“I hate, I contemn your festivals and in your feasts I delight not; for when you offer me your burnt-offerings and gifts, I do not regard them with favour and your fatted peace-offerings I will not look at. Take away from me the clamour of your songs; and the music of your viols I will not hear. But let judgment roll down like waters and justice like a perennial brook.”
“I hate, I contemn your festivals and in your feasts I delight not; for when you offer me your burnt-offerings and gifts, I do not regard them with favour and your fatted peace-offerings I will not look at. Take away from me the clamour of your songs; and the music of your viols I will not hear. But let judgment roll down like waters and justice like a perennial brook.”
In the younger contemporary prophet of Ephraim, Hosea, the stress is laid on the relation of love (ḥesēd) between Yahweh, the divine husband, and Israel, the faithless spouse. Israel’s faithlessness is shown in idolatry and the prevailing corruption of the high places in which the old Canaanite Baal was worshipped instead of Yahweh. It is shown, moreover, in foreign alliances. Compacts with a powerful foreign state, under whose aegis Israel was glad to shelter, involved covenants sealed by sacrificial rites in which the deity or deities of the foreign state were involved as well as Yahweh, the god of the weaker vassal-state. And so Yahweh’s honour was compromised. While these aspects of Israel’s relation to Yahweh are emphasized by the Ephraimite prophet, the larger conceptions of Yahweh’s character as universal Lord and the God of righteousness, whose government of the world is ethical, emphasized by the prophet of Tekoah, are scarcely presented.
In Isaiah both aspects—divine universal sovereignty and justice, taught by Amos, and divine loving-kindness to Israel and God’s claims on His people’s allegiance, taught by Hosea—are fully expressed. Yahweh’s relation of love to Israel is exhibited under the purer symbol of fatherhood (Isa. i. 2-4), a conception which was as ancient and familiar as that of husband, though perhaps the latter recurs more frequently in prophecy (Isa. i. 21; Ezek. xvi. &c.). Even more insistently does Isaiah present the great truth of God’s universal sovereignty. As with his elder contemporary, the foreign peoples—(but in Isaiah’s oracles Assyria and Egypt as well as the Palestinian races)—come within his survey. The “fullness of the earth” is Yahweh’s glory (vi. 3) and the nations of the earth are the instruments of His irresistible and righteous will. Assyria is the “bee” and Egypt the “fly” for which Yahweh hisses. Assyria is the “hired razor” (Isa. vii. 18, 19), or the “rod of His wrath,” for the chastisement of Israel (x. 5). But the instrument unduly exalts itself, and Assyria itself shall suffer humiliation at the hands of the world’s divine sovereign (x. 7-15).
And so the old limitations of Israel’s popular religion,—the same limitations that encumbered also the religions of all the neighbouring races that succumbed in turn to Assyria’s invincible progress,—now began to disappear. Therefore, while every other religion which was purely national was extinguished in the nation’s overthrow, the religion of Israel survived even amid exile and dispersion. For Amos and Isaiah were able to single out those loftier spiritual and ethical elements which lay implicit in Mosaism and to lift them into their due place of prominence. Nationalsacraand the ceremonial requirements were made to assume a secondary rôle or were even ignored.24The centre of gravity in Hebrew religion was shifted from ceremonial observance and local sacra to righteous conduct. Religion and righteousness were henceforth welded into an indissoluble whole. The religion of Yahweh was no longer to rest upon the narrow perishable basis of locality and national sacra, but on the broad adamantine foundations of a universal divine sovereignty over all mankind and of righteousness as the essential element in the character of Yahweh and in his claims on man. This was the “corner-stone of precious solid foundation”: “I will make judgment the measuring-line and righteousness the plummet” (Isa. xxviii. 16, 17). The religion of the Hebrew race—properly the Jews—now enters on a new stage, for it should be observed that it was Amos, Isaiah and Micah—prophets of Judah—who laid the actual foundations. The latter half of the 8th century, which witnessed a rapid succession of reigns in the northern kingdom accompanied by dismemberment of its territory and final overthrow, witnessed also the humiliating vassalage and religious decline of the kingdom of Judah. Unlike Amos and Micah, Isaiah was not only the prophet of denunciation but also the prophet of hope. Though Yahweh’s chastisements on Ephraim and Judah would continue to fall till scarcely a remnant was left (Isa. vi. 13, LXX.), yet all was not to be lost. A remnant of the people was to return,i.e.be converted to Yahweh. The name given to an infant child—Immanuel—was to become the mystic symbol of a growing hope. God’s presence was to abide in Jerusalem, and, as the century drew near its close, “Immanuel” became the watchword and talisman of a strong faith that God would never permit Jerusalem to be captured by the Assyrians. In fact it is not improbable that the words of consolation uttered by the prophet (Isa. viii. 9-10) in the dark days of Ahaz (735-734B.C.) were among the oracles which God commanded Isaiah “to seal up among his disciples” (verse 16), and that they were quoted once more with effect as the armies of Sennacherib closed around Jerusalem. The talismanic name Immanuel became the nucleus out of which the laterMessianicprophecies of Isaiah grew. To this age alone can we probably assign Isa. ix. 1-7, xi. 1-9, xxxii. 1-3. The hopes expressed in the word Immanuel, “God with us,” were to become embodied in a personality of the royal seed of David, an ideal righteous ruler who was to bring peace to the war-distraught realm. Thus Isaiah became in that troubled age the true founder ofMessianicprophecy. The strange contrast between the succession of dynasties and kings cut off by assassination in the northern kingdom, ending in the tragic overthrow of 721B.C., and the persistent succession through three centuries of the seed of David on the throne of Jerusalem, as well as the marvellous escape of Jerusalem in 701B.C.from the fate of Samaria, must have invested the seed of David in the eyes of all thoughtful observers with a mysterious and divine significance. The Messianic prophecies of Isaiah, the prophet of faith and deliverance, were destined to reverberate through all subsequent centuries. We hear the echoes in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and lastly in Haggai in ever feebler tones, and they were destined to reawaken in the Psalter (Pss. ii. and lxxii.), in the psalms of Solomon and in the days of Christ. SeeMessiah(and also the article “Messiah” in Hastings’sDict. of Christ and the Gospels).
The next notable contribution to the permanent growth of Hebrew prophetic religion was made about a century after the lifetime of Isaiah by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The reaction into idolatry and Babylonian star worship in the long reign of Manasseh synchronized and was connected with vassalageto Assyria, while the reformation in the reign of Josiah (621B.C.) is conversely associated with the decay of Assyrian power after the death of Assur-bani-pal. That reformation failed to effect its purifying mission. The hurt of the daughter of God’s people was but lightly healed (Jer. vi. 14, 15; cf. viii. 11, 12). No possibility of recovery now remained to the diseased Hebrew state. The outlook appeared indeed far darker to Jeremiah than it seemed more than a century before to Isaiah in the evil days of Jotham and Ahaz, “when the whole head was sick and the whole heart faint” (Isa. i. 5). Jeremiah foresaw that there was now no possibility of recovery. The Hebrew state was doomed and even its temple was to be destroyed. This involved an entire reconstruction of theological ideas which went beyond even the reconstructions of Amos and Isaiah. In the old religion the race or clan was the unit of religion as well as of social life. Properly speaking, the individual was related to God only through the externalities of the clan or tribal life, its common temple and its commonsacra. But now that these external bases of the old religion were to be swept away, a reconstruction of religious ideas became necessary. For the external supports which had vanished Jeremiah substituted a basis which wasinternal, personal and spiritual(i.e.ethical). In place of the old covenant based on external observance, which had been violated, there was to be anew covenantwhich was to consist not in outward prescription, but in the law which God would placein the heart(Jer. xxxi. 30-33). This was to take place by an act of divine grace (Jer. xxiv. 5 foll.): “I will give them an heart to know me that I am the Lord” (verse 7). Ezekiel, who borrowed both Jeremiah’s language and ideas, expresses the same thought in the well-known words that Yahweh would give the people instead of a heart of stone a heart of flesh (Ezek. xi. 19, 20, xx. 40 foll., xxxvi. 25-27), and would shame them by his loving-kindness into repentance, and there “shall ye remember your ways and all your doings wherein ye have been defiled and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight” (xx. 43).
Personal religionnow became an important element in Hebrew piety and upon this there logically followed the idea ofpersonal responsibility. The solidarity of race or family was expressed in the old tradition reflected in Deut. v. 9, 10, that God would visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, and it lived on in later Judaism under exaggerated forms. The hopes of the individual Jew were based on the piety of holy ancestors. “We have Abraham as our father.” ButEzekielexpressed the strong reaction which had set in against this belief in its older forms. He denies that the individual ever dies for the sins of the father. “The soul that sinneth, it (the pronoun emphasized in the original) shall die” (Ezek. xviii. 4). Neither Noah, Daniel nor Job could have rescued by his righteousness any but his own soul (xiv. 14). And as a further consequenceindividual freedomis strongly asserted. It is possible for every sinner to turn to God and escape punishment, and conversely for a righteous man to backslide and fall. In the presence of these awful truths which Ezekiel preached of individual freedom and of impending judgment, the prophet is weighted with a heavy responsibility. It is his duty to warn every individual, for no sinner is to be punished without warning (Ezek. iii. 16 foll. xxxiii.).
The closing years of the Judaean kingdom and the final destruction of the temple (586B.C.) shattered the Messianic ideals cherished in the evening of Isaiah’s lifetime and again in the opening years of the reign of Josiah. The untimely death of that monarch upon the battlefield of Megiddo (608B.C.), followed by the inglorious reigns of the kings who succeeded him, who became puppets in turn of Egypt or of Babylonia, silenced for a while the Messianic hopes for a future king or line of kings of Davidic lineage who would rule a renovated kingdom in righteousness and peace. Even in the darkness of the exile period hopes did not die. Yet they no longer remained the same. In the Deutero-Isaiah (chaps. xl.-lv.) we have no longer a Jewish but aforeignmessiah. The onward progress of the Persian Cyrus and his anticipated conquest of Babylonia marked him out as Yahweh’s anointed instrument for effecting the deliverance of exiled Israel and their restoration to their old home and city (Isa. xli. 2, xliv. 24, xlv.). This was, however, but a subsidiary issue and possesses no permanent spiritual significance. Of far more vital importance is the conception of Israel as God’ssuffering servant. This is not the place to enter into the prolonged controversy as to the real significance of this term, whether it signifies the nation Israel or the righteous community only, or finally an idealized prophetic individual who, like the prophet Jeremiah, was destined to suffer for the well-being of his people. Duhm, in his epoch-making commentary, distinguishes on the grounds of metre and contentsthe four servant-passages, in the last of which (lii. 13-liii. 12) the ideal suffering servant of Yahweh is portrayed most definitely as an individual. In the “servant-passages” he is innocent, while in the rest of the Deutero-Isaiah he appears as by no means faultless, and the personal traits are not prominent. These views of Duhm, in which a severe distinction is thus drawn between the representation of Yahweh’s servant in the servant-passages, and that which meets us in the rest of the Deutero-Isaiah, have been challenged by a succession of critics.25It is only necessary for us to take note of the ideal in its general features. It probably arose from the fact that the calamities from which Israel had suffered both before and during the exile had drawn the reflective minds of the race to the contemplation of the problem of suffering. The “servant of Yahweh” presents one aspect of the problem and its attempted solution, the book of Job another, while in the Psalms,e.g.Pss. xxii., xlii.-xliii., lxxiii., lxxvii., other phases of the problem are presented. In the Deutero-Isaiah the meaning of Israel’s sufferings is exhibited as vicarious. Israel is suffering for a great end. He suffers, is despised, rejected, chastened and afflicted that others may be blessed and be at peace through his chastisement. This noble conception of Israel’s great destiny is conveyed in Isa. xlix. 6, in words which may be regarded as perhaps the noblest utterance in Hebrew prophecy: “To establish the tribes of Jacob and bring back the preserved of Israel is less important than being my servant. Yea, I will make you a light to theGentilesthat my salvation may be unto the end of the earth.”26This passage, which belongs to the second of the brief “servant-songs,” sets the mission of Israel in its true relation to the world. It is the necessary corollary to the teaching of Amos, that God is the righteous lord of all the world. If Jerusalem has been chosen as His sanctuary and Israel as His own people, it is only that Israel may diffuse God’s blessings in the world even at the cost of Israel’s own humiliation, exile and dispersion.
The Deutero-Isaiah closes a great prophetic succession, which begins with Amos, continues in Isaiah in even greater splendour with the added elements of hope and Messianic expectation, and receives further accession in Jeremiah with his special teaching on inward spiritual and personal religion which constituted the new covenant of divine grace. Finally the Deutero-Isaiah conveyed to captive Israel the message of Yahweh’s unceasing love and care, and the certainty of their return to Judaea and the restoration of the national prosperity which Ezekiel had already announced in the earlier period of the exile. To this is united the noble ideal of the suffering servant, which serves both as a contribution to the great problem of suffering as purifying and vicarious and as the interpretation to the mind of the nation itself of that nation’s true function in the future, a lesson which the actual future showed that Israel was slow to receive. Nowhere in the Old Testament does the doctrine taught by Amos of Yahweh’s universal power and sovereigntyreceive ampler and more splendid exposition than in the great lyrical passages of chap. xl. It marks the highest point to which the Hebrew race attained in its progress from henotheism to monotheism. Here again we see the wholesome influences of the exile. The Jew had passed from the narrow confines of his homeland into a wider world, and this larger vision of human life reacted on the prophet’s theology. This closes the evolution of Hebrew prophetism. What immediately follows is on a descending slope with some striking exceptions,e.g.the book of Job and the book of Jonah.
7.Deuteronomic Legalism.—The book of Deuteronomy was the product of prophetic teaching operating on traditional custom, which was represented in its essential features by the two codes of legislation contained in Ex. xx. 24-xxiii. 19 (E) and Ex. xxxiv. 10-26 (J), but had also become tainted and corrupted by centuries of Canaanite influence and practice which especially infected the cult of thehigh places. The existence of “high places” is pre-supposed in those two ancient codes and is also presumed in the narratives of the documents E and J which contain them. But the prevalence of the worship of “other gods” and of graven images in these “high places,” and the moral debasement of life which accompanied these cults, made it clear that the “high places” were sources of grave injury to Israel’s social life. In all probability the reformation instituted in the reign of Hezekiah, to which 2 Kings xviii. 4 (cf. verse 22) refers, was only partial. It is hardly possible that all the high places were suppressed. The idolatrous reaction in the reign of Manasseh appears to have restored all the evils of the past and added to them. Another and more drastic reform than that which had been previously initiated (probably at the instigation of Isaiah and Micah) now became necessary to save the state. It is universally held by critics that our present book of Deuteronomy (certainly chaps. xii.-xxvi.) is closely connected with the reformation in the reign of Josiah. It is quite clear that many provisions in the old codes of J and E expanded lie at the basis of the book of Deuteronomy. But new features were added. We note for the first time definite regulations respecting Passover and the close union of that celebration withMassōthor “unleavened bread.” We note the laws respecting the clean and unclean animals (certainly based on ancient custom). Moreover, the prohibitions are strengthened and multiplied. In addition to the bare interdict of the sorceress (Ex. xxii. 18), of stone pillars to the Canaanite Baal, of the Ashērah-pole, molten images and the worship of other gods than Yahweh (Ex. xxxiv. 13-17), we now have the strict prohibition ofany employment whateverof the stone-symbol (Maṣṣēbhah), and of all forms of sorcery, soothsaying and necromancy (Deut. xviii. 10, 11. Respecting the stone-pillar see xvi. 22). But of much more far-reaching importance was thelaw of the central sanctuarywhich constantly meets us in Deuteronomy in the reference to “the place (i.e.Jerusalem) which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there” (xii. 5, xvi. 5, 11, 16, xxvi. 2). There alone all offerings of any kind were to be presented (xii. 6, 7, xvi. 7). By this positive enactment all the high places outside the one sanctuary in Jerusalem became illegitimate. A further consequence directly followed from the limitation as to sanctuary, viz. limitation as to the officiating ministers of the sanctuary. In the “book of the covenant” (Ex. xx. 22-xxii. 19), as we have already seen, and in the general practice of the regal period, there was no limitation as to the priesthood, but a definite order of priesthood, viz. Levites, existed, to whom a higher professional prestige belonged. As it was impossible to find a place for the officiating priests of the high places, non-levitical as well as levitical, in the single sanctuary, it became necessary to restrict the functions of sacrifice to the Levites only as well as to the existing official priesthood of the Jerusalem temple (see PRIEST). Doubtless such a reform met with strong resistance from the disestablished and vested interests, but it was firmly supported by royal influence and by the Jerusalem priesthood as well as by the true prophets of Yahweh who had protested against the idolatrous usages and corruptions of the high places.
The strong impress of Hebrew prophecy is to be found in the deeply marked ethical spirit of the Deuteronomic legislation. Love to God and love to man is stamped on a large number of its provisions. Love to God is emphasized in Deut. vi. 5, while love to man meets us in the constant reference to the fatherless and the widow (cf. especially Deut. xvi.). This note of philanthropy is frequently found as a mitigating element (e.g.in the laws respecting slavery and war)27that subdues or even removes the harshness of earlier laws or usages. It should be noted, however, that the spirit of brotherly love was confined within national barriers. It did not operate as a rule beyond the limits of race.
The book of Deuteronomy, in conjunction with the reformation of Josiah’s reign (which synchronizes with the rapid decline of Assyria and the reviving prestige of Yahweh), appeared to mark the triumph of the great prophetic movement. It became at once a codified standard of purer religious life and ultimately served as a beacon of light for the future. But there was shadow as well as light. We note (a) that though the book of Deuteronomy bears the prophetic impress, the priestly impress is perhaps more marked. The writer “evinces a warm regard for the priestly tribe; he guards its privileges (xviii. 1-8), demands obedience for its decisions (xxiv. 8; cf. xvii. 10-12) and earnestly commends its members to the Israelites’ benevolence (xii. 18-19, xiv. 27-29, &c.).”28(b) In many passages Jewish particularism is painfully manifest. Yahweh’s care for other peoples does not appear. The flesh of a dead (unslaughtered) beast is not to be eaten, but it may be given to the “stranger within the gates”! (Deut. xiv. 21).29(c) Prophetic religion was a religion of the spirit which came to the messenger (Isa. lxi. 1) and expressed itself as a word of instruction of Yahweh (tōrah); see Isa. 1. 10. Now when the Hebrew religion was reduced to written form it began to be a book-religion, and since the book consisted of fixed rules and enactments, religion began to acquire a stereotyped character. It will be seen in the sequel that this was destined to be the growing tendency of Jewish religious life—to conform itself to prescribed rules, in other words, it becamelegalism. (d) Lastly, the old genial life of the high places, in which the “new moon” or Sabbath or the annual festival was a sacrificial feast of communion, in which the members of the local community or clan enjoyed fellowship with one another—all this picturesque life ceased to be. And though there was positive gain in the removal of idolatrous and corrupt modes of worship, there was also positive loss in the disappearance of this old genial phase of Hebrew social life and worship. It involved a vast difference to many a Judaean village when the festival pilgrimage was no longer made to the familiar local sanctuary with its hoary associations of ancient heroic or patriarchal story, but to a distant and comparatively unfamiliar city with its stately shrine and priesthood.
8.Ezekiel’s System.—Ezekiel was the successor of Jeremiah and inherited his conceptions. But though the younger prophet adopted the ideas respecting personal religion and individual responsibility from the elder, the characters of the two men were very different. Jeremiah, when he foretold the destruction of the external state and temple ritual, found no resource save in a reconstruction that was internal and spiritual. In this he was true to his prophetic impulse and genius. But Ezekiel was, as Wellhausen well describes him, “a priest in prophet’s mantle.” While Jeremiah’s tendency was spiritual and ideal, Ezekiel’s was constructive and practical. He was the first to foretell with clearness the return of his people from captivity foreshadowed by Jeremiah, and he set himself the task even inthe midnight darkness of Israel’s exile to prepare for the nation’s renewed life. The external bases of Israel’s religion had been swept away, and in exchange for these Jeremiah had led his countrymen to the more permanent internal grounds of a spiritual renewal. But a religion could not permanently subsist in this world of space and time without some external concrete embodiment. It was the task of Ezekiel to take up once more the broken threads of Israel’s religious traditions, and weave them anew into statelier forms of ritual and national polity. The priest-prophet’s keen eye for detail, manifested in the elaborate vision of the wheels and living creatures (Ezek. i.) and in his lamentation on Tyre (chap. xxvii.), is also exhibited in the visions contained in chaps. xl.-xlviii., which describe the ideal reconstructed temple and theocracy of the restored Israel. The foreground is filled by the temple and its precincts. The officiating priests are now the descendants of the line of Zadok belonging to the tribe of Levi. Thus the priesthood is still further restricted as compared with the restriction already noted in the Deuteronomic legislation. It is the sons of Zadok only that have any right to offer sacrifice at the altar of burnt offering (xliii. 19, xliv. 15 foll.). The Levites, who formerly ministered in the high places, now discharge the subordinate offices of gate-keepers and slaughterers of the sacrificial victims.
Another element in this ideal scheme which comes into prominence is the sharp distinction betweenholyandprofane. The wordholiness(qodesh) in primitive Hebrew usage partook of the nature of taboo, and came to be applied to whatever, whether thing or person, stood in close relation to deity and belonged to him, and could not, therefore, be used or treated like other objects not so related, and so was separated or stood apart. The idea underlying the word, which tousis invested with deep ethical meaning, had only this non-ethical, ritual significance in Ezekiel. Unlike the old temple and city, the ideal temple of Ezekiel is entirely separate from the city of Jerusalem. In the immediate surroundings of the temple there is an open space. Then come two concentric forecourts of the temple. The temple stands in the midst of what is called thegizrahor space severed off. The outer court lies higher than the open space, the inner court higher still, and the temple-building in the centre highest of all. No heathen may tread the outer court, no layman the inner court, while the holiest of all may not be trodden even by the priest Ezekiel but only by the angel who accompanies him. “The temple-house has a graduated series of compartments increasing in sanctity inwards” (Davidson). In the innermost the presence of Yahweh abides.
We are here moving in a realm of ideas prevailing in ancient Israel respectingholiness,uncleannessandsin, which are ceremonial and not ethical; see especially Robertson Smith’sReligion of the Semites, 2nd ed., p. 446 foll. (additional note B.) on holiness, uncleanness and taboo. It is, of course, true that the ethical conception of sin as violation of righteousness and an act of rebellion against the divine righteous will had been developed since the days of Amos and Isaiah; but, as we have already observed, cultus and prophetic teaching were separated by an immense gulf, and in spite of the reformation of 621B.C.still remain separated. In the sacrificial system of sin-offerings (ḥattāthand’āshām) we have to do with sin as ceremonial violation and neglect (frequently involuntary), or violation of holiness in the old sense of the term or as personal uncleanness (touching a corpse, eating unclean food, sexual impurity, &c.). In the historical evolution of Hebrew sacrifice it is remarkable how long this non-ethical and primitive survival of old custom still survived, even far into post-exilian times. (SeeSacrifice; also Moore’s art. “Sacrifice” inEncy. Bibl.)
One conspicuous feature of Ezekiel’s system is the predominance of piacular sacrifice. It undoubtedly existed in pre-exilian Israel, especially in times of crisis or calamity, for the appeasement of an offended deity (2 Sam. xxiv. 18 foll.), and in Deut. xxi. 1-9, we have details of the purificatory rite which was necessary when human blood was shed; but now and in the future propitiatory sacrifice and ideas of propitiation began to overshadow all the other forms of sacrifice and their ideas. Ezekiel prescribes a half-yearly ritual of sin-offering whereby atonement was to be made (xlv. 18-20). We shall see subsequently to what great institution this led the way.
Ezekiel’s system constituted anecclesiasticalin place of a political organization, achurch-statein place of a nation. We clearly discern how this reacted on his Messianic conceptions. In his earlier oracles (xxxiv. 23 foll.) we find one shepherd ruling over united Israel, viz. Yahweh’s servant David, whereas in the ideal scheme detailed in chap. xl. et seq. the rôle of the prince as a ruler is a very shadowy one. The prince, it is true, has a central domain, but his functions are ecclesiastical and subordinate and his powers strictly limited (xlvi. 3-8, 12, 16-18).
Thus the exile period marks the parting of the ways in the development of Hebrew religion. In the Deutero-Isaiah we reach the highest point in the evolution of prophetism. It is true that we have some noble resounding echoes in the lyrical passages lx.-lxii. In the Trito-Isaiah during the post-exilian period, and in such psalm literature as Pss. xxii., xxxvii., l., lxii., cvii., cxlv. 9-12 and others; and also in Isa. xxxv., which is obviously a lyrical reproduction of earlier literature. But it cannot be said that we possess in later literature any fresh contribution to the conception of God or any presentation of a higher ideal of human life30or national destiny than that which meets us in chap. xl. or in the servant-passages of the Deutero-Isaiah. It may with truth be said thatafter Jeremiah we discern the parting of the ways. Thefirstis represented by the Deutero-Isaiah, who constitutes the climax and close of Hebrew prophetism, which is henceforth (with the possible exception of the Trito-Isaiah, Malachi and Jonah, who reproduce some features of the earlier prophecy) a virtually arrested development. Thesecond pathis that which is traced out by the priest-prophet Ezekiel, and is that oflegalism, which was destined to secure a permanent place in the life and literature of the Jewish people. It is essentially the path which may be summed up in the wordJudaism, though, as will be shown in the sequel, Judaism came to include many other factors. The statement, however, remains virtually true, since Judaism is mainly constituted by the body of legal precepts called the Tōrah, and, moreover, by the post-exilian Tōrah.
9.Post-exilian Law—The Priestercodex.31—The oracles of Malachi clearly reveal the continued influence of the book of Deuteronomy in his day. But the new conditions created by the return of the exiles and the germinating influence of Ezekiel’s ideas developed a process of new legislative construction. The code of holiness (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.) is the most obvious product of that influence. The ideas of expiation and atonement so prevalent in Ezekiel’s scheme, which there find expression in the half-yearly sacrificial celebrations, are expressed in Lev. xvi. in the singleannual great fast of atonement. It is impossible to enter here into the numerous details of that impressive ceremonial. Two special features, however, which characterize the celebration should here be noted: (a) The person of thehigh priest, who is throughout the entire drama the chief and indeed the sole actor. This supreme official, who was destined ultimately to take the place of the king in the church-nation of post-exilian Judaism, is mentioned for the first time in Zech. iii. 132(in the person of Joshua). In the Priestercodex he stands at the head of the priests, who are, in the post-exilian system, thesons of Aaronand possessed the sole right to offer the temple sacrifices. On the great day of atonement the high priest appears in a vicarious and representative capacity, and offers on behalf of the whole nation which he was considered to embody in his sacred person. (b) The rite of thegoat devoted to Azazel. There can be littledoubt thatAzazelwas an evil demon (like an Arabic Jinn) of the desert. The goat set apart for Azazel was in the concluding part of the ceremonial brought before the high priest, who laid both his hands upon it and confessed over it the sins of the people. It was then carried off by an appointed person to a lonely spot and there set free.
In later post-exilian times this great day of atonement became to an increasing degree a day of humiliation for sin and penitent sorrow, accompanied by confession; and the sins confessed were not only of a purely ceremonial character, whether voluntary or inadvertent, but also sins against righteousness and the duties which we owe to God and man. This element of public confession for sin became more prominent in the days when synagogal worship developed, and prayer took the place of the sacrificial offerings which could only be offered in the Jerusalem temple. The development of the priestly code of legislation (Priestercodex) was a gradual process, and probably occupied a considerable part of the 5th centuryB.C.The Hebrew race now definitely entered upon the new path of organized Jewish legalism which had been originally marked out for it by Ezekiel in the preceding century. It became a holy people on holy ground. Circumcision and Sabbath, separation from marriage with a foreigner, which rendered a Jew unclean, as well as strict conformity to the precepts of the Tōrah, constituted henceforth an adamantine bond which was to preserve the Jewish communities from disintegration.
10.The later Post-exilian Developments in Jewish Religion.—These may be briefly referred to under the following aspects:
(a)Codified lawand the written record of the patriarchal history, as well as the life and work of the lawgiver Moses (to whom the entire body of law came to be ascribed), assumed an ever greater importance. The reverence felt for the canonizedTōrahor law (the Pentateuch or so-called five books of Moses) grew even into worship. Of this spirit we find clear expression in some of the later psalms,e.g.the elaborate alphabetic Ps. cxix. and the latter portion of Ps. xix. There were various causes which combined to enhance the importance of the writtenTōrah(the “instruction”par excellencecommunicated by God through Moses). Chief among these were (1)The conception of God as transcendent. We have taken due note of Amos, who unfolded the character of Yahweh as universal righteous sovereign; and also the sublime portrayal of His exalted nature in Isa. xl. (verse 15; cf. 22-26, and Job xxxvi. 22-xlii. 6). The intellectual influence of Greece, manifested in Alexandrian philosophy, tended to remove God still further from the human world of phenomena into that of an inaccessible transcendental abstraction. Little, therefore, was possible for the Jew save strict performance of the requirements of the Tōrah, once for all given to Moses on Sinai, and, in his approach to the awful and unknown mystery, to rely on ceremonial and ascetic performances (see Wendt’sTeaching of Jesus, i. 55 foll.). The same tendency led the pious worshippers to avoid His awful name and to substituteAdonaiin their scriptures or to use in the Mishna the term “name” (shēm) or “heaven.” (2) TheMaccabean conflict(165B.C.) tended to accentuate the national sentiment of antagonism to Hellenic influence. The Ḥasīdim or pious devotees, who arose at that time, were the originators of the Pharisaic movement which was conservative as well as national, and laid stress on the strict performance of the law.
(b)Eschatologyin the Judaism of the Greek period began to assume a new form. The pre-exilian prophets (especially Isaiah) spoke of the forthcoming crisis in the world’s history as a “day of the Lord.” These were usually regarded as visitations of chastisement for national sins and vindications of divine righteousness or judgments,i.e.assertions of God’s power as judge (shōphet). By the older prophets this judgment of God or “day of Yahweh” was never held to be far removed from the horizon of the present or the world in which they lived. But now as we enter the Greek period (320B.C.and onwards) there is a gradual change from prophecy toapocalyptic. “It may be asserted in general terms that whereas prophecy foretells a definite future which has its foundation in the present, apocalyptic directs its anticipations solely and simply to the future, to a new world-period which stands sharply contrasted with the present. The classical model for all apocalyptic is to be found in Dan. vii. It is only after a great war of destruction, a day of Yahweh’s great judgment, that the dominion of God will begin” (Bousset). Ezek. xxxviii. and xxxix. clearly bear the apocalyptic character; so also Isa. xxxiv. and notably Isa. xxiv.-xxvii. Apocalyptic, as Baldensperger has shown, formed a counterpoise to the normal current of conformity to law. It arose from a spiritual movement in answer to the yearning of the heart: “O that Thou mightest rend the heavens and come down and the mountains quake at Thy presence!” (Isa. lxiv. 1 [Heb. lxiii. 19]); and it was intended to meet the craving of souls sick with waiting and disappointment. The present outlook was hopeless, but in the enlarged horizon of time as well as space the thoughts of some of the most spiritual minds in Judaism were directed to the transcendent and ultimate. The present world was corrupt and subject to Satan and the powers of darkness. This they called “the presentaeon” (age). Their hopes were therefore directed to “the coming aeon.” Between the two aeons there would take place theadvent of the Messiah, who would lead the struggle with evil powers which was called “the agonies of the Messiah.” This terrible intermezzo was no longer terrestrial, but was a cosmic and universal crisis in which the Messiah would emerge victorious from the final conflict with the heathen and demonic powers. This victory inaugurates the entrance of the “aeon to come,” in which the faithful Jews would enter their inheritance. In this way we perceive the transformation of the old Messianic doctrine through apocalyptic. Of apocalyptic literature we have numerous examples extending from the 2nd centuryB.C.to the 2nd centuryA.D.(See especially Charles’sBook of Enoch.)
The doctrine of theresurrection of the righteousto life in the heavenly world became engrafted on to the old doctrine of Sheōl, or the dark shadowy underworld (Hades), where life was joyless and feeble, and from which the soul might be for a brief space summoned forth by the arts of the necromancer. The most vivid portraiture of Sheōl is to be found in the exilian passage Isa. xiv. 9-20 (cf. Job x. 21-22). With this also compare the BabylonianDescent of Ishtar to Hades. The added conception of the resurrection of the righteous does not appear in the world of Jewish thought till the early Greek period in Isa. xxvi. 19. R. H. Charles thinks that in this passage the idea of resurrection is of purely Jewish and not of Mazdaan (or Zoroastrian) origin, but it is otherwise with Dan. xii. 2; see hisEschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian. Corresponding to heaven, the abode of the righteous, we haveGē-henna(originallyGē-Hinnom, the scene of the Moloch rites of human sacrifice), the place of punishment after death for apostate Jews.
(c)Doctrine of Angels and of Hypostases.—In the writings of the pre-exilian period we have frequent references to supernatural personalities good and bad. It is only necessary to refer to them by name.Sebāōth, or “hosts,” attached to the name of Yahweh, denoted the heavenly retinue of stars. Theseraphīmwere burning serpentine forms who hovered above the enthroned Yahweh and chanted the Trisagion in Isaiah’s consecration vision (Isa. vi.). We have also constant references to “angels” (malāchīm) of God, divine messengers who represent Him and may be regarded as the manifestation of His power and presence. This especially applies to the “angel of Yahweh” or angel of His Presence [Ex. xxiii. 20, 23 (E). Note in Ex. xxxiii. 14 (J) he is called “my face” or “presence”33(cf. Isa. lxiii. 9)]. We also know that from earliest times Israel believed in the evil as well as good spirits. Like the Arabs they held that demons became incorporate in serpents, as in Gen. iii. Thenephīlīmwere a monstrous brood begotten of the intercourse of the supernatural beings called “sons of God” with the women of earth. We also read of the “evil spirit” that came upon Saul. Contact with Babylonia tended to stimulate theangelology and demonology of Israel. The Hebrew wordshēdor “demon” is no more than a Babylonian loan word, and came to designate the deities of foreign peoples degraded into the position of demons.34Līlīth, the blood-sucking night-hag of the post-exilian Isa. xxxiv. 14, is the BabylonianLilātu. Whether these’īrīmor shaggy satyrs (Isa. xiii. 31; Lev. xvii. 7) andAzāzēlwere of Babylonian origin it is difficult to determine. The emergence ofSatanas a definite supernatural personality, the head or prince of the world of evil spirits, is entirely a phenomenon of post-exilian Judaism. He is portrayed as the arch-adversary and accuser of man. It is impossible to deny Persian influence in the development of this conception, and that the Persian Ahriman (Angromainyu), the evil personality opposed to the good, Ahura Mazda, moulded the Jewish counterpart, Satan. But in Judaism monotheistic conceptions reigned supreme, and the Satan of Jewish belief as opposed to God stops short of the dualism of Persian religion. Of this we see evidence in the multiplication of Satans in the Book of Enoch. In the Book of Jubilees he is calledmastēmā. In later JudaismSammaelis the equivalent of Satan. Persian influence is also responsible for thevast multiplication of good spirits or angels, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, &c., who play their part in apocalyptic works, such as the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch.
Probably the transcendent nature of the deity in the Judaism of this later period made the interposition of mediating spirits an intellectual necessity (cf. Ps. civ. 4). It also stimulated the creation ofdivine hypostases. First among these may be mentionedWisdom. The roots of this conception belong to pre-exilian times, in which the “word” of divine denunciation was regarded as a quasi-material thing. (It is hurled against offending Israel, Isa. ix. 8.). In the post-exilian cosmogony it is the divine word or fiat that creates the world (Gen. i.; cf. Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9). Out of these earlier conceptions the idea of the divine wisdom (Heb.ḥokhmah) gradually arose during the Persian period. The expression “wisdom,” as it is employed in thelocus classicus, Prov. viii., connotes the contents of the Divine reason—His conscious life, out of which created things emerge. This wisdom is personified. It dwelt with God (Prov. viii. 22 foll.) before the world was made. It is the companion of His throne, and by it He made the world (Prov. iii. 19, viii. 27; cf. Ps. civ. 24). It, moreover, enters into the life of the world and especially man (Prov. viii. 31). This conception of wisdom became still further hypostatized. It becomes redemptive of man. In the Wisdom of Solomon it is the sharer of God’s throne (πάρεδρος), the effulgence of the eternal light and the outflow of His glory (Wisd. vii. 25, viii. 3 foll., ix. 4, 9); “Them that love her the Lord doth love” (Ecclesiasticus iv. 14). This group of ideas culminated in the Logos of Philo, expressing the world of divine ideas which God first of all creates and which becomes the mediating and formative power between the absolute and transcendent deity and passive formless matter, transmuted thereby into a rational, ordered universe.
In later Jewish literature we meet with further examples of similar hypostases in the form ofMēmrā,Metatron,Shechinah,Holy SpiritandBath kōl.
(d) The doctrine ofpre-existenceis another product of the speculative tendency of the Jewish mind. The Messiah’s pre-existent state before the creation of the world is asserted in the Book of Enoch (xlviii. 6, 7). Pre-existence is also asserted of Moses and of sacred institutions such as the New Jerusalem, the Temple, Paradise, the Tōrah, &c. (Apocal. of Baruch iv. 3-lix. 4; Assumptio Mosis i. 14, 17); Edersheim’sLife and Times of the Messiah, i. 175 and footnote 1.
11.Christ resumes the Broken Tradition of Prophetism.—The Psalms of Solomon and the synoptic Gospels (70B.C.-A.D.100) clearly reveal the powerful revival of Messianic hopes of a national deliverer of the seed of David. This Messianic expectation had been a fermenting leaven since the great days of Judas Maccabaeus. The conceptions of Jesus of Nazareth, however, were not the Messianic conceptions of his fellow-countrymen, but of the spiritual “son of man” destined to found a kingdom of God which was righteousness and peace. The Tōrah of Jesus was essentially prophetic and in no sense priestly or legal. The arrested prophetic movement of Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah reappears in John the Baptist and Jesus after an interval of more than five centuries. The new covenant of redeeming grace—the righteousness which is in the heart and not in externalities of legal observance or ceremonial—are once more proclaimed, and the exalted ideals of the suffering servant of Isa. xlix. 6 and Isa. liii. (nearly suppressed in the Targum of Jonathan) are reasserted and vindicated by the words and life of Jesus. Like Jeremiah He foretold the destruction of the temple and suffered the extreme penalties of anti-patriotism. And thus Israel’s old prophetic Tōrah was at length to achieve its victory, for after Jesus came St Paul. “Many shall come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. viii. 11, 12). The fetters of nationalism were to be broken, and the Hebrew religion in its essential spiritual elements was to become the heritage of all humanity.