1. Even in the Deuteronomic redaction of the Book of Kings indeed,
and still more by the Chronicler, the political rebellion of
Israel is regarded as having been ecclesiastical and religious in
its character. The Book of Chronicles regards Samaria as a
heathen kingdom, and recognises Judah alone as Israel. But in
point of fact Judah takes up the history of Israel only after
the fall of Samaria; see ## 6, 7.
-- Footnote
Rehoboam did not readily accept the situation; he sought to
reduce the revolt by force of arms, with what degree of success
is shown by the fact that his rival found himself constrained to
take up his residence at Peniel (near Mahanaim) on the other side
of Jordan. The invasion of Shishak, however, who took Jerusalem
and burnt it, gave Jeroboam at last a breathing space. The feud
continued indeed, but Rehoboam could no longer dream of bringing
back the ten tribes. The scale by and by turned in Israel's
favour. King Baasha, who had seated himself on the throne in
place of Nadab, Jeroboam's son, took the offensive, and Asa ben
Rehoboam had no help for it but to call in Benhadad of Damascus
against his adversary. In this way he gained his immediate
purpose, it is true, but by the most dangerous of expedients.
Baasha's son Elah was supplanted by his vizier Zimri, who,
however, was in his turn unable to hold his own against Omri, who
had supreme command of the army. Against Omri there arose in
another part of the country a rival, Tibni ben Ginath, who
succeeded in maintaining some footing until his death, when Omri
became supreme. Omri must be regarded as the founder of the first
dynasty, in the proper sense of that word, in Israel, and as the
second founder of the kingdom itself, to which he gave a permanent
capital in Samaria. The Bible has hardly anything to tell us about
him, but his importance is evident from the fact that among the
Assyrians "the kingdom of Omri" / 1/
-- Footnote
1. Bit Humri, like )OIKOS *LUSANIOU, and similar territorial names
in Syriac.
-- Footnote
was the ordinary name of Israel. According to the inscription of
Mesha, it was he who again subjugated Moab, which had become
independent at the death of David or of Solomon. He was not so
successful against the Damascenes, to whom he had to concede
certain privileges in his own capital (1Kings xx. 34) /2/
-- Footnote
2. Omri's accession is to be placed somewhere about 900 B.C It is
a date, and the first, that can be determined with some precision,
if we place the battle of Karkar (854) near the end of Ahab's
reign, and take the servitude of Moab, which lasted forty years
and ended with Ahab's deatb, to begin in Omri's first decade.
-- Footnote
Ahab, who succeeded Omri his father, seems during the greater part
of his reign to have in some sort acknowledged Syrian suzerainty.
In no other way can we account for the fact that in the battle of
Karkar against the Assyrians (854 B.C.) a contingent was
contributed by him. But this very battle made the political
situation so clear that he was led to break off his relations with
Damascus. With this began a series of ferocious attacks on Israel
by Benhadad and Hazael. They were met by Ahab with courage
and success, but in the third year of that fifty years' war he
fell in the battle at Ramoth Gilead (c. 851).
After the events recorded in 1Kings xx., a forced alliance with
Damascus on the part of Samaria is incredible; but the idea of
spontaneous friendly relations is also inadmissible. Schrader
indeed finds support for the latter theory in 1Kings xx. 34;
but in that passage there is no word of any offensive or defensive
alliance between the rival kings; all that is stated is that Ahab
releases the captive Benhadad on condition (BBRYT) that the latter
undertakes certain obligations, particularly those of keeping the
peace and restoring the cities which had been taken. By this
arrangement no change was made in the previously strained
relations of the two kingdoms; and, moreover, the BRYT was not
kept (xxii. 1 seq.). Not much nearer the truth than the
preceding is the view that the danger threatened by Assyria drove
the kings of Syria and Palestine into one another's arms, and so
occasioned an alliance between Ahab and Benhadad also. For if
feelings of hostility existed at all between the two last named,
then Ahab could not do otherwise than congratulate himself that
in the person of Shalmaneser II. there had arisen against
Benhadad an enemy who would be able to keep him effectually in
check. That Shalmaneser might prove dangerous to himself probably
did not at that time occur to him; but if it had he would still
have chosen the remote in preference to the immediately
threatening evil. For it was the political existence of Israel
that was at stake in the struggle with Damascus; in such
circumstances every ally would of course be welcome, every enemy
of the enemy would be hailed as a friend, and the political
wisdom which Max Duncker attributes to Ahab would have been
nothing less than unpardonable folly. The state of matters was at
the outset in this respect just what it continued to be throughout
the subsequent course of events; the Assyrian danger grew in
subsequent years, and with it grew the hostility between Damascus
and Samaria. This fact admits only of one explanation,--that the
Israelites utilised to the utmost of their power for their own
protection against the Syrians the difficulties into which the
latter were thrown by Shalmaneser II., and that these in their
turn, when the Assyrians gave them respite, were all the fiercer
in their revenge. On the evidence of the monuments and the Bible
we may even venture to assert that it was the Assyrian attacks upon
Damascus which at that time preserved Israel from becoming
Aramaic,--of course only because Israel made the most of them for
her political advantage.
Assuming that Ahab the Israelite (Ahabu Sirlaai) fought in the
battle of Karkar (854) on the side of the king of Damascus, it
was only because he could not help himself; but if it is actually
the case that he did so, the battle of Karkar must have taken
place BEFORE the events recorded in 1Kings xx.
The Moabites took advantage of an accession under such critical
circumstances to shake off the yoke imposed by Omri forty years
before; an accurate account of their success, obviously written
while the impression of it was still fresh, /1/ has come down to
-- Footnote
1. It is obvious that Mesha's narrative is to be taken with
2Kings i. 1, and not with 2Kings iii.
-- Footnote
us in the famous inscription of King Mesha. Ahaziah, Ahab's
immediate successor, was obliged to accept the situation; after
his early death a futile attempt again to subjugate them was made
by his brother Joram. Such a campaign was possible to him only
in the event of the Syrians keeping quiet, and in point of fact
it would appear that they were not in a position to follow up the
advantage they had gained at Ramoth; doubtless they were
hampered by the inroads of the Assyrians in 850 and 849. As soon
as they got a little respite, however, they lost no time in
attacking Joram, driving him into his capital, where they
besieged him. Samaria had already been brought to the utmost
extremities of famine, when suddenly the enemy raised the siege
on account of a report of an invasion of their own land by the
"Egyptians and Hittites." Possibly we ought to understand by these
the Assyrians rather, who in 846 renewed their attacks upon Syria;
to ordinary people in Israel the Assyrians were an unknown quantity,
for which it would be natural in popular story to substitute something
more familiar. This turn of affairs relieved Joram from his straits;
it would even seem that, favoured by a change of dynasty at
Damascus, he had succeeded in taking from the Syrians the fortress
of Ramoth in Gilead, which had been the object of Ahab's
unsuccessful endeavours, when suddenly there burst upon the house
of Omri the overwhelming catastrophe for which the prophets had
long been preparing.
When the prophets first made their appearance, some time before the
beginning of the Philistine war, they were a novel phenomenon in
Israel; but in the interval they had become so naturalised that
they now had a recognised and essential place in connection with
the religion of Jehovah. They had in the process divested
themselves of much that had originally characterised them, but
they still retained their habit of appearing in companies and
living together in societies, and also that of wearing a peculiar
distinctive dress. These societies of theirs had no ulterior
aims; the rabbinical notion that they were schools and academies
in which the study of the Torah and of sacred history was pursued
imports later ideas into an earlier time. First-rate importance
on the whole cannot be claimed for the Nebiim, but occasionally
there arose amongst them a man in whom the spirit which was
cultivated within their circles may be said to have risen to the
explosive pitch. Historical influence was exercised at no time
save by these individuals, who rose above their order and even
placed themselves in opposition to it, but always at the same time
had their base of operations within it. The prototype of this
class of exceptional prophets, whom we not unjustly have been
accustomed to regard as the true, is Elijah of Thisbe, the
contemporary of Ahab.
ln compliment to Jezebel his wife, Ahab had set up in Samaria a
temple with richly endowed religious services in honour of the
Syrian Baal. In doing so he had no intention of renouncing
Jehovah; Jehovah continued to be the national God after whom he
named his sons Ahaziah and Jehoram. The destruction of Jehovah's
altars or the persecution of His prophets was not at all proposed,
or even the introduction of a foreign cultus elsewhere than in
Samaria. Jehovah's sovereignty over Israel being thus only
remotely if at all imperilled, the popular faith found nothing
specially offensive in a course of action which had been followed
a hundred years before by Solomon also. Elijah alone was strenuous
in his opposition; the masses did not understand him, and were far
from taking his side. To him only, but not to the nation, did it
seem like a halting between two opinions, an irreconcilable
inconsistency, that Jehovah should be worshipped as Israel's God
and a chapel to Baal should at the same time be erected in Israel.
In solitary grandeur did this prophet tower conspicuously over
his time; legend, and not history, could alone preserve the
memory of his figure. There remains a vague impression that with
him the development of Israel's conception of Jehovah entered upon
a new stadium, rather than any data from which it can be
ascertained wherein the contrast of the new with the old lay.
After Jehovah, acting more immediately within the political
sphere, had established the nation and kingdom, he now began in
the spiritual sphere to operate against the foreign elements, the
infusion of which previously had been permitted to go on almost
unchecked. /1/
-- Footnote
1. It is worth noticing how much more frequent from this period
onwards proper names compounded with the word Jehovah become.
Among the names of the judges and of the kings before Ahab in
Israel and Asa in Judah, not a single instance occurs;
thenceforward they become the rule.
-- Footnote
The Rechabites, who arose at that time, protested in their zeal
for Jehovah altogether against all civilisation which presupposes
agriculture, and in their fundamental principles aimed at a
recurrence to the primitive nomadic life of Israel in the
wilderness; the Nazarites abstained at least from wine, the chief
symbol of Dionysiac civilisation. In this indeed Elijah was not
with them; had he been so, he would doubtless have been
intelligible to the masses. But, comprehending as he did the
spirit from which these demonstrations proceeded, he thought of
Jehovah as a great principle which cannot coexist in the same
heart with Baal. To him first was it revealed that we have not
in the various departments of nature a variety of forces worthy
of our worship, but that there exists over all but one Holy One
and one Mighty One, who reveals Himself not in nature but in law
and righteousness in the world of man. The indignation he displayed
against the judicial murder at Jezreel was as genuine and strong
as that which he manifested against the worship of Baal in
Samaria; the one was as much a crime against Jehovah as the
other.
Elijah ascended to heaven before he had actually achieved much
in the world. The idea which his successors took from him was that
it was necessary to make a thorough clearance from Samaria of the
Baal worship and of the house of Ahab as well. For this practical
end Elisha made use of practical means. When Elijah, after the
murder of Naboth, had suddenly appeared before Ahab and
threatened him with a violent end, an officer of high command had
been present, Jehu ben Nimshi, and he had never forgotten the
incident. He now found himself at the head of the troops at
Ramoth Gilead after the withdrawal to Jezreel of Joram ben Ahab
from the field to be healed of his wound. To Elisha the moment
seemed a suitable one for giving to Jehu in Jehovah's name the
command now to carry out Elijah's threat against the house of
Ahab. Jehu gained over the captains of the army, and carried out
so well the task with which the prophet had commissioned him that
not a single survivor of Ahab's dynasty or of his court was left.
He next extirpated Baal and his worshippers in Samaria. From that
date no worship of foreign gods seems ever to have recurred in
Israel. Idolatry indeed continued to subsist, but the images,
stones, and trees, even the seraphim apparently, belonged to the
cultus of Jehovah, or were at least brought into relation with it.
Jehu founded the second and last dynasty of the kingdom of Samaria
His inheritance from the house of Omri included the task of
defending himself against the Syrians. The forces at his disposal
being insufficient for this, he resorted to the expedient of
seeking to urge the Assyrians to renew their hostilities against
the Arameeans. For this end his ambassadors carried presents to
Shalmaneser II.; these were not of a regular but only of an
occasional character, but the vanity of the great king represents
them as the tribute of a vassal. In the years 842 and 839 Assyrian
campaigns against Hazael of Damascus actually took place; then
they were intermitted for a long time, and the kings of Samaria,
Jehu and his two successors, were left to their own resources.
These were evil times for Israel. With a barbarity never
intermitted the frontier war went on in Gilead, where Ammon and
Moab showed themselves friendly to the Syrian cause (Amos i.);
occasionally great expeditions took place, one of which brought
King Hazael to the very walls of Jerusalem. It was only with
the greatest difficulty that Israel's independence was maintained.
Once more religion went hand in hand with the national cause;
the prophet Elisha was the main stay of the kings in the struggle
with the Syrians, "the chariot and horsemen of Israel." Joash ben
Joahaz ben Jehu at last succeeded in inflicting upon Syria several
blows which proved decisive. Thenceforward Israel had nothing to
fear from that quarter. Under Joash's son, Jeroboam II., the
kingdom even reached a height of external power which recalled the
times of David. Moab was again subdued; southwards the frontier
extended to the brook of the wilderness (Amos vi. 14), and northward
to Hamath.
5. GOD, THE WORLD, AND THE LIFE OF MEN IN OLD ISRAEL.
Before proceeding to consider the rise of those prophets who were
the makers of the new Israel, it will not be out of place here to
cast a glance backwards upon the old order of things which
perished with the kingdom of Samaria. With reference to any
period earlier than the century 850-750 B.C., we can hardly be
said to possess any statistics. For, while the facts of history
admit of being handed down with tolerable accuracy through a
considerable time, a contemporary literature is indispensable for
the description of standing conditions. But it was within this
period that Hebrew literature first flourished--after the Syrians
had been finally repulsed, it would seem. Writing of course had
been practiced from a much earlier period, but only in formal
instruments, mainly upon stone. At an early period also the
historical sense of the people developed itself in connection
with their religion; but it found its expression in songs, which
in the first instance were handed down by word of mouth only.
Literature began with the collection and writing out of those
songs; _the Book of the Wars of the Lord_ and _the Book of Jashar_
were the oldest historical books. The transition was next made to
the writing of prose history with the aid of legal documents and
family reminiscences; a large portion of this early
historiography has been preserved to us in the Books of Judges,
Samuel, and Kings. Contemporaneously also certain collections of
laws and decisions of the priests, of which we have an example in
Exodus xxi. xxii., were committed to writing. Somewhat later,
perhaps, the legends about the patriarchs and primitive times,
the origin of which cannot be assigned to a very early date, /1/
-- Footnote
1. Even the Jehovistic narratives about the patriarchs belong
to the time when Israel had already become a powerful kingdom;
Moab, Ammon,, and Edom had been subjugated (Genesis xxvii. 29),
and vigorous frontier wars were being carried on with the Syrians
about Gilead (Genesis xxxi. 52). In Genesis xxvii. 40
allusion is made to the constantly repeated subjugations of Edom
by Judah, alternating with successful revolts on the part of the
former; see Delitzsch on K)$R;.
-- Footnote
received literary shape. Specially remarkable is the rise of
a written prophecy. The question why it was that Elijah and
Elisha committed nothing to writing, while Amos a hundred years
later is an author, hardly admits of any other answer than that
in the interval a non-literary had developed into a literary age.
How rapid the process was may be gathered from a comparison between
the singularly broken utterances of the earlier oracle contained
in Isaiah xv. xvi. with the orations of Isaiah himself.
We begin our survey with that of the family relations. Polygamy
was rare, monogamy the rule; but the right of concubinage was
unlimited. While a high position was accorded both by affection
and custom to the married wife, traces still existed of a state of
society in which she was regarded as property that went with the
inheritance. The marriage of relations was by no means
prohibited; no offence was taken at the circumstance that Abraham
was the husband of his sister (by a different mother). Parents
had full power over their children; they had the right to sell
and even to sacrifice them. In this respect, however, the
prevailing usage was mild, as also in regard to slaves, who
socially held a position of comparative equality with their
masters, and even enjoyed some measure of legal protection.
Slavery, it is plain, had not thc same political importance as
with the Greeks and Romans; it could have been abolished without
any shock to the foundations of the state.
Throughout this period agriculture and gardening continued to be
regarded as man's normal calling (Genesis iii. iv.); the laws
contained in Exod. xxi.-xxiii. rest entirely upon this
assumption. To dwell in peace under his vine and under his
fig-tree was the ideal of every genuine lsraelite. Only in a few
isolated districts, as in the country to the east of Jordan and
in portions of Judah, did the pastoral life predominate. Art and
industry were undeveloped, and were confined to the production of
simple domestic necessaries.
Commerce was in old time followed exclusively by the Canaanite
towns, so that the word "Canaanite" was used in the general sense
of "trader." But by and by Israel began to tread in Canaan's
footsteps (Hosea xii. 8, 9), /1/
-- Footnote
1. "Canaan (i.e., Ephraim Canaanised) has deceitful balances in his
hand, and loves to overreach. Ephraim indeed saith, I am become
rich, I have gained weealth; but all his profits will not suffice
for (expiation of) the guilt which he has incurred."
-- Footnote
The towns grew more influential than the country; money notably
increased; and the zeal of piety was quite unable to arrest the
progress of the change which set in. The kings themselves, from
Solomon onwards, were the first to set the bad example; they eagerly
sought to acquire suitable harbours, and in company or in competition
with the Syrians entered upon large commercial transactions.
The extortions of the corn-market, the formation of large estates,
the frequency of mortgages, all show that the small peasant
proprietorship was unable to hold its own against the accumulations
of wealth. The wage-receiving class increased, and cases in which
free Hebrews sold themselves into slavery were not rare.
On all hands the material progress of the commonwealth made itself
felt, the old simplicity of manners disappeared, and luxury
increased. Buildings of hewn stone began to be used even by
private individuals. The towns, especially the chief ones, were
fortified; and in time of war refuge was sought in them, and not
as formerly in woods and caves. Even in the time of David the
Israelites always fought on foot; but now horses and chariots were
regarded as indispensable. The bow came to be the principal weapon
of offence, and a military class appears to have sprung up.
The monarchy retained in the kingdom of the ten tribes its
military character; the commander-in-chief was the first person
in the kingdom. In internal affairs its interference was slight;
with systematic despotism it had little in common, although of
course within its narrow sphere it united executive and
legislative functions. It was little more than the greatest house
in Israel. The highest official was called "master of the
household." The court ultimately grew into a capital, the
municipal offices of which were held by royal officials. The
provinces had governors who, however, in time of war withdrew to
the capital (1Kings xx.); the presumption is that their sole
charge was collection of the revenue.
The state was not charged with affairs of internal administration;
all parties were left free to maintain their own interests. Only
in cases in which conflicts had emerged in consequence could the
king be approached. Ruling and judging were regarded as one and
the same; there was but one word for both (2Kings xv. 5).
Still, the king was not altogether the only judge; there were, in
fact, a number of independent jurisdictions. Wherever within a
particular circle the power lay, there the right of judging was
also found, whether exercised by heads of families and communities
or by warriors and powerful lords. It was only because the king
was the most powerful that he was regarded as the judge of last
resort; but it was equally permitted to apply to him from the first.
Of method and rule in these things there was but little; a man was
glad to find any court to receive his complaint. Of course without
complaint one got no justice. The administration of justice was at
best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help. The heir
of the murdered man would not forego the right of blood revenge; but
his family or the commune gave him aid, and in case of need took
his place, for bloodshed had at all hazards to be atoned for.
The firm establishment of civil order was rendered all the more
difficult by the continual wars and violent changes of dynasty
which ever and anon made its very existence problematical.
Power, which is more important than righteousness to a judicatory,
was what the government was wanting in In the simpler social
conditions of the earlier time a state which was adapted merely
for purposes of war might easily be found to work satisfactorily
enough, but a more complex order of things had now arisen. Social
problems had begun to crop up; for the poor and the proletariat
the protection of a thoughtful government had come to be required,
but was not forthcoming.
But these defects did not check all progress. The weakness of the
government, the want of political consolidation, were insufficient
to arrest intellectual advance or to corrupt the prevailing moral
tone and feeling for justice; in fact it was precisely in this
period (the period in which the main part of the Jehovistic
history must have been written) that the intellectual and moral
culture of the people stood at its highest. Even when the
machinery of the monarchy had got out of order, the organisation
of the families and communes continued to subsist; the smaller
circles of social life remained comparatively untouched by the
catastrophes that shook the greater. Above all, the national
religion supplied the spiritual life with an immovable basis.
The favourite illustrations of the power of religion in the Israel
of that period are drawn from the instances of great prophets who
raised kings out of the dust and smote them to it again. But the
influence and importance of these is generally exaggerated in the
accounts we have. That among them there occasionally occurred
manifestations of such power as to give a new turn in history is
indeed true; a figure like that of Elijah is no mere invention.
But such a man as he was a prophecy of the future rather than an
actual agent in shaping the present. On the whole, religion was
a peaceful influence, conserving rather than assailing the existing
order of things. The majority of the prophets were no revolutionists;
rather in fact were they always too much inclined to prophesy in
accordance with the wishes of the party in power. Besides, in
ordinary circumstances their influence was inferior to that of
the priests, who were servants of royalty at the chief
sanctuaries, but everywhere attached to the established order.
The Torah of Jehovah still continued to be their special charge.
It was not even now a code or law in our sense of the word;
Jehovah had not yet made His Testament; He was still living and
active in Israel. But the Torah appears during this period to
have withdrawn itself somewhat from the business of merely
pronouncing legal decisions and to have begun to move in a freer
field. It now consisted in teaching the knowledge of God, in
showing the right God-given way where men were not sure of
themselves. Many of the counsels of the priests had become a
common stock of moral convictions, which, indeed, were all of them
referred to Jehovah as their author, yet had ceased to be matters
of direct revelation. Nevertheless the Torah had still occupation
enough, the progressive life of the nation ever affording matter
for new questions.
Although in truth the Torah and the moral influence of Jehovah
upon the national life were things much weightier and much more
genuinely Israelitic than the cultus, yet this latter held on the
whole a higher place in public opinion. To the ordinary man it
was not moral but liturgical acts that seemed to be truly
religious. Altars of Jehovah occurred everywhere, with sacred
stones and trees--the latter either artificial (Asheras) or
natural--beside them; it was considered desirable also to have
water in the neighbourhood (brazen sea). In cases where a temple
stood before the altar it contained an ephod and teraphim, a kind
of images before which the lot was cast by the priest. Of the
old simplicity the cultus retained nothing; at the great
sanctuaries especially (Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba) it had become
very elaborate. Its chief seasons were the agricultural
festivals--the passover, the feast of weeks, and most especially
the feast of the ingathering at the close of the year. These were
the only occasions of public worship properly so called, at which
every one was expected to attend; in other cases each worshipper
sought the presence of God only in special circumstances, as for
example at the beginning and at the end of particular undertakings.
The cultus, as to place, time, matter, and form, belonged almost
entirely to the inheritance which Israel had received from Canaan;
to distinguish what belonged to the worship of Jehovah from that
which belonged to Baal was no easy matter. /1/
-- Footnote
1. The description of the cultus by the Prophet Hosea shows this
very clearly. It is obvious enough, however, that the object
was to serve JEHOVAH, and not any foreign deity, by this worship.
-- Footnote
It was the channel through which also paganism could and did ever
anew gain admittance into the worship of Jehovah. Yet that
publicity of the cultus which arose out of the very nature of Jehovah,
and in consequence of which the teraphim even were removed from the
houses to the temples, cannot but have acted as a corrective against
the most fatal excesses.
As for the substance of the national faith, it was summed up
principally in the proposition that Jehovah is the God of Israel.
But "God" was equivalent to "helper;" that was the meaning of
the word. "Help," assistance in all occasions of life,--that was
what Israel looked for from Jehovah, not "salvation" in the
theological sense. The forgiveness of sins was a matter of
subordinate importance; it was involved in the "help," and was a
matter not of faith but of experience. The relation between the
people and God was a natural one as that of son to father; it did
not rest upon observance of the conditions of a pact. But it was
not on that account always equally lively and hearty; Jehovah
was regarded as having varieties of mood. To secure and retain
His favour sacrifices were useful; by them prayer and
thanksgiving were seconded.
Another main article of faith was that Jehovah judges and
recompenses, not after death (then all men were thought to be
alike), but upon the earth. Here, however, but little account
was taken of the individual; over him the wheel of destiny
remorselessly rolled; his part was resignation and not hope.
Not in the career of the individual but in the fate of families
and nations did the righteousness of Jehovah find scope for its
manifestation; and this is the only reason why the religion
could dispense with the conceptions of heaven and hell. For the
rest, it was not always easy to bring the second article into
correlation with the first; in practice the latter received the
superior place.
It need hardly be said that superstition of every kind also
abounded. But the superstition of the Israelites had as little
real religious significance as had that poetical view of nature
which the Hebrews doubtless shared in greater or less degree with
all the other nations of antiquity.
6. THE FALL OF SAMARIA.
Under King Jeroboam II., two years before a great earthquake that
served ever after for a date to all who had experienced it, there
occurred at Bethel, the greatest and most conspicuous sanctuary
of Jehovah in Israel, a scene full of significance. The multitude
were assembled there with gifts and offerings for the observance
of a festival, when there stepped forward a man whose grim
seriousness interrupted the joy of the feast. It was a Judaean,
Amos of Tekoa, a shepherd from the wilderness bordering on the
Dead Sea. Into the midst of the joyful tones of the songs which
with harp and tabor were being sung at the sacred banquet he
brought the discordant note of the mourner's wail. For over all
the joyous stir of busy life his ear caught the sounds of death:
"the virgin of Israel is fallen, never more to rise;
lies prostrate in her own land with no one to lift her up."
He prophesied as close at hand the downfall of the kingdom which
just at that moment was rejoicing most in the consciousness of
power, and the deportation of the people to a far-off northern land.
There was something rotten in the state of Israel in spite of
the halcyon days it enjoyed under Jeroboam II. From the indirect
results of war, from changes in the tenure and in the culture of
the soil, from defective administration of justice, the humbler
classes had much to suffer; they found that the times were evil.
But it was not this that caused Amos to foresee the end of Israel,
not a mere vague foreboding of evil that forced him to leave his
flocks; the dark cloud that threatened on the horizon was plain
enough--the Assyrians. Once already at an earlier date they had
directed their course south-westwards, without, however, on that
occasion becoming a source of danger to the Israelites. But now
that the bulwark against the Assyrians, Aram of Damascus, was
falling into ruins, a movement of these against Lebanon in the time
of Jeroboam II. opened to Israel the alarming prospect that
sooner or later they would have to meet the full force of the
irresistible avalanche.
What then? The common man was in no position truly to estimate
the danger; and, so far as he apprehended it, he lived in the
firm faith that Jehovah would not abandon His people in their
straits. The governing classes prided themselves on the military
resources of Israel, or otherwise tried to dismiss from their
minds all thought of the gravity of the situation. But Amos heard
the question distinctly enough, and did not hesitate to answer
it: the downfall of Israel is imminent. It was nothing short of
blasphemy to utter anything of this kind, for everything, Jehovah
Himself included, depended on the existence of the nation. But
the most astounding thing has yet to come; not Asshur, but Jehovah
Himself, is bringing about the overthrow of Israel; through Asshur
it is Jehovah that is triumphing over Israel. A paradoxical
thought--as if the national God were to cut the ground from under
His own feet! For the faith in Jehovah as the God of Israel was
a faith that He intervenes on behalf of His people against all
enemies, against the whole World; precisely in times of danger
was religion shown by staying oneself upon this faith. Jehovah
might indeed, of course, hide His face for a time, but not
definitively; in the end He ever arose at last against all
opposing powers. "The day of the Lord" was an object of hope
in all times of difficulty and oppression; it was understood
as self-evident that the crisis would certainly end in favour of
Israel. Amos took up the popular conception of that day; but how
thoroughly did he change its meaning! "Woe to them who long
for the day of the Lord!--What to you is the day of the Lord,?
It is darkness, not light." His own opposition to the popular
conception is formulated in a paradox which he prefixes as theme
to the principal section of his book:--"Us alone does Jehovah
know," say the Israelites, drawing from this the inference that
He is on their side, and of course must take their part. "You
only do I know," Amos represents Jehovah as saying, "therefore do
I visit upon you all your sins."
If the question, Whereon did Jehovah's relation to Israel
ultimately rest? be asked, the answer, according to the popular
faith, must substantially be that it rested on the fact that
Jehovah was worshipped in Israel and not among the heathen, that
in Israel were His altars and His dwelling. His cultus was the
bond between Him and the nation; when therefore it was desired
to draw the bond still closer, the solemn services of religion
were redoubled. But to the conception of Amos Jehovah is no
judge capable of accepting a bribe; with the utmost indignation
he repudiates the notion that it is possible to influence
Him by gifts and offerings. Though Israel alone has served Him
he does not on that account apply any other standard to it than
to other nations (chaps. i. ii.). If Israel is better known to
Him, it does not follow that on that account He shuts His eyes and
blindly takes a side. Neither Jehovah nor His prophet recognises
two moral standards; right is everywhere right, wrong always
wrong, even though committed against Israel's worst enemies (ii. 1).
What Jehovah demands is righteousness,--nothing more and
nothing less; what He hates is injustice. Sin or offence to the
Deity is a thing of purely moral character; with such emphasis
this doctrine had never before been heard. Morality is that for
the sake of which all other things exist; it is the alone
essential thing in the world. It is no postulate, no idea, but at
once a necessity and a fact, the most intensely living of
personal powers-Jehovah the God of Hosts. In wrath, in ruin, this
holy reality makes its existence known; it annihilates all that
is hollow and false.
Amos calls Jehovah the God of Hosts, never the God of Israel.
The nation as such is no religious conception to him; from its mere
existence he cannot formulate any article of faith. Sometimes it
seems as if he were denying Israel's prerogative altogether. He
does not really do so, but at least the prerogative is
conditional and involves a heavy responsibility. The saying in
iii. 2 recalls Luke xii. 47. The proposition "Jehovah knows
Israel" is in the mouth of Amos almost the same thing as "Israel
knows Jehovah; " save only that this is not to be regarded as
any merit on Israel's part, but as a manifestation of the grace of
Jehovah, who has led His people by great deeds and holy men, and
so made Himself known. Amos knows no other truth than that
practical one which he has found among his own people and nowhere
else, Iying at the foundation of life and morality, and which he
regards as the product of a divine providential ordering of
history. From this point of view, so thoroughly Israelitish, he
pronounces Israel's condemnation. He starts from premisses
generally conceded, but he accentuates them differently and
draws from them divergent conclusions.
Amos was the founder, and the purest type, of a new phase of
prophecy. The impending conflict of Asshur with Jehovah and
Israel, the ultimate downfall of Israel, is its theme. Until that
date there had subsisted in Palestine and Syria a number of petty
kingdoms and nationalities, which had their friendships and
enmities with one another, but paid no heed to anything outside
their own immediate environment, and revolved, each on its own axis,
careless of the outside world, until suddenly the Assyrians burst
in upon them. These commenced the work which was carried on by
the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, and completed by the Romans.
They introduced a new factor, the conception of the world,--the world
of course in the historical sense of that expression. In presence
of that conception the petty nationalities lost their centre of
gravity, brute fact dispelled their illusions, they flung their
gods to the moles and to the bats (Isaiah ii.). The prophets of
Israel alone did not allow themselves to be taken by surprise by
what had occurred, or to be plunged in despair; they solved by
anticipation the grim problem which history set before them.
They absorbed into their religion that conception of the world
which was destroying the religions of the nations, even before it
had been fully grasped by the secular consciousness. Where
others saw only the ruin of everything that is holiest, they saw
the triumph of Jehovah over delusion and error. Whatever else
might be overthrown, the really worthy remained unshaken. They
recognised ideal powers only, right and wrong truth and falsehood;
second causes were matters of indifference to them, they were no
practical politicians. But they watched the course of events
attentively, nay, with passionate interest. The present, which
was passing before them, became to them as it were the plot of a
divine drama which they watched with an intelligence that
anticipated the _denouement_. Everywhere the same goal of the
development, everywhere the same laws. The nations are the
_dramatis personae_, Israel the hero, Jehovah the poet of the
tragedy. /1/
-- Footnote
1. In very much the same way the threatened and actual political
annihilation of Ionia led to the rise of Greek philosophy
(Xenophanes, Heraclitus).
-- Footnote
The canonical prophets, the series of whom begins with Amos, were
separated by an essential distinction from the class which had
preceded them and which still continued to be the type of the
common prophet. They did not seek to kindle either the
enthusiasm or the fanaticism of the multitude; they swam not
with but against the stream. They were not patriotic, at least
in the ordinary acceptation of that word; they prophesied not good
but evil for their people (Jer. xxviii. 8). Until their time
the nation had sprung up out of the conception of Jehovah; now
the conception of Jehovah was casting the nation into the shade.
The natural bond between the two was severed, and the relation
was henceforward viewed as conditional. As God of the
righteousness which is the law of the whole universe, Jehovah
could be Israel's God only in so far as in Israel the right was
recognised and followed. The ethical element destroyed the
national character of the old religion. It still addressed itself,
to be sure, more to the nation and to society at large than to
the individual; it insisted less upon a pure heart than upon
righteous institutions; but nevertheless the first step towards
universalism had been accomplished, towards at once the general
diffusion and the individualisation of religion. Thus, although
the prophets were far from originating a new conception of God,
they none the less were the founders of what has been called
"ethical monotheism." But with them this ethical monotheism was no
product of the "self-evolution of dogma," but a progressive step
which had been called forth simply by the course of events. The
providence of God brought it about that this call came at an
opportune period, and not too suddenly. The downfall of the nation
did not take place until the truths and precepts of religion were
already strong enough to be able to live on alone; to the
prophets belongs the merit of having recognised the independence
of these, and of having secured perpetuity to Israel by refusing
to allow the conception of Jehovah to be involved in the ruin of
the kingdom. They saved faith by destroying illusion.
The event which Amos had foreseen was not long in coming. The
Israelites flew spontaneously, like "silly doves," into the net
of the Assyrians. Zechariah ben Jeroboam was overthrown after a
short reign, Shallum his murderer and successor was also unable to
hold his own, and was followed after the horrors of a civil war by
Menahem ben Gadi (745 B.C). But Menahem, in the presence of
domestic (and perhaps also foreign) assailants, /1/ had no other
-- Footnote
1. It is not inconceivable that the wars carried on by
Tiglath-pileser II. against Hamath had some connection with his
interventions in favour of Menahem. The kingdom of Hamath, which
may have been threatened by Jeroboam II., may have availed
itself of the state of matters which followed his death to secure
its own aggrandisement at Israel's expense; in correspondence
with this attack from the northern side another by Judah in
concert with Hamath may well have been made from the south. In
this way, though not without the aid of pure hypothesis, it might
be possible to fit into the general historical connection the
fragmentary Assyrian notices about Azariah of Judah and his
relations to Hamath; the explanations suggested by the
Assyriologists have hitherto been total failures. But in that
case it would certainly be necessary to assume that the Assyrians
were badly informed as to the nature of the relations between
Hamath and Judah, and also as to the individual who at that time
held the throne of Judah. Uzziah (= Azariah), who in his old age
had become a leper, could only nominally at best have been king
of Judah then.
-- Footnote
resort than to purchase by payment of a great tribute the assistance
of King Tiglath-pileser II., who at that time was giving new force
to the Assyrian predominance in these regions. By such means he
succeeded in attaining his immediate end, but the further
consequence was that the rival party in the state turned for
support to Egypt, and Palestine now became the arena of conflict
between the two great world-powers.
Menahem transmitted his kingdom to Pekahiah; Pekahiah was murdered
about 735 B.C. by Pekah, and Pekah himself shortly afterwards
was overthrown. All this happened within a few years. It would
have been possible to conjecture the state of the country in
these circumstances, even if we had not been informed of it by
means of the prophetical book of Hosea, which dates from the time
when the Assyrians had begun indeed to tamper with the country,
but had not yet shown their full design. After the death of
Jeroboam II. there had been wild outbursts of partisan war; none
of the kings who in quick succession appeared and disappeared had
real power, none established order. It was as if the danger from
without, which was only too obviously threatening the existence
of the kingdom, had already dissolved all internal bonds; every
one was at war with his neighbour. Assyrians and Egyptians were
called in to support this or that government; by such expedients
the external confusion was, naturally, only increased. Was there
any other quarter in which help could yet be sought? The
people, led by the priests, turned to the altars of Jehovah, and
outdid itself in pious works, as if by any such illusory means,
out of all relation to the practical problem in hand, the gangrene
of anarchy could possibly be healed. Still more zealous than
Amos against the cultus was Hosea, not merely on the ground that
it had the absurd motive of forcing Jehovah's favour, but also
because it was of heathenish character, nature-worship and
idolatry. That Jehovah is the true and only helper is certainly
not denied by Hosea. But His help is coupled with the condition
that Israel shall undergo a complete change, and of such a change
he sees no prospect. On this account the downfall of the state is
in Hosea's view inevitable, but not final ruin, only such an
overthrow as is necessary for the transition to a new and fair
recommencement. In Hosea's prophecies the relation between Jehovah
and Israel is conceived of as dissoluble, and as actually on the point
of being dissolved, but it has struck its roots so deep that it
must inevitably at last establish itself again.
The first actual collision between Israel and Assyria occurred in
734. Resin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Samaria, had
united in an expedition against Judah, where at that time Ahaz ben
Jotham occupied the throne. But Ahaz parried the blow by placing
himself under the protection of the Assyrians, who perhaps would
in any case have struck in against the alliance between Aram and
Israel. Tiglath-pileser made his first appearance in 734, first on
the sea-coast of Palestine, and subsequently either in this or in
the following year took up his quarters in the kingdom of the ten
tribes. After he had ravaged Galilee and Gilead, he finally
concluded a peace with Samaria conditionally on his receiving the
head of King Pekah and a considerable yearly tribute. Hosea ben
Elah was raised to the throne in Pekah's place and acknowledged by
the Assyrian as a vassal For some ten years he held his position
quietly, regularly paying his dues. But when at the death of
Tiglath-pileser the Syro-Palestinian kingdoms rebelled _en masse_,
Samaria also was seized with the delirium of patriotic fanaticism
(Isaiah xxviii.). Relying upon the help of Seve, king of Ethiopia
and Egypt, Hosea ventured on a revolt from Assyria. But the
Egyptians left him in the lurch as soon as Shalmaneser IV.,
Tiglath-pileser's successor, invaded his territory. Before his
capital had fallen, Hosea himself fell into the hands of the
Assyrians. Samaria offered a desperate resistance, and succumbed
only to Sargon, Shalmaneser's successor (72I). Energetic
measures were adopted by the victor for the pacification of the
country; he carried all the inhabitants of mark into captivity
to Calachene, Gozanitis, and Armenia. Much light is thrown upon
the conditions of the national religion then and upon its
subsequent development by the single fact that the exiled
Israelites were absorbed by the surrounding heathenism without
leaving a trace behind them, while the population of Judah, who
had the benefit of a hundred years respite, held their faith fast
throughout the period of the Babylonian exile, and by means of it
were able to maintain their own individuality afterwards in all
the circumstances that arose. The fact that the fall of Samaria
did not hinder but helped the religion of Jehovah is entirely due
to the prophets. That they had foreseen the downfall of the
state, and declared in the name of religion that it was
inevitable, was a matter of much greater historical importance
than the actual downfall itself.
7. THE DELIVERANCE OF JUDAH.
Hitherto the small kingdom of Judah had stood in the background.
Its political history had been determined almost exclusively by
its relation to Israel. Under the dynasty of Omri the original
enmity had been changed into a close but perhaps not quite
voluntary friendship. Judah found itself drawn completely into
the train of the more powerful neighbouring state, and seems even
to have rendered it military service. The fall of the house of
Omri was an ominous event for Judah as well as Israel; Jehu, as
he passed to the throne, put to death not only Ahaziah the king
but also two and forty other members of the royal house of David
who had fallen into his hands; and those who still survived,
children for the most part, were murdered wholesale by the regent
Athaliah for reasons that are unknown. Only one little boy,
Joash, was concealed from her fury, and by a successful
conspiracy six years afterwards was placed upon the throne of his
ancestors. At that time the Syrians were extending their
incursions to Judah and Philistia, and Joash bought them off from
Jerusalem with the temple treasures. Perhaps it was this disgrace
that he expiated with his death; in like manner perhaps the
assassination of his successor Amaziah is to be accounted for by
the discredit he had incurred by a reckless and unsuccessful war
against Israel. Just as Israel was beginning to recover itself
after the happy termination of the Syrian wars, Judah also
experienced its period of highest prosperity. What Jeroboam II.
was to the northern kingdom, Uzziah was to that of the south. He
appears to have obtained possession of Edom, and for a
considerable time to have held that one province of David's
conquests which fell to Judah; and at the trading port of Elath
he revived the commerce which Solomon had created. The prosperity
of his long reign was uninterrupted till in his later years he was
smitten with leprosy, and found it necessary to hand over the
affairs of the kingdom to his son Jotham. But Jotham appears to
have died about the same time as his father,--his successor, still
in very early youth (Isaiah iii. 12), being Ahaz ben Jotham
ben Uzziah.
If Judah could not compare with Israel in political and general
historical importance, it nevertheless enjoyed more than one
considerable advantage over the larger kingdom. It was much safer
from foreign foes; for the Egyptians, as a rule, were not
dangerous neighbours. But its chief advantage consisted in the
stability of its dynasty. It was David who had elevated Judah
and Jerusalem to a position of historical significance, and the
prosperity of his house was most intimately connected with that
of the town and territory, and even with that of religion. On two
separate occasions it occurred that a king of Judah was murdered
by subjects, but in both cases the "people of the land" rose up
against the assassins and once more placed a member of the Davidic
family upon the throne. The one actual recorded revolution was
that against Athaliah, which had for its object the restoration of
the throne to the legitimate heir. Under shelter of the monarchy
the other institutions of the state also acquired a measure of
permanency such as was not found at all in Israel, where
everything depended on the character of individuals, and the
existing order of things was ever liable to be subjected to fresh
dispute. Life in Judah was a much more stable affair, though not
so exciting or dramatic. Possibly the greater isolation of the
little kingdom, its more intimate relations with the neighbouring
wilderness, and the more primitive modes of life which resulted,
were also factors which contributed to this general result.
In the capital of course the life was not primitive, and its
influence was undoubtedly greater than that of the country.
Successive kings exerted themselves for its external improvement,
and in this respect Hezekiah ben Ahaz was specially
distinguished. Above all they manifested sincere interest in the
temple, which from an early period exerted a powerful force of
attraction over the entire mass of the population. They
regulated the cultus according to their individual tastes, added
to it or curtailed it at their pleasure, and dealt with the sacred
treasures as they chose. Although the priests had in a certain
sense great power--the conspiracy against Athaliah was led not by
a prophet but by a priest,--they were nevertheless subjects of
the king, and had to act according to his orders. That the cultus
of Jehovah at Jerusalem was purer than that at Bethel or at
Samaria is an assertion which is contradicted by more than one
well-attested fact. In this respect there was no essential
difference between Israel and Judah. It was in Israel that the
reaction against Baal-worship originated which afterwards passed
over into Judah; the initiative in all such matters was Israel's.
There the experiments were made from which Jerusalem learned the
lesson. How deep was the interest felt in the affairs of the larger
kingdom by the inhabitants even of one of the smaller provincial
towns of Judah is shown in the instance of Amos of Tekoah.
Step by step with the decline of Israel after the death of
Jeroboam II. did Judah rise in importance; it was already
preparing to take the inheritance. The man through whom the
transition of the history from Israel to Judah was effected, and
who was the means of securing for the latter kingdom a period of
respite which was fruitful of the best results for the
consolidation of true religion, was the Prophet Isaiah. The
history of his activity is at the same time the history of
Judah during that period.
Isaiah became conscious of his vocation in the year of King
Uzziah's death; his earliest discourses date from the beginning
of the reign of Ahaz. In them he contemplates the imminent
downfall of Samaria, and threatens Judah also with the
chastisement its political and social sins deserve. In chapter ix.,
and also in chapters ii.-v., he still confines himself on the whole
to generalities quite after the manner of Amos. But on the
occasion of the expedition of the allied Syrians and Ephraimites
against Jerusalem he interposed with bold decision in the sphere of
practical politics. To the very last he endeavoured to restrain
Ahaz from his purpose of summoning the Assyrians to his help; he
assured him of Jehovah's countenance, and offered him a token in
pledge. When the king refused this, the prophet recognised that
matters had gone too far, and that the coming of the Assyrians
could not be averted. He then declared that the dreaded danger
would indeed be obviated by that course, but that another far
more serious would be incurred. For the Egyptians would resist
the westward movement of Assyria, and Judah as the field of war
would be utterly laid waste; only a remnant would remain as the
basis of a better future.
The actual issue, however, was not yet quite so disastrous. The
Egyptians did not interfere with the Assyrians, and left Samaria
and Damascus to their fate. Judah became indeed tributary to
Assyria, but at the same time enjoyed considerable prosperity.
Henceforward the prophet's most zealous efforts were directed to
the object of securing the maintenance, at any price, of this
condition of affairs. He sought by every means at his command to
keep Judah from any sort of intervention in the politics of the
great powers, in order that it might devote itself with undivided
energies to the necessities of internal affairs. He actually
succeeded in maintaining the peace for many years, even at times
when in the petty kingdoms around the spirit of revolt was abroad.
The ill success of all attempts elsewhere to shake off the yoke
confirmed him in the conviction that Assyria was the rod of
chastisement wielded by Jehovah over the nations, who had no
alternative but to yield to its iron sway.
While thirty years passed thus peacefully away so far as foreign
relations were concerned, internal changes of all the greater
importance were taking place. Hezekiah ben Ahaz undertook for
the first time a thoroughgoing reformation in the cultus of
Jehovah. "He removed the high places, and brake the pillars,
and cut down the Ashera, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent
that Moses had made;" so we are told in 2Kings xviii. 4, with
a mixture of the general and the special that does not inspire
much confidence. For, e.g., the "high places" which Solomon
had raised on the Mount of Olives were not removed by Hezekiah,
although they stood quite close to Jerusalem, and moreover were
consecrated to foreign deities. But in every respect there must
have been a wide difference between the objects and results of
the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah. Undoubtedly Hezekiah
undertook his reforms in worship under the influence of Isaiah.
Following in the footsteps of Hosea, who had been the first to
take and to express offence at the use of images in the worship
of Jehovah, this prophet, utilising the impression which the
destruction of Samaria had produced in Jerusalem (Isaiah
xvii., cf. Jeremiah iii.), strove to the utmost against the
adoration of the work of men's hands in the holy places, against
the Asheras and pillars (sun-pillars), and above all against the
ephods, i.e., the idols of silver and gold, of which the land was
full. But against the high places in and by themselves, against
the multiplicity of the altars of Jehovah, he made no protest.
"( In the Messianic time) ye shall loathe and cast away as an
unclean thing your graven images with silver coverings and your
molten images overlaid with gold," he says (xxx. 22); and the
inference is that he contemplated the purification of the high
places from superstitious excesses, but by no means their abolition.
To this one object /1/
-- Footnote
1. That is, to the abolition of the images. Jeremiah's polemic
is directed no longer against the images, but against wood
and stone, i.e, Asheras and pillars. The date of the reformation
under Hezekiah is uncertain; perhaps it ought to be placed after
Sennacherib's withdrawal from Jerusalem.
-- Footnote
Hezekiah's reformation seems to have confined itself,--an object
of much greater primary importance than the destruction of the
altars themselves. Their destruction was a measure which arose
simply out of despair of the possibility of cleansing them.
Sargon, king of Assyria, was succeeded in 705 by Sennacherib.
The opportunity was seized by Merodach Baladan of Babylon to secure
his independence; and by means of an embassy he urged Hezekiah
also to throw off the yoke. The proposal was adopted, and the
king of Judah was joined by other petty kingdoms, especially
some of the Philistine towns. Relations with Egypt were
established to secure its support in case of need. Sennacherib's
more immediate and pressing business in Babylon enabled Palestine
to gain some time; but the issue of that revolt made
self-deception impossible as to the probable result of the other
movement.
This was the period at which Isaiah, already far advanced in life,
wielded his greatest influence. The preparations for revolt, the
negotiations with Egypt, were concealed from him,-a proof how
greatly he was feared at court. When he came to know of them, it
was already too late to undo what had been done. But he could at
least give vent to his anger. With Jerusalem, it seemed to him,
the story of Samaria was repeating itself; uninstructed by that
sad lesson, the capital was giving itself up to the mad
intoxication of leaders who would inevitably bring her to ruin.
"Quietness and rest" had been the motto given by Jehovah to
Judah, powerless as it was and much in need of a period of peace;
instead of this, defiance based on ignorance and falsehood
expressed the prevailing temper. But those who refused to listen
to the intelligible language of Jehovah would be compelled to hear
Him speak in Assyrian speech in a way that would deafen and blind
them. Isaiah shows himself no less indignant against the crowd
that stupidly stared at his excitement than against the
God-forsaken folly of the king, with his counsellors, his priests,
and his prophets. They do not suffer themselves to be shaken out
of their ordinary routine by the gravity of such a crisis as
this; the living work of Jehovah is to them a sealed book; their
piety does not extend beyond the respect they show for certain
human precepts learnt by rote.
Meanwhile Sennacherib, at the head of a great army, was advancing
against Philistia and Judah along the Phoenician coast (701).
Having captured Ascalon, he next laid siege to Ekron, which,
after the combined Egyptian and Ethiopian army sent to its relief
had been defeated at Eltheke, fell into the enemy's hand, and was
severely dealt with. Simultaneously various fortresses of Judah
were occupied, and the level country was devastated (Isaiah i.).
The consequence was that Hezekiah, in a state of panic, offered
to the Assyrians his sub-mission, which was accepted on payment of
a heavy penalty, he being permitted, however, to retain possession
of Jerusalem. He seemed to have got cheaply off from the unequal
contest.
The way being thus cleared, Sennacherib pressed on southwards, for
the Egyptians were collecting their forces against him. The nearer
he came to the enemy the more undesirable did he find it that he
should leave in his rear so important a fortress as Jerusalem in
the hands of a doubtful vassal. Notwithstanding the recently
ratified treaty, therefore, he demanded the surrender of the
city, believing that a policy of intimidation would be enough to
secure it from Hezekiah. But there was another personality in
Jerusalem of whom his plans had taken no account. Isaiah had
indeed regarded the revolt from Assyria as a rebellion against
Jehovah Himself, and therefore as a perfectly hopeless undertaking
which could only result in the utmost humiliation and sternest
chastisement for Judah. But still more distinctly than those who
had gone before him did he hold firm as an article of faith the
conviction that the kingdom would not be utterly annihilated; all
his speeches of solemn warning closed with the announcement that
a remnant should return and form the kernel of a new commonwealth
to be fashioned after Jehovah's own heart. For him, in contrast to
Amos, the great crisis had a positive character; in contrast to
Hosea, he did not expect a temporary suspension of the theocracy,
to be followed by its complete reconstruction, but in the pious
and God-fearing individuals who were still to be met with in this
Sodom of iniquity, he saw the threads, thin indeed yet sufficient,
which formed the links between the Israel of the present and its
better future. Over against the vain confidence of the multitude
Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker obverse of
his religious belief, but now he confronted their present
depression with its bright reverse; faint-heartedness was still
more alien to his nature than temerity. In the name of Jehovah he
bade King Hezekiah be of good courage, and urged that he should by
no means surrender. The Assyrians would not be able to take the
city, not even to shoot an arrow into it nor to bring up their
siege train against it. "I know thy sitting, thy going, and thy
standing," is Jehovah's language to the Assyrian, "and also thy
rage against me. And I will put my ring in thy nose, and my
bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by
which thou camest." And thus it proved in the issue. By a still
unexplained catastrophe, the main army of Sennacherib was
annihilated on the frontier between Egypt and Palestine, and
Jerusalem thereby freed from all danger. The Assyrian king had to
save himself by a hurried retreat to Nineveh; Isaiah was
triumphant. A more magnificent close of a period of influential
public life can hardly be imagined.
What Sennacherib himself relates of his expedition against his
rebellious vassals in Palestine (George Smith, Assyrian Eponym
Canon, p. 67, 68, 131-136) runs parallel with 2 Kings xviii. 14-16,
but not with the rest of the Bible narrative. These three verses
are peculiar, and their source is different from that of the context.
After having captured various Phoenician cities, and received tribute
from a number of kings, his first measure is forcibly to restore the
Assyrian governor who had been expelled from Ascalon, and next he
turns his arms against Ekron. This city had put in irons its own
king, Padi (who remained loyal to the suzerain), and handed him over
to Hezekiah, who appears as the soul of the rebellion in these
quarters. The Egyptians, who as usual have a hand in the matter,
advance with an army for the relief of the beleaguered city, but
are defeated near Eltheke in the immediate neighbourhood; Ekron is
taken, remorselessly chastised, and forced to take Padi back again
as its king. For Hezekiah in the meantime has delivered up his
prisoner, and, terrified by the fall of his fortresses and the
devastation of his territory, has accepted the position of a vassal
once more, paying at the same time a heavy fine, inclusive of
30 talents of gold and 800 of silver. Such is the Assyrian account.
If we treat the 300 talents mentioned in 2Kings xviii. 14 as
Syrian (=800 Babylonian), it completely fills in the vague outlines
given in 2Kings xviii. 14-16, and, while confirming in their place
immediately after ver. 13 these verses, unrelated as they are to
the main connection of the Biblical narrative, corrects them only
in one point, by making it probable that the subjection of
Hezekiah (which is not equivalent to the surrender of his city)
took place while Sennacherib was still before Ekron, and not at
later date when he had gone further south towards Libnah. As
regards his further advance towards Egypt, and the reasons of his
sudden withdrawal (related by Herodotus also from Egyptian tradition),
the great king is silent, having nothing to boast of in it.
The battle of Eltheke, which is to be regarded only as an episode
in the siege of Ekron, being merely the repulse of the Egyptian
relieving army, was not an event of great historical importance,
and ought not to be brought into any connection either with 2Kings
xix. 7 or with xix. 35; Sennacherib's inscription speaks only of
the first and prosperous stage of the expedition, not of the decisive
one which resulted so disastrously for him, as must be clear from
the words themselves to every unprejudiced reader.
8. THE PROPHETIC REFORMATION.
Isaiah was so completely a prophet that even his wife was called
the prophetess after him. No such title could have been bestowed
on the wife of either Amos or Hosea. But what distinguished him
more than anything else from those predecessors was that his
position was not, like theirs, apart from the government; he sat
close to the helm, and took a very real part in directing the
course of the vessel. He was more positive and practical than
they; he wished to make his influence felt, and when for the
moment he was unsuccessful in this so far as the great whole of the
state was concerned, he busied himself in gathering round him a
small circle of like-minded persons on whom his hope for the future
rested. Now that Israel had been destroyed, he wished at all
events to save Judah. The lofty ideality of his faith (ii. 1 seq.)
did not hinder him from calling in the aid of practical means
for this end. But the current of his activities was by the
circumstances of the case directed into a channel in which after
his death they continued to flow towards a goal which had hardly
been contemplated by himself.
The political importance of the people of Jehovah was reduced to a
minimum when Judah only was left. Already at an earlier period
in that kingdom the sacred had come to be of more importance than
the secular; much more was this the case under the suzerainty of
Assyria. The circumstances of the time themselves urged that the
religion of Israel should divest itself of all politico-national
character; but Isaiah also did his best to further this end. It
was his most zealous endeavour to hold king and people aloof from
every patriotic movement; to him the true religious attitude was
one of quietness and sitting still, non-intervention in political
affairs, concentration on the problems of internal government. But
he was compelled to leave over for the coming Messiah (xi. 1 seq.)
that reformation in legal and social matters which seemed to him so
necessary; all that he could bring the secular rulers of his
country to undertake was a reform in worship. This was the most
easily solved of the problems alluded to above, and it was also
that which most closely corresponded to the character of the
kingdom of Judah. Thus it came about that the reform of the
theocracy which had been contemplated by Isaiah led to its
transformation into an ecclesiastical state. No less influential
in effecting a radical change in the old popular religion was
Isaiah's doctrine which identified the true Israel with the
holy remnant which alone should emerge from the crisis unconsumed.
For that remnant was more than a mere object of hope; it actually
stood before him in the persons of that little group of pious
individuals gathered around him. Isaiah founded no "ecclesiola
in ecclesia" indeed, but certainly an "ecclesia in civitate Dei."
Now began that distinction between the true Israel and the Israel
according to the flesh, that bipartite division of the nation
which became so important in later times. As head and founder
of the prophetic party in Judah, Isaiah was, involuntarily,
the man who took the first steps towards the institution of
the church.
The catastrophe which befell the army of Sennacherib had no very
great effect upon the external affairs of Judah. Sennacherib
indeed, being busy in the east, was unable to retrieve the loss he
had sustained, but his son Esarhaddon, who succeeded him in 681,
resumed the Egyptian war with better success. He made himself
master of the Nile valley, and brought the Ethiopians into
submission. That the petty kingdoms of Palestine returned to the
old relations of dependence is to be taken as a matter of course.
Judah appears to have resumed the yoke voluntarily, but the
Samaritans only after force had been applied; they were
afterwards deported, whereupon the deserted country was occupied
by foreign colonists, who, however, accepted the cultus of the god
of the land.
That Manasseh ben Hezekiah should have again come under Assyrian
suzerainty appears at that time to have made but little impression;
since the time of Ahaz Judah had been accustomed to this
relation. The Book of Kings speaks only of internal affairs under the
reign of Manasseh. According to it, he was a bad ruler, who
permitted, and even caused, innocent blood to flow like water.
But what was of greater consequence for the future, he took up an
attitude of hostility towards the prophetic party of reform, and
put himself on the side of the reaction which would fain bring back
to the place of honour the old popular half-pagan conception of
Jehovah, as against the pure and holy God whom the prophets
worshipped. The revulsion manifested itself as the reform had
done, chiefly in matters of worship. The old idolatrous
furniture of the sanctuaries was reinstated in its place, and new
frippery was imported from all quarters, especially from Assyria
and Babylon, to renovate the old religion; with Jehovah was now
associated a "queen of heaven." Yet, as usual, the restoration did
more than merely bring back the old order of things. What at an
earlier period had been mere naivete now became superstition, and
could hold its ground only by having imparted to it artificially
a deeper meaning which was itself borrowed from the prophetical
circle of ideas. Again, earnestness superseded the old joyousness
of the cultus; this now had reference principally to sin and its
atonement. Value was attached to services rendered to the Deity,
just in proportion to their hardness and unnaturalness; at this
period it was that the old precept to sacrifice to Jehovah the male
that opens the matrix was extended to children. The counter-
reformation was far from being unaffected by the preceding
reformation, although it understood religious earnestness in
quite another sense, and sought, not to eliminate heathenism from
the cultus, but to animate it with new life. On the other hand,
the reaction was, in the end, found to have left distinct traces of
its influence in the ultimate issue of the reformation.
We possess one document dating from Manasseh's time in Micah vi. 1-
vii. 6. Here, where the lawlessness and utter disregard of
every moral restraint in Judah are set in a hideous light, the
prophetic point of view, as contrasted with the new refinements in
worship, attains also its simplest and purest expression. Perhaps
to this period the Decalogue also, which is so eloquently
silent in regard to cultus, is to be assigned. Jehovah demands
nothing for Himself, all that He asks is only for men; this is
here the fundamental law of the theocracy.
Manasseh's life was a long one, and his son Amon walked in his
ways. The latter died after a brief reign, and with his death a
new era for Judah began. It was introduced by the great
catastrophe in which the Assyrian empire came to an end. The
sovereignty of the world was beginning to pass out of the hands of
the Semites into those of the Aryans. Phraortes of Media indeed
was unsuccessful in his attempt against the Assyrians, but Cyaxares
beat them and proceeded to besiege their capital. The Scythian
invasion of Media and Western Asia (c. 630) at this juncture gave
them another respite of more than twenty years; but even it
tended to break in pieces the great, loosely-compacted monarchy.
The provinces became gradually disintegrated, and the kingdom
shrivelled up till it covered no more than the land of Asshur. /1/
-- Footnote
1. Our knowledge of the events of the second half of the 7th century
has remained singularly imperfect hitherto, notwithstanding the
importance of the changes they wrought on the face of the ancient
world. The account given above is that of Herodotus (i. 103-106),
and there the matter must rest until really authentic sources shall
have been brought to light. With regard to the final
siege of Nineveh, our chief informant is Ctesias as quoted by
Diodorus (ii. 26, 27). Whether the prophecy of Nabum relates to
the LAST siege is doubtful (in spite of ii. 7, and the oracle
given in Diodorus, (OTI THN *NINON )OUDEIS (ELEI KATA KRATOS )EAN
MH PROTERON (O POTAMOS TH| POLEI GENHTAI POLEMOS), inasmuch as Nahum
(i. 9) expressly speaks of the siege alluded to by him as the
first, saying, "the trouble shall not rise up the second time."
-- Footnote
The inroad of the Scythians aroused to energy again the voice of
prophecy which had been dumb during the very sinful but not very
animated period of Manasseh's reign. Zephaniah and Jeremiah
threatened with the mysterious northern foe, just as Amos and Hosea
had formerly done with the Assyrians. The Scythians actually did
invade Palestine in 626 (the 13th year of Josiah), and penetrated
as far as to Egypt; but their course lay along the shore line,
and they left Judah untouched. This danger that had come so near
and yet passed them by, this instance of a prophetic threatening
that had come to pass and yet been mercifully averted, made a
powerful impression upon the people of Judah; public opinion went
through a revolution in favour of the reforming party which was
able to gain for itself the support also of the young king Josiah
ben Amon. The circumstances were favourable for coming forward
with a comprehensive programme for a reconstruction of the
theocracy. In the year 621 (the eighteenth of Josiah) Deuteronomy
was discovered, accepted, and carried into effect.
The Deuteronomic legislation is designed for the reformation, by
no means of the cultus alone, but at least quite as much of the
civil relations of life. The social interest is placed above the
cultus, inasmuch as everywhere humane ends are assigned for the
rites and offerings. In this it is plainly seen that
Deuteronomy is the progeny of the prophetic spirit. Still more
plainly does this appear in the _motifs_ of the legislation;
according to these, Jehovah is the only God, whose service demands
the whole heart and every energy; He has entered into a covenant
with Israel, but upon fundamental conditions that, as contained
in the Decalogue, are purely moral and of absolute universality.
Nowhere does the fundamental religious thought of prophecy find
clearer expression than in Deuteronomy,--the thought that Jehovah
asks nothing for Himself, but asks it as a religious duty that man
should render to man what is right, that His will lies not in any
unknown height, but in the moral sphere which is known and
understood by all. /1/
-- Footnote
1. The commandments which I command thee are not unattainable for
thee, neither are they far off; not in heaven so that one might
say, Who can climb up into heaven and bring them down, and tell us
them that we might do them! not beyond the sea so that one might
say, Who shall go over the sea, and fetch them, and tell us them
that we might do them!--but the matter lies very near thee, in thy
mouth and in thy heart, so that thou canst do it (Deut. xxx. 11-14).
-- Footnote
But the result of the innovation did not correspond exactly to its
prophetic origin. Prophecy died when its precepts attained to the
force of laws; the prophetic ideas lost their purity when they
became practical. Whatever may have been contemplated, only
provisional regulations actually admitted of being carried, and
even these only in co-operation with the king and the priests, and
with due regard to the capacity of the masses. The final outcome
of the Deuteronomic reformation was principally that the cultus
of Jehovah was limited to Jerusalem and abolished everywhere
else,--such was the popular and practical form of prophetic
monotheism. The importance of the Salomonic temple was thereby
increased in the highest degree, and so also the influence of the
priests of Jerusalem, the sons of Zadok, who now in point of fact
got rid entirely of their rivals, the priests of the country
districts.
9. JEREMIAH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
Josiah lived for thirteen years after the accomplishment of his
great work. It was a happy period of external and internal
prosperity. The nation possessed the covenant, and kept it. It
seemed as if the conditions had been attained on which, according
to the prophets, the continuance of the theocracy depended; if
their threatenings against Israel had been fulfilled, so now was
Judah proving itself the heir of their promises. Already in
Deuteronomy is the "extension of the frontier" taken into
consideration, and Josiah actually put his hand to the task of
seeking the attainment of this end.
Jehovah and Israel, religion and patriotism, once more went hand in
hand. Jeremiah alone did not suffer himself to be misled by the
general feeling. He was a second Amos, upon a higher platform--
but, unlike his predecessor, a prophet by profession; his
history, like Isaiah's, is practically the history of his time.
In the work of introducing Deuteronomy he had taken an active part,
and throughout his life he showed his zeal against unlawful altars
and against the adoration of wood and stone (Asheras and pillars).
But he was by no means satisfied with the efforts of the reformation
that had been effected; nothing appeared to him more sinful or
more silly than the false confidence produced by it in Jehovah
and in the inviolability of His one true temple. This confidence
he maintained to be delusive; Judah was not a whit better than
Israel had been, Jerusalem would be destroyed one day like the
temple of Shiloh. The external improvements on which the people
of Judah prided themselves he held to leave this severe judgment
unaffected; what was needed was a quite different sort of change,
a change of heart, not very easy positively to define.
An opportunity for showing his opposition presented itself to the
prophet at the juncture when King Josiah had fallen at Megiddo in
the battle with Pharaoh Necho (608), and when the people were
seeking safety and protection by cleaving to Jehovah and His holy
temple. At the instance of the priests and the prophets he had
almost expiated with his blood the blasphemies he had uttered
against the popular belief; but he did not suffer himself to be
driven from his course. Even when the times had grown quiet again,
he persisted, at the risk of his life and under universal reproach
and ridicule, in his work as a prophet of evil. Moments of despair
sometimes came to him; but that he had correctly estimated the
true value of the great conversion of the nation was speedily
proved by the facts. Although Deuteronomy was not formally
abolished under Jehoiakim, who as the vassal of Egypt ascended the
throne of his father Josiah, nevertheless it ceased to have
practical weight, the battle of Megiddo having shown that in spite
of the covenant with Jehovah the possibilities of non-success in
war remained the same as before. Jehoiakim tended to return to the
ways of Manasseh, not only as regarded idolatry, but also in his
contempt for law and the private rights of his subjects;--the two
things seem to stand in connection.
The course of events at last brought upon the theocracy the
visible ruin which Jeremiah had been so long expecting. After the
Egyptians had, with comparative ease, subjugated Syria at the time
when the Medes and Chaldaeans were busied with the siege of
Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar, that task accomplished, came upon them
from Babylon and routed them on the Euphrates near Carchemish (605-4).
The people of Judah rejoiced at the fall of Nineveh, and also at
the result of Carchemish; but they were soon undeceived when the
prospect began to open on them of simply exchanging the Egyptian
for the Chaldaean yoke. The power of the Chaldaeans had been quite
unsuspected, and now it was found that in them the Assyrians had
suddenly returned to life. Jeremiah was the only man who gained
any credit by these events. His much ridiculed "enemy out of
the north," of whom he had of old been wont to speak so much, now
began to be talked of with respect, although his name was no longer
"the Scythian" but "the Babylonian." It was an epoch,--the close
of an account which balanced in his favour. Therefore it was that
precisely at this moment he received the Divine command to commit
to writing that which for twenty-three years he had been preaching,
and which, ever pronounced impossible, had now showed itself so
close at hand.
After the victory of Carchemish the Chaldaeans drove Pharaoh out
of Syria, and also compelled the submission of Jehoiakim (c. 602).
For three years he continued to pay his tribute, and then he
withheld it; a mad passion for liberty, kindled by religious
fanaticism, had begun to rage with portentous power amongst the
influential classes, the grandees, the priests, and the prophets.
Nebuchadnezzar satisfied himself in the first instance with raising
against Judah several of the smaller nationalities around,
especially the Edomites; not till 597 did he appear in person
before Jerusalem. The town was compelled to yield; the more
important citizens were carried into exile, amongst them the young
king Jechoniah, son of Jehoiakim, who had died in the interval;
Zedekiah ben Josiah was made king in his stead over the remnant
left behind. The patriotic fanaticism that had led to the revolt
was not broken even by this blow. Within four years afterwards
new plans of liberation began to be again set on foot; but on this
occasion the influence of Jeremiah proved strong enough to avert
the danger. But when a definite prospect of help from Pharaoh
Hophra (Apries) presented itself in 589, the craving for
independence proved quite irrepressible. Revolt was declared; and
in a very short time the Chaldaean army, with Nebuchadnezzar at
its head, lay before Jerusalem. For a while everything seemed to
move prosperously; the Egyptians came to the rescue, and the
Chaleaeans were compelled to raise the siege in order to cope
with them. At this there was great joy in Jerusalem; but Jeremiah
continued to express his gloomy views. The event proved that he
was right; the Egyptians were repulsed and the siege resumed.
The city was bent on obstinate resistance; in vain did Jeremiah,
at continual risk of his life, endeavour to bring it to reason.
The king, who agreed with the prophet, did not venture to assert
his opinion against the dominant terrorism. The town in these
circumstances was at last taken by storm, and along with the temple,
reduced to ruins. Cruel vengeance was taken on the king and grandees,
and the pacification of the country was ensured by another and
larger deportation of the inhabitants to Babylon. Thus terminated
in 586 the kingdom of Judah.
The prophets had been the spiritual destroyers of the old Israel.
In old times the nation had been the ideal of religion in actual
realisation; the prophets confronted the nation with an ideal to
which it did not correspond. Then to bridge over this interval the
abstract ideal was framed into a law, and to this law the nation
was to be conformed. The attempt had very important consequences,
inasmuch as Jehovah continued to be a living power in the law,
when He was no longer realised as present in the nation; but that
was not what the prophets had meant to effect. What they were
unconsciously labouring towards was that religious individualism
which had its historical source in the national downfall, and
manifested itself not exclusively within the prophetical sphere.
With such men as Amos and Hosea the moral personality based upon
an inner conviction burst through the limits of mere nationality;
their mistake was in supposing that they could make their way of
thinking the basis of a national life. Jeremiah saw through the
mistake; the true Israel was narrowed to himself. Of the truth of
his conviction he never had a moment's doubt; he knew that Jehovah
was on his side, that on Him depended the eternal future. But,
instead of the nation, the heart and the individual conviction were
to him the subject of religion. On the ruins of Jerusalem he gazed
into the future filled with joyful hope, sure of this that Jehovah
would one day pardon past sin and renew the relation which had
been broken off-though on the basis of another covenant than that
laid down in Deuteronomy. "I will put my law upon their heart,
and write it on their mind; none shall say to his neighbour, Know
the Lord, for all shall have that knowledge within them."
10. THE CAPTIVITY AND THE RESTORATION
The exiled Jews were not scattered all over Chaldaea, but were
allowed to remain together in families and clans. Many of them,
notwithstanding this circumstance, must have lapsed and become
merged in the surrounding heathenism; but many also continued
faithful to Jehovah and to Israel. They laboured under much
depression and sadness, groaning under the wrath of Jehovah, who
had rejected His people and cancelled His covenant. They were
lying under a sort of vast interdict; they could not celebrate
any sacrifice or keep any feast; they could only observe days of
fasting and humiliation, and such rites as had no inseparable
connection with the holy land. The observance of the Sabbath,
and the practice of the rite of circumcision, acquired much
greater importance than they formerly possessed as signs of a
common religion. The meetings on the Sabbath day out of which
the synagogues were afterwards developed appear to have first
come into use during this period; perhaps also even then it had
become customary to read aloud from the prophetic writings which
set forth that all had happened in the providence of God, and
moreover that the days of adversity were not to last for ever.
Matters improved somewhat as Cyrus entered upon his victorious
career. Was he the man in whom the Messianic prophecies had found
their fulfilment? The majority were unwilling to think so. For it
was out of Israel (they argued) that the Messiah was to proceed who
should establish the kingdom of God upon the ruins of the kingdoms
of the world; the restitution effected by means of a Persian could
only be regarded as a passing incident in the course of an historical
process that had its goal entirely elsewhere. This doubt was met by
more than one prophetical writer, and especially by the great
anonymous author to whom we are indebted for Isaiah xl.-lxvi.
"Away with sorrow; deliverance is at the door! Is it a humiliating
thing that Israel should owe its freedom to a Persian? Nay, is it
not rather a proof of the world-wide sway of the God of Jacob that He
should thus summon His instruments from the ends of the earth? Who
else than Jehovah could have thus sent Cyrus? Surely not the false
gods which he has destroyed? Jehovah alone it was who foretold and
foreknew the things which are now coming to pass,--because long ago
He had prearranged and predetermined them, and they are now being
executed in accordance with his plan. Rejoice therefore in the
prospect of your near deliverance; prepare yourselves for the new era;
gird yourselves for the return to your homes."
It is to be observed, as characteristic in this prophecy, how the
idea of Jehovah as God alone and God over all--in constantly recurring
lyrical parenthesis he is praised as the author of the world and of
all nature--is yet placed in positive relation to Israel alone, and
that upon the principle that Israel is in exclusive possession of the
universal truth, which cannot perish with Israel, but must through
the instrumentality of Israel, become the common possession of the
whole world. "There is no God but Jehovah, and Israel is his prophet."
For many years the Persian monarch put the patience of the Jews to
the proof; Jehovah's judgment upon the Chaldaeans, instead of
advancing, seemed to recede. At length, however, their hopes were
realised; in the year 538 Cyrus brought the empire of Babylon to
an end, and gave the exiles leave to seek their fatherland once more.
This permission was not made use of by all, or even by a majority.
The number of those who returned is stated at 42,360; whether women
and children are included in this figure is uncertain. On arriving
at their destination, after the difficult march through the desert,
they did not spread themselves over the whole of Judah, but settled
chiefly in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The Calebites, for example,
who previously had had their settlements in and around Hebron, now
settled in Bethlehem and in the district of Ephrath. They found
it necessary to concentrate themselves in face of a threatened
admixture of doubtful elements. From all sides people belonging
to the surrounding nations had pressed into the depopulated territory
of Judah. Not only had they annexed the border territories--where,
for example, the Edomites or Idumaeans held the whole of the Negeb
as far as to Hebron; they had effected lodgments everywhere, and--
as the Ammonites, Ashdodites, and especially the Samaritans--had
amalgamated with the older Jewish population, a residue of which
had remained in the country in spite of all that had happened.
These half-breed "pagani" (Amme haarec 'oxloi) gave a friendly
reception to the returning exiles (Bne haggola); particularly
did the Samaritans show themselves anxious to make common cause
with them. But they were met with no reciprocal cordiality.
The lesson of religious isolation which the children of the
captivity had learned in Babylon, they did not forget on their
return to their home. Here also they lived as in a strange land.
Not the native of Judaea, but the man who could trace his descent
from the exiles in Babylon, was reckoned as belonging to their
community.
The first decennia after the return of the exiles, during which
they were occupied in adjusting themselves to their new homes,
were passed under a variety of adverse circumstances and by no
means either in joyousness or security. Were these then the
Messianic times which, it had been foretold, were to dawn at the
close of their captivity? They did not at all events answer the
expectations which had been formed. A settlement had been again
obtained, it was true, in the fatherland; but the Persian yoke
pressed now more heavily than ever the Babylonian had done. The
sins of God's people seemed still unforgiven, their period of
bond-service not yet at an end. A slight improvement, as is shown
by the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, followed when in the
year 520 the obstacles disappeared which until then had stood in
the way of the rebuilding of the temple; the work then begun was
completed in 516. Inasmuch as the Jews were now nothing more
than a religious community, based upon the traditions of a national
existence that had ceased, the rebuilding of the temple, naturally,
was for them an event of supreme importance.
The law of the new theocracy was the Book of Deuteronomy; this
was the foundation on which the structure was to be built. But the
force of circumstances, and the spirit of the age, had even before
and during the exile exerted a modifying influence upon that
legislative code; and it continued to do so still. At first a
"son of David" had continued to stand at the head of the Bne
haggola, but this last relic of the old monarchy soon had to give
way to a Persian governor who was under the control of the satrap
of trans-Euphratic Syria, and whose principal business was the
collection of revenue. Thenceforward the sole national chief was
Joshua the high priest, on whom, accordingly, the political
representation also of the community naturally devolved. In the
circumstances as they then were no other arrangement was possible.
The way had been paved for it long before in so far as the
Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Israel, while in the kingdom
of Judah which survived it the religious cultus had greater importance
attached to it than political affairs, and also inasmuch as in
point of fact the practical issue of the prophetic reformation
sketched in Deuteronomy had been to make the temple the national
centre still more than formerly. The hierocracy towards which
Ezekiel had already opened the way was simply inevitable. It took
the form of a monarchy of the high priest, he having stepped into
the place formerly occupied by the theocratic king. As his peers
and at his side stood the members of his clan, the Levites of the
old Jerusalem, who traced their descent from Zadok (Sadduk);
the common Levites held a much lower rank, so far as they had
maintained their priestly rank at all and had not been degraded,
in accordance with Ezekiel's law (chapter xliv.), to the position
of mere temple servitors. "Levite," once the title of honour
bestowed on all priests, became more and more confined to members
of the second order of the clergy.
Meanwhile no improvement was taking place in the condition of the
Jewish colonists. They were poor; they had incurred the
hostility of their neighbours by their exclusiveness; the
Persian Government was suspicious; the incipient decline of the
great kingdom was accompanied with specially unpleasant
consequences so far as Palestine was concerned (Megabyzus). All
this naturally tended to produce in the community a certain
laxity and depression. To what purpose (it was asked) all this
religious strictness, which led to so much that was unpleasant?
Why all this zeal for Jehovah, who refused to be mollified by it?
It is a significant fact that the upper ranks of the priesthood
were least of all concerned to counteract this tendency. Their
priesthood was less to them than the predominance which was based
upon it; they looked upon the neighbouring ethnarchs as their
equals, and maintained relations of friendship with them. The
general community was only following their example when it also
began to mingle with the Amme haarec.
The danger of Judaism merging into heathenism was imminent. But it
was averted by a new accession from without. In the year 458 Ezra
the scribe, with a great number of his compatriots, set out from
Babylon, for the purpose of reinforcing the Jewish element in
Palestine. The Jews of Babylon were more happily situated than
their Palestinian brethren, and it was comparatively easy for
them to take up a separatist attitude, because they were
surrounded by heathenism not partial but entire. They were no
great losers from the circumstance that they were precluded from
participating directly in the life of the ecclesiastical
community; the Torah had long ago become separated from the
people, and was now an independent abstraction following a career
of its own. Babylonia was the place where a further codification
of the law had been placed alongside of Deuteronomy. Ezekiel had
led the way in reducing to theory and to writing the sacred praxis
of his time; in this he was followed by an entire school; in their
exile the Levites turned scribes. Since then Babylon continued to
be the home of the Torah; and, while in Palestine itself the
practice was becoming laxer, their literary study had gradually
intensified the strictness and distinctive peculiarities of
Judaism. And now there came to Palestine a Babylonian scribe
having the law of his God in his hand, and armed with authority
from the Persian king to proceed upon the basis of this law with a
reformation of the community.
Ezra did not set about introducing the new law immediately on his
arrival in Judaea In the first instance he concentrated his
attention on the task of effecting a strict separation between the
Bne haggola and the heathen or half-heathen inhabitants. So much
he could accomplish upon the basis of Deuteronomy, but it was long
before he gave publicity to the law which he himself had brought.
Why he hesitated so long it is impossible to say; between the
seventh and the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus (458-445
B.C.) there is a great hiatus in the narrative of the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah. The main reason appears to have been that, in spite
of the good will of the Persian king, Ezra had not the vigorous
support of the local authorities. But this was indispensably
necessary in order to secure recognition for a new law.
At last, in 445, it fell to the lot of a Jew, who also shared the
views of Ezra, Nehemiah ben Hakkelejah, /1/
-- Footnote
1. According to the present punctuation this name is Hakalja
(Hachaljah), but such a pronunciation is inadmissible; it has no
possible etymology, the language having no such word as _hakal_.
The name in its correct form means "wait upon Jehovah."
-- Footnote
the cupbearer and the favourite of Artaxerxes, to be sent as Persian
governor to Judaea. After he had freed the community from external
pressure with vigour and success, and brought it into more tolerable
outward circumstances, the business of introducing the new law-book
was next proceeded with; in this Ezra and Nehemiah plainly acted in
concert.
On the first of Tisri--the year is unfortunately not given, but it
cannot have been earlier than 444 B.C.--the promulgation of the
law began at a great gathering in Jerusalem; Ezra, supported by
the Levites, was present. Towards the end of the month, the
concluding act took place, in which the community became solemnly
bound by the contents of the law. Special prominence was given to
those provisions with which the people were directly concerned,
particularly those which related to the dues payable by the laity
to the priests.
The covenant which hitherto had rested on Deuteronomy was thus
expanded into a covenant based upon the entire Pentateuch.
Substantially at least Ezra's law-book, in the form in which it
became the Magna Charta of Judaism in or about the year 444, must
be regarded as practically identical with our Pentateuch, although
many minor amendments and very considerable additions may have
been made at a later date.
The character of the post-Deuteronomic legislation (Priestly Code)
is chiefly marked, in its external aspects, by the immense
extension of the dues payable to the priests, and by the sharp
distinction made between the descendants of Aaron and the common
Levites; this last feature is to be traced historically to the
circumstance that after the Deuteronomic reformation the legal
equality between the Levites who until then had ministered at the
"high places" and the priests of the temple at Jerusalem was not
_de facto_ recognised. Internally, it is mainly characterised by
its ideal of Levitical holiness, the way in which it everywhere
surrounds life with purificatory and propitiatory ceremonies, and
its prevailing reference of sacrifice to sin. Noteworthy also is
the manner in which everything is regarded from the point of view
of Jerusalem, a feature which comes much more boldly into
prominence here than in Deuteronomy; the nation and the temple are
strictly speaking identified. That externalisation towards which
the prophetical movement, in order to become practical, had
already been tending in Deuteronomy finally achieved its acme
in the legislation of Ezra; a new artificial Israel was the
result; but, after all, the old would have pleased an Amos better.
At the same time it must be remembered that the kernel needed a
shell. It was a necessity that Judaism should incrust itself in
this manner; without those hard and ossified forms the preservation
of its essential elements would have proved impossible. At
a time when all nationalities, and at the same time all bonds of
religion and national customs, were beginning to be broken up in
the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the Graeco-Roman empire, the
Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the ocean. When the
natural conditions of independent nationality all failed them,
they nevertheless artificially maintained it with an energy
truly marvellous, and thereby preserved for themselves, and at the
same time for the whole world, an eternal good.
As regards the subsequent history of the Jewish community under
the Persian domination, we have almost no information. The high
priest in Nehemiah's time was Eliashib, son of Joiakim and grandson
of Joshua, the patriarchal head of the sons of Zadok, who had
returned from Babylon; he was succeeded in the direct line by
Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua (Nehemiah xii. 10, 11, 22); the
last-named was in office at the time of Alexander the Great
(Josephus, Antiquities, xi. 8). Palestine was the province which
suffered most severely of all from the storms which marked the last
days of the sinking Persian empire, and it is hardly likely that
the Jews escaped their force; we know definitely, however, of only
one episode, in which the Persian general Bagoses interfered in a
disagreeable controversy about the high-priesthood (cir. 375).
To this period also (and not, as Josephus states, to the time of
Alexander) belongs the constitution of the Samaritan community on
an independent footing by Manasseh, a Jewish priest of rank. He
was expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah in 432, for refusing to
separate from his alien wife. He took shelter with his father-in-law
Sanballat, the Samaritan prince, who built him a temple on Mount
Gerizim near Shechem, where he organised a Samaritan church and a
Samaritan worship, on the Jerusalem model, and on the basis of a
but slightly modified Jerusalem Pentateuch. If the Samaritans
had hitherto exerted, themselves to the utmost to obtain admission
into the fellowship of the Jews, they henceforward were as averse
to have anything to do with these as these were to have any
dealings with them; the temple on Mount Gerizim was now the symbol
of their independence as a distinct religious sect. For the Jews
this was a great advantage, as they had no longer to dread the
danger of syncretism. They could now quite confidently admit
the Amme haarec into their communion, in the assurance of
assimilating them without any risk of the opposite process taking
place. The Judaizing process began first with the country
districts immediately surrounding Jerusalem, and then extended to
Galilee and many portions of Peraea. In connection with it, the
Hebrew language, which hitherto had been firmly retained by the
Bne haggola, now began to yield to the Aramaic, and to hold its own
only as a sacred speech.
11. JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
The post-Deuteronomic legislation is not addressed to the people,
but to the congregation; its chief concern is the regulation of
worship. Political matters are not touched upon, as they are in
the hands of a foreigner lord. The hierocracy is taken for granted
as the constitution of the congregation. The head of the cultus is
the head of the whole; the high priest takes the place of the
king. The other priests, though his brothers or his sons, are
officially subordinate to him, as bishops to the supreme pontiff.
They, again, are distinguished from the Levites not only by their
office but also by their noble blood, though the Levites belong by
descent to the clergy, of which they form the lowest grade. The
material basis of the hierarchical pyramid is furnished by the
contributions of the laity, which are required on a scale which
cannot be called modest. Such is the outward aspect of the rule
of the holy in Israel. Inwardly, the ideal of holiness governs
the whole of life by means of a net of ceremonies and observances
which separate the Jew from the natural man. "Holy" means almost
the same as "exclusive." Originally the term was equivalent to
divine, but now it is used chiefly in the sense of religious,
priestly, as if the divine were to be known from the worldly, the
natural, by outward marks.
It had so fallen out, even before the exile, that the reform of
the theocracy which the prophets demanded began in the cultus;
and after the exile this tendency could not fail to be persisted in.
The restoration of Judaism took place in the form of a
restoration of the cultus. Yet this restoration was not a relapse
into the heathen ways which the prophets had attacked. The old
meaning of the festivals and of the sacrifices had long faded away,
and after the interruption of the exile they would scarcely have
blossomed again of themselves; they had become simply statutes,
unexplained commands of an absolute will. The cultus had no longer
any real value for the Deity; it was valuable only as an
exercise of obedience to the law. If it had been at first the
bond connecting Israel with heathenism, now, on the contrary, it
was the shield behind which Judaism retreated to be safe from
heathenism. There was no other means to make Judaism secure;
and the cultus was nothing more than a means to that end. It was
the shell around the faith and practice of the fathers, around the
religion of moral monotheism, which it alone preserved until it
could become the common property of the world. The great public
worship gave the new theocracy a firm centre, thus keeping it one
and undivided, and helped it to an organisation. But of more
importance was the minor private cultus of pious exercises, which
served to Judaize the whole life of every individual. For the centre
of gravity of Judaism was in the individual. Judaism was gathered
from scattered elements, and it depended on the labour of the
individual to make himself a Jew. This is the secret of the
persistence of Judaism, even in the diaspora. The initiatory act
of circumcision, which conferred an indelible character, was not
the only safeguard; the whole of the education which followed that
act went to guard against the disintegrating effects of individualism.
This is the real significance of the incessant discipline, which
consisted mainly in the observance of laws of purity and generally
of regulations devised to guard against sin. For what holiness
required was not to do good, but to avoid sin. By the sin and
trespass offerings, and by the great day of atonement, this
private cultus was connected with that of the temple; hence it was
that all these institutions fitted so admirably into the system.
The whole of life was directed in a definite sacred path; every
moment there was a divine command to fulfil, and this kept a man
from following too much the thoughts and desires of his own heart.
The Jews trained themselves with an earnestness and zeal which have
no parallel to create, in the absence of all natural conditions,
a holy nation which should answer to the law, the concrete embodiment
of the ideals of the prophets.
In the individualism thus moulded into uniformity lay the chief
difference which separated the new period from the old. The aim
was universal culture by the law, that the prophecy should be
fulfilled which says: "They shall all be taught of God." This
universal culture was certainly of a peculiar kind, and imposed
more troublesome observances than the culture of our day. Yet the
strange duties which the law imposed were not universally felt
to be a heavy burden. Precepts which were plain and had to do
with something outward were very capable of being kept; the
harder they seemed at first, the easier were they when the habit
had been formed. A man saw that he was doing what was prescribed,
and did not ask what was the use of it. The ever-growing body of
regulations even came to be felt as a sort of emancipation from
self. Never had the individual felt himself so responsible for all
he did and left undone, but the responsibility was oppressive, and
it was well that there should be a definite precept for every hour
of his life, thus diminishing the risk of his going astray. Nor
must we forget that the Torah contained other precepts than those
which were merely ceremonial. The kernel did not quite harden into
wood inside the shell; we must even acknowledge that moral sentiment
gained very perceptibly in this period both in delicacy and in
power. This also is connected with the fact that religion was not,
as before, the custom of the people, but the work of the
individual. A further consequence of this was, that men began to
reflect upon religion. The age in question saw the rise of the
so-called "Wisdom," of which we possess examples in the Book of
Job, in the Proverbs of Solomon and of the Son of Sirach, and in
Ecclesiastes. This wisdom flourished not only in Judah, but also
at the same time in Edom; it had the universalistic tendency
which is natural to reflection. The Proverbs of Solomon would
scarcely claim attention had they arisen on Greek or Arabian
soil; they are remarkable in their pale generality only because
they are of Jewish origin. In the Book of Job, a problem of faith
is treated by Syrians and Arabians just as if they were Jews. In
Ecclesiastes religion abandons the theocratic ground altogether,
and becomes a kind of philosophy in which there is room even for
doubt and unbelief. Speculation did not on the whole take away
from depth of feeling; on the contrary, individualism helped to
make religion more intense. This is seen strikingly in the Psalms,
which are altogether the fruit of this period. Even the sacrificial
practice of the priests was made subjective, being incorporated in
the Torah, i.e., made a matter for every one to learn. Though the
laity could not take part in the ceremony, they were at least to
be thoroughly informed in all the minutiae of the system; the law
was a means of interesting every one in the great public
sacrificial procedure. Another circumstance also tended to remove
the centre of gravity of the temple service from the priests to
the congregation. The service of song, though executed by choirs
of singers, was yet in idea the song of the congregation, and came
to be of more importance than the acts of worship which it
accompanied and inspired. The Holy One of Israel sat enthroned,
not on the smoke-pillars of the altar, but in the praises of the
congregation pouring out its heart in prayer; the sacrifices were
merely the external occasion for visiting the temple, the real
reason for doing so lay in the need for the strength and
refreshment to be found in religious fellowship.
By the Torah religion came to be a thing to be learned. Hence the
need of teachers in the church of the second temple. As the
scribes had codified the Torah, it was also their task to imprint
it on the minds of the people and to fill their life with it; in
this way they at the same time founded a supplementary and
changing tradition, which kept pace with the needs of the time.
The place of teaching was the synagogue; there the law and the
prophets were read and explained on the Sabbath. The synagogue and
the Sabbath were of more importance than the temple and the
festivals; and the moral influence of the scribes transcended that
of the priests, who had to be content with outward power and
dignity. The rule of religion was essentially the rule of the
law, and consequently the Rabbis at last served themselves heirs
to the hierarchs. At the same time, while the government of the
law was acknowledged in principle, it could at no time be said to
be even approximately realised in fact. The high-born priests who
stood at the head of the theocracy, cared chiefly, as was quite
natural, for the maintenance of their own supremacy. And there
were sheep in the flock not to be kept from breaking out, both in
the upper and in the lower classes of society; the school could not
suppress nature altogether. It was no trifle even to know the six
hundred and thirteen commandments of the written law, and the
incalculable number of the unwritten. Religion had to be made a
profession of, if it was to be practiced aright. It became an art,
and thereby at the same time a matter of party:, the leaders of the
religious were of course the scribes. The division became very apparent
in the time of the Hellenization which preceded the Maccabaean revolt;
at that period the name of Pharisees, i.e., the Separated, came
into vogue for the party of the religious. But the separation and
antipathy between the godly and the ungodly had existed before
this, and had marked the life of the congregation after the exile
from the very first.
It was the law that gave the Jewish religion its peculiar
character. But, on the other hand, a hope was not wanting to that
religion; the Jews cherished the prospect of a reward for the
fulfilling of the law. This hope attached itself to the old
prophecies, certainly in a very fantastic way. The Jews had no
historical life, and therefore painted the old time according to
their ideas, and framed the time to come according to their wishes.
They stood in no living relation with either the past or the
future; the present was not with them a bridge from the
one to the other; they did not think of bestirring themselves
with a view to the kingdom of God. They had no national and
historical existence, and made no preparations to procure such a
thing for themselves; they only hoped for it as a reward of
faithful keeping of the law. Yet they dreamed not only of a
restoration of the old kingdom, but of the erection of a universal
world-monarchy, which should raise its head at Jerusalem over the
ruins of the heathen empires. They regarded the history of the
world as a great suit between themselves and the heathen. In this
suit they were in the right; and they waited for right to be
done them. If the decision was delayed, their sins were the
reason; Satan was accusing them before the throne of God, and
causing the judgment to be postponed. They were subjected to hard
trials, and if tribulation revived their hopes, with much greater
certainty did it bring their sins into sorrowful remembrance.
Outward circumstances still influenced in the strongest way
their religious mood.
But the old belief in retribution which sought to justify itself
in connection with the fortunes of the congregation proved here
also unequal to the strain laid upon it. Even in Deuteronomy it
is maintained that the race is not to suffer for the act of an
individual. Jeremiah's contemporaries thought it monstrous that
because the fathers had eaten sour grapes the teeth of the children
should be set on edge. Ezekiel championed in a notable way the
cause of individualism on this ground. He denounced the Jews who
had remained in Palestine, and who regarded themselves as the
successors of the people of Jehovah because they dwelt in the Holy
Land and had maintained some sort of existence as a people. In his
view only those souls which were saved from the dispersion of the
exile were to count as heirs of the promise; the theocracy was
not to be perpetuated by the nation, but by the individual
righteous men. He maintained that each man lived because of his
own righteousness, and died because of his own wickedness; nay
more, the fate of the individual corresponded even in its
fluctuations to his moral worth at successive times. The aim he
pursued in this was a good one; in view of a despair which thought
there was nothing for it but to pine and rot away because of
former sins, he was anxious to maintain the freedom of the will,
ie., the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. But the way
he chose for this end was not a good one; on his showing it was
chance which ultimately decided who was good and who was wicked.
The old view of retribution which allowed time for judgment to
operate far beyond the limit of the individual life had truth in it,
but this view had none. Yet it possessed one merit, that it brought
up a problem which had to be faced, and which was a subject of
reflection for a long time afterwards.