never used as a name for God until the Reformation. We can be certain
only that the consonants of the word were _JHVH_ (or _YHWH_, Hebrew
pronunciation). This extraordinary state of things is accounted for
by the fact that for centuries the Hebrew Scriptures were "unpointed"
or unvocalised--that is, the consonants only were written and the
necessary connecting vowels were taught orally, and only retained in
the memory for use when the Scriptures were read aloud. When in the
Ninth Century A.D. it was likely that the pronunciation of the sacred
language would be entirely forgotten, a device for its preservation
was made whereby the vowel pronunciation was indicated by means of
"points" placed chiefly underneath the consonantal text; very much like
the dots and dashes used for vowels in Pitman's system of shorthand.
When, however, it came to the "pointing" of JHVH, it was found that
the pronunciation of this word had been entirely lost. Reverence for
the name of God had become so exaggerated that, in reading aloud from
the Scriptures, wherever the sacred name occurred another word had
always been substituted. This word was one of respect, but of less
marked exaltation--_Adonai_, equal to our word "Lord." The only course
open to the punctuators was that of inserting under the consonants
JHVH, the vowels (with suitable euphonic modifications) of the word
_Adonai_, with the result that we get the conflate "Jehovah," a word
which has become invested with so much solemnity to our ears, but
which was certainly not the right pronunciation, and which has never
been used by the Jews. Scholars have endeavoured, at present without
any universally accepted result, to recover the lost pronunciation
by linguistic enquiries, with the desire to discover what the word
originally meant, in the hope that it would throw some light on the
origin of the religion founded by Moses. In Exod. iii. 13 ff. (R. V.
margin) we have the traditional explanation of the word, an explanation
which is not altogether satisfactory from a grammatical point of
view; the great Hebraist Ewald goes so far as to pronounce it highly
artificial. It has been objected that the man who wrote this account,
about 750 B.C., surely understood his own language. Probably; but that
is not to say that he understood the etymology of it, for etymology is
a new science, and has upset many popular derivations in the case of
our own language. If the explanation given in Exodus is correct, and
we cannot with certainty put anything much better in its place, then
the meaning of the word "Jehovah" would be "He that is," perhaps an
equivalent in Hebrew form to the Western idea of "The Eternal." Only
one of the numerous guesses as to the meaning of the original name
need be quoted here: that the word comes from a verb, _hawah_, meaning
either "to fall," or "to blow." Similar ideas would seem to account
for either of these meanings. "He who blows," looks like the name for
the Tempest God, while "that which falls" has been taken to indicate a
fallen meteorite, which may have been preserved as a symbol of Jehovah.
When we remember the thunderstorms at Sinai, and the common belief that
thunder was a special theophany of Jehovah, these ideas are not to be
hastily dismissed as altogether incredible. Nor should we be prevented
from considering such an idea from the prejudice that it would make
the origin of the religion of Israel a piece of Nature-worship and
superstition. God has taken man where He has found him, and none can
dare to define the limits of childish and crude conceptions within
which the Spirit of God can begin His work in man's mind.
The conclusion derived from the examination of the meaning of the name
"Jehovah" must therefore remain open until some further light is thrown
on the subject. (Scholars usually adopt the pronunciation, _Yahwe_, as
our nearest approach to the original.)
An endeavour has been made to discover the origin of the religion of
Israel from the persistent connection of Jehovah with the locality of
Mount Sinai. This idea continues long after in the Promised Land (Deut.
xxxiii. 2; Judges v. 5), and Elijah takes a long journey back to the
sacred spot, presumably to get into closer touch with Jehovah (1 Kings
xix.). With the prevailing beliefs of that age in the localisation of
the god, this connection must be thought of as of more than accidental
significance. It is fair to assume that the seat of Jehovah at Sinai
must have been known before the great covenant, and is indeed required
by the narrative itself (Exod. iii.; iv. 27), while recent discoveries
are said to prove that the traditional Sinai must have been a sacred
place from the earliest times. Moses, however, is clearly represented
as coming to know of Jehovah during his stay in Midian. The exact means
of the revelation is said to have been the sight of a bush on fire, yet
miraculously unconsumed. What actually lies behind this story--whether
it is a creation of the religious imagination which sees "every common
bush afire with God"--it is useless for us to try and discover. A
natural explanation has been sought in the fact that Jethro, the
Kenite, was the priest of Midian, and presumably of some shrine of
Jehovah. Certainly Jethro knew the name of Jehovah, but apparently only
regarded Him as one of the gods, until the marvellous deliverance of
the Exodus proved Him to be the greatest of gods (Exod. xviii. 9-11).
Jethro performs an act of sacrifice to Jehovah, in the presence of
Aaron and the elders, that looks remarkably like an act of initiation
by which Israel are introduced to the worship of Jehovah by the regular
priest of the shrine (Exod. xviii. 12). The hypothesis is further
strengthened by the fact that the Kenites are found later dwelling
in Palestine (Judges i. 16), and are always remembered long after as
the friends of the Israelites (1 Sam. xv. 6; xxvii. 10; xxx. 29). The
inference from this is that Moses first learned of Jehovah from his
father-in-law Jethro, but that he understood more of the character
of Jehovah than Jethro, and by his superior religious consciousness
conceived of Him as in some way Supreme who to Jethro had been only one
of the desert gods.
This theory would certainly be strengthened if Sinai could be
identified, not with the traditional site of _Jebel Musa_ in the
southern part of the Sinaitic peninsula, but with some spot in the land
of Midian, across the gulf of Akaba. This does indeed seem necessary
from the narrative, for from the most natural interpretation of Exod.
iii. 1, Horeb, the mount of God, was in Midian. It is generally taken
for granted that Horeb and Sinai are identical; the respective names
are used by different documents. It is said that, for some reasons,
Midian would fit in with the record of the journey through the
wilderness better than the Sinaitic peninsula. If the parallelism of
Sinai with Seir in Deut. xxxiii. 2 can be taken to show identity, as is
natural, we have a further confirmation, for Seir is in Midian.
The grave difficulty of all this is that it would make the religion
of Jehovah a distinct importation. Is such a thing as its reception by
the Hebrews credible on this account? The idea of a nation changing
its religion is certainly repugnant to the Semitic mind (Jer. ii. 10,
11), and some more natural connection seems necessary, both from the
narrative and from general considerations. Now the narrative hints that
the religion was not entirely new (Exod. vi. 3), but was known to the
Patriarchs under different forms; while the sanctity of Sinai would
seem to have been already known to some of the tribes (Exod. iv. 27).
There is nothing here definite enough for us to proceed to historical
certainty, but it is fair to suppose that the shrine at Sinai was
known to the Patriarchs in their wanderings, and that Jehovah would be
worshipped; as would any other local god whose territory they happened
to be in. Grant that this was partly known to the Hebrew slaves in
Egypt; that Moses received the revelation of the power of Jehovah in
his exile in Midian, and by a splendid leap of inspiration identified
the actual shrine and the Person of Jehovah with the Mighty Spirit
dimly known to the Patriarchs, and we have an explanation that is
natural and is also true; for the Object of man's worship has been One
through all history. When the successful passage of the Red Sea and
the defeat of the Egyptians were interpreted by Moses as the direct
intervention of Jehovah, the transition to the great covenant is made
possible. All this may be very contrary to the traditional idea of how
Moses received the revelation of Jehovah, but the facts do point this
way; and it is not for us to deny that the Spirit of God could work
through these natural events and through the mind of this commanding
personality, and so bring about this identification of Jehovah and the
Great Spirit of the Patriarchal thought, which was to lead to such
great results for religion.
We are now free to investigate what the character of the religion
introduced by Moses actually was.
(1) _General Character._ A careful examination of its character shows
that while it is by no means identical with the religion taught by the
Prophets, and while it retained many heathen ideas and customs, yet it
contained within itself the promise and guarantee of development. We
have already had occasion to notice that it is not pure Monotheism.
Jehovah is not the only God; He is the only God for Israel. The heathen
deities are still regarded as having a real existence. Neither can it
be called a purely spiritual religion, for Jehovah is rather said to
have a spirit than to be a spirit; He has a form which, though terrible
in its effect on the beholder, by reason of its glory, can nevertheless
be seen; He inhabits a special place, which is His sacred territory,
and on this Moses stumbles all unwittingly in Midian.
Still more emphatically against the idea of a purely spiritual religion
is the fact--which the editors have done their best to hide, but
not successfully--that images of some kind were allowed, or existed
unreproved. The Ephod, of which we hear so often, was evidently at
one time an idol. The meaning of the word is of something "covered,"
as may be seen from Isa. xxx. 22, where the feminine form of the word
(_aphuddah_) is used of the gold plating of images; but according to
a later idea (Exod. xxviii. 6-14), the Ephod formed part of the dress
of the High Priest, and was a kind of embroidered waistcoat. This
explanation, however, does violence to a number of passages where
the Ephod is mentioned. Gideon expended seventeen hundred shekels of
gold on an Ephod which he "set up" in Ophrah (Jud. viii. 26 f.); this
cannot be a waistcoat. Only the explanation that the Ephod was an image
can do justice to the reference in Judges xvii. 5, and it suits the
passage in 1 Sam. xxi. 9, if we think of the sword hanging behind an
image. If the ephod was nothing more than a waistcoat by which lots
were determined, we have to explain why it is so sharply condemned
in Judges viii. 27, and why the text of 1 Sam. xiv. 18, which in the
Septuagint reads "ephod," in the Hebrew text has been altered to read
"ark"; an alteration which is quite impossible here, as the ark was at
this time in Kirjath Jearim, and, moreover, was never used for the
purpose of obtaining oracles. (The only explanation is that some scribe
has made this alteration because he knew that there was something
idolatrous about the ephod.) Even as late as Hosea (iii. 4) we find
the ephod mentioned in a connection where it can only stand for an
object of idolatrous worship. It is certainly strange that the same
name should be in use for an image, and then later for a garment of the
high-priest; but the likely explanation of this is that the image was
at one time clothed with a dress, as was usual (Jer. x. 9), and that
in the pockets of this the lots were kept. When the use of the image
became offensive the garment was retained as part of the high-priest's
dress. The transition is made more natural if we can suppose that the
Priest of the Oracle, in the early days, was accustomed to put on the
garment of the image, under the customary idea that thus the divine
knowledge of the idol would be communicated to him. In 2 Kings xviii.
4, we read of _Nehushtan_, the brazen serpent which Moses had made,
being used idolatrously; but perhaps this has been wrongly ascribed to
Moses. From the intimate connection of bull-worship with the worship
of Jehovah, it would seem that the bull was regarded as a symbol of
Jehovah; a similar idea may have instituted Aaron's golden calf.
While admitting the force of this evidence, we must still keep open
the possibility that the religion instituted by Moses was of a purer
type, but was never strong enough to drive out the remnants of heathen
practice.
More indisputable evidence of the materialistic conception of the
Person of Jehovah is found in the reverence paid to what is known as
"the ark of Jehovah," the making of which is certainly ascribed to
Moses. The name "the ark of the covenant," was not the original name
given to the ark, but is taken from the incident recorded in Deut. x.
1-5. The idea that the ark was built to contain the tables of the Law
does not appear until the time of Deuteronomy, and is quite unknown to
the older strata of the Pentateuch. In these older strata all mention
of the actual making of the ark is omitted, although there is evidence
that they did contain an account of its preparation and meaning.
Enough, however, is told us of the reverential treatment of it, to show
that it was a symbol of higher sanctity than a mere receptacle for the
stones of the law would be likely to be. It is certainly very closely
identified with Jehovah Himself, as may be seen from Num. x. 35. (This
is in poetic form, and is therefore likely to be a very early fragment.
It should be noticed that the ark apparently starts of itself.) Its
presence in the battlefield ensures victory, while its absence brings
about defeat (Num. xiv. 42-45; 1 Sam. iv. 3-7; v. 1 ff.). It can hardly
be that the ark was taken for Jehovah Himself, but it must have
contained something that was closely identified with Jehovah; a box
is not built except with the idea of holding something. We have seen
that it is unlikely that that something was originally the two tables
of the law; was it something else of stone which made the transference
to the tables of the law at once necessary and natural? Was it a stone
image of Jehovah? It has been conjectured that it may have contained
meteoritic stones, which would agree with the proposed derivation of
"Jehovah" from the Storm God of Sinai. There is nothing in the Old
Testament which gives any support to these conjectures, but in face
of the fact that the original narrative of the making of the ark has
been omitted, and in view of the ideas of religion which were common
in that period, we cannot say that they are absolutely excluded from
consideration. The ark was certainly bound up with the idea of war, and
would seem to have been kept in a soldier's tent. It was transferred to
the dark inner temple till 586 B.C., and from that date all trace of it
is lost. The Priest's Code ("P") makes provision for it in the second
temple, but we have unimpeachable Jewish testimony that the shrine of
the inner temple was absolutely empty (Josephus, _War of the Jews_, v.
v. § 5). Jeremiah may have been aware of the original significance of
the ark as tending towards idolatry, and hence his words in Jer. iii.
16.
(2) _Ordinances of Worship._ It remains for us to enquire into the
character of the religion founded by Moses by an examination of some of
the outstanding ordinances that regulated the idea of worship.
Here the traditional ascription of the fully developed ritual of the
Book of Leviticus to Moses has to be set aside, on the consideration
that we have no record of its observance until late in the period of
the monarchy, and from then it can be traced as a gradual growth of
custom and ideal until its complete observance after the Exile.
There does not seem to have been any priesthood of the exclusive
Levitical order founded by Moses. The story of the Levites in Exod.
xxxii. can only be a late story, for there is no record of their
monopoly of the ritual service until the Reform under Josiah:
Joshua, an Ephraimite, is the "servant of the tent"; Samuel, also an
Ephraimite, sleeps beside the ark (1 Sam. iii. 3); David and Solomon
assume a kind of chief priesthood (2 Sam. vi. 13; 1 Kings viii. 5, 62
ff.), and of course neither of them were Levites. The story in Judges
xvii. gives what is perhaps the true position of the Levites: anyone
could be consecrated as a family priest, but the presence of a Levite
was reckoned propitious. Down to a very late age sacrifice seems to
have remained largely a tribal or family act, and although a descendant
of Moses' tribe (Levi) was regarded as possessing special advantage,
there was no law by which Levites alone were reckoned capable of
discharging priestly functions.
In the matter of sacrifice, it would seem that Moses simply adopted
what was a very ancient and common practice. In face of the evident
neglect of the Levitical ritual in matters of sacrifice, both by
the common people and by such great reformers as Samuel and Elijah,
together with the fact that in the teaching of the prophets doubts are
cast on its divine origin (Isa. i. 11; Amos v. 25; Micah vi. 6-8),
we cannot infer that the detailed and explicit commands concerning
sacrifice found in the Book of Leviticus are the work of Moses,
or belong to an early age. To the Prophets, sacrifice is always
reminiscent of paganism. The time when the change came in may be
detected in the different value given to sacrifice by the post-exilic
prophets (Mal. i. 13 f.), while the incompatibility of the two views,
prophetic and priestly, can be seen from the addition which has been
made to Ps. li., to bring it into accord with the later view.
Neither is it possible for us to believe that the elaborate shrine
known as the Tabernacle owed its existence to Moses. The impossibility
of transporting the cumbrous fixtures through the wilderness had been
noticed before the modern era of critical study. A close examination
of the details of construction shows that it is nothing more than an
ideal projection from the mind of a priestly writer who believed that
a tent-like counterpart of Ezekiel's temple was essential to Israel's
worship in the wilderness. It is enough to recall that the tabernacle
of the priestly writer's imagination is quite unknown to the historical
books. In Exod. xxxiii. 7 ff., which may be seen to be only a fragment
of an early document, since it starts abruptly by describing "the"
tent, which is known as the Tent of Meeting, we have what has been
taken to be the Tabernacle; but it is nothing more than a tent for
keeping the ark in.
(3) _Legislation._ How much of the legislation of the Pentateuch is
to be ascribed to Moses we cannot tell. Too many hands have been at
work on it for the original to be discovered. A remarkable discovery
was made in the year 1901 of some enormous _steles_, which bear in
cuneiform characters what is now known as the Code of Hammurabi, the
oldest code of laws in the world, the date of which is reckoned to
be 2250 B.C. They presuppose an advanced state of civilisation and
morality existing in the Euphrates valley at that period. The agreement
between the Pentateuchal Code and the Code of Hammurabi argues
dependence of the former on the latter to a very considerable extent,
and supplies a still further testimony to the extent to which the
religion of Israel is indebted to Babylon. The exact bearing of this
discovery upon critical theories, and especially upon the date of the
Pentateuch has perhaps hardly been estimated yet; it does not, however,
refute the theory which denies that the Pentateuch as it stands is from
the hand of Moses.
We naturally think of the Decalogue as the work of Moses, but here
we are faced by the difficulty that the Decalogue appears to exist
in three recensions (Exod. xx. 1-17; xxxiv. 14-28; Deut. v. 6-21).
The account in Exod. xxxiv., which forms part of the document "J," is
reckoned to be the oldest of these, and the original of this might well
go back to the time of Moses. It has been objected that the Decalogue
is too ethical to suit the time of Moses, but is this not because we
are inclined to read into the Ten Commandments far more than is to be
found there? It can be shown that they are little more than ten laws
of "rights." A special difficulty is found in ascribing the second
commandment to this age, in view of its frequent uncensured breach;
but perhaps there is some difference that escapes us between a molten
image, which is prescribed in the first draft (Exod. xxxiv. 17), and
the later prohibition of the graven image (Exod. xx. 4).
In the foregoing examination we have allowed for the most rigorous
demands of advanced criticism, demands which may have to be modified
as criticism becomes more of a science, but there remains the need to
discover what there was, on these critical assumptions, in the Mosaic
religion that provided the way for a further advance into the faith
which became the glory of Israel. What is it that makes the difference
between Mosaism and the heathen Semitic religions, a difference which
was to make the gradual growth of a pure Monotheism possible?
The first important element which needs to be reckoned with is that it
was a religion of choice rather than a religion of nature. We saw that
it was difficult to conceive how the religion of Jehovah could have
been adopted by Israel unless there had been some previous contact.
What is so difficult to understand is nevertheless the one element
that contained the possibility of progress. The relation of Israel to
Jehovah was neither by physical descent nor through the connection of
the god with the land, as with the heathen Semitic religions. Jehovah
was at first conceived of as the God of the tribe only, but even
this was not by nature, but by His gracious choice. Their land was
given to them by Jehovah, but His natural connection was with a far
distant shrine. This fact in itself must have rendered necessary some
more spiritual conception of His habitation, and, though hard enough
for the common people to realise, when they entered Canaan and found
a full-grown cultus and religion in connection with the god of the
land already in possession, it was this fact upon which the Prophets
fastened and which could not be denied: the religion of Jehovah was a
matter of choice and not of racial or local connection. That choice
had been ratified by solemn covenant, to which the Prophets appealed.
The relation between Jehovah and Israel depended therefore on the
conditions of the covenant being faithfully kept. When we compare the
religions of the other Semites, which made the relation of the god
and his people one which nothing could break, and from which neither
the god nor the people could escape, we can see how this difference
constituted one of the ethical germs of the religion which was destined
to grow into fuller power and life.
There was another important conception, which was intensified by the
fact that the religion of Jehovah was a religion of choice: that of
the jealousy of Jehovah. This was often interpreted, especially in
the pre-prophetic period, in a very crude and in even a cruel way.
The jealousy of Jehovah was very like the human passion: uncertain,
arbitrary and irrational, manifesting itself according to the popular
mind in outbreaks of fury for ceremonial mistakes, or for causes even
less comprehensible (Num. iii. 4; 2 Sam. vi. 7). In all the religions
it was thought to be a serious thing to depart from the allegiance
to the rightful god, and sure to lay one open to his jealousy and
vengeance; but something more is now found in this idea as it develops
in Hebrew thought: it is that the jealousy of Jehovah is due to the
great difference between Him and the other gods, a difference which
came to be recognised as one of character. Something of this must go
back to Moses himself.
This difference is also expressed in the idea that He is a God of
righteousness. The word "righteousness" does not always have in
the Hebrew Scriptures the absolute meaning which it has for us. It
was rather equal to our word "rights," which we often employ quite
unethically. Jehovah was one who gave right judgments when questions
were submitted and answered by the lot, and One who brought victory
to the right. It was undoubtedly Israel's right that was chiefly
considered, but there was hidden in it an ethical germ which was to
bring forth notable fruit when man's sense of right was widened.
This at least was the mark of the new religion which Moses impressed on
the people, impressed with such a force that it could never be quite
forgotten. It had new thoughts pregnant with meaning for the mind of
man and for the future of religion, and these became the fulcrum of the
Prophets' appeal. From the bosom of this people was to come forth One
who was to reveal the Father as perfectly righteous and impartial, and
who demands for His service a righteousness that must far exceed that
of the straitest observers of external religion.
It would be easy for us to despise this day of small beginnings, or
to refuse to see in it any real revelation of God at all. Doubtless
this enquiry may necessitate a change in our conceptions of the work
of Moses, but it is one that we are forced to by a multitude of facts,
and we must find a theory of inspiration wide enough to fit them. Crude
as we may make the beginnings of Israel's faith, natural as we may
feel are the laws by which it worked towards its growth, we have not
been able to get any nearer to some of those ultimate questions which
ask how religion begins, what the nature of revelation is, and how it
comes to man's mind. We need not think that God had to break in on the
mind of Moses, so that the personality of the man was in abeyance while
God worked through him. When God wishes to bring men to a higher truth
He does not supernaturally communicate it; He makes human nature to
produce personalities whose minds come naturally to the truth. There
can be no separation of natural and supernatural here; wherever that
separation is to be made, we certainly cannot make it. There can be
no meaning in revelation, and no possibility of it, unless God has
made man's mind to be growingly in touch with Him and to be capable of
receiving His revelation by the natural working of thought, so that it
seems to spring up within his own consciousness.
Deeper into this question we are not called upon to go at present, but
no one can object that it is less reverent, or that it shows signs of a
decay of faith, if men can see God to-day not only in the extraordinary
and the supernatural, but also in the ordinary and the natural. If the
recognition of God depends on spiritual vision, then those who refuse
to narrow the limits within which God can be seen, and who therefore
welcome all truth with gladness and without fear, are not to be called
godless and unspiritual.