SOLOMONIC ANTIJAHVISM.
The ferocities of Josiah and his Jahvists indicate the presence of
an important Solomonist School. Their culture and tendencies are
reflected, as we have seen, in the rage of prophets against them,
and the continuance of their strength is shown in the preservation
of Agur's Voltairian satire on Jahvism, and Job's avowed blasphemies:
"If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
And prove me guilty of blasphemy--
Know then, that God hath wronged me!"
This translation from Job, quoted from Professor Dillon, need only
be compared with that of the authorised and the revised versions
to show us the causa causans to-day which of old added four hundred
interpolations to the Book of Job to soften its criticism.
It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included
among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the
composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book
of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise
man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises ("Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,"
perhaps meaning Wisdom of the Everlasting Helper) to attest the divine
mercies and faithfulness in all generations. This is in two verses,
evidently ancient, which a later hand, apparently, has pointed with
a specification of the covenant with David. After the "Selah" which
ends these four verses come fourteen verses of sermonising upon them,
in which nearly all of the points made by Job's "comforters" are put
in a nutshell. The sons of God who presented themselves, Satan among
them, in his council (Job i. 6) appear here also (Ps. lxxxix. 6):
"Who among the sons of the gods is like unto Jahveh,
A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones."
After the mighty things that "Jah" had done to his enemies have been
affirmed an Elohist takes up the burden and a "vision" like that of
Eliphaz (Job iv. 13) is appealed to:
"Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones."
The vision's revelation (Job v. 17) "Happy is the man whom God
correcteth" is also in this psalm (32, 33): "Then will I visit their
transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, but
my mercy will I not utterly take from him." And Eliphaz's assurance
"thy seed will be great" (v. 25) corresponds with that in our psalm
(verse 36), "His seed shall endure forever."
When the psalmist of the vision has pictured, as if in dissolving
views, the military renown of David, God's "servant," and his "horn,"
pointing to Solomon, God's "first-born," the transgressions of the
latter are intimated (30-33), but the seer continues to utter the
divine promises:
"My covenant will I not break,
Nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.
One thing have I sworn by my holiness;
I will not lie unto David:
His seed shall endure forever,
And his throne as the sun before me;
As the moon which is established forever:
Faithful is the witness in the sky. Selah."
Then breaks out the indignant accuser:
"But thou HAST cast off and rejected!
Thou hast been wroth with thine 'anointed';
Thou hast broken the covenant with thy 'servant,'
Thou hast profaned his crown to the very dust;
Thou hast broken down all his defences;
Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin!
All the wayfarers that pass by despoil him;
He is become a reproach to his neighbors.
Thou hast exalted the right-hand of his adversaries,
Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.
Yea, thou turnest back the edge of his sword,
And hast not enabled him to stand in battle.
Thou hast made his brightness to cease,
And hurled his throne down to the ground.
The days of his youth thou hast shortened:
Thou hast covered him with shame! Selah."
A sarcastic "Selah," or "so it is!"--if Eben Ezra's definition of
Selah be correct.
Then follow four verses by a more timid plaintiff, who, almost in the
words of Job (e.g., x. 20), reminds Jahveh of the shortness of life,
and the impossibility of any return from the grave, and asks how long
he intends to wait before fulfilling his promises. He also supplies
Koheleth with a text by the pessimistic exclamation, "For what vanity
hast thou created all the children of men"!
After this writer has sounded his "Selah," another rather more bitterly
reminds Jahveh, in three verses, that not only his chosen people are
in disgrace, but his own enemies are triumphant.
(These two are much like the writer of Psalms xliv. 9-26, who almost
repeats the points made by the above three remonstrants, and asks
Jahveh, "Why sleepest thou?")
Finally a Jahvist doxology, fainter than any appended to the other
four books, completes this strange eighty-ninth psalm:
"Praised be Jahveh for evermore!
Amen, and Amen!"
Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Or is this the half-sardonic
submission of Job under the whirlwind-answer, which extorted from him
no tribute except a virtual admission that when the ethical debate
became a question of which could wield the loudest whirlwinds,
he surrendered!
In Job's case the only recantation is that of Jahveh himself, who
admits (xlii. 7) that Job had all along spoken the right thing about
him (Jahveh). The epilogue is a complete denial of Jahvist theology.
Job's small voice of scepticism which followed the whirlwind was
never silenced. The fragment of Agur (Proverbs xxx. 1-4) appears to
have been written as the alternative reply of Job to Jahveh. Job had
said, "I am vile, I will lay my hand upon my mouth, I have uttered
that I understand not." Agur adds ironically, "I am more stupid
than other men, in me is no human understanding nor yet the wisdom
to comprehend the science of sacred things." Then quoting Jahveh's
boast about distributing the wind (Job xxxviii. 24), about his "sons
shouting for joy" (Ibid. 7), and giving the sea its garment of cloud
(Ibid. 9), Agur, the "Hebrew Voltaire," as Professor Dillon aptly
styles him, asks:
"Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
Who can gather the wind in his fists?
Who can bind the seas in a garment?
Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
Such an one I would question about God: 'What is his name?
And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest?'"
The stupid Jahvist commentator who follows Agur (Proverbs xxx. 5-14)
and in the same chapter interpolates 17 and 20, has the indirect value
of rendering it probable that there were a great many "Agurites" (a
"bad generation" he calls them) and that they were rather aristocratic
and distrustful of the masses. This commentator, who cannot understand
the Agur fragments, also shows us, side by side with the brilliant
genius, lines revealing the mentally pauperised condition into which
Jahvism must have fallen when such a writer was its champion.
It is tolerably certain that such fragments as those of Agur imply a
literary atmosphere, a cultured philosophic constituency, and a long
precedent evolution of rationalism. Such peaks are not solitary, but
rise from mountain ranges. Professor Dillon, whose admirable volume
merits study, finds Buddhistic influence in Agur's fragments. [9]
But I cannot find in them any trace of the recluse or of the mystic;
he does not appear to be even an "agnostic," for when he says "I
have worried myself about God and succeeded not," the vein is too
satirical for a mind interested in theistic speculations. He is a man
of the world,--more of a Goethe than a Voltaire; he regards Jahveh as
a phantasm, is well domesticated in his planet, and does not moralise
on the facts of nature in the Oriental any more than in the Pharisaic
way. He appears to be a true Solomonic philosopher and naturalist. I
cannot agree to Professor Dillon's omission of the "Four Cunning Ones"
(Proverbs xxx. 24-28), because they are not of the same metrical form
as the others, and lead "nowhither." The lines
"The ants are a people not strong,
Yet they provide their meat in the summer,"
no doubt led to the famous parable of Proverbs vi. 6-11, "Go to the
ant, thou sluggard." Being there imbedded in an otherwise commonplace
editorial chapter, they may have been derived from some commentator
on Agur.
Agur apparently represents the Solomonic thinkers brought with
the rest of the people under the trials that made Israel the Job
of nations. They are such as those who led astonished Jeremiah to
ask "what kind of wisdom is in them?" (Jeremiah viii.) They "do not
recognise Jahveh's judgments"; in "shame, dismay, captivity, they have
rejected Jahveh's word." The exquisite humor of Agur shows that these
philosophers did not lose their serenity. Agur sees man passing his
life between two insatiable daughters of the ghoul, "the Grave and
the Womb,"--Birth and Death,--and amid the inevitable evils of life
he will be wise to refrain from rage and lay his hand upon his lips.
But silence was just what the Jahvist omniscients could not attain
to. Notwithstanding Jahveh's confession that Job was right in his
position, and the orthodox wrong in their theory that all evil is
providential, the "comforters" rise again in the commentator who begins
(Proverbs xxx. 5):
"Every word of God is perfected.
He is a shield to them that trust in Him,"
and proceeds in verse 14 with his inanities. And these have prevailed
ever since. Even Jesus, when he took up the burden of Wisdom, and
rebuked the Jahvist superstition that those on whom a tower fell
were subjects of a judgment, must have his stupid corrector to add,
"Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." This simpleton's
superstition has taken the place of the great successor of Solomon,
and to-day, amid all the learning of Christendom, is proclaiming
that the Father is "permitting" all the Satans,--war, disease,
earthquake, famine,--to harry his children just to test them or to
chasten them. Why should omnipotence create a race requiring worse than
inquisitorial tortures for its discipline? In all the literature of
Christendom there is not one honest attempt to deal with the evils and
agonies of nature; and at this moment we find theists apotheosizing the
"Unknowable from which all things proceed," without any appreciation
of the fact that in the remote past Jahvism sought the same refuge,
and that it was proved by Job a refuge of fallacies. In an awakening
moral and humane sentiment Job stands in this latter day upon the
earth, and again steadily repeats his demand why one should respect
an Unknowable from whom all things,--all horrors and agonies,--proceed.
Ethically we are required to do no evil that good may come;
theologically, to worship a deity who is doing just that all the
time. This is no doubt a convenient doctrine for the Christian
nations that wish to preserve their own property and peace at home,
while acting as banditti in remote continents and islands. All such
atrocities are enacted and adopted as part of the providential plan of
spreading the Gospel, latterly "civilisation"; but it is very certain
that there can be no such thing as national civilisation until evil is
recognised as evil, good as good,--the one to be abhorred, the other
loved,--and no deity respected whose government would wrong a worm.