promised” (Heb. x., 23), yet we must believe that Jahveh declared to the
Israelites, “ye shall know my breach of promise” (Numbers xiv., 34).
It is blasphemy to deny that Jahveh commanded that a man who “gathered
sticks upon the sabbath day” (xv., 32—36) should be stoned to death. Yet
is it equally blasphemy to deny that Jesus, the representative and
first-begotten of Jahveh, condemned the Pharisees who declared that his
disciples did “that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day”
(Matt, xii., 2), when they gathered corn.
The poor Pharisees tried to obey the law as given by Jahveh; their
reward was to be condemned by his son. Yet it is blasphemy to deny that
“I and my Father are one” (John x., 30).
It is blasphemy to deny that Jahveh commanded the Israelites to “make
them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their
generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a riband
of blue: and it shall be unto you for a fringe” (Numbers xv., 38, 39).
It is hard to believe, though it is blasphemy to deny, that the “Eternal
Spirit” troubled himself about “a fringe.”
It is blasphemy to deny that there is a “pit,” within the earth, into
which people may fall alive, when the earth opens her mouth and swallows
them up; further, that Korah, Dathan and Abiram, their wives, their sons
and their little children, were so swallowed up, and “went down alive
into the pit, and the earth closed upon them” (Numb, xvi., 27—33).
It is blasphemy to deny that a plague so fierce that it slew 14,700
people in a few hours could be stopped by a man with a censer full of
incense who “stood between the dead and the living” (xvi., 46—49). One
can only suppose that the plague advanced steadily across the camp, like
a fog, killing every person it covered. Thus only could a man stand
between the living and the dead. Yet no such advancing destruction is
known to history.
It is blasphemy to deny that a dry old rod belonging to Aaron blossomed
miraculously when eleven other dry old rods behaved in the normal
fashion (xvii., 2—9). And not only did Aaron’s rod bud and blossom, but
it also yielded almonds, and this all in the course of one night. It is
blasphemy to suggest that Moses, Aaron’s brother, who took the rods and
who hid them “before the Lord in the tabernacle of witness,” quietly
substituted a blooming and fruiting branch in the place of his brother’s
rod, and yet this would be the explanation which would be at once
suggested if a similar trick were played now-a-days. But in those
easy-going and credulous times very little skill was needed to impose
upon a crowd ready to be deceived.
It is interesting to note, in passing, the admirable provision made by
Jahveh—through the mouth of his servant, Moses —for Aaron and his
family. “All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of
the wheat, the first fruits of them which they shall offer unto the
Lord, them have I given thee. And whatsoever is first ripe in the land,
which they shall bring unto the Lord, shall be thine” (Numb, xviii., 12,
13). This claim on the part of the priesthood has never been regarded as
part of that ceremonial law which has been “done away in Christ.”
The story of Balaam is one of the tests to which true faith must be
submitted. We learn in this that when Balak sent to ask Balaam to go to
him that he might curse Israel, god at first commanded him not to go
(Numbers xxii., 12), but a little later commanded him to go (20). God,
as we know, never changes. When Balaam obeyed god’s command and went,
“god’s anger was kindled against him because he went” (22), that is
because Balaam did what god told him to do, and “the angel of the Lord
stood in the way for an adversary against him.” Balaam was riding on a
donkey, and the donkey saw the angel, though no one else did, “and the
ass turned aside out of the way.” Again the angel placed himself in
front of the donkey, and the donkey squeezed past him, crushing Balaam’s
foot against the wall. For the third time the angel confronted the
donkey, and on this occasion in a narrow place, “where there was no way
to turn either to the right hand or to the left.” Then the donkey
tumbled down. Balaam was, not unnaturally, disturbed at his donkey’s
extraordinary behavior, and he had struck her each time that she had, as
he thought, misbehaved. And now occurred a wonderful thing. “The Lord
opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done
unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? And Balaam said
unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in
my hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not
I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto
this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.”
Sensible persons are expected to believe this absurd story of a
conversation between a man and a donkey. Peter speaks of it without any
expression of doubt, saying: “the dumb ass, speaking with man’s voice,
forbad the madness of the prophet” (2 Peter ii., 16). It is blasphemy to
deny it; it is madness to believe it. Balaam’s ass stands on a level
with Mahomet’s, and only the credulous and superstitious can yield
credence to the stories of either.
It is not worth while to delay over Balaam’s rhapsodies, except to note
their extreme inaccuracy. “God is not a man that he should lie” (Numbers
xxiii,, 19); yet “I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet” (Ezech. xiv.,
9). “Nor the son of man that he should repent” (Numbers xxiii., 19); yet
“it repented the Lord that he had made man” (Gen. vi., 6). “He hath not
beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”
(Numbers xxiii., 21); yet, “I have seen this people, and behold it is a
stiff-necked people;” “how long will this people provoke me?” (Exodus
xxxii., 9, and Numbers xiv., 11). This declaration is the more startling
when we find Moses— whose acquaintance with the people was more intimate
than that of Balaam—saying: “Remember, and forget not, how thou
provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day
that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this
place, ye have been rebellious against the Lord.... Ye have been
rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you” (Deut. ix., 7
and 24). It is needless to accumulate these contradictory statements,
all of which we are commanded to believe on peril of damnation.
Immediately after Balaam’s declaration of Israel’s holiness, we read how
the people reverted to idolatry, and how “the anger of the Lord was
kindled against them” (Numbers xxv., 3). Some more murders were
committed to pacify Jahveh, and he himself slew 24,000 by a plague.
In Numbers xxxi. we have one of the most horrible stories related even
in the Bible, the story of the slaughter of the Midianites. Jahveh sent
his tribes against this unhappy race, and, after their usual wicked
fashion, they “slew all the males.” Moved, however, by an unwonted touch
of pity, they “took all the women of Midian captives, and their little
ones,” and brought them alive back to their camp. Moses, Jahveh’s
friend, “was wroth with the officers of the host” for their unworthy
humanity, and shrieked out in his rage: “Have ye saved all the women
alive?” And then he commanded them to “kill every male among the little
ones, and kill every woman” that had been married, “but all the women
children that” were virgins “keep alive for yourselves.” This
bloodthirsty and loathsome command is of “divine authority.” It is
blasphemy to deny that it was god-given. Yet what of the blasphemy that
ascribes an order so fiendish to “the God of the spirits of all flesh?”
These baby boys and prattling children, kill every one; these mothers
and matrons of Midian, murder them one after another. Such is the
command of Jahveh, who said: “Thou shalt not kill.” And these fair and
pure maidens, these helpless women-children, whose natural guardians ye
have slain, keep these for the satisfactions of your passions. Such is
the command of Jahveh, who said: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
Some of these fair girls were claimed as “the Lord’s tribute,” 352 in
all. These were handed over to the Levites, and small doubt can be felt
as to their fate.
To add a touch of the comic to this tragic scene, we learn that after
all the fighting and the slaughter, not one solitary Israelite was
missing, while the Midianitish nation, of which not a male was left
alive, turns up again later as merrily as though it had never been
destroyed, and “prevailed against Israel, and because of the Midianites
the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains,
and caves, and strongholds” (Judges vi., 2).
The book of Deuteronomy is awkward for the true believer, because it is
a recital of the story related in the preceding book, and constantly
contradicts the previous narrative. Thus Moses commands Israel to make
no likeness or similitude of Jahveh on the ground that when he spake to
them “out of the midst of the fire,” “ye heard the voice of the words
but saw no similitude” (Deut. iv., 12); yet turning back we read that
seventy-four of them “saw the god of Israel, and there was under his
feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the
body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of
Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God” (Ex. xxiv., 10,11). It
can scarcely be pretended that when they saw a visible being with “feet”
and a “hand,” they “saw no similitude.”
In Deut. v., 15, the reason for keeping holy the sabbath day is
different from the reason given in Ex. xx., 11. Both of these are given
as the very words of Jahveh, spoken from “Horeb” or “Sinai.” One of the
versions must be inaccurate, yet it is blasphemy to deny either. In
Deut. v., 22, Moses says that after the ten commandments “he added no
more.” In Exodus he added a large number of other commands (see
xx.—xxiii.).
We learn in Deut. viii., 4, that during the forty years wasted in the
wilderness “thy raiment waxed not old upon thee.” This was very
satisfactory for the adults, but what happened to the growing children?
The raiment of a week-old baby can scarcely have been suitable to the
man of forty; did the clothes grow with the body, and as the numbers of
the people increased very much during the forty years, were new clothes
born as well as new babies? If such questions are regarded as
blasphemous, I can only answer that they are suggested by Moses’
assertion of the remarkable durability of the raiment, and raiment that
did not become old might surely also grow and reproduce itself. Once
begin miracle-working on old clothes, and none can say how far it may
go.
It is blasphemy to assert that it is wrong to swear, for the Bible
commands: “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God.... and swear by his name”
(Deut. x., 20). It is blasphemy to assert that it is right to swear, for
the Bible commands: “Swear not at all” (Matt, v., 34).
Deuteronomy xiii., from the first verse to the last, is a disgrace to
the book in which it is contained, and a scandal to the community which
permits it to be circulated as of divine authority. Yet it is blasphemy
to attack it and to show its horrible atrocity. If a prophet or dreamer
arise and try to turn away the Hebrews from Jahveh, then they are told:
“The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your
God” (v. 3). Yet, although it is Jahveh’s own doing, that unfortunate
“prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death” (v. 5). The
same fate is to befall “thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son,
or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as
thine own soul” (v. 6), if such try to turn any away from Jahveh’s
worship; with a refinement of cruelty, devilish in its wickedness,
“thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death” (v. 9). The
wife, passionately loved, is to see her husband, in whose bosom she has
lain, raise his hand against her, foremost of a howling mob, greedy for
her blood. The daughter is to clasp her father’s knees in vain; he must
strike her down as she clings to him in her agony. The trusting and
trusted friend is to be betrayed to the slaughterers, and the hand most
closely grasped in love is to be the first to catch up the heavy stone
and to beat out the faithful life. And it is blasphemy to cry out
against this horror, but not blasphemy to ascribe its invention to the
god “whose tender mercy is over all his works.”
The murder commenced in the family circle is to be continued in the
national policy. If a city of the Hebrews reject Jahveh, “thou shalt
surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword,
destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof,
with the edge of the sword” (v. 15); nothing is to escape, a burning
bloodstained ruin is to be left “for the Lord thy God” (v. 16), and then
Jahveh will bless his brutal servants, who have done “that which is
right in the eyes of the Lord thy God” (v. 18). This command is of
divine authority, and has been largely obeyed in Christendom, but people
have fortunately become too civilised to carry it out now.
In Deut. xiv., some of the natural history blunders of Lev. xi. are
repeated. It is confusing, however, after reading in Lev. xi., 21—23,
“these may ye eat, of every flying creeping thing,” etc., to find in
Deut. xiv., 19, “Every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you;
they shall not be eaten.” So that the Israelites are deprived of those
remarkable four-legged locusts, beetles and grasshoppers which “have
legs above their feet.” (Do other animals carry their feet above their
legs?) It is delightful to find Moses speaking of a bat as a bird;
clearly in those days the schoolmaster was not abroad, but it is hard
that we should be compelled to choose between the blasphemy of speaking
of the bat as a mammal, and the falsehood of treating it as a bird. A
beautiful touch of generosity is to be found in v. 21: “Ye shall not eat
of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger
that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an
alien.”
The general law of warfare laid down in Deut. xx., 10—15, is brutal in
the extreme. If any foreign city ventures to defend itself against
Hebrew aggression, and closes its gates against the invader, then it is
to be besieged, and “when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine
hands, thou shalt Smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword.”
A yet worse fate is to be dealt out to the cities of Palestine, for in
these “thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth” (v. 16). Of course
such method of war has nothing surprising, when we consider the cruelty
and barbarism of the Eastern nations of which the Hebrews were one, but
it is surprising that in the nineteenth century the bloody customs of a
savage tribe should be set forth as founded on “divine authority.”
If possible, still viler is the treatment of captive women; when thou
“seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her
that thou wouldst have her to thy wife; then thou shalt bring her home
to thine house.... and after that thou shalt.... be her husband, and she
shall be thy wife. And it shall be if thou have no delight in her,” thy
passions being satisfied, “then thou shalt let her go whither she will”
(Deut. xxi., 11—14). No wonder that prostitution is rife in every
Christian city, when this command is placed before young men’s eyes as
“of divine authority.” Similar low views are taken in Deut. xxiv., 1.
While this degrading teaching is that of Jahveh, Manu, a mere man, with
no “divine authority,” but with only a human heart, taught his followers
to treat every aged woman as their mother, every young woman as their
sister.
It is rather odd to note in passing that he is declared to be cursed who
marries “his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his
mother” (Deut. xxvii., 22), when we remember that Abraham said of his
wife Sarah: “Indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father,
but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife” (Gen. xx.,
12). Thus Abraham, who is so highly blessed in one part of god’s word,
is cursed in another.
The book of Joshua is taken up with the bloody wars of the Israelites;
it is a mere record of savage butchery; every page reeks with slaughter.
“They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman,
young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword”
(Josh, vi., 21). This, repeated _ad nauseam_, is the book of Joshua. The
tale is varied now and then with the record of absurd miracles, as that
of the falling down of the walls of Jericho, or the standing still of
the sun and moon at the command of Joshua. From its ferocity and
absurdity, the book is beneath contempt, yet it is of “divine
authority.”
In the Book of Judges we have the record of a number of utterly
unimportant victories and defeats in the history of the Hebrew nation.
Why should these be accepted as “of divine authority” any more than any
corresponding history of some other equally obscure and barbarous
people?
Over the barbarous stories of Ehud stabbing Eglon, with its disgusting
details (iii., 21, 22); of Jael murdering her guest, in defiance of all
desert laws of hospitality, and receiving for her treachery the blessing
of the Lord, a blessing shared only with Mary, the mother of Jesus (v.
24, compare Luke i., 28); of Gideon and of Abimelech, with the evil
spirit sent by god (Judges ix., 23); of Jephthah and his vow and his
sacrifice of his daughter (xi., 29—39), as Agamemnon sacrificed
Iphigenia; of Samson with his absurd and brutal conduct (xiv., 19; xv.,
4, 5; and 14— 19, etc.); of the Levite and his concubine, and the foul
details thereon (xix.)—what can any say of these save that such coarse
and brutal stories belong to the childhood of every nation, and that
while other peoples look back on their savage history as a thing that is
past, these Hebrew stories are preserved in perennial freshness, and are
placed as a burden on the consciences of the civilised nations of
Europe, and, to our shame, are defended from criticism by the brutal
laws of blasphemy invented in savage times and sanctioned in England
to-day.
The books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah are
interesting for the light they throw on the growth of the Israelitish
people, but regarded as of divine authority, they give manifold occasion
“for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.”
Thus we read how the “ark of God” was carried to battle, and how the
Philistines were afraid, and asked: “Who shall deliver us out of the
hand of these mighty Gods?” But they wisely determined to try and save
themselves, and bade each other: “Quit yourselves like men, and fight.”
So they overcame Israel and his “mighty Gods,” and took the ark itself
captive (chap. iv.). Jahveh, however, if he could not fight the
Philistines, was strong enough to fight their gods, and when he was
offered the hospitality of Dagon’s temple, and was left quiet for the
night, he knocked poor Dagon down. The Philistines put Dagon up again,
and this so annoyed Jahveh that on the following night he knocked Dagon
down again, and cut off his head and “the palms of his hands” on the
threshold. After that Jahveh performed a miniature edition of the
plagues of Egypt in the various towns to which his ark was carried,
until some clever priests hit upon the idea of putting the ark on a cart
and harnessing in two milch kine, and letting them go wherever they
pleased. Off marched the kine to Bethshemesh, and there they met the
fate of all the unlucky creatures that did Jahveh any service, for the
men of Bethshemesh took them and offered them as “a burnt offering to
the Lord.” Then Jahveh broke out on the poor men of Bethshemesh, and
killed 50,070 of them, because they (all of them?) had peeped into the
ark (chaps, v., vi.). And it is actually blasphemy to deny any detail of
this absurd story.
1 Samuel xv. is a chapter that many a pious soul must wish blotted out
from the Old Testament. Samuel, as bloodthirsty as Moses, gave in “the
Lord’s” name the horrible command: “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly
destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and
woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (v. 3). This
fiendish command was not wholly obeyed, for Saul saved the king, and the
best of the sheep and of the other animals. Thereupon Samuel came down
and cursed Saul vigorously, and then committed the absurdity of telling
Saul that the “Strength of Israel,” whose change of purpose he had just
announced, and who “repented that he had made Saul king” (v. 35), was
“not a man that he should repent” (v. 29). After this manifest untruth,
he murdered poor Agag, hewing him “in pieces before the Lord” (v. 33).
Yet it is blasphemy to deny that this tissue of bloodshed and lying is
inspired by “the spirit of truth.”
After this the contradictions about the connexion of Saul and David are
of small moment. In chap. xvi., 18—23, David is brought to play the harp
to Saul, and he is described as “a mighty valiant man and a man of war,”
and he became Saul’s arm or-bearer as well as musician. In the next
chapter David leaves him (v. 15) and goes back to feed his father’s
sheep, when a war breaks out; a curious proceeding for a “mighty valiant
man.” Six weeks later David carries some food to his brethren in the
camp, and hearing the Philistine giant Goliath utter a challenge, he
offers to go and fight him. Saul points out to the man who six weeks
before was “mighty valiant” and “a man of war,” that he could not fight
the Philistine, for he was “but a youth,” while Goliath was “a man of
war from his youth.” David then relates the story of a struggle he had
with a curious composite animal, a “lion and a bear,” who stole a lamb,
and “I went out after him and smote him, and delivered it out of his
mouth, and when he arose against me I caught him by the beard and slew
him.” Saul then put his armor on him, but the former armor-bearer and
man of war had forgotten how to use armor, and refused to wear it. He
then killed the Philistine, and Saul, in whose court he had lived six
weeks before, and who “loved him greatly” (xvi., 21), asked one of his
captains who he was, and bade him “inquire whose son the stripling is”
(xvii., 55, 56). We can only understand the king’s loss of memory when
we think how much changed David was; the “man of war” had become a
“stripling,” the “mighty valiant man,” the armor-bearer, had changed
into a “youth” who could not wear armor. No wonder poor Saul was
puzzled, and if he could not understand it when he was on the spot, how
cruel to threaten us with imprisonment and damnation if we blunder about
it 3,000 years afterwards. Almost immediately after David is playing
away on his harp “as at other times” (xviii., 10).
The bloodthirsty, treacherous, profligate character of David is so well
known that I will not deal with it here, further than to call attention
to the fact that this deep-dyed criminal was the man “after God’s own
heart,” the man who “did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord,
and turned not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of
his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite” (1 Kings xv.,
5).
There is one grave difficulty of identity that meets us here which we
must not overlook. In 1 Sam. xxiv, 1, we read: “The anger of the Lord
was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say: go
number Israel and Judah.” In 1 Chron. xxi., 1, we _read_: “And
Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” Are
“God” and “Satan” convertible terms? It is clearly blasphemy to say that
they are not, since the above verses prove that they are, yet I fancy it
must be blasphemy to say that they are.