What importance the written letter, the book of the law, possessed
for the Jews, we all know from the New Testament. Of ancient
Israel, again, it is said in the introductory poem of Goethe's
West-Oestlicher Divan, that the word was so important there,
because it was a spoken word. The contrast which Goethe evidently
perceived is really characteristic, and deserves some further
attention.
X.I.
X.I.1. Even if it be the case that Deuteronomy and the Priestly
Code were only reduced to writing at a late period, still there
remains the Jehovistic legislation (Exodus xx.-xxiii. xxxiv.)
which might be regarded as the document which formed the
starting-point of the religious history of Israel. And this
position is in fact generally claimed for it; yet not for the
whole of it, since it is commonly recognised that the Sinaitic
Book of the Covenant (Exodus xx.-xxiii. 19) was given to a
people who were settled and thoroughly accustomed to agriculture,
and who, moreover, had passed somewhat beyond the earliest stage
in the use of money. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Exodus xxi. 35: compare xxi. 33 with Judges ix. 4
-- Footnote
The Decalogue alone is commonly maintained to be in the strictest
sense Mosaic. This is principally on account of the statement
that it was written down on the two stone tables of the sacred
ark. Yet of Deuteronomy also we read, both that it was written
on twelve stones and that it was deposited in the sacred ark
(Deuteronomy xxxi. 26). We cannot therefore place implicit reliance
on such statements. What is attested in this way of the Decalogue
seems to find confirmation in 1Kings viii. 9. But the authority
of this statement is greatly weakened by the fact that it occurs
in a passage which has undergone the Deuteronomistic revision, and
has been, in addition to this, subjected to interpolation. The more
weight must we therefore allow to the circumstance, which makes for
a different conclusion, that the name "The Ark of the Covenant"
(i.e., the box of the law) /1/ is peculiar to the later writers,
-- Footnote
1. Compare 1Kings viii. 21, "the ark wherein is the covenant of
Jehovah," and viii 9, "there was nothing in the ark save the two
tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, the tables of the
covenant which Jehovah had made with the children of Israel." The
Deuteronomistic expression "tables of the covenant", alternates
in the Priestly Code with that of "tables of testimony"; i e.,
likewise of the law. For H(DWT, "the testimony," 2Kings xi. 12,
read HC(DWT, "the bracelets," according to 2Samuel i. 10.
-- Footnote
and, when it occurs in older narratives, is proved by its sporadic
appearance, as well as by a comparison of the Septuagint with
the Massoretic text, to be a correction. In early times the ark
was not a mere casket for the law; the "the ark of Jehovah" was of
itself important, as we see clearly enough from 1Samuel iv.-vi.
Like the twelve maccebas which surrounded the altar on the holy hill
of Shechem, and which only later assumed the character of monuments
of the law, so the ark of the covenant no doubt arose by a change
of meaning out of the old idol. If there were stones in it at all,
they probably served some other purpose than that of writing materials,
otherwise they would not have been hidden as a mystery in the
darkness of the sanctuary; they must have been exposed to public
view. Add to this that the tradition is not agreed as to the
tenor of the ten words said to have been inserted on the two
tables; two decalogues being preserved to us, Exodus xx. and
Exodus xxxiv., which are quite different from each other. It
results from this that there was no real or certain knowledge as
to what stood on the tables, and further that if there were such
stones in the ark--and probably there were--there was nothing
written on them. This is not the place to decide which of the two
versions is prior to the other; the negative result we have
obtained is sufficient for our present purpose.
X.I.2. Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases
for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in
writing. Usage and tradition were looked on to a large extent as
the institution of the Deity. Thus, for example, the ways and
rules of agriculture. Jehovah had instructed the husbandman and
taught him the right way. He it was whose authority gave to
the unwritten laws of custom their binding power. "It is never so
done in Israel," "that is folly in Israel," and similar
expressions of insulted public conscience are of frequent occurrence,
and show the power of custom: the fear of God acts as a
motive for respecting it. "Surely there is no fear of God in
this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake," so
Abraham says to himself in Gerar. "How shall I do such great
wrong and sin against God?" says Joseph to the woman in Egypt.
"The people of Sodom were wicked and sinned grievously against
Jehovah," we read in Genesis xiii. 13. Similarly Deuteronomy
xxv. 18: "The Amalekites attacked Israel on the march, and killed
the stragglers, all that were feeble and fell behind, and feared
not God." We see that the requirements of the Deity are known and
of force, not to the Israelites only, but to all the world; and
accordingly they are not to be identified with any positive
commands. The patriarchs observed them long before Moses. "I
know Abraham," Jehovah says, xviii. 19, "that he will command his
children to keep the way of Jehovah, to do justice and judgment."
Much greater importance is attached to the special Torah of
Jehovah, which not only sets up laws of action of universal
validity, but shows man the way in special cases of difficulty,
where he is at a loss. This Torah is one of the special gifts
with which Israel is endowed (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 4); and it is
intrusted to the priests, whose influence, during the period of
the Hebrew kings, of which we are now speaking, rested much more
on this possession than on the privilege of sacrifice. The verb
from which Torah is derived signifies in its earliest usage to
give direction, decision. The participle signifies _giver of
oracles_ in the two, examples _gibeath moreh_ and _allon moreh_.
The latter expression is explained by another which alternates
with it, "oak of the soothsayers." Now we know that the priests
in the days of Saul and David gave divine oracles by the ephod
and the lots connected with it, which answered one way or the other
to a question put in an alternative form. Their Torah grew no doubt
out of this practice. /1/ The Urim and Thummim are regarded,
-- Footnote
1. 1Sam xiv. xxiii. xxx. In connection with 1Samuel xxxi. 3
I have conjectured that the verb of which Torah is the abstract
means originally to throw the lot-arrows. The Thummim have been
compared in the most felicitous way by Freytag, and by Lagarde
independently of him (Proph. Chald. p. xlvii.) with the
Arabian Tamaim, which not only signifies children's amulets but
any means of "averruncatio". Urim is probably connected with
)RR "to curse" (cf. Iliad i. 11 and Numbers xxiii. 23): the two
words of the formula seem mutually to supplement each other.
-- Footnote
according to Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8, as the true and universal insignia
of the priesthood; the ephod is last mentioned in the historical
books in 1Kings ii. 26, /1/
-- Footnote
1 Bleek, Einleiung in das A. T., 1878, p. 642.
-- Footnote
but appears to have remained in use down to the time of Isaiah
(Hosea iii. 4; Isaiah xxx. 22). The Torah freed itself in the
process of time, following the general mental movement, from such
heathenish media and vehicles (Hab. ii. 19). But it continued
to be an oral decision and direction. As a whole it is only a
power and activity of God, or of the priests. Of this subject
there can be no abstract; the TEACHING; is only thought of as
the action of the TEACHER. There is no torah as a ready-made
product, as a system existing independently of its originator and
accessible to every one: it becomes actual only in the various
utterances, which naturally form by degrees the basis of a fixed
tradition. "They preserve Thy word, and keep Thy law; they teach
Jacob Thy judgments and Israel Thy statutes " (Deuteronomy xxxiii.
9, 10).
The Torah of the priests appears to have had primarily a legal
character. In cases which there was no regular authority to
decide, or which were too difficult for human decision, the latter
was brought in the last instance before God, i.e., before the
sanctuary or the priests (Exodus xviii. 25 seq.). The priests
thus formed a kind of supreme court, which, however, rested on a
voluntary recognition of its moral authority, and could not
support its decisions by force. "If a man sin against another,
God shall judge him," 1Samuel ii. 25 says, very indefinitely.
Certain legal transactions of special solemnity are executed
before God (Exodus xxi. 6). Now in proportion as the executive
gained strength under the monarchy, _jus_--civil justice--necessarily
grew up into a separate existence from the older sacred _fas_. The
knowledge of God, which Hosea (chapter iv.) regards as the contents
of the torah, has as yet a closer connection with jurisprudence
than with theology; but as its practical issue is that God
requires of man righteousness, and faithfulness, and good-will,
it is fundamentally and essentially morality, though morality
at that time addressed its demands less to the conscience than
to society. A ritual tradition naturally developed itself even
before the exile (2Kings xvii. 27, 28). But only those rites
were included in the Torah which the priests had to teach others,
not those which they discharged themselves; even in Leviticus
this distinction may be traced; the instructions characterised
as toroth being chiefly those as to animals which might or might
not be eaten, as to clean and unclean states, as to leprosy and
its marks (cf. Deuteronomy xxiv. 8).
So it was in Israel, to which the testimony applies which we have
cited: and so it was in Judah also. There was a common proverb in
the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, "The Torah shall not perish
from the priest, nor counsel from the ancient, nor the word from
the prophet:" but no doubt the saying was not new in their time,
and at any rate it will apply to the earlier time as well. Not
because they sacrifice but because they teach, do the priests
here appear as pillars of the religious order of things; and
their Torah is a living power, equal to the occasion and
never-failing. Micah reproaches them with judging for reward
(iii. 11), and this shows their wisdom to have been based on a
tradition accessible to them alone; this is also shown by some
expressions of Deuteronomy (xvii. 10 seq., xxiv. 8). We have
the counterpart to the proverb above cited (Jeremiah xviii. 18;
Ezekiel vii. 26) in the complaint in Lamentations (ii. 9):
"Jerusalem is destroyed; her king and her princes are among the
Gentiles: the Torah is no more; the prophets obtain no vision
from Jehovah;" after the ruin of the sanctuary and the priests
there is no longer any Torah; and if that be so, the axe is laid
to the root of the life of the people. In the post-exile prophets
the torah, which even in Deuteronomy (xvii. 11) was mainly
legal in its nature, acquires a strong savour of ritual which one
did not notice before; yet even here it is still an oral teaching
of the priests (Haggai ii. 11).
The priests derived their Torah from Moses: they claimed only
to preserve and guard what Moses had left (Deuteronomy xxxiii 4,
9 seq.). He counted as their ancestor (xxxiii. 8; Judges xviii.
30); his father in-law is the PRIEST of Midian at Mount Sinai,
as Jehovah also is derived in a certain sense from the older deity
of Sinai. But at the same time Moses was reputed to be the
incomparable originator and practicer of PROPHECY (Numbers xii. 6
seq.; Deuteronomy xxxiv. 10; Hos. xii. 14), as his brother Aaron
also is not only a Levite (Exodus iv. 14), but also a prophet
(iv. 15; Numbers xii. 2). There is thus a close relation between
priests and prophets, i.e., seers; as with other peoples (1Samuel
vi.,; 1Kings xviii. 19, compare with 2Kings x. 19), so also
with the Hebrews. In the earliest time it was not knowing the
technique of worship, which was still very simple and
undeveloped, but being a man of God, standing on an intimate
footing with God, that made a man a priest, that is one who keeps
up the communication with heaven for others; and the seer is
better qualified than others for the office (1Kings xviii. 30
seq.). There is no fixed distinction in early times between the
two offices; Samuel is in 1Samuel i.-iii. an aspirant to the
priesthood; in ix. x. he is regarded as a seer.
In later times also, when priests and prophets drew off and
separated from each other, they yet remained connected, both in
the kingdom of Israel (Host iv. 5) and in Judah. In the latter
this was very markedly the case (2Kings xxiii. 2; Jeremiah xxvi.
7 seq., v. 31; Deuteronomy xviii. 1-8, 9-22; Zechariah vii. 3).
What connected them with each other was the revelation of Jehovah
which went on and was kept alive in both of them. It is Jehovah
from whom the torah of the priest and the word of the prophet
proceeds: He is the true DIRECTOR, as Isaiah calls Him in the
passage xxx. 20 seq., where, speaking of the Messianic time,
he says to the people, "Then thy director (MWRYK) is no more
concealed, but thine eyes see thy director, and thine ears hear
the words of One calling behind thee; this is the way, walk ye
in it; when ye are turning to the right hand or to the left."
TORAH and WORD are cognate notions, and capable of being
interchanged (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9; Isaiah i. 10, ii. 3, v. 24,
viii. 16, 20). This explains how both priests and prophets
claimed Moses for their order: he was not regarded as the founder
of the cultus.
The difference, in the period when it had fully developed itself,
may be said to be this: the Torah of the priests was like a
spring which runs always, that of the prophets like a spring which
is intermittent, but when it does break forth, flows with all the
greater force. The priests take precedence of the prophets when
both are named together; they obviously consolidated themselves
earlier and more strongly. The order, and the tradition which
propagates itself within the order, are essential to them:
they observe and keep the torah (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9).
For this reason, that they take their stand so entirely on the
tradition, and depend on it, their claim to have Moses for
their father, the beginner and founder of their tradition,
is in itself the better founded of the two. /l/
-- Footnote
1 It is also more firmly rooted in history; for if Moses did
anything at all, he certainly founded the sanctuary at Kadesh
and the torah there, which the priests of the ark carried on after
him, thus continuing the thread of the history of Israel, which
was taken up again in power by the monarchy. The prophets only
appeared among the Hebrews from the time of Samuel onwards, but
the seers were older than Moses, and can scarcely have had such
a close connection with his tradition as the priests at the
sanctuary of the ark of Jehovah.
-- Footnote
In the ordinary parlance of the Hebrews torah always meant first,
and chiefly the Priestly Torah. The prophets have notoriously no
father (1Samuel x. 12), their importance rests on the
individuals; it is characteristic that only names and sketches
of their lives have reached us. They do indeed, following the
tendency of the times, draw together in corporations; but in
doing so they really renounce their own distinctive
characteristics: the representative men are always single,
resting on nothing outside themselves. We have thus on the one
side the tradition of a class, which suffices for the occasions of
ordinary life, and on the other the inspiration of awakened
individuals, stirred up by occasions which are more than ordinary.
After the spirit of the oldest men of God, Moses at the head of
them, had been in a fashion laid to sleep in institutions,
it sought and found in the prophets a new opening; the old fire
burst out like a volcano through the strata which once, too, rose
fluid from the deep, but now were fixed and dead.
The element in which the prophets live is the storm of the world's
history, which sweeps away human institutions; in which the
rubbish of past generations with the houses built on it begins to
shake, and that foundation alone remains firm, which needs no
support but itself. When the earth trembles and seems to be passing
away, then they triumph because Jehovah alone is exalted. They
do not preach on set texts; they speak out of the spirit which
judges all things and itself is judged of no man. Where do they
ever lean on any other authority than the truth of what they
say; where do they rest on any other foundation than their own
certainty? It belongs to the notion of prophecy of true
revelation, that Jehovah, overlooking all the media of ordinances
and institutions, communicates Himself to the INDIVIDUAL, the
called one, in whom that mysterious and irreducible rapport in
which the deity stands with man clothes itself with energy.
Apart from the prophet, _in abstracto_, there is no revelation;
it lives in his divine-human ego. This gives rise to a synthesis
of apparent contradictions: the subjective in the highest sense,
which is exalted above all ordinances, is the truly objective,
the divine. This it proves itself to be by the consent of the
conscience of all, on which the prophets count, just as Jesus
does in the Gospel of John, in spite of all their polemic
against the traditional religion. They are not saying anything
new: they are only proclaiming old truth. While acting in the
most creative way they feel entirely passive: the _homo tantum
et audacia_ which may with perfect justice be applied to such men
as Elijah, Amos, and Isaiah, is with them equivalent to _deus
tantum et servitus_. But their creed is not to be found in
any book. It is barbarism, in dealing with such a phenomenon, to
distort its physiognomy by introducing the law.
X.I.3. It is a vain imagination to suppose that the prophets
expounded and applied the law. Malachi (circa 450 B.C.) says,
it is true, iv. 4, "Remember ye the torah of Moses my servant;"
but where shall we look for any second expression of this nature?
Much more correctly than modern scholars did these men judge, who
at the close of the preexilic history looked back on the forces
which had moulded it, both the divine and those opposed to God.
In their eyes the prophets are not the expounders of Moses, but
his continuators and equals; the word of God in their mouth is
not less weighty than in the mouth of Moses; they, as well as he,
are organs of the spirit of Jehovah by which He is present in
Israel. The immediate revelation to the people, we read in Deuteronomy
xviii., ceased with the ten commandments: from that point onwards
Jehovah uses the prophets as His mouth: "A prophet like unto
thee," He says to Moses, "will I raise up to them from among their
brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak
unto them all that I shall command him; and whosoever shall not
hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will
require it of him."
We find it the same in Jeremiah; the voice of the prophets, always
sounding when there is need for it, occupies the place which,
according to the prevailing view, should have been filled by the
law: this living command of Jehovah is all he knows of, and not
any testament given once for all.
"This only I commanded your fathers when I brought them up out
of Egypt: Obey my voice, and walk ye in all the ways that I will
command you. Since the day that your fathers came forth out of Egypt,
I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up
early and sending them; but ye would not hear."
And even after the exile we meet in Zechariah (520 B.C.) the
following view of the significance of the prophets: "Thus spake
Jehovah of hosts [to the fathers before the exile], Speak true
judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother,
and oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the stranger nor the
poor: and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in his
heart. But they refused to hearken, and shrugged the shoulder,
and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made
their hearts as a flint, lest they should hear the Torah and the
words which Jehovah Sebaoth hath sent by His Spirit through the
old prophets: therefore came a great wrath from Jehovah Sebaoth.
And as He cried and they would not hear, so now shall they cry
and I will not hear, and I will blow them away among the
peoples.... Thus saith Jehovah Sebaoth [after the exile to the
present generation], As I thought to punish you without pity
because your fathers provoked me to anger, so again have I
thought in these days to do well to the house of Judah: fear
ye not. These are the things that ye shall do: Speak ye every
man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth
and peace in your gates; and let none of you imagine evil in
your hearts against his neighbour, and love no false oath,
for all these are things which I hate, saith Jehovah"
(Zechariah vii. 9-11, viii. 14-16).
The contents of the Torah, on obedience to which the theocracy is
here based, are very suggestive, as also its derivation from the
"old" prophets. Even Ezra can say (ix. 10, 11):
"We have forsaken Thy commandments which Thou hast commanded by the
servants the prophets, saying, The land unto which ye go to
possess it is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of
the land, which have filled it from one end to another with their
uncleanness."
He is thinking of Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.
Of those who at the end reflected on the meaning of the
development which had run its course, the writer of Isaiah
xl.-lxvi. occupies the first place. The Torah, which he also
calls _mishpat_, right (i.e., truth), appears to him to be the
divine and imperishable element in Israel. With him, however,
it is inseparable from its mouthpiece, the servant of Jehovah,
xlii. 1-4, xlix. 1-6, l. 4-9, lii. 13-liii. 12. The name would
denote the prophet, but here it stands for the people, a prophet
on a large scale. Israel's calling is not that of the
world-monarchies, to make sensation and noise in the streets
(xiii. 1-4), but the greater one of promulgating the Torah and
getting it received. This is to be done both in Israel and among
the heathen. What makes Israel a prophet is not his own inner
qualities, but his relation to Jehovah, his calling as the
depository of divine truth: hence it involves no contradiction
that the servant should begin his work in Israel itself. /1/
-- Footnote
1. This is as if one were to say that there is much to be done
before we Evangelicals are truly evangelical. Yet the
distinction as worked out in Isaiah xl. seq. is certainly very
remarkable, and speaks for a surprising degree of profound
meditation.
-- Footnote
Till now he has spent his strength only in the bosom of his own
people, which is always inclined to fall away from Jehovah and
from itself: heedless of reproach and suffering he has laboured
unweariedly in carrying out the behests of his Master and has
declared His word. All in vain. He has not been able to avert
the victory of heathenism in Israel, now followed by its victory
over Israel. Now in the exile Jehovah has severed His relation
with His people; the individual Hebrews survive, but the servant,
the people of Jehovah, is dead. Then is the Torah to die with
him, and truth itself to succumb to falsehood, to heathenism?
That cannot be; truth must prevail, must come to the light.
As to the Apostle Paul the Spirit is the earnest of the
resurrection of those who are born again, so to our author the
Torah is the pledge of the resurrection of Israel, the
justification of the servant of Jehovah. The final triumph of
the cause, which is God's, will surpass all expectations. Not
only in Israel itself will the Torah, will the servant of Jehovah
prevail and bring about a regeneration of the people: the truth
will in the future shine forth from Israel into the whole world,
and obtain the victory among all the Gentiles (xlix. 6). Then it
will appear that the work of the servant, resultless as it seemed
to be up to the exile, has yet not been in vain.
It is surely unnecessary for me to demonstrate how uncommonly
vivid, I might say how uncommonly historical, the notion of the
Torah is as here set forth, and how entirely incompatible that
notion is with "the Torah of Moses." It might most fitly be
compared with the Logos of the prologue of John, if the latter
is understood in accordance with John x. 35, an utterance
certainly authentic, and not according to Philo. As Jesus is
the revelation of God made man, so the servant of Jehovah is
the revelation of God made a people. The similarity of their
nature and their significance involves the similarity of their
work and of their sufferings, so that the Messianic interpretation
of Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12 is in fact one which could not fail to
suggest itself. /1/
-- Footnote
1. The personification is carried further in this passage than
anywhere else, and it is possible that the colours of the sketch
are borrowed from some actual instance of a prophet-martyr: yet
the Ebed Jahve cannot have a different meaning here from that
which it has everywhere else. It is to be noted that the
sufferings and death of the servant are in the past, and his
glorification in the future, a long pause lying between them in
the present. A resurrection of the individual could not be in
the mind of the writer of Isaiah xl seq., nor do the details of
the description, lii. 12 seq., at all agree with such an idea.
Moreover, it is clear that liv. 1-lvi. 8 is a kind of sermon on
the text lii. 13-liii. 12; and there the prophecy of the
glorification of the servant has reference to Zion. See Vatke,
p. 528 seq.
-- Footnote
X.II.
X.II.1. In the 18th year of King Josiah (621 B.C) Deuteronomy was
found and published. In the account of the discovery, 2Kings
xxii. xxiii., it is always called simply _the book of the Torah_;
it was accordingly the first, and in its time the only book of
the kind. It is certainly the case that the prophets had written
down some of their speeches before this, and the priests also may
before this time have written down many of their precepts: it
appears in fact, as Vatke surmises, that we have a monument of
their spirit, e.g., in the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant.
Deuteronomy presupposes earlier attempts of this kind, and
borrows its materials largely from them; but on the other hand it
is distinguished from them not only by its greater compass but
also by its much higher claims. It is written with the distinct
intention not to remain a private memorandum, but to obtain public
authority as a book. The idea of making a definite formulated
written Torah the law of the land, is the important point /1/
-- Footnote
1. Duhm, ap. Cil. p. 201.
-- Footnote
it was a first attempt and succeeded at the outset beyond
expectation. A reaction set in afterwards, it is true; but the
Babylonian exile completed the triumph of the law. Extraordinary
excitement was at that time followed by the deepest depression
(Amos viii. 11 seq.). At such a time those who did not despair
of the future clung anxiously to the religious acquisitions of the
past. These had been put in a book just in time in Deuteronomy,
with a view to practical use in the civil and religious life of
the people . The book of the Torah did not perish in the general
ruin, but remained in existence, and was the compass of those who
were shaping their course for a new Israel. How thoroughly
determined they were to use it as their rule we see from the
revision of the Hexateuch and of the historical books which was taken
in hand during the exile.
With the appearance of the law came to an end the old freedom,
not only in the sphere of worship, now restricted to Jerusalem,
but in the sphere of the religious spirit as well. There was now
in existence an authority as objective as could be; and this was
the death of prophecy.
For it was a necessary condition of prophecy that the tares
should be at liberty to grow up beside the wheat. The signs given
in Deuteronomy to distinguish the true from the false prophet,
are no doubt vague and unpractical: still they show the tendency
towards control and the introduction of uniformity; that is the
great step which is new. /1/
-- Footnote
1. The difference between Deuteronomy xviii. 22 and 1Kings xxii.
19-23 may be thought to throw light on the two positions. In the
former passage we read that if a prophet says something in the
name of Jehovah which does not come to pass, it is a word which
Jehovah has not spoken. Here, on the contrary, Micaiah ben Imlah,
when the prophets of Jehovah promise the king of Israel a happy
issue of the campaign against the Syrians, regards the prediction
as contrary to the truth, but as none the less on that account
inspired by the spirit of prophecy; Jehovah, he said, had made
his spirit a Iying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. It
may be that this difference reflects to us the interval between
two different ages: but on the whole Micaiah's view appears to be
rather a piece of ingenuity which might have been resorted to in
later times as well. In the seventh century the command, "every
firstborn is mine," was held to apply to the human firstborn as
well, the sacrifice of which Jehovah was thought to require: this
appears from Jeremiah's protest, "I commanded them not, neither
came it into my mind," vii. 31, xix. 5. With reference to this
Ezekiel says that because the Israelites despised the wholesome
commandments of Jehovah, He gave them laws which were not good and
statutes by which they could not live. That is a similar
ingenious escape from a difficulty, without deeper meaning. See
the converse, Koran, Sura ii. 174.
-- Footnote
It certainly was not the intention of the legislator to encroach
upon the spoken Torah or the free word. But the consequence,
favoured by outward circumstances, was not to be avoided: the
feeling that the prophets had come to an end did not arise in the
Maccabean wars only. In the exile we hear the complaint that the
instruction of the priests and the word of the prophets are silent
(Lamentations ii. 9); it is asked, where he is who in former times
put his spirit in Israel (Isa lxiii. 11); in Nehemiah's time a
doubtful question is left unsettled, at least theoretically, till
the priest with Urim and Thummim, i.e., with a trustworthy
prophecy, shall appear (Nehemiah vii. 69). We may call Jeremiah the
last of the prophets: /2/
-- Footnote
2. In his early years Jeremiah had a share in the introduction of
the law: but in later times he shows himself little edified by
the effects it produced: the Iying pen of the scribes, he says,
has written for a lie. People despised the prophetic word because
they had the Torah in black and white (viii. 7-9).
-- Footnote
those who came after him were prophets only in name. Ezekiel had
swallowed a book (iii. 1-3), and gave it out again. He also,
like Zechariah, calls the pre-exilic prophets the old prophets,
conscious that he himself belongs to the epigoni: he meditates on
their words like Daniel and comments on them in his own prophecy
(xxxviii. 17, xxxix. 8). The writer of Isaiah xl. seq. might with
much more reason be called a prophet, but he does not claim to be
one; his anonymity, which is evidently intentional, leaves no doubt
as to this. He is, in fact, more of a theologian: he is principally
occupied in reflecting on the results of the foregoing development,
of which prophecy had been the leaven; these are fixed possessions
now secured; he is gathering in the harvest. As for the prophets
after the exile, we have already seen how Zechariah speaks of the
old prophets as a series which is closed, in which he and those
like him are not to be reckoned. In the writing of an anonymous
contemporary which is appended to his book we find the following
notable expression:
"In that (hoped-for) day, saith Jehovah, I will cut off the names
of the idols out of the land, that they be no more remembered,
and also I will cause to cease the prophets and the unclean
spirit; and if a man will yet prophesy, his parents shall say
unto him, Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name
of Jehovah, and his parents shall thrust him through when he
prophesieth" (xiii. 2-3).
X.II.2. Deuteronomy was the programme of a reform, not of a
restoration. It took for granted the existence of the cultus,
and only corrected it in certain general respects. But the temple
was now destroyed and the worship interrupted, and the practice of
past times had to be written down if it was not to be lost. Thus
it came about that in the exile the conduct of worship became the
subject of the Torah, and in this process reformation was naturally
aimed at as well as restoration. We have seen <II.II.1.>) that
Ezekiel was the first to take this step which the circumstances of
the time indicated. In the last part of his work he made the
first attempt to record the ritual which had been customary in
the temple of Jerusalem. Other priests attached themselves to him
(Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.), and thus there grew up in the exile from
among the members of this profession a kind of school of people
who reduced to writing and to a system what they had formerly
practiced in the way of their calling. After the temple was
restored this theoretical zeal still continued to work, and the
ritual when renewed was still further developed by the action and
reaction on each other of theory and practice: the priests who
had stayed in Babylon took as great a part, from a distance, in
the sacred services, as their brothers at Jerusalem who had
actually to conduct them. The latter indeed lived in adverse
circumstances and do not appear to have conformed with great
strictness or accuracy to the observances which had been agreed
upon. The last result of this labour of many years is the
Priestly Code. It has indeed been said that we cannot ascribe
the creation of such a work to an age which was bent on nothing
but repristination. Granted that this is a correct description of
it, such an age is peculiarly fitted for an artificial
systematising of given materials, and this is what the originality
of the Priestly Code in substance amounts to. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Dillmann arrives at the conclusion that the assumption is the
most natural one in the world, and still capable of proof from ACD
(!) that the priesthood of the central sanctuary wrote down their
toroth even in early times; and that it is absurd to suppose
that the priestly and ceremonial laws were first written down,
or even made, in the exile and in Babylon, where there was no
worship. We will let it be absurd, if it is true. It is not
progress, though it is a fact, that the kings were succeeded by
the high-priests, and the prophets by the Rabbis. Yet it is a
thing which is likely to occur, that a body of traditional
practice should only be written down when it is threatening to
die out, and that a book should be, as it were, the ghost of a
life which is closed.
-- Footnote
The Priestly Code, worked into the Pentateuch as the standard
legislative element in it, became the definite "Mosaic law."
As such it was published and introduced in the year 444 B.C.,
a century after the exile . In the interval, the duration of which
is frequently under-estimated, Deuteronomy alone had been known
and recognised as the written Torah, though as a fact the essays of
Ezekiel and his successors may have had no inconsiderable
influence in leading circles. The man who made the Pentateuch the
constitution of Judaism was the Babylonian priest and scribe,
Ezra. He had come from Babylon to Jerusalem as early as the year
458 B.C., the seventh of Artaxerxes Longimanus, at the head of a
considerable company of zealous Jews, provided it is said with a
mandate from the Persian king, empowering him to reform according
to the law the congregation of the temple, which had not yet been
able to consolidate itself inwardly nor to shut itself off
sufficiently from those without.
"Thou art sent of the king and of his seven counsellors to hold an
inquiry concerning Judah and Jerusalem _according to the law of thy
God which is in thine hand_....And thou Ezra, according to _the
wisdom of thy God which is in thine hand_, set magistrates and
judges which may judge all the people that are beyond the river,
all such as acknowledge the laws of thy God, and teach ye them
that know them not. And whosoever will not do the law of thy God
and the law of the king, let him be prosecuted."
So we read in the commission of the Persian king to Ezra, vii.
12-26; which, even should it be spurious, must yet reflect the
views of his contemporaries. The expression taken from Ezra's
own memoirs, vii. 27, leaves no doubt that he was assisted by
Artaxerxes in the objects he had in view. /1/
-- Footnote
1. With regard to his relation to the law, we have to consider the
following points: he was a scribe (SWPR = literatus), at home in
the Torah of Moses, vii. 6. He had directed his mind to study
the Torah of Jehovah, and to do and to teach in Israel judgment
and statute, vii. 10. "The priest Ezra, the master of the law
of the God of heaven," vii. 21. The most important expression,
however, is that which states that the law (the wisdom) of his God
was in his hand: thus it was his private property, though it
claimed authority for all Israel. With this agree the statements
as to the object of the learned priest's mission.
-- Footnote
But Ezra did not, as we should expect, at once introduce the law
on his arrival in Judah. In concert with the heads of the people,
and proceeding on the existing Torah, that, namely, of
Deuteronony, he ordained and relentlessly carried out a strict
separation of the returned exiles from the heathen and
half-heathen inhabitants of the land. This was done a few months
after his arrival in Jerusalem. But a long time, at least
fourteen years, elapsed before he produced the law which he had
brought with him. Why he delayed so long we can at the best only
surmise, as no accounts have reached us of what he did in the
interval; there is a great gap in the narrative of the Books of
Ezra and Nehemiah between the 7th and the 20th year of Artaxerxes.
Perhaps the outward circumstances of the young community, which,
probably in consequence of the repellent attitude taken up to the
surrounding peoples, were not of the happiest, made it unadvisable
at once to introduce a legislative innovation; perhaps, too, Ezra
desired to wait to see the correcting influence of the practice of
Jerusalem on the product of Babylonian scholarship, and moreover
to train up assistants for the work. The principal reason,
however, appears to have been, that in spite of the good-will of
the king he did not enjoy the energetic support of the Persian
authorities on the spot, and could not without it get the
authority of the new law recognised.
But in the year 445 it came about that a Jew and a sympathiser of
Ezra, Nehemiah ben Hakkelejah, cup-bearer and favourite of
Artaxerxes, appeared in Judea as Persian governor. With
straightforward earnestness he first addressed himself to the task
of liberating the Jewish community from outward pressure and
lifting them up from their depressed condition; and, this being
accomplished, the time had come to go forward with the introduction
of the Pentateuch. Ezra and Nehemiah were manifestly in concert
as to this. On the 1st day of the 7th month--we do not know the
year, but it cannot have been earlier than 444 B.C.--the whole
people came together as one man before the water-gate, and Ezra
was called on to produce the book of the law of Moses, which
Jehovah had commanded Israel. The scribe mounted a wooden pulpit;
seven priests stood beside him on the right hand, and seven on the
left. When he opened the book all present stood up, both men and
women; with loud Amen they joined in the opening blessing, lifted
up their heads, and cast themselves on the ground. Then he read
the book, from early morning till mid-day, in small sections,
which were repeated and expounded by a number of Levites dispersed
throughout the crowd. The effect was that a general weeping arose,
the people being aware that they had not till then followed the
commandments of God. Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites had to
allay the excitement, and said: "This day is holy unto Jehovah
your God; mourn not nor weep. Go your way, eat the fat and drink
the sweet, and give unto them that have brought nothing with them."
The assembled people then dispersed and set on foot a "great mirth,"
because they had understood the words which had been communicated
to them. The reading was continued the next day, but before the
heads of families only, and a very appropriate section was read,
viz., the ordinances as to festivals, and particularly that about
the feast of tabernacles, which was to be kept under branches of
trees on the 15th day of the 7th month, the month then just
beginning. The matter was taken up with the greatest zeal, and
the festival, which had not been kept RITE <sic!> since the days
of Joshua ben Nun, was now instituted in accordance with the
precepts of Leviticus xxiii. and celebrated with general enthusiasm
from the 15th to the 22nd of the month. /1/
-- Footnote
1. For eight days, according to Leviticus xxiii. 39: as against
Deuteronomy xvi. 13-15.
-- Footnote
On the 24th, however, a great day of humiliation was held, with
sackcloth and ashes. On this occasion also the proceedings began
with reading the law, and then followed a confession of sins
spoken by the Levites in the name of the people, and concluding
with a prayer for mercy and compassion. This was preparatory to
the principal and concluding act, in which the secular and
spiritual officials and elders, 85 in number, bound themselves
in writing to the Book of the Law, published by Ezra, and all
the rest undertook an obligation, with oath and curse, to walk
in the Torah of God, given by His servant Moses, and to keep
all the commandments of Jehovah and His statutes and laws.
Special attention was directed to such provisions of the Pentateuch
as were of immediate importance for the people in the circumstances
of the day--the greater part of the whole work is about the ritual
of the priests--and those were in particular insisted on which
refer to the contributions of the laity to the priesthood, on
which the very existence of the hierocracy depended. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Nehemiah viii. 1-x. 40. The credibility of the narrative
appears on the face of it. The writer of Chronicles did not write
it himself, but took it from his main source, from which also he
drew the fragments he gives us of the memoirs of Ezra and
Nehemiah. This we see from the fact that while copying Nehemiah vii.
in Ezra ii. he unconsciously goes on with the beginning of Nehemiah
viii. (= Ezra iii. 1). That shows that he found Nehemiah vii. and
viii. in their present connection, and did not write viii. seq.
himself, as we might suppose.
-- Footnote
Lagarde expresses great surprise--and the surprise is reasonable--
that so little importance is attributed to this narrative by Old
Testament critics; only Kuenen had rightly appreciated its
significance. /2/
-- Footnote
2 Goettinger Gel. Anzeigen, 1870, p. 1557 seq. Kuenen, Religion
of Israel, vol. ii. chapter viii.
-- Footnote
It is obvious that Nehemiah viii.-x. is a close parallel to 2Kings
xxii. xxiii., especially to xxiii. 1-3. There we read that
Josiah caused all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to come
together, and went up with the men of Judah and the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, with the priests and the prophets and all the people,
high and low, to the house of Jehovah; where he read to the
assemblage all the words of the Book of the Law, and bound himself
with all the people before Jehovah to keep all the words of the
book. Just as it is in evidence that Deuteronomy became known in
the year 621, and that it was unknown up to that date, so it is in
evidence that the remaining Torah of the Pentateuch--for there is
no doubt that the law of Ezra was the whole Pentateuch--became
known in the year 444 and was unknown till then. This shows in the
first place, and puts it beyond question, that Deuteronomy is the
first, and the priestly Torah the second, stage of the
legislation. But in the second place, as we are accustomed to
infer the date of the composition of Deuteronomy from its
publication and introduction by Josiah, so we must infer the date
of the composition of the Priestly Code from its publication and
introduction by Ezra and Nehemiah. It would require very strong
internal evidence to destroy the probability, thus based on a
most positive statement of facts, that the codification of the
ritual only took place in the post-exile period. We have already
seen of what nature the internal evidence is which is brought
forward with this view. /1/
-- Footnote
1. It is not, however, necessary, and it can scarcely be correct,
to make Ezra more than the editor, the real and principal editor,
of the Hexateuch: and in particular he is not likely to have
been the author of Q. Nor on the other hand is it meant to deny
that many new features may have been added and alterations made
after Ezra. A body of customs is a subject which can scarcely
be treated quite exhaustively. There are no directions about the
_nervus ischiadicus_ <**sciatic nerve??**>, about the priests
having their feet bare, about shutting up before Jehovah
(1Samuel xxi cf. Jeremiah xxxvi. 5), or about the stoning of adulterers.
-- Footnote
X.II.3. Ezra and Nehemiah, and the eighty-five men of the great
assembly (Nehemiah viii. seq.), who are named as signatories of
the covenant, are regarded by later tradition as the founders of
the canon. And not without reason: only King Josiah has a still
stronger claim to this place of honour. The introduction of the
law, first Deuteronomy, and then the whole Pentateuch, was in fact
the decisive step, by which the written took the place of the
spoken word, and the people of the word became a "people of the
book." To THE BOOK were added in course of time THE BOOKS; the
former was formally and solemnly introduced in two successive
acts, the latter acquired imperceptibly a similar public authority
for the Jewish church. The notion of the canon proceeds entirely
from that of the written Torah; the prophets and the hagiographa
are also called Torah by the Jews, though not Torah of Moses.
The origin of the canon thus lies, thanks to the two narratives
2Kings xxii. xxiii., Nehemiah viii.-x. in the full light of
history; but the traditional science of Biblical introduction has
no clear or satisfactory account to give of it. Josiah, the
ordinary notion is, introduced the law, but not the canon; Ezra,
on the other hand, the canon and not the law. An analogy drawn
from the secondary part of the canon, the prophets and
hagiographa, is applied without consideration to the primary
part, the Torah of Moses. The historical and prophetical books
were, in part at least, a long time in existence before they
became canonical, and the same, it is thought, might be the case
with the law. But the case of the law is essentially different.
The law claims to have public authority, to be a book of the
community; the difference between law and canon, does not exist.
Hence it is easy to understand that the Torah, though as a
literary product later than the historical and prophetical books,
is yet as law older than these writings, which have originally
and in their nature no legal character, but only acquired such
a character in a sort of metaphorical way, through their association
with the law itself.
When it is recognised that THE CANON is what distinguishes Judaism
from ancient Israel, it is recognised at the same time that what
distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel is THE WRITTEN TORAH.
The water which in old times rose from a spring, the Epigoni
stored up in cisterns.