1. In the Hebrew language truth and faithfulness are both derived from the
same root; _aman_, “firmness,” is the root idea of _emeth_, “truth,” and
_emunah_, “faithfulness.” Man feels insecurity and uncertainty among the
varying impressions and emotions which affect his will; therefore he turns
to the immovable Rock of life, calls on Him as the Guardian and Witness of
truth, and feels confident that He will vindicate every promise made in
His sight. He is the God by whom men swear—_Elohe amen_;(379) nay, who
swears by Himself, saying, “As true as that I live.”(380) He is the
supreme Power of life, “the God of faithfulness, in whom there is no
iniquity.”(381) The heavens testify to His faithfulness; He is the
trustworthy God, whose essence is truth.(382)
2. Here, too, as with other attributes, the development of the idea may be
traced step by step. At first it refers to the God of the covenant with
Israel, who made a covenant with the fathers and keeps it with the
thousandth generation of their descendants. He shows His mercy to those
who love Him and keep His commandments. The idea of God’s faithfulness to
His covenant is thus extended gradually from the people to the cosmos, and
the heavens are called upon to witness to the faithfulness of God
throughout the realm of life. Thus in both the Psalms and the liturgy God
is praised as the One who is faithful in His word as in His work.(383)
3. From this conception of faithfulness arose two other ideas which
exerted a powerful influence upon the whole spiritual and intellectual
life of the Jew. The God of faithfulness created a people of faithfulness
as His own, and Israel’s God of truth awakened in the nation a passion for
truth unrivaled by any other religious or philosophical system. Like a
silver stream running through a valley, the conviction runs through the
sacred writings and the liturgy that the promise made of yore to the
fathers will be fulfilled to the children. As each past deliverance from
distress was considered a verification of the divine faithfulness, so each
hope for the future was based upon the same attribute. “He keepeth His
faith also to those who sleep in the dust.” These words of the second of
the Eighteen Benedictions clearly indicate that even the belief in the
hereafter rested upon the same fundamental belief.
On the other hand, the same conception formed the keynote of the idea of
the divine truthfulness. The primitive age knew nothing of the laws of
nature with which we have become familiar through modern science. But the
pious soul trusts the God of faithfulness, certain that He who has created
the heaven and the earth is true to His own word, and will not allow them
to sink back into chaos. One witness to this is the rainbow, which He has
set up in the sky as a sign of His covenant.(384) The sea and the stars
also have a boundary assigned to them which they cannot transgress.(385)
Thus to the unsophisticated religious soul, with no knowledge of natural
science, the world is carried by God’s “everlasting arms”(386) and His
faithfulness becomes token and pledge of the immutability of His will.
4. At this point the intellect grasps an idea of intrinsic and
indestructible truth, which has its beginning and its end in God, the Only
One. “The gods of the nations are all vanity and deceit, the work of men;
Israel’s God is the God of truth, the living God and everlasting
King.”(387) With this cry has Judaism challenged the nations of the world
since the Babylonian exile. Its own adherents it charged to ponder upon
the problems of life and the nature of God, until He would appear before
them as the very essence of truth, and all heathenish survivals would
vanish as mist. God is truth, and He desires naught but truth, therefore
hypocrisy is loathsome to him, even in the service of religion. With this
underlying thought Job, the bold but honest doubter, stands above his
friends with their affected piety. _God is truth_—this confession of
faith, recited each morning and evening by the Jew, gave his mind the
power to soar into the highest realms of thought, and inspired his soul to
offer life and all it holds for his faith. “God is the everlasting truth,
the unchangeable Being who ever remains the same amid the fluctuations and
changes of all other things.” This is the fundamental principle upon which
Joseph Ibn Zaddik and Abraham Ibn Daud, the predecessors of Maimonides,
reared their entire philosophical systems, which were Aristotelian and yet
thoroughly Jewish.(388)
Mystic lore, always so fond of the letters of the alphabet and their
hidden meanings, noted that the letters of _Emeth_—_aleph_, _mem_ and
_tav_—are the first, the middle, and the last letters of the alphabet, and
therefore concluded that God made truth the beginning, the center, and the
end of the world.(389) Josephus also, no doubt in accordance with the same
tradition, declares that God is “the beginning, the center, and the end of
all things.”(390) A corresponding rabbinical saying is: “Truth is the seal
of God.”(391)