, and judgments wherein they should not live'. Jehovah gave them the latter in punishment for their not keeping the former. These punitive statutes and judgments are then identified with the ritual law. This is an impossible exegesis, especially if we remember that Ezekiel was the priest-prophet, for whom it must have been impossible to treat the very things among which his occupation lay, as things purely imposed for punishment. It is another question what precisely is meant by 'the statutes that were not good and the judgments whereby they should not live'. Perhaps these words refer to the idolatrous customs which in their later history, for instance in the time of Manasseh, the people adopted. Causing their children to pass through the fire is mentioned as one of them, vs. 26. It is said, however, that Jehovah 'gave' them these evil ordinances. This is not easy to explain. Perhaps it may be understood of the providential ordering of the history by God, which led to their apostasy to such heathen cults.

SYMBOL AND TYPE

In determining the function of the ceremonial law we must take into consideration its two large aspects, the symbolical and typical, and the relation between these two. The same things were, looked at from one point of view, symbols, and, from another point of view, types. A symbol is in its religious significance something that profoundly portrays a certain fact or principle or relationship of a spiritual nature in a visible form. The things it pictures are of present existence and present application. They are in force at the time in which the symbol operates.

With the same thing, regarded as a type, it is different. A typical thing is prospective; it relates to what will become real or applicable in the future. In the New Testament the word 'type' occurs only once [Rom. 5:14] where Adam is said to have been a type of Christ. This is the technical, theological meaning of the word, which, therefore, must have been in use before the time of Paul. The Jewish theologians doubtless had their system of typology. The word came to this technical meaning after a very natural fashion. Its primary, physical sense is that of a mark or impression made upon some soft substance by a thrust or blow (tupto, 'to strike'). This meaning occurs in John 20:25. Out of this developed the sense 'form', 'image', possibly from the fact that the impression struck on coins produced an image [Acts 7:43]. But the meaning 'image' easily passes over into that of 'model', 'example' [Acts 23:25; 2 Thess. 3:9]. To this third usage the technical use, observed in Rom. 5:14, attaches itself.

To 'type', the impression, corresponds 'antitype', the counterimpression. This also is used technically in the New Testament. Both Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews employ it. It stands for the copy taken of the technical type. There is, however, a difference between these two writers. Peter finds the technical type in the history of the Old Testament. The water of baptism to him is the antitype of that of the deluge [1 Pet. 3:21]. The writer of Hebrews finds the type, the model, in the heavenly world. To him, therefore, the same Old Testament things that Peter would call types are already antitypes [Heb. 9:24]. The former is a more theological, the latter a more purely historical view of the relationship.

The main problem to understand is, how the same system of portrayals can have served at one and the same time in a symbolical and a typical capacity. Obviously this would have been impossible if the things portrayed had been in each case different or diverse, unrelated to each other. If something is an accurate picture of a certain reality, then it would seem disqualified by this very fact for pointing to another future reality of a quite different nature. The solution of the problem lies in this, that the things symbolized and the things typified are not different sets of things. They are in reality the same things, only different in this respect that they come first on a lower stage of development in redemption, and then again, in a later period, on a higher stage. Thus what is symbolical with regard to the already existing edition of the fact or truth becomes typical, prophetic, of the later, final edition of that same fact or truth. From this it will be perceived that a type can never be a type independently of its being first a symbol. The gateway to the house of typology is at the farther end of the house of symbolism.

This is the fundamental rule to be observed in ascertaining what elements in the Old Testament are typical, and wherein the things corresponding to them as antitypes consist. Only after having discovered what a thing symbolizes, can we legitimately proceed to put the question what it typifies, for the latter can never be aught else than the former lifted to a higher plane. The bond that holds type and antitype together must be a bond of vital continuity in the progress of redemption. Where this is ignored, and in the place of this bond are put accidental resemblances, void of inherent spiritual significance, all sorts of absurdities will result, such as must bring the whole subject of typology into disrepute. Examples of this are: the scarlet cord of Rahab prefigures the blood of Christ; the four lepers at Samaria, the four Evangelists.

These extravagances have produced in better-trained minds a distaste for typology. In order to weed out the worst, it was proposed to deal only with such types as were recognized to be types in the New Testament. These were called typi innati, 'inborn types'. The others whose typical significance had to be discovered by research were called typi illati. Then the Rationalists went one step further, claiming that all instances of typology in the New Testament are but so many examples of Rabbinical allegorizing exegesis. This would discredit our Lord and His Apostles as fanciful exegetes. But even the distinction between typi innati and typi illati cannot be upheld. The mere fact that no writer in the New Testament refers to a certain trait as typical, affords no proof of its lacking typical significance. Types in this respect stand on a line with prophecies. The New Testament in numerous cases calls our attention to the fulfilment of certain prophecies, sometimes of such a nature that perhaps we might not have discerned them to be prophecies. And yet we are not restrained by this from searching the field of prophecy and looking in the New Testament for other cases of fulfilment. The instances of typology vouched for by the New Testament writers have nothing peculiar to themselves. To recognize only them would lead to serious incompleteness and incoherency in the result. A system of types is something rational, the shaping of which we may expect from a God of wisdom, but the insertion here and there of a few isolated allusions would be out of harmony with the evidence of design in revelation.

We have, besides, the direct encouragement of the New Testament to heed the typical import of the Old Testament Scriptures. On the way to Emmaus, our Lord, beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, interpreted to the disciples in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Since the law of Moses is included, some of these things must have been of a typical nature. He rebuked his companions, because they were slow of heart to understand and believe these prefigurations concerning His work and career. The author of Hebrews intimates that about the tabernacle there was much more of typical significance than he was able to work out [9:5]. After the same manner he speaks of Melchizedek as a typical figure whom his readers had failed to appreciate [5:11ff.]. Of course, it is inevitable that into this kind of interpretation of Old Testament figures an element of uncertainty must enter. But after all this is an element that enters into all exegesis.

Besides ritual types there are in the Old Testament historical types. With some of these we have already become acquainted from the foregoing narrative. There had been also ritual types previously. But all this had been more or less sporadic. The new thing is that now, in the time of Moses, a system of types is established, so that the whole organism of the world of redemption, as it were, finds a typical embodiment on earth. The types are shadows of a body which is Christ. If the body called Christ was an organism, then also the shadows of it, that came before, must have borne the same character. In Gal. 4:3; Col. 2:20 Paul speaks of the ritual institution as 'first rudiments of the world'. He ascribes this rudiment-character to them because they were concerned with external, material things. In a certain sense (though not in point of formulation) Paul placed the ceremonies of the Old Testament on a line with similar customs of pagan religions. In paganism the religious rites possessed this character through their general dependence on the inclination towards symbolism. In the Mosaic institutions this natural symbolism also lay at the basis, but here there was a special divine control in the shaping of the materials. Because thus the truth found expression in physical forms, we say that it came on a lower plane. Under the New Testament this outward mode of expression has been retained in the two instances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper only, but the entire Old Testament still moves in this physical sphere. Hence, in Heb. 9:1, the tabernacle is called 'a worldly sanctuary', that is, a sanctuary belonging to this physical world. It was appropriate that after this fashion a sort of artificial substratum should be created for the truth of redemption to rest upon. The truth shuns suspension in the air. In the New Testament it has the accomplished facts to attach itself to. While these were yet in the making a provisional support was constructed for them in the ceremonial institutions.

From the foregoing it follows that the symbolic and the typical understanding of the ceremonies could not be expected to keep equal pace. Its symbolical function the law performed in virtue of its own inherent intelligible character. It was different with the types. Even though the defective provisional efficacy of the ceremonies might be to some extent perceived, it was far more difficult to tell what was intended to take their place in the future. Here the types needed the aid of prophecy for their interpretation [cp. Isa. 53]. We must not infer from our comparatively easy reading of the types that Israelites of old felt the same ease in interpreting them. It is unhistorical to carry back into the Old Testament mind our developed doctrinal consciousness of these matters. The failure to understand, however, does not detract from the objective significance these types had in the intent of God. But it is also possible to commit the opposite error, that of perpetuating the Old Testament typical form of religion through importing it into the New Testament. This the Romish Church does on a large scale. And in doing so, instead of lifting the substance of the types to a higher plane, it simply reproduces and repeats. This is destructive of the whole typical relation.

THE TABERNACLE

The tabernacle affords a clear instance of the coexistence of the symbolical and the typical in one of the principal institutions of the Old Testament religion. It embodies the eminently religious idea of the dwelling of God with His people. This it expresses symbolically so far as the Old Testament state of religion is concerned, and typically as regards the final embodiment of salvation in the Christian state. The tabernacle is, as it were, a concentrated theocracy. That its main purpose is to realize the indwelling of Jehovah is affirmed in so many words [Ex. 25:8; 29:44, 45]. It derives its most general name from this, namely, mishkan, 'dwelling-place'. The English versions render this too specifically, in dependence on the Septuagint and the Vulgate, by 'tabernacle'. But 'tabernacle' signifies 'tent'; every tent is a mishkan, but not every mishkan a tent. For 'tent' there is another Hebrew word, 'ohel.

The dwelling of God in a house must not be, and was never, conceived, as Spencer would understand it, on the basis of the primitive idea that the Deity needs comfort and shelter. Even as regards the shrines of paganism this can hardly have been the original conception. A shrine is always and everywhere a place established or appointed for intercourse between a god and his worshippers. Had the Israelites associated with their mishkan so low an idea of the Deity, then they could hardly have failed to introduce into the mishkan some image of God, for a god thus physically conceived as needing shelter cannot have been conceived without a body. In the passages quoted it is most distinctly stated, that not a need which God has for Himself, but a need created by His relation to Israel is served by the establishment of the tabernacle. The tabernacle does not symbolize what Jehovah is in His general Being and operations. Hence also it does not circumscribe or limit Him in any way. The sense in which it is to be understood becomes clear by having regard to the metaphorical sense which the verb 'to dwell' frequently has. It means intimate association [Gen. 30:20; Psa. 5:4; Prov. 8:12]. The dwelling with His people is to satisfy God's desire to have a mutual identification of lot between Himself and them. Thus understood, the concept helps us to feel somewhat of the inner warmth and God-centred affection, and on the part of God, the manseeking interest of Old Testament religion.

Because such identification of lot is the underlying idea, we can understand that the form chosen for the divine mishkan should be an 'ohel, a tent. For, since the Israelites lived in tents, the idea of God's identifying His lot with theirs could not be more strikingly expressed than by His sharing this mode of habitation. Further, the materials out of which the tent was constructed had to come from a free-will offering of the people, so as to symbolize that they desired their God to dwell among them. More precisely the religious intercourse is defined in still another name of the tent: 'ohel mo'ed, 'tent of meeting'. The meeting does not refer to the meeting of the people together, but to the meeting of Jehovah with the people. Here again, curiously, the Septuagint and the Vulgate, anticipating the next name, have rendered 'tent of the testimony', but in this case the English versions have not followed them. The word that is rendered 'meeting' does not designate an accidental encounter, but something previously arranged. It implies that Jehovah makes the provision and appoints the time for coming together with His people. The idea is of importance, because it is one of the indications of that conscious intercourse between God and man which characterizes the Biblical religion [Ex. 29:42, 43; Amos 3:3].

That the coming together is for the communication of thought, the third name, just mentioned, 'tent of the testimony', 'ohel ha'eduth, shows. Testimony is a name for the law. The law was present, and through it a perpetual testimony of Jehovah, in the Decalogue, put within the ark of the testimony. It was likewise present in the book containing the law as a whole, which was put by the side of (not inside) the ark [Deut. 31:26]. But, while the 'testimony' is a synonym for the law it is also a synonym for the berith, and in harmony with this its purport will have to be determined. In part a testimony against Israel [Deut. 31:26, 27], it must be on the whole a testimony in their favour; it emphasizes in this connection the gracious, redemptive nature of God's revelation to Israel, Psalm 78:5; 119 (passim).

THE MAJESTY AND HOLINESS OF GOD

While all this emphasizes the condescending, friendly nature of Jehovah's approach to and abode with the people, and brings, as it were, an echo of the Abrahamic mercies, yet there is another side to it, which was only partially brought out in the patriarchal period. The tabernacle still bears another name. It is 'a holy place', 'a sanctuary', Mikdash. It is somewhat difficult to understand the bearing and full reach of this term, because in New Testament usage the conception of 'holiness' has been more or less narrowed, and monopolized by the ethical sense. The older application, out of which the ethical one has sprung, denotes the majesty, the aloofness of God, not, however, as something arbitrarily assumed or maintained, but as something inherent in and inseparable from the divine nature. One might almost say, God's holiness is His specific divinity, that which separates Him from every creature, as distinct in place and honour.

The state of mind in the creature answering to this is the feeling of profound reverence and fear. The effect may best be seen from such a context as Isa. 6. It is more in evidence in Old Testament revelation and religion than in the New Testament, although in the latter also it is sufficiently present to show that the tendency of modern religion toward an exclusive stress upon the love of God is unwarranted [cp. 1 John 4:18]. The awe or fear inspired by the holiness of Jehovah is not first due to the sense of sin. It is something deeper, lying behind that, although the consciousness of sin is profoundly stirred and intensified by the feeling of this deeper fact. A comparison between the seraphim, who experience only the sense of the majesty of Jehovah, but have no sin, and the prophet, who has both, is very instructive [Isa. 6]. The sanctuary-character of the tabernacle is expressive of both elements in the idea. The people, though in favour with God, must yet remain at a distance, in fact are confined to the court, excluded from the tabernacle proper. Only the priests may enter, but this is due to the necessity of their ministering within, not to their being outside of the reach of the divine holiness in its exclusive effect. Even the expiation that continually takes place, and whereby the ethical disqualification is in a measure removed, cannot overrule this anterior principle that a proper distance must be maintained between God and man.

The coexistence of these two elements, that of trustful approach to God and that of reverence for the divine majesty, is characteristic of the Biblical religion throughout. Even the religious attitude exemplified by Jesus retains it, for if He teaches us to address God as Father, He immediately adds to this the qualification 'in heaven', lest the love and trust towards God should fall to the level of irreligious familiarity with God. Especially the presence of the cherubhim upon the ark in the most holy place gives a majestic expression to the majesty-side of the divine holiness. These cherubhim are throneattendants of God, not 'angels' in the specific sense of the word, for the angels go on errands and carry messages, whereas the cherubhim cannot leave the immediate neighbourhood of the throne, where they have to give expression to the royal majesty of Jehovah, both by their presence and their unceasing praise [Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8, 9]. The second, more ethically coloured aspect of the holiness idea is exhibited likewise in the tabernacle. It is, as already stated, in part responsible for the exclusiveness observed. Positively it finds expression in the demands of purity made of the priests and in the ceaseless expiation of which the tabernacle is the scene.

THE PLACE OF WORSHIP

Still another application of the idea of the presence of Jehovah in the tabernacle appears in this, that it is the place where the people offer their worship to God. It is the palace of the King in which the people render Him homage. This feature belongs more particularly to the 'holy place', where it is symbolized in the three pieces of furniture there placed, the altar of incense, the table of the bread of the Face (i.e., the Deity in revelation) and the lampholder. The incense stands for prayer. The symbolism lies partly in that the smoke is, as it were, the refined quintessence of the offering, partly in the ascending motion of the same. That the altar of incense has its place nearest to the curtain before the 'holy of holies' signifies the religious specificness of prayer as coming nearest to the heart of God. The offering was of a perpetual character. The notion of the grateful smell of the burning incense in the nostrils of Jehovah is somewhat removed from our own taste of religious imagery, but should not on that account be overlooked, since it is not in the slightest degree felt to be inappropriate by the Hebrew sense of religion. The table of the bread of the Face [Ex. 25:30; Lev. 24:5–8] represents a meatand drink-offering. As our study of the sacrificial law will show, this is the class of offering symbolizing the consecration of the activities of life to God. What the lampholder precisely represents is not so easy to determine. Its offering must be something on a line with the other two, that of prayer, and that of the good works of Israel, but the problem is to discover in what it differs from the last-named of these two. In connection with Zech. 4:2ff.; Rev. 1:20, it may be found in this, that here the reflex effect of the good works of the congregation upon those without, and thus resulting indirectly in the ascription of praise to God, may be intended [Matt. 5:14]. Light has perhaps more symbolical association in Scripture than any other natural element. It figures significantly in all of the three spheres of religious manifestation. It appears as the light of knowledge, as the light of holiness, as the light of joy.

These various things were symbolized in the tabernacle with close dependence upon Jehovah's dwelling there. The symbolic character, however, must not be understood as purely symbolic, excluding the element of real efficacy. There was in all of them a sacramental use; they were real means of grace. For this reason the question becomes interesting, how the divine presence in the tabernacle is to be understood. Was this a symbolical thing, or at least a purely spiritual thing, or was it embodied in some realistic supernatural manifestation? This is the problem of the so-called Shekinah. From very ancient times a realistic view concerning this has prevailed both among Jewish and among Christian theologians. In 1683 Vitringa abandoned this venerable belief and substituted for it the belief in a purely spiritual, invisible presence. He did this on the basis of a modified exegesis of Lev. 16:2, which passage had served up to that time as the main support of the realistic interpretation. His opinion was that the 'cloud' spoken of in this verse was the cloud of incense, to be produced by the high priest, not a theophanic cloud of supernatural character. People at that time were sensitive on the point of supernaturalism, and this, on the surface innocent, exegetical innovation roused such a storm of protest that Vitringa retracted his proposal and returned to the old view. About the middle of the eighteenth century the controversy was renewed and this time the anti-realistic opinion prevailed. Since the first quarter of the nineteenth century the realistic view has found new defenders, but some of the objections previously raised against it weighed heavily enough in the somewhat rarified air of the 'supernaturalism' of those days to lead to a compromise. It was now thought that the divine glory was actually present by way of supernatural manifestation in the most holy place, but that it had not resided there continuously, being confined to the annual occasion of the high priest's entrance behind the curtain.

It is plain that opinions in this matter have been influenced more by theological predisposition than by exegetical evidence. Vitringa seems to have been almost the only one who approached the question with an unprejudiced exegetical mind. His exegesis of Lev. 16:2, is, however, untenable. It rests on the identification of the cloud in vs. 2 and in vs. 13. This equation is unfounded, for the mere occurrence of the identical phrase, 'lest he die', in both verses does not, in view of the totally different connection, suffice to prove it. The meaning of vs. 2 is: Aaron must not come at all times within the veil; if he should come at any other than the one appointed time, he exposes himself to the danger of death, for there is within a manifestation of the presence of Jehovah embodied in a cloud. The caution 'lest he die' is occasioned by the presence of the cloud. In vs. 13 Aaron is warned that, when entering, he must not enter without veiling himself with a cloud of incense, because disregard of that will expose him to danger of death. The caution 'lest he die' here is directed to the production of an artificial cloud of incense. Moreover it will be observed, that in vs. 2 'the cloud', and in vs. 13 'a cloud' is spoken of. 'The cloud' must mean the well-known cloud spoken of previously in the history. This can only be the cloud which had accompanied the people on their journeys, namely, the supernatural, theophanic cloud. The cloud of incense had never before been mentioned in the narrative; therefore in vs. 13 'a cloud' was in place. Wherever in the Old Testament the terms 'cloud' and 'appearing' occur together the reference is always to the theophanic cloud. The construction of vs. 2 must be strained to the utmost to make it speak of a cloud of incense and the necessity of producing it. On the occasion of the inauguration of the tabernacle and of the temple it is distinctly stated that the divine glory entered into the sanctuary [Ex. 40:34, 35; 1 Ki. 8:10–12]. True, on both occasions the glory must subsequently have withdrawn, for the priests, who could not serve on account of its presence at first, afterwards served again. But that the glory entirely withdrew, and no part of it remained, is not stated either. After all, the latter assumption is a most natural one. Ezekiel relates that at the time of the captivity he saw the glory of Jehovah departing from the temple [10:18; 11:23]. Haggai implies that in the post-exilic temple something was lacking in comparison with the temple of Solomon [2:7]. The Psalmists speak of the sanctuary in terms implying that it and the glory belong together [63:2]. And to corroborate all this we have the testimony of Paul, who mentions among the great privileges distinguishing Israel the doxa, 'glory' [Rom. 9:4; cp. also Acts 7:2; Rev. 15:8; 21:11, 23].

The tabernacle, then, represented not merely symbolically the indwelling of God among Israel, but actually contained it. But we must enquire more particularly, whether it was Jehovah's house exclusively, or the joint house of Him and the people. The correct answer to this is that the tabernacle is in its entirety Jehovah's house. There are not in it two apartments, one for God and one for the people, for the holy place, no less than the holy of holies, is the place which Jehovah owns alone. At the same time it must be maintained that the people are received into God's house as His guests. That this under the Old Testament was not carried out literally, but only symbolically, cannot alter the fact. For reasons of emphasizing the sinfulness of the people and the provisional nature of their sanctification, this could as yet be only symbolically expressed, but the thought was there as an ideal none the less. As an ideal privilege this belonged to every Israelite [Psa. 15; 24; 27]. If the tabernacle symbolized the heavenly habitation of God, and the ideal destiny of God's people has always been to be received of Him to the most consummate fellowship there, then there must have been at least an ideal reflex and foreshadowing of this in the tabernacle. In accordance with this principle the names given to God's celestial palace and to the earthly sanctuary are identical. Ma'on, hekhal, zebhul are used indiscriminately of both. The point raised is not without theological importance. It touches the question of the nature of religion, and the part played in it by God and man respectively. In the ideal covenant-fellowship, here portrayed, the divine factor is the all-controlling one. Man appears as admitted into, adjusted to, subordinated to, the life of God. Biblical piety is God-centred.

CHRIST IS THE ANTI-TYPICAL TABERNACLE

The typical significance of the tabernacle should be sought in close dependence upon its symbolic significance. We must ask: where do these religious principles and realities, which the tabernacle served to teach and communicate, reappear in the subsequent history of redemption, lifted to their consummate stage? First we discover them in the glorified Christ. Of this speaks the Evangelist [John

1:14]. The Word become flesh is the One in whom God came to tabernacle among men, in order to reveal to them His grace and glory. In John 2:19–22 Jesus Himself predicts that the Old Testament temple, which His enemies by their attitude towards Him are virtually destroying, He will build up again in three days, i.e., through the resurrection. This affirms the continuity between the Old Testament sanctuary and His glorified Person. In Him will be for ever perpetuated all that tabernacle and temple stood for. The structure of stone may disappear; the essence proves itself eternal. In Col. 2:9, Paul teaches that in Him the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. With these passages should be compared the saying of Jesus to Nathanael [John 1:51] where He finds in Himself the fulfilment of what Jacob had called the house of God, the gate of heaven. In all these cases the indwelling of God in Christ serves the same ends which the Mosaic tabernacle provisionally served. He as the antitypical tabernacle is revelatory and sacramental in the highest degree.

THE TABERNACLE ALSO A TYPE OF THE CHURCH

But what is true of the Christ is likewise true of the Church. Of that also the tabernacle was a type. This could not be otherwise, because the Church is the body of the risen Christ. For this reason the Church is called 'the house of God' [Eph. 2:21, 22; 1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 3:6; 10:21; 1 Pet. 2:5]. An individual turn is given to the thought where the Christian is called a temple of God [1 Cor. 6:19]. It ought to be noticed that 'house of God' is not in the New Testament a mere figure of the fellowship between God and the Church, but always refers specifically to the Old Testament dwelling of Jehovah. The highest realization of the tabernacle idea is ascribed to the eschatological stage of the history of redemption. This is depicted by the Apocalypse [21:3]. The peculiarity of the representation here is that, in dependence on Isa. 4:5, 6, the area of the tabernacle and temple are widened so as to become equally co-extensive with the entire New Jerusalem. The necessity of a tabernacle or a temple symbolic and typical, presupposes the imperfection of the present state of the theocracy. When the theocracy will completely correspond to the divine ideal of it, then there will be no more need of symbol or type. Hence the statement 'I saw no temple therein', vs. 22. This does not, however, make it 'the city without a church'. Using Scriptural terminology, we should rather say that the place will be all church.

THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM OF THE LAW

The second main strand entering into the ceremonial law is that relating to sacrifice. The sacrificial ritual forms the centre of the rites of the tabernacle. The altar is in fact a house of God, a tabernacle in miniature. Hence it is described as the place where God records His 'Name', and meets with His people [Ex. 20:24]. The laws about the tabernacle in the closing chapters of the Book of Exodus are immediately followed by the sacrificial laws in the opening chapters of Leviticus.

Sacrifices as such did not, of course, begin with the Mosaic law. We read of Cain and Abel bringing their offerings, and of Noah offering sacrifices after the flood. Still it will be observed that these sacrifices belong to the state of sin. From this it may be inferred that the idea of sacrifice has an intimate connection with the fact of sin. In order to determine this connection accurately, we shall have to distinguish between the two main ends served by sacrifice, for the connection with sin is not entirely the same in each. These two main ends are expiation and consecration. It is plain that expiation cannot exist without there being sin to expiate. The expiatory element in sacrifice, therefore, takes its origin from sin. It is somewhat different with the element of consecration. Consecration is not first made necessary by sin. It is as old as religion itself, nay, constitutes the very essence of religion. But from this original existence of consecration in the exercise of sinless religion we may not infer that the specifically sacrificial form of consecration is as old as the practice of the idea itself.

The correct way of putting it is that the externalized form of consecration is a result of sin. In the sinless intercourse between God and man everything is direct and spiritual; no symbol intervenes between the worshipping creature and the Creator. This difference between the two aspects of sacrifice has its bearing upon the question of the purely human origination of sacrifice or its divine institution. For the expiatory use of sacrifice a positive divine institution was obviously required. Even if man could have conceived the idea of expiation of himself, there still would have been required explicit divine sanction to put it into practice. On the other hand, the idea of consecration was innate in man, and it is perhaps conceivable, that, after the fall, man of his own accord proceeded to give to this a new externalized embodiment, because he felt sin to have made such a separation between God and himself as to preclude the direct offering of himself to God.

It must be admitted, however, that the Pentateuch contains no record of the institution of sacrifice either as to its expiatory or as to its consecratory aspect. Some profess to find it in Gen. 3:21. The covering provided by God from the simple skins of animals would have carried the implication that animal life is necessary for covering sin. Agaicst this speaks the fact that the word used for this act of God is not the technical term used in the law for the covering of sin by sacrifice. It is a word signifying 'to clothe', a term never employed in the law for the expiation of sin.

While the law does not appoint a separate class of sacrifice for expiation alone, it does devote the vegetable, bloodless sacrifice to the purpose of consecration alone. In the animal, bloody sacrifice, the two ideas find joint expression, and the intimate union between the two is also brought out in the rule that no vegetable sacrifice shall be brought except on the basis of a preceding animal sacrifice. The unbloody sacrifice does not negate the idea of expiation; it presupposes it. Of course, the exclusive use of animal sacrifice for expiation is due to the presence of blood in it. Without blood there is no sacrificial expiation under the law.

OFFERINGS—GIFTS—SACRIFICES

The general category under which sacrifices are subsumed is that of qorban, 'offering' (literally, 'that which is brought near') or that of mattenoth qodesh, 'gifts of holiness'. This classification seems primarily to have been taken from the consecration element in them. That consecration is a gift seems natural, but that expiation should bear the same name is not so easy to understand, although there must be some meaning in this also, as we may discover later. This gift character is of the greatest importance for our understanding the nature of sacrifice. The point here to observe is that 'offerings' and 'holy gifts' are generic terms. They cover sacrifice, but they cover much more than sacrifice proper. All that is devoted in any way whatsoever to the service of Jehovah can be called by these names, but not everything of this nature can be called sacrifice. Every sacrifice is a holy gift, but not every holy gift is a sacrifice. It is unfortunate for our understanding of the matter that the law has no separate, single term for this specific subdivision of the holy gifts, so that in order to satisfy our desire for specification we must fall back on the Latin word 'sacrificium', which originally was also far more comprehensive than the use we now put to it. But, if we cannot name the 'sacrifice' in one Biblical word, we can at least by way of description single it out from the cognate, but by no means identical, things.

What distinguishes the sacrifice from all other things, however sacred these may be, is that part or the whole of its substance comes upon the altar. Without the altar there would be no sacrifice. This coming upon the altar is a most significant thing: it means the direct consumption of the sacrifice by Jehovah, for Jehovah dwells in the altar. In anthropomorphic language the law expresses the principle of assimilation of the sacrifice by Jehovah, when it speaks of it as 'food for Jehovah' or as yielding 'a firing for the savour of satisfaction for Jehovah'. Much later the prophets still had to protest against a naturalistic interpretation of this conception, as though Jehovah were by nature in need of food and the gratification of His sense of smell. The meaning of the law is that in virtue of His relation to Israel, as the God of Israel, He cannot exist without this, since for this very purpose He has chosen Israel and instituted the ritual service, that there might be a never-ceasing supply of praise and consecration for Him. The whole tenor of the law is to that effect. Its spirit, especially in the system of sacrifice, is that of a God-centred religion. Since, in the Old Testament, the man-ward activities of religion were relatively restricted, the impression made by this is all the stronger. It belongs, however, to the entire Biblical religion under all circumstances. In it all activity is service, not according to the modern depleted, humanitarian sense of the word, but in the sense of its being in the last analysis directed toward God, a sacrifice in the profound Old Testament understanding of this term.

It is, however, a one-sided exaggeration of this thought, when some have endeavoured to define sacrifice as worship. There is worship in sacrifice, but worship by no means constitutes the whole of sacrifice. Worship covers only the one half of the act, that which extends from man to God. The other half, extending from God to man, is not prayer, but a sacramental transaction, something God does, and in regard to which man is purely receptive, passive. Instead of prayer, it is rather the divine answer to prayer. In this respect again the modern connotation of the word has become deceptive. It savours too much of the pagan etymology, for in sacrificium the notion of facere is too prominent, and that as a human, not a divine facere. Still the designation of sacrifice as worship may be turned to good use. It may help to explain how, even in the case of expiatory sacrifice, a giving on the part of man is involved. Man must put his aspiration and desire and trust into the proceeding; he gives in so far back to God what God has first given to him as a means of grace.

The regulation of the material for sacrifice will further make plain the sense in which it is regarded as a gift to Jehovah. The first requisite is, of course, that all things offered must be technically 'clean'. But not all that is clean is allowed for sacrifice. Within the animal kingdom the following species are allowed: oxen, sheep, goats, pigeons. From the vegetable kingdom: corn, wine and oil can be brought. The principle expressed in this selection is two-fold. The sacrifice must be taken from what constitutes the sustenance of the life of the offerer, and from what forms the product of his life. To an agricultural people like the Israelites in Canaan (and to this the law looks forward) the things named naturally came under consideration from the two-fold point of view indicated. Reducing these two, however, to their unitary root, we have to say that they characterize sacrifice as the gift of life to God. Short of the impossibility under the Old Testament of human sacrifice, the principle in question could not have been better expressed than in the way it was. Both negatively and positively an important truth was thus enunciated. Negatively it was brought out that sacrifice is not transfer of value to Jehovah, not a present, in the pagan sense of the word. Jehovah protests against such a perverted notion with the reminder that all the contents of the world are antecedently His property. There is no possibility of enriching Him. And positively it emphasizes that God is not satisfied in the religious converse between Himself and man with anything short of the consecration of life itself.

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE OFFERER AND HIS SACRIFICE

The next point to discuss is the relation assumed by the law to exist between the offerer and his sacrifice. There are varying theories about this, not so much because the law itself is equivocal on this point, but because the argumentation from the ritual law in favour of or against certain theories of the atonement has influenced opinion on this question. This is made possible through the absence from the law of any outspoken philosophy of sacrifice. Here as in other points the law is left to speak for itself. Abuse is made of this, when interpreters, as it were, interrupt the law or even silence it, presuming to speak for it. No preconceived theory of atonement should be allowed to colour our understanding of the law, but the reverse should happen. There is only one qualification of this: the New Testament in certain points speaks so plainly in regard to the fulfilment of certain traits of the ritual in the atonement, as to render it impossible for us to disregard this. For the rest, however, we must gather our philosophy of sacrifice from careful observation of the manner in which the ritual proceeds. This we shall do presently. By way of preface it may be explained here, that there are three general opinions in regard to the inner meaning of the ritual and the relation it establishes between offering and offerer.

The first may be designated the purely symbolical theory. According to it the sacrificial process exhibits in a picture certain things that must be done to the offerer, and that can and will be done to him with the proper effect. The picture, as a mere picture, must needs remain within the sphere of subjectivity; it exhibits in no way what must take place outside of man for him, but only what takes place within him; we, therefore, call this the purely symbolical theory. Speaking in dogmatic language we might say, that on this view of the matter sacrifice is a pictorial representation of such things as sanctification and return to the favour of God. The utmost that this theory could possibly concede would be, that the ritual perhaps depicts some objective obligation, that might have been imposed upon man, of which by way of a lesson he is reminded in the sacrifice, but which is not further carried out or exacted from man, not even symbolically, in the further process. This interpretation of the sacrificial procedure lies on the line of the moral and governmental theories of the atonement.

The second theory may be designated as the symbolico-vicarious theory of sacrifice. It has in common with the other the assumption of subjectively-turned symbolism at the opening. According to it the ritual begins with portraying the subjective state of man, chiefly as to his obligation. But right there it parts way with the purely symbolical view. If the latter assumes that the further steps continue to portray what will be done within man to modify this, the symbolico-vicarious theory presupposes the recognition by ritual itself that nothing can be done in man himself with the proper effect, and that, therefore, a substitute must take his place. All the successive acts of the ritual apply to this substitute, not to the offerer. Consequently the entire transaction assumes an objective character. It becomes something done, to be sure, for the benefit of the offerer, but done outside of him. It will thus be seen, that the objectivity and the vicariousness of the process go together. On the same principle adoption of the purely symbolical theory carries with itself exclusion of the vicarious element and of the objectivity.

To be distinguished from these two theories is a third attitude towards the law of sacrifice. This, however, can by no means be coordinated with the two preceding views, for it denies that in the law, or the Old Testament in general, any coherent, consistent theory of sacrifice is to be found. This is the opinion, on the whole, of the Wellhausen school of critics. The sacrificial laws are said to be the precipitate of a long development. They contain, loosely conglomerated, customs dating from widely distant times, and based on discordant principles. It belongs, therefore, to the very essence of this hypothesis to deny that the law itself has any intelligent view of the meaning of sacrifice. All that these writers presume to offer is a history, not a theory of sacrifice. During the most ancient, nomadic period, sacrifices were nothing else but means for establishing or strengthening the blood-communion supposed to exist between the deity and its worshippers. This was effected by making both partake of a common blood, the blood of the sacrificial animal. The act did not mean expiation; it meant a sacrament. In a later stage of religious development a considerable change took place in the conception of sacrifice. This change was connected with the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Canaan. Previously their religion had been a nomadic religion, now it became an agricultural one. The sacrifices were presents bestowed upon Jehovah, the richness and frequency of which assumed great importance. The cult became complicated and luxuriant. Underlying it was the naïve popular belief that God could be influenced by the presentation of such gifts, irrespective of the spirit in which they were brought.

This view of sacrifice was essentially of Canaanitish origin. The prophets protested against this popular delusion, and from the ethical conception of the nature of Jehovah attained by them, drew the inference that sacrifices were not only an unnecessary but even a dangerous form of religious service, something disapproved of by Jehovah. At first this remained a purely theoretical preaching, which never gained any acceptance with the people. The prophets soon saw that in order to make any headway against the popular cult they would have to stoop to some form of compromise. This consisted in pruning, purifying, and elevating as much as possible the practised religion. The results of this compromise are embodied in the various law-codes now found in the several Pentateuchal documents. Especially in the later codes the grosser conceptions of the earlier period were made to the largest possible extent vehicles of ethical, spiritual truth.

THE STAGES OF THE SACRIFICIAL RITUAL

Now, coming to the various acts or stages making up the ritual process, we first consider the selection of the particular animal from within the limits of allowance above specified. The animal must be a perfect specimen of its kind. Both as to age and as to condition it must be free of anything that would detract from its value. This is conceivable from the naïve popular conception of sacrifice as a gift to Jehovah, for to one's God one gives of the best only. But it is not easily explainable from the standpoint of the purely symbolical theory. According to this the sacrifice must be viewed as a picture, a replica of the offerer. Now the offerer is at the same time supposed to come with an offering, because he feels himself abnormal and imperfect. How then can the perfectly normal and flawless animal figure as his double? At this point, certainly, the symbolico-vicarious view has the advantage; it substitutes for the imperfect offerer the perfect animal-substitute, in order that through its perfection something may be accomplished that would be otherwise impossible. To be sure, the animal exhibits ethical perfection after a very negative fashion only; in that it is not subject to moral distinctions it is incapable also of symbolizing moral defects. It is innocent simply because it cannot be good or bad. But this is inseparable from a process in which an animal takes the place of a man. And in part it is symbolically obviated by the positive stress laid upon the physical normality and perfection of the animal. Isaiah in chapter 53 speaks of the sacrificial lamb, as though it had semi-ethical qualities, but even these are negative, innocence and meekness, and besides, the description is modelled after the character of the Servant of Jehovah. Still this suggests how the negative could serve as a symbol of the sinlessness of the antitype. And Peter declares that believers are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. And this blameless and spotless character the Apostle does not represent as merely in general enhancing the value of the offering, but as enhancing its efficacy for redemption [1 Pet. 1:19].

The next step in the ritual, after the animal had been brought to the sanctuary, was the so-called laying on of hands by the offerer. The Hebrew phrase is stronger than the English rendering suggests; it literally means 'the leaning on' of the hand or the hands [Lev. 16:21]. This ceremony took place in every ordinary animal sacrifice, and in animal sacrifice only. This points to a close connection between what was peculiar to animal sacrifice and the act in question. Peculiar to animal sacrifice is the use of the blood for expiation. With this, therefore, the laying on of hands must have something to do. The significance of the act is indicated by the analogy of the other occasions on which it was performed [Gen. 48:13, 14; Lev. 24:14; Num. 8:10; 27:18; Deut. 34:9]. From these instances it appears that laying on of hands always symbolized a transfer from one person to another. What the thing transferred was depended on the occasion, but the one to whom something was transferred appears everywhere as a second person, distinct from the one whose hands are laid on. This decidedly favours the vicarious interpretation of sacrifice. It means that the animal cannot have been considered the mere double of the offerer; it must have been a second person different from the offerer.

In answering what was transferred to the animal-substitute we cannot, of course, be guided by the above analogies. There is independent evidence to show that the transferred thing was nothing else but the sin, i.e., the liability to death-punishment on the part of the offerer. In the ritual of the Day of Atonement, which we may consider the culminating occasion of the whole ritual system, Aaron is told to lay his hands on the head of the second goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people. This second goat was not a sacrifice to be slain after the ordinary manner; it was sent away into the wilderness for the purpose of symbolically removing the sin. Yet it formed with the other goat in reality one sacrificial object; the distribution of suffering death and of dismissal into a remote place simply serving the purpose of clearer expression, in visible form, of the removal of sin after expiation had been made, something which the ordinary sacrificial animal could not well express, since it died in the process of expiation. We are certainly warranted, when here the hands convey sin, and where the same ceremony occurs in ordinary sacrifice, in drawing the conclusion that on every such occasion sins are transferred.

The interpretation followed is of such great importance, because it virtually determines the construction to be placed upon the next following step in the ritual, the slaying of the animal by the hands of the offerer. The act has thus given the altar its name mizbeach, 'place of slaughter'. The importance is attested also by the careful injunction that the slaying must take place at the altar and particularly at the north side. The symbolical meaning of this may not be clear, but, unless weight was attributed to the act, the place would have been treated as indifferent. Both these features tell strongly against a theory defended by even such safe interpreters as Keil and Delitzsch, to the effect that the slaying of the animal forms no significant part of the ritual, but is simply the inevitable means for obtaining the blood and the fat, the use of which is truly significant, ritually considered.

In connection with the laying on of hands transmitting sin the slaying of the sin-bearing animal could scarcely have any other purpose than to signify that death is the penalty of sin, vicariously inflicted in sacrifice. And that this point of view is not foreign to the law appears from such cases as that related in Deut. 21:9 (where there is expiation and yet no shedding of blood, but death by the neck being broken), and the offer of himself by Moses to die in the place of Israel [Ex. 32:30–34].

The error of Keil and Delitzsch is due to the fact that the law does not name the slaying, but everywhere the blood, as the means of expiation. This is a correct observation, but the inference drawn from it is wrong. The blood is the most eloquent symbol of death, so that the antithesis, not death but blood, is fundamentally wrong. To be sure, blood can likewise be the symbol of life. But it does not so appear in the ritual. Nor is it fit to appear in such a capacity, because it figures as blood flowed out, and this stands everywhere for the life departing, i.e., for death. Blood in its normal state, blood in the integral animal does not expiate. It expiates as blood that has passed through the crisis of death, and is therefore fit to be the exponent of death. The rule, there is no expiation without blood, cannot be reversed, so as to make it say, there is no blood without expiation. If it still be urged that blood conceived as the exponent of expiating death ought to have had its effect when flowing out of the animal slain, at the moment of its direct conjunction with death, the answer lies in a correct appreciation of what the Old Testament term designating 'to expiate' stands for.

We are inclined to draw distinctions here which are necessary for dogmatic precision. Thus we distinguish between the atonement itself and the application of the atonement. The symbolism of the ritual takes these two in one. When it says that 'blood covers' (that is the technical term of the law for expiation), it means to describe in one word the atonement as we call it, plus the application of the atonement (which we call justification). Now in this inclusive sense the process of covering is not completed until the blood, as the symbol of death, has been applied to the altar, i.e., brought into contact with God, who dwells in the altar. This is the simple reason why the law refrains from saying that the slaying atones, and why it is so careful to emphasize that the application of the blood to the altar has this effect. But this cannot be held to prove that the slaying has nothing to do with the effect. Besides, there is also an external reason why the law dwells more upon the manipulation of the blood than upon the slaying of the animal. The latter was simple and the same in all cases, whereas the former was complex, varying in the various classes and for the various occasions of sacrifice. It needed discriminating attention.

So far from negating the expiatory power of death in a vicarious sense, the constant references to the blood rather illuminatingly confirm this. To the conception of the ritual 'blood' and 'life' are identical. And 'life' and 'soul' are likewise identical. We need, therefore, only to inquire into the Old Testament signification of 'soul' to reach the inwardness of the matter on this point. Besides several others, the classic passage on the subject is Lev. 17:11. Here we read: 'For the life of the flesh' (i.e. living flesh) 'is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make covering for your souls; for it is the blood that makes covering by reason of the life'.

What, then, is the Old Testament conception of 'soul'? In that the reason is placed for the blood's efficacy to cover for souls. The two associations of the term 'soul' are in the first place that of individuation, secondly, that of sensibility. Both are, of course, physiologically, and hence symbolically, intimately connected with the blood in the body. 'Soul' is that which results when the general spirit of life joins breath to a body. This is not meant for an affirmation of trichotomy; it is a practical distinction between spirit and soul, not as two entities, substantially considered, but as two aspects of the same thing. And in the same practical way soul and sensation, feeling, are associated.

The question, therefore, is simply reduced to this: what makes the principle of individuation and of sensibility the proper instrument for expiation? It will be seen at a glance that the answer to this is found in the vicarious theory, and in it alone. That which is a substitute for another person must be an individual, and that which undergoes punishment for another must be capable of feeling, of suffering. Taking it together, then, we may say, that the blood has its rich symbolism in sacrifice, first, because it stands for death, secondly because it stands for the death of an individual, substitutionary person, and thirdly because it stands for a death involving suffering. All this is given in the slaying, but slaying or dying are abstract conceptions, that cannot be made subject to sight symbolically, whereas 'blood' and 'soul' and 'life' are concrete things.

VICARIOUSNESS DEFINED

The passage Lev 17:11 also contains the most explicit statement of the principle of vicariousness to be found in the law anywhere. It virtually amounts to saying: soul works covering for soul. The inherent vicariousness of the statement is recognized by all exegetes, even by such as have no theological use for its teaching. Still a certain latitude of interpretation, within the limits of vicariousness, seems possible.

There are, in the abstract, three possibilities. One can say the passage teaches that for the integral life of the offerer, due to God, another integral life, that of the animal is substituted. This it will be observed, while retaining the principle of vicariousness, rules out entirely the idea of vicarious death, vicarious suffering. Antitypically speaking it would amount to saying that for the positive gift of our life in consecration to God, which we had failed to bring, Christ has, by way of substitution, given God His life of service, to reimburse God for ours, but that the suffering of the Saviour played no part in the matter, inasmuch as God was simply concerned with receiving consecration, and had no interest in the payment through suffering for offences committed. In other words, the justice of God is entirely ruled out. Christ was our substitute in His active obedience only.

Again one may say: God does indeed reckon with sins but not in the sense of punishment being required for them; the only way in which He reckons with them is by desiring a positive gift that will compensate for the injury offered Him. This would amount to saying that Christ's active obedience had served for making God forego the punishment of our sins, in view of the rich obedience rendered by Christ. It is again the active obedience that plays the exclusive part, but on this view it plays it at least with a side-reference to the sin that was committed, and had to be made good somehow.

Or, finally, one may say: the sacrificial animal in its death takes the place of the death due the offerer. It is forfeit for forfeit. Christ not merely in His positive service, but through His suffering and death made up for the abnormality of our sin. He satisfied the justice of God. We maintain that the first and second interpretations, while not perhaps absolutely ruled out by Lev. 17:11 alone, do not place the most natural construction upon the words, and, taken together with the general trend of Biblical teaching on the atonement are not plausible.

THE MEANING OF 'COVERING'

Our next enquiry addresses itself to the precise symbolical conception the law frames for what we call expiation, that of 'covering'. The Hebrew word is kapper, piel infinitive of kaphar. Covering can be of two kinds, obliterative and protective. It is thought by some that the latter is the idea originally underlying the use of the word for expiation. The symbolism would convey that the offerer through the interposition of the blood between God and himself obtained safety from the reaction of the divine anger against sin. The obliterative interpretation is that the stain of sin and its impurity are put out of the sight of God through the blood smeared over them. It is not a matter of grave doctrinal importance, but one of historical interest largely, which of the two figures lies at the basis of the Biblical usage. It is not even certain that in Biblical times the etymological associations were still distinctly remembered. The word may have become a purely technical ritual term.

Most seem to speak in favour of the original understanding of the process as one of obliteration. In secular use the term seems to have this for a background. Jacob 'covers' the face of Esau through sending a present before himself. In this way the anger on Esau's face is 'covered', put out of sight [Gen. 32:20]. There is further a religious usage outside of the sphere of sacrifice, and in this also the idea of obliteration shines clearly through [cp. Psa. 32:1; 65:3; 78:38; Isa. 22:14; Jer. 18:23]. In these cases the object is almost uniformly the sin, not the sinner, and to the former the idea of protection afforded by God could not properly apply. Then there are the various synonymous phrases in which the Old Testament describes the removal of sin on the part of God. These are most of them of an obliterative sort [Neh. 4:5; Isa. 6:7; 27:9; 38:17; 44:22; Jer. 18:23; Mic. 7:19].

We may infer from all this that in the province of sacrifice likewise the idea of removal of sin through obliteration was the originally prevailing one. A striking difference should be noted, however, between the secular and the religious use of the conception. Outside of religion it is the offender who does the covering, and the person offended is covered. Jacob covers the face of Esau. In the sphere of religion, ritual or otherwise, God, the offended Person, procures the covering, and it is applied to the sinner. Man cannot cover the face of God. The idea, as though man could do anything whatsoever in order to effect a change in the disposition or attitude of God towards sin or the sinner, is utterly repugnant to the spirit of Biblical religion. Between man and man that may be possible, but not between God and man. If the normal relation is to be restored, it is the prerogative of God to resolve this and to put His resolve into operation.

In paganism all this is different. Here the figure employed is that of 'smoothing' the gods, that is of removing the wrinkles out of their frowning face. Thus the Greek says hilaskesthai tous theous, the Latin says placare deos. This figure underlies the technical pagan term of 'expiating'. If the translation of the Scriptures into Greek, or Latin, or the modern languages, could have avoided such terms, there would have been less danger of perverting the Biblical idea through giving it a pagan equivalent grown on a totally different root. But the translators, perhaps, had no choice. Their use of 'covering' would probably have made the language unintelligible to the Greek or Roman reader. This state of affairs imposes the duty upon us of not relying on the Greek or Latin or English sound of a term used in such connections, but carefully to consult the Hebrew, and make our construction of the process on the basis of that alone. To neglect doing this exposes in the present case to a very dangerous misconception.

When the Bible says that God 'expiates' man, not man God, the inference is easily drawn that the whole abnormality consists in the ill-disposition of man, and that all that is required consists in God's smoothing this out. The whole process of atonement would become in this way subjectivized. The resulting concept is a hybrid: it has the Biblical construction, and the pagan mould of thought. To escape from the misunderstanding all that is required is to go back from the term 'expiating' to the term 'covering'. Man needs 'covering', God needs no 'covering'. God is the subject, man is the object of the act. The reason why man needs covering is something that lies in him, but it is not something that lies in man considered in itself. It creates the need of covering, because of something that is in God. The sin in man, as calling forth a reaction from the offended holiness of God, is what renders the covering necessary. It is a real help here to keep in mind the full formula in which the law itself describes the process: 'the priest shall cover upon him on account of his sin' [Lev. 4:35].

While the protective view of the transaction fits equally well into the true doctrine of the atonement as the other, Ritschl has worked it out in a manner which leads far away from the Biblical premises of sacrifice. He assumes that the protection which man needs and the law provides does not arise from man's sinfulness, but from his finiteness as a creature, which endangers his life when entering into the presence of the majesty of God. But, when man appears with the prescribed gifts, and the priests perform for him the appointed rites, he receives adequate protection from this danger, and is enabled to exercise fellowship with God. And from this fellowship with God he receives, besides other things, also the favour of the forgiveness of sin. It will be noticed, that this reverses the usual order of things. We are accustomed to say, and understand the Bible as saying, that forgiveness is the source from which fellowship flows. Ritschl would turn this around, making fellowship the source from which forgiveness proceeds. The whole tenor of the law is against this. As we have seen, the covering is kept by the law in the closest connection with the fact of sin. To deny this is to void the sacrificial system of all ethical content.

The next step in the ritual after the covering is the burning of certain parts of the animal upon the altar. What was the symbolical meaning of this act? Some would find in it a further carrying out of the idea expressed in the slaying of the animal. The consumption of it by fire would then symbolize that more intensified experience of death which awaits the sinner in the hereafter. Against this there are fatal objections. After expiation had once taken place, and the offerer's soul had been effectually covered, the end of the penal transaction had been reached. Had the meaning of the burning been what is assumed on this view, then the act of expiation ought to have followed, not preceded the burning. The covering ought to have been made by means of the blood and ashes combined. In the vegetable offering the burning was exactly the same as in the animal offering, and yet no expiation entered into the former.

The verb descriptive of the burning is everywhere hiqtir. This verb does not describe burning of the consuming kind, but of the sublimating kind, a process whereby something is changed into a finer substance. The verb for destructive burning is saraf, and this is actually used for the burning of parts of the animal outside the camp, but never of the burning upon the altar. Moreover, the law speaks of the altar-burning as yielding a sweet odour of delight to Jehovah. While Scripture teaches that the punishment of sin is required by the justice of God, it never speaks of this as giving delight to God. On the contrary, that which is represented as yielding delight to Jehovah is the surrender of man's life in consecration of obedience. In this sense, therefore, we must understand the burning upon the altar.

The question, however, may be raised, whether this consecration is the vicarious one offered God by the substitute of the offerer, or the consecration of the offerer himself. If the latter were true, we should have to say that at this point the symbolico-vicarious significance of the ritual came to an end, and the purely symbolical one took its place. But this would inevitably have introduced a certain ambiguity and confusion into the ritual. And there is no reason whatever for finding a conflict between vicariousness and consecration. Although expiation cannot be made by man himself, and consecration by the grace of God can be subjectively inwrought into the life of man, yet we also know of an active consecratory obedience offered to God on behalf of sinners by Christ. Our Lord employs ritual language, when affirming that He sanctifies Himself for them (i.e., for the suffering of His death) [John 17:19]. And Paul does the same, when, speaking of Christ's active obedience, he says: 'Christ also loved us, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour of a sweet smell' [Eph. 5:2].

The final stage in the ritual of sacrifice consisted in the sacrificial meal. This was peculiar to the peace-offerings. In speaking of the Passover we have already noticed the main characteristics of this class of sacrifice. The Hebrew name for it is shelamim. The adjective corresponding to this is shalem meaning 'integral', 'uninjured', 'living in peace and friendship with somebody'. It is natural to think, in connection with this, first of all of the state of forgiveness following the expiation. But, while this is not excluded, since in the sacrifice preceding the meal there is real expiation, yet we must take care not to stress this side of the matter one-sidedly.

'Peace' is in Scripture a far more positive conception than it is with us. The peace-offering accordingly symbolizes the state of positive favour and blessedness enjoyed in the religion of Jehovah, which at all times includes more than the sacrificial relief obtained from sin. In the Orient a meal can signify both the cessation of hostility and the communion of friendship. The rendering 'peace-offerings' in the English Bible, on the basis of Septuagint and Vulgate, is most felicitous; that of other versions, German and Dutch, is less faithful. These render 'thank-offerings', but the thank-offerings are only one species of the genus peace-offerings. The state of peace in its twosided significance is symbolized as a gift of Jehovah, for it is He, not the offerer, who prepares the meal. Hence the meal is to be held at the tabernacle, the house of God. We may compare the meal partaken of by 'the nobles of Israel' on the mount [Ex. 24:11] where also Jehovah is obviously the host. Paul in 1 Cor. 10, by implication calls the meal the table of Jehovah, for he compares the Lord's supper, where Christ is the host, and the pagan sacrificial meals, where the 'demons' give the feast at their table, with the practice of the ancient Israelites, who have 'communion with the altar'.

THE VARIETY OF OFFERINGS

The classification of animal sacrifices represents an ascending scale, beginning, as it were, with the worst point, religiously considered, in the state of the offerer, and ending with the acme of his religious blessedness. The distinction between the classes is not a distinction of exclusive expression of single points, but one of emphasis on particular points, which in the succeeding classes are not dismissed from view, but recapitulated, so that the final class contains the whole in proper arrangement of the several elements. In the sinoffering the idea of expiation stands in the foreground, but, after this has first been stressed, the consecration-idea receives attention likewise, through the burning upon the altar. The intent upon working expiation before all else is seen in the elaborate manipulation of the blood, not present to that extent in the following classes. The animal in the sin-offering was invariably one, but the species and sex differed according to the persons involved and their rank in the congregation, not, however, as though the guilt of the sin were proportionate to the station of the sinner, but because the more highly-placed member of the theocracy involves more individuals in his sinning [Lev. 4:3].

The distinction between the sin-offering and the trespass-offering is difficult to define. Two features stand out in the latter: on the one hand, it is the only sacrifice of which an appraisal is made; on the other hand, it is the only one to which a sum of money must be added. The value-feature, therefore, is in evidence. This suggests the theory, that it forms the complement of the sin-offering in giving to God the positive thing withheld from Him through sin. Every sin offers to God what ought not to be offered, an offence, and at the same time it withholds from God what ought to have been given to Him, obedience. If the sin-offering rectifies the former, the trespassoffering would then make restitution for the latter. In its ritual procedure it closely resembles the sin-offering, as we might expect on this view. The trespass-offering derives a unique interest from the fact that it is the only class of sacrifice with which the sacrificial death of Christ is directly connected in the Old Testament. In Isa. 53:10, the self-surrender of the Servant of Jehovah is designated an 'asham, a trespass-offering, and this is quite in harmony with the idea, prevailing in the context, that the Servant not merely atones for the sins of the people, but gives to God what by their disobedience they have withheld.

Finally it will be noticed, that not every sin-offering had a trespassoffering joined to it, as the above theory might seem to imply. The trespass-offering was only required where an actual property-value had not been paid. The material substance in a limited sphere was thus made to symbolize the spiritual in the general sphere of sin.

In connection with the burnt-offering we notice the strong emphasis placed upon consecration, which found expression in the burning of the entire sacrifice upon the altar. With this agrees, that it is the one sacrifice perpetually kept burning. In fact from the latter feature one of its names, the tamid, is derived.

Of the peace-offering all that is essential has been said in discussing the Passover and the sacrificial meal. Three distinct classes of peaceofferings are named: the praiseor thank-offering, the votiveoffering, and the freewill-offering. The principle of division is not a strictly logical one, inasmuch as the first class is denominated from the purpose served, the second and the third are named from the subjective attitude of the offerer, which was either obligatory, as in the case of the votive-offering, or spontaneous, as in the case of the freewill-offering. An interesting fact to notice is that the Mosaic law makes no provision for prayer-offerings. Perhaps this was due to a fear of fostering the superstition that the offering could through its natural inherent power compel the bestowal of the blessing desired. As to the votive-offering the sacrifice seems not to have accompanied the making of the vow, but to have been the object promised in the vow, so that it becomes a special kind of thank-offering.

The vegetable offering was considered, like the animal sacrifice, as symbolically food for Jehovah. Hence it is not offered in an unprepared condition, but in the shape of roasted ears, or as fine wheaten flour, or as loaves or cakes prepared in the oven or in the pan. Every meal-offering must be attended with oil. A wine-offering forms its complement. Taking these ingredients together, some have thought to discover in the vegetable offering an exact copy of the animal sacrifice, the meal standing for the meat, the oil for the fat, the wine for the blood. On a line with this the Romish theologians found in the meal-offering a special type of the Lord's Supper. Both opinions are untenable. In the case of the substitution of a vegetable sin-offering, on account of extreme poverty, the law enjoins that no oil shall be put upon the flour. Had the fat been represented by the oil, then the latter could not have been lacking in the substitute-sinoffering. There is, of course, a typical connection of these sacrifices with the Lord's supper, but this it has in common with all other parts of the system. It is true, the elements are vegetable in both, but they are so for a different reason in each case. In the Lord's supper they are so, because of the substitution of the unbloody for the bloody sacrament under the new dispensation. In the Old Testament vegetable offering the vegetable material was selected, in order to give expression to the idea of consecration in works. In the animal sacrifice too, as we have seen, there is consecration, but there, in harmony with the animal gift, it is a consecration of the entire life as a unit. Here, in the vegetable offering, it is a consecration of fruit, that is, of the diversified product of life. That part of the vegetable offering which is burnt upon the altar bears the name of azkarah, 'that which calls to remembrance'. Though sometimes in the law the term may be used in an unfavourable sense [Num. 5:26], in the vegetable offering it has favourable meaning. In the Greek it is rendered by mnemosynon. This relates to alms and prayers especially. Thus the angel says to Cornelius that his prayers and alms have gone up for a 'memorial' before God [Acts 10:4].

UNCLEANNESS AND PURIFICATION

The third main strand distinguishable in the ceremonial law is that relating to uncleanness and purification. Together with the indwelling of Jehovah in the theocracy, and the process of sacrifice, it forms a fundamental conception, which as such has entered into the permanent fabric of Biblical religion. At the outset we must guard against identifying the unclean and the forbidden. There are processes and acts absolutely unavoidable, which nevertheless render unclean. The law rather seems to have multiplied the occasions for contracting uncleanness, that thus it might increase the material on which to operate the distinction and teach its lesson. Further, we must avoid identifying cleanness with cleanliness, uncleanness with dirtiness. Sanitary significance the distinction does not have. It offers no excuse for identifying Christianity with hygiene. Positively, we may say that the conception has reference to the cult, that is, to the ritual approach to Jehovah in the sanctuary. We must not view it from the standpoint of inherent content or quality. 'Clean' means qualified for the worship of Jehovah in the tabernacle, 'unclean' the opposite. The effect which these predicates produce is the thing stressed. If we say that the contrast is symbolical of ethical purity and impurity, it still will hold true that this symbolized contrast is not simply equivalent to goodness and badness as such, but to goodness and badness from the particular point of view that the one admits into, the other excludes from fellowship with God. This is one of the ideas in which the intimate connection between religion and ethics finds expression. From the Biblical standpoint ethical normalcy or abnormality should, before aught else, be appraised with the question in mind: What effect does the state, designated in ethical terms, have on one's intercourse with God?

There is a distinction between the antithesis 'clean' versus 'unclean' and that of 'holy' versus 'unholy'. And yet there is a close connection between the two pairs of opposites. Cleanness is the prerequisite of holiness. Nothing unclean can be holy, while it remains in that state. But, suppose it to be made clean, this would by no means ipso facto render it holy. Nor are things clean by nature necessarily holy. There exists a large territory between the unclean and the holy, full of things clean but not on that account holy. But from this territory things are taken and constituted holy by a positive act of God. The Hebrew vocabulary bears out the relation thus defined. It offers distinct terms for the two contrasts involved. The terms for 'holy' and 'unholy' are qadosh and chol, those for 'clean' and 'unclean' are tahor and tame.

Being thus related to the service of Jehovah, the distinction between cleanness and its opposite obtains for the life of every Israelite comprehensive significance, for in reality the Israelite exists for nothing else but the continual service of God. It creates a bisection of the entire congregation to apply to it this ritual test. The people at each moment divide themselves into two halves, one composed of the clean, the other of the unclean. This finds striking expression in one of the formulas for designating the people comprehensively. The phrase 'atsur we'azubh means 'every Israelite'. It is rendered in the A.V. somewhat mysteriously by 'shut up or left', in the R.V. by 'shut up or left at large'. Its simple meaning is 'shut out from access to the sanctuary and left free to go' [Deut. 32:36; Jer. 36:5].

The objects and processes causing uncleanness are regulated by the law chiefly in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14. They belong to the following classes: certain sexual processes, death, leprosy, the eating of certain species of animals, or the touching of otherwise clean animals when these have not been slaughtered but have died of themselves. The distinction, as applied to these several classes of things, is evidently much older than the Mosaic law. The law does not profess to introduce the matter de novo; it simply regulated usages and observances of long standing. Many of these observances must have changed their character in the course of the ages, and the meaning attached to them, if such there were, must have changed likewise. Perhaps there is no sphere of conduct tending more strongly towards the petrification of once significant acts than this world of the clean and unclean.

From the original or subsequently acquired meanings we must, therefore, distinguish the lawgiver's motives in incorporating these practices into the legislation. First we devote some attention to the possible previous meanings attributed to them, either forgotten, or still remembered at the times of Moses. The subject occupies a very large place in recent study of primitive religion. Not a few writers bring it into connection with what they consider the origin of religion itself. Our remarks confine themselves to the field of Shemitic religion, and that with special reference to the Old Testament laws of uncleanness and purification.

TOTEMISM

A first theory on the basis of which, besides other things, the distinction between clean and unclean has been explained is that of totemism. Totemism is a form of superstition in which savage tribes and families derive their origin from some animal or plant or some inanimate object, to all the specimens of which they pay religious reverence, after which they name themselves, and which they abstain from killing and eating. Various phenomena in Old Testament popular religion have been explained from it, and then appealed to as traces of its ancient existence among the Hebrews. It is not believed that within the period covered by the Old Testament tradition such things were practised, but survivals, no longer understood, are supposed to occur. As regard animals, the eating of which is forbidden in the law, the view is that these animals were originally sacred to the various totem-groups among the Hebrews. When several tribal groups united, and adopted the cult of Jehovah, the interdiction of eating them was continued, but the motive for the interdict was changed: they were forbidden as food because of their idolatrous character. On this theory the notions of uncleanness and holiness appear materially identical. What is holy in one cult is unclean in another, and it is unclean in the latter precisely because of its holiness in the former. The adherents of this view are wont to apply to these two ideas the common term 'taboo'. The two ideas have in common not merely the element of prohibition, but also that of contagiousness, and of necessary removal through lustration, holiness as much as unholiness.

Objections that may be urged against this theory in its Old Testament application are numerous. The lists of unclean animals in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14 are so long that all these animals could not any time have been totems within Israel's ken. The names of persons among Israel derived from animals form a small proportion of the names borne. Even in Arabia the majority of the tribes do not bear animal names: of the big tribes only a few; of closely related tribes the one will have an animal name, the other not. No plants were unclean to the Hebrews, yet totems were made of plants as well as of animals. The tribal names among Israel in which a reminiscence of totemism has been found are Leah, Rachel, and Simeon. The first two of these precisely name clean animals.

ANCESTOR-WORSHIP

A second, likewise partial, explanation of the phenomena of uncleanness is that from ancestor-worship. This is believed to lie at the basis of the uncleanness of the dead. Also the prohibition of certain mourning rites is attributed to worship of the dead, whereas others are supposed to have sprung from some other attitude towards the dead to be spoken of subsequently. On the principle that what is sacred in one cult becomes taboo in another, ancient worship of the dead, particularly of ancestors, is believed to account for the taboo of the dead in the cult of Jehovah.

Of the mourning customs that come under consideration here is the wearing of a 'sack', signifying primitively religious submission, therefore extended to the dead as gods. The veiling of the head and the covering of the beard spring from the same motive that leads a person obtaining sight of the deity to veil himself. The putting off of sandals was a common act in stepping on holy ground. Hence, if it occurs in connection with the dead or their graves, it must have been a religious act. The shaving of head or beard is of the nature of an hair-offering. Fasting plays a role in the worship of Jehovah, in mourning it likewise must have been a part of religion. Nakedness and self-mutilation appear elsewhere as religious rites; in mourning they cannot have any different meaning.

Here again the objections that arise are numerous. We mention the following only. There are many of these things, e.g. fasting, that are not forbidden in Israel. On the principle of their being descended from such a pronounced form of idolatry as worship of the dead they most certainly ought to have been. This applies to all practices for which analogy in the service of Jehovah is found. Further the uncleanness arises from the dead body, but the worship of ancestors or the dead in general was not rendered to the body. It addressed itself to the 'soul' or 'spirit' of the dead. We can verify this from other circles where worship of the dead existed. To the Greeks the dead body, in one period of their history at least, was unclean, and yet, in spite of this belief, there was worship of the dead. That the cutting off of the hair was preparatory to an offering to the dead is not proven, since nothing is said anywhere of such hair being left at the grave or in any other way given to the dead. The putting off of sandals is not, strictly speaking, an act of worship. Nor can the blood made by incisions have been considered an offering to the dead. There is no evidence that this blood was brought in contact with the dead. A number of the customs mentioned are not interpretable as acts of worship. Nakedness, the rending of garments, the rolling on the ground are such. That the dust and ashes put upon the head were obtained from the grave or funeral pyre is not proven. But, even if they were, that would not render the custom an act of worship. There must be some other explanation of these things on the basis of superstitious idolatry in general.

Still further, the way in which the matter of mourning for relatives has been ordered for the priests forbids us to derive these mourning customs from ancestor-worship. The high-priest could not come near a dead body at all. But the ordinary priests were permitted to perform the mourning rites for their near relatives, not for remoter ones. Had a protest against ancestor-worship been involved, then the prohibition ought to have been most stringent with regard to near relatives, for these precisely would be likely to receive worship of this sort.

THE ANIMISTIC THEORY

Still a third theory offered in explanation of the facts of uncleanness is the animistic theory. This theory appears in two forms. Both have in common the assumption that to the primitive mind certain things appear as bearers of a sinister supernatural influence that is to be shunned. According to the one form of the theory these bearers are of a personal, demonic kind. According to the other the danger resides in impersonal soul-matter, diffusing itself and attaching itself in certain preferred ways, and in reality as dangerous as the influence of a personal demon. The nature of the first form of the theory brings with it that the forms of uncleanness are, especially the mourning-practices, but so many self-disguising attempts to escape the notice of these demonic powers. To say that it renders unclean to do this or touch that, only means that danger lurks in the vicinity where uncleanness is held to be contracted. It is an indirect discipline, administered as to children for teaching them to avoid danger by dissemblance in their appearance. The other form of the theory finds in these practices likewise a sort of self-defence, not by means of camouflage, but rather by prophylaxis.

The personal form of the theory attaches itself chiefly to the uncleanness of death and to the mourning customs. The dead body should be held unclean, because the soul hovers around it for some time in not altogether too pleasant a spirit. It is jealous of the relatives, who have entered upon possession of its estate, a feeling extending even to the personal relict of a man, his widow, who therefore, was cautioned not to remarry for a considerable period.

While this theory in the first form may give a fairly plausible explanation of some of the facts, it by no means explains all. There are some mourning customs that cannot have sprung from the desire of self-protection through disguise. Fasting scarcely can have aimed at that, a mistaken exegesis of Matt. 6:16 notwithstanding. The most various explanations of fasting as a religious practice have been presented, none of them so far satisfactory in every respect. Some say it springs from regarding the food in a place where some one has died as unclean. Others say, the fasting person considers himself unclean, and does not want to defile the food. According to still others, it is originally the preparation for a sacrificial meal, on the principle that no other food should come in contact with the holy food. Others again see in it an effort to induce ecstatic conditions. Still others consider it a species of ascetic practice. All this shows how precarious it is to maintain that it must have meant a form of self-disguise.

Nor can the sounds made by the mourners very well be accounted for on such a principle. A person's voice, when crying or wailing or shouting, may not be as easily recognizable as ordinary speech, but silence would have rendered it far more unrecognizable still. The rending of garments does not hinder identification very much. Nor does walking on bare feet. Nor do incisions made on the body. Nor does the beating of face, breasts or hips. Nor does the putting of dust and ashes on the head. Perhaps the treatment of hair on head or beard most easily lends itself to this explanation from disguise. But in that case the mourning women ought to have treated the hair differently from the mourning men, as was actually the custom elsewhere.

Apart from these individual points of criticism, the theory labours under one general difficulty. How could the spirit of the dead supposedly be ignorant of the simple fact that the people in the immediate surroundings were relatives? If it wanted to injure relatives, the mourning observances would have been the simplest and surest way of informing it where to strike. Personal identification was unnecessary. People could hardly fail to credit the dead with so much knowledge as to be aware of this, the less so, since the dead were known to have been mourners themselves during life on frequent occasions. And why should the dead be jealous of the survivors for entering upon possession of what they had left behind? As a rule among primitive people no such extreme individualism in the matter of property-relations exists. The average man, primitive or civilized, is not jealous of his heirs, but glad to have heirs. Besides, the theory implies that mourning customs are more recent in their origin than the existence of private property. This would be hard to prove. The same mourning practices are found among most nomadic as among settled agricultural tribes.

The impersonal form of the animistic theory holds that the ascription of uncleanness to things and places is a means to bar soul-matter out. When separated from one body this substance seeks to slip into or attach itself to another. Every avenue of entrance is carefully closed up. The openings of the body are covered up, or made inaccessible. Fasting precludes the hostile fluid from slipping in with the food. The first food eaten after the fasting was not derived from the house of the dead. It was supposed that the soul-matter disliked attaching itself to anything torn or burst. The bystander rent his garment at the very first moment after death had taken place. The simplest, shortest, straightest garment was put on; all folds and creases were avoided; shoes were discarded, so as to leave nothing for the soul to nestle in. The hair was cut off the head with the same fear in mind. The nails were pared. Incisions were made in the body, that the blood might freely flow out. Attention is called to the distinction the law makes between covered and uncovered vessels. The uncovered vessel becomes unclean, the covered one escapes the contagion [Num. 19:15].

It must be admitted that this form of the theory on the whole succeeds better in explaining things than the preceding one. Many of these primitive practices really look like means of seclusion and fortification against an invading spirit-power. This principle admits of application at several points where that of concealment breaks down. Even so, however, many things remain unaccounted for. The rending of garments, one would think, rendered ingress all the easier. To say, that the soul-matter does not like a broken or torn thing, may be true, but this itself requires an explanation which is not given. Entire nakedness also would have been felt as giving the spirit free play upon the body. The taking off of the sandals would be dangerous for the same reason. The rolling on the ground, as well as the putting of dust and ashes on the head, would have been an unsafe act. The self-mutilations, by opening up the body, made only new avenues of ingress.

The theory is distinctly weaker than the other form, when it comes to explain the greater exposure of relatives to attack. If it is a question of personal jealousy, there is at least some apparent reason for this. If, on the other hand, it is a question of soul-matter seeking some lodgement, then it is difficult to see, why precisely relatives should have felt themselves in danger above others. The range of uncleanness is wider than the mourning circle. Why do the relatives in particular mourn? If the soul-matter, being unintelligent, has no personal feelings about it, if it only seeks some hole or crevice to slip into, then, when a taboo is erected against this through the assumption of uncleanness, and this is further strengthened through the observance of mourning, it becomes difficult to explain why only the relatives engage in the latter. It might be said that the relatives are nearer to the body, therefore subject to greater exposure, whereas the others can simply keep away. But if so, then the rule ought to have been that, not blood-propinquity, but local propinquity, was the decisive consideration. All who came near the dead ought to have mourned.

Besides these three theories, which endeavour to account for groups of phenomena comprehensively, there are attempts to account for single facts. Altogether apart from totemism, certain unclean animals may have derived their taboo from their figuring as sacred animals in some idolatrous cult. This may apply to single cases, although to the entire collection of unclean animals it is not applicable. Many of the unclean animals belong to the smallest species, and certainly never were cult-objects. With bigger animals, such as swine, it is different. Isa. 65:4ff. speaks of a cult, which included the eating of pork. In the circle there referred to, undoubtedly pork was regarded, not as unclean, but as holy. Some similar practice of more ancient date may have occasioned the regulation of the law, that swine shall be unclean animals to the servants of Jehovah. The interdict on unclean animals is in Lev. 20:22ff. significantly brought into connection with the difference between the Israelites and the Canaanites. This indicates that the latter did not treat the animals tabooed in Israel as unclean. On the contrary these very animals must have played a rather prominent role in their religion. It further suggests that on that very account they were debarred from the ritual of the true religion.

The uncleanness of leprosy occupies a place by itself. This cannot be explained from sanitary motives. True, although modern medical science teaches leprosy to be only slightly contagious, the ancient people might have thought differently about it. But a serious objection is, that other equally serious, and obviously contagious diseases did not render a person unclean, notably the pestilence. It has been suggested that leprosy was ascribed to a special stroke from Jehovah or some evil spirit, and that even the name of the disease bears witness to this; tsara'ath and nega', the two names for leprosy, both come from roots meaning 'to strike'. But according to others these terms have no religious significance, being taken from the spots and swellings characteristic of the disease. If the idea of a demonic or divine stroke came into play, we should expect that the same instinct would have expressed itself in regard to insanity and epilepsy. Yet these do not render unclean. Possibly leprosy may have been associated with uncleanness, because of its being, as it were, a living death. In that case the uncleanness of the leprosy would have to be classified with that of death. The words used about the leprosy of Miriam [Num. 12:12] suggest something like this.

But why does death with all that accompanies it render unclean? On the principle that both birth and death cause uncleanness, it has been plausibly suggested that through the uncleanness of these two termini of life the entire natural life as such is declared unclean. The objection has been raised, that on this view of the matter, the law should not have declared giving birth, but being born, as bringing with it uncleanness. It does only the former. The mother is unclean, we are told, not the child. The objection has not much weight. We may observe that the child is actually unclean. This, however, having received a most pointed expression through circumcision, there was no need of stating it separately, and by attaching the uncleanness to the mother the additional truth was taught of the uncleanness not merely of life in its entire course, but in its very source.

While the points of view indicated may contain elements of truth, they do not profess to give a satisfactory solution of the whole problem Some older explanations, frequently discarded by modern writers with amusement and contempt, are not so summarily to be dismissed as is done by them. Certain animals, like snakes and birds of prey, awaken a natural aversion in the human mind at primitive stages, and this may have had something to do with the shaping of the law.

Far more important than these insoluble problems and their tentative solutions is the consideration of the manner in which the law makes these strange things subserve its purpose of revealing the true religion of the Old Testament. The first thing the law does is to give the whole distinction a religious aspect, no matter whether this inhered in it from the beginning or not. When the law undertakes to regulate a thing, it obtains from that very fact religious significance. The principle is explicitly affirmed. The matter is brought into relation with the holiness of God [Lev. 11:44, 45; Deut. 14:21]. Hence also the process of cleansing is called a 'sanctifying'. The unclean are debarred from the sanctuary and from the feasts. From the tithes nothing can be taken for the dead, nor eaten in mourning [Lev. 22:4; Num. 9:6; 19:12, 20; Deut. 26:14]. The removal of uncleanness is in part accomplished by ritual 'covering' [Lev. 12:7, 8; 14 (passim); 16:29, 30; 15:14, 15; Num. 8:5ff.]. The role played by the number seven in the periods of purification is evidence of the religious character of the latter. The stringency of the regulations with reference to the priests proves that a religious motive was the determining one [Lev. 21:1ff., 22:2, 3].

The uncleanness, thus related to the service of Jehovah, is associated with ethical sin. This is done in two ways. On the one hand the ritual uncleanness is treated as sin. On the other hand the ethical abnormality is made to borrow its vocabulary from the ritual law. We do not always clearly appreciate the latter. When sin of a distinctly ethical kind is called 'impurity', we are apt to think this a selfexplanatory metaphor. In reality it is a direct borrowing of ritual language. God teaches people to feel about sin as they are accustomed to feel about an ignominious and uncomfortable exclusion from the ritual service. Thus circumcision is made a lever of ethicizing and spiritualizing in Deut. 10:16. This incipient spiritualizing of the ritual vocabulary is further carried out by the Prophets and Psalmists. Isaiah speaks of 'unclean' lips in an ethical sense [6:5]. The earth is 'defiled' by transgression of the fundamental laws of God [Isa. 24:5]; blood (i.e. murder) 'defiles' the hands [Isa. 1:15; 59:3]; the temple is 'defiled' by idolatry [Jer. 32:34; Ezek. 5:11; 28:18]; the people pollute themselves by their sins [Ezek. 20:7, 8, 43; 22:3; 39:24]. Ethical purity is symbolized by 'clean hands' and 'a pure heart' [Psa. 24:4]. The ethical cleansing is described in terms of ritual purification [Psa. 51:7; Ezek. 36:25; Zech. 13:1].

The Old Testament

PART TWO

THE PROPHETIC EPOCH OF

REVELATION

ONE:

THE PLACE OF PROPHETISM IN OLD

TESTAMENT REVELATION

Next to Mosaism, Prophetism marks an epochal onward movement in Old Testament revelation. In order to understand why this should be so, we must call to mind how the process of revelation is articulated. Revelation follows events. But not all happenings in the history of Israel, even though apparently momentous, give rise to a large influx of new revelation. What is necessary for this is, that the new happenings shall leave something new, that is of lasting significance, behind. When the acts of the exodus lead to the setting up of the theocratic organization, a large volume of revelation follows in their wake. We must, therefore, ask, what was the great event in Sacred History, that could call forth such a new body of revelation of the most far-reaching importance.

This event can be nothing else but the new organization of the theocratic kingdom under a human ruler. In the days of Samuel this movement began; it found provisional embodiment in the rule of Saul, but was not consolidated on a firm basis until the accession of David. Henceforth the idea of this kingdom remains central in the hopes of Israel. This human kingdom, however, is only a representation of the kingdom of Jehovah Himself. At first, when the people asked for a king, Jehovah disapproved of the un-theocratic spirit in which the request was made, and declared it tantamount to rejection of Himself. Nevertheless the desire was granted, obviously in order that through the wrong conduct of the office by Saul, its true conception might be the more clearly taught.

This was also the reason why for such a long time during the period of Joshua and the Judges the institution of the kingdom was kept in abeyance. Only after in this twofold manner—first by withholding a king, and next by allowing a wrong sort of king—the ideal of the king after the heart of Jehovah had been carefully inculcated, did the actual permanent thing arrive. The kingdom is in its intent an instrument of redemption as well as the embodiment of the blessedness of Israel. To it the Messianic expectations attach themselves. It is a serious mistake to conceive of the kingdom as something accidentally arrived at, and merely tolerated for a time at the expense of democracy. The thing was too large and deep to have aught of the unessential and dispensable about it. It touches, through the kingship of Christ, the very acme and perfection of the Biblical religion.

A KINGDOM-PRODUCING MOVEMENT

To this kingdom-producing movement the rise and development of prophetism attach themselves. The prophets were guardians of the unfolding theocracy, and the guardianship was exercised at its centre, the kingdom. The purpose was to keep it a true representation of the kingdom of Jehovah. It sometimes almost appears as if the prophets were sent to the kings instead of to the people. From this interlinking of the prophetic office with the national interests of Israel, summed up in the kingdom, we can best explain the peculiar circumstances under which prophecy arose at the time of Samuel, in a deep patriotic movement, with a large admixture of national aspirations, shaping itself collectively at the first as well as individually. The bands or so-called 'schools' of the prophets were centres of religious and patriotic life in one; but, in harmony with the purpose of Israel's existence, the religious dominated the patriotic, not the reverse. The case of Deborah in the period of the Judges furnishes an earlier example.

It is a mistake, however, to infer from this national function, that the prophetic office was a sort of diplomatic, political office. This has been done by Winkler, who appeals wrongly in support of it to the enumeration of offices in Isa. 3:2. As developed by him, the view in question would throw a rather unpleasant light upon the prophetic activity during the later critical days of the kingdom. He believes that the great Oriental powers availed themselves of the prophets as agents to further their own interests among the smaller kingdoms. Hence the phenomenon that so often the counsel given by the prophets in political complications coincided with the plans pursued by these powers. Elisha is assumed to have received his instructions from Damascus, Isaiah from Nineveh, Jeremiah from Babylon.

But there is no evidence that such relations of a diplomatic or semidiplomatic kind were ever cultivated by the prophets. What we find is rather an aversion to all political entanglements and alliances. But this is not based on superior political insight on the part of the prophets. It simply results from their staunch maintenance of the theocratic principle, that Jehovah is King, and Israel bound to rely exclusively on Him [Isa. 7; 30:1–5; Hos. 7:11; 12:1]. Already in the times of David and Solomon such prophets as Nathan and Gad worked largely through the kingship. By Elijah and Elisha afterwards the same method was pursued. That whatever there seemed to be of political interposition was not at bottom political, but religious, appears from the fact that its procedure is open. There is no secret understanding, no conspiracy about it. Politics as such is unable to dispense with the element of secret procedure. It must be admitted, however, that there is some difference in this respect between Elijah and Elisha. The latter did enter into a conspiracy against the dynasty of the house of Omri. But even what Elisha aimed at was not improvement of the political situation. The end in view was to eradicate the cult of Baal by fire and sword through the supplanting of the Omrites by the house of Jehu. One need only compare the conduct of the prophets of Israel with that of the seer Balaam in the Mosaic period, to acquit the former of all charges of diplomatic intrigue. Balaam let himself be hired by a king, something no prophet of Israel could ever have contemplated.

THE WORD AS THE INSTRUMENT OF PROPHETISM

Prophetism, in restricting itself to the word as its instrument, while seemingly limited as to efficacy in this respect, in reality did more than anything else towards the spiritualizing of the relation between Jehovah and Israel. The prophets did not create facts, they upheld principles; and whatever future facts they spoke of were placed by them in the pure ideal light of prediction. Through prophecy Biblical religion has first come to be, to the extent it is, the religion of truth, of faith, of Scripture. In this respect the prophets were the precursors of Protestantism, at least from a formal point of view. More than ever before, the religious consciousness of Israel felt itself bound up with the cardinal fact of revelation. Jehovah's approach to Israel is eminently the approach of speech; God gives Himself in the word of His mouth.

The word, while being primarily intended for an official purpose, secondarily also becomes a means of grace for the prophet himself. The intimacy of the intercourse which the prophet needed and enjoyed in virtue of his task, could not fail at the same time to minister to his own religious growth. Still, the stressing of this feature can be overdone. It is suspicious, when joined to a neglect or implicit disavowal of the revelation-significance of the prophet. Religious heroism is not what Scripture puts foremost among the phenomena of prophecy. And where a high degree of religiousness is shown, we are distinctly given to understand that it was the result of the privileges of the office, rather than the prerequisite of investment with the office. The prophets were not primarily chosen because of their signal piety. They became pious above the average as a result of the exercise of their God-ward function.

A FACTOR OF CONTINUITY

Prophecy is a factor of continuity in the history of revelation, both through its retrospective and through its prospective attitude. Its preaching of repentance, and of the sin of apostasy from the norms of the past, links it to the preceding work of Jehovah for Israel in the patriarchal and Mosaic periods. Through its predictive elements it anticipates the continuity with the future. Although the name 'prophet' may not mean 'foreteller', none the less foretelling is an essential part in the prophet's task. The prophets themselves emphasize this so much that one cannot consider it to be incidental [Amos 3:7]. The initiation into the secret of the coming things forms part of that religious intimacy into which the prophet has been received with Jehovah. But objectively also the prophet could not be a true revealer if the substratum of facts, which all revelation requires, were absent from his consciousness. And this substratum is given partly in the future facts.

Modern interpreters but too frequently make the prophet stand as a disinterested 'teacher' historically, forgetful of all things except his own present lesson. This is a distortion of his figure. Teachers in this sense the prophets never were and 'schools' they never kept. The error in question frequently springs from a failure to observe how closely the doctrinal principles of the prophet's preaching shape his forecast of the future. Mere arbitrary exhibitions of pretended foresight the predictions never were. They cannot be removed from the preaching without disarranging and deforming the latter. And here again the personal equation must be taken into account. The prophets felt to a large extent that they were living in times out of joint, and among a people out of sympathy with what was most precious to themselves. Their instinctive desire would be to seek compensation in the future for what the present denied them. A warmth of emotionally-coloured interest not seldom suffuses their predictions. And there is also perceptible a desire for contemplating in advance the vindication of the truth, assailed and scorned in the present. Religious decadence and degeneracy have always stimulated occupation with the future. Eschatological interest is sometimes a species of comfort to the pious soul. For all these reasons it is a cheap modernizing tendency to belittle the predictive element in prophecy.

TWO MAIN PERIODS OF PROPHETISM

The principle of continuity within the plan of revelation in its double form of linking on to the past and reaching out into the future, can be distributed over the two main periods in which the history of prophetism divides itself. The former of these periods extends from the great prophetic revival in the time of Samuel to the date of the first writing-prophets about the middle of the eighth century B.C. The second extends from there onwards until the close of Old Testament prophecy. The difference between these two periods is that in the earlier one the possibility of repentance and conversion, in response to the prophetic preaching, is still reckoned with. The prophets speak out of the consciousness of being reorganizers, reconstructionists. That something better will come and must come they know, but they are not aware as yet of the extent to which, when come, it will swallow up the past.

In the second period, although the call to repentance never ceases, yet it acquires a more or less perfunctory tone. The prophet now knows that, not repair, but regeneration of the present lies in the womb of the future. But the main thing to be observed is that this rebirth is not equivalent to a new setting up of the past, not even in an idealized form. Occasion is taken from the prediction of overthrow to introduce into the picture all the absolute values of eschatology. As the divine method in general is not to bring out of the chaos and dissolution of sin the return simply of the former state of affairs but the attainment of a higher order of things, so the same rule on a smaller scale is illustrated here in the history of Israel. God made use of the impending destruction of the Mosaic theocracy to create room for something far transcending the original structure.

The arrival of this new phase of prophecy coincides with a series of new, momentous developments on the scene of history. The first phase opened with the record-breaking events of the age from Samuel to David. The second opens with the appearance upon the horizon of the great, humanly-speaking irresistible, Eastern power which God had chosen to be the instrument of His judgment. How important was the change thus brought about in the outlook of prophecy may be seen from this, that it has left its impress even upon the outward form of communicating the message. From the middle of the eighth century onwards the prophets begin to be writing prophets. Amos, Hosea, and, somewhat later, Isaiah and Micah for the first time committed the prophetic word to writing. The word of the earlier prophets, though a truly divine word, had been largely a transient word, intended for their own day and generation. But from this second crisis onward the word ever increasingly obtained reference to the new creation of the future, and consequently dealt with things in which future generations would have a share and supreme interest. And even their own contemporaries, who refused the prophets a hearing, were through the witness of the written word to be convicted of the truth spoken of them. In these ideas the prophets begin to grasp more clearly than had been done before the principle of the continuity, that is, of a history of redemption and revelation.

The true principle of history writing, that which makes history more than a chronicling of events, because it discovers a plan and posits a goal, was thus grasped, not first by the Greek historians, but by the prophets of Israel. Hence we find also that the activity among these circles includes sacred historiography, the production of books like the Books of Samuel and Kings in which the course of events is placed in the light of an unfolding divine plan. Good meaning can thus be found in the ancient canonical custom of calling these historical writings 'the earlier prophets'.

TWO:

THE CONCEPTION OF A PROPHET:

NAMES AND ETYMOLOGIES

THE HEBREW TERM 'NABHI' '

The Hebrew word for prophet is nabhi'. It is doubtful whether the etymology can render us much assistance towards determining the fundamental conception of the office. Various proposals have been made by exegetes. We mention the following:

(a) Connection is sought with a root-group in which the first two radicals are nun and beth. The meaning fixed upon is 'to spring', 'to gush forth', or passively 'to be sputtered, bubbled or gushed against'. The nabhi' then might be 'the one gushed upon by the Spirit' (so Keil). Kuenen seeks to give an active turn to the idea. He thinks the nabhi' may have been so called because he was rushing and gushing in his gestures and speech. The passive view is excluded by the intransitive meaning of these verbs, which are not capable of a direct object. Nor does the active sense particularly suit the purpose to which Kuenen would put it. He seeks in it support for considering the earliest prophets a sort of raving men, dervish-like in their behaviour. 'To gush' is scarcely strong enough for that. At the utmost the copious flow of speech could perhaps be referred to, but on this there is no clear reflection anywhere. 'To drop', as a synonym for prophesying, seems rather to describe the constant iteration of the message [Ezek. 20:46; 21:2], but even this is not certain.

(b) Recourse is had to the Arabic. In it naba'a means 'to announce'. But the ideas of 'bubbling' and 'sprouting' are also represented in this root-circle, so that adherents of view (a) may find additional support here. A difficulty arising in connection with 'to announce' is that nabhi' is restricted to the announcer for the Deity, whilst the verb, in order to give us help, would have to signify 'to announce' in general. The suspicion arises that perhaps the verb is derived from nabhi' in its technical religious sense, which latter then might very well have had another etymology. Nor is it impossible that the word entered into the Arabic from the Hebrew.

(c) Derivation from the Assyrian has been advocated. Nabu here signified 'to call', 'to proclaim', 'to announce'. The element of authority seems to be regularly associated with the word. The ideas of 'gushing', 'springing' are likewise represented in the root: manbau is 'a fountain', nibhu, 'a sprout'. The concurrence of the Hebrew, Arabic and Assyrian in expressing this idea in the same root to which nabhi' belongs is certainly remarkable, but we are not able to point out the transition from this root-concept to the specific meaning of nabhi' 'prophet'.

(d) A special derivation from the Assyrian is that attaching itself to the name of the god Nebo. Some think that Nebo bears his name as speaker and herald for the gods, but this is not proven. He does appear as the god of wisdom, inventor of the art of writing, carrier of the tablets of destiny. Sayce says: he was interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach; he reads the oracles and interprets dreams. He might, however, carry all these predicates, and yet there might be no etymological connection with his name.

(e) Hupfeld proposes to identify the roots naba'a and na'am, from which latter comes the well-known phrase ne'um Jahveh, 'oracle of Jehovah'. The identification of the two roots is precarious, because it involves both interchange of mem and beth, and exchange of place between these two radicals. On Hupfeld's view nabhi' would mean 'oracler'.

(f) Certain Jewish scholars, and more recently Land, bring nabhi' into connection with the verb bo', 'to enter in'. It is taken by them as the Niphal participle of this verb, 'one entered in', that is, by the Deity. But on this view the most important part of the conception would have remained unexpressed or been lost sight of through long usage. 'Nabhi' of the Deity' or 'nabhi' of the Spirit' nowhere occurs.

In view of this uncertainty of the several derivations it is exceedingly fortunate that from a few Old Testament passages we can gather with certainty the meaning attached to the word by Scripture in the sphere of revelation. These passages are: Ex. 4:16; 7:1; Jer. 1:5, 6. From these we learn that nabhi' was understood as an appointed regular speaker for a divine superior, whose speech carries the authority of the latter. In the first-named passage, it is true, the term nabhi' is not used explicitly. None the less a definite view of what a prophet ought to be with reference to God underlies it. Aaron will serve Moses as a mouth, and Moses will be to Aaron as a god. It is not a question of the relation between some sender and his ambassador in general, but a question of an ambassador of God. Aaron shall be the substitute-mouth for the Moses-god. It is only because Moses, so to speak, occupies the place of God, that Aaron can be spokesman in this absolute sense. And within the terms of the figure the infallibility of the result is safeguarded, for Jehovah says: 'I will be with thy mouth and with his mouth.' The second passage is still more convincing. Moses is made a god to Pharaoh and Aaron is to act as Moses' nabhi'. Aaron can be nabhi' only because a god stands back of him. The same, without figurativeness, follows from the relation between Jehovah and Jeremiah defined in the third passage. God says, He has ordained Jeremiah a prophet. Jeremiah answers: I am a child; I cannot speak. Then Jehovah declares that He has put His words in Jeremiah's mouth by touching it with His hand. Thereupon the words become divinely-powerful: Jeremiah stands over the nations, to root out and to pull down, to build and to plant.

It will be noticed that in all three passages it is a question of speaking. This alone introduces into the second the figure of the nabhi'. The disqualification pleaded is in each case an inability to speak. The prophet's business lies in the sphere of speaking. And this speaking is not ordinary speaking, as in ordinary life one man might speak representatively for another. It is a unique representation conveying divine authority and, in a measure, divine omnipotence, and these are based on divine communication. Jehovah touches the mouth and puts the words there, and they acquire the effect of divine words.

The point is thus clearly established, that even to the pre-Mosaic Hebrew consciousness a nabhi' is an authorized spokesman for the Deity, and that in his word a divinely-communicated power resides. Jehovah does not endeavour to teach Moses what a prophet is. He takes for granted that Moses knows this, and on that supposition constructs the analogy, wherein Moses figures as a god and Aaron as a prophet. Whatever the etymology of the name in its origin, to the Old Testament mind the prophet stood from beginning to end as the authoritative speaker for Jehovah. What the implications of this general conclusion are, we shall investigate presently, when dealing with the mode of prophetic revelation. But the general conclusion in itself is of the highest importance. It marks the religion of the Old Testament as a religion of conscious intercourse between Jehovah and Israel, a religion of revelation, of authority, a religion in which

God dominates, and in which man is put into the listening, submissive attitude.

Within the process of carrying the divine message nabhi' names the active factor. The nabhi' is one who does something; he speaks. True, in order to be able to do this, he must have been first passive; he must have received or experienced something. But that the name does not express; it only presupposes it. In fact the receiving of a divine message does not necessarily imply that it must be communicated. It can be for the recipient himself, or intended to be kept unspoken. Only when with the message there goes, explicitly or implicitly, the charge to transmit it, is there a case of prophecy. The prophet is a speaker to others. In other names the reverse, passive side of the process, the receiving of the message may stand in the foreground. In 'prophet' it does not. And nabhi' has become the prevailing name. Not the mysteries of the background, but the issue in the open, where it reaches the mind of man, is the main consideration. The term is practical through and through, and so is the religion of the Old Testament which it so largely colours.

Some of the etymologies above reviewed differ from this conclusion. They would lay the stress on the passive side of the prophetic experience. Apart from etymology, two motives underlie this unbiblical preference. By representing the prophet as chiefly passive the way is prepared for conceiving him after a rude, primitive fashion, as not in control of himself, being powerfully affected by a strange extraneous compulsion. On the other hand, the passivizing of the form suits the modern desire for assimilating the prophetic experience as much as possible to the common experience of religion, for that can be done only through bringing out the subjective, experiential side.

The two linguistic arguments adduced for the passive understanding are, in the first place, that nabhi', after the pattern of qatil, must be meant passively, and in the second place, that the only verbal forms occurring in connection with the word are the Niphal and Hithpael species. It must be conceded that the qatil-form often has passive meaning. For example, mashiach is, not the one who anoints, but the anointed one. Still this is by no means uniformly so. There are quite a number of active nouns of this formation, such as paqid, 'overseer'. In the Arabic, Ethiopic, and Assyrian languages qatil is the regular form for the Qal active participle. As to the verbal forms, we must remember that, while the Niphal is both passive and reflexive, the Hithpael is never passive, but always reflexive. The fact is that both are reflexive, being derivatives from the noun nabhi', and signify simply 'to conduct oneself as a nabhi'.

THE GREEK TERM 'PROPHETES'

With this enquiry into the meaning of nabhi' we may combine a brief discussion of its Greek equivalent, prophētēs, from which our word prophet has come. We associate with this mostly the idea of 'foreteller'. This is not in accord with the original Greek etymology. The preposition 'pro' in the composition does not express the timesense of 'beforehand'. It has local significance; the prophētēs is a forth-teller. The Greek term, however, has religious associations no less than the Hebrew one. Prophētēs is the one who speaks for the oracle. Thus it might seem, that with the 'pro' correctly understood, the Hebrew nabhi' and the Greek prophētēs were practically synonyms. This, however, would be misleading. The Greek prophētēs does not stand in the same direct relation to the deity as the Hebrew nabhi' does. In reality he is the interpreter of the oracular, dark utterances of the Pythia, or some other inspired person, whom, from the depth underneath, the godhead of the shrine inspires. The Pythia would thus stand at the same remove from deity as the nabhi', but the prophētēs is separated from the deity by this intervening person. Prophētēs is therefore rather an interpreter than a mouth-piece of what the god speaks through the one he directly inspires. He adds of his own, not merely the illumination of the oracle, but also the form in which he clothes the meaning apperceived.

Those who scorn the idea of what they contemptuously call 'verbatim inspiration' move rather along the Hellenic than along the Biblical line. It is precisely the Greek prophētēs, and not the Old Testament nabhi' who has this freedom of movement they think so desirable. And not merely are the nabhi' and the prophētēs different, but this difference is in the last analysis due to the difference between the Biblical Jehovah and the pagan god. Phoebus Apollo speaks, or rather speaks not. He utters dark, incomprehensible sounds. Then the Pythia, herself upon her tripod under the influence of the narcotic fumes arising from the cleft, needs likewise a prophētēs for rendering the oracular noise intelligible to ordinary mortals. But the Biblical God is light in Himself and His word gives light to all who seek it, although He uses the nabhi' as His transmitter. Somewhat of the savour of subjectivity always clung to the Hellenic term. A philosopher is prophētēs of immortal nature. Poets are prophētai of the Muses. These are, of course, metaphors, but none the less they arise out of the apperception of the vague character of divine inspiration, belonging to the whole complex of pagan experience from which they spring.

It is no wonder, then, that the word prophētēs, taken into the service of Biblical religion, had to undergo a baptism of regeneration, before it could be properly used. And, since so much of the task of the Old Testament nabhi' consisted, as a matter of fact, in prediction, the Biblical-Greek usage naturally put this into its regenerated prophētēs. Although this was etymologically wrong, it was not so theologically. The New Testament already puts a quite perceptible chronological stress on the preposition pro. There can be no doubt but, when the Evangelist Matthew writes numerous times, 'this happened in order that it might be fulfilled that was written by the prophet', etc., he associates with the word 'prophet' the idea of foretelling, which the Hebrew word nabhi' has not, although the nabhi'-function has.

Some of the Greek fathers, who might have been more sensitive to Greek idiom, forgot the locally-projectory sense of pro, and substituted for it the chronological sense. Thus Chrysostom observes: 'For prophēteia is nothing else but the proclamation beforehand of things to come.' Augustine, as a matter of etymological definition, quite correctly says: 'The prophet of God is nothing else but the enunciator of the words of God to men.' When he, however, adds: 'men, who either are not able to, or do not deserve to hear God', this goes beyond the import of both nabhi' and the Biblical prophētēs. Although thus the New Testament and the fathers may have sacrificed somewhat of etymological correctness, we should remember that their interest lay not in philology. The modern tendency to minimize the predictive element, and lay well-nigh exclusive stress on the teaching function, is far more one-sided and misleading than the popular impression that the prophets were foretellers of coming events. Still the original meaning of prophētēs as an exact translation of nabhi' is by no means entirely lost sight of in the New Testament [cp. Heb. 1:1].

THE TERMS 'RO'EH' AND 'CHOZEH'

So much for nabhi' and its equivalent, prophētēs. We now come to two other names, ro'eh, and its synonym chozeh. These two names are translated into Biblical English by 'seer' without distinction. For determining their import the point at issue is: do they refer to supernatural insight (metaphorically), or are they descriptive of a specific visionary mode of receiving what is conveyed by God? In themselves the two verbs could easily bear a metaphorical interpretation. But it is not so easy to apply this notion to the noun. We do not usually say that a person has, or has had, a sight, when we simply mean that he evinces deeper insight into certain matters than the average man. Yet the object-nouns of the verbs are quite freely used. The verbs must at first have related to a visionary process or product in the technical sense. Later on their sense was generalized; they came to mean 'revelation' by whatever process obtained, through hearing no less than vision. But this did not make them metaphors. We shall see, later on, how this generalizing came about in the regular development of the mode of prophetic revelation. The word 'seer' refers to an extraordinary influence brought to bear on the seeing-faculty of the prophet, by which he was made to see things, instead of hearing them, with the same result that through this seeing a message of divine provenience was introduced into his consciousness. The two terms differ from nabhi' in that the latter describes the active function of speaking for transmission of the message, whereas 'seer' describes the passive experience of being made acquainted with the message ocularly. To this, of course, would correspond the hearing which receives the speech of God.

Koenig, in his work entitled The Old Testament Conception of Revelation, has endeavoured to establish a distinction between chozeh and ro'eh. He thinks that ro'eh is used of true prophets only, whereas chozeh would, if not exclusively, yet predominantly be applied to false prophets. Isa. 28:7 shows that ro'eh is not avoided with reference to false prophets. According to Isa. 30:10, the two terms are quite synonymous [cp. further 2 Chron. 16:7, 10]. And the nouns for 'vision' are taken from both roots without any perceptible difference.

There are other designations of the prophets, more of a descriptive nature, and not rising to the rank of formal names. Such are tzopheh, metzappeh (outlooker, watchman); mal'akh Jahveh (messenger of Jehovah); ro'eh (shepherd); 'ish haruach (man of the Spirit); 'ish ha'elohim (man of God). These either explain themselves or will find their explanation in connection with those features of prophecy of which they are descriptive.

THREE:

THE HISTORY OF PROPHETISM:

CRITICAL THEORIES

The term 'prophet' is not always used in the stiff, strict technical sense we are accustomed to combine with it. As 'vision' came in course of time to stand for revelation in general, so 'prophet' could be equivalent to 'instrument of revelation' without particular regard to technical sense, distinguishing a prophet from other organs of revelation. Moses is called a prophet, and yet is set over against the prophets as to his communication with God [Num. 12:6ff.]. In Gen. 20:7, Abraham is called a prophet. The meaning here seems to be one who has special acquaintance with God, and can intercede for others. To this Psa. 105:15, refers, where the synonym is 'anointed ones'. Amos speaks of prophets raised up in the distant past [2:11]. Hosea calls Moses a prophet [12:13]. Peter, in Acts 3:21, 24, uses in succession the wider sense and the specialized application: 'holy prophets which have been since the world began', and 'all the prophets from Samuel and them that followed after'. This recognizes that there was an incision in the history of revelation in the time of Samuel, that prophecy in a new form began from that date. The reason for this has been explained above.

THE HISTORY OF PROPHETISM

We can take our point of departure for the history of prophetism in the time of Moses. Not only were there prophets at that time among Israel, but they represented, with the exception of Moses, whose case was unique, the prevailing form of revelation. Their position was a privileged one. Nor was this entirely due to pre-eminence of office. It is evident that a religious pre-eminence was involved. Moses, in Num. 11:29, expressed the desire that all the Lord's people might be prophets. This clearly shows that from the first there was a religious as much as a functional value found in the appearance and exercise of the office. This appraisal runs through the entire history of prophecy from beginning to end. The divine promise in Joel 2:28–32 extends it into the eschatological age. Not only is Israel honoured by having prophets, the greater honour is that the people are intended to become prophets. Jer. 31:34 is of the same tenor. Afterwards the functional position of the prophets is raised. From inferior to Moses, they become in prospect like unto Moses, with an approach even to the prophetic dignity of the Christ [Deut. 18:15; Acts 3:22].

During the first stage of the new epoch in the history of prophetism, which dates from Samuel, the difference from what had existed before lay in two points. On the one hand, the office obtained a more public theocratic background for its activity in the newly-established kingdom. On the other hand, the number of prophets shows a large increase, especially if we count in the groups of collective prophets associated with such men as Samuel. Prophetism, as attached to the kingdom, did not on that account lose any of its independence. The events in the reigns of Saul and David in turn, upheld and restrained by the prophetic leaders of the time, are sufficient proof of this. A mere religious appendix of the kingdom prophecy never was. In course of time, as the occupants of the throne degenerated, it became the very opposite, an institution to counterbalance and reprove, or even to reject. But on the whole, during this first stage of development, the attitude of the prophets towards the kingdom was a friendly, fostering, protective one. Especially was this the case in the line of the Davidic succession.

As apostasy reared its head, both in the kings and among the nation, the relationship was altered. Prophets and kings stood over against each other. The keynote of prophecy having become the message of overthrow, the kings, who naturally believed in the conservation of what existed, could not fail to regard the prophets with suspicion and antagonism. The prophets were from their standpoint lacking in patriotism, in fact traitors. This change of base on both sides is followed by the invasion of apostasy into the ranks of the prophets themselves. The contrast between true and false prophets begins to play a role. False prophecy encroached to such an extent upon the true, as to bring the whole office into discredit. Zechariah predicts that in the better order of affairs to come, parents will disavow a son laying claim to prophetic calling, nay, that the quasi-prophets themselves shall be ashamed of the calling. Prophesying and an unclean spirit are put on a line [13:2–6]. This is quite a different reason for the supersession of prophecy from that forecast in Jer. 31:34, and the opposite of the favourable forecast of Joel, which hearkens back to the Mosaic era.

It has been attempted to derive the corruption of prophecy in some way from the collective form which the latter developed. This is unjust so far as the earlier stage of the history of this movement is concerned. It coincides, as we have seen, with the religious and patriotic revival that occurred in the age of Samuel, and can scarcely be discredited without discrediting in principle the whole movement of which it formed a part. The same observation can be made in regard to its intensified activity in the age of Elijah and Elisha. The historical writers plainly stamp it with their approval [1 Sam. 3:1]. It is not easy, however, to define the exact relation between individual prophetism and group-prophetism. We meet with the groupprophets first in 1 Sam. 10:5. The word here used is chethel, 'band', 'company'. The same meaning belongs to another word, Lehaqah, found in 19:20. A 'school' in any academic sense these words cannot describe. After this these designations are not met with again. But something analogous appears in the history of Elijah. The name here is 'sons of the prophets' [1 Ki. 20:35; 2 Ki. 2:3; 4:38; 6:1]. The only subsequent reference to this name is in Amos 7:14.

'Sons of the prophets' might be descriptive of the relation of submission and attachment in which these bands lived with great individual leaders. Or it might be simply an instance of the Hebrew idiom, which, by putting 'son' before some noun, indicates that a person is possessed of the character the noun expresses. In that case

'sons of the prophets' might not differ from the simple 'prophets'. Of course, the phrase is not a genealogical designation. But the second view also meets with the objection that some sort of distinction is clearly suggested. Amos even makes the statement that he was at the time of his calling neither a prophet nor a prophet's son disjunctively. What is the distinction? Some have attempted to seek it along the line of prophets as recipients of revelation and as cultivators of religious enthusiasm. Koenig has characterized the leading prophets as 'primary', the group-prophets as 'secondary'. He thinks the secondary prophets were mere preachers. Supernatural disclosures were not confined to the leading prophets.

The term 'preachers' is apt to obscure the very point in which perhaps a difference between individual prophets and band-prophets can be discovered. The group-prophets do not seem to have been employed in the transmission of truth as the others were. The individual prophets, therefore, were the 'preachers'. That the collective bodies were recipients of supernaturally-communicated truth is plain, nevertheless. They 'prophesied', and this can scarcely mean anything else than that they had been touched by the Spirit in a supernatural manner.

The strange bodily manifestations that took place among them likewise bear witness to that fact. These extraordinary phenomena must be attributed to the Spirit as much as were the analogous peculiar phenomena in the early New Testament Church. The Spirit has not his exclusive function in moralizing and spiritualizing. He can work also in the sphere of the semi-intelligible. Music played a part both in the production and the expression of the enthusiasm characteristic of these circles, and music lies on the border-land of that reign of feeling where mysterious forces play upon the soul, of which even he who experiences them cannot give a clear account to himself. We must not classify such things depreciatingly. They were different from bodily convulsions of purely pathological origin. They have their contact with the centre of the religious, spiritual life. As regards music, it is interesting to note that, according to 1 Chron. 25:1, the temple-singers by their singing 'prophesied'.

Taking these things into account, we shall be kept from drawing too sharp a line of division between the individual and the groupprophets. Individuals from the groups were selected to execute errands for the others. Sometimes a group-prophet was made an individual one. There seems, however, to be no evidence that the functions and experiences of the collective prophets were lifeoccupations. The call of such men as Isaiah and Jeremiah was obviously a call to life-long service. The assumption that Amos, after prophesying at Bethel, returned to his secular occupation at Tekoah finds no real support in 7:14. A point of difference between the two kinds of prophets may perhaps be found in this, that those belonging to the band-prophets had no power to do miracles [2 Ki. 6:5].

It has been asserted that Amos disavows every connection between himself and 'the sons of the prophets' [7:14]. This cannot be a correct exegesis, for the same disavowal would also include the prophets in general. Amos speaks of the sending of prophets to Israel as one of the bounties bestowed upon the people by Jehovah [2:11]. It has been overlooked that in the Hebrew form of the statement there is no predicative verb. It is just as grammatical to render: 'I was no prophet', etc.' as to render: 'I am no prophet,' etc. He was no prophet before his call, but precisely in virtue of the call he is one now. The only implied criticism that Amos seems to make of the prophets or prophets' sons of his day lies in the indignant repudiation of the priest's charge that he prophesies in order to eat bread, i.e., to support himself, and therefore should not stay at Bethel, but return to his own Judean country. We may even infer from this that Amaziah means to intimate, 'Do not take away the bread from such prophets as are native here'.

This is the first trace we discover of a deterioration within the prophetic circles. Micah later on criticizes the prophets of his own day on the same ground [3:11; Jer. 6:13]. When serious corruption of this nature appears, we are obviously on the eve of the approach of 'false prophecy' in general. The court and temple prophets at Bethel cannot have deserved the name of true prophets. And yet there is no particular reason for finding the source of such corruption among the group-prophets. We find Isaiah gathering around himself a band of disciples. Evidently there did not attach any stigma in his day to the group-formation as such [8:16]. And in the time of Jeremiah we observe that the false prophets had individual leaders, leading them astray, so that it was no matter of individuals or groups either for good or for evil. The collective movement had as good a reason of existence as the activity of individual prophets. The crisis through which Israel passed in the time of Samuel, and again of Elijah-Elisha, was but a form of expression of a religious crisis. The issue between Philistines and Israel, and that between Canaanites and Israel, was at bottom a religious issue. We must look upon the assemblies of prophets as centres of religious life. As the priestly representation of Israel was entrusted to a tribe and family, so it was quite appropriate that companies of men, under the influence of the Spirit, should represent and typify the new Israel, through their endowment with extraordinary gifts and powers. To the individual prophets such a symbolico-typical significance likewise belonged, but in their case it was to some extent obscured by their messenger and speaker function. And herein may lie a reason why the reception of truth was common to both orders, whilst the transmission of it fell outside of the province of the prophetic groups.

The modern critical reconstruction of the history of Israel's religion has laid hold upon prophetism at two vital points. The first concerns the origin of nabhi'-ism among Israel. The second relates to the role the prophets are believed to have played from the eighth century, B.C. onwards as creators of ethical monotheism. These two points deserve separate investigation.

THE ORIGIN OF 'NABHI'-ISM' IN ISRAEL

First, then, we have the hypothesis, widely spread in critical circles, of the Canaanitish derivation of prophetism. It is believed that the movement was not an indigenous one in Israel, but by a sort of contagion passed over from the Canaanites. The arguments adduced in favour of this hypothesis are chiefly the following four:

(a) There is in Hebrew no etymology for nabhi'; the thing therefore, as well as the name, must have been an exotic thing:

(b) the peculiar phenomena of the movement remind of the wild, orgiastic character of Canaanitish nature-worship;

(c) the time of its emergence coincides with the time of closest contact and conflict with the Canaanites;

(d) the subsequent history of prophetism, its gradual purification, is most readily explained on the theory of its foreign provenience.

Our answer to these arguments is as follows: the absence of the Hebrew etymology nabhi' has in common with other offices of a religious nature. It simply proves that the function is exceedingly ancient. The word kohen, priest, likewise has no ostensible root in Hebrew, but nobody infers from this that the priesthood was a foreign importation; there is no etymology in the Canaanitish idiom any more than in the Hebrew. The enthusiastic elements of the prophetic phenomena of the period of Samuel are much exaggerated. The gusher-etymology is too uncertain and too variouslyinterpretable to furnish any solid support. Much reliance is placed on the following contexts for bearing out the view in question [1 Sam. 10:10; 19:23; 1 Ki. 18; 2 Ki. 9:11; Jer. 29:26; Hos. 9:7; Zech. 13:6]. The first two show Saul encountering bands of prophets, prophesying with them, and engaging in certain movements peculiar to their behaviour. In 1 Ki. 18 we have the account of the story of the orgy of the Baal-prophets at Carmel. 2 Ki. 9 gives the story of the officers in camp with Jehu, who spoke of the young man sent to them by Elisha as 'this mad fellow'. Hos. 9:7 has: 'the prophet is a fool, the man of the Spirit is mad.' Jer. 29:26 reads: 'every man that is mad, and makes himself a prophet.' Zech. 13:6 speaks of the wounds (received in prophesying) which the young man will ascribe to some other cause, when disavowed and threatened with death by his parents.

It must be granted that there are some strange phenomena here. They are, however, by no means homogeneous in character. There is nothing, for example, in the remainder of the material resembling the actions of the Baal-prophets at Carmel; notice the phrase 'after their manner'. Such a thing as the cutting of themselves with knives nowhere else occurs, except, perhaps, in the decadent post-exilic period. Our danger and difficulty spring from this, that this whole group of phenomena lies so far removed from the customs and habits of our religion, that, out of astonishment at the mere facts as such, we lose sight of the great difference between the features displayed among Israel and similar features observed in pagan religion.

At the outset we should frankly acknowledge this mysterious 'irrational element' to have been an integral part of prophetism for those times. It was not a thing disapproved of, but created and sanctioned by God and the great leaders of Israel's faith. It stood in close connection with the collective form that prophetism assumed, and the fundamental significance for Old Testament revelation of which we have endeavoured above to point out.

As to the phenomena in detail some special observations may be added here. The descriptions in 1 Sam. 10 and 19 give no warrant for speaking of 'roving bands', or 'wandering dervishes'. Saul met a procession of prophets. That they roved over the whole land or through certain parts of it, is not proven by this. On the contrary, 19:20–24 indicates that at Naioth, near Ramah, they had a fixed habitation. Of 'dancing' and 'leaping' there is no mention. A distinction must further be made between what the prophets did and what happened to Saul. The passage reads: 'the Spirit of God was upon him also [that is, in like manner as upon the prophets], and he stripped off his clothes also [in like manner], and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day, and all that night.' Observe that with the last statement the 'also' is not repeated. The lying naked for twenty-four hours, therefore, need not have been of common occurrence among the band-prophets. It seems to have been rather a special judgment visited upon Saul, something moreover which furnished David an opportunity to escape. The ancient Versions omit the 'also' in vs. 20 likewise; if this be adopted as an emendation, the stripping off of clothes may as well have been something peculiar to Saul. At any rate the 'nakedness' was not quite the same as what we understand by that term. It need mean no more than the laying aside of the upper garment. From all this to wild, orgiastic ecstasy there is still considerable distance. Raving behaviour is reported of Saul in 1 Sam. 18:10: 'And it came to pass in the morning that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house … and Saul cast the javelin', etc. The verb rendered 'prophesied' is in reality a denominative from nabhi'; it means 'he behaved like a nabhi'. The point of comparison is that he behaved like one possessed of a spirit, whose words and actions are beyond his own control. But this cannot prove that the prophet in all respects was like a 'raving madman'. It only proves that a madman could be characterized by certain symptoms of prophesying.

There is still further the term meshugga' used by the officer in Jehu's camp of the messenger sent by Elisha. It means 'a mad fellow', and is still used every day as a slang term in the Yiddish language. It is now an expression of disrespect, but was not necessarily so in everybody's mouth at the time of Elisha. It is only the smart young officer in the camp who applies it with contemptuous connotation. This is not different from the way in which a company of drinking men might speak of a preacher who appeared with a message to some person of their number. It might be best rendered by 'fanatic'.

The word recurs in Hos. 9:7, in parallelism with 'ewil: 'The prophet is meshugga', the man of the Spirit is 'ewil, for the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred.' These words either describe the desperate state of mind overwhelming the prophet when he sees the judgment come (in which case the true prophet is meant), or they describe the madness and foolishness of the prophet who encourages the people in their iniquitous course of action (in which case the false prophets are meant).

A third passage containing meshugga' is Jer. 29:26. It occurs here in the letter sent by Shemaiah to the priest Zephaniah. It gives the latter authority to put into prison 'every meshugga' and mithnabbe'. Vs. 27 shows that the writer reckons among this category also the prophet Jeremiah. Translating strictly, the two terms are not quite synonymous; the pair means, 'every one that is mad and pretends to be a prophet'. Besides, this is a judgment passed by a false prophet, and does not reflect the average opinion among the people. Shemaiah was the bitter enemy of Jeremiah.

Disrespect for the prophetic office has also been found in the question of 1 Sam. 10:11, 12: 'Is Saul also among the prophets?' and the further question to which it gave rise: 'And who is their father?' [cp. 19:24]. The context in which the narrative occurs makes it difficult to believe that, at least on the narrator's part, real disrespect is intended. If there originally was such to his knowledge, he would scarcely have incorporated into his account the quaint saying embodying it from mere archaeological curiosity. Samuel is depicted as standing on a footing of familiarity with these prophets: he causes the just-anointed Saul to be brought into their company. The meaning of the proverb is obscure, but it can hardly mean: 'How does such a decent man get into such disreputable company?' Equally obscure is the import of the other question. That would, on the assumption of intended disrespect, have to mean: These fellows are people of no extraction; no one knows their father. Neither of these two interpretations has anything particularly in its favour, except the circumstance that a better one has not so far been found. Proverbs are often the hardest things to interpret. The alleged disavowal of connection with the prophetic order by Amos has been touched upon above. This disposes of the first and second arguments in favour of the derivation of nabhi'-ism from Canaan.

The third argument requires but little comment. In reality it tells much more strongly against the hypothesis under review than in favour of it. At the alleged time of the rise and spread of the movement there was strong antagonism between Israelites and Canaanites. Is it likely that a man like Samuel, who stood at the head of the theocratic-patriotic movement, should have encouraged borrowing from the enemy? In order to make this credible, it would first be necessary to assume that the entire figure of Samuel, as drawn by the historian, is a caricature.

The fourth argument is easily the most feeble of all. That foreign origin presents more favourable opportunity for improving a movement of this kind, than its indigenous character, would be hard to prove. With equal, nay, greater, force one might contend that the native growth will have more of the gradualness and native attachment, which are the basis for a desire after improvement.

DID THE LATER PROPHETS CREATE ETHICAL MONOTHEISM?

In the next place we will consider the theory of the same critical school as to the role played by the prophetic movement at a later point in history. The prophets, from the age of Amos and Hosea onwards, are credited with the discovery and establishment of the great truth of ethical monotheism, in which the distinctive and permanent value of Old Testament religion is held to reside. We here must endeavour to sketch the genesis of this belief in the prophetic circles as the critics conceive of it. The phrase 'ethical monotheism' should not be misunderstood. It is not constructed on the principle of addition, as though the prophets had stood, in the first place for monotheism, and in the second place for the ethical character of Jehovah. The real meaning is: an ethical conception of Jehovah giving rise to monotheism. It will not be overlooked that in this opinion concerning the later complexion of prophetism, the critics assume towards the movement a favourable attitude, whilst, as just shown, the critical appraisal of its origin is highly unfavourable. This is the reason why it is so necessary, from the critical premises, to speak of gradual purification and improvement. Once the fact of ethical improvement, in an idealizing direction, has been established, there can be, perhaps, no serious difficulty about deducing monotheism from it. But the problem lies in the ethicizing of the conception of God from the starting-point of an ethically-indifferent or sub-ethical conception of Jehovah's nature and character. The construction we are offered by way of solving this problem is as follows:

The ethical element must have come in between the days of Elijah and Elisha on the one hand, and the age of Amos and Hosea on the other. Before the time of Elijah and Elisha Jehovah was only the national God of Israel. He was neither a particularly ethical being, nor the only true God. Some of His features were even ethically repellent. The prophets like Elijah and Elisha stood up for Jehovah, simply because they were greater patriots and more confirmed nationalists than the rest. Elijah's main trait is his insistence upon the exclusive right of Jehovah to the national service of Israel. Neither he nor his lesser successor protested against the calves set up at Dan and Bethel. Of course, they did represent Jehovah as the avenger of gross injustice. But this is by no means to be confounded with the prophetic view of a a century later, which made the entire relation of Israel to Jehovah rest on an ethical basis, and believed that it served a moral purpose. It did not differ in principle from the way in which a heathen deity might have been invoked in a similar situation elsewhere.

What then happened to create a difference in this respect? The course of external events became the great ethicizer in the prophetic mind. Israel suffered serious reverses in war. Such a thing, especially when of a protracted nature, was difficult to explain on the old basis of national favouritism alternating with autocratic caprice. As soon as the existence of the nation was threatened, the unsatisfactory nature of such a crude, incalculable relationship became apparent. The smaller nations, when conquered by the large powers, not only themselves passed from the scene of history, but with them vanished their gods. The problem of the threatened existence of Israel assumed the character of a religious problem. The national god has no other reason of existence than to protect his people. Failing in this, his usefulness is at an end. The situation became even more acute when, after the danger from Syria had been averted, the Assyrian power appeared on the horizon. From Damascus one might possibly hope to escape.

The national god was not equal to such a crisis. The alternative became: Israel is saved, and then Jehovah remains, or Israel is conquered, and then Jehovah likewise is eliminated. While only the latter seemed within the range of historical possibility, the prophets of that age shrank from even contemplating such a terrible issue. They were so attached to their God, that they dared not think of His perishing. To escape from this desperate thought it was evidently necessary to detach in some way the national existence of Israel from the religious existence of Jehovah. This, of course, could be done in one way only: by incorporating some other superior element in His character, such as would surmount the ideas of national championship and favouritism towards Israel, in which no one could possibly believe any longer. It was not sufficient to say: Let Israel be sacrificed, but let Jehovah continue. What was needed in addition was a new and super-national content to fill up the gap created in the concept of Jehovah through the prospective fall of Israel.

Now it was this service which the ethical conception of God rendered to the prophets. For, if Jehovah were supremely ethical, then the ethical aims He pursued could be thought of as requiring the destruction of Israel. In that case the destruction of the nation would no longer involve the destruction of Jehovah. On the contrary, from the new standpoint, it would mean the vindication of Jehovah as to His innermost character. The prophets thus sacrificed Israel in order to save their God. At an almost exorbitant rate, as it were, they insured their religious conviction in regard to the indestructibility of God. At bottom, and sharply looked at, it was not so much positive interest in the idealism of ethics that made them reason as they did. In reality their ethicizing of the character of Jehovah was but the indispensable prerequisite for keeping a hold upon Him. They adored Him religiously, with a deep traditional attachment, so strong, that in the case of an enforced choice they would rather lose their people than their God. The ethical character of God was a means to an end.

But how did they come to seize upon the ethical element as precisely fitted to render them this service? The answer is that the prophets were somewhat ethically gifted above the mass. They had a greater sensitivity to right and wrong. But even this was not so much to their credit as might be at first supposed. It was rather a case of goodness arising from reaction against extreme evil. For, as a fact, the moral conditions among Israel offered abundant warrant for such a reaction. Riotous living and licentiousness prevailed, especially among the upper classes. The administration of justice was thoroughly corrupt. The rich oppressed and exploited the poor. All the elements were therefore given for framing a new conception of God. The newness consisted in this, that the prophets clearly enunciated the absolute supremacy of the ethical aspect in the nature of Jehovah. The entire religion of Israel was placed by this on a new basis. All the distinctive tenets of the prophetic theology are supposed to have sprung from it. It lies at the root of the monotheism differentiating the prophets of the eighth century from the monolatry of the preceding age, beyond which even an Elijah and Elisha had not advanced. With His character of ethical absolutism Jehovah now stood unique among the gods.

Most critics agree that this monotheistic inference is clearly drawn from Jeremiah's time onward. Some difference of opinion exists as to the period between Amos and Jeremiah. According to some the writers of this period are practically monotheistic, so far as Israel is concerned, but without as yet reflecting upon the sphere outside of

Israel (so Baudissin). According to others this period is one of nascent monotheism, the prophets not expressing themselves consistently, but only occasionally passing the line between monolatry and monotheism (so Kuenen). Still others think that the whole problem had no existence for the pre-exilic prophets, that not Jeremiah, but Deutero-Isaiah, during the exile, was the first actual monotheist (so Stade). But all agree that the genesis of monotheism was after the manner described.

It ought to be further noticed that, according to the critics, the ethicism that thus came to be ascribed to Jehovah, was extreme ethicism, hyper-ethicism, as it were. It was concentrated, not in the benevolent, gracious aspects of the ethical consciousness, but in the strictly retributive aspect of the same. The Jehovah of the prophets is not so much a good Being in the sense of 'well-inclined', as a good Being in the sense of his insisting upon obedience. He has little of the genial warmth of love about Him. The emphasis weighs heavier upon the inevitable consequences of disobedience, than upon the joy of obedience. The whole view of God's moral nature has a certain unamiable one-sidedness about it. The ethics exclude the love and grace of God. This is the reason for the divisive criticism practised by certain writers of this school upon the text of the prophetic books. On the principle that a promissory, gracious attitude of Jehovah towards the people would have been utterly irreconcilable with the ethical premises of the prophets, these writers proceed to eliminate from the prophetic discourse everything that, in their opinion, would belie the manner in which the ethical convictions had been acquired. Large sections of a promissory, eschatological nature are exscinded.

In still one further respect the ethical absolutism of the new-school prophets powerfully affected the reconstruction of religion. Ethicism tends of itself to spiritualizing, and spiritualizing, carried to an extreme, resulted in the rejection of all religious usages among Israel that were not spiritual, at least not on the surface. All ritual observances, the sacrificial cult, the feasts, all images made of the Deity, were represented by the prophets, not merely as ineffective, but as reprehensible and exciting the wrath of Jehovah. Notice carefully: it is not the spiritual knowledge of Jehovah that has produced the correct ethical ideal as to his demands; the reverse process took place: because Jehovah was ethical, therefore He must be spiritual.

There is at this point also some dispute as to the more or less absolute nature of the prophetic opposition to the cult. Some hold that it was rejected in toto as intolerable to Jehovah. Wellhausen admits that the prophets reject the sacrificial cult of the people, because it was so grossly corrupt. Smend declares: 'The prophets reject the sacrificial cult of a people with whom Jehovah is on the point of suspending all fellowship.' But others think more radically on this point.

Finally, although this is supposed to have been a more gradual development, the ethically monotheistic conception of God gave birth in course of time to whatever there appears of individualism and universalism in the prophetic religion.

So far the hypothesis represents the movement of prophetism as tending towards a better and ideal goal. The remainder of the story is of a different nature. For prophetism proved unequal to the combat with the unethical popular religion it had ventured upon. The perception gradually dawned upon the prophets, that as pure idealists they could not accomplish anything. A more pragmatic tendency appeared as a result of this. The prophets now addressed themselves chiefly to the cult as the root-seat of all the evils denunciated. An attempt was made to turn the cult, which could not be entirely abolished, to the best possible use by making it a vehicle of ethical and spiritual ideas. For this purpose it had, of course, to be pruned of its most naturalistic excrescences. Unfortunately this pragmatism, aiming at compromise, bore in it the seeds of decay. It meant, regarded from the original prophetic standpoint, an abandonment of the absolute distinction between right and wrong. The several law-codes of the Pentateuch, with their strange mixture of the moral and the ritual, are the product of this compromise. In this way prophetism obtained its first external hold upon the popular mind, but the strength inherent in its former uncompromising attitude was broken. In accepting a fixed law for regulating the religion of Israel it sacrificed its idealistic freedom. It succeeded to some extent in uprooting the cult from its soil of naturalism, but the cult, however much modified, remained something external. The antithesis between the ritual and the prophetic loses its sharpness, until in the post-exilic prophets it vanishes almost entirely. Thus were laid the first foundations of Judaism.

The foregoing must suffice as an outline of the later history of prophetism from the eighth century onward, as the critics construe it. The criticism of its several positions is so interwoven with our positive presentation of the prophetic teaching, that we cannot help deferring it until then.

FOUR:

THE MODE OF RECEPTION OF THE

PROPHETIC REVELATION

The prophets affirm and imply everywhere a real communication from Jehovah to themselves. They believe themselves recipients of revelation in the solid, unmodernized, unsubjectivized, original sense of the word. We proceed to enquire into the specific forms of statement in which the prophets describe this experience, and the mode in which they conceive it to have come to them from God.

That the prophets had a conviction concerning the objectivity of the process is acknowledged with practical unanimity even by those whose theological or philosophical standpoint leads them to deny the supernatural source from which the prophets derived it. This being so, it becomes incumbent on all those unable to accept the simple, straightforward explanation submitted by the prophets, who had the experiences themselves, to attempt a different solution of the problem. It is true, the old form of reasoning which simply reduced the whole matter to the alternative: either the prophets were untrustworthy characters, and then their writings are a tissue of lies, or they were honest, reliable men, and in that case we must accept their testimony at its face value with all the supernaturalism involved —this reveals a sort of historical naïveté, somewhat remote from our modern way of thinking. Not all honest, sincere testimony, backed up by a good reputation of the witness can in this way be absolutely identified with the reality of what happened, although in our ordinary relations of life it still remains, and will doubtless remain, the simple and only means of verification. But even in judicial proceedings the matter becomes easily complicated far beyond the reach of such simple tests.

Modern psychology is said to have made many things comprehensible, on which our forefathers looked as profound mysteries. But modern psychology has also revealed depths in the inner life of man, of the existence of which rationalism, with its easygoing way of accounting for things, could not have any suspicion. Modern science in this matter applies in both directions: the rationalistic explanation of prophecy is as thoroughly discredited by it as any superficial and naïve demonstration of the reality and truth of the phenomena, that was current among the orthodox at one time.

There are three elements entering into the problem to be solved.

(a) The first is the psychological fact of the conviction on the part of the prophets.

(b) The second is the continuity of the prophetic movement with its claim to supernaturalism during so many centuries.

(c) The third is the remarkable body of predictions, that has accompanied the movement in its course, the whole teleological trend of it towards a distant consummation, in point of which no movement in the history of religions can be compared with it.

If we keep these three points in mind, it ought not to be difficult to show that prophetism still remains a mystery, unsolved as much as ever, and that it casts no stigma of being unscientific or outdated upon anyone, if he prefers to accept the testimony of the prophets themselves, that the revelations came to them from above.

THE VIEWS OF KUENEN EXAMINED

Kuenen recognizes the fact that the prophets sincerely believed in the direct divine source of the message they proclaim. But he thinks they must have been mistaken in this, because many of their predictions have not been fulfilled, nay, are incapable of fulfilment at the present day, or at any future day. Yet he recognizes with true scientific temper that the uniformity and continuity of conviction on the prophets' part require a psychological explanation of greater dignity than the easy verdict: they were mistaken. But the explanation he offers is a very poor one. It consists in this, that the great sureness expressed is the reflex of the earnestness and unshakableness of their ethico-religious belief. The prophets were aware, literally speaking, that no such communications from God took place, but they desired, by the representation of objectivity employed, to impress the people, that their teaching was true. The explanation is open to serious criticism both as to its reconcilableness with the antique cast of mind, and to its moral excusability. It is too modern a conception to try to convince people of the truth of the thing preached not only by earnestness of preaching, but to do so by way of a pretended direct derivation of the thing from God. The earnestness would stand in inverse ratio to the consciousness of the preacher, that he had to resort to pretence. The prophets would, no doubt, have discovered sooner than modern preachers seem to be able to do, that every such mental reservation broke the force of their enthusiasm, and moreover cut through the bond of sympathetic self-identification of their hearts with the hearts of their audience. It is easy to see that what such an explanation ascribes to the prophets is something that a high-minded man like the critic in this case would hesitate to admit as his own mental attitude.

Further there is here a failure of understanding the prophets from a purely literary point of view. Their avowals sound so positive, and realistic also, that the conscious intent of utilizing them for the purpose of persuasion seems out of the question. Such positiveness and realism are not the product of rhetorical craftsmanship.

Nor must we forget into how difficult a position the consciousness of using such methods would have brought the prophets in their controversy with the false prophets. Against them the burden of prophetic criticism was that they prophesied 'out of their own hearts'. Can that have meant that the false prophets lacked the earnestness of conviction which their criticizing opponents ascribed to themselves? Is the point not rather this, that they questioned the supernatural provenience of the message proclaimed by the other prophets? And that, while all the time they must have been aware of their own having prophesied out of their hearts, with this difference only, that they believed their heart to be a better one!

Finally on any theistic scheme that believes in a real contact of God with the prophets, however much 'psychologized' it may have been, the stigma of half-true representation would inevitably involve God Himself. How could He have indulged in or connived at such a procedure as would have lain beneath the plane of business ethics supposed to be in force between the principal and his agent?

As to the argument from non-fulfilment or impossibility of fulfilment of certain prophecies, that is a chapter by itself. Reasoning from this is very deceptive and precarious, because the fundamental premises of supernaturalism and naturalism enter into the very determination of what 'fulfilment' of a prophecy means, and as to whether it is absolutely unfulfillable at any point of time. The adoption of premillenarianism would greatly limit the field of the impossible in this respect, chronologically speaking. Upon the problem of 'fulfilment' we cannot here enter. The question under debate ought to be staked on the self-testimony of the prophets alone.

'KERNEL-REVELATION'

Another serious attempt in the same direction is made by the theory of 'kernel-revelation'. God is believed to have imparted to the prophets the essential kernel of the truth only, and to have left the working-out of this kernel to the subjective prophetic reflection. This would conserve at least a portion of the claim of the prophets that their message came supernaturally from God. The 'kernel' is usually identified with the ethico-religious principles of the preaching. In this case likewise the prophets must have been aware of the distinction in provenience between the two elements of their message. But here again the criticism applies that such a distinction between kernel and envelope lies far from the mode of antique religious thought. The prophets everywhere insist on their word carrying the authority of God, but nowhere indicate that this claim must be understood with the qualification named. The prophets must have been conscious of the contribution made out of their own minds to the resulting product, and yet they speak of this product in its entirety as invested with absolute divine authority. Finally, this hypothesis requires the intervening of a considerable period between the communication of the truth-kernel to the prophet and the state of ripeness of it, through reflection, for transmission to the people. As a matter of fact we find frequently that, no sooner is the message received, than it is made known to the hearers. Such instantaneousness the theory renders impossible.

THE 'DIVINATION' THEORY

In the third place we consider the 'divination' theory. This places the prophetic knowledge on a line with extra-biblical instances of a mysterious knowledge, so that the former would lose its unique character. It is a theory particularly devised for explaining the predictive element in the prophetic writings. It ranks higher, from a religious point of view, than the two preceding views, in that it places the phenomena at least in a mysterious light, and disdains to make use of rationalistic devices to account for them. The contact between Jehovah and the prophet is, indeed, a highly mysterious thing. Some of the mystery escapes us because we are led to speak of it in anthropomorphic language. Smend and others would stake the whole issue of prophetic prediction on this one analogy.

It is true, there are some well-authenticated instances in history of foresight or insight into matters far out of the range of ordinary human knowledge. In Deut. 13:1, 2, Scripture itself speaks of 'prophets' and 'dreamers of dreams', giving a sign and wonder that comes to pass, who yet seduce the people through the prestige thus obtained to idolatry. Yet a certain degree of divine influence in their activity cannot be denied, for we are told that through this experience God proves the people. It is added, however, that such a quasi-prophet must be put to death. But to explain the phenomena of Old Testament prophecy as a whole on the basis of such a faculty of insight or foresight is not to be thought of. There are certain features differentiating all that has been discovered of this nature from the facts of prophetism. The naturalness, clearness and immediacy of the latter are here looked for in vain. Magical preparations and manipulations regularly accompany these alleged analogous processes. Much that seemed at first unaccountable has been explained on the basis of 'suggestion' or 'autosuggestion'. This field, however, while to some extent explored, remains still full of mystery. It is foolish to build upon it a comprehensive explanation of the phenomena of Biblical prophetism. Perhaps it may throw light on the development of false prophecy among Israel. False prophecy is probably not entirely made up of fraud. Self-delusion may have had something to do with it. On the other hand, there is among the true prophets a clear and not seldom expressed consciousness that the God of Israel alone can make true predictions of the future and lay bare the secret things to which the created mind has no access. Were prophecy to be explained as 'divination', then we should have to say that in this respect it has thoroughly misunderstood itself.

REVELATION THROUGH SPEECH AND HEARING

We now proceed to register the statements of the prophets themselves as to the manner in which the truth came from God to them. We must distinguish here between what falls in the sphere of speaking followed by hearing, on the one hand, and what falls in the sphere of showing followed by seeing, on the other. References to the speech of Jehovah are frequent in the records of the prophets. Sometimes Jehovah's speaking is a comprehensive formula for the whole process of bringing the message into the mind of him for whom it is intended, including every step leading up to this. He is said to speak to the people, although in reality He at first spoke only to the prophet, commissioning the latter to repeat His words in the ears of the people. For the present we are concerned only with what passed from God to the prophet. [Cp. for the distinction Hag. 1:1; Mal. 1:1; with Hos. 12:10.]

The most frequent formulas used of the divine prophetward address are amar Jahveh, dibber Jahveh, ne'um Jahveh. The first and second of these are in the perfect tense and mean 'Jahveh has said', 'Jahveh has spoken'. The third is a passive participle signifying 'that which has been oracled'. The perfect tense is important, because originally, and probably always, related to revelations imparted before the prophet spoke. That this speaking of God was meant by the prophets, not in any mere figurative, but in the literal sense appears in various ways. They distinguished between Jehovah as the speaking God and the idols as dumb gods. This antithesis entirely loses its point, if the divine speech was not to, but only through the prophets. The contrast drawn is a piece of popular apologetic. For as regards speech through the prophets, the heathen laid claim to receiving this as much as Israel, and there was no way of proving the difference with regard to indirect provenience. The difference lay precisely in this point, that in paganism there was no objective speech coming from the gods to the prophets, because the whole structure of pagan religion and revelation lacks reality [Isa. 41:22–26; 43:9; Jer. 10:5; Hab. 2:18].

Further the divine speech is represented by the prophets as the expression of the thinking and planning of Jehovah. Just as in man thought and speech belong organically together, so in God [Isa. 19:17; 23:9; Jer. 51:29; Amos 3:7]. Still more realistically, we find a mouth ascribed to Jehovah, which, while not implying a corporeal nature, yet admits of no other interpretation than that He exercises the faculty of speech in the literal sense [Isa. 58:14]. The prophets describe this speaking of Jehovah as coming with various degrees of emphasis. Such a variety could be predicated of a real act only [Isa. 5:9; 8:11; 14:24; Jer. 25:30; Amos 3:7, 8].

Once more, the prophets not merely say in an indefinite way that God has spoken, but add the indirect object: Jehovah spake unto me [Isa. 8:1; 18:4]. The speaking of Jehovah is assigned to a definite point both in space and time [Isa. 5:9; 16:13, 14; 22:14; Jer. 1:13; Ezek. 3:12]. According to 1 Sam. 3:8, 9, the voice was so external that Samuel mistook it once and again for Eli's voice. Isaiah distinguishes explicitly between his hearing from Jehovah and his declaration to others of the thing heard [21:10].

It has been objected to this mode of argument, that neither Deuteronomy nor Jeremiah places the criterion for distinguishing between a false prophet and true prophet in the reception of divine communications, but, on the one hand, in the agreement of the oracles with the principles of the true religion, on the other hand in the fulfilment afterwards. This, however, relates not to the prophets themselves, but only to those to whom they were sent. Of course, the people could not tell what had or what had not taken place in the private chamber of the prophet's intercourse with God.

There is ample ground, then, to assume that in a number of cases the speech of Jehovah was not only objective but external. The externality implies the objectivity, but this cannot be turned around, so as to make the objectivity in every case involve externality. Koenig takes the ground that all speech of God to the prophets must have been external, because thus only could an infallible assurance be produced of the divine source of the revelation. But this a priori ground is not sufficient to prove his thesis. Externality of revelation would not exclude every possibility of self-deception. Hallucinations of hearing are not uncommon things in excited states of mind. If the testimony of the prophets claimed an external speech as underlying every communicated message, we should have to accept this, no matter whether it was to our taste or not. But this the prophets do not claim. The resulting problem arises, how objective speech can be conceived without externality.

At the outset the confusion of thought should be guarded against, as though the inward speech of Jehovah to the prophet were identical with the product of reflection or emotion in the prophet's mind, so that it welled up from his own consciousness. This would not so much internalize as subjectivize the whole process, and as a rule it is stressed by those whose faith is not quite equal to belief in a solid revelation from God. They feel that, if somehow it could flow up as a part of the natural mental processes, the thing would appear more normal and credible. But this is not meant by 'internal speech'. The phrase is here taken to designate an inner occurrence in which, apart from the bodily ear, the prophet perceives a divine voice addressing him, and that with such objectivity as to enable him clearly to distinguish its content from the content of his own thinking.

The possibility of such a thing rests partly on the theological, partly on physiologico-psychological grounds. Theologically speaking, it is not impossible for God to convey to the soul directly sounds of words expressing a certain thought. God has control of the soul in its whole internal organization. And we must endeavour to realize that the conveying of sound to the soul ab extra through the ordinary process of air-vibration and nerve-conduction and brain-impression and soul-reaction is in itself a most wonderful, to us unintelligible, thing, so long as we believe in the difference between matter and soul. Hearing is a psychical, not a physical act. It has ordinarily certain physical prerequisites, but is not identical with these. What then should hinder God from producing the psychical experience of hearing in other ways than the ordinary one? The case is precisely the same in the sphere of sight-production and seeing as a psychical act. The prerequisites of seeing are physical, the seeing is psychical. It is a difficult question to answer, how the prophet could have distinguished between internal voices and speech externally conveyed. But it certainly would be presumptuous, with our limited knowledge of the borderland between matter and mind, to declare it impossible.

The grounds on which it has been assumed that not infrequently such an inner speech came from God to the prophet's soul are as follows. The root from which comes the well-known phrase ne'um Jahveh is cognate with roots that signify 'to rumble', 'to grumble'. It might, therefore, well be expressive of a dull, low sound, and in so far appropriate of low, whispered tones heard from within. True, we must not appeal to 1 Kings 19:12, because here 'the sound of a gentle stillness' is symbolical, the actual revelation coming afterwards. Job 4:12–16 might rather be compared: 'Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a whisper thereof … fear came upon me and trembling … a form was before mine eyes: silence, and I heard a voice.' The analogy of revelation through vision suggests a double mode of revelation by sound. The vision was not always seen with the bodily eye; most likely the speech was not always received through the bodily ear. The force of this analogy is further strengthened by the circumstances that in both cases, of seeing and hearing, a preparatory operation on ear and eye was required. Jehovah 'opens the eye', but He likewise 'wakes the ear' [Isa. 50:4].

The Spirit of God is sometimes specified as the organ for communicating the word of God. This favours the view, that in such cases at least the revelation was an inward one. The Spirit works usually ab intra. Koenig has denied that the Spirit anywhere appears as a source of revelation. He would restrict the Spirit's work in connection with revelation to the preparatory sphere, and excludes from it the impartation of truth itself. But there are some passages which speak of the Spirit as Revealer [2 Sam. 23:2; 1 Kings 22:24; Isa. 61:1; Joel 2:28 (English Bible); Zech. 7:12; Neh. 9:30; 1 Pet. 1:11]. Of course, there was such a thing as an antecedent operation of the Spirit for the endowment of the prophet with necessary gifts, such as courage, force of utterance and similar qualifications [Mic. 3:8].

In what proportion verbal revelation took place by external or internal speech cannot be determined. It has been suggested that, as verbal revelation gradually supplanted visions, so the increasing use of the internal word may have marked an advance in the development of prophetism. It might be said that in the inner word God comes nearer to man than in any other mode of self-disclosure. But positive evidence to that effect we do not possess. Which were the motives for the preference on each several occasion of the one to the other is hard to determine. Where the communication occurred in privacy, both forms may have appeared equally appropriate. The choice may have depended on the momentary psychical or religious condition of the prophet. There are moods in the spiritual life, even of the ordinary child of God, where the desire for an external approach of God is felt strongly. This desire is at bottom the desire for something substantial, suited to meet the weakness of faith. Every external approach of God to His people is more or less of the nature of a sacrament. On the other hand, the religious state of the prophet may have been at times so spiritualized, that the desire for touch with God took the inward direction, and the voice perceived within produced a feeling of unique satisfaction.

Where the contact occurred in public, in the presence of other witnesses, and of the people for whom the communication was intended, the natural mode of address would be the inward one. Here the prophet had to repeat the words. Suppose they had been given to him by an external voice, then this voice would have reached the ear of the others no less than his own, and the transmission of the message to these others would have become an unnecessary duplication. The function of the prophet would have been in that case superfluous.

Further the internal speech may have secured, through its immediate precedence of the delivery of the message, the exact correspondence of word received and word transmitted. The prophet could simply utter straightway what the internal voice supplied. There was scarcely an interval of remembrance; the whole thing became, as it were, one living process; the prophet became in a veritable sense the mouth of God, while lending his ear to God within. Perhaps in the writing of prophecy also the inward voice played a part. The main point to affirm is that the prophet indiscriminately calls whatever he utters in the discharge of his function 'the word of Jehovah', and means this in a strict, literal sense. The product is to him the essential thing, not the variable process. But the prophet never makes the freedom observed in the process an excuse for impugning the absoluteness of the product.

REVELATION THROUGH SHOWING AND SEEING

Side by side with the revelation through speech and hearing goes the other form, that through showing and seeing. Visions are recorded of the canonical prophets in the following instances: Isa. 6; Jer. 1:11–12; 24:1; Ezek. 1–3; 8–11; 37:1–10, 20–28; Dan. 2:19; 7; 8; 10; 11; 12; Amos 7:1–9; 8:1–3; 9:1; Zech. 1:8; 6:1–8. No visions occur in Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi. Taking the extended visions of Ezekiel and Daniel as units we obtain a comparatively small number. This, however, leaves out of account the cases where 'visions' are spoken of in the prophets, and uncertainty exists as to whether the word means visions proper, or is a general term for revelation. But, even counting these in, there are not enough to bear out Hengstenberg's view that the visionary form was the constant form of prophetic revelation, and that whatever speech there is must be considered as intravisionary speech. In some cases the visionary mode of receiving a message would seem to have belonged to the introductory act of the prophet's career.

There is evidence that in ancient times visions were of common occurrence. Balaam's revelations were received in a visionary state. In the time of Moses, according to Num. 12:6, the ordinary converse of Jehovah with prophets was in a vision, and the parallelism with dreams, in which the term here occurs, shows that visions in the technical sense are referred to. For the period immediately preceding Samuel, 'word of Jehovah' and 'frequent (or open) vision' were synonyms. These facts have been construed as indicating a steady progress in revelation from the more external and sensual media to the more internal and spiritual vehicles, because sound and hearing come closer in their nature to the spiritual world than perceptible objects and sight. This is open to the objection, however, that with both Ezekiel and Zechariah the visionary mode preponderates, and that in Jeremiah visions are somewhat more frequent than in Isaiah. The personal equation probably had something to do with this phenomenon. Some of the prophets may have been of a more imaginative type of mind than others. Jeremiah relates of himself that he lived constantly amidst the scenes of the coming destruction, and that they were so vivid to him as to become exceedingly painful. He could no longer participate in any social pleasure, was 'full of the fury of Jehovah', weary with holding in [6:11].

It has already been observed that in course of time 'vision' lost its technical meaning, and became simply synonymous with 'revelation', in whatever form received. The title standing at the head of the Book of Isaiah: 'The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz' certainly does not mean to cover the whole book as the product of visionary experiences. The content of much of the book excludes this. It simply means 'the revelation of Isaiah'; the verb in the clause 'which he saw' has the same generalized sense: it means 'which he received'.

We can distinguish in visions proper between the nature of some objects perceived and that of others. Realities of the supersensual world may have been momentarily brought within the range of sight of the prophet. This may have been the case in 2 Kings 6:17, where Jehovah at the prayer of Elisha opens the eyes of his servant, so as to make him see the supernatural host encompassing the city of Dothan. A purely symbolical picture, had he been told that it was such, would hardly have satisfied the boy. But surely in other cases there was no need of bringing forth the supersensual realities and laying them open to the beholder. We gain the impression from the account just referred to that the prophet himself either did not need to have his eyes opened, because he had this faculty of 'second sight' constantly, or that for this particular occasion his eyes had been opened some time before. The opening of the eyes would suit equally well the beholding of supernatural realities as the apprehension of supernaturally produced pictures. There can be no doubt that in many cases the wonder was an internal one. It was then placed before the inner vision of the prophet, an inner field of vision, as it were, consisting of pictures.

But even here a distinction is possible: the things thrown upon this screen might have been psychical reproductions, portraits of the realities submitted, or they may have been symbolic figures shadowing forth the realities but not copying them. This yields various possibilities. Similar distinctions may be drawn as to the organ of perception employed in a vision. This may have been the external bodily eye. If there was external reality ab extra, though of a supernatural kind, it would seem that the organ of external vision would have been the proper instrument for perceiving it. It might have been supernaturally qualified for the act, but it would be none the less the bodily eye. If, on the other hand, the things to be shown were spread out on the inner field of vision, then the inner eye, the soul-eye, would be the organ of vision indicated. The outer eye for the outer things, the inner eye for the inner things, would seem to be a natural rule to follow. Still there is something of logical constructiveness about this, so that we may well hesitate to lay it down as a hard and fast rule. The whole region is a field of mystery, and other processes than we can imagine may have characterized it.

REVELATION THROUGH RAPTURE

Notice, however, that there is conceivable, as to the field of vision, still a third possibility besides the two mentioned above. A rapture of the prophet's entire personality into the region of heaven is not out of the question. In that case he would have seen not merely a piece of objective supernaturalism, descended for his own benefit, but he would have himself ascended, either in the body, or, what is more likely, in the spirit to the very realm of heaven. There has been much dispute along this line in regard to the vision of Isa. 6. Was this a vision in the temple on Mount Zion, or an opening up to the prophet of the heavenly sanctuary into which he had been transported? It is good to keep these various possibilities before one's mind in order to avoid confusion of thought, but not commendable to yield to the urge of curiosity, where Scripture withholds details. Paul, who had had the visionary experience in a most realistic form, up to the point of rapture into heaven, modestly disclaims knowledge as to whether the rapture was in or outside of the body [2 Cor. 12:1–4].

BODILY EFFECTS

The visionary mode of receiving a message differed in one important respect from the process of audition, namely, as to the manner and extent in which it affected the body. Perhaps there was in hearing also a clearing or closing up of sense from the outside world, with entire concentration upon the one voice heard. But on its negative side this has not found expression. It is not uncommon to say in ordinary connections, that a person closes his ears or has his ears closed. Still no reference is made to this, where the hearing of divine speech is described. Only the 'waking' of the ear is mentioned, not its being put to sleep, or being closed to the outside world. With the seeing-process it is different. Here we have somewhat detailed and objective description of what happens to the body during the visionary state. First of all, of course, comes the shutting of the bodily eye. No sooner does the prophetic vision set in than the external sight is suspended, and this is not due simply to psychical concentration upon the shown image; there is a physical closure of the eyelids. Balaam describes himself as 'the man whose eye was closed', and also as 'the man which saw the vision of the Almighty, having his eye open' [Num. 24:3, 4]. The seer's inner eye was opened, whilst the bodily eye was closed. But the bodily peculiarity was not confined to the eye, for Balaam mentions as a further characteristic of this visionary experience his 'falling down'. We read of this also in the accounts of Ezekiel and Daniel. This was not a voluntary act of worship, but obviously an effect of the overpowering divine influence coming upon him. As such, of course, it was not necessarily a symptom of the visionary state. Further, however, goes what is related about Ezekiel's sensation of being carried off to a far away place, whilst yet the elders in Tel-Abib remained sitting before him [8:1ff.]. This looks like a regular rapture of the soul while the body remained where it was, and, if so, involves a separation between soul and body.

Frequently the prophetic vision in its subjective side is associated with the revelation-dream [Num. 12:6; Dan. 2:19; Joel 2:28]. Although the association shows that the two were in some measure cognate, the distinction shows them to have been different in other respects. In the dream there is no abnormal, disturbed relation between body and soul. In the vision there probably was, at least at times. What it consisted in is not easy to determine. The vision seems to have exhausted the body much more than would happen through a dream. In order to interpret to him a new vision the angel had to awaken Zechariah, as a man that is awakened out of his sleep. The appearance of the body after the vision was like that of a sleep. Still this does not describe here the bodily condition during the vision. It is an after-effect of something not itself described [Zech. 4:1]. After receiving a revelation Daniel was sick for some days [7:28; 8:27]. Jer. 31:26 is also peculiar: the prophet after depicting the delights of the future, says, 'I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me'. Is the use of 'sleep' instead of 'dream' here significant?

THE INTRA-MENTAL STATE

So far, however, all this relates to the commerce between body and spirit. Much more delicate and difficult the problem becomes when the intra-mental state during the vision is enquired into. Even if we go so far as to conceive of the body as having lain in a trance, with apparently suspended animation (which does not happen in a dream), even then this would not teach us anything as to how the soul felt and reacted under the things shown within the vision. In attempts to answer this question, altogether too much has been built on the Greek term ekstasis. The influence of this term is due, not so much to its summing up in itself a group of Biblical phenomena, as rather to its having served at first as the translation of the Hebrew word tardemah, 'torpor of deep sleep' in the Greek Bible, and to its having, once in, carried with itself many associations acquired in its previous or subsequent extra-biblical usage. Tardemah occurs twice, first of the sleep God made to fall upon Adam before the removal of his rib, and the second time of the sleep into which Abram was put previously to his vision of the theophany that passed between the pieces of the animals [Gen. 15:12]. In Adam's case the sleep had nothing to do with any visionary state. It simply acted as an anaesthetic. In Abram's case, on the other hand, we actually have a sleep introducing and accompanying the vision.

But tardemah here does not throw any light on the patriarch's mental state during the vision, although we learn from the situation itself that he did not, while in this visionary sleep, lose consciousness of things around, as would be the case in an ordinary sleep, for the very purpose of the transaction was that he should observe and notice. But the apparent source of information began to flow, when the word ekstasis replaced tardemah, for ekstasis is an extremely pregnant and suggestive term in the Greek consciousness. It expresses in classical Greek the state of insanity, mania, although this does not seem to have been particularly applied to the oracular process in religion. The word has also both in ordinary Greek and in the Greek Old Testament the weaker sense of 'dread'; 'astonishment'; a figurative and toned-down meaning, which presupposes the stronger one, as when we say that we are 'beside ourselves' under sudden, strange occurrences. Originally the ekstatis was real abnormality, insanity. Perhaps something of this crept into the popular conception of the prophetic state, since it easily appeared as a condition of lack of self-control. But that insanity has lack of selfcontrol, and the prophetic state shows the same feature, does not, of course, identify prophecy with insanity.

Stronger, however, than popular usage, was the effect produced by the philosophical handling of the word. Philo gave it a prominent place in his system, and that in a peculiar well-defined sense. According to Philo ekstasis is the literal absence of the nous from the body. His view of the transcendental nature of God and its incompatibility for close association with the creature necessitated this view. When the divine Spirit arrives in the prophet, he observes, the nous takes its departure, because it would not be fitting for the immortal to dwell with the mortal. Now this Philonic conception of ecstasy received wide acceptance in the early Church, although in a somewhat moderated form. Its widest spread it obtained through the Montanists, who in the second century cultivated a type of prophecy rendering the prophet out of his senses. In order to justify the phenomena current among themselves, the Montanists claimed that the Biblical prophets had been subject to the same law. They expressed their view in the belief that the prophet was amens, in the visionary state. Tertullian sided with them, and spoke, like them, of the amentia of the prophets.

In more recent times Hengstenberg has been a strenuous defender of the realistic 'ecstasy', and in the first edition of his 'Christology of the Old Testament' even approaches the Montanist position, although in the second edition his statements are more moderate, and he here concedes that, as between the Montanists and the Church fathers, the truth lay in the middle. In order not to do injustice to this type of view, we must carefully note the philosophical provenience of the term amentia. It was not meant as a synonym of dementia. Far less is it the equivalent of 'mania'. It simply means that the prophet for the time being is 'without his mind'. This at least was the philosophically oriented theory of Philo, although much cruder and wilder notions may have gathered around it, when handled by less cultivated minds.

It is plain on the surface of the Biblical data that ecstasy in the Philonic or Montanist sense had no place in prophetism. The Biblical prophets coming out of the visionary state have a distinct remembrance of the things seen and heard. Biblical prophecy is not a process in which God dislodges the mind of man. Its true conception is that it lifts the human mind to the highest plane of intercourse with God. And it is of the very essence of Biblical religion that its exercise lies in the sphere of consciousness. The prophets, while in the visionary state, retained the faculty of reflection and introspection. Isaiah compares with the holiness of Jehovah, sung by the seraphim, the sinful state of himself and his people. Ezekiel in later visions was aware of the similarity of what he actually saw to things shown him before [3:23; 8:4; 10:15, 22; 43:4]. Interesting from this point of view is Isa. 21:6–10. Here the prophet, as it were, becomes a double personality, one for receiving the vision, another for reflecting upon it and speaking about it to God. In the New Testament we have the explicit declaration of Paul, that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets [1 Cor. 14:32]. A glossolalist needs an interpreter, the prophet interprets himself.

We have found in the above enquiry that the mode of seeing, while the older of the two main forms of prophetic revelation, yet continued to accompany the mode of hearing, in later times. The prophets did not cease to be ro'im, henceforth to remain nebhi'im exclusively. The coequality of the one with the other is proven by the constant double usage till the latest times. This result seems to be upset by the passage, 1 Sam. 9:9: 'Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he said, Come and let us go to the ro'eh: for he that is now called a nabhi' was beforetime called a ro'eh.' The verse is an interjected remark of the writer to explain why in vs. 11 Saul and his servants say to the young maidens, 'Is the ro'eh here?' Here ro'eh and nabhi' appear as two successive designations of the same office in the course of history.

The critics have not been slow to make use of it in support of their theory of the importation of nabhi'-ism from Canaan in the time of Samuel. This the passage could never prove, for the writer, certainly later than Samuel's time, speaks from his own historical standpoint: what was customary in his (the writer's) time had not yet been so in Saul's time. Between the period of Saul and his own a change of usage had taken place. But what he does not say is that the change had come in the time of Saul or thereabouts. It might have been later, and have had nothing to do with any importation from Canaan.

But, while for this reason of no use to the critics, the verse causes difficulty. Negatively it seems to imply that nabhi' was not yet in use at the time of Saul. And it would also create some difficulty to determine about what date the change of usage came in and what occasioned it. When and why was the designation ro'eh dropped and nabhi' uniformly used? These two difficulties are met by substituting for the Massoretic text that of the Septuagint. The latter reads: 'for the people called the nabhi' the ro'eh'. In the text followed by the Septuagint translators, in the place of hayyom, 'today', there stood ha'am, 'the people'. Through this emendation the statement becomes clear in its import. Of the two, so to speak official, names in use for the prophet the people had preferred for a long time to employ the ro'eh-title. This was still their habit in Saul's day; it was no longer so in the time of the writer. Because his readers might not be familiar with the ancient popular way of speaking, he explains its early prevalence. It was entirely a matter of popular habit of address. In no way does this contradict the statements in earlier history that there were nebhi'im long before, say in the time of Moses.

Perhaps we can even surmise in what this popular habit of avoiding nabhi' was rooted. The common people would come to a man like Samuel in the ordinary, in a certain sense trivial, difficulties of their daily life, as was the case with Saul seeking his father's animals. To that kind of enquiry the name ro'eh may well have seemed more fitting than the stately, serious nabhi'. And the man of God would also naturally obtain the information sought through vision-process rather than through speech-address from God. Such things Jehovah supplied to His servants by letting them see, for instance, the place where something lost could be found. A state of mind like this, so far from proving the non-existence of nabhi' rather presupposes it.

There is no occasion, moreover, for looking down upon this part of the prophet's function as something beneath his dignity, and putting it on a line with pagan soothsaying. It was God's desire to furnish the people with light even on such homely subjects. They were a people among whom revelation dwelt, and it was one of their privileges to reap this practical benefit from it. The ro'eh of Israel could be at the same time the nabhi' in the important affairs of national and religious life. It is instructive to read Isa. 8:19ff. in this connection. There is false soothsaying among Israel, but the prophet maintains not only that it is evil; he likewise maintains that it is unnecessary, because normal provision has been made for its supply: 'Should not a people seek unto their God?'

EXTREME CRITICAL VIEWS ANSWERED

Two extremes may be observed in the critical attitude towards the visionary phenomena of prophecy. The latest tendency is to approximate what took place among Israel as much as possible to the abnormalities of pagan prophecy, and to reduce the phenomena in both quarters alike to the pathology of religion. Interpreters of the prophets have turned themselves into medical students in order to discover what specific type of neurology can throw light on the symptoms. Hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy and several other more recondite states are studied from the records of medicine, in order to make the abnormal from the physiological or psychological point of view the normal from the pathological standpoint. When a prophetic strangeness has been classified as a disease, it is supposed to be sufficiently accounted for. Hoelscher's book, Die Propheten, is so excessively technical in this respect as to be unreadable to the theologian who is not at the same time an expert in a highly specialized branch of medicine.

Before this psychiatric development took place, the diametrically opposite tendency existed, namely, to consider the visions of the prophets, not real experiences, but a species of literary composition employed in order to add vividness and force to their message. Some have applied this to all visions. Others would restrict it to the later period of prophetism, holding that in earlier times the visions were real. The argument in support of this theory is as follows. Some visions, it is believed, are so circumstantial and elaborate, that they cannot possibly have been perceived. They betray in numerous points the workmanship of the free composer. Some are made up of such fantastic and grotesque features that no degree of imaginative power could enable us to combine them into a real picture. They elude the painter's skill, for the simple reason that they are not real pictures, just aggregates of single scenes loosely combined. The connection between the vision and the message is often far-fetched and artificial. The complicated and artificial visions occur largely in the later prophets, Ezekiel and Zechariah, the simple and more natural ones belong to the older period.

Over against such considerations we should take into account other equally pertinent facts. We are not fitted to determine from the range of our own imagination how far the visualizing power may have extended in the prophets. The prophets were Shemites. The ecstatic state allowed of intense concentration upon a single scene. Our inability to reproduce the vision into a picture proves or disproves nothing as to what the prophets were capable of in that respect. The argument from looseness in combining, closely looked at, proves the opposite of what it is intended to prove. In the case of free literary composition a prophet like Jeremiah would certainly have been capable of producing more natural and striking symbols. This suggests that such visions are the work of God, whom in this matter we do not presume to measure by the rules of pictorial or literary composition. It may be true that the unnatural visions are found largely in the later prophets, but these same prophets on other occasions see visions of striking vividness and charm. On the theory of literary composition it becomes difficult to explain why the prophets have, on the whole, made such rare use of this form of representation. The prophets draw a clear distinction between symbolic actions and objects figuring in the reality, and symbolic visions seen by themselves. Why this distinction, if the visions were inventions? Why did not Jeremiah exhibit the almond rod, or Amos the basket of summer fruit? Most writers now admit that the older prophets did see visions. But the later prophets speak of theirs in precisely the same language. This would have been somewhat misleading, had they not actually seen them.

FIVE:

THE MODE OF COMMUNICATION OF

THE PROPHECY

SPEECH

We have already seen that the name nabhi' places the emphasis upon the communication of his message by the prophet. Where the form in which the message had been conveyed was that of speech, the most natural form for delivering it would be that of reproductive speech. That divine speech can thus naturally pass over into human speech is a wonderful thing in itself. But man has been made in the image of God, and the faculty of speech forms a part of this. In all speech outside of God there is something divine-like. Besides, the prophets stood under the special control of the Holy Spirit, who plays upon the human organ where and as He will. Especially if through inner speech the oracle came at the very moment preceding delivery, there would remain no time to translate it into other language. And the retention of the same form was of official importance.

The prophets, of course, must have done considerable work in writing their prophecies. This would remain true, even if the modern theory of the redactional character of the books named after them were to be adopted. The written prophecies were in the first instance delivered in speech, to some extent at least. And the cause why writing was resorted to was a peculiar one which had nothing to do with the original form of transmission. Ezekiel has sometimes been singled out as a type of the rhetorical writing prophet, especially in his eschatological deliverances, but he was none the less a great speaker too. His audiences were so impressed and excited by the address made to them as to be daily talking against him by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and representing his speech as a very lovely song of one that has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument [33:30–32]. It would not be useless to study even Ezekiel for homiletical instruction.

Just as the spoken divine word calls for verbal delivery, so the vision calls for a special kind of verbal delivery, in which its pictorial origin shall be reckoned with. For words were necessary here also. The prophets could not set up a stage or throw on a screen that inner film they had looked upon in the vision. The optical experience is, however, reproduced in words as closely optical as possible, and frequently the prophet leaves it at that without further explanation. He simply says, I saw. The visionary form obviously was chosen for the people's sake, no less than for the prophet's sake. Hence both in parables and allegories the medium of the objective work is likewise employed. Isaiah probably had not seen in vision the vineyard of Chapter 5. Still further the prophets are sometimes directed to turn their persons and their actions into the form of symbolism. Here is the incarnate vision.

It must be admitted, however, that some of these actions are of a most extraordinary nature, so as to raise doubt as to the possibility of their having been actually carried out. The two conspicuous examples of this are what is related in Jer. 13:1–7 and in Ezek. 3:26. To these may be added, though of less difficult interpretation, Isa. 20:3, and Hos. 1:3. It would take too long to rehearse in detail the difficulties and possibilities of these instances. The commentaries should be consulted on this subject by the curious.

MIRACLES

Under the head of the communication of the divine purpose, also the miracles performed by the prophets should be considered. The Old Testament is not precise in its definition of what constitutes a miracle or in distinguishing among the several types of miracles. The several names in Hebrew reveal this indefiniteness on the theological side. These words are: pel'e, something peculiar, extraordinary; mopheth, something creating surprise or attracting attention; nora', something that inspires awe; and the comprehensive name 'oth, sign, which is generic for the preceding more special terms. The importance obviously lies in the effect to be produced, not in the precise manner of its production.

Besides the sign of omnipotence there is the sign of conjunction, consisting in the prediction that two (possibly both natural) events will come together in time, and which in the last analysis is reducible to the omniscience of God, showing His supernatural presence in the course of things as clearly as the sign of omnipotence. All predictions are wonders, that is, when taken together with the fulfilment. This does not, however, necessarily imply that the fulfilment must be brought about through supernatural interposition. The supernatural here lies in the foreknowledge; it is a species of omniscience-miracle. In such cases the name 'sign' is transferable to the fulfilling event itself [Isa. 41:22ff.; 42:9].

But we shall have to conceive of the connection between prophecy and fulfilment as closer still. The representation emerges here and there, that there is a causal nexus between the predictive word spoken and the event following at its own appointed time. The divine word here appears invested with a self-realizing, omnipotent power: it is a word that works miracles. Of course, this is not the word entered into matter or bound to paper, but the living word that issued from the divine mouth, and is never detached from Him.

Finally, it should be observed, that the record of the prophetic miracles is found not so much in the prophetic writings themselves, as in the historical books dealing to a large extent with the prophets. The inference has been drawn from this that we cannot place reliance on the miracle accounts, because they are not borne out by the prophets' own testimony. This is an unwarranted inference. The difference is due to the different character of the two sources. History is an account of acts, prophecy an account of words. Hence, where a piece of history-writing has been inserted in a prophetical book, the miracles are as much in evidence as in the history elsewhere [cp. Isa. 36–39]. The case of the New Testament is analogous. Here we find the miracles in the historical document of Acts, rather than in the Epistles. The wonders that do appear in the prophetic writings are those most intimately connected with the word, viz., the wonders of prediction. In the earlier part of Daniel, which is historical in character, the wonders occupy more space than in the later part, which bears a different impress. The idea that the disappearance of the wonder element would be one of the symptoms of the gradual purification and spiritualization of prophecy has no support in the phenomena. As prediction prevails especially in the later prophets, and prediction is regarded as a wonder-thing, one might be inclined to reverse the judgment in question, and affirm that the element of miracle appears not on the decrease but on the increase in the history of prophetism.

Besides the apologetic and a soteric purpose served by the miracles themselves, the prominence of this element in its teaching has also a typical significance belonging to the sphere of eschatology. It bears witness to the prophets' interest in the great supernaturalizing world-change expected from the future. The specifically eschatological predictions of the prophets are steeped in the atmosphere of the supernatural. Modern criticism likes to call this the apocalyptic element in the prophetic writings. While it must be granted that the later apocalyptic (non-canonical) writers have run to excess in this matter, they probably would not have done so, had there not been a solid basis for it in the canonical books. The more up-to-date criticism, which is succeeding the school of Wellhausen, has already made a much-needed correction at this point. Through showing that there was an indigenous eschatology in Israel before the time of the great writing prophets, it has greatly changed the aspect of the ancient religion that used to be placed back of the prophetic movement by the critics. Still this sense for the supernatural, as is now being realized and recognized more clearly, lies at a far remove from the pagan sphere of magic and divination. Against the latter the prophets uniformly protest. The prophetic miracle is wrought after prayer, and in dependence on the power of Jehovah working freely [1 Kings 13:5; 17:20ff.; 18:36ff.; 2 Kings 4:33; 20:11]. Of compulsion of the Deity there is no trace anywhere. And in the future epoch it will not be otherwise.

SIX:

THE CONTENT OF THE PROPHETIC

REVELATION

We confine ourselves in this place to the teaching of the great prophets of the eighth century. Coming as these do at the great turning-point of the Old Testament history of redemption, their study is of fundamental importance, and in point of newness anticipates much of the teaching of the later period.

The subject easily divides itself into the following parts:

[A] The Nature and Attributes of Jehovah.

[B] The Bond between Jehovah and Israel.

[C] The Rupture of the Bond: The Sin of Israel.

[D] The Judgment and the Restoration: Prophetic Eschatology.

[A] THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF JEHOVAH

It goes without saying that the prophetic orientation is God-centred. This is but another way of saying that it is religious, for without that, no religion deserving that name can exist. The prophets feel this so instinctively that they have no need nor occasion for reflecting upon or expressing it. It is only when reaching its highest point, and becoming a veritable passion for Jehovah, that it sets its crown upon itself by reflecting upon its own nature and delighting in its own expression. For in religion everywhere, not the instinctive, unreflected, but the clearly-recognized, the thoroughly illuminated, constitutes the finest product of the process. That is the cause why a religious experience uncoloured by thought and doctrine necessarily means an inferior thing, and may even reach the vanishing-point, where doubt arises whether it still deserves the name of religion or not. This does not mean that there is not much in religion lying below the surface of consciousness, or belonging to the spheres of volition and feeling. But it can prove its title only by the urge of ascending into the light of day and the region of praise, for in no other way can it reach the place where the divine glory finds recognition and the movement of religion attains its summit. God is not a philanthropist who likes to do good in secret without its becoming known; His delight is in seeing Himself and His perfections mirrored in the consciousness of the religious subject. No compromise is possible here. The only other comprehensive principle is that man finds his supreme pleasure in seeing himself and his excellencies recognized and admired by God. He who chooses the latter standpoint will never understand the prophets.

The one among the prophets who has most clearly apprehended this and expressed it is Isaiah. If we compare his consciousness in this respect with Hosea's, we shall find that the latter dwells more upon what Jehovah is and does for Israel, the former is centred in what Israel is for Jehovah [Isa. 5; Hos. 13:8]. While Jeremiah in his inaugural visions sees things, Isaiah in his temple vision sees Jehovah Himself. And he sees Jehovah in His temple, that is to say, in the place where everything is subordinated to God, and God sets the stamp of His presence upon everything, the place of worship. In keeping with this, Isaiah is pre-eminently the prophet of the highest type of religion. His religious sensibilities are most finely and strongly affected by the message he brings to others.

Further, this religious reaction is in Isaiah of a peculiarly fundamental character. Three primal ingredients enter into it. First there is a vivid perception of the infinite majesty of Jehovah. In the second place this has for its correlate a deep realization of the immeasurable distance between the majesty of Jehovah and the creaturehood, as well as the sinfulness, of man. Thirdly, there enters the element of unqualified surrender to the service of the divine glory. It is a significant fact that the noblest conception of religion is represented in the circle of the prophets by him who was unquestionably the greatest of the prophets in every respect.

MONOTHEISM

Coming now to the first head of the prophetic teaching on the nature and attributes of Jehovah, we begin with the principle of monotheism. As has been shown above, there is agreement on this point between us and the critical school, inasmuch as the latter not only grants the prophets to have been monotheists, but even regards them as the discoverers and first champions of the belief. Controversy as to the point of fact could arise with the left wing of the school only, namely, with those who make explicit monotheism an exilic or post-exilic product. With the others the further question might be debated, as to whether the pre-exilic monotheism from Amos downward was only a nascent, inconsistent, or an explicit, confirmed monotheism. It remains, therefore, still of importance both for a positive and for a controversial purpose to state the facts as furnished by the early prophets.

We find in them explicit statements in which at least the divinity of the pagan gods is denied, although this, of course, does not deny to these gods absolutely every sort of existence. Amos calls the false gods after which the ancient Judeans had walked 'their lies' [2:4; cp. Isa. 1:29, 30]. Isaiah has a sarcastic term for naming the idols,

'elilim; this, though not of the same etymology as el, yet reminds of it, but by making out of the word a diminutive, represents the pagan gods as 'godlets', or (etymologically taken) as 'good-for-nothingones'. The false god fails to measure up to the conception of full deity [2:8, 18, 20; 10:10ff.; 19:1, 3; 31:7]. In Hosea, who comes chronologically between Amos and Isaiah, we have no such explicit statement, apart from his references to the images. In chapter 1:10, however, he calls Jehovah 'the living God' in which there may be a reflection on the 'dumb' idols.

Monotheism is likewise presupposed by the way in which the early prophets express themselves about images and image-worship. The images are represented as the work of man's hand and their worship is ridiculed. This polemic against idols is found in both Hosea and Isaiah [Hos. 2:10; 4:12; 14:3; Isa. 2:18, 20; 17:7, 8; 31:7]. It might be objected that such ridicule strikes only at the images, with which the gods were not identified. The objection might also be raised, that the same polemic is directed against the images of Jehovah, in whose case it cannot have implied denial of His existence or Deity. With reference to the first caption it should be answered that such a distinction between the god and his image is a thoroughly modern idea. The idolatrous mind forms a far more realistic concept of the image than that of a symbolic reproduction of the deity. In some way, not always comprehensible to us, the image and the god are seen in one; through the image, control is exercised over the deity. This alone, after all, makes the ridicule of Hosea, Isaiah and some of the Psalmists, fair and to the point. Where the theological distinction between image and what is imaged forth is introduced, it immediately becomes unfair and beside the point. But the ridicule of the prophets through the image is intended for the pagan gods. If it is a disgrace for the god to be manufactured out of matter, then this must be because the god is actually bound up with matter; a more remote or refined association with matter, on the principle of symbolism, would not warrant it.

We may here refer back to what was said in connection with the second word of the Decalogue. To the pagans the magically-divine presence in the image exists. A deity which lets itself be manufactured or encased in this manner, to be manipulated by man, exposes itself to ridicule. This ridicule, then, proves proximately only that the pagan god is falsely invested with deity by his worshippers. In the somewhat later stage of the polemic this has apparently become different. Here the language employed is such as to suggest that there is nothing to the image besides mere matter. From this latter standpoint the ridicule becomes, of course, more poignant and incisive: it leaves nothing un-annihilated. But perhaps in the earlier period the subject had not been thought through thus far by the popular mind.

The second caption made upon the argument was, that it would seem as if the prophets through their ridicule of the images had struck at the existence of Jehovah Himself, since what they say is not seldom, nay, primarily, addressed to the cult of Jehovah-images. This caption likewise is unwarranted. The prophets actually meant to strike at 'Jehovah', that is, at the false Jehovah represented by the images, such as stood at Dan and Bethel. Hosea places the Jehovah of Dan and Bethel entirely on a par with the foreign gods or the imported deities in Israel or the indigenous gods of Canaan. He calls him outright 'Baal'.

There are a number of statements in the early prophets, as there are in other parts of the Old Testament, which vividly speak of other gods and ascribe actions or movements to them seemingly implying existence. It is possible, that this may be due to belief in subdivine, demonic existence. It is also possible, however, that such statements must be explained on the basis of rhetorical personification. It is not always easy to say which of the two is involved. Sometimes the context will tell [cp. Isa. 19:1; 46:1; Mic. 7:18]. In Psa. 96:4, we read: 'Jehovah is to be feared above all the gods', yet vs. 5 soon adds: 'All the gods of the peoples are things of nought, but Jehovah made the heavens', and in vs. 7 all the peoples are invited to give glory and strength unto Jehovah [cp. Psa. 135:5, 6, 15ff.].

The unlimited power ascribed to Jehovah in every place and sphere has for its correlate the monotheism of the prophets. To be sure, these affirmations do not exactly cover what we understand by 'the universe', as in its vast extent it has become known to us in the course of history. But this objection is not relevant. The sole question is, whether any rival power was attributed in any known sphere of reality to any other divine or sub-divine being. Of this there is no trace.

If the critical theory of a gradually developing monotheism in the era of the prophets were true, we should expect that the monotheistic belief would appear in the earlier writers in a less developed, in the later writers in a more developed form. We might be prepared for finding Amos and Hosea less consistently monotheistic in their forms of statement than Isaiah and Micah. Or, as between the eighth and the seventh centuries, we might anticipate a progress in Jeremiah beyond Isaiah. But no difference of this kind is found. Further, the monotheism of the prophets is nowhere associated by them with the unique ethical nature of Jehovah. The modern theory holds that stressing the ethical at the expense of the gracious character of Jehovah brought forth the monotheistic conviction. Mic. 7:18 reasons in precisely the opposite way.

THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF JEHOVAH

Next to the question of monotheism the prophetic teaching on the nature and attributes of Jehovah claims attention. Jehovah is called 'spirit', but this has a somewhat different connotation from what it has in our doctrinal terminology. It does not express immateriality, but the energy of life in God. Its opposite is 'flesh', signifying the innate inertia of the creature, considered apart from God [Isa. 31:3]. 'Flesh' is not yet, as later in the New Testament, associated with sin.

Among the attributes distinguished there is no attempt at classification. In Isa. 57:15, two aspects of the divine manifestation towards man are distinguished, the transcendental one, in virtue of which God dwells on high, and the condescending one, in virtue of which He bends down and dwells with the humble ones of His servants. This approaches in a broad way the well-known distinction between incommunicable and communicable attributes. To the class of transcendental attributes belong omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, omniscience, holiness.

OMNIPOTENCE

The unlimited power of Jehovah is strongly emphasized by Amos, largely for the ethical purpose of magnifying the terror of the approaching judgment. A word for the conception of omnipotence the Old Testament does not possess. But Amos in a figurative, descriptive way succeeds in vividly conveying the impression of what it consists in. Jehovah forms the mountains, creates the wind, makes the Pleiades and Orion. He calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the face of the earth. The change from day into night and from night into day obeys His will. As a conqueror controls the land through occupying its high places, so He treads upon the high places of the earth. He sends fire, famine, pestilence, and all plagues and evil, all this again as instrumental in the execution of His judgment [2:5; 3:6; 4:6, 9, 10, 13; 5:8; 7:4].

Similar statements are met with in Isaiah in similar connections. Especially the suddenness, the immediateness of the effect produced, are stressed by this prophet. Jehovah works by a word, and this is but a way of saying that He works supernaturally. He sustains to the creature the relation of a potter to the clay, a great figure expressive of omnipotence as well as of sovereignty. In the future He will change the whole face of the earth, making Lebanon a fruitful field and the fruitful field a forest [2:19, 21; 9:8; 17:13; 29:5, 17]. The strongest statements are in the second part of the prophecy [40; 42; 45]. For Micah we may compare 1:2–4.

'JEHOVAH OF HOSTS'

One of the standing names of Jehovah is associated with this attribute of omnipotence, the name 'Jehovah of Hosts'. It occurs in several forms, some fuller, some more compact in form. It is difficult to tell whether the variety is due to a process of enlargement or of abbreviation. The longest form is 'The Lord Jehovah the God of the Hosts'. This (with the article before 'hosts') is found in Amos 3:13 only. Most common is 'Jehovah Zebaoth'. This is a specifically prophetic name of God, which does not appear in the Pentateuch, Joshua, or Judges. We meet with it first in Samuel and Kings, next in eight Psalms, in all four of the early prophets, in all the other prophets, except Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Ezekiel. Finally, it occurs in three passages in Chronicles. Jehovah Zebaoth is probably an abbreviation, since a proper name cannot stand in the construct state. A further abbreviation is that into the simple 'Zebaoth', but this is not found in the Old Testament. The Septuagint has in a number of cases transliterated 'Zebaoth', and this has passed over into two New Testament passages [Rom. 9:29; Jas. 5:4]. Where the Septuagint translates it, it has either 'The Lord of the powers', or, 'the Lord, the All-Ruler'.

The word tsabha' has outside of the name four meanings, and to each of these one of the four interpretations of the name attaches itself. These four meanings are: an army of human warriors, the host of super-human spirits, the host of the stars, the sum-total of all created beings. The last-named view, proposed by Wellhausen, is thought to be borne out by Gen. 2:1, where the writer speaks of 'the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of them'. While the plural of the pronoun shows that hosts of the earth is not an unconceivable phrase, yet it is evident that the preceding reference to 'heavens' has by way of zeugma induced the writer to draw 'the earth' into the same construction. It is not proven thereby that this was a common way of combining 'hosts' with the earth. There is, however, truth in Wellhausen's observation that in Amos the name has most comprehensive cosmical associations. Only, this is due to another cause, as we shall see presently. Some have found two other instances of this cosmical use, one in Psa. 103:20–22, the other in Psa. 148:1–4. In these passages, however, a clear distinction is drawn between the works of Jehovah in heaven and on earth, and his hosts, which shows that the latter must be sought in a specific sphere of the intelligent creation, namely, among the heavenly servants of God.

Wellhausen, besides putting upon it this peculiar interpretation, has also advocated the view that the name was coined by Amos. But this is unlikely, because already in Amos the name has several forms, and because the prophet nowhere seeks to explain it. Both features indicate that the name was in use before him. As a matter of fact it does occur in passages which on Wellhausen's own view, would be older than the date of Amos. In order to carry through his conjecture he has to declare these passages interpolated or altered from their original form. For this no literary necessity exists.

The interpretation which understands the hosts of the astral bodies has some things in its favour. 'The host of heaven' occurs most frequently in passages where astral idolatry is spoken of [Deut. 4:19; 17:3; Jer. 8:2; 19:13; 32:29; Zeph. 1:5]. In pagan religion this is usually based on the belief that the stars are living beings or somehow identified with superhuman spirits. It has been suggested that this reference of the phrase 'host of heaven' is originally identical with the reference of it to angels. It would then date back to a time when a similar belief still prevailed among the ancestors of the Hebrews. Its use in the name of God would involve a protest against this species of idolatry, it being intimated that Jehovah is superior to these beings, Lord over every creature. There was also a belief, not seldom associated with the preceding, that the star-angels had been set over the pagan nations to rule them under the permission of God, and the belief in this form seems to have existed and survived late among the Jews. There are some contexts in Deuteronomy, where this belief is referred to. In chap. 29:26, we read: 'they went and served other gods … whom He had not divided unto them.' In 32:8, the Septuagint has a text diverging from the Hebrew, which reads:

'When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of men, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the angels of God.' The Hebrew reads, 'according to the number of the children of Israel'. But the difference in reading between the original and the Greek Version rather suggests that here the Septuagint translators or readers stood under the influence of this peculiar idea, and changed the text accordingly. And there are several serious objections to the idea that the name was in ancient Israel understood in this sense. In the early prophets it does not occur in contexts where the stars are mentioned. Amos in 5:8, where he speaks of Pleiades and Orion, does not employ it [cp. also Isa. 40:26]. The stars are uniformly called the 'host' of heaven in the singular. And they are never called 'the host of Jehovah'.

Much more can be said in favour of a view, enjoying considerable vogue at the present day, that the 'hosts' are the armies of Israel of which Jehovah is the captain. The wide acceptance accorded to this is due to its favouring the critical idea, that Jehovah was originally a wargod. Still this need not hinder us from accepting it. There is a warlike side to the conception of God in the prophets; Isaiah especially reveals a certain delight in describing the martial features of Jehovah. It would by no means imply, as the critics seem to think it does, that Jehovah had once been a war-god exclusively. An argument in favour of this interpretation has been taken from the fact that of the military 'hosts' only, the word is used in the plural, whereas of stars and angels it always occurs in the singular. The name has the plural; what else then can these 'hosts' be than the 'hosts' of Israel? [cp. Ex. 7:4; 12:41; Psa. 44:9; 60:10; 108:11].

Two things, however, somewhat detract from the force of this argument. The first is that in the Exodus passages, not the soldiers of Israel, but the multitude of the people in general are spoken of as 'the hosts of Jehovah'. The use of the noun 'hosts' is not, then, due to military associations; it arises simply from the numerousness of the people. And in the Psalm passages the hosts are not called Jehovah's hosts, but 'our hosts'. A counter-consideration is this, that precisely those passages where God is named 'Jehovah of Hosts', when they have occasion to refer to the armies of Israel, do not employ the term 'hosts', but some different word (1 Sam. 4:16, 17].

Another argument adduced in favour of the military sense is, that in several instances 'Jehovah of Hosts' occurs in significant combination with the ark, which was a palladium of war (1 Sam. 1:3, 11; 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2]. The first two passages do not speak of the ark in particular, but only of the tabernacle, and for its association even with the ark another reason would have to be found, since there is nothing military in the story of Hannah. As to 1 Sam. 4:4, and 2 Sam. 6:2, where the surroundings are more or less warlike, it yet seems unlikely that the use of the name Jehovah of Hosts is induced by the ark as the exponent of this. In the sequel of these references the ark is spoken of repeatedly, and yet it does not draw in its wake the name under discussion. There must then be another reason why it should do this in precisely the two passages cited. And the reason is not difficult to discover, for in these two there are mentioned, together with the ark, the cherubim upon it. And that points to another explanation presently to be looked into.

A further argument, and one to which some force cannot be denied, is taken from 1 Sam. 17:45, and Psa. 24:10. In the former David says to Goliath: 'I come unto thee in the name of Jehovah of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, which thou hast defied.' Here 'The God of the armies of Israel' seems actually to be explanatory of 'Jehovah of Hosts'. The Psalter passage is not equally convincing. 'Jehovah of Hosts' in vs. 10 is not necessarily the equivalent of 'Jehovah mighty in battle' of vs. 8. The structure of the passage seems to be rather climacteric, so that 'Jehovah of Hosts' is made out to mean far more than 'Jehovah mighty in battle'. If we assume that for David the martial sense was really associated with it, we shall have to regard this as probably the older interpretation put upon the name, one, however, which in course of time, in Prophets and Psalms gave way to another, felt to be more adequate in describing the central character of Jehovah.

Nor need the reason for such a substitution have lain exclusively in the enlarged conceptions of this later period of revelation. There is something else to be taken into account. The prophets probably felt that the times had changed. Whilst in the time of David the whole trend of the religion of Israel was towards the forcible shaking off of a foreign yoke, in the period of the prophets, when altogether too much reliance was placed on military resources, and the divine purpose was to break this unreligious, untheocratic frame of mind, the stress could no longer be laid upon what should be done with human help, but rather upon what Jehovah would miraculously accomplish. And therefore the 'hosts' become of a different complexion; they are now exponents of the heavenly, supernatural interposition of God in the affairs of His people. This is quite in line with the condemnation of political alliances, which is a constant ingredient of the prophetic preaching of our period.

So far as the prophets are concerned, then, we are led back to the older view, which interprets the 'hosts' of the multitude of angels. This best satisfies all the facts in the case. We have already found that the occurrence of the name in 1 Sam. 4:4 and 2 Sam. 6:2, is due to the mention of the cherubim. A number of other instances show the same conjunction. It is Jehovah worshipped by the seraphim whom Isaiah calls Jehovah of Hosts. In Isa. 37:16, Hezekiah's prayer, Jehovah is called Jehovah of Hosts as sitting upon the cherubim. The only place where the name occurs in Hosea stands in a context which mentions the angel of Jehovah [12:4, 5]. In Psa. 89 the name occurs only once, vs. 8, and in the preceding context the angels stand in the foreground.

Further, this interpretation most easily explains the several features associated with the name. The war-like flavour arises from the fact that the God of the angels is the omnipotent King of the heavenly multitudes, who can conquer His enemies, when earthly resources fail, nay, can even turn His hosts against Israel, if need be [Isa. 31:4]. Jehovah of Hosts is His royal name. It designates Him as the almighty King both in nature and history [Psa. 103:19–22; Isa. 6:5;

24:23; Jer. 46:18; 48:15; 51:57]. In the Orient the might of a king is measured by the splendour of his retinue.

JEHOVAH'S RELATION TO TIME AND SPACE

Next to Jehovah's omnipotence His relation to time and space come under consideration. In regard to God's presence in space two representations occur. He abides in Zion, whence He roars [Amos 1:2], and where He has His royal throne [Isa. 2:3; 8:18]. Hosea calls Canaan Jehovah's land [9:3]. These statements do not involve any earthly limitation of God's presence. They are not remnants of a crude theology. These writers elsewhere represent God as dwelling in heaven [Hos. 5:15, of a return to heaven; Isa. 18:4; 33:5; Mic. 1:2, 3]. In Zion there is a presence of gracious revelation. Of course, the same is true with reference to heaven, for heaven, no more than any locality on earth, can circumscribe or bind God. The heaven is His throne, and the earth His footstool. According to Amos 9:2, the reach of Jehovah's power is absolutely unlimited by space. True, this is expressed in anthropomorphic popular language. There is no hint of the idea that God is above all space, and strange to it in His own inner life. He, of course, recognizes space as an objective reality in the existence of the creature, but His own divine mode of existence it does not affect.

The same relation applies as between Jehovah and time. In popular language, such as the prophets use, eternity can only be expressed in terms of time, although in reality it lies altogether above time. Some have found in Isa. 57:15, the theological conception of eternity as a sphere enveloping God, in the same manner as time is that in which, by reason of the structure of his consciousness, man necessarily dwells. But the words rendered in the Authorized and Revised Versions by 'that inhabits eternity' are also capable of the rendering, 'that sits enthroned for ever', which would yield only the ordinary idea of duration without beginning and without end. Among the early prophets it is only Isaiah who reflects upon this mysterious and majestic divine attribute. In the description of the Messiah [9:6], the title abhi'ad, now frequently rendered by 'father for eternity', might perhaps mean 'father of eternity', although this would be an even higher flight into the realm of the transcendental than the idea of God's inhabiting eternity.

Indirectly the eternity finds expression in various ways. Inasmuch as Jehovah is the Creator of all things, He must have existed before every creature and be prior to every development in history. He is the first and the last, because He has laid the foundation of the earth and spread out the heavens [Isa. 44:6; 48:12, 13]. He calls the succeeding generations of men from the beginning [Isa. 41:4]. Together with these statements sometimes occurs the divine self-designation, 'I am He', which is interpreted to mean, I am the same, not subject to change through the flux of time, especially as implying a warrant for the unchanging faithfulness of Jehovah. This would be the same thought which we found expressed in Ex. 3:14, in the phrase 'I am that I am', and that is thenceforth associated with the name Jehovah as such.

OMNISCIENCE

Jehovah's omniscience finds expression in connection with His omnipresence, and His ability to predict things. Because He is everywhere, He knows whatever occurs. He declares unto man what is his (man's) inward thought [Amos 4:13]. Hosea says, 'The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up, his sin laid up in store'. Every sin committed by the people is present before God; it cannot be lost any more than can money kept carefully in a bag [Hos. 13:12]. God's eternity comes into play here also. Being before all that happens, He has been able to foretell many things that came to pass, and now challenges the pagan gods to measure themselves with Him in further predictions [Isa. 41:22–24; 43:9–13; 44:6–8]. This implies that His foreknowledge is intimately connected with His purpose. It is no magical divination of uncertain contingencies, but the natural concomitant of His plan. 'Jehovah does nothing, but He reveals His secret unto His servants the prophets' [Amos 3:7]. It is in vain to seek to hide one's counsel from Jehovah, as the politicians try to do, who work in the dark and say: Who sees us, and who knows us? This is in vain, because Jehovah is, in reference to all plotting of man, as the potter is to the clay: He fashions the very mind that conceives the thought of hiding from Him. Man's hiding from Jehovah is an object of Jehovah's own purpose [Isa. 29:15, 16].

HOLINESS

Another transcendental attribute is the 'holiness' of Jehovah. The Hebrew for the adjective is qadosh, the corresponding noun 'qodesh'. Of the verb the Niphal, Piel, Hiphil and Hithpael species are in use. But all these verbal forms are derivatives from the noun or adjective; they therefore can afford no help towards ascertaining the fundamental meaning beyond what the noun and adjective give, and these give nothing by way of etymology, because the whole root with all its derivatives has been monopolized by religion, leaving us to guess what, outside the sphere of religion, its physical rootsignification may have been. And such is the case not only in Hebrew, but likewise in the cognate languages. Some compare the radicals with those of the root chadash, 'to shine', from which is formed the adjective for 'new', the new thing being the shining thing. This would be in accord with the positive aspect of the Biblical idea of 'holiness', that of purity, and to it the ethical application of the idea would naturally attach itself. Others make the derivation from a root-group having for its first radicals the combination qad, in which inheres the idea of 'cutting', of 'separation'. On this view the branch of the concept which denotes aloofness, majesty, lies nearer the rootconcept. The latter of these derivations deserves the preference.

The reasons for this preference are, first: it is easier to subsume all that pertains to the idea of holiness under the concept of separation, than, pursuing the reverse order, to start with the notion of purity. The transition from majesty to purity seems easier than that from purity to majesty. In the next place, the opposite of qadosh is chol; the latter means 'loose', 'open', 'accessible': it is natural, then, to assume that qadosh is originally 'separated', 'cut off'; 'nontrespassible' [1 Sam. 21:5; Ezek. 42:20; Amos 2:7]. And thirdly, a certain synonymity can be observed between the idea of holiness and that connected with the root cherem. The Hiphil of this latter root means 'to devote', and this starts from the idea of separating (cp. 'harem' and 'Hermon').

Starting then with the concept of 'cutting off', we must endeavour to trace the development of the word, and in what manner it came to be applied to the Deity. The original sense is a negative one. And it is a practical one, describing a rule of behaviour to be observed with relation to the Deity and His surroundings. Beginning to speak of an 'attribute' of God can only lead to misunderstanding. 'Holiness' is not in the first instance what a god is, but it teaches what ought not to be done to a god, that is, come too familiarly near. 'Unapproachability' would best express it. But the further feeling is that this rule of exclusion is not something arbitrary; it is due to the fact that the divine is divine, and that it insists upon having this distinction between itself and the creature recognized. Here, then, a positive element enters in through the consciousness on God's part of His distinctness and His resolve to maintain the distinction and give it external expression. A shrine is not indiscriminately open, the entourage of the deity and of the shrine constitute a barrier for approach, which, when violated, excites the resentment of the deity.

Thus far the notion is not one of Special Revelation; it is not confined to Israel or the Old Testament. The Phoenicians, for instance, speak of 'the holy gods'. But under the influence of Special Revelation the idea is immeasurably deepened. It is safe to say that no Shemitic pagan ever looked upon his god in the same manner that Isaiah did when having the vision in the temple. Since ascription and feeling of holiness are at the bottom a recognition of deity, it must follow that the true, inward, consummate sense of it can be reached only there, where the conviction of the uniqueness, not of a god as such, but of Jehovah as the only true God, exists. As Deity obtains a new meaning, when we pass over from paganism to Israel, so does holiness. Notice that the idea of majesty and exaltation above the creature is not abandoned; it is only deepened and purified, and remains a standing safeguard against every vulgar familiarity with God, such as would undermine the very basis of religion.

Taking the divine holiness in this form, we can easily perceive that it is not really an attribute to be co-ordinated with the other attributes distinguished in the divine nature. It is something co-extensive with and applicable to everything that can be predicated of God: He is holy in everything that characterizes Him and reveals Him, holy in His goodness and grace, no less than in His righteousness and wrath. An attribute, strictly speaking, holiness becomes first through its restriction to the ethical sphere.

There are certain passages in the Old Testament that clearly illustrate this general conception of the majesty-holiness of Jehovah. The Song of Hannah [1 Sam. 2:2], addresses God in these words: 'There is none holy as Jehovah, for there is none beside Thee, neither is there any rock like our God'; again, Hos. 11:9: 'I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee (Israel).' We can explain from this general meaning the association also between holiness and God's dwelling on high [Isa. 57:15]. The heavens are the highest and most intimate shrine, where Jehovah dwells alone; hence the striking contrast, when over against this is set His condescension to the humble. The same association exists with Jehovah's eternity. This likewise is something so specifically divine that it sets Him apart from all that is created and exists in time. In the passage just quoted, God's being enthroned for ever and His holiness stand side by side. Habakkuk exclaims: 'Art not Thou from everlasting, O Jehovah my God, mine Holy One; we shall not die' [1:12]. It is the same with the divine omnipotence, for this too belongs to Jehovah alone. In the song of Ex. 15 God is celebrated as 'glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders'. According to Num. 20:12, Moses and Aaron are rebuked for not having 'sanctified' Jehovah (that is to say, for not having recognized and proclaimed Him as 'holy'), when they failed to ascribe to Him the omnipotence that could make water flow from the rock at a simple word of command. Especially in the prophet Ezekiel this association with omnipotence is frequent. One might almost say that here holiness is equivalent to almighty power. God complains that His holy name has been profaned among the nations through the captivity of Israel, because it made the heathen doubt His omnipotence to protect and defend and deliver His people. Hence in order to sanctify His name again (that is to say, to exhibit Himself as omnipotent), He will gather them and bring them back into their land. 'My great name' is now interchangeable in this prophet with 'my holy name'. The subjective response from man to this majestyholiness consists in awe and reverence [1 Sam. 6:20; Isa. 6:2, 3], where even the raphim, though not sinful, recognize it with trembling [Isa. 8:13].

More familiar to us is the specifically ethical aspect of 'holiness'. This is due to its having almost monopolized the word in the New Testament. Still it has not entirely supplanted the general majestyholiness, as the second petition in the Lord's prayer may remind us. But, what is of more importance, the ethical meaning does not stand in the Old Testament simply co-ordinated with the majesty-meaning, as if these represented two disconnected ideas. On the contrary, the ethical sense bears very plainly upon its face the impress of its development out of the majesty-idea. The development starts with the experience that by a sinful being the majesty of God is far more keenly felt than by a sinless one. The seraphim in Isa. 6 feel the majesty and react to it with awe; the prophet feels this same thing, but feels it as a sinner; hence his exclamation, 'Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.' This is a sense, not of general fear, but of moral dissolution. The reaction upon the revelation of Jehovah's ethical holiness is a consciousness of sin. But this consciousness of sin carries in itself a profound realization of the majesty of God. It contemplates the holiness not as 'purity' simply. It were better to define it 'majestic purity' or 'ethical sublimity'. It is associated with exaltation no less than the other branch. Especially in Isaiah this intermarriage between majesty and purity is clearly observable. The prophet likes to speak of it in terms of dimension rather than of intensity. 'Jehovah of Hosts is exalted in judgment, and God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness' [5:16; cp. Psa. 15:1; 24:3].

From this interweaving with the idea of majesty we may further explain that holiness becomes the principle of the punishment of sin. From mere purity, which is a negative conception, this could never follow, for purity might satisfy itself with a mere revulsion from sin or a shutting up of itself against sin. As soon, however, as the element of majesty is made to mingle with that of purity, the latter becomes an active principle, that must vindicate itself and uphold its own honour. Holiness thus operating is represented as the light of divine glory turned into a flame devouring the sinful [Isa. 5:24; 10:17; 33:14, 15]. The same colouring received from the majesty of God is perceptible in the other, benevolent, ethical attributes. According to Psa. 103:1ff., the 'holy name' of God underlies such gracious manifestations as are enumerated in vss. 2–5.

Side by side with holiness in God Himself, holiness is predicated of certain things that are more or less closely related to Him. The temple is holy, heaven is called holy, the sabbath is holy, the mountain of Jehovah is holy. We have already seen how this is a natural consequence of the primary meaning of the word. If Jehovah is unapproachably majestic, then it becomes important to draw a circle of holiness around Him, which shall bar out the 'profane'. On our view the holiness predicated of God is the primary, original conception, the holiness of the other things is derivatory. The divine holiness radiates, as it were, in every direction, and creates a light inaccessible.

Some writers, however, have taken the opposite view of the sequence of these two ideas. They assume that at first certain objects entering into the cult of the deity were considered holy, and that afterwards this way of speaking passed over from the objects to the god into whose cult they entered. It has even been suggested that the transfer may have been brought about through the images, which were both sacred things devoted to the worship of the deity, and identified with the gods themselves. But this would have been an utterly unintelligible procedure. What could the holiness of an object, considered as antedating the custom of calling the gods holy, have meant? To say that they were 'consecrated' is no answer, for it presupposes that the deity is sacred. The only answer that could be given would be that the things were set apart as the property of the god, in other words, 'holiness', when predicated of a thing, would be equivalent to 'the property of the god'. But on this view it becomes quite incomprehensible how the transition of the attribute to the deity ever took place. If the thing is holy, because it is exclusive property, what could it mean that Jehovah was exclusive property? The proximate answer to this would probably be: He is the property of those who are holy, that is Israel. But on that view the idea would become a purely reciprocal one, in which the god would have no priority to man.

This certainly is not the impression we receive from the Old Testament usage, which stresses so strongly the exclusive application of the idea to God. Moreover, the difficulty arises, that on this view of the matter the existence of private property must have preceded in time the rise of the idea of holiness. Diestel, who advocates the priority of thing-holiness or at least its simultaneity with godholiness, seeks to prove his theory with two arguments. The one is derived from the name 'the Holy One of Israel', frequent in Isaiah, occurring also in Jeremiah and the Psalter. He takes it to mean, 'the One who consecrates Himself to Israel'. Grammatically this is possible, for on the same principle the sabbath is called 'the holy one of Jehovah', that is to say, dedicated to Him. So is Aaron. Still, the usual construction on such an understanding would have been with the preposition lamed, 'holy to Israel'. But an objection to Diestel's view is that Isaiah uses the name not exclusively with favourable reference to Israel; sometimes the opposite is the case [5:19, 24].

On account of this it is better to interpret the name as joining two thoughts in one: Jehovah is the Holy One, and Jehovah is the God of

Israel. His appurtenance to Israel is indeed affirmed, but it finds expression in the phrase 'of Israel', and 'Holy' stands in the ordinary (ethical-majestic) sense to describe His nature. The other fact relied upon by Diestel has already been touched upon above. He thinks that because holiness can be associated with benevolent divine intent towards Israel, this must rest on its being a name for Jehovah's consecration to Israel. We saw that this combination has no other purport than to ascribe to the attributes in question a unique richness and quality.

The derived holiness of things and persons in the service of the deity or in the neighbourhood of its dwelling-place occurs, as has been shown, both in the circles of paganism and in revealed religion. But there is a difference in principle as to the manner in which the idea has been worked out. The background of the concept in paganism is of a physical, naturalistic kind. The derived holiness was conceived as a vague influence passing over to persons and things. One might compare it to an electrical current, with which everything in the vicinity of a shrine is charged. It makes things dangerous to the touch. It is different among Israel. Though the same dangerous character may belong to certain things (for instance, the ark), yet this is due only to a free sanctifying act of God. Thus God 'hallowed' the sabbath, not because it inherently possessed a peculiar character, to which magic and superstition could attach themselves, but because it was His will that the day should bear a peculiar significance reminding of and binding it to the service of God.

The specific connotation of 'holiness', as predicated of man, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, should be carefully noted. When a man is declared to be ethically holy, even where the conception has been thoroughly spiritualized, the meaning is never simply that of moral goodness, considered in itself, but always ethical goodness seen in relation to God. The idea marks the consecration of ethics to religion.

RIGHTEOUSNESS

Midway between the transcendental and the communicative attributes stands the righteousness of Jehovah. The Hebrew words are tsedek and tsedakhah; the adjective is tsaddiq. First of all it ought to be observed that when righteousness is predicated of Jehovah, the analogy is not the duty of fair dealing between man and man, but always the procedure according to strict justice on the part of a judge. There are only apparent exceptions to this, as when, for the sake of metaphor, God is represented as Himself appearing in court seeking a verdict on His own action [Psa. 51:4]. As a rule the righteous God is the righteous judge. Now a judge among men is not called righteous simply because he follows an instinct of fairness towards the parties before him, but because he rigidly adheres to the law above him. Thus the question arises how this idea can be transferred to God, who has no law above Him. Still, the prophets and the Old Testament in general adhere to this form of representation. Nor is this with them a convenient anthropomorphism simply. The idea lies behind it, that underlying the decisions of Jehovah lies His nature. That is the law, not, to be sure, above Him, but yet truly within Him. And the same presupposition applies when not merely in a case of decision under the law, but also in the making of the law Jehovah is called righteous. The law was not made according to arbitrary fiat, it is a righteous law, because conforming to the divine nature, higher than which there is and can be no norm [Deut. 4:8].

This forensic or judicial righteousness of Jehovah further branches out in several directions. We can distinguish

[1] a righteousness of cognizance,

[2] a righteousness of retribution,

[3] a righteousness of vindication, and

[4] a righteousness of salvation, shading off into

[5] a righteousness of benevolence.

[1] First, then, the righteousness of cognizance

By this we mean that Jehovah is held to take notice and keep account of all moral conduct. This applies both to individuals and to nations collectively. All conduct falls under the divine jurisdiction. Here it should be remembered that God, while functioning as judge, none the less remains God, and His being God cannot be separated from His procedure as judge. In ordinary life it is not the business of a judge to watch the conduct of men subject to his jurisdiction. From Jehovah's oversight nothing escapes. Nor is He in any relation a disinterested spectator: the cognizance is with a view to corresponding action.

Amos has given most emphatic expression to this. To him the divine omniscience has practically become the pervasiveness of ethical appraisal and ethical control on the part of Jehovah. Righteousness and God are identical; to seek the one is to seek the other [5:4, 6, 14]. To such an extent does the prophet feel righteousness to be the inward governing principle of world-control, that it appears to him as the normal, the departure from which is monstrous and absurd [5:7; 6:12]. God stands beside every wall of conduct, a plumbline in His hand [7:8]. In this figure, however, the cognizance-aspect is seen at the point of turning into that of retribution, for the plumbline was used not merely for measuring, but likewise for tearing down [Isa. 28:17].

[2] Secondly, therefore, Jehovah is righteous as the One who punishes sin

The modern ethical admiration for the prophets but too often overlooks this feature of their teaching. Ritschl has even denied that the punishment of sin appears anywhere in the Old Testament, except in some of the latest writings, as a result of the divine righteousness. He would interpret the attribute as a benevolent one. Going back to the physical root-meaning of 'straightness' he defines it as 'the order and normal consistency with which God acts to secure for the righteous and pious the attainment of salvation through protection from the wicked'. Only incidentally, because the positive beneficial end cannot be attained otherwise, the destruction of the wicked results. They stand in the way of God's plans and must be swept aside.

Our criticism upon this interpretation should not be that it is entirely wrong. There is a meaning of the term 'righteousness' imparting to it benevolent character and sometimes losing sight in doing so of the retribution administered to the wicked. We shall presently see what there is of this in the prophets. Ritschl's mistake does not lie in this either, that the later writings of the Old Testament evince a keener sense of this terrible side of the divine treatment of sin. The later generations had learned through the bitter experience of the judgment how true and inavertible the execution of this principle was. The more frequent occurrence of the word itself, for instance, in the penitential prayers of that period, may serve as proof of this [2 Chron. 12:6; Ezra 9:15; Neh. 9:33; Lam. 1:18; Dan. 9:14]. But the mistake of Ritschl lies in his taking part for the whole. Still, so far as the actual occurrence of the idea in the Old Testament is concerned, he was not mistaken.

We must, however, emphatically insist that there is a retribution for sin in the prophets and that this is for them associated with the word 'righteousness'. In fact Amos and Isaiah are all emphasis on this. The word is not lacking, but its relative infrequency is proof of its unworded presence to the mind of the prophets. There are things so self-understood that scarcely articulate expression is required for voicing them. The term is found in Amos 5:24: 'let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.' This should not be interpreted as a demand for uprightness from Israel. Israel, being so degraded and corrupt as the prophet represents it to be, it would have been strange to ask for uprightness of such sudden and copious production as the figure implies. The idea is rather, that, the time for reasoning and expostulation having gone by, nothing remains but divine judgment rushing down and sweeping away the sinners. The thought of the absolute necessity of this has made so deep an impression on Amos' mind, that he almost loses sight of everything else. There is a grandiose one-sidedness in this prophecy; Amos is the preacher of justice and retribution par excellence. His mind is carried away by the unparalleled energy, one might almost say impetuosity, of the divine resentment against sin. Jehovah, according to Amos, executed righteousness, not from any lower motive, such as safeguarding the structure of society, or converting the sinner, but from the supreme motive of giving free sway to the infinite force of his ethical indignation. In Isaiah we meet with essentially the same conception, although not perhaps in such impressive grandeur as with Amos. In two passages the divine righteousness is explicitly named as bringing the judgment on sin [Isa. 5:16; 10:22].

[3] The third aspect of righteousness in the prophets is that of vindication

Jehovah decides between two causes, puts the one in the right, the other in the wrong. He does this as part of His world-government, to which all issues are subject, but more particularly, because the fulfilment of His purpose is involved. The idea is soteric, though having in it a principle of universalism. It may be applied to individuals, but also collectively. The Psalmists sometimes claim that they are righteous, and appeal to Jehovah to acknowledge this and treat them accordingly. This has caused difficulty with interpreters on account of its seeming to run athwart the principle of unmeritoriousness in God's dealing with His people. The difficulty is relieved by giving such statements their proper setting. It is not over against God in the abstract, that the pleaders claim to be righteous, but over against their adversaries, who persecute them, not, however, for private reasons, but on account of their identification with the true religion.

The same holds true where the claimant is not an individual but the personification of Israel. In the Psalms it is not always easy to determine whether the praying subject is an individual or the congregation of Jehovah. The principle, however, is the same in both cases. However sinful against Jehovah, Israel stands in the world for the true religion, the cause of God is bound up with her destiny. Over against her oppressors and persecutors she is in the right, although these at the same time are the instruments of God in pressing His claim against Israel. But they go too far and do not understand the merely instrumental nature of the service they render. It is the part of the divine righteousness to declare this, in doing which, for a moment, the issue between Jehovah and Israel may be put to one side. But not seldom also the sight of Israel's humiliation and sorrow seems to move Jehovah to deep compassion, and becomes the occasion for a signal display of grace towards His suffering people. An instructive and touching passage in this connection is Mic. 7:9, where Israel speaks: 'I will bear the indignation of Jehovah, because I have sinned against Him: until He plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness' [cp. for the righteousness of vindication, Isa. 41:10, 11; 50:8; 51:5; 54:1, 14, 17; 59:16, 17].

[4] Out of this reasonable righteousness of vindication, that of salvation easily develops

So far, even in the vindication of Israel against her enemy, the setting is plainly forensic. God acts in the instances cited plainly in the capacity of a judge. There are, however, cases where righteousness is spoken of as a source of salvation without particular reflection on the righting of the people's wrongs from the side of their enemies. This saving righteousness can appear as an attitude or intent in God [Isa. 46:4, 13]. But it can also be objectified, so as to acquire existence and embodiment outside of Jehovah, the product of the righteousness as it is in Him. Nay, it can even appear in the plural: 'righteousnesses' [Isa. 45:24; Mic. 6:5 Heb.]. It is synonymous with such terms as salvation, light, glory, peace [Isa. 46:12; 51:5, 6, 8; 56:1; 59:9, 11; 61:3, 10; 62:1, 2]. Isaiah 49:4 is the only passage where the salvationidea and the judicial-award-idea intermingle: 'Yet surely the righteousness due to me is with Jehovah, and my recompense with my God.'

These passages, all in the latter part of Isaiah, furnish Ritschl with the evidence for his benevolent construction of the idea of 'righteousness' in general. It cannot be denied that here his contention is right, and credit due to him for having brought light into the facts. But his recurring upon the root-idea of 'straightness', and framing his definition upon it, is not thereby proven correct. It reflects his desire to cut the whole idea loose as much as possible from its forensic moorings. It need not be absolutely rejected, however, on that account. To us a sufficient explanation seems to be found in this, that the judge is commonly expected to be the saviour of the wronged and oppressed. When it is forgotten that he does this as a judge, and only the beneficent intent and the desirable result are remembered, the judge, as it were, disappears from the scene, and only the saviour remains. To us the association of righteousness in God as Judge on the one hand, and saving procedure on the other, [Psa. 51:14] appears more or less incongruous, just as the same combination of holiness with saving procedure, previously observed, has something strange for us. Compare, however—and it is found in the New Testament [1 John 1:9]—'He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.'

For the pluralizing of the idea noticed in Isa. 45:24, and Mic. 6:5, analogies have been discovered outside of the prophets [Judg. 5:11; 1 Sam. 12:7; Psa. 11:7; 103:6]. According to some writers, however, this is a different usage, with its own peculiar etymology, and the rendering ought to be 'victories'. But the two ideas, perhaps, do not lie so far apart as is imagined. Even if the term be rendered 'victories', there may be reflected in this the belief, so common in war, that victory is a practical verdict from the deity, declaring the victor in the right. On this view the instances cited should be classified with the preceding rubric, the righteousness of vindication.

[5] One step farther still, the term 'righteousness' is removed from its forensic origin where it comes to stand for 'generosity', 'alms-giving'

This is a late development. Instances occur in Dan. 4:27 (Aramaic); Psa. 112:3, 9; Prov. 10:2; 11:4. Examples of it also occur in the New Testament [Matt. 6:1; 2 Cor. 9:9, quoting freely from the Psalm]. Undoubtedly in Judaism there was connected with the usage as such a sentiment of self-righteousness. Hence our Lord's criticism of the spirit, while retaining the current word.

EMOTIONS AND AFFECTIONS

The next group of attributes consists of what may be called the 'emotional' or 'affectional' dispositions in Jehovah's nature. Most of the material for this is found in Hosea and the second part of Isaiah. Hosea's temperament was strongly emotional, and therefore adapted for giving expression to this side of the divine self-disclosure. We are here in a sphere full of anthropomorphism, but this furnishes no excuse for neglecting or glossing over the subject. An anthropomorphism is never without an inner core of important truth, which only has to be translated into more theological language, where possible, to enrich our knowledge of God.

The prophet Hosea was not unaware of the relativity and limitations of this mode of description, as may be seen from 11:9: 'I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger … for I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee.' What other prophets affirm concerning God in terms of will and purpose, Hosea expresses in language suffused with emotion. He speaks of the divine resentment of sin as 'hating' [9:15]. God's intention to punish Israel is 'a strong desire' [10:10]. 'Anger' appears as a motive for judgment [11:9; 13:11]. The strongest expressions are found in 5:14; 13:7, 8. Still the tendency towards this is not wholly absent from Isaiah either [42:13, 14; 59:17; 63:3–6].

The terms are usually derived from violent physical processes, but we must not forget that the language formed such words before the prophet, and the latter only made use of them. As to anger, chemah means 'a boiling heat within'; 'aph is 'the snorting quick breathing' of an angry person; as its opposite, 'erekh 'appim, literally 'long breathing', means 'longsuffering'; za'am is 'seething heat'; 'ebhrah, 'the overflowing of passion'.

But not only the dangerous, likewise the friendly, benevolent manifestation of Jehovah's nature is expressed, in similar terms. The most general term for this is chesed, a word which has received the most varying renderings, but, taking all in all, is best rendered by 'loving-kindness'. It expresses the warm, affectionate feeling that should exist between persons bound together in a previous bond of love. It presupposes love, but is even more than that. Compare Job 39:14–16; the pinions and feathers of the ostrich have no chesed, because she leaves her eggs in the sand. 'ahabhah, 'love', is distinguished from chesed, in that it expresses the spontaneous, free origin of the divine affection. Into chen, 'grace', the element of the unworthiness of the recipient enters. Still further we meet rachamim, literally 'bowels', for mercy and compassion. The importance of 'loving-kindness' is seen in this, that it underlies and enriches and makes more tender other disclosures of the divine affection [Hos. 2:19]; for the New Testament, cp. Eph. 2:4, 5.

[B] THE BOND BETWEEN JEHOVAH AND ISRAEL

According to the prophets a close and unique bond exists between Jehovah and Israel. This is so self-understood as not to need explicit affirmation. Indirectly its existence is expressed through references to its origin. Jehovah chose Israel, they are His people; He married her, they are like a vineyard which He cultivates for the sake of its fruit. A technical term for it is berith, usually rendered by 'covenant', although this is not always the proximate association. Of forms of some inter-human berith mention is made in Amos, Hosea and

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