_LAWS AGAINST IDOLATROUS ACTS AND CUSTOMS_
DEUT. xiii., xiv.
Having thus set forth the law which was to crown and complete the
long resistance of faithful Israel to idolatry, our author goes on
to prohibit and to decree punishment for any action likely to lead
to the worship of false gods. He absolutely forbids any inquiry into
the religions of the Canaanites. "Take heed to thyself that thou
inquire not after their gods, saying, How do these nations serve
their gods? even so will I do likewise." All that was acceptable to
Yahweh was included in the law of Israel, and beyond that they were
on no account to go in their worship. "What thing soever I command
you, that shall ye observe to do: thou shalt not add thereto nor
diminish from it." But it should be observed that the inquiry here
forbidden has nothing in common with the scientific inquiries of
Comparative Religion in our time. Curiosity of that kind, supported
by the motive of discovering how religion had grown, was unknown
at that early age of the world, probably everywhere, certainly in
Israel. The only curiosity powerful enough to result in action then
was that which tried to learn how the ritual might be made more
potent in its influence over Yahweh by gathering attractive features
from every known religion. That was one of the distinguishing
characteristics of Manasseh's reign. The Canaanite religions, the
religions of Egypt and Assyria, were all laid under contribution;
and wherever there was a feature which promised additional power
with God or the gods, that was eagerly adopted. Israel had lost
faith in Yahweh, owing to the successes of Assyria. In unbelieving
terror men were wildly grasping at any means of safety. They
worshipped Yahweh, lest He should do them harm, but they joined with
Him the gods of their foes, to secure if possible their favour also.
Inquiry into other religions, with the intent of adopting something
from them which would make either Yahweh or the strange gods, or
both, propitious to them, was rife. Like the heathen population
who had been transported by Assyria into the territory of the ten
tribes, men "feared Yahweh, and served their graven images." All
that is here sternly condemned, and Judah is taught to look only
to the Divine commands for effective means of approach to their
God. The prohibition, therefore, does not import mere fanatical
opposition to knowledge. It is a necessary practical measure of
defence against idolatry; and only those can disapprove of it who
are incapable of estimating the value which the true religion in
its Old Testament shape had and has for the world. To preserve that
was the high and unique calling of Israel. Any narrowness, real or
supposed, which this great task imposed upon that people, is amply
compensated for by their guardianship of the spiritual life of
mankind.
But if inquiry into lower religions was forbidden, there could be
nothing but the sternest condemnation for those who had inquired,
and then endeavoured to seduce the chosen people. Deuteronomy,
therefore, takes three typical cases--first, seduction by one who
was respected because of high religious office, then seduction by
one who had influence because of close bonds of natural affection,
and lastly that of a community which would be likely to have
influence by force of numbers--and gives inexorably stern directions
how such evil is to be met. There can be little doubt that the
cases are not imaginary. In the evil days which the Deuteronomist
had fallen upon they were probably of frequent occurrence, and they
are, consequently, provided against as real and present evils.
Naturally the writer takes the most difficult case first. If an
Israelite prophet, with all his religious prestige as a confidant of
Yahweh, and still more with the prestige of successful prediction in
his favour, shall attempt to lead men to join other gods to Yahweh
in their worship--for that and not rejection of Yahweh for the
exclusive service of strange gods is almost certainly meant--then
they were not to listen to him. They were to fall back upon the
original principle of the Mosaic teaching as it was restated in
Deuteronomy, that Yahweh alone was to be their God. Some lynx-eyed
critics have discovered here the cloven hoof of legalism. They think
they see here the free spirit of prophecy, to which untrammelled
initiative was the very breath of life, subjected to the bondage
of written law, and so doomed to death. But probably such a mood
is unnecessarily elegiac. It is not to written law that prophecy
is subjected here. It is the actual life-principle of Yahwism in
its simplest form which prophecy is required to respect; that is,
ultimately, it is called upon simply to respect itself. Its own
existence depended upon faithfulness to Yahweh. If it had a mission
at all, it was to proclaim Him and to declare His character. If it
had a distinction which severed it from mere heathen soothsaying, it
was that it had been raised by the inspiration of Yahweh into the
region of "the true, the good, the eternal," and its whole power
lay in its keeping open the communication with that region. It is
therefore only the law of its own inner being to which prophecy is
here bound; and the people are instructed that, whatever reputation
or even supernatural power it might have attained to, it was to
be obeyed only when true to itself and to the faith. Nothing was
to make men stagger from that foundation. Not even the working
of miracles was to mislead the people, for only on the plane of
Yahweh's revelation had even miracle any worth. This is the sound
and wholesome doctrine of true prophecy, and other utterances on the
subject in our book must be taken in conjunction with it. Religious
faithfulness, not foretelling, is the essence of it, and by that the
prophet is to be inexorably judged. If any prophet, therefore, leads
men to strange gods, his character and his powers only make him more
dangerous and his punishment more inexorable. "That prophet, or that
dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death." He comes under the ban.
"So shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee."
Similarly, when family ties and family affection are perverted to
be instruments of seduction, they are to be disregarded, just as
religious reputation and miraculous power were to be set aside. If
a brother, or a son, or a daughter, or a wife, or a friend, shall
secretly entice a man to "serve other gods," then he shall not
only not yield, but he must slay the tempter. It is characteristic
of the Deuteronomist that, by the qualifications of the various
relationships he mentions, he should show his sympathy and his
insight into the depths of both family affection and friendship.
"Thy brother, the son of thy mother," "the wife of thy bosom," "the
friend which is as thine own soul," even these, near as they are to
thee, must be sacrificed if they are false to Israel and to Israel's
God. Nay more, "Thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be upon
him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people,
and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die." Upon him, too,
the ban shall be laid.
Nor, finally, shall their multitude shield those who suffered
themselves to be perverted. If a city should have been led away by
sons of Belial, i.e. by worthless men, to worship strange gods, then
the whole city was to be put to the ban. It was to be immediately
stormed, every living creature put to death, and all the spoil
of it burnt "unto Yahweh their God"; and the ruins were to be a
"mound for ever"--that is, a place accursed. Only on these terms
could Yahweh be turned away from the fierceness of His anger at
such treason and unfaithfulness among His people. The Canaanites
had been condemned to death that their idolatries and vices might
not corrupt the spiritual faith of Israel. There was no other way,
if the treasure which had been committed to this nation was to be
preserved. As Robertson Smith has said, "Experience shows that
primitive religious beliefs are practically indestructible except
by the destruction of the race in which they are engrained." But if
so, it was perhaps even more necessary that idolaters within Israel
should be also extirpated. We may think the punishment harsh; and
our modern doctrines concerning toleration can by no ingenuity be
brought into harmony with it. But the times were fierce, and men
were not easily restrained. In more civilised communities excessive
severity in punishment defeats itself, for it enlists sympathy on
the side of the criminal. But among a people like the Hebrews,
probably severity succeeded where mercy would have been flouted.
In India our administrators have had to confess that the horrible
recklessness and severity of punishment in the Mahratta states of
the old type suppressed crime as the infinitely more just and better
organised but milder British police organisations could not then
do. "Probably the success of barbarous methods of repressing crime
is best explained by their origin in and close connection with a
primitive state of society. Because punishments were inhuman, they
struck terror where no other motive would deter from crime."[75] In
other and Scriptural words, the hardness of men's hearts made such
harshness unavoidable.
[75] Tupper, _Our Indian Protectorate_, p. 248.
Taking the whole of this thirteenth chapter into consideration,
therefore, we see how high and severe were the demands which
Old Testament religion, as taught in Deuteronomy, made upon its
votaries. It presupposes on the part of the people an insight
into the fundamentally spiritual nature of their faith entirely
unobscured by ritual and sacrifice. They were expected to pass
beyond the teachings of accredited spiritual guides, beyond even the
evidence of supernatural power, and to test all by the moral and
spiritual truth, once delivered to them by prophet and by miracle,
and now a secure possession. Spiritual truth received and lived by
is thus set above everything else as the test and the judge of all.
Other things were merely ladders by which men had been brought to
the truth in religion. Once there, nothing should move them; and
any further guidance which purported to come from even the heavenly
places was to be tried and accepted, only if it corroborated the
fundamental truths already received and attested by experience in
actual life. Loyalty to ascertained truth, that is, is greater than
loyalty to teachers, or to that which seems to be supernatural; and
the chief power for which a prophet is to be reverenced is not that
by which he gives a true forecast of the future, but that which
impels him to speak the truth about God.
Even at this day, and for believers in Christ, after all the
teaching and experience of eighteen Christian centuries, this is a
high, almost an unattainable, standard to set up. Even to-day it
is thought an advanced position that miracles as a security for
truth are subordinate and inferior to the light of the truth itself
as exhibited in the lives of faithful men. Yet that is precisely
what the Deuteronomist teaches. He has no doubt about miracles.
He regards them as being Divinely sent, even when they might be
made use of to mislead; but he calls upon his people to disregard
them if they seem to point towards unfaithfulness to God. Their
supreme trust is to be that Yahweh cannot deny Himself. If he seem
to do so by giving the sanction of miracle to teaching which denies
Him, that is only to prove men, to know whether they love Yahweh
their God with all their heart and with all their soul. The inner
certainty of those who have had communion with Yahweh is to override
everything else. "Whosoever loves God with a pure heart," says
Calvin, "is armed with the invincible power of the Divine Spirit,
that he should not be ensnared by falsehoods."[76] This has always
been the confidence of religious reformers who have had real power.
Luther, for example, took his stand upon the New Testament and his
own personal experience; and by what he _knew_ of God he judged all
that the most venerable tradition, and the authority of the Church,
and the examples of saintly men claimed to set forth as binding upon
him. "Here stand I: I can do no other: God help me." He felt that
he had hold of the heart of the revelation of God as it was made in
Christ, and he rejected, without scruple, whatever in itself or in
its results contradicted or obscured that. Inspired and upheld by
this consciousness, he faced a hostile world and a raging Church
with equanimity. It is always so that abuses have been removed and
innovations that are hurtful warded off in the Church of God.
[76] _Commentary on Pentateuch_, vol. i., p. 448.
But there is a difficulty here. As against the historical examples
which show how much good may be wrought by this unshaken mind
when accompanied by adequate insight, many, perhaps even more,
instances can be adduced where unbending assertion of individual
conviction has led to fanaticism and irreligion; or, as has even
more frequently been the case, has blinded men's eyes, and made them
resist with immovable obstinacy teachings on which the future of
religion depended. On the altar of uncompromising fidelity to the
letter of the faith delivered to them, men in all ages have offered
up love and gentleness and fairness, and that open mind to which
alone God can speak. How then can they be sure, when they disregard
their teachers and defy even signs from heaven, that they are really
only holding up the banner of faith in an evil day, and are not
hardening themselves against God? The answer is that, since the
matter concerns the spiritual life, there are no clear, mechanical
dividing lines which can be pointed out and respected. Nothing but
spiritual insight can teach a man what the absolutely essential and
the less essential elements of religion are. Nothing else can give
him that power of distinguishing great things from small which here
is of such cardinal importance. Probably the nearest approach to
effective guidance may be found in this principle, that when all
points in a man's faith are to him equally important, when he frets
as much in regard to divergence from his own religious practices as
in regard to denial of the faith altogether, he must certainly be
wrong. Such a temper must necessarily resist all change; and since
progress is as much a law in the religious life as in any other, it
must be found at times fighting against God. Otherwise, stagnation
would be the test of truth, and the principles of the Christian
faith would be branded as so shallow and so easily exhausted, that
their whole significance could be seized and set forth at once by
the generation which heard the apostles. That was far from being the
case. The post-apostolic Church, for instance, did not understand
St. Paul. It turned rather to the simpler ideas of the mass of
Christians, and elaborated its doctrines almost entirely on that
basis. During the centuries since then many lessons of unspeakable
value have been learned by the Christian world. The Church has been
enriched by the thoughts and teachings of multitudes of men of
genius. The providential chances and changes of all these centuries
have immensely widened and deepened Christian experience. Stagnation
consequently cannot be made the test of Christian truth. We must
be open to new light on the meaning of Divine revelation, or we
fail altogether, as the Israelites would have done had they refused
to accept the teaching of any prophet after the first. This much
may, however, be said on the affirmative side, that when a man has
thoughtfully and prayerfully decided that the central element of
his faith is attacked, he cannot but resist, and if he is faithful
he will resist in the spirit of the passage we are discussing. His
assertion of his individual conviction, even if it be mistaken,
will do little harm. Time will be in favour of the truth. But
mistake will be rare, indeed, when men are taught to assert in
this manner only the things by which the soul lives, when only the
actual channels of communion with God are thus defended to the
uttermost. These any thoughtful patient man who looks for and yields
to the guidance of the Holy Spirit of Christ will almost infallibly
recognise, and by these he will take his stand, for he can do no
other.
But precautions against idolatry are not exhausted by the war
declared upon men who might attempt to lead the Israelite into evil.
Besides insidious human enemies, there were also insidious customs
originating in heathenism, and still redolent of idolatry even
when they were severed from any overt connection with it. Ancient
rituals, ancient superstitions, hateful remnants of bloodthirsty
pagan rites, were being revived in the Deuteronomist's day on every
hand, because faith in the higher religion that had superseded
them had been shaken. Like streams from hidden reservoirs suddenly
reopened, idolatrous and magical practices were overflowing the
land, and were finding in popular customs, harmless in better days,
channels for their return into the life of those who had formerly
risen above them.
Some of these were more hurtful than others, and two are singled
out at the beginning of chapter xiv. as those which a people holy
unto Yahweh must specially avoid: "Ye shall not cut yourselves,
nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead." The grounds
for avoiding these practices are first given, and we may probably
assume that they are the grounds also for the other enactments which
follow. They are these: "Ye are the children of Yahweh your God,"
and "Thou art a holy people unto Yahweh thy God, and Yahweh hath
chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto Himself, out of all peoples
that are upon the face of the earth." The last of these reasons is
common to the Exodus code with Deuteronomy, and comes even more
prominently into view in the Levitical law. Just as Yahweh alone was
to be their God, they alone were to be Yahweh's people, and they
were to be holy to Him, _i.e._ were to separate themselves to Him;
for in its earliest meaning to be holy is simply to be separate
to Yahweh. This whole dispensation of law, that is, was meant to
separate the people of Israel from the idolatrous world, and in
this separation we have the key to much that would otherwise be
hard to comprehend. Looked at from the point of view of revelation,
petty details about tonsure, about clean and unclean animals, and
so on, seem incredibly unworthy; and many have said to themselves,
How can the God of the whole earth have really been the author of
laws dealing with such trivialities? But when we regard these as
provisions intended to secure the separation of the chosen people,
they assume quite another aspect. Then we see that they had to be
framed in contrast to the idolatries of the surrounding nations, and
are not meant to have further spiritual or moral significance.
But the first reason given is a higher and more important one, which
occurs here for the first time in Deuteronomy: "Ye are the children
of Yahweh your God." In heathen lands such a title of honour was
common, because physically most worshippers of false gods were
regarded as their children. But in Israel, where such physical
sonship would have been rejected with horror as impairing the Divine
holiness, the spiritual sonship was asserted of the individual
much more slowly. In Yahweh's command to Moses to threaten Pharaoh
with the death of his firstborn son, and in Hosea xi. 1, Israel
collectively is called Yahweh's firstborn and His son. In Hosea
i. 10 it is prophesied that in the Messianic time, "in the place
where it was said unto them, Ye are not My people, it shall be said
unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God." But here for the
first time this high title is bestowed upon the actual individual
Israelites. It was perhaps implied in the Deuteronomist's view of
God's fatherly treatment of the nation in the desert, and still more
in his demand for the love of the individual heart. Yet only here
is it brought plainly forth as a ground for the regulation of life
according to Yahweh's commands. Each son of Israel is also a son
of God; and by none of his acts or habits should he bring disgrace
upon his spiritual Father. Likeness to God is expected and demanded
of him. It is his function in the world to represent Him, to give
expression to the Divine character in all his ways. This is the
Israelite's high calling, and the religious application of _noblesse
oblige_ to such matters as follow, gives a dignity and importance
to all of them such as in their own nature they could hardly claim.
"Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your
eyes for the dead." Israel was not to express grief for the dead
in these ways, first because that was the custom of other nations,
and secondly still more because the origin and meaning of such
rites was idolatrous, and as such altogether unworthy of Yahweh's
sons. "Both," says Robertson Smith, "occur not only in mourning,
but in the worship of the gods, and belong to the sphere of
heathen superstition."[77] Elsewhere he explains the cutting of
themselves to be the making of a blood covenant with the dead, just
as the priests of Baal in their worship tried to get their god to
come to their help by making a covenant of blood with him at his
altar.[78] This naturally tended to bring in the superstitions of
necromancy, and opened the way also for the worship of the dead.
Many traces of its previous existence among the Israelite tribes
are to be found in the Scriptures; and the probability is that as
ancestor-worship ruled the life and shaped the thoughts of Greeks
and Romans till Christianity appeared, so Yahwism alone had broken
its power over Israel. But such superstitions die hard, and in the
general recrudescence of almost forgotten forms of heathenism at
this time, this cult may very well have been reasserting itself. As
for the shaving of the front part of the head, that had a precisely
similar import. "It had exactly the same sense as the offering of
the mourner's blood."[79] "When the hair of the living is deposited
with the dead, and the hair of the dead remains with the living, a
permanent bond of connection unites the two."
[77] _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, p. 366.
[78] _Religion of the Semites_, p. 304.
[79] _Ibid._, p. 306.
The prohibition as food of the animals and birds called "unclean"
was another measure obviously of the same nature as the prohibition
of heathen mourning practices; but in its details it is more
difficult to explain. Probably, however, it was a more potent
instrument of separation than any other. In India to-day the gulf
between the flesh-eater and the orthodox vegetarian Hindu is utterly
impassable; and in the east of Europe and in Palestine, where the
Jewish restrictions as to food are still regarded, the orthodox
Jew is separated from all Gentiles as by a wall. In travelling he
never appears at meals with his fellow-travellers. All the food he
requires he carries with him in a basket; and at every place where
he stops it is the duty of the Jewish community to supply him with
proper food, that he may not be tempted to defile himself with
anything unclean. But it is very difficult for us now to bring the
individual prohibitions under one head, and it seems impossible to
explain them from any one point of view.
Some of the animals and birds prohibited were probably, then,
animals eaten in connection with idolatrous feasts by the
neighbouring heathen. Isa. lxv. 4 shows that swine's flesh was eaten
at sacrificial meals by idolaters, and from the expression "broth
of abominable things is in their vessels" it is clear that the
flesh of other animals was so used. All these would necessarily be
prohibited to Israel; but beyond a few, such as the swine, which was
sacrificed to Tammuz or Adonis, and the mouse and the wild ass, we
have no means of knowing what they were. That this is a _vera causa_
of such prohibitions is shown by the facts mentioned by Professor
Robertson Smith, that "Simeon Stylites forbade his Saracen converts
to eat the flesh of the camel, which was the chief element in the
sacrificial meals of the Arabs, and our own prejudice against the
use of horse-flesh is a relic of an old ecclesiastical prohibition
framed at the time when the eating of such food was an act of
worship to Odin." The very ancient and stringent prohibition of
blood as an article of diet is probably to be accounted for in this
way also. Blood was eaten at heathen sacrificial feasts; without
other reason that would be sufficient. These are the general lines
which must have determined the list of clean animals in the view of
the lawgiver, since he brings them in under the head of idolatry and
under the two general grounds we have discussed (p. 289, _supra_).
Jewish writers, however, especially since Maimonides, have regarded
these prohibitions as aiming primarily at sanitary ends, and as a
proof of their efficacy have adduced the unusually high average
health of the Jews, and their almost complete exemption from certain
classes of disease. No such point of view is suggested in the
Scriptures themselves, for it would surely be rather farfetched to
class possible disease as an infringement of the holiness demanded
of Israel, or as a thing unworthy of Yahweh's sons. Nevertheless a
general view of the list of clean animals here given would support
the idea that sanitary considerations also had _something_ to do
with the classification. The practical effect of the rule laid down
is to exclude all the _carnivora_ among quadrupeds, and so far as
we can interpret the nomenclature, the _raptores_ among birds.[80]
"Amongst fish, those which were allowed contain unquestionably
the most wholesome varieties." Further, the nations of antiquity
which developed such categories of clean and unclean animals
seem in the main to have taken the same line. The ground of this
probably is the natural disgust with which unclean feeders are
always regarded. Animals and birds especially which feed, or may
be supposed to feed, on carrion, are everywhere disliked, and as
a rule they are unsuitable for food. Grass-eating animals, on the
other hand, are always regarded as clean. Scaleless fish, too, are
generally more or less slimy to the touch, and with them reptiles
are altogether forbidden. All this seems to show that a natural
sentiment of disgust, for whatever reason felt, was active in the
selection of the animals marked unclean by men of every race.
The pre-Mosaic customary law on this subject would, of course,
have this characteristic in common with similar laws of primitive
nations. When the worship of Yahweh was introduced, most of this
would be taken over, only such modifications being introduced as
the higher religion demanded. In some main elements, therefore,
the Mosaic law on this subject would be a repetition of what is
to be found elsewhere. Hence a general tendency to health may be
expected; for besides the guidance which healthy disgust would give,
a long experience must also have been registered in such laws. The
influence of them in promoting health has recently been acknowledged
by the _Lancet_; and though that reason for observing them is not
mentioned in Scripture, we may view it as a proof that the Jewish
legislators were under an influence which brought them, perhaps even
when they knew it not, into relation with what was wholesome in the
practices and customs of their place and time.
[80] Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. iii. p. 1589.
Beyond these three reasons for the laws regarding food, all is
the wildest speculation. If other reasons underlie these laws, we
cannot now ascertain what they were. For a time it was the custom to
ascribe the Jewish laws to Persian influence, though from the nature
of the case such laws must have been part of the heritage of Israel
from pre-Mosaic time. Even to-day Jewish writers ascribe them to the
evil effect which bad food has upon the soul, either by infecting
it with the characteristics of the unclean beasts, or by rendering
it impenetrable to good influences.[81] But, as usual, it is the
allegorical interpreters who carry off the palm. Animals that chew
the cud were to be eaten, because they symbolised those who "read,
mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the Divine law: those which divide
the hoof are examples of those who distinguish between good and bad
actions; and in the ostrich one interpreter finds an analogue to the
bad commentators who pervert the words of Holy Scripture.
[81] Dillmann, _Deuteronomy_, p. 483.
Hitherto in chapter xiv. we have been dealing with material to which
a parallel can be found only in the small code of laws contained
in Lev. xvii.-xxvi., commonly called the Law of Holiness, and in
the Priestly Code.[82] But the two remaining directions regarding
food, which are contained in the twenty-first verse are parallel to
prohibitions in the Law of the Covenant. The first, "Ye shall not
eat of anything that dieth of itself ... for thou art an holy people
unto Yahweh thy God," is parallel to Exod. xxii. 31. "And ye shall
be holy men unto Me: therefore ye shall not eat any flesh that is
torn of beasts in the field," and to Lev. xvii. 15, "Every soul that
eateth that which dieth of itself, or that which is torn of beasts,
whether he be homeborn or a stranger, he shall wash his clothes,
and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening." The
ground for prohibiting such food, was, of course, that the blood was
in it. But there is a divergence between the parallel laws, which is
seen clearly when we take into account the destination of the flesh
of the animal so dying. In Exodus it is said, "To the dogs shall ye
cast it." In Deuteronomy the command is, "To the stranger within
thy gates ye shall give it, and he shall eat of it, or ye may sell
it unto a foreigner." In Leviticus it is taken for granted that an
Israelite and also a stranger may eat either of the _nebhelah_, that
which dieth of itself, or the _terephah_, that which is torn; and if
either do so it is prescribed only that he should wash, and should
be unclean until the evening.
[82] This, of course, does not show that P must have been known to
D, but it proves that as regards material P and D have drawn from
the same source, and that older documents, or customs at least,
underlie both.
Here, therefore, we have one of the cases in which the traditional
hypothesis--that the Law of the Covenant was given at Sinai when
Israel arrived there, the laws of the Priestly Code probably not
many weeks after, and the code of Deuteronomy only thirty-eight or
thirty-nine years later, but before the laws had come fully into
effect by the occupation of Canaan--raises a difficulty. Why should
the Sinaitic law say that _terephah_ is not to be eaten by any one,
but cast to the dogs, and the Levitical law in so short a time after
make the eating of that and _nebhelah_ mere cause of subordinate
uncleanness to both Israelite and stranger, while Deuteronomy
permits the Israelite either to give the _nebhelah_ to the stranger
that he may eat it, or to make it an article of traffic with the
foreigner? Keil's explanation is certainly feasible, that in Exodus
we have the law, in Leviticus the provision for accidental, or
perhaps wilful, disobedience of it under the pressure of hunger,
while in Deuteronomy we have a permission to sell, lest on the plea
of waste the law might be ignored. But the position of the "_gēr_,"
or stranger, is not accounted for. In Leviticus he is bound to the
worship of Yahweh, and can no more eat _nebhelah_ or _terephah_ than
the native Israelite can, while in Deuteronomy he is on a lower
stage than the Israelite as regards ceremonial cleanness, and much
on the same level as the _nokhri_, the foreigner, who in Deuteronomy
is dealt with as an inferior, not bound to the same scrupulosity
as the Israelite (Deut. xv. 3, 23, 29). There does not appear to
be any explanation of such a change in less than forty years;
more especially as the moment at which the change would on that
hypothesis be made was precisely the moment when the stranger was
about for the first time to become an important element in Israelite
life. If, on the other hand, the order of the codes be Exodus,
Deuteronomy, Leviticus, then the Exodus law, which does not consider
the stranger, would suit the earliest stage of Israel's history,
when the stranger would generally be a spy. Later, he crept into
Israelite life, and gradually received more and more consideration;
especially in the days of Solomon, when the Chronicler estimates
the number of the strangers at over a hundred and fifty thousand.
But he was not recognised at that stage as fully bound to all
an Israelite's duties, or as possessed of all an Israelite's
privileges, and that is precisely the position he occupies in
Deuteronomy. In the Priestly Code, however, at a time when the
stranger had practically become a proselyte, the ideal Kingdom of
God includes the "stranger," and gives him a position which differs
little from that of the homeborn. That would make these different
laws answer to different periods of Israel's history, and would
coincide with what has been otherwise found to be the order of
Israel's legal development.
The second prohibition, which runs parallel to what we find in
Exodus, is the somewhat enigmatical one that a kid should not be
sodden in its mother's milk. What it was in this act which made it
seem necessary to issue such a command cannot now be ascertained
with any certainty. Most probably it was connected in some way with
heathen ceremonies, perhaps at a harvest feast; for, as we have
seen, it is a ruling motive throughout all this section that the
Israelites should reject everything which among their neighbours was
connected with idolatry.