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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029278698 
 
ISRAEL'S IDEAL 
 
 OK 
 
 STUDIES IN OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 Sermons in Syntax: or, Studies in tlie 
 Hebrew Text. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 Sermons in Accents : or, Studies in the 
 Hebrew Text. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 Bible Class Primers. 
 
 The Minor Prophets. 
 
 The Mosaic Tabernacle. Paper Covers, 
 6d. each : Cloth Covers, 8d. 
 
 For fuU particulars of above works, see end 
 of this Volume. 
 
 EDINBURGH r T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 
 
ISRAEL'S IDEAL 
 
 OR 
 
 STUDIES IN OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D. 
 
 InverkeUor 
 
 AUTHOK OF "SERMONS IN SYNTAX," "SERMONS 
 IN ACCENTS,'' ETC. 
 
 Comall Unlv«ralty Library 
 BS1171 .A21 
 
 Israel's Ideal : or. Studies In Old Test 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 029 278 698 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 
 1909 
 
Kz-^^in^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 "The endeavour to connect the Hebrew usages 
 everywhere with general Shemitic practice and 
 ideas is a most interesting feature of your essay." ^ 
 These words, which so fitly described the author's 
 first attempt to deal with the priesthood and 
 sacrifices of the Jews,^ may be allowed to stand as 
 a suitable prefatory note to the present series of 
 Studies. In both instances he has tried to look 
 at everything in the Hebrew religion from the 
 standpoint of Semitic heathenism. Once, indeed, 
 he was asked to say, in a word, what benefit he 
 had received from Robertson Smith's " Religion of 
 the Semites," and he answered, without hesitation, 
 that in approaching any Old Testament subject 
 the book in question had entirely altered his 
 viewpoint. It had taken one up a hill, so to 
 speak, enlarging one's horizon as he climbed, until, 
 peering over the edge of the Mosaic system, one 
 could see stretching away in all directions the 
 underlying Semitic realm, out of which, on its 
 
 * A. B. Davidson. 
 
 ^ "Bible Class Primer," edited by Principal Salmond. 
 
vi Preface 
 
 human side, the entire fabric had sprung. Semitic 
 religion had not weakened or obscured a single 
 sacred belief we ever cherished ; but having 
 received its teaching, as iron drops into the blood, 
 one could never look at the history and worship of 
 the Jews in the same way again. Everything 
 Hebraic presented an entirely new world. It was 
 seen in the light of its prehistoric origins. Hear- 
 ing this confession, the one who asked the question 
 significantly remarked that he would be glad to 
 hear, at any future time, of any other book that 
 produced the same or a similar transformation ; 
 but though many years have elapsed since then, 
 we have never as yet been able to gratify his 
 desire. The books that give another turn to the 
 kaleidoscope of one's thinking, and exhibit our 
 familiar studies from quite a different standpoint, 
 are but- few after all. With their broadening 
 horizons and deeper glimpses into truth they 
 come only at long intervals into the sky of one's 
 thought; but when they do flash like stars into 
 the firmament of faith and knowledge, we do well 
 to treat them as lifelong friends and turn to them 
 time and again, " when the lamps are lighted." 
 In the hope that these studies may incline some 
 other students to dip into the same Semitic litera- 
 ture, and furnish a contribution, however humble, 
 towards the system of doctrine desiderated at 
 
Preface vii 
 
 p. 14 of " Sermons in Syntax," they are offered, 
 not without misgiving, to one's fellow-students, 
 and especially to the younger ministers of the 
 Church, who, like the author of these pages, must 
 often dream their own dreams in a country 
 manse. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 (1) The principle of growth in the Old Testament. 
 
 (2) Its main elements. (3) Israel's ideal. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Israel's Ancestral Home . . . .17 
 
 (1) Nomadic life. (2) The primitive golden age. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Jehovah, The God of Israel 33 
 
 (1) Semitic monolatry. (2) Prophetic monotheism. 
 
 (3) New Testament Fatherhood. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Old Testament Doctrute of the Spirit 52 
 
 (1) The cosmioal spirit. (2) The theocratic spirit. 
 (3) The spirit in regeneration. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FAOB 
 
 Old Testament Saobihce 71 
 
 (1) The origin of sacrifice. (2) The Levitical 
 legislation. (3) The atoning efficacy. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Covenant with Israel 93 
 
 (1) The general idea of a covenant. (2) The divine 
 election. (3) The human obligation. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Old Testament Pbopheoy . . . . .113 
 
 (1) The prophetical succession. (2) The prophetic 
 call. (3) The prophetic calling. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Mbsslanio Fulfilment 132 
 
 (1) The Messianic predictions. (2) The Messianic 
 King. (3) Prophetical and priestly functions. 
 (4) The function of suffering. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Old Testament Contribution to Christolooy 152 
 
 (1) The Angel of the Lord. (2) The divine wisdom. 
 (3) The Messiah. 
 
Gontents xi 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAGB 
 
 The Creation of the Would and of Man . 171 
 
 (1) The cr^,tion of the world. (2) Creation crowned 
 in man. (3) The constituent elements in 
 human nature. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Old Testament Doctrine of Sin . 189 
 
 (Ij The possibility of sin. (2) The nature of sin. 
 (3) The universality of sin. (4) The effects of 
 sin. 
 
 CHAPTER XU 
 
 The Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation . .210 
 
 (1) To do justly. (2) To love mercy. (3) To 
 walk humbly with thy God. 
 
 INDEX 
 Scripture Passages . 228 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Old Testament is sometimes spoken of as 
 the " hinterland " of the New. It is that large 
 section of the Bible, lying behind the times of 
 Jesus and His apostles, which, like a great water- 
 shed, sends down its streams of custom and idea 
 to fertilise and make beautiful the fields of the 
 New Testament kingdom. The figure implies 
 that if we are to understand aright the era of 
 fulfilment, we must go back to the teaching of 
 Law and Prophecy, Psalm and Sacrifice, in the 
 preparatory age of the Hebrews. The childhood 
 of Israel (Hos. xi. 1) has much to tell us con- 
 cerning the "full-grown man" (Eph. iv. 13, R.V.) 
 of Christianity. Besides, the fact has constantly 
 to be borne in mind that not even the religion of 
 Israel is to be regarded as the fountain-head. 
 The Old Testament itself has its hinterland. 
 There is the wider and more primitive religion of 
 the Semites — that well-defined group of nations 
 
 from whom the ancestors of the Hebrews came — 
 1 
 
2 Israel's Ideal 
 
 and the many streams of custom and idea that 
 flow through the fields of Israel have to be traced 
 further back to the springs that rise and burst 
 forth from the dim uplands of the Semitic world. 
 The religion of Israel looks both behind and 
 before. It is not unmindful of its past, but it is 
 equally conscious of its future. And all those 
 who would profit by its teaching must try to see 
 it from its own instructive standpoint — believing 
 that he who occupies this coign of vantage is 
 better able to appreciate the subject in detail 
 than he whose position has been influenced and 
 determined by our modern modes of thought. 
 
 The biblical way of conveying truth is not to 
 be likened to the erection of a building; it is 
 the gradual unfolding of a tree. The acorn 
 becomes a plant, the plant becomes a sapling, 
 and the sapling, in turn, becomes the full-grown 
 oak, until, by the process of inward expansion, 
 the tree becomes what the house built of stone 
 could never be, a living, fruit-bearing, and organic 
 unity. This is the story of religion as set forth 
 in the biblical records. It began as a tiny rill 
 away up in the Semitic highlands. It increased 
 in volume and depth as it sped through the 
 Mosaic age and entered the period of the 
 monarchy. It was fed by priesthood and 
 prophecy, psalm and proverb, discipline and 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 deliverance, until, in the fulness of the times, it 
 flowed a mighty river and poured its waters 
 into the sea of the New Testament Gospel Or 
 better still, religion at first was a little child. 
 " When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and 
 called my son out of Egypt." He even taught 
 Ephraim to walk (Hos. xi. 3); "but they knew 
 not that I healed them" — "presumably when 
 they fell and hurt themselves." ^ Keligion was a 
 mere child, but the child in time became a youth, 
 and the youth in turn became a man, until, in the 
 Messianic fulfilment, it came to the fulness of its 
 strength in the ideal manhood of the Saviour. 
 In fine, Old Testament religion was given as all 
 things in heaven and earth are given, not as a 
 completed scheme, but as essentially a thing of 
 growth.- 
 
 This being admitted, one important safeguard 
 immediately follows with respect to Old Testament 
 interpretation. One is not to read too little into 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, as one is inclined to do, 
 who accepts the figure of a building as setting 
 forth the gradual progress of divine revelation. 
 If the copestone was only laid in the era of New 
 Testament fulfilment, it is but a part of the 
 building that we possess in the previous history 
 
 ^ Prin. Geo. A. Smith in loco. 
 
 ' Of. the author's " Sermons in Syntax," p. 12. 
 
4 Israel's Ideal 
 
 of Israel; and we can never treat of any single 
 portion of it as a unity in itself, but must 
 always go forward to the completion of the build- 
 ing before we can give any satisfactory account 
 of the subject. Note the contrast, however, 
 when we begin our inquiry with the biblical idea 
 of growth. It is only the picture of a stream, a 
 sapling, or a child that we find in the era of 
 preparation. True, but it is a whole stream that 
 winds its way to the valley, a whole sapling 
 that grows upon its banks, and a whole child that 
 gathers the flowers by the bum-side, and throws 
 them into the water. Each is a unit in itself, 
 and beautiful and instructive in its unity ; though, 
 at the same time, it is a faithful forecast of the 
 coming years — the child being prophetic of the 
 man, and the burn, like a sea-shell, being filled 
 with the music of the sea. Old Testament 
 religion is not yet full-grown, like the religion of 
 the Messianic fulfilment ; but no more is there 
 aiiy part awanting. It is all there in germ and 
 after the manner of presentiment; and we are 
 not to read too little into its initial stages. The 
 entire oak is already rolled up in the acorn ; and 
 everything that is yet to grow and eflfloresce in 
 the gospel age is already planted or sown in 
 the faith of Israel. The Fatherhood of God, for 
 instance, is a fully developed doctrine at the end 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 of the process ; but away back at the beginning of 
 Semitic history and religion it is akeady sown as 
 a living seed. In the view of primitive man, the 
 divine being was something more than a head or 
 chief; he was the father of the tribe. 
 
 Another mode of studying the religion of Israel 
 is, not in its length, but in its breadth. One may 
 take a cross-section of the tree and count its 
 various rings. Or, if we liken the Hebrew faith 
 to a strong cable mooring the ship of Israel to the 
 eternal rock, one may take a cross-section of it, 
 and count the various strands of which the cable 
 is composed. In a word, we can enumerate the 
 different elements in Old Testament religion, 
 (a) The blood-red ring of sacrifice, or the media- 
 torial functions of the priests. For man begins 
 his search for God by means of sacrificial offerings. 
 He builds an altar unto the Lord his God, and 
 seeks by the way of sacrifice to propitiate the 
 deity (Gen. iv. 3-4). The crimson thread, thus 
 introduced, runs through the entire warp and 
 woof of Old Testament history, until, in the 
 constimmation of the gospel age, a sacrifice of 
 nobler name and of richer blood makes the sacri- 
 fice and the oblation to cease, (b) The parti- 
 coloured ring of prophecy, or the closely allied 
 order of the Hebrew prophets. These were the 
 voices that spake for God throughout the whole 
 
6 Israel's Ideal 
 
 history of Israel — voices that left records of their 
 words not simply in the precepts of the Law, or in 
 the pages of the canonical prophets, but also on 
 the tablets of the human heart and in the wider 
 hieroglyphics of human thought: records which 
 are more enduring than brass, and more luminous 
 than the brick inscriptions of Babylonia, and even 
 yet are one of the most valued possessions of 
 humanity, (c) The ring of heart-felt devotion or 
 prayer — that instinct of the human breast which 
 refuses to be content with building an altar and 
 arranging its sacrifice upon it ; it must stand near 
 the altar with the upturned gaze of Elijah, wait- 
 ing and watching for the divine flame which is to 
 descend and consume the sacrifice (Ps. v. 3). 
 This is the incense of prayer or the aroma of the 
 devotional spirit whose presence may be felt 
 everywhere in Scripture, but is specially gathered 
 up and concentrated as a cluster of camphor in 
 the pages of the Hebrew Psalms, (d) The ring 
 of human reflection or wisdom — i.e., the picture 
 of God-fearing men, who, when brought face to 
 face with the dark problems of life, set themselves 
 to try and find a possible solution. 
 
 " They, when the face of God drew dim, 
 Held through the dark, and trusted Him." 
 
 Cf. especially, the prudential wisdom of Proverbs 
 and Ecclesiastes, or the profound colloquies and 
 
Introduction 1 
 
 argument of the Book of Job. It was not enough 
 for these sages that inspired men had spoken in 
 the name of Jehovah ; they must dedicate their 
 own energies to sift the evidence and harmonise 
 the prophetic message with the mysteries of 
 divine providence. Hence they became the 
 worthy successors of priests, prophets, and 
 psalmists, who all toiled at the same task — ^the 
 task of building up a faith in God, and of 
 handing down to coming generations a religion 
 steeped in morality and stamped with the 
 evidences of historic truth — 
 
 " These are the sons of sacred flame. 
 Their brows marked with the secret name ; 
 The company of souls supreme. 
 The conscripts of the Mighty Dream ; 
 Souls that have built our faith in man, 
 And lit the ages as they ran." 
 
 Sacrifice, prophecy, prayer, and wisdom — these 
 are the leading elements in Israel's faith. 
 
 But this brings us to what is probably unique 
 in the history and religion of Israel. It is not 
 the rings themselves which are peculiar. A cross- 
 section of the Babylonian tree, or of any other 
 Semitic religion, would have shown the same 
 four constituent elements most clearly defined. 
 Indeed, in some of the neighbouring faiths, 
 certain of the rings are even more deeply marked 
 than among the Hebrews. Sacrifice, for instance. 
 
8 Israel's Ideal 
 
 was sometimes carried so far as to include human 
 victims. They made their children pass through 
 the fire to Molech, and gave the fruit of their 
 body for the sin of their soul. And the idea of 
 prophecy was not confined to Israel.-*^ Each 
 nation believed that it had been favoured with 
 a divine revelation delivered by the lips of 
 inspired men, and it continued to regard these as 
 its seers and prophets who were admitted into 
 the closest fellowship with the gods. Both 
 priesthood and prophecy were widely accepted 
 facts, and so also were the kindred elements of 
 prayer and wisdom. Beautiful penitential psalms 
 were chanted on the banks of the Euphrates long 
 before the harp of Israel was strung, and are 
 still found on the Babylonian monuments, breath- 
 ing with the same spirit of devotion as is felt in 
 the Hebrew Psalter. Gf. the Erechite's lament 
 over the desolation of his fatherland — 
 
 The mighty enemy has smitten me down like a single 
 
 reed. 
 I mourn day and night like the marshland.^ 
 
 Or the touching strain of the Accadian penitent 
 as rendered by Professor Sayce — 
 
 ' See a striking article in the Interpreter for April, 1906, 
 on " The Prophets in Babylonia," by C. H. W. Johns. 
 2 " Records of the Past," new series. Vol. I. p. 85. 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 O my God, Thou givest not rest to Thy Bervant. 
 In the waters of the raging flood take his hand. 
 The sin he has sinned turn into good. 
 Let the wind carry away the transgression I have com- 
 mitted. 
 Destroy my manifold wickedness like a garment.' 
 
 And who can mention the element of wisdom 
 or reflection on the dark problems of life, without 
 being reminded of the G^thjis or Hymns of 
 Zoroaster, or the philosophy of ancient Greece ? 
 " The Greeks seek after wisdom," said St. Paul ; 
 and sought it so eflfectually, we may add, that all 
 modem thought has been enriched by their 
 labours. It is simply not the case that sacrifice, 
 prophecy, prayer, or wisdom was awanting in 
 any of the ancient religions by which Israel was 
 surrounded. One may take a cross-section of any 
 one of them, and the same four instructive 
 rings will be discernible in each. 
 
 Wherein, then, lay the difiference ? Or what 
 constituted the true originality of Israel's faith ? 
 It lay in the living sap which flowed through 
 the rings — the spiritual treasure that was poured 
 into the earthen vessels — in a word, the divine 
 presence, and especially, the moral character of 
 Israel's Qod. " That was a moment, I call it, of 
 revelation. You may call it of supreme guess- 
 work or grandest discovery; or you may, by 
 
 * " Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments," p. 151. 
 
10 Israel's Ideal 
 
 magnifying incidental difficulties, attempt to 
 conceal from yourselves its meaning. Yet it 
 is to speak with prosaic soberness to say, gravita- 
 tion, navigation, the secret of the sea, of the sun, 
 or the stars or the earth, never, all combined, 
 had such promise for man. Take from the heart 
 of him this religion steeped in morality, made 
 living by the moral character of his God, and 
 you leave him without the grandest energy 
 working for good and peace and progress that 
 ever came into his history or into his heart." ^ 
 Hence the principle applied to the individual 
 life is equally applicable to the form and contents 
 of a religion. God looketh not upon the outward 
 appearance, but upon the heart. It is not the 
 ornate character of its ritual, the gorgeousness 
 of its temples, the eloquence of its teachers, or 
 even the fervency and length of its prayers. It 
 is the inner life or spirit that breathes through 
 its services, the hidden power that rises and 
 pulsates in its blood. Is that spirit a Power, 
 not themselves, making for mercy ? Is it right- 
 eousness, purity, compassion, love ? In fine, is 
 it the living presence and moral character of 
 Jehovah? If not, the mere possession of the 
 rings is of no lasting value; it is the body 
 without the soul. 
 
 1 Fairbairn, " Religion in History," p. 42. 
 
Introd/uction 11 
 
 This distinction may help to set the ideal 
 of Israel in its true light. It is a recognised 
 canon of interpretation that in the history of 
 religion great souls are ever before their time, 
 and they catch the glory of the divine vision 
 long before the tribes in the valley axe conscious 
 of the dawn, How natural then, if the Hebrew 
 leader, as he led the hosts of Israel, where once 
 he had led his flocks, unto Horeb, the mountain 
 of God, was thinking only of a moral and spiritual 
 faith, not the ritual element which so often dims 
 the spiritual, but the inner essence or sap which 
 is the life-blood of the tree. His spirit, indeed, 
 was still hot within him at the remembrance 
 of what he had seen in Egypt — not simply the 
 primitive fetishism or totem-worship which are 
 supposed to have existed in pre-historic times, 
 but the marked fusion of races and ideas that 
 characterised the later Pharaonic dynasties. It 
 was a fusion, alaa ! which did not carry with it 
 a like iiniformity in religion. The great mass of 
 the people were still sunk in the traditional 
 worship of animals. If the upper classes, and 
 especially the priests, adored Horus or Osiris as 
 a form of the beneficent Sun-god, " the older race 
 knew Horus only as a hawk."^ So far, indeed, 
 
 ' Sayoe, "Early Israel and the Sarrounding Nations," 
 p. 151. 
 
12 IsraA's Ideal 
 
 were they permitted to carrj this materialistic 
 conception, that "with the exception of the 
 Sun-god Ke , the local gods had more temples, 
 and enjoyed more worship and sacrifices" than 
 any of the more spiritual deities in the Egyptian 
 pantheon.! Even with the consent and conniv- 
 ance of the priests, the element of ritual was 
 being allowed to dwarf and dim the spiritual. 
 
 Such, however, it would not be permitted to do 
 in the higher faith of the Hebrews. Instead of 
 being dominant, the element of ritual would be 
 firmly repressed and reduced to a minimum ; for 
 there, amid the solitudes of Mount Sinai, the 
 Hebrew leader was assured that he would receive 
 and convey to Israel, on tables of stone, the 
 unique and august summary of a moral and 
 spiritual law. And the people, in turn, would 
 stand and respond to the ratification of this 
 divinely framed covenant, and no one, like the 
 priests in Egypt, would be allowed to tamper 
 with the profound spirituality of the whole. It 
 was a fair ideal; but what was the meaning of 
 that sound of tumult wafted up the mountain- 
 side from the Israelitish camp ? Not the voice of 
 those who shouted for the mastery, or the voice 
 of those who cried because they were overcome, 
 but the voice of men who sang as at the celebra- 
 1 Encyclopcedia Biblica, ool. 1215. 
 
Introduction 13 
 
 tion of a feast, and the revelry of those who 
 danced ardund a molten calf. It was a sound, 
 indeed, that meant the shattering of all his 
 cherished hopes for Israel, and the receding of 
 his spiritual ideal for many a long year to come. 
 He had brought the Hebrew tribes out of Egypt, 
 that amid the silences of nature they might be 
 alone with God; but, bitter reflection, they had 
 brought Egypt with them — they had renounced 
 the worship of Jehovah altogether, and were 
 setting up, if not the idolatry of Egypt, then the 
 worship of a common Semitic idol,^ in its place. 
 Hence, in a great burst of indignation and dis- 
 appointment, he cast the two tables of the law 
 beneath the mount, and postponed his entire 
 programme to the unknown possibilities of the 
 future. 
 
 Who can marvel, if on the day of their 
 departure from Sinai, this man of the long vision 
 sat down on the hillside to watch the various 
 tribes resuming the march, and wept as he 
 reflected on what might have been, or felt the 
 bitter humiliation of what was and is. Or was 
 he comforted even then by the thought of what 
 might yet be ? Did the spirit of Revelation draw 
 near and assure him that, though the vision 
 tarried, it would unquestionably come, that 
 1 A. B. D., "Old Testament Prophecy," p. 66. 
 
14 Israel's Ideal 
 
 though the ideal was postponed, it was in no 
 sense destroyed, and that though the element of 
 ritual was accepted in the circumstances, his 
 spiritual hopes for Israel would be gloriously 
 realised in a coming Messianic fulfilment? It 
 may have been. The compromise with ritual 
 was not a defeat, and still less was it a retro- 
 gression; it was simply another opportunity of 
 emphasising the character of Jehovah and the 
 true originality of Israel's faith. For if the 
 earthen vessels were being used for the bearing 
 of spiritual treasure, the vessels themselves were 
 not impervious to the influence of the perfume 
 they carried.^ They were being steeped in 
 morality and made living by the moral character 
 of Israel's God ; and, therefore, as the channels of 
 a divine blessing for humanity, they had become 
 prophetic of the coming age. 
 
 The spirit of Revelation has thus made use of 
 the old rings as channels for the divine life and 
 sap. What, in the light of the Messianic fulfil- 
 ment, is the full significance of that fact ? Ought 
 He not to have created new vessels for the con- 
 taining of the spiritual treasure ? If He was 
 designing a fresh unveiling of divine truth, or a 
 conception of faith and duty never heard of in 
 
 1 For this figure, see G. M. Mackie's " Bible Maimers and 
 Customs," p. 5. 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 the valley of the Nile or on the plains of 
 Babylonia, should He not have fashioned a new 
 vehicle for the conveying of the gift, and not have 
 dimmed its surpassing lustre by bringing it into 
 contact with ordinary Semitic ritual ? No, the 
 question as thus raised goes straight to the heart 
 of the New Testament evangel. Why did Jesus, 
 who came with the highest gift of all, take unto 
 Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and 
 submit to all the limitations and privations of an 
 ordinary human life? Because there was no 
 other way of acting the part of a brother, or of 
 finishing the work the Father had given Him to 
 do. " It behoved Him in all things to be made 
 like unto His brethren that He might be a merci- 
 ful and faithful high priest. . . . For in that He 
 Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able 
 to succour them that are tempted." In order 
 to accomplish great results like these, the 
 heavenly sap must needs flow through the old 
 rings. 
 
 The principle, then, instead of being a difl&culty 
 to the Old Testament student, becomes the one 
 illuminating circumstance that fills the whole field 
 with new light and meaning. Jehovah, the God 
 of Israel, is greater than he thought. He who 
 can subdue nature to the ways of his kingdom, 
 and use ancient customs as earthen vessels for the 
 
16 Israel's Ideal 
 
 holding of spiritual treasure, is greater than the 
 one who, being baffled by the obduracy of either 
 nature or man, is compelled to devise new instru- 
 ments for the effecting of his purposes. The use 
 of the old rings is not a sign of weakness, but of 
 power. Nay, it is a sign of grace. Within Old 
 Testament limits, the Divine Spirit has come 
 down to eat and drink with publicans and sinners, 
 because He knows what they are capable of 
 becoming. He will even take a character so 
 morally defective as that of Jacob, and make him 
 the recipient of divine revelation ; for He knows 
 that when the younger brother comes to wrestle 
 by the brook Jabbok, his name Jacob will be 
 changed into Israel, and he, the supplanter of his 
 brother, will be transformed into a Prince and 
 Soldier of God.^ Not what men are by nature, 
 but what they may become by grace, is the one 
 conclusive argument of the Gospel. They may 
 be the mere pariahs of society, but they may be 
 forgiven much and love much. In a word, they 
 may be nothing better than the old rings of the 
 tree, but these may be made the channels of a 
 divine and re-creating life. 
 
 1 Of. A. B. Bruoe, "Chief End of Revelation," p. 137. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Israel's ancestral home 
 
 The immemorial home of the Semitic race is now 
 generally admitted to have been the cradle-land 
 of Arabia. It is a land in every way worthy of so 
 remote and obscure an ancestry. Fully one-third 
 of the whole area is arid desert and practically 
 uninhabitable; and while other portions around 
 the sea-coast, as Hedjaz, Yemen, and Oman, are 
 comparatively rich and fertile, the vast interior, 
 with the possible exception of the hill country of 
 Nejd near the centre, is one burning expanse of 
 red sand, where not a single river is able to reach 
 the sea.^ Over these sterile tracts which covered 
 thousands of square miles, the ancient Semites, 
 like the modern Arabs, wandered far and wide in 
 their calling as shepherds or huntsmen ; and found 
 at the various oases of wells and grass which 
 dotted the wide expanse of the desert, a welcome 
 
 ^ At least by the overland route ; but see the description 
 of the fresh-water springs under the sea at Bahrein, in 
 S. M. Zwemer's " Arabia, the Cradle of Islam," p. 99. 
 2 17 
 
18 Israel's Ideal 
 
 series of suitable halting-places for their caravans, 
 as merchants or pilgrims. The original tribes 
 were undoubtedly pastoral or nomadic. We are 
 to think of them as a number of closely related 
 clans or hordes who roamed about like the Bedouin 
 of modern times, following the pasture, and living 
 in tents of hair or woollen cloth, and whose wealth 
 consisted in camels, sheep, horses, and slaves. 
 The words " shepherd," " camel," " bow," " arrow," 
 etc., which are found in all the dialects of the 
 race, are sufficient evidence of their original con- 
 dition as nomads. Even in modern times the 
 roving Bedouin show a strong attachment to their 
 nomadic mode of life, and make no secret of the 
 fact that they despise the peaceful Fellahin or 
 settled tribes whom they regard as having 
 surrendered their native independence, and bent 
 the neck to the galling yoke of an industrial 
 civilisation. 
 
 A glance at the map is sufficient to show that 
 the various directions in which the Arabian tribes 
 might seek expansion were mainly these four : — 
 (1) South-west, across the straits of Bab-el- 
 Mandeb, where, on the high table-lands of 
 Abyssinia, they gradually built up an isolated 
 civilisation of their own, by founding the Semitic 
 kingdom of Ethiopia ; (2) North-west, across the 
 Isthmus of Suez into the rich valley of the Nile, 
 
laraeVa Ancestral Home 1& 
 
 ■where, interfused with African elements, they 
 helped to produce that peculiar cast of features 
 and type of character which is found in the 
 early dynasties of Egypt; (3) Eastwards, across 
 the river Euphrates, where, through canalisation 
 and irrigation they utilised the vast resources of 
 the two rivers, and built up those great city- 
 kingdoms which were untimately united and 
 consolidated under the powerful rule of Babylon ; 
 (4) Northwards, through the Syrian desert and 
 across the valley of the Jordan, where, in the 
 little shelves and corners of Western Syria, the 
 smaller tribes which swarmed out of Arabia found 
 at once a sanctuary and an opportunity — a 
 sanctuary or school for the development of their 
 own gifts and graces, but also an opportunity or 
 coign of vantage for eventually passing westwards. 
 For from the rocky summits of "Western Palestine 
 they could look out upon the waters of the 
 " Great Sea." 
 
 It is the last of these migrations — the Arabian 
 drift northwards — that is of special interest to the 
 student of Old Testament history. Syria lay 
 broadside-on to the Arabian desert, and received 
 not only the direct tides from the desert, but the 
 backwash from Babylonia and Egypt as well.^ 
 Of this backwash the Hebrews were the most 
 1 See 6. A. Smith, " Historical Geography," p. 8. 
 
20 Israel's Ideal 
 
 signal instance, who came over to Syria, first 
 from Mesopotamia, and then from the valley of 
 the Nile. Not that they were the first to cross 
 the Syrian desert, and try to secure a foothold in 
 Western Palestine. They were preceded by the 
 Canaanites and Phoenicians who, at a much 
 earlier date, had taken possession of the 
 Mediterranean sea-board, and built up in the 
 interior and on the coast, but especially in the 
 maritime supremacy of Tyre and Sidon, an 
 extended civilisation which made them the 
 carriers and middlemen of the ancient world. 
 The kindred Aramaeans, meanwhile, had seized 
 the pasture lands of Mesopotamia, where for long 
 ages they performed a similar service in the 
 carrying trade of Babylonia ; until, taking advan- 
 tage of the declining power of the Hittites which 
 extended from the Euphrates westwards, they 
 had rapidly advanced in that direction also, and 
 established on the north-east corner of Palestine 
 the powerful kingdom of Damascus. It is highly 
 probable that the Hebrews themselves were of 
 this primitive Aramaean stock (Deut. xxvi. 5, 
 R.V.). Not only did Abraham find a temporary 
 shelter among them when journeying from Ur of 
 the Chaldees, but there, in Haran, the chief 
 trading mart of Mesopotamia, one portion of the 
 clan, the family of Nahor, elected to remain. 
 
larcbeVa Ancestral Home 21 
 
 This fact, read in the light of their previous 
 sojourn in Babylonia, and their subsequent 
 absorption of Canaanitish elements in the land of 
 their adoption, prevents us from classing the 
 Hebrews with any one of the other great sections ; 
 but suggests to us, in the language of Professor 
 M'Curdy, "that their kinship with all of them 
 may help to account for their marvellous ' race ' 
 qualities, as well as the unmatched intellectual 
 and moral force of their choicest representatives." ^ 
 In leaving the life of the desert for the more 
 settled existence of Western Palestine, the 
 Hebrews passed from the nomadic to the 
 agricultural or industrial stage, and found, for 
 the first time in the history of their federation, a 
 suitable opportunity for their development as a 
 nation. To make any real advance beyond the 
 elementary unit of the tribe, the securing of 
 cities, either by conquest or erection, was 
 absolutely necessary. This fact is recognised by 
 the Bible itself in Gen. iv. 17 ; and in all parts of 
 the Semitic field it is the first decisive step in the 
 growth of settled communities. Not that we are 
 to think of these cities as in any sense analogous 
 to the cities of modern Europe. In the earliest 
 times a city was a kingdom. With its unwalled 
 villages and agricultural environment, and the 
 
 ' "History, Prophecy, and the Monnments," I. 26. 
 
22 Israel's Ideal 
 
 rule and protection of his own king and tutelary 
 deity, each walled city constituted a separate 
 principality, and retained an independent position 
 of its own. Witness, for instance, the rise of the 
 great city-kingdoms of Babylon, Asshur, Haran, 
 Damascus, and the many and goodly cities, high 
 and walled up to heaven, which the Hebrews 
 found in Western Palestine, both in Phoenicia, 
 Philistia, and Canaan. What was really in- 
 dispensable for their political advancement as a 
 people was already provided for them in the 
 land promised to their fathers (cf. Deut. vi. 10-11). 
 So that in passing from the pastoral to the agri- 
 cultural mode of existence, the Hebrews were only 
 serving themselves heirs to a previous civilisation. 
 And yet, however important this rise in 
 civilisation may be, it does not follow that these 
 various Semitic communities, whether in 
 Babylonia, Mesopotamia, or Palestine, afford the 
 best and most trustworthy starting-point for the 
 study of antique religion.'^ Not on the alluvial 
 plains of Babylonia, nor amid the buried 
 inscriptions of Assyria, but in the traditional 
 rites and customs of a later Arabia, are we to find 
 the purest and fullest memorials of early Semitic 
 belief. It is admitted that the cuneiform 
 inscriptions of the Far East are the earliest sources 
 
 1 Cf. Rob. Smith's "Religion of the Semites," p. 13/. 
 
Israel's Ancestral Eome 23 
 
 of information we possess with respect to Semitic 
 antiquity; but it is rightly argued, in this 
 connection, that early and ancient are not by any 
 means synonymous terms. However early the 
 cuneiform script may be, we are not to look for 
 the most primitive form of faith in a region where 
 neither religion nor society is primitive, but 
 complex; and this, Assyriologists themselves 
 being witness, is the precise condition of religious 
 and political life in the early records of Babylonia. 
 The Semites were not the first to people the 
 Babylonian plains. They found there an older 
 population of a different race (the Sumerians), 
 whose science and literature and religion they 
 partly appropriated and assimilated. And thus 
 there grew up on the banks of the Euphrates not 
 the pure and popular ritual of a primitive faith, 
 but one artificially moulded by priestcraft and 
 statecraft in much the same way as the official 
 religion of Egypt had been moulded in the fertile 
 valley of the Nile. Hence the conclusion of 
 Robertson Smith seems more than warranted that 
 the right point of departure for a general study 
 of Semitic religion is not among the fused races 
 of Babylonia, but among the closely allied tribes 
 of Arabia, where, though our knowledge begins 
 at a later date, it refers to a simpler state of 
 society, and where religion displays an extremely 
 
24 Israel's Ideal 
 
 primitive type corresponding to the primitive and 
 unchanging character of nomadic life.^ 
 
 It is in the light of this Semitic past that we 
 can understand the imagery of Gen. ii. 4-25. 
 The primary home of the human race was a 
 Paradise. Here, as elsewhere, in the Semitic 
 realm, the human heart looks back to a primitive 
 golden age — an idyllic sphere in which heaven 
 and earth, God and man, lived in unbroken 
 fellowship and peace. Sin had not yet fallen 
 with its blighting touch. The garden was still 
 dressed in its robe of living green. And man, in 
 the dawning glory of his fresh young life, had a 
 loving childlike confidence in his God. It is not 
 more natural for individual men to look back 
 with longing to the happy days of childhood, than 
 
 ^Gf. J. G.Frazer's "Golden Bough,'' p. viii. , where a similar 
 claim is put forward in conneotiou with the primitive 
 religion of the Aryans. "It can hardly be too often 
 repeated, since it is not yet generally recognised that, in spite 
 of this fragmentary character, the popular superstitions and 
 customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most 
 trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion 
 of the Aryans. Indeed, the primitive Aryan, in all that 
 regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is 
 amongst us to this day. The great intellectual and moral 
 forces which have revolutionised the educated world have 
 scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost beliefs he is 
 what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still 
 grew, and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and 
 London now stand." 
 
Israel's Ancestral Home 25 
 
 it is for the human race to hark back to the 
 innocence and bliss of Paradise, and bemoan the 
 awful catastrophe that shut its gates. Various 
 elements in the picture are full of beauty. 
 
 1. Man lived in undisturbed intercourse with 
 nature. Gf. Gen. ii. 19, where the living 
 creatures are brought to the man to see what 
 he would name them ; and iii. 17-18, where 
 exacting toil, thorns and thistles are represented 
 as the sad legacy of the curse. Nature is not yet 
 " red in tooth and claw with ravine "; but man is 
 in league with the stones of the field, and the 
 beasts of the field are at peace with him. So 
 deeply has this idea penetrated the faith of Israel 
 that the golden age of the futv/re can be depicted 
 in no other way. " The wolf shall dwell with the 
 lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, 
 and the calf and the young lion and the fatling 
 together, and a little child shall lead them " (Isa. 
 xi. 6). Before the advent of sin and enmity, man 
 and nature were at one. 
 
 Of special interest in this connection is the 
 Semitic imagery of a garden. In view of the 
 dryness of the Arabian climate, we cannot be 
 surprised if the early Semite came to regard 
 flowing (or, as the Hebrews say, " living ") water 
 as one of the most supernatural of all inanimate 
 things. It was the percolation of water under- 
 
26 Israel's Ideal 
 
 ground, and not the stinted and precarious 
 rainfall, that "proved the main source of pastoral 
 and agricultural fertility throughout the Semitic 
 realm. There, if anywhere, where the roots of 
 the date-palm were able to reach the subterranean 
 flow, or where a fountain rose to the surface, and 
 with its life-giving streams fertilised an oasis 
 without the toil of man, the untutored mind was 
 confronted by the felt presence of the Supernatural, 
 and the sacred spot was marked and reverenced 
 as a veritable habitation of the gods. The 
 contrast must have been one sufficiently striking 
 to a traveller in Arabia. Day by day he crosses 
 the glaring expanse of the desert, where no vegeta- 
 tion gladdens the eye save a few thorny acacias, 
 or scanty tufts of parched herbage that seem to 
 blanch and shrivel in the heat, when suddenly, at a 
 bend in the road, he emerges on a wady, where the 
 ground- water, having risen to the surface, changes 
 everything, as by magic, into freshness and 
 verdure ; and where stately palm-trees which 
 draw their vigour from the same fountain of life, 
 invite the weary, foot- worn pilgrim to their shade. 
 Resting there, like the children of Israel beside 
 the springs and palms of Elim (Num. xxxiii. 9), 
 who can wonder if the primitive Semite felt 
 that he had entered into a very haunt of the 
 deity, and that there, in the depth of that cool 
 
Israel's Ancestral Home 27 
 
 retreat, he might catch the sound of a divine 
 footfall " walking in the cool of the day " (Gen. 
 iii. 8). 
 
 It is well known how fully this feature has 
 helped to colour the thought and mould the 
 language of the various Hebrew writers. Begin- 
 ning with this picture of Paradise (chap. ii. 8.), 
 it has never ceased to inspire their finest imagery, 
 until, in Ezekiel's vision of the New Jerusalem 
 {chap, xlvii. 12), or the glowing Apocalypse of the 
 Seer on Patmos (Rev. xxii. 1), the same sacred 
 streams are represented as flowing in the presence 
 of the Eternal, and the leaves of the trees that grow 
 upon their banks are as medicine for the healing 
 ■of the nations. 
 
 2. A second element in the picture is the pre- 
 supposition of childlike fearlessness and trust in 
 the presence of the deity. The man, after his 
 first disobedience, is depicted as hiding himself 
 •among the trees of the garden ; but the implica- 
 tion is, that previous to this disloyalty, he had 
 welcomed the approach of his august Visitor as 
 •one with whom he could, and did, hold communion. 
 He had a simple and naave confidence in his God. 
 And this is in perfect keeping with the general 
 teaching of early Semitic thought. On the assump- 
 tion that antique religion is closely related to kin- 
 ship, the opinion of Renan,'that religion in its origin 
 
28 IsraA's Ideal 
 
 is the child of terror is quite untenable. It is not 
 until the eighth century B.C., when the smaller 
 states went down before the dread Assyrian 
 invasion, that magical superstitions, founded on 
 mere terror, invaded the sphere of tribal or national 
 religion, and drove men, who were possessed by 
 the gloomiest forebodings, to appeal to everything 
 that bore the name of God. Then, indeed, a 
 sombre and sanguinary earnestness took possession 
 of the popular mind, and men were ready to devote 
 to heaven all that the human heart holds dearest 
 — " to give their first-born for their transgression, 
 the fruit of their body for the sin of their souls " 
 (Micah vi. 7). But it had not been so from the 
 beginning. Instead of regarding himself as 
 surrounded by unseen foes whom it was his 
 wisdom to appease and conciliate, man addressed 
 himself to friendly beings who were always well 
 disposed to the circle of their own worshippers. 
 Gf. Frazer's " Golden Bough " (vol. i. p. 31), where 
 primitive man, instead of being frightened and 
 coerced by supernatural beings, supposes himself 
 to stand on a footing of tolerable equality with 
 them, and able to frighten or coerce them into- 
 doing his will. The tribal god was really a divine 
 kinsman. He might be displeased for a season 
 with the character of their devotion or the paucity 
 of their gifts ; but he would never allow his anger 
 
Israel's Ancestral Home 29 
 
 to be carried so far as to seriously imperil the 
 well-being or existence of the tribe. Like 
 Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, he might be 
 angry with his land for many days, and allow 
 Omri, the king of Israel, to oppress Moab, but ere 
 long that temporary displeasure would be turned 
 away, and he would say to Mesha, as recorded on 
 the Moabite Stone — Go, drive them out. On the 
 whole, men lived on very easy terms with their 
 tribal god. Unless they had sinned all the more 
 grievously, they were fully assured that he would 
 neither be over severe nor unduly exacting. The 
 long-suffering tolerance which they were ready 
 to extend to one another was also ascribed to the 
 deity ; and nothing was further from their thoughts 
 than the idea that their religion was the child of 
 terror. 
 
 3. A starting-point for morality. From what 
 has been said of their naive confidence in the 
 presence of the deity, it may readily be imagined 
 what the nature of its moral influence would be in 
 the leavening and moulding of society. Undue 
 familiarity in the things of religion is not and 
 cannot be a sound basis on which to build up a 
 strong and vigorous moral life. Reverence before 
 God is the sine qua non of every ethical ideal. 
 Righteousness in heaven, and justice on earth 
 stand or fall together. It is not suggested by 
 
30 Israel's Ideal 
 
 this statement that the ancient Semitic god» 
 were necessarily unjust. They were simply 
 exclusive. They were conceived as mainly 
 interested in the welfare of their own clan. They 
 might be strict to mark iniquity and to punish 
 injustice if directed against the person of a fellow- 
 kinsman, but they were not regarded as solicitous 
 to right wrong or even to avenge murder, if 
 committed against the members of another tribe. 
 Both religion and morality were confined to the 
 circle of the kin. Antique religion was con- 
 cerned not so much about high ethical ideals, as 
 about the primal needs of tribal or national 
 existence. Except in times of national danger, 
 when the nation was fired by the instinct of self- 
 preservation, it called forth no self-denial, and 
 aroused no generous enthusiasm, but left men 
 very much where they were, sluggishly enjoying 
 the good things which their national god had 
 provided. Even the mass of the Hebrew nation, 
 before the Exile, could not credit the notion that 
 Jehovah, the God of Israel, would enforce His law 
 of righteousness by the destruction of His sinful 
 and backsliding people. The prophets who had 
 grasped the truth of His absolute holiness, might 
 see the Babylonian armies gathering on the 
 horizon, and realise the moral necessity of so 
 great and terrible an invasion ; but the common 
 
leraeVa Ancestral Home 31 
 
 people could only listen to their warnings with 
 blank amazement and incredulity, and still cling 
 to the belief that their national God would not 
 keep His anger for ever, and never permit His own 
 people to be trodden underfoot of the stranger. 
 Alas, for the awakening ! Israel had to learn that 
 " what Jehovah demands is righteousness, nothing 
 more and nothing less — what He hates is injustice. 
 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 Israel." ^ 
 
 Thus the main element in the Old Testament 
 delineation of primitive man is not so much his 
 delight in nature, or his naive confidence in the 
 presence of the deity, but the fact that he was 
 confronted by a divine prohibition, and his whole 
 nature summoned to the exercise of obedience. 
 Like every other created being man was made 
 "good" (Gen. i. 31); but whether this means 
 goodness as a moral quality, the narrative in 
 Genesis says, and can say, nothing. Creation as 
 such cannot make anything either morally good 
 or morally bad ; nothing but the exercise of free- 
 will can do that. And therefore man himself 
 must be put under discipline. Temptation has 
 1 Wellhausen, article " Israel," Ency. Brit. 
 
32 Israel's Ideal 
 
 become a necessity. For the innocence of child- 
 hood is not the highest stage quite within man's 
 reach. Matured knowledge and victorious man- 
 hood are attainments nobler still. Virtue is more - 
 than innocence, and ripe moral character is 
 greater than the purity that never has been 
 tempted. Hence along the pathway of work and 
 obedience (Gen. ii. 15-17) the inexperience of 
 man is put to school. Childlike innocence is no 
 longer possible in presence of that tree. Two 
 ways have suddenly opened before man's feet — 
 the path of obedience to a higher will, and the path 
 of self-gratification ; and one or the other of these 
 two ways must be chosen. He will either choose 
 the former, having bravely endured the test, and 
 find that his childlike innocence has been trans- 
 formed into genuine moral power ; or he will 
 culpably give his decision for the latter, and find 
 himself in an agony of remorse bewailing the fact 
 of his own infatuation. But whether he rise or 
 fall, there is no other path available. Jesus Himself 
 planted His foot on the same rough pathway 
 (Heb. iv. 15) ; and we too must tread it. But 
 the path of obedience leads now, where un- 
 doubtedly it would have led then, into a closer 
 walk with God, and into a fuller and nobler 
 manhood. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 JEHOVAH, THE GOD OF ISRAEL 
 
 In the treatment of any Bible doctrine, the 
 
 position is frankly accepted that proof texts are 
 
 not to be gathered indiscriminately from the 
 
 pages of Holy Scripture. A passage in Genesis 
 
 or Exodus is not to be interpreted as if it were 
 
 identical in meaning with a statement in St. 
 
 John's Gospel or in the Epistles of St. Paul. 
 
 Each verse must be read in the light of its own 
 
 context and history. The position, as thus 
 
 defined, is of special value when applied to the 
 
 Old Testament doctrine of God. When Cain, for 
 
 instance, complained in Gen. iv. 14, saying, 
 
 " Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from 
 
 the face of the (cultivated) ground ; and from 
 
 Thy face shall I he hid ; " he gave expression to 
 
 the ordinary Semitic conception that the god of 
 
 a tribe was confined to one particular locality — 
 
 the district inhabited by his professed worshippers ; 
 
 so that when a fugitive was driven forth into the 
 
 desert, or into the territory of another tribe, 
 3 33 
 
34 Israel's Ideal 
 
 he immediately passed outwith the province of 
 his own natural protector, and ceased to be a 
 member of his community or kin. It reminds 
 one of Naaman the Syrian in 2 Kings v. 17, who 
 carried home some of the soil of Canaan, that he 
 might be able to pray to Jehovah on holy soil. 
 It was assumed that Jehovah was the God of 
 Israel alone, and that He could only be truly 
 worshipped within His own land. The moment 
 the Syrian crossed from Canaan into Syria, he 
 was treading the territory of another god, and 
 could no Ibnger worship the God of Israel except 
 on the two mules' burden of earth which he had 
 begged for the purpose. 
 
 This is the normal view of the office and 
 functions of the gods, as it has been carried down 
 the stream of custom and idea from the dim 
 uplands of Semitic heathenism. But this is not 
 the view of the eighth century prophets or of the 
 Hebrew psalmists who grasped the profound 
 significance of ethical monotheism. Jehovah, the 
 God of Israel, was not confined to one particular 
 land; He was King over all the nations. He 
 brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the 
 Syrians from Kir, no less than the children of 
 Israel from the land of Egypt (Amos ix. 7) ; and 
 he was controlling the destiny of even the 
 Assyrian empire, in order to make it the fit 
 
Jehovah, the Ood of Israel 35 
 
 instrument for His purpose (Isa. x. 5ff.). Con- 
 sequently it was quite unworthy of His world- 
 wide rule, to say, that He was the mere local 
 deity of the Hebrews, or was limited in His 
 operations to the land of Palestine. " Whither 
 shall I go from Thy Spirit ? or whither shall I 
 flee from Thy presence ? If I take the wings of 
 the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of 
 the sea ; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and 
 Thy right hand shall hold me " (Ps. cxxxix. 7-9). 
 The God of Israel was most high and terrible: 
 He was a great King over all the earth. 
 
 Still less was this the teaching of Him who, in 
 the Messianic fulfilment, spake as never man 
 spake. He proclaimed the Fatherhood of God for 
 each individual believer, saying, " The hour 
 cometh when I shall tell j'ou plainly of the 
 Father." " I ascend unto My Father and your 
 Father." " Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye 
 have need of all these things." " I will pray the 
 Father, and He shall give you another Comforter." 
 If the acorn had become a sapling, the sapling 
 in turn had become a tree ; and now, through 
 " the new creating God, whose gift is childhood's 
 heart,'' the true worshipper could come to God as 
 a Father and rest in the fulness of His love — 
 
 " So wilt thou aye be young, 
 The ^660 on fliy tongue." 
 
36 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Semitic monolatry, prophetic monotheism, and 
 New Testament Fatherhood : these are the three 
 natural divisions of the Bible view of God ; and 
 we may indicate, in a few brief paragraphs, the 
 Old Testament contribution to each. 
 
 1. Semitic Monolatry. 
 
 This has no reference to the later forms of 
 Semitic worship. Some would class the most 
 of these later forms as " polytheistic," in contrast 
 with the three monotheistic faiths which arose 
 within the same Semitic field. Others, who are 
 convinced that the former term expresses more 
 than the facts warrant, would rather use the phrase 
 " multiplicity-in-unity," as better bringing out 
 their distinctive features.^ The question, however, 
 as thus raised, has little or no bearing on the 
 character of antique religion. The various strands 
 may not be so easily unwound in the later forms 
 of faith, but the primitive type of Semitic religion 
 is comparatively naive and simple. It was a form 
 of belief which was neither monotheistic nor 
 polytheistic, but tribal. Each tribe or community 
 of kinsmen had a god of its own. And while it 
 no doubt believed in a multiplicity of gods — one 
 god for each stock or clan — it, nevertheless, 
 refused to worship any other god save its own 
 1 Prof. W. M. Ramsay, in Expositor, January, 1895. 
 
Jehovah, the Ood of Israel 37 
 
 tribal deity, reserving all its gifts and services for 
 him — i.e., monolatry. All other gods were outside 
 the circle of the kin, and as no good purpose 
 could be served by recognising them in its worship, 
 each clan, or group of tribesmen, retained all its 
 homage or tribute for its own divine kinsman, 
 and entered into a mutual compact with him — 
 a compact which was solemnly ratified by blood. 
 It was not so much " multiplicity-in-unity," as 
 unity-in-multiplicity. 
 
 The only divine name, in the Old Testament, 
 which seems to reflect something of this Semitic 
 past, is the Hebrew term Elohim. It is a plural 
 form, denoting power and majesty, and cannot be 
 held to shut out the possibility of there being 
 more gods than one. Some have referred it to 
 the " polytheistic " idiom of the early Semites, 
 and Robertson Smith has even suggested that it 
 may be a remnant of Semitic totemism. But 
 since the plural form of the name is not found in 
 any other Semitic religion, being peculiar to the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament, it is not really 
 necessary to have recourse to so primitive and 
 hypothetical an explanation — a sufficient account 
 being furnished by similar word-formations in 
 Hebrew grammar. It is a common enough idiom 
 in Hebrew to employ a plural word, not simply to 
 indicate a plurality of objects, but to signalise or 
 
38 Israel's Ideal 
 
 intensify the singular. Whenever: they desired 
 to ascribe greatness, or fulness, majesty, or even 
 ownership to a person or thing, they did so by 
 using the plural form of the word.^ The early 
 Semites, indeed, had obtained a glimpse of the 
 truth so forcibly expressed by Jeremiah in 
 chap, xxiii. 24, that the divine being is full — not 
 with the measure of a man (Mieah iii. 8), but with 
 the compass of a God — filled with such a plenitude 
 of wisdom and might that He fills both heaven 
 and earth.^ And this is the thought which they 
 have tried to express in this first of all the divine 
 names. 
 
 From one point of view the name was a most 
 inadequate one for Him whose garment is the 
 light (Ps. civ. 2), and of whom Nahum has said 
 that the clouds are the dust of His feet (chap, 
 i. 3). It does not enter into the sphere of revela- 
 tion at all. It is an idea of the Supreme Being 
 which may be attained by the exercise of man's 
 natural faculties upon the objects and processes 
 of the external world. And as the result, the 
 nations by whom Israel was surrounded were in 
 possession of this knowledge no less than the 
 Hebrew tribes themselves. They all rise to the 
 conception that the God whom they worshipped 
 
 1 A. B. D., "Theology of the Old Testament," p. 41. 
 
 2 Cf. Bwald, Ausfuhr. Lehrhuch, § 281 b. 
 
Jehovah, the God of Israel 39 
 
 was the maker of the heaven and the earth ; and 
 for many a long age they were satisfied with this 
 attainment — they bowed the head and raised an 
 altar within the sphere of Semitic monolatry. 
 
 Even from this point of view, however, the 
 primitive Semites were far nearer the Eternal 
 Secret than they thought. They were all 
 worshipping the same divine being under 
 different local names. Bel and Nebo, Asshur 
 and Hadad, Milcom and Chemosh, Melcarth and 
 Baal — what was it all, but the same Divine Ruler 
 of the universe to whom they were raising their 
 altars and offering their sacrifices; a testimony 
 to the truth, so fitly expressed by the Apostle 
 long after, that even in that early age, God had 
 made of one every nation of men to dwell on all 
 the face of the earth that they should seek the 
 Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find 
 Him, though He be not far from every one of us 
 (Acts xvii. 27). In fine, "the particularism of 
 Israel's idea of God had already in those olden 
 times become merely the protecting shell within 
 which the pure monotheism of Old Testament 
 religion could grow and mature."^ The fulness 
 of the time, however, was not yet. In the early 
 age of Semitic monolatry, only one conception of 
 the deity had flashed, like a star, into man's sky. 
 
 1 Sohultz's " Old Testament Theology," Vol. I. p. 184. 
 
40 Israel's Ideal 
 
 And as he gazed up night by night at its spark- 
 ling radiance, it became to him the All-seeing Eye 
 of Elohim — the symbol of all that was great and 
 glorious in Israel's past. And therefore he 
 moulded his bricks, or lifted his mallet, and 
 inscribed the words, " In the beginning Mohim 
 created the heaven and the earth." 
 
 2. Prophetic Monotheism. 
 
 Beginning with the primitive conception of 
 Semitic monolatry, the subsequent development 
 of religion need not pass through the stage of 
 polytheism at all. The worship of one tribal god 
 might easily expand into the faith that there is 
 no god save one — i.e., monotheism, without 
 involving, at any point, the worship of gods 
 many. Religion, in large measure, is the reflec- 
 tion of society ; and as the fusing together of 
 neighbouring tribes became the nucleus of the 
 state, the ultimate religion of the nation was 
 simply the fusing together or coalition of the 
 different tribal deities. But this result might 
 be reached in two ways — either by causing them 
 to lose their identity in one national god, or 
 placing them side by side in an ever-growing 
 pantheon. The former method leads direct to 
 monotheism ; the latter to polytheism. It is the 
 
Jehovah, the God of Israel 41 
 
 former tendency that we see operating among the 
 tribes of Israel, Once and again they were 
 prepared to worship Jehovah through the 
 idolatrous ritual of the local Baalim ; but it was 
 seldom, if ever, a question of setting Jehovah and 
 Baal side by side. Jehovah or Baal was the 
 challenge of Elijah, not Jehovah omd Baal. For 
 whether the kindred ritual of other nations could 
 be incorporated in His divine worship or not, no 
 other god save the God of Israel could answer by 
 rain or by fire. In this way the spiritual teach- 
 ing of the prophets caught up and expanded the 
 sublime conception of monotheism — that as all 
 the tribal gods had been fused together in one 
 national deity, all the gods of the nations must 
 now pale before the peerless majesty of Jehovah. 
 He alone was the true God and Supreme Ruler 
 of the universe; and all the other reputed 
 deities were mere, senseless images (Jer. ii. 11 ; 
 Ps. xcvi. 5). 
 
 This, of course, does not mean that the mono- 
 theistic idea is the outcome of a purely natural 
 development. " It will be time enough to accept 
 this theory when, outside the line of the biblical 
 development, a single nation can be pointed to 
 which has gone through these stages and reached 
 this goal." ^ Here, as elsewhere, we are confronted 
 1 Orr's " Christian View of God and the World," p. 91. 
 
42 Israel's Ideal 
 
 by two supplementary, though distinct, ideas — 
 the natural basis of Israel's faith, and the 
 spiritual superstructure which has been reared 
 upon it. The latter was not, and could not be, 
 the outcome of a merely human development. It 
 was the efflorescence and fruit of a divine revela- 
 tion. The value of the prophetic ideal did not 
 spring from any feature it had in common with 
 the Semitic religions as a whole, but solely 
 through the unique conception of Jehovah as a 
 God of absolute righteousness. " In other nations 
 individual thinkers rose to lofty conceptions of a 
 supreme deity, but in Israel, and in Israel alone, 
 these conceptions were incorporated in the 
 accepted worship of the national god. And so, of 
 all the gods of the nations, Jehovah alone was 
 fitted to become the god of the whole earth." ^ 
 
 Admitting the divine element in any sense, 
 we cannot profess to understand the difficulty 
 experienced by some who see a deep-seated varia- 
 tion between two different views of Old Testament, 
 religion. These two views are — (1) the more 
 recent contention of advanced criticism that mono- 
 theism was born, not in Arabia, but in Syria, and 
 gradually grew towards a loftier and purer con- 
 ception of the divine nature under the spiritual 
 teaching of the prophets ; and (2) the traditional 
 1 "Religion of the Semites," p. 81, 
 
Jehovah, the God of Israel 43 
 
 view that the lofty character of Hebrew religion 
 was impressed on it from the first, not in Syria, 
 but in Arabia, and that the continual backslidings 
 of Israel amid the seductions and temptations of 
 Syrian surroundings, were only so many moral 
 lapses from the original purity of their faith. It 
 is assumed that both of these theories cannot 
 possibly be correct, and that all the efforts of 
 " moderate critics " to reduce them to harmony 
 must be foredoomed to failure. They are attempts 
 to combine " two different (and I would add irre- 
 concilable) theories " of the history and religion of 
 Israel.^ But the reply is obvious. The two theo- 
 ries are only irreconcilable if we start with the 
 assumption that a perfectly natural development 
 precludes the idea of a superhuman revelation ; 
 or if we accept the closely allied hypothesis that 
 because the higher teaching was not operative 
 within the body of the people until the later 
 Assyrian period, it was therefore not known to the 
 leaders of the theocracy at any previous stage 
 in the history. But no one who recognises a 
 divine element in Israel's faith will be prepared 
 to admit either of these assumptions. It is the 
 glory of Mosaism that it uses a perfectly natural 
 development for the holding of spiritual treasure ; 
 and it is a sound principle of biblical criticism 
 1 Prof. W. M. Bamaay, in Expositor, January, 1895. 
 
44 Israel's Ideal 
 
 that the Spirit of Revelation, in imparting a per- 
 sonal knowledge of God and His will, deals not 
 with the nation as such, but with chosen indi- 
 viduals. "To say that God speaks to all men 
 alike, and gives the same communication directly 
 to all without the use of a revealing agency, 
 reduces religion to mysticism." ^ Great souls are 
 ever before their age ; and if some of them caught 
 a glimpse of the divine vision in Arabia, long 
 before the common people came to a knowledge 
 of its truth in Syria, where is the deep-seated 
 variation between the two views which justifies 
 the term " irreconcilable " ? There are elements 
 of truth in both views ; and the duty of the prac- 
 tical expositor is not to pit the one against 
 the other, , but to find a theory sufficiently com- 
 prehensive to include both series of facts. In any 
 case, we need not do injustice to the organs of 
 revelation by dwelling upon the unfitness of the 
 tribes. 
 
 One of these divine glimpses, vouchsafed to 
 the organs of revelation, is contained in the lead- 
 ing Old Testament name Jehovah. Nothing 
 higher or more spiritual is said of Him, until, on 
 the standpoint of the New Testament fulfilment, 
 He unveils Himself as the Father of the Son. 
 When God said to Moses, " I am that I am," or, 
 1 Robertson Smith, "Prophets of Israel," p. 11. 
 
Jehovah, the God of Israel 45 
 
 "I will be that I will be" (Ex. iii. 14), He 
 pointed the way into the holiest ; He touched the 
 height and sounded the depth of Personality. 
 Strictly speaking, the verbal form gives to the 
 divine being no name, but leaves Him the awful, 
 nameless, eternal activity in whom all things 
 exist. The Jews themselves felt this, when in 
 superstitious dread they feared to utter the 
 sacred Tetragrammaton. Building on Lev. xxiv. 
 16, where, instead of " blasphemeth," the Septua- 
 gint reads "nameth," the pronouncing of the 
 name was strictly forbidden. Josephus declares 
 that he was not permitted to speak about it. 
 Yet however sacred the divine name may be — 
 sacred as any sanctuary — it stands there as the 
 measure of God's revelation to man, and the feet 
 of reverential devotion are not forbidden to enter. 
 It is not a temple that forbids the foot of man ; 
 it is a desert. And while no one would rush in 
 heedlessly where angels fear to tread, we may, 
 nevertheless, take off the shoes at the threshold, 
 and go in and learn something of its divine 
 depths. 
 
 Fundamentally, it contains the notion of being 
 — not lasting and immutable being, but being in 
 the sense of a moving existence which is always 
 in the act of becoming. " I will be that I will 
 be." Heathenism may rest in the past revela- 
 
46 Israel's Ideal 
 
 tions of its divinities, but this name " Jehovah " 
 assures the people of Israel that in their God 
 they have a future. If the term " Elohim " spoke 
 to them of the divine fulness, which fills both 
 heaven and earth, the name " Jehovah " promises 
 to pour all this fulness of blessing into the future 
 life of Israel. " Certainly I will be with thee " — 
 with Moses before Pharaoh, and with Israel before 
 the tribunal of the world. I will give my people, 
 so to speak, a blank cheque ; and they can fill it 
 up, from age to age, unto all the fulness of 
 God (c/. Eph. iii. 19, KV.). Well may Professor 
 Davidson conclude, "The name is a circumfer- 
 ence, the contents of which cannot be expressed."^ 
 And yet there are two considerations which may 
 assist Israel in drawing upon this divine fulness. 
 They can recount the history of the past, and 
 observe the way in which Jehovah dealt with the 
 fathers ; and they may analyse the necessities of 
 the present, and ask Him to enable the new 
 generation to meet the very diflferent situation 
 which may have arisen. For there will always be 
 something peculiar in the problems of the child- 
 ren which is not exactly covered by the experi- 
 ence of the fathers ; and if they had simply the 
 past to guide them, they might often be in per- 
 plexity as to how Jehovah would aid them in the 
 1 " Theology of the Old Testament," p. 71. 
 
Jehovah, the God of Israel 47 
 
 new circumstances. But they have more than 
 the past. They have One who says, " Certainly 
 I will be with thee." In a word, they have the 
 unveiling of a full, living Personality in whom 
 the covenant people may fearlessly and con- 
 fidently trust. This is His memorial unto all 
 generations, "Jehovah, the God of your fathers, 
 hath sent me unto you." 
 
 3. New Testament Fatherhood. 
 
 Jesus was not the first to announce the Father- 
 hood of God. The idea, if not the word, had 
 been before man's mind from the beginning ; and 
 the uniqueness of the Messianic conception can 
 only be fully realised when read in the light of 
 the Semitic and Hebraic anticipations of the 
 coming spiritual ideal. 
 
 In the earlier stages of Semitic religion the 
 divine ancestor of the tribe was invested with all 
 the attributes of fatherhood. Not that this was 
 the first result arrived at in antiquity. Robertson 
 Smith comes to the conclusion that the practice 
 of tracing kinship through males necessarily 
 succeeded that through females ; and that it was 
 the mother's blood, and not the father's, which 
 formed the original bond of union.^ In proof of 
 
 ^ Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. 
 
48 Israel's Ideal 
 
 this we are referred to the large part played by 
 goddesses within the Semitic realm. We have 
 Beltis, the lady of Bel-Merodach, and Ashtoreth, 
 the consort of Baal, and especially the Babylonian 
 Istar, the supreme mother-goddess, who retains 
 her independent position by the side of the male 
 deities, and is frequently invoked as the queen 
 of all the other gods. Of. the beautiful peni- 
 tential psalm, already quoted from Professor 
 Sayce, where the mother-goddess is mentioned 
 side by side with the sovereign Lord Himself, 
 as being wroth in her heart against her afflicted 
 suppliant : — 
 
 To God I refer my distress, I utter my prayer. 
 The feet of Istar, my mother, I embrace. 
 
 In course of time, however, Istar herself becomes, 
 in large measure, an ordinary Semitic goddess. 
 For the former practice of tracing kinship through 
 the mother is supplanted by the law which assigns 
 the son to his father's kindred, and the chief place 
 in religion, throughout the ancient world, is now 
 given, not to a mother-goddess, but to a father- 
 god. 
 
 The recognition of this truth is of the utmost 
 significance for the subsequent development of 
 religion. Instead of the emotional and sometimes 
 sensuous side of Semitic heathenism, which was 
 
Jehovah, the Ood of Israel 49 
 
 so strongly accentuated by the worship of female 
 deities, we have the higher and more wholesome 
 ideal connected with the moral aspect of father- 
 hood — the father's claim to be honoured and 
 served by his son, and the son's duty to obey and 
 serve his father. Even the elder brother in the 
 pearl of parables could say to his father, " Lo, 
 these many years do I serve thee;" for to this 
 day the grown-up son in Arabia serves his father 
 in much the same offices as the domestic slave. 
 And how high a value is set on filial obedience 
 is obvious from both editions of the Old Testa- 
 ment Law, when the honouring of parents, as the 
 God-appointed medium of our creation, is fitly 
 represented as the first commandment with 
 promise. 
 
 This, indeed, is the only aspect of fatherhood, 
 recognised in the spiritual religion of Israel. 
 The divine fatherhood is moral, not physical. 
 The sonship of Israel is not a thing of nature, 
 but essentially a thing of grace. "In the Old 
 Testament Israel is Jehovah's son, and Jehovah 
 is his father who created him (Hos. xi. 1); but 
 this creation is not a physical act, it refers to the 
 series of gracious deeds by which Israel was 
 shaped into a nation." ' Or to express the same 
 truth from another point of view, while the older 
 
 1 " Religion of the Semites," p. 41. 
 4 
 
50 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Semitic conception is based on physical kinship, 
 and continues to regard a common ancestor as 
 the veritable god of the kin, Israel is taught to 
 believe that his position as a son is purely moral 
 and national; for the nation, and not the 
 individual Israelite, is the child whom Jehovah 
 has called. 
 
 Moral and national ! these terms indicate the 
 direction in which the higher conceptions of the 
 divine fatherhood are to be sought and studied. 
 They lead both outward and inward — outward to 
 a universal fatherhood of the race, and inward to 
 a spiritual fatherhood of individual men. The 
 one is the security and safeguard of the other. 
 The race is reached through the individual, and 
 the moral is reached through the spiritual. In 
 fine, the fulness of the New Testament conception 
 of Fatherhood is the result of a twofold develop- 
 ment. On the one side, the Semitic tribe gives 
 place to the Israelitish nation, and the nation, in 
 turn, is supplanted by the idea of humanity; 
 until, in the universality of Apostolic teaching, we 
 read, that God " made of one every nation of men 
 to dwell on all the face of the earth ... for we 
 are also his ofifspring" (Acts xvii. 28). And yet, 
 on the other side, this does not mean that all men 
 are therefore the children of God in the same 
 sense, or that the distinction between Israel 
 
Jehovah, the God of Israel 51 
 
 " according to the flesh," and Israel " according to 
 the spirit " is no longer admissible. There is the 
 other development inward. The physical bond of 
 blood gives place to the moral covenant of law, 
 and this in turn is deepened and enriched in a 
 spiritual union of life and love; until, in the 
 same universal teaching of the Apostle, they only 
 are the sons of God who are led by the Spirit of 
 God (Rom. viii. 14) — "which were born, not of 
 blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
 of man, but of God," (John i. 13). When that 
 stage is reached the end of Old Testament 
 pedagogy will have been attained; the Semite, 
 the Israelite, and the Christian together will have 
 found enough and to spare in the Father's house. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 A SUFFICIENT basis for this doctrine is found in 
 the affirmation that " God is spitit " (John iv. 24). 
 So too is man. '' Man has a body, but he is a 
 spirit."' In these two correlated facts — the 
 spirituality of God and the spirituality of man — 
 we have the presupposition and basis for the 
 doctrine of the Divine Spirit. The spirituality of 
 God is the primary idea. God is spiritual and 
 independent, and cannot be represented by an 
 image. His garment is the light — that most 
 ethereal of all sensuous elements — light, at once 
 the veil and the revelation of God (Ps. civ. 2). 
 Out of this depth of spirituality the living energy 
 of the Spirit of God takes its rise. It issues forth 
 from God as the breath comes out of the mouth 
 of a man. The language is obviously popular and 
 anthropomorphic. God's Spirit is regarded as 
 man's spirit; it is one essential element in His 
 personality. At other times, however, it is some- 
 
 1 Parker's "Paraclete." 
 52 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of the Spirit 53 
 
 what more subsistent and independent, as if it 
 were already pointing the way to the New 
 Testament fiilfilment, when, in TertuUian's fine 
 phrase, the ever blessed Spirit of God becomes 
 the " Vicar of Christ." Still the time of blossom 
 and iruit is not yet. The Old Testament prophets 
 and the Spirit who inspires them are like men 
 standing on the summits of lofty mountains, and 
 committing their messages to the winds of heaven. 
 They do so as the preachers and heralds of the 
 dawn. It is not unto themselves, but unto us, 
 that they minister the things which even angels 
 desire to look into (1 Pet. i. 12). Into these 
 anticipatory conceptions we too desire to look; 
 and may He, who searches all things, yea, the deep 
 things of God, be our Teacher. 
 Veni Creator Spiritua 
 
 Qui Paiaclitus diceris, 
 Altissimi donum Dei, 
 Fons vivus, Ignis, Oaritas, 
 Et Spiritalia Unctio. 
 
 1. The Cosmical Spirit 
 The term J^^'^, or " Spirit," has a physical basis 
 in outward, natural phenomena. • It is the breath 
 that issues from the mouth of a man or even the 
 cloud-scattering wind that brightens the face of 
 the sky (Job xxvi. 13). It may therefore furnish 
 
54 Israel's Ideal 
 
 a, point of contact with early Semitic idiom. 
 In the view of early man all natural objects are 
 animate. The distinctions which seem so 
 requisite to us between mental and physical 
 existence, or between organic and inorganic 
 nature, are not so obvious to the mind of the 
 savage ; and he habitually ascribes to all material 
 objects the faculties and activities of his own self- 
 conscious life. The Ojebways, for instance, as we are 
 informed in Frazer's " Golden Bough," very seldom 
 cut down green or living trees from the idea that 
 it puts them to pain ; and some of their medicine 
 men profess to have heard the wailing of the trees 
 under the axe. In Eastern Africa also, the 
 destruction of the cocoa-nut tree is regarded as 
 equivalent to matricide, because that tree gives 
 them life and nourishment as a mother does 
 her child. Even the early Greek philosophers, 
 Aristotle and Plutarch, argued that trees must have 
 souls, on such evidence as their movements in the 
 wind, and the elasticity of their branches. Animals, 
 plants, and even lifeless things are all classed in 
 the same rough category ; they are endowed with 
 perceptions and passions in every way analogous to 
 those of man, until, as James Gilmour found among 
 the modern Mongols, the primitive or untutored 
 mind is never alone — every bird is a brother. 
 The explanation of this primitive view may be 
 
The Old Testament Doctriine of the Spirit 55 
 
 found under the general subject of AniTnism — 
 whether that term be taken in its original sense 
 as the amima mundi of philosophy, or in its more 
 general signification of "spiritual existences" as 
 set forth in the later science of anthropology. In 
 support of the former view we have the important 
 statement in Gen. i. 2, where the cosmical spirit 
 is depicted as brooding on the face of the waters, 
 and infusing into dead matter that vital principle 
 which is the source of all physical and sentient 
 life. It is from this original influx of creative 
 energy that all living creatures take their rise. 
 Animals no less than plants spring from the earth 
 through the primeval vitalising of the cosmos (c/. 
 ver. 24). 
 
 The main factor, however, at least in the 
 Semitic view of the world, is contained in the 
 second form of this animistic belief They 
 believed in the presence of spiritual existences — 
 ancestral souls if you will — which had been raised 
 to the dignity of supernatural beings, and who 
 still visited the scenes of earth, making their 
 presence felt in external nature. Not that these 
 supernatural beings were conceived as merely 
 occasional visitors, touching the hills and valleys 
 with celestial feet, and then leaving nothing to 
 identify the spot save the aroma of their sanctity. 
 They remained also as the very life of the world, 
 
56 Israel's Ideal 
 
 imparting to each natural object its inner vitality 
 
 or soul. The energy that bubbles up in springing 
 
 water, the living sap that ascends and effloresces 
 
 in the tree, the strength and permanence of the 
 
 everlasting hills, and especially the fuller tide of 
 
 sentient life that throbs in the animal and the 
 
 man — all these were unmistakable traces of a 
 
 presence that was divine, and they teach us that 
 
 in the view of early man, God and nature were 
 
 far more closely related than any connection 
 
 desiderated in our modern modes of thought. 
 
 Springing from this material basis in early 
 
 Semitic idiom, the Old Testament description of 
 
 the cosmical spirit may be summarised as 
 
 follows : — (1) It is the principle of animation. 
 
 In Gen. i, 2, for example, as already cited, the 
 
 Spirit of God was the source of all physical and 
 
 sentient life; for there is no reason why the 
 
 reference to the mother's life-giving activity 
 
 should be excluded, as is acknowledged by the 
 
 rendering " to brood " inserted in the margin of 
 
 the Revised Version. 
 
 " Thou from the first 
 Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, 
 Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, 
 And madest it pregnant." 
 
 More prosaically, according to Oehler, "it 
 signifies the approach of a divine influence to 
 
The Old Testwment Doctrine of the Spirit 57 
 
 the helpless, lifeless chaos." Psalm xxxiii. 6 
 carries us a step further : — 
 
 By the word of the Lord were the heavens made ; 
 And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. 
 
 This precludes the idea that the principle of 
 animation is to be conceived as a blind, physical 
 force. It is a power or influence coming forth 
 from God as the breath comes out of man. Cf. 
 Isa. xl. 13, where the idea is not so much that of 
 breath, as of conscious, active wisdom : " Who 
 hath directed the spirit of the Lord, or being His 
 counsellor hath taught Him?" Even in the 
 domain of nature the Divine Spirit is not a mere 
 physical energy. It is a life-breathing influence 
 that proceedeth from the life of God. It is both 
 life and wisdom. 
 
 (2) It is the principle of intelligence in man. 
 For in passing from the cosmos of the world to 
 the microcosm of the soul, we find the goal and 
 crown of the Old Testament doctrine of creation. 
 The principle of animation generated in nature is 
 now brought into a focus ; and so intensified does 
 it become by this process of concentration, that it 
 is no longer animation but intelligence. "God 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
 man became a living soul " (Gen. ii. 7). Gf. also 
 Job xxxiii. 4 and xxxii. 8. 
 
58 Israel's Ideal 
 
 The Spirit of God hath made me, 
 And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life. 
 But there is a spirit in man : 
 
 And the breath of the Almighty giveth them 
 understanding. 
 
 What we seem to be taught by these passages 
 is that the life of the creature proceeds from God 
 through the ageacy of the Divine Spirit ; but that 
 the life, as thus imparted, is no mere physical 
 energy ; it is the production of a reasoning faculty 
 in man. It is called into existence as a relatively 
 independent life ; animation has been focussed 
 into intelligence. 
 
 (3) A final result in connection with the 
 cosmical spirit may lead us into the sphere of 
 ethics. The spirit in creation, is of ethical value 
 to man, not because it animated nature and man 
 at the beginning, but because, in the maintenance 
 and preservation of the world, it is influencing 
 the individual life still. Of. Isa. xlii. 5, and 
 especially Ps. civ. 30 : 
 
 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created : 
 And Thou renewest the face of the ground. 
 
 No such ethical impulse is possible, if the divine 
 point of contact is pushed too far back in the 
 history of the race. It may have been as a pebble 
 dropped into the ocean of existence, and the ever- 
 spreading vibrations may touch the remotest 
 shores ; but no individual boulders strown along 
 
The Old Testcument DoctriTie of the Spirit 59 
 
 those shores will ever register a perceptibly higher 
 tide-mark as the result of these ocean thrills. On 
 the other hand, persuade a man that the Divine 
 Spirit is with him at every moment — the very 
 breath of God touching his soul, and pressing 
 •everywhere, like the air, for entrance — and ethics 
 have become a necessity. It is no idea, no 
 postulate, but a necessity and a fact ; morality is 
 the alone essential thing in the world. The 
 Spirit of God is present with man, and the Spirit 
 of God is holy (Pa. li. 11). 
 
 So intensely do the pious in Israel feel this 
 that they come to recognise the voice of God even 
 in the dictates of the Conscience. 
 
 I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel : 
 Yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons. 
 
 (Ps. xvi. 7.) 
 
 The counsel of the Lord comes through the 
 reins or heart. The man is admonished by a 
 moral heart-throb which testifies to the existence 
 of a higher will. And as the possession of this 
 moral sense is the vicar of God in the soul, it 
 approves or condemns the man's motives and 
 actions according as they are good or bad. Even 
 a guilty conscience is conceived as coming from 
 the Lord, as when " an evil spirit from the Lord " 
 ■came to trouble the disobedient Saul (1 Sam. 
 xvi. 14.) Not that we are to understand any 
 
60 Israel's Ideal 
 
 " wicked spirit possessing the unfaithful King like 
 the demoniacs of whom we read in the New 
 Testament ; but rather his own guilty conscience 
 stirred up by divine influence to accuse and 
 torment him." ^ With this ethical result, we are 
 being prepared for a concluding attribute of the 
 cosmical spirit. It is not merely life and 
 wisdom ; it is a moral witness against sin. 
 
 2. The Theocratic Spirit. 
 
 The key to this higher conception may be found 
 in a suggestive change of terminology. The 
 Ruach Elohim becomes the Ruach Tahweh. If 
 the former be the principle of animation, the 
 latter is the spirit of revelation. If the one finds- 
 its sphere of operation in the creation and 
 preservation of the world, the other is the spirit 
 and guide of the theocracy. 
 
 The cosmical spirit, as indicated above, came 
 to be identified latterly with the voice of God in 
 the conscience. But did not this, as in the case 
 of Saul, involve the Spirit of God in the origin of 
 moral evil? The mere suggestion that the 
 accusing voice within the man was " an evil spirit 
 from the Lord," was enough to occasion the most 
 serious misgiving with respect to the nature of 
 
 1 Candlish, "The Work of the Holy Spirit,'' p. 13. 
 
The Old Testwment Doctrine of the Spirit 61 
 
 the divine government. In the distinction already 
 indicated, however, they found a possible way of 
 escape. For was it not possible to hold, in view 
 of this distinction, that even the power of an evil 
 conscience was in some way the work of the Lord 
 — the work, at least, of the Ruach Elohim, who, 
 as the principle of life in man, and the author of 
 all natural and intellectual gifts, might have been 
 commissioned by the God of righteousness to 
 plague the unfaithful monarch — alongside of the 
 other assured conviction that as the spirit of the 
 theocracy, the Ruach Yahweh was only the 
 author of good ? In actual fact, this distinction 
 is scrupulously observed in the account given of 
 the spirit-possessed king. In verse 14 the Ruach 
 Yahweh departs from Saul, and an evil spirit 
 from the Lord comes upon him ; and this latter 
 spirit in verse 23 is distinctly called Buach Elohim. 
 When Schultz objects to this that the difference 
 is not essential, and that in 1 Sam. xix. 9, at 
 least, our present text has tlj^l I Ti^Tf IDT he 
 forgets that this expression is quite different 
 from n'ln"' riNO nyiTTll (xvl. 14), and cannot 
 
 X : •• •• XT- ' 
 
 possibly mean " an evil spirit of Jehovah," but at 
 
 the most, " the spirit of the Lord was evil towards 
 
 Saul " (R.V. margin) — a very different statement. 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord, then, is the spirit of the 
 
62 Israel's Ideal 
 
 theocracy. It is present with Israel as the 
 medium and measure of a supernatural endow- 
 ment. Through priesthood and sacrifice, psalmody 
 and prophecy, through the discipline of history 
 and the operation of law, it seeks to inspire the 
 covenant nation for the greatness of its spiritual 
 functions, and makes it the 'custodian of a divine 
 revelation for the ultimate instruction of humanity. 
 Not that this meant the actual inspiration of all 
 the individual members. Their best minds, it is 
 true, desired that it might be so, as when Moses 
 exclaimed, " Would God that all the Lord's people 
 were prophets, and that the Lord would put His 
 spirit upon them ! " (Num. xi. 29) ; but the 
 fulness and universality of the blessing must wait 
 for the advent of the Messianic fulfilment, as 
 when it '}s added in Joel ii. 28 : " It shall come 
 to pass afterwards that I will pour out my spirit 
 upon all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters 
 shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, 
 and your young men shall see visions." It is not 
 the individual members as such, but the special 
 organs of the theocracy, who are endowed with 
 the gifts of the Ruach Yahweh; and even in 
 their case, it is not the New Testament gifts of 
 grace, but only the Old Testament gifts of oflSce. 
 It furnishes them with the necessary equipment 
 for the perfect exercise of their callings. It 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of the Spirit 63 
 
 bestows upon Moses and the seventy elders the 
 wisdom needed for the guidance and government 
 of the people. It awakens and inspires the 
 judges for deeds of valour and prowess. It 
 confers on Samson the endowment of even 
 physical strength. And in prophecy, especially, 
 which is its distinctive sphere as the spirit of 
 revelation, it imparts the various qualifications 
 demanded by that particular oflSce (Zech. vii. 12 ; 
 Amos iii. 7). It is by the Ruach Yahweh that 
 the divine word is put into the mouth of the 
 prophet. The prophet is " the man that hath the 
 spirit " (Hos. ix. 7). Hence, when the spirit rested 
 upon the seventy elders, "they prophesied, but 
 they did so no more " (Num. xi. 25). And in the 
 latter days the universal outpouring of the Spirit 
 can be portrayed in no other way — it will be a 
 universal bestowal of the gift of prophecy. "I 
 will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your 
 sons and your daughters shall prophesy." It is 
 in view of this conviction that one can appreciate 
 the conclusion of the Apostle, that " no prophecy 
 ever came by the will of man : but men spake 
 from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost" 
 (2 Pet. i. 21). 
 
 The Divine Spirit is thus the primary agent in 
 prophecy ; but the prophet is the second : and in 
 estimating the Spirit's work on him, we are not 
 
64 IsraA's Ideal 
 
 to limit it to anything intellectual. The spirit 
 of revelation influences the whole man. "The 
 spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon thee, 
 and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be 
 turned into another man. And it was so, that 
 when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, 
 God gave him another heart : and all these signs 
 came to pass that day " (1 Sam. x. 6-9). Another 
 heart! Prophecy, through this endowment of 
 the spirit, has become a real anticipation of 
 the civ6pa)Tro<! irvev/xanKO'; of the gospel dispensa- 
 tion — a circumstance that fills with new meaning 
 the fervent desire of the ancient lawgiver. 
 " Would God that all the people were the prophets 
 of the Lord, and that the Lord would put His 
 spirit upon them." 
 
 From this estimate of the Spirit's work in 
 revelation, we may safely tabulate another result 
 with respect to its own essential character. It 
 is not merely life and wisdom as in the cosmical 
 spirit, nor a moral witness against sin, as in the 
 secret admonitions of the conscience : but it is 
 also a sanctifying and strengthening agency, 
 in virtue of which the prophet especially is 
 qualified for the efficient discharge of his mission. 
 And thus the true prophet can testify of himself, 
 saying : " I am full of power by the spirit of the 
 Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of the Spirit 65 
 
 unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his 
 sin " (Micah iii. 8). 
 
 3. The Spirit in Regeneration 
 
 In introducing this concluding aspect of the 
 subject, we are not dealing with what may well 
 have been the actual experience of Old Testament 
 saints, but with the conceptions and representa- 
 tions of the various Hebrew writers. So far as 
 we know, the pious in Israel could only enter 
 the spiritual kingdom of God as New Testament 
 believers enter it, by the regenerating and 
 sanctifying power of the Divine Spirit. But 
 while experienced as a spiritual fact, was it also 
 taught as a clearly defined doctrine? Is it 
 seriously claimed that even in the teaching of 
 the eighth century prophets, we have anything 
 approaching the fulness of this New Testament 
 conception ? We cannot admit that there is. 
 Even when Ezekiel exclaims, " A new heart also 
 will I give you, and a new spirit will I put 
 within you. . . . And I will put my spirit 
 within you,'' he is only depicting in inspiring 
 imagery the deeper spirituality of Israel's future. 
 He is not portraying a condition already known 
 to exist, but affirming that in the fulness of 
 Israel's restoration, the Divine Spirit would take 
 
66 Israel's Ideal 
 
 up its abode in the renewed and regenerated 
 heart. 
 
 The nearest approach to this New Testament 
 conception is the influence exerted by the Divine 
 Spirit on the organs of the theocracy. It was 
 a moral reformation in every way worthy of its 
 author. It possessed a character and influence 
 peculiarly its own. A.nd yet it was not the 
 regeneration of New Testament times; it was 
 not regarded as the " new creation " of Christi- 
 anity. From first to last it was an extraordinary 
 condition interfering in a violent manner with 
 the normal course of the prophet's life. It 
 was an influence exerted upon the soul, not a 
 dwelling of the Divine Spirit within the soul. 
 The Spirit is put on a man. It comes and 
 rests upon him. It even clothes itself with 
 a man, where the idea seems to be that the 
 man is like a covering of the Spirit which 
 rules, speaks, and testifies in him (Judges vi. 34, 
 R.V.). All this, however, is not the penetration 
 of the human spirit by the Spirit of God which is 
 the secret and essence of regeneration. It is 
 something violent and extraordinary — something 
 transient and fitful ; and therefore a divine 
 influence which the man of God experiences only 
 on rare occasions. It could not be otherwise in 
 that preparatory dispensation ; for there was no 
 
The Old Testament Boctrvne of the Spirit Ql 
 
 thought of a real indwelling of the Divine Spirit 
 within the heart, until the avdpwiro'i irvevfiaTiKoi 
 appeared in Christ Jesus. But until this 
 spiritual indwelling has been grasped as an actual 
 possession, the old foundations of life are not seen 
 to be permanently affected, and the seed of a 
 new and spiritual personality is not conceived as 
 planted in the soul. There may, on such a 
 supposition, be the idea of conversion in the sense 
 of moral reformation, but there cannot be the 
 doctrine of regeneration in the sense of a new 
 creation. 
 
 But why then speak of the theocratic spirit as 
 a sanctifying and strengthening agency? For 
 this reason, that while the spirit is not yet 
 regarded as the source of holiness in man, it is 
 associated, as the Ruach Yahweh, with the 
 bestowal of moral qualities. It gives the fear of 
 the Lord, judgment and righteousness, penitence 
 and prayer (c/. Isa. xi. 2 ; xxxii 15-17 ; Zech. xii. 10). 
 Nay, in three Old Testament passages, but only 
 in three, it is expressly designated " a holy spirit." 
 Still in none of these references is the designation 
 " holy spirit " ever used absolutely as if the spirit, 
 like a distinct personality, were the author of 
 holiness in man. It is employed invariably in 
 connection with Jehovah. It is " his holy spirit " 
 or " thy holy spirit " — the Spirit of the God of 
 
68 Israel's Ideal 
 
 holiness, and therefore rightly called "holy" as 
 belonging to Him ; but not as producing holiness 
 in the heart (Isa. Ixiii. 10, 11 ; Ps. li. 11). In 
 fine, while it is regarded as the principle of 
 moral goodness in the pious in Israel, it is 
 not yet conceived as the Agent of the Second 
 Birth. 
 
 It remains under a closing paragraph to 
 indicate the manner in which the Old Testament 
 looks to the New for its completion and crown. 
 The Old Testament conception is deficient in, 
 at least, three different particulars. (1) With 
 respect to the Spirit's personality. This cannot 
 be said to be taught in the Old Testament. But 
 no more, except in the manner of presentiment, 
 is the personality of Christ. Both of these truths 
 become dogmatic propositions only on the basis 
 of the New Testament fulfilment. Thorough- 
 going monotheism is the theocratic watch- 
 word. Or as Westcott expresses it in his 
 " Historic Faith " : " The Spirit of God is not yet 
 made known as a distinct Person with whom man 
 can hold communion, though the scope of the 
 energy foreshadows the nature of the Person." 
 That is to say, while we must not read the dogma 
 of the New ' Testament Trinity into the Old 
 Testament, it is yet undeniable that we find the 
 way to it prepared in the doctrine of the Mal'ach 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of the Spirit 69 
 
 and of the Spirit. (2) The recipients of the 
 Spirit's influence. In the Old Testament, the 
 Spirit is bestowed, not on the members of the 
 theocracy, but on its organs and leaders. In the 
 New Testament, therefore, the outpouring of the 
 Spirit must be upon the members of the Church, 
 and not simply upon the overseers and officials. 
 Only on this condition will the prophecy of Joel 
 be fulfilled, or the fervent desire of the ancient 
 lawgiver be realised — " Would God that all the 
 Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord 
 would put his spirit within them ! " (3) The 
 nature of the Spirit's work. In the Old Testa- 
 ment it is not yet regarded as regeneration 
 of life, but simply as moral fitness for office. 
 The Spirit of God acts upon, not within, the 
 soul. It is dynamical, rather than biological 
 power. The Church of the future, then, must 
 see men impelled from within. In Ezekiel's 
 language, it must substitute the heart of flesh 
 for the heart of stone, and see the law of 
 God inscribed, not upon tables of stone, but on 
 the spiritual tablets of the heart (xxxvi. 26-27). 
 In a word, the Spirit must not only act upon 
 the heart, but make the heart its dwelling-place. 
 Individual man must be bom again of the 
 Holy Spirit. When this is accomplished, the 
 Divine Spirit will be acknowledged " holy " in both 
 
70 Israel's Ideal 
 
 senses — holy in His own character, and as the 
 principle of holiness in man. And the end of 
 Old Testament pedagogy along this line also 
 will he reached — the holy people of Jehovah will 
 he, what Oehler calls, a " subjectively holy 
 church." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT SACRIFICE 
 
 It is not enough to place man, as Linnaeus has 
 done, in the highest order of the Mammals. Man 
 is more than a mammal. He is of finer clay than 
 the sheep or goats that nibble on the hUlside ; for 
 he has the faculty of thought and the instinct of 
 devotion — the mental and spiritual capacity for 
 seeking and enjoying God. Man begins his 
 search for God by means of sacrificial oflferings. 
 He is found doing what none of the lower animals 
 is capable of doing — ^building an altar unto the 
 Lord his God, and seeking by the way of sacrifice 
 to propitiate the deity. How is this fact to be 
 accounted for ? How is this feeling after God to 
 be explained? Only by the persistence of the 
 divine image originally stamped upon man. 
 There are remnants of it left even amid the ruins 
 of the Fall, and these prepare the way for peni- 
 tence, prayer, sacrifice, and reconciliation. Im- 
 pelled by it, as by a moral heart-throb, Abel 
 
 came to the altar of God with a bleeding victim, 
 
 71 
 
72 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the vehicle and pledge of his devotion. He 
 brought both a conscience and a lamb — a con- 
 science which was the remnant of the divine 
 image, and a lamb which was the symbol of his 
 consecration. And is not the end already antici- 
 pated in the beginning ? It may only be a reflex 
 influence from the great Antitype, but the New 
 Testament believer will instinctively think of 
 One who is both image and lamb : One who 
 satisfies all the types, and gratifies every spiritual 
 longing — Him who is the effulgence of God's 
 glory, the very image of His substance, and yet 
 the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of 
 the world. 
 
 1. The Origin of Sacrifice 
 
 This must be determined in large measure by 
 the character of antique religion. To accept the 
 dictum of Renan, that religion in its origin was 
 the child of terror, must have led to a very 
 different conclusion from the view of Robertson 
 Smith that early religion was essentially a thing 
 of joy, being characterised by all the happy 
 abandon of a child. If primitive man was 
 surrounded by mysterious and often malevolent 
 powers whom it was his wisdom to try and 
 conciliate, this must have imparted to early ritual 
 a far more sombre colouring than if he had 
 
Old Testa/ment Sacrifice 73 
 
 possessed the idea that the tribal deity was a 
 friendly being, who, as his divine kinsman, was 
 always well disposed to the circle of his own kin. 
 In the former case the primitive sacrifice might 
 be nothing more than a gift or present, designed 
 to secure the favour or appease the anger of the 
 deity ; but in the latter, it may take the form of 
 a sacrificial meal or banquet, at which the god and 
 his worshippers are expected to feast together in 
 an act of sacramental communion. This is the 
 crux of the whole matter. The element of fear, 
 or the possession of naive confidence in the 
 presence of the deity, was sufficient to suggest the 
 one aspect or the other — unless, indeed, a juster 
 view of antique religion should indicate a wider 
 theory sufficiently comprehensive to include both 
 series of facts. 
 
 This wider theory may not be so remote or 
 abstruse as one is apt to imagine. It is found in 
 connection with the divine image originally 
 stamped upon man. It is not to be assumed that 
 the evolutionary hypothesis that primitive man 
 was a savage is the only tenable supposition. 
 The higher conception of the biblical record that 
 man was made in God's image must more and 
 more come into recognition. Not only do the 
 early inscriptions of Egypt and Babylonia speak 
 of a civilisation, which even yet the greatest of 
 
74 Israel's Ideal 
 
 our modern achievements have done little to excel, 
 but the claims of Evolution itself demand a 
 correspondence between the initial germ and the 
 era of fulfilment, which makes some such 
 assumption as the Bible view of man a necessity. 
 However plausible the theory of development may 
 be, it cannot be held to shut out the possibility of 
 an original divine impress in man's creation. And 
 it is this higher synthesis of a spiritual endowment 
 that combines both views of antique religion and 
 both theories of the origin of sacrifice into one 
 intelligible unity. God made man in His own 
 image ; hence the deity and His worshippers could 
 meet in sacramental communion ; but this image 
 was a moral heart-throb testifying to the existence 
 of a higher will ; hence the worshipper might 
 come with a gift or sacrificial offering, designed 
 to retain the favour or placate the jealousy of the 
 divine being. The original' endowment had 
 prepared the way for both ideas — the ratifying of 
 a solemn paction between the deity and His 
 worshippers, and the restoring of the mutual 
 compact, when once it had been interrupted by 
 any manner of estrangement. In fine, the forma- 
 tion of a table-bond between the two parties and 
 the closely allied gift-theory of sacrifice have been 
 subsumed under the wider category of an original 
 divine creation. 
 
Old Testa/ment Sacrifice 75 
 
 It need scarcely be said that this idea of an 
 original spiritual endowment is not synonymous 
 with a primitive revelation, or the positive enact- 
 ment of a ritual law in the pristine age of the 
 world's history. That may, or may not, have been 
 the meaning of the divine unveiling ; but there is 
 nothing in the suggestion as here put forward that 
 renders such an inference essential. God created 
 man in His own image; that is sufficient as a 
 basis for the subsequent unfolding of the religious 
 life. He endowed him with the mental capacity 
 for knowing and enjoying God; and that is the 
 source of all the spiritual longings by which the 
 worshipper proves his affinity with the divine. 
 There is nothing unnatural or even supernatural 
 in the forms of his devotion; his sacrifice is as 
 natural as his prayer. Both by the presentation 
 of a gift — nnjp (Gen. iv. 4-5), and by the eating 
 of a sacrificial meal — Hit (Gen. xxxi. 54), man 
 seeks to do homage to the God of heaven by 
 coming as a priest to His altar. Along the cus- 
 tomary lines of early Semitic ritual, and without 
 any necessary enactment to regulate his practice, 
 he seeks to give expression to his normal religious 
 instincts by bringing his first-fruits and firstlings 
 to his fathers' god. 
 
 The distinction here drawn between the prompt- 
 
76 Israel's Ideal 
 
 ing of a religious instinct and the terms of a 
 positive enactment may help us to appreciate the 
 conflicting traditions of the Priestly Code and the 
 no less conflicting statements of the eighth cen- 
 tury prophets. As has frequently been averred, 
 the authors of the Levitical legislation (unlike the 
 earlier narratives of the Jehovist) have made no 
 allusion to the existence of sacrificial offerings in 
 the pre-Mosaic period. In keeping with their 
 customary rule of tracing everything back to the 
 age and activity of Moses, they have no place 
 for the ordinary Semitic ritual which prevailed 
 throughout the patriarchal era. But the reason 
 is obvious. They were so anxious to build their 
 entire system on the basis of a positive enactment, 
 that any ritual praxis which could claim no 
 higher sanction than the satisfying of a religious 
 instinct was passed over in silence. Their silence, 
 however, is no proof of the non-existence of the 
 ritual ; it is only an evidence that it had no recog- 
 nised place, and no appreciable value, from their 
 particular standpoint. 
 
 The same distinction applies, though in a 
 slightly modified sense, to the period of the wilder- 
 ness journey, and the polemical attitude of the 
 prophets. Amos especially is suflSciently emphatic 
 with respect to the non-observance of the Leviti- 
 cal system during the forty years in the desert. 
 
Old Testament Sacrifice 77 
 
 " Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and oflferings in 
 the wilderness forty years, house of Israel ? " 
 (chap. V. 25), The implication is that they did 
 not. The sacrifical offerings had not, at that time, 
 the imposing position which was afterwards 
 assigned to the system. But this does not imply 
 that the ordinary Semitic ritual, as the embodi- 
 ment of a religious sentiment, was also conspicu- 
 ous by its absence. The closely allied language 
 of Jeremiah furnishes the true solution of the 
 diflSculty. " I spake not unto your fathers, nor 
 commanded them in the day that I brought them 
 out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt-offerings 
 or sacrifices." None of those sacrificial offerings 
 had been made the subject of a positive divine 
 enactment. " But this thing I com/manded 
 them,, saying, Hearken unto My voice, and I will 
 be your God, and ye shall be My people . . . but 
 they hearkened not " (vii. 22-24). This, indeed, 
 was the ideal of the Hebrew leader himself at 
 the period of the exodus from Egypt. He, 
 too, had longed for the time when the ceremonial 
 element would no longer be allowed to dim the 
 ethical. It was not the framing of a merely ritual 
 legislation, but the promulgation of a great moral 
 law that fired his imagination and captivated 
 his thought. But, alas ! the period was not ripe 
 for the greatness of that spiritual ideal ; and 
 
78 Israel's Ideal 
 
 therefore, breaking the two tables of the Law 
 beneath the Mount, he postponed his entire 
 programme to the unknown possibilities of the 
 future. And yet, while the ordinary forms of 
 Semitic worship were, in this way, allowed to 
 remain, they remained simply as earthen vessels 
 for the convejang of the spiritual treasure. 
 Through a kind of dispensational toleration they 
 were given a place in the religious life of the 
 nation, but only until the fulness of a coming 
 golden age, when the sacrifice and the oblation 
 would cease. Such was the hope of Moses at the 
 founding of the theocracy, and such is the view of 
 the later Hebrew prophets, that while gifts and 
 sacrifices have been present from the beginning, 
 and have won a place of sufferance in the higher 
 creed of Israel, it is obedience and not sacrifice 
 which is the true service of Jehovah — righteous- 
 ness, and not the fat of rams, which is His pleasure 
 (1 Sam. XV. 22). This is the higher synthesis 
 that unites both the human and the divine. The 
 instinct and the enactment together are com- 
 bined. 
 
 2. The Levitical Legislation. 
 
 Beginning with the rudimentary forms of early 
 Semitic ritual — forms which were observed by 
 the patriarchs, utilised by Moses, continued under 
 
Old Testament Sacrifice 79 
 
 the monarchy, but challenged and criticised by 
 the prophets — the sacrificial system went down 
 amid the fires of the Babylonish Exile ; but hav- 
 ing been emended and expanded by those who 
 sought to conserve the past and to forecast the 
 future, it reappeared and culminated in the 
 Priestly Code which was introduced by Ezra in 
 444 B.C. The completed scheme was the result 
 of at least two lines of development which had 
 undergone considerable modification with the 
 advance of the years. These were the higher 
 conceptions formed of Jehovah by the exponents 
 of ethical monotheism, and the corresponding 
 centralising of the worship under the teaching 
 of Deuteronomy. The prophets especially empha- 
 sised the moral character and absolute supremacy 
 of Israel's God ; and this rendered the Semitic 
 idea of a gift or present totally untenable. "If 
 I were hungry, I would not tell thee : for the 
 world is Mine, and the fulness thereof" (Ps. 1. 12). 
 The holocaust could no longer be regarded as a 
 gift of sublimated nourishment which came up as 
 a " sweet savour " unto the Lord ; but simply as a 
 form of worship or vehicle of devotion, the sacri- 
 fice, par excellence, which expressed the spiritual 
 homage due to Jehovah alone (ver. 14). A 
 similar transformation was found to pass over 
 the sacrificial meal under the influence of the 
 
80 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Deuteronomic law of a central sanctuary. In the 
 presence of this nationalised worship, the old 
 na'iveU of the sacramental feast, which was so 
 closely connected with the everyday life of the 
 people, was allowed to pass under a temporary 
 eclipse ; and as this was felt to synchronise with 
 the series of woes that finally overwhelmed the 
 nation, the artless joy of the sacrificial banquet 
 was swallowed up in the far more sombre associa- 
 tions of the svn- and ifTesposs-ofierings. In short, 
 what had begun with gifts and sacrifices, designed 
 to retain the favour or placate the jealousy of the 
 deity, had now terminated in the , fully organised 
 system of the IJriestly Code, which grappled with 
 the two closely related ideas of worship and 
 atonement. 
 
 The completed system, however, is not to be 
 depicted as if it involved a distinct break with 
 the past, or introduced into the thought of Israel 
 anything that was essentially new. It was no 
 more the abrupt termination of the old festive 
 joy than it was the unexpected beginning of the 
 dark consciousness of sin. The primitive sacrificial 
 meal did not terminate ; it passed over into 
 the numerous peace- and thank-offerings, which 
 accompanied and grew out of the more impressive 
 ritual of the sin-offering. And the profound 
 stirrings of the moral sense, which find so suitable 
 
Old Testament Sacrifice 81 
 
 an expression in this more imposing symbolism, 
 did not find their initial starting-point amid the 
 dark storm-clouds of the Exile ; they hark back to 
 the dim uplands of the Semitic world, where, 
 stung by the moral heart-throb that testified to 
 the existence of a moral governor, man came as a 
 priest to God's altar, and supplicated the divine 
 favour. The appearance of the Priestly Code was 
 neither the conclusion of the joy, nor the inception 
 of the sin. For as the consciousness of need, and 
 the possibility of estrangement had been present 
 from the beginning, so the possession of childlike 
 confidence in the presence of the deity, and even 
 the possibility of sacramental communion, con- 
 tinued to characterise the hope of Israel right 
 onward to the end. What it did imply was, that 
 during the entire course of Israelitish history, the 
 forms and ideas of Old Testament sacrifice were 
 flexible and malleable in the hands of an ever- 
 growing monotheism, and that they were ham- 
 mered into shape with the progress of the years, 
 until, in the estimation of the codifiers of the 
 laws, the whole development required to be recast 
 in the light of that consummation. It was the 
 completed scheme, and not its rudimentary begin- 
 nings, that ought to explain and dominate the 
 whole. The oak, and not the acorn, was the best 
 representation of the tree. 
 6 
 
82 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Consequently, while its actual historical develop- 
 ment may have commenced with naive confidence, 
 and ended with an ever-deepening consciousness 
 of moral evil, it did not follow that this must 
 be the order observed in meeting the practical 
 necessities of a later age. The consciousness of 
 sin, and the necessity of atonement, might have 
 to be taken as a new starting-point from which 
 to travel upwards and backwards to something 
 greater than even the childlike confidence 
 of early Semitic ritual. From the merely 
 negative thought of expiation, Israel might 
 pass naturally to the positive idea of a life of 
 worship, and find as the outcome of such service, 
 not the happy abandon of a child, but the 
 calm satisfaction of a strong man who has felt 
 the rapture of restoration. And that this was 
 the arrangement adopted by the Priestly Code 
 is obvious from the gradation in ExodUs xxix., 
 where the sacrifices presented at the dedication 
 of the priests are set in juxtaposition. One 
 young bullock and two unblemished rams were 
 taken and offered at the door of the tent of 
 meeting, that Aaron and his sons might be 
 installed into office and minister unto the Lord 
 in holy things. The bullock was a sin-oS&vmg 
 (ver. 14) ; the first ram a fewrwi-ofifering (ver. 18), 
 and the second a ram of consecration, that is 
 
Old Testament Sacrifice 83 
 
 a modified thank-o&enng (ver. 22) ; and as these 
 are the three main classes into which Old Testa- 
 ment sacrifices have been divided, it is of great 
 interest to have them grouped together in so 
 clear and instructive an order. "The basis of 
 all is the sin-offering. Secret sin and unworthi- 
 ness must be expiated before there can be any 
 question of filling a sacred office. Then, as one 
 already pardoned, the priest presents a burnt- 
 offering in token of his loyal homage to the 
 great God of Israel. Only then, v^hen this duty 
 has been discharged, can he give expression to 
 his gratitude for the high and honourable office 
 God has graciously bestowed upon him. The 
 thank-offering is presented, and the community 
 of worshippers gathers to a joyous meal round 
 the table now dedicated to God."^ If atone- 
 ment is followed by worship, this in turn is 
 followed by the giving of thanks. 
 
 And how luminous all this becomes when read 
 in the light of the New Testament fulfilment. 
 The great Antitype is sin-offering, burnt-offering, 
 and thank-offering all in one. He satisfies all 
 the types and meets every spiritual requirement, 
 and he does so in the same instructive order. 
 Through Him we have the inestimable boon of 
 reconciliation (Rom. viii. 9). By Him, as through 
 
 » Sohultz, " Old Testament Theology," I. 401. 
 
84 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the Old Testament holocaust, we draw near to 
 God in worship (Heb. vii. 25). And through 
 Him, as imaged in the ram of consecration, we 
 may offer to God continually a sacrifice of praise 
 (Heb. xiii. 15). And the end when it comes is 
 simply the realisation of a glorified beginning. 
 What began with the joy of the table in the 
 primitive ritual of the Semites, ends in the 
 rapture of a sacrificial meal in the priesthood 
 of Christian men. For in Christ there is both 
 a sprinkling and an eating. "He that eateth 
 My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, 
 and I in him." "Behold, I stand at the door 
 and knock : if any man hear My voice and open 
 the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with 
 him, and he with Me " (John vi. 55 ; Rev. iii. 20). 
 They meet and ratify an everlasting covenant in 
 an act of sacramental communion. 
 
 " My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched : 
 That, after Last, returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round he fetched ; 
 That what began best, can't end worst." ' 
 
 3. Its Atoning Eppicact 
 
 In a wide and general sense, a certain piacular 
 force is to be ascribed to all sacrifices. There 
 ^ Browning, "Apparent Failure." 
 
Old Testa/tnent Sacrifice 85 
 
 are traces found even in the burnt-offering that 
 appear to attribute to this priestly sacrifice 
 a really expiatory character. It is offered at 
 the door of the tent of meeting that the 
 worshipper may be accepted before the Lord. 
 " He shall lay his hand upon the head of the 
 burnt-offering ; and it shall be accepted for him 
 to maJce atoneTnent for him " (Lev. L 4). This 
 atoning efficacy may be fully explained from the 
 general standpoint of sacrifice. In the very 
 nature of a sacrificial system, the idea is expressed 
 that if man bring, and God accept, a sacrificial 
 victim, the memory of any estrangement which 
 may have existed between them will thereby be 
 entirely wiped out. The offering, as thus pre- 
 sented, will have conciliated the favour, if it has 
 not appeased the jealousy of an offended deity. 
 But if this be true anywhere, it is certainly true 
 of a sacrificial system which is based on a covenant 
 contract between God and man. The whole 
 conception of a covenant is that Jehovah has 
 drawn near to EUs people in grace. It is not so 
 much an agreement between equals, as the 
 ratification of God's purposes of mercy towards 
 those who are undeserving. Hence, if they are 
 permitted to enter into covenant relation at all, 
 it is not because they are entitled to do so, as a 
 question of equal rights, but simply because they 
 
86 Israel's Ideal 
 
 are privileged in God's good pleasure to stand on 
 the broad platform of atonement and reconcilia- 
 tion. It is not only positive breaches of the 
 covenant that have to be repaired and atoned for 
 by a series of sin-oSerings, but this broad fact of 
 reconciliation, embodied in the very idea of the 
 covenant, must also be set forth before the people ; 
 and as the daily burnt-o&eiing is the ever present 
 sign of this deep groundwork in redemption, it is 
 rightly described, at least from this general stand- 
 point, as having a basis in atonement. 
 
 It is chiefly in the ritual of the sin-offering, 
 however, that we are to look for the nearest 
 approach to a theory of expiation ; and in seeking 
 to elucidate • the meaning of its expressive 
 symbolism, we may begin with some allusion to 
 the precise nature of the sin. The Old Testament 
 knows of sins of rebellion, sins that have been 
 committed with the full intention of violating the 
 law of God, sins with a "high hand" (Num. 
 XV. 30). The legal sacrifices, however, are not 
 intended for unpardonable crimes like these. 
 They are limited to offences of a less serious cast, 
 violations of the law that are committed 
 "unwittingly," the so-called sins of ignorance; 
 and they are not to be regarded as being wrought 
 out on the same moral plane as the atoning 
 sacrifice of Jesus. They move on a much lower 
 
Old Testcument Sacrifice 87 
 
 level than that. Still, it does not follow that they 
 have thereby little or nothing to do with the 
 question of atonement and the forgiveness of sins.^ 
 They may not have been designed to expiate the 
 guilt of the braggart or the murderer, without on 
 that account being emptied of all moral signifi- 
 cance and reduced to the level of a merely 
 ceremonial transaction. The transgression which 
 is committed " in ignorance " is not so colourless 
 an offence as this theory tries to make out. In 
 the language already quoted from Professor 
 Schultz, "The basis of all is the sin-oiBEering. 
 Secret sin and unworthiness must be expiated 
 before there can be any question of filling a sacred 
 office." Secret sin and unworthiness/ Does 
 anyone imagine that this is to be restricted to a 
 purely ceremonial relationship ? The question is 
 its own answer. The sin in view has entered into 
 the sphere of morality, and the sacrifice that is 
 to restore the interrupted communion must be 
 viewed in the light of that fact. It has not the 
 efficacy of New Testament atonement ; but that 
 moral ideas of sin and religious views of expiation 
 are expressed by the ritual of the sin-offering 
 cannot seriously be questioned. 
 
 The atoning value of the sacrifice may be 
 illustrated by one detail in the ceremony, which 
 1 Sohultz, "Old Testament Theology," I. 383. 
 
88 Israel's Ideal 
 
 is full of significance for the doctrine of Old 
 Testament sacrifice. We refer to the laying on of 
 hands — a detail that may be interpreted in various 
 ways. From the side ot property — e.g., it may be 
 regarded as a simple act of dedication. The 
 worshipper has not come to the altar of God 
 empty-handed ; he has brought an offering from 
 his fiock or herd, and as he lays his hand on the 
 head of the victim, he expresses his intention of 
 dedicating the whole animal to God. The gift 
 brought is a free-will offering to the deity. From 
 the side of sin, however, as already defined, the 
 character of his action may be greatly modified. 
 The offerer is now confronted by the fact of his 
 own unworthiness ; and as he stands abashed in 
 the presence of the divine holiness, he may well 
 long for a means of reconciliation — a sacrifice, at 
 once the vehicle of his repentance and the 
 divinely accepted covering of his sin. And all 
 this is provided for in the symbolism of the sin- 
 offering. So that when he laid his hand on the 
 head of the victim, and set it apart as an expiatory 
 sacrifice, he expressed his intention not simply to 
 dedicate the whole animal to God, but also to 
 sacrifice the pure life of the victim as a covering 
 for his impure soul (c/. Ex. xii. 13 ; Lev. xvii. 11 ; 
 Ps. xxxii. 1). 
 
 This, in large measure, is the only theory of 
 
Old Testament Sacrifice 89 
 
 atonement which can be deduced from Old 
 Testament sacrifice. The life of the creature is 
 interposed between God and man as a covering 
 for sin. It is in this way that we can appreciate 
 the subsequent disposal of the blood. It was 
 brought as near to Jehovah as possible, smeared 
 on the Jioms of the altar which significantly 
 pointed heavenwards ; and on the day of atone- 
 ment, taken and sprinkled within the vail itself 
 in the felt presence of the Eternal. The reason 
 for this is obvious. The blood is the chief part 
 of the animal. It is the vital element in which 
 the life of the creature pulsates. It is God's 
 " holy of holies in nature, within which the secret 
 of life lies under lock and key." And, therefore, 
 when it is brought and sprinkled upon the altar 
 or the mercy-seat, the whole value of the sacrifice 
 is interposed between God and man. " When 
 I see the blood, I will pass over you : it is the 
 blood that maketh atonement by reason of the 
 life." This is the robe in which every true 
 worshipper must appear before Jehovah — a perfect 
 emblem of the robe of righteousness described by 
 the prophet (Isa. Ixi. 10), or the white robes of 
 the great multitude which have been washed and 
 made white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 
 viL 14). 
 
 Finally, it cannot be maintained that the ritual 
 
90 Israel's Ideal 
 
 of the sin-offering has much to tell us regarding 
 the doctrine of vicarious substitution. There 
 is no evidence from the Levitical laws themselves 
 that the laying on of hands was conceived as 
 a transference of guilt, or that the death of the 
 victim was held as a poena vicaria for the sin 
 of the offerer. Even in the case of the two goats 
 on the day of atonement, it was not the goat of 
 the sin-offering that was laden with the people's 
 sins, but the second or live goat on whose head 
 the hands of Aaron had been laid, and which was 
 sent away by the hand of a fit man into the 
 wilderness (Lev. xvi. 21). Instead of being 
 viewed as unclean, the sin-offering was held in 
 special honour and treated as a sacrifice of the 
 first class which was entirely dedicated to 
 Jehovah. It was most holy (Lev. vi. 25). It was 
 too sacred to be left in contact with anything 
 human, and therefore it was totally removed from 
 common use. Its blood and fat were offered on 
 the altar ; its flesh, in ordinary circumstances, was 
 eaten by the priests who were Jehovah's repre- 
 sentatives (ver. 26), and even when this could 
 not be done, as when the priests offered a 
 sacrifice for themselves, or represented Israel 
 instead of Jehovah, the victim was not, on that 
 account, allowed to revert to the offerer, but 
 was wholly withdrawn from human contact by 
 
Old Teata/ment Sacrifice 91 
 
 being burned in a clean place without the 
 camp. 
 
 The burning of the flesh was not so much 
 a mark of obloquy as a proof of superior sanctity. 
 So that wherever we are to seek the origin of 
 the " reproach " referred to in Heb. xiiL 13, it is 
 not to be sought, at least in the first instance, in 
 the ritual of the sin-offering. The higher moral 
 plane on which the atoning work of Jesus is 
 wrought out must be traced in another and 
 totally different direction. It is found (1) 
 in the thought of vicarious auffervng so strikingly 
 foreshadowed in passages like Ex. xxxii. 32 and 
 Isa. liii. ; and (2) in the thought of judicial 
 punishment so sternly meted out to the rebel or 
 malefactor, who, because he had acted "pre- 
 sumptuously," was stoned to death outside the 
 city gates, or hanged upon a tree (Deut. xxL 
 21-22). Jesus fulfils all the types and satisfies 
 every spiritual longing. Like the Lord's suffer- 
 ing servant He connects Himself indissolubly with 
 the nation's fate, and by vicarious suffering works 
 out its redemption ; but in so doing, He burdens 
 Himself with the nation's sins, and suffers a felon's 
 doom outside the city walls. He is Sacrifice, 
 Sufferer, and Satisfaction all in one. His blood 
 does atone for sin, but it is the blood of One who 
 was made sin for us that we might be made the 
 
92 Israel's Ideal 
 
 righteousness of God in Him. So that the 
 symbolism of the laying on of hands has come to 
 express at last the deepest fact of all — the fact 
 of vicarious substitution — 
 
 " My faith would lay her hand 
 On that dear head of Thine, 
 While aa a penitent I stand 
 And there confess my sin. 
 
 "Believing we rejoice 
 
 To see the curse remove ; 
 We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice, 
 And sing His bleeding love." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE COVENANT WITH ISRAEL 
 
 Revelation, or the unveiling of God to man, is 
 
 the leading characteristic of Old Testament 
 
 religion. Ethnic faiths may assure us that man 
 
 is seeking God (c/. Acts xvii. 26-27), but in the 
 
 history and faith of Israel we are reminded that 
 
 God is seeking man. " I said not unto the seed 
 
 of Jacob, seek ye Me as in a waste " (Isa. xlv. 19). 
 
 The ethnic religions do seek God as in a waste. 
 
 Like caravans lost in the desert, they go round 
 
 and round in a circle, with neither guide nor 
 
 goal ; or like unstable variations which always 
 
 revert to the original type, they fall back, after 
 
 all their struggles, to the level from which they 
 
 sprung. It is not till the advent of revealed 
 
 religion — not till God seeks man — that we 
 
 have the promise of a stable variation, the 
 
 veritable inauguration of a new species. Then, 
 
 indeed, the divine and human co-operate for 
 
 the attainment of one end and aim, and those 
 
 that are lost in the solitudes of the desert 
 
 93 
 
94 Israel's Ideal 
 
 are found, instructed, and kept (Deut. xxxii. 
 10). 
 
 On the other hand, a wider reading of com- 
 parative religion may place both types in one and 
 the same category. All life, whether animal or 
 human, springs from one divine fountain of life ; 
 and all religion, whether natural or revealed, 
 may be traced back to one divine impulse. In 
 the last resort all rivers come from, the sea. And 
 while there are many cross-currents observable in 
 humanity, the great purpose of God is above and 
 around all, like the wide curve of the heavens 
 encircling the little birds that fly to and fro in 
 the sunlight. The two things are not mutually 
 exclusive. If the ethnic religions have sprung as 
 the souls of animals from the original vitalising 
 of the cosmos,^ the religion of Israel, like the 
 soul of man, has been brought into existence 
 by a special divine act. Revealed religion 
 is really a circle within a circle. Election is 
 merely a method by which God uses the few 
 to bless the many (Gen xxii. 18). " If ye will 
 obey My voice, and keep My covenant, then ye 
 shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among 
 all peoples ; for all the earth is Mine " (Ex. xix. 5). 
 1 See above, p. 55, 
 
The Covenant with Israel 95 
 
 1, The General Idea of a Covenant 
 
 The fonning of a covenant was quite a familiar 
 transaction among the early Semites. When 
 two tribes were anxious to remain at peace, and 
 to respect each other's possessions, and desired 
 intermarriage and commercial intercourse, they 
 concluded a covenant. Witness the compact 
 between Abraham and Abimelech, Jacob and 
 Laban, Joshua and the Gibeonites, Jonathan 
 and David (Gen. xxi. 32 ; xxxL 44 ; Josh. ix. 6 ; 
 1 Sam. xviii. 3). Covenant contracts were made 
 in all conceivable connections. In the simple 
 circumstances of the ancient East this is the 
 foundation of all legal relations. And the 
 contract is accompanied by certain solemn acts, 
 as, for instance, the eating of salt, the sprink- 
 ling of blood, but chiefly the partaking of a 
 common sacrificial meal (Num. xviii. 19; Lev. 
 ii. 13 ; Ex. xxiv. 8 ; Gen. xxxL 54). The signi- 
 ficance of this meal cannot be overestimated. 
 According to Robertson Smith, it is the key to 
 the whole subject of sacrifice, and the basis of all 
 Semitic covenants. When the two parties have 
 eaten of the same victim, and thus become 
 participants in a common life, a living bond of 
 union is immediately formed between them, and 
 they are no longer enemies but brothers. 
 
96 laraeVs Ideal 
 
 An allusion to this rite may be found in the 
 Hebrew term for covenant — ]T''15.. It is commonly 
 derived from the root "barah," to cut, to cleave, 
 then to eat — the reference being to the solemn 
 killing and eating of the sacrificial victim by 
 which the covenant contract is ratified. But cf. 
 also Gen. xv. 10, and Jer. xxxiv. 18, where the 
 animal sacrifices are cut in twain, and the 
 contracting parties are made to pass between the 
 pieces. Professor Schultz is of opinion that this 
 ceremony is nothing more than a symbolical form 
 of oath. They who pass between the pieces and 
 sware loyalty to one another, call down on their 
 heads the fate of these victims, if they should 
 prove unfaithful to their covenant obligations. 
 Probably, however, it is nearer the truth to refer 
 the whole observance to the original partition of 
 the sacrificial meal ; just as the blood of the 
 covenant, in Ex. xxiv. 6, is divided into two equal 
 parts, and the one half sprinkled on the altar — i.e., 
 given to Jehovah, and the other half sprinkled on 
 the people. The fundamental idea is the eating 
 of the sacrifice, and when this ceased to be eaten, 
 the parties stand or pass between the pieces, as a 
 symbol that they are " taken within the mystical 
 life of the victim." ^ 
 
 1 "Religion of the Semites," p. 481. 
 
The Covenant with Israel 97 
 
 When Israel, then, is called into fellowship with 
 Jehovah, a terminology is already in use for 
 describing their mutual relationship. It is called 
 the establishing of a covenant between the two 
 parties (Gen. ix. 9 ; Isa. Iv. 3). This is not a 
 claim on the part of man to be in a position of 
 equality with the deity- Even the victor makes 
 with the vanquished a covenant — to spare him 
 (Josh. ix. 6). And in God's covenant with man, 
 there is not so much the idea of a paction between 
 equals, as the ratification of God's purposes of 
 grace towards the children of men. The general 
 idea of the covenant is that God is drawing near 
 to the people in grace. And thus, instead of the 
 term axwdrjicT], a compact or mutual agreement, 
 the Septuagint prefers the form SiaOi^Kri, a 
 disposition or vrill} 
 
 At the same time, the moment a covenant is 
 formed, there does come into existence a certain 
 relation of equality — a mutual obligation on the 
 part of both members to keep the covenant 
 contract inviolate. Hence, because of His covenant 
 with Abraham, God is unwilling to hide from him 
 the judgment determined against Sodom. " Shall 
 I hide from Abraham that which I do ? " No, as 
 the depositary of the blessing he has the right to 
 
 > Of. Hatch's " Essays in Biblical Greek," p. 47. Also Heb. 
 ix. IS, with the Revisers' marginal note. 
 
 7 
 
98 Israel's Ideal 
 
 know why even one nation is to be cut off from 
 the covenant promise ; or to put it more generally, 
 the covenant-relation between God and man 
 has made prophecy a necessity (Gen. xviii. 17). 
 
 The principal covenants in which this general 
 idea is expressed are the following : — (1) 
 The world-covenant made with Noah immedi- 
 ately after the flood (Gen. ix. 11-18), in 
 which is ratified the purpose of God to preserve 
 the world against any future deluge, and to 
 continue the race of men and animals throughout 
 all succeeding ages. And as its visible and 
 appropriate sign His bow is set in the cloud. (2) 
 The covenant of promise made with Abraham 
 (Gen. XV. 18), when, because of the long- 
 continued delay in the granting of the promised 
 seed, the patriarch has well-nigh lost faith in the 
 reality of a coming inheritance. " Lord God, 
 what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless ? " 
 And God enters into a covenant with Abraham 
 in which He announces His settled purpose to 
 convey to him and his seed the inheritance of the 
 land of Canaan. In the full draft of the covenant, 
 as given in Gen. xvii. 10, the sign specified is the 
 rite of circumcision; but here in chap. xv. 17 it is 
 something mysterious and far more spiritual — the 
 appearance of a flaming torch that passes between 
 the two halves of the sacrifice — the burning lamp 
 
The Covenant with Israel 99 
 
 being the pledge of a divine ratification. (3) The 
 coveTwmt of law, or the national covenant of 
 Israel (Ex. xxiv. 4-11), that moral and religious 
 contract by which their history as a nation so 
 grandly begins, and they themselves are set apart 
 as a community or kingdom of priests (Ex. xix. 6). 
 And the sign is blood — the sacred blood of the 
 covenant which is sprinkled now on the altar and 
 then on the people, and refuses to be effaced from 
 the conscience or creed of Israel, until, in the 
 fulness of time, the blood of the old gives place to 
 the wine of the new, as the Lamb of nobler name 
 and richer blood makes the sacrifice and the 
 oblation to cease. (4) The covenant made with 
 the house of David (2 Sam. vii. ; cf. Isa. Iv. 3), 
 when Nathan the prophet is commissioned to go in 
 before the king and say, " Thine house . . . and 
 thy throne shall be established for ever." It is 
 pre-eminently a covenant of promise, and differs 
 only from that of Abraham in more clearly indicat- 
 ing the particular channel through which the 
 result is to be attained. For what is the sism ? 
 " I will set up thy seed after thee . . . and I will be 
 His Father and He shall be My Son " — a promise 
 which Oehler has called " the foundation of the 
 Messianic idea in its stricter sense.'' It is simply 
 another reading of the sign given to Ahaz in Isa. 
 vii. 14, or the fuller announcement made to the 
 
100 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Bethlehem shepherds concerning one who was born 
 in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the 
 Lord (Luke ii. 12).^ All the covenants and all 
 the signs meet in Him ; for in the golden age 
 of Messianic fulfilment He brings in and ratifies 
 the covenant of grace. And as Pascal reminds us, 
 even nature is an image of grace. The rainbow, 
 the torch, the blood and the kingdom are all 
 gathered up and consummated in Christ. 
 And what is the sign ? A cross. There the 
 sacrificial blood is shed, and there the everlasting 
 kingdom is securely founded; for the cross 
 becomes His triumphal car on which He rides to 
 universal empire (John xii. 32 ; Col. ii. 15). It is 
 the burning lamp which testifies to the acceptance 
 of all our spiritual sacrifices ; and because it is, 
 the rainbow of an eternal promise encircles it 
 for ever. 
 
 2. The Divine Election 
 
 In this we have the divine side of the covenant- 
 relationship. " The Lord thy God hath chosen thee 
 to be a peculiar people unto Himself . . . because 
 the Lord loveth you, and because He would 
 keep the oath which He sware unto your fathers " 
 (Deut. vii. 6-8). The strongest force determining 
 
 1 Of. " Sermons in Syntax," p. 90. 
 
The Covenant with Israel 101 
 
 God's action is the prompting of His love. There 
 is a Power, not themselves, making for mercy. 
 Legal righteousness is not the burthen of the 
 Old Testament after all ; and legal righteousness 
 is not, and cannot be, the burthen of any New 
 Testament creed. Bighteousness, as in the 
 Pauline Epistles, is often a synonym for grace. 
 "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not 
 consumed, because His compassions fail not." 
 The Lord loveth you — loveth you with a free, 
 spontaneous, and sovereign love — not because 
 ye were more in number than any people, for ye 
 were the fewest of all peoples ; but because God 
 is loving, and faithful to His spoken word — a God 
 who " remembers the oath which He sware unto 
 your fathers." God has chosen a people " whose 
 ancestors were already in communion with Him." ^ 
 He has known them, and loved them for the 
 fathers' sake (Amos iii. 2 ; Gen. xviii. 19), and 
 because He is ever mindful of His covenant 
 promise. He saves them and keeps them for His 
 own (Ex. xxxii. 13-14; Isa. xlviiL 9-11). Even 
 when He punishes, it is a father's hand that 
 smites. He does not retain his anger for ever 
 (Ps. Ixxxix. 30-34). 
 
 The finest of Bible imagery is used to set forth 
 the nearness and tenderness of this covenant- 
 > Sohultz, Vol. n. p. 7. 
 
102 Israel's Ideal 
 
 relationship. It is beautifully expressed by the 
 term son given to Israel, and likewise by the 
 thought of a marriage contract between Jehovah 
 and His people. It is not a simple, but a complex 
 relationship — a union of tenderest love and care, 
 and a bond of exclusive proprietorship (Ex. iv. 
 22 ; Jer. iii. 4, 19 ; Ezek. xvi. 8 ; Jer. iii. 14). It 
 need scarcely be added that this divine fellow- 
 ship is entirely an ethical conception. It denotes 
 the relation of love and moral communion in 
 which Jehovah has placed Himself to Israel. 
 And, as pointed out in Chapter III., it is national, 
 not personal; for in the era of preparation the 
 unit is still the nation, and the individual 
 Israelite has not yet the right to call himself 
 Jehovah's son. Here, as elsewhere, he must wait 
 for the teaching of Him who said, " I ascend unto 
 My Father and your Father, and My God and 
 your God." For until God unveils Himself as 
 the Father of the Son, nothing higher is said of 
 Him on the basis of the Old Testament than that 
 He is the covenant God of the nation. 
 
 The election of Israel, of course, does not 
 involve the ultimate exclusion of others. It is 
 rather a method by which God uses the few for 
 the benefit of the many. Israel is being set 
 apart as a missionary people to hold aloft the 
 torch of revelation until the fulness of the nations 
 
The Covenant with Israel 103 
 
 has been gathered in. God through one would 
 bless all. True, there is no lack of evidence in 
 the history of Israel that would seem to point in 
 a different direction. There are elements in their 
 religion that obviously pave the way for what has 
 been called the particula/riam of salvation. 
 For, alas ! many in every age refuse to see that 
 election means, and must mean, election to serve : 
 not simply a negative separation from surround- 
 ing heathenism, but also a positive dedication of 
 the entire life to Him, who sets His people in 
 the midst of humanity to be the salt of the earth 
 and the light of the world. In Israel's case, indeed, 
 this element of particularism waa absolutely 
 necessary. Robertson Smith has dwelt upon 
 their proneness to fall into idolatry as a proof 
 that in the externals of religion their ritual 
 practice must have been quite similar to that of 
 surrounding cults.^ But it proves more than this. 
 It demonstrates the necessity of a frank and even 
 rigorous exclusiveness on the part of Israel in 
 order to safeguard the purity of their national 
 and religious ideals. The resemblances between 
 the two cults are so close that the differences 
 must be strongly accentuated. The very elasticity 
 shown by their religion in adapting itself to former 
 rites and customs, becomes, on the other side, the 
 
 • " Religion of the Semites," p. 4. 
 
104 Israel's Ideal 
 
 measure of the tenacity with which it clings to 
 its own distinctive elements. Until, as Schultz 
 has expressed it, we are clearly on the road to the 
 " Judaism that hates humanity." 
 
 Alongside of this, however, and acting as its 
 necessary supplement and corrective, there is no 
 lack of references to another road that leads in 
 quite a different direction. There are numerous 
 allusions that point inevitably to the ideal of 
 a world-wide religion. Witness the striking 
 register of nations inserted in Gen. x. — a register 
 which preserves the original unity of mankind, 
 before it was broken up and scattered by the 
 confusion and dispersion at Babel (chap, xi.) ; 
 or the promise made to Abraham in xxii. 18, 
 or the teaching contained in the Song of Moses, 
 where we read, "The Most High gave to the 
 nations their inheritance, according to the number 
 of the children of Israel " (Deut. xxxii. 8). Israel 
 is simply Jehovah's first-born son (Ex. iv. 22) — an 
 expression that speaks volumes respecting the 
 standing of the other nations ; and a truth like- 
 wise that prepares the way for the beautiful 
 prayer of Solomon in 1 Kings viii. 41, and the 
 world-wide faith of the psalmist in Pss. xlvi. 10, 
 Ixvii. 4, or the firmer and growing universalism 
 of the prophets (Isa. xix. 23-25 ; Ixvi. 18 ; 
 Jer. xlviii. 47 ; Mai. i. 11). And yet in perfect 
 
The Covenant with Israel 105 
 
 keeping with Old Testament revelation as a whole, 
 all this must come through Israel, the covenant 
 people of Jehovah. The nations must come and 
 bless themselves (Eithpael) in Abraham and his 
 seed (Gen. xxii. 18). The command of the New 
 Testament may be, " Go ye into all the world " ; 
 but in the period of preparation, all the world 
 must come to Zion (Isa. ii. 2 ; xi. 10). Jerusalem 
 must first be blessed, and then the, nations will 
 participate in the blessing, just as showers which 
 fall upon the hills afterwards run down in streams 
 to water the vales below. Hence the psalmist, in 
 the great missionary psalm of the Old Testament, 
 exclaims, " God be merciful unto its and bless us, 
 and cause His face to shine upon us : that Thy 
 way may be known upon the earth. Thy saving 
 health among aU nations." The election of Israel 
 is really a call to world-wide service. The 
 particularism of their salvation has broadened 
 into universalism. 
 
 3. The Husian Obligation 
 
 This is the human side of the covenant-rela- 
 tionship — the assurance to Israel, that on the 
 faithful discharge of the stipulated conditions, the 
 very existence of the covenant depends. Gf. 
 Gen. xvii. 1 ; xviii. 19, where God appeared to 
 Abraham and said, " Walk before Me and be thou 
 
106 Israel's Ideal 
 
 'perfect, and I will make My covenant with thee." 
 In like manner, when Moses took the book of the 
 covenant, and read in the audience of the people 
 all the " conditions " (K.V.) on which the covenant 
 was based, they answered with one voice and said, 
 " All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and 
 be obedient '' (Ex. xxiv. 7). The will of God was 
 accepted by the will of man. The election of 
 love was responded to by the obedience of law. 
 
 The kernel of the law is found in the Decalogue 
 (pi BeKa Xoryoi. LXX), which is given in two 
 different editions in the Biblical writings (Ex. xx. 
 1-17 ; Deut. v. 6-21). The variations are consider- 
 able. In Exodus, for instance, the reason assigned 
 for the institution of the Sabbath is derived from 
 God's rest at creation, and agrees with Gen. ii. 3 ; 
 but in Deuteronomy the command is based on the 
 duty of Israel to their servants, and the memory 
 of their own bondage in the land of Egypt. How. 
 is this divergence to be accounted for ? According 
 to some, the speaker in Deuteronomy is giving a 
 " revised account " of the transactions described 
 in Exodus. He is not aiming at an exact repro- 
 duction of the past, but is content to present it, 
 to some extent, in the form of a " free rehearsal." 
 Others would regard both versions alike as 
 enlarged copies of an older and simpler form. 
 See article " Decalogue," in the Ency. Brit, where 
 
The Govenamt imth Israel 107 
 
 Robertson Smith comes to the conclusion that, in 
 its original form, the fourth commandment was 
 simply " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
 holy " ; so that the reasons assigned for its 
 institution both in Exodus and Deuteronomy are 
 merely later additions. Be this as it may, the 
 variations in the parallel texts are not of such a 
 nature as seriously to impair the main body or 
 substance of the precepts. With or without 
 reasons, the fourth commandment is confessedly 
 a dedication of holy time to God, and this is the 
 essence of the injunction ; and in a similar 
 manner with all the other precepts in the 
 Decalogue. The original extent of each command- 
 ment may be a matter of uncertainty, but the 
 Decalogue itself as a system of ten words was the 
 symbol and seal of the covenant. 
 
 Another matter which has exercised the 
 ingenuity of theologians, is the distributing of 
 the ten commandments over the two tables of 
 stone. Augustine, in order to secure an equal 
 amount of writing on the two tables, assigned 
 three commandments to the first, and seven to the 
 second — a division which was supposed to have 
 the further merit of using sacred numbers, the 
 number three being associated with the Trinity, 
 while seven, as almost a synonym for sacred, is 
 found in a variety of applications all through 
 
108 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Scripture. But the division commonly accepted 
 is that of Philo and Josephus who assign five 
 precepts to each table — the first five being 
 precepts of piety, and the second, precepts of 
 probity} The five precepts of piety are : (1) No 
 other gods — i.e., the principle of monotheism. 
 
 (2) No image of the true God; this, and not 
 simply the exclusion of heathen idols, being the 
 manifest design of the commandment. (3) No 
 dishonouring of God's name, the name itself being 
 the holy expression of His self-revealing essence. 
 
 (4) No desecrating of His holy time — this being 
 the point of view which regulates everything. 
 Nothing is to be touched which is dedicated to 
 God. (5) The honouring of parents, as the God- 
 appointed medium of our creation ; but also the 
 medium through which we rise into the highest 
 reverence of all — the bowing of the finite before 
 the Infinite. They who honour earthly parents 
 (c/. Gen. ix. 23 ; 1 Kings ii. 19) are being prepared 
 for the thought and service of the Eternal. 
 
 Then follow the five precepts of probity : — (1) 
 Sacredness of life. (2) Sacredness of marriage. 
 
 (3) Sacredness of property. (4) No false witness. 
 
 (5) No covetousness. The first three are sins in 
 deed, the fourth a sin in word, and according to 
 one view of the term " covetousness," the last is a 
 
 1 Of. Sohultz, Vol. n. p. 48. 
 
The CovenaTtt with Israel 109 
 
 sin in hea/rt — leading Oehler to conclude that " the 
 fulfilling of the law is not complete except in the 
 sanctification of the inner man." Schultz, how- 
 ever, disputes this rendering of the term " covet," 
 and instead of applying it to the prohibition of 
 evil desires, refers it to the deceitful undertakings 
 by which one tries to get possession of another's 
 property with an appearance of right. He 
 mentions the case of Naboth's vineyard as an 
 example of such coveting. But surely the two 
 things are not mutually exclusive. Ahab himself 
 was certainly guilty of both. The ignoble desire 
 was so deep-seated within the sulking king that 
 he actually betook himself to bed and refused to 
 touch food. All the high-handed robbery and 
 even bloodshed which immediately followed was 
 nothing more than the outcome of that secret 
 coveting of the heart. Why, then, hesitate to 
 acknowledge that the Decalogue has touched the 
 spring of inward disposition ? It certainly has done 
 so in the word " honour " in the fifth command- 
 ment, and why not in the term " covet " in the 
 tenth ? In Schultz's own language, " the Decalogue 
 includes within its beautifully simple circle the 
 chief duties of religion and morality ; " and these 
 duties must include both the disposition and the 
 life. 
 
 For under a closing paragraph, what is the 
 
110 Israel's Ideal 
 
 great motive of Old Testament morality, as set 
 ■ forth by the organs of revelation ? It is not 
 enough to say that the motives which impelled 
 an Israelite to the practice of what we call 
 "morality'' were without doubt originally the 
 same as have proved effective among all peoples 
 on a similar plane of civilisation — namely, family 
 feeling, clan feeling, hospitality, and certain 
 popular customs of a religious kind, such as 
 purifications, festivals, and sacrifices — all which 
 would naturally tend to mere " outward legality." 
 All this, except in the way of contrast, does not 
 touch the core of the matter as shaped by the 
 spirit of revelation. The motives that did 
 influence Israel in actual life, and the motives that 
 should have influenced them in view of the 
 holiness of their calling may be two very different 
 things. It is not what Israel had in common 
 with other nations that is the theme and task of 
 Old Testament theology ; but what was brought 
 to them by the organs of the theocracy — the great 
 motive for Old Testament morality as set forth 
 by revelation itself. 
 
 That motive is love — the deep spring of human 
 love as the reflection of thedivinp^ (Deut. vi. 5; 
 Josh. xxii. 5 ; Micah vi. 8). Turn where we will 
 
 1 Of. Robertson Smith's treatment of hesed, piety or bond 
 of love, in his " Prophets of Israel," p. 162. 
 
Tke Oovencmt with Israel 111 
 
 in the pages of Holy Scripture, God's tender 
 love in choosing and blessing Israel is the theme 
 and joy of all the sacred writers. He found him 
 in a desert land and in the waste howling wilder- 
 ness ; He compassed him about, He cared for him, 
 He kept him as the apple of His eye. He drew 
 him with the cords of love. He bare him on 
 eagles' wings. He chose him as His peculiar 
 treasure. His kingdom of priests, His Jeshurun 
 (Deut. xxxii. 10 ; Hos. xi. 14 ; Ex. xix. 4 ; Ps. cxxxv. 
 4 ; Deut. xxxiii. 5). Or to take the language 
 already cited from Deut. vii. 6-8, God chose Israel 
 to be a peculiar people unto Himself . . . because 
 He loved him, and because He would keep the 
 oath which He sware to their fathers. But why 
 thus dwell on the love of God for Israel, if not to 
 excite responsive love in Israel — responsive love 
 as the deepest motive for Old Testament 
 obedience? A design, indeed, which is already 
 suggested in Ex. xix. 4-5, which Ewald has called 
 "the gospel of the Old Testament"; and in 
 Ex. XX. 2, where the Decalogue puts at the head 
 of its demands what God has done for His people. 
 Obedience to the law of God can never stand 
 alone. It presupposes /aitA in the divine election. 
 And while we are not to seek, in this connection, 
 the forensic terminology of St. Paul, it is neverthe- 
 less beyond question that faith, even in the Old 
 
112 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Testament, is a thing of the inward disposition, 
 and as such is the subjective basis of all true 
 morality. 
 
 Abraham, the father of the faithful, believed in 
 God, and it was counted to him for righteousness 
 (Gen. XV. 6). And all the pious in Israel continue 
 to cherish a similar faith and piety. They trust 
 in the Lord, they wait for His salvation, they hope 
 in His word. And as the result, the law of God 
 is transfigured for them with new light. It 
 becomes their meditation day and night. It is 
 neither a heavy burden nor a hated yoke. It is 
 more to be desired than gold, and sweeter than 
 honey. It is the most precious and prized gift of 
 God's grace.^ Such is the power of love, and 
 such is the genius of the covenant, that when 
 God has taken man into covenant-relation with 
 Himself, election is followed by obedience, and 
 the law of love is reflected in the love of law. 
 I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my 
 God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. 
 
 I Cf. Weiss' "Biblical Theology," I. 277, where the 
 apostle James is represented as living and practising the 
 law "in the sense of the pious psalmists of the Old Testa- 
 ment," with the result that, when he saw in Christianity 
 the perfect law, he was not led to such a radical break with 
 his past as was necessary in the case of the apostle Paul. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY 
 
 Prophecy, fo/r excellence, is the sign and seal of 
 
 the covenant. It is a pledge to Israel of the 
 
 high position it holds as God's purchased possession. 
 
 In Sohultz's fine imagery, " prophecy is like the 
 
 rainbow in nature, a constant token of God's 
 
 covenant with Israel, a constant pledge of the 
 
 divine love whose everlasting light irradiates the 
 
 darkness of time." Whether we regard it as a 
 
 proof of the divine faithfulness, a vehicle of Old 
 
 Testament revelation, or a moral witness against 
 
 sin, the covenant relation between God and man 
 
 has made prophecy a necessity. God Himself is 
 
 faithful to the covenant. He is the Father of 
 
 lights (the planets), with whom is no variation, 
 
 nor the shadow cast by turning (no parallax and 
 
 no eclipse) ; and therefore He does not withhold 
 
 from His chosen people the spiritual guidance 
 
 they need for the perfect exercise of their calling. 
 
 He raises up from among themselves a long series 
 
 of prophets to be the pilots of their history and 
 8 113 
 
114 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the pioneers of their faith (Jer. vii. 25). He 
 remembers the oath which He sware unto their 
 fathers ; and thus prophecy becomes the sequel to 
 the covenant. 
 
 1. The Prophetical Succession 
 
 Each prophet is primarily one of a class. He 
 is not to be conceived as an isolated individual, 
 having no connection with those who have gone 
 before, and leaving no legacy to those who come 
 after. He is rather one link in a chain — one 
 member in a long line of prophets, who are raised 
 up one after another to complete gradually the 
 whole revelation which God has designed for His 
 people. Hebrew prophecy is really an organic 
 whole, and each prophet must be viewed in the 
 light of his historical and religious environment. 
 
 Even Amos, the herdman of Tekoa, is no real 
 exception to this rule. He appears before 
 Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, and protests, 
 saying, " I am no prophet, neither was I one of 
 the sons of the prophets " (vii. 14) ; but this 
 strong language does not mean that for the 
 fulfilment of his task he is entirely independent 
 of the past. His own prophecy, with its accurate 
 knowledge of previous history, both Israelitish 
 and foreign, is conclusive proof to the contrary 
 
Old Testament Prophecy 115 
 
 (c/. chaps, i. ; ii. 9-10 ; vi 5 ; ix. 7). " There is 
 nothing provincial about our prophet ; his idsion 
 embraces ail the nations with whom the Hebrews 
 had any converse ; he knows their history and 
 geography with surprising exactness, and is, in 
 fact, our only source for several particulars of 
 great value to the historian of Semitic antiquity." ^ 
 He may not have been trained in the so-called 
 schools of the prophets ; but the silence of nature 
 and the long leisure of life, the loneliness of the 
 fields dipping at times into the seclusion of the 
 desert, has been no unworthy training-school for 
 the faculty divine — a very nursery of heaven for 
 the cultivation of a deep, spiritual discernment. 
 "It is the atmosphere in which seers, martyrs, 
 and fanatics are bred."^ Thus, while Amos is 
 only a herdman following the flocks in Tekoa, 
 and a cultivator of the sycamore fig, he is never- 
 theless deeply studied both in religion and 
 history, and is well fitted to become a polished 
 shaft in the quiver of the Eternal. It may be / 
 granted that the Book of Amos is the earliest 
 prophetical writing of which we can speak with 
 any certainty (0^.760 B.C.) ; but this does noT"' 
 mean that Amos himself is the originator of Old 
 Testament prophecy. It is the conviction of all 
 
 ' Robertson Smith, " Prophets of Israel," p. 120. 
 2 Geo. A. Smith, " Historical Geography," p. 29. 
 
116 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the sacred writers that the line of prophetical 
 teachers may be traced back without break to 
 the age and activity of Moses (Amos ii. 10-12 ; 
 Hos. xii. 13 ; Jer. vii. 25). Not to dwell on a 
 succession of men like Nathan, Gad, Iddo, etc., 
 who are expressly described as prophets or seers 
 in 2 Sam. vii. 2 ; xxiv. 11 ; and 2 Chron. ix. 29, we 
 have the prophetical guilds or "sons of the 
 prophets" mentioned in the times of Elijah and 
 Elisha (2 Kings ii. 15) — an association which 
 shows that a full century before the call of Amos, 
 the fostering of spiritual life, and probably the 
 training of young men as religious teachers, had 
 been greatly extended throughout the northern 
 kingdom, and had well-nigh assumed the propor- 
 tions of a national institution. Two centuries 
 earlier, in the days of Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 20), 
 we find large bands or companies of prophets 
 gathering around Samuel himself, who desired at 
 the close of that lawless age to found a home for 
 the newly kindled religious life of the nation. 
 Cf. what is said of Isaiah long after, when he 
 sought to make his teaching immediately 
 practical, by proclaiming it in a circle of disciples 
 whom he gathered around him (viii. 16). And 
 yet not even the guilds under Samuel are the 
 beginning of the prophetical order. A prophet 
 is incidentally mentioned in Judges vi. 8 ; and 
 
Old Testa/ment Prophecy 117 
 
 still earlier we have the illustrious example of 
 the prophetess Deborah (iv. 4-5). "The Song 
 of Deborah rises like a broken arch amid ruins 
 pointing we perceive not whither, but across a 
 gulf of wreck and confusion, another arch rises 
 in the prophetical period in line with the former, 
 and pointing backwards. Is it unreasonable to 
 conclude that they form the remains of what was 
 once a continuous structure ? " ^ 
 
 The answer given by the eighth century 
 prophets is clear and decisive. "By a prophet 
 the Lord brought Israel up out of Egypt, and by 
 prophets was he preserved " (Hos. xii. 13).^ The 
 continuous structure goes back all the way to the 
 Exodus. It leads to the towering personality of 
 him who said, " The Lord thy God will raise up 
 unto thee a prophet (or prophets — i.e., the 
 prophetical order) like unto me " (Deut. xviiL 15). 
 Without Moses the Hebrew prophets could never 
 have existed. He laid the foundations on which 
 they afterwards built ; and they but helped to 
 expand the nature of the work which he had 
 so grandly inaugurated, by declaring the same 
 divine will and purpose in relation to the history 
 of their own times. He generated the currents 
 
 » Bobertson, " The Early Keligion of Israel," p. 119. 
 
 * The Syriao reads the plund, also A. B. B., " Prophecy,'' 
 pp. 18, 101, giving an interpretation rather than a transla- 
 tion of the Hebrew word. 
 
118 Israel's Ideal 
 
 of prophetic thought away up at one of the feed- 
 ing-springs of Old Testament prophecy ; and they 
 but helped to widen and deepen the stream, until 
 it issued at last into the glory of the Messianic 
 fulfilment. Still, not even Moses can be regarded 
 as independent of the past. It was the God of 
 their fathers that he proclaimed to Israel. His 
 work is never represented as anything absolutely 
 new. It was rather the response or supplement 
 to something already existing among the people. 
 In fine, the patriarchal age, with its knowledge 
 of Elohim, was stretching far behind him, and 
 with its moral elevation, unswerving trust in God, 
 and fulness of divine promise, was no unworthy 
 preparation for the higher truth revealed to 
 Moses — the necessary basis and presupposition of 
 God's covenant with Israel. 
 
 The prophet, then, is primarily one of a class. 
 He is the heir of all the ages that have preceded 
 him. In seeking to inspire men with a purer 
 idea of God, he is conscious that he is standing in 
 the old paths. The God whom he declares to his 
 own generation is the God of his fathers, the same 
 God, declaring His character and will in applica- 
 tion to new circumstances. So it was with Elijah, 
 and so is it with Amos or any other prophet who 
 speaks in the name of the Lord. His own gifts 
 and qualifications, the religious condition of the 
 
Old Testament Prophecy 119 
 
 society that gave Ilim birth, the national and 
 even political events that characterise his time, 
 and, above all, his indebtedness to the spiritual 
 teaching and testimony of his predecessors — all 
 these are elements that contribute to the rise of 
 his prophetic consciousness, and must be frankly 
 admitted into the final estimate we form of the 
 supernatural character of his calling. " We can- 
 not account for the appearance of a succession of 
 such men, otherwise than on the supposition that 
 they arose out of a society in the main like- 
 minded with themselves — that they were the 
 efflorescence, season after season, of a tree whose 
 roots always stood in the soil." ^ 
 
 2. The Prophetic Call 
 
 The prophets may be the efflorescence of a tree 
 whose roots always stood in the soil, but both the 
 tree and the efflorescence have themselves to be 
 accounted for. The power that plants the tree 
 at the beginning is not the tree itself; and the 
 vernal breath of Spring that woos the buds into 
 blossoms is not to be confounded with the petal 
 blooms that are breathed into being by its power. 
 Both are needed — the living sap of the tree which 
 is the life-blood of the branches, and the welcome 
 
 1 A. B. D., "Biblioal and Literary Essays," p. 109. 
 
120 Israel's Ideal 
 
 voice of Spring that summons it to rise and 
 effloresce. And, in like manner, the call of 
 Jehovah, no less than the fitness of man, is 
 needed for the vocation and functions of a 
 prophet. The human gifts are not ignored, but 
 they must be enlarged, perfected, and crowned by 
 a spiritual endowment. 
 
 What is said of David, the son of Jesse, when 
 Saul desired a man to soothe his conscience with 
 the mystic power of music, puts the whole case in 
 a nutshell (1 Sam. xvi. 18). He could play well, 
 he was courageous, he was prudent, he was 
 comely — all absolutely necessary if he was to 
 gain the appointment ; but beyond all these, 
 the Lord was with him; he had the power of 
 God's eternal Spirit upon his side (ver. 13). 
 This it was that welded his other qualifications 
 into one finished whole, set them on fire, and 
 fitted him for his delicate and responsible posi- 
 tion. And the same truth is applicable to the 
 organs of Old Testament prophecy. Their own 
 gifts and graces are not overlooked, but they 
 know themselves that they are fitted for the 
 perfect exercise of their calling by the God-given 
 unction of a spiritual anointing. They never 
 speak of a resolution formed by themselves to 
 devote their lives to a prophetical vocation, as 
 if the purpose to become a prophet was the 
 
Old Testament Prophecy 121 
 
 outcome of their own training or reflection ; but 
 they do know of a moment when they received 
 a coil from God — a divine summons .which was 
 impressed upon them with irresistible force and 
 clearness, and impelled them even against their 
 own desire to become the teachers and pilots of 
 their nation. "The lion hath roared, who will 
 not fear? the Lord Jehovah hath spoken, who 
 can but prophesy ? " (Amos iii. 8). 
 
 The imperative nature of this call is well 
 illustrated by the case of Moses. The Lord 
 appeared to him at the sanctuary of the burning 
 bush, and said : " Come now, and I will send 
 thee unto Pharaoh'' (Ex. iii. 10). The solitude 
 of the desert, however, has left a deep impression 
 on this young Hebrew. He now feels that there 
 are greater conflicts to be waged than the simple 
 contests of the fist. He has been led to measure 
 himself amid the unmeasured silences of the 
 desert, and the result has not been to add to the 
 complacency of his former self-confidence. He 
 who supposed that his brethren understood how 
 that God by his hand was giving them deliver- 
 ance (Acts vii. 25) would now have hung back 
 from the greatness of the undertaking, and 
 willingly have allowed another to go in his 
 stead (Ex. iv. 10 ; cf. Jer. i. 6 ; Isa. vi. 5). But 
 there is no setting aside the plain command of 
 
122 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Jehovah. " The Lord hath spoken, who can but 
 prophesy ? " " Who hath made man's mouth . . . 
 is it not I, the Lord ? I will be with thy mouth, 
 and teach thee what thou shalt speak." Or, as 
 He answered Jeremiah, " Say not, I am a child ; 
 for to whomsoever I shall send thee, thou shalt 
 go, and whatsoever I shall command thee, thou 
 shalt speak. . . . Behold, I have put My words 
 in thy mouth." It is said that John Knox burst 
 into tears at his first call to preach the Gospel, 
 and rushing from the Church resolved never to 
 enter the pulpit again. It is not in this way, 
 however, that history is made. The divine call 
 is peremptory. 
 
 " There's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough hew them how we will." 
 
 And that Power, not ourselves, we are bound 
 to obey (c/. Num. xxiv. 13 ; 1 Cor. ix. 16). The 
 servant is not above his Lord. And he who 
 quailed before his fellow-prisoners in the Church 
 of St. Andrews lived to confront an angry queen, 
 and say : " Out of the pulpit, few have occasion 
 to complain of me ; but there, I arn not my own 
 master, but am bound to obey Him who com- 
 mands me to speak plainly, and to flatter no 
 flesh on the face of the earth." 
 
 As to the psychological condition of the 
 prophet when he receives this divine call, it is 
 
Old Teatamient Prophecy 123 
 
 not easy to speak with certainty. We cannot 
 remind ourselves too frequently that revelation is 
 a spiritual process of which we know, and can 
 know little or nothing. It is an inspiration of the 
 soul which we can neither detect nor measure. 
 " Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
 tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth ; " so 
 is everyone that is "moved or borne along 
 {<f)ep6fjLevoi) by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. i. 21). 
 It is a much simpler matter to say what the 
 prophetic state is not than to specify what it is. 
 We cannot accept, for instance, the notion of 
 Philo, that the prophets received their revelations 
 in a condition of ecstasy or trance — a state in 
 which the self-consciousness is entirely held ia 
 a,beyance, and the human soul, like an unsullied 
 mirror, is fitted to receive impressions of divine 
 truth. No doubt cases do occur in Scripture 
 where the individual is subjugated by the power 
 of the Divine Spirit ; as when Saul, being seized 
 by the prophetic spirit, stripped off his clothes 
 and prophesied before Samuel, and lay down 
 naked all that day and all that night (1 Sam. 
 xix. 24). Cf. Virgil, VI., 47-49, where the Sibyl 
 seems to increase in stature under the divine 
 afflatus ; her bosom heaves and her heart swells 
 with the wild frenzy of inspiration. Even the 
 higher organs of the theocracy are not exempt 
 
124 Israel's Ideal 
 
 from some measure of this divine excitation ; as 
 when Ezekiel (i. 28), Daniel (viii. 17), or John 
 (Rev. i. 17) falls prostrate before the glory of the 
 Lord ; or one like Paul is caught up even to the 
 third heaven, where he hears words which it is 
 not lawful for a man to utter (2 Cor. xii. 2). It 
 does not follow, however, that these abnormal 
 conditions are coincident with the state of pro- 
 phetic revelation. The paralysing sense of the 
 supernatural is not meant to be permanent. It 
 is nothing more than the needful preparation for 
 the subsequent reception of the truth. The 
 moment the human soul is emptied of self, and 
 kneels abashed in the presence of the Eternal, the 
 command comes to it, as it came to Job, Ezekiel, 
 and John, " Arise, stand upon thy feet, and I will 
 speak with thee.'' God calls His servants to 
 dignified self-possession in His presence. It is not 
 His will that their intellectual self-command 
 should be overawed and annihilated by the 
 manifestation of His majesty. They are not like 
 snow crystals to be dissolved in the heat of the 
 sun, but rather like diamonds whose facets flash a 
 hundred sparkling rays when they are brought 
 into the light of the sunbeam. Instead of 
 absolute passivity as in a trance, there is every 
 evidence of the highest strained mental and 
 spiritual energy. They stand up with complete 
 
Old Teatcrnnent Prophecy 125 
 
 consciousness and perfect recollectedness to receive 
 the divine word. Gf. Num. xii. 6-8, where the 
 communication of spiritual truth in plain words is 
 placed far above dreams or visions as a method of 
 revelation. It may not be the whole truth to say 
 that "Revelation is only through the natural 
 activities of mind ; " for there is more than can be 
 accounted for by a mere natural development; 
 but if we assume that God is immanent in these 
 activities, and that through them He mediates His 
 revelation to the human spirit, we have all that 
 Scripture desiderates for a due appreciation of the 
 facts. And that this may be accepted as a fairly 
 just view of the prophetic state must be the con- 
 viction of most readers ; for inspiration is neither 
 infallibility nor abnormal miracle, nor the playing 
 of the Spirit of God upon the harp of man's being 
 as upon a passive instrument ; it is the inmost 
 harmony of the spirit of man with the Spirit of 
 God within the sphere of human limitations. 
 
 3. The Peophetic Calling 
 
 As a general proposition no objection need be 
 taken to the statement that the prophets, one and 
 all, stand in an intimate relation to the history 
 of their own times. Whatever bearing their 
 messages may have upon the remote future, they. 
 
126 Israel's Ideal 
 
 first and chief, are the moral and spiritual teachers 
 of their own age. They are no mere augurs or 
 monthly prognosticators of coming events, but 
 the patriotic statesmen, preachers, and guides of 
 their national and religious history. They are 
 not so much foretellers, as forthtellers — the men 
 who are commissioned of God to declare His will 
 for the spiritual instruction and guidance of His 
 covenant people. As Robertson Smith, however, 
 reminds us, the prophets were never patriots of 
 the ^ommon stamp, to whom the national interests 
 stand higher than the absolute claims of religion 
 and morality. Elijah, for instance, in his con- 
 troversy with the house of Ahab (1 Kings xix. 16 ; 
 xxi. 22); and Isaiah, in counselling submission 
 to the foreign yoke of Assyria — seen in his 
 opposition to an alliance with Egypt (xxxi. 1) — 
 and in his censure of Hezekiah for receiving the 
 ambassadors of Merodach-baladan (xxxix. 1) ; 
 were not blinded by the cheap optimism that 
 places patriotism above righteousness, and 
 sacrifices the eternal sanctions of morality to the 
 temporal interests of the State. The fall of the 
 house of Ahab might be a step in the downfall 
 of Israel ; and the position of being a mere vassal 
 to Assyria might be for Judah the ominous 
 beginning of the end ; but the things for which 
 the prophets contended were of far more value 
 
Old Testament Prophecy 127 
 
 than the national existence of any people, and it 
 is a " higher wisdom than that of patriotism which 
 insists that divine truth and civil righteousness 
 are more than all the counsels of statecraft." ^ 
 
 The prophets of the Lord are hoth patriots and 
 preachers; but they are also something more. 
 They are the inspired organs of divine revelation. 
 They are the heralds of new truth. They are 
 the interpreters of ever higher stages in the 
 unveiling of the divine purpose ; and their higher 
 tasks demanded a higher spiritual endowment — 
 a divine afflatus that enabled them to declare 
 God's will with a directness and authority which 
 we cannot claim. " They differed from Christian 
 ministers in this, that they not only expounded 
 the Law, and a revelation already given ; their 
 expositions were additional elements of the 
 revelation. They fertilised the religious life of 
 the nation with new thoughts, or nourished the 
 seeds of truth and the higher aspirations already 
 planted into fuller growth and fruitfulness." * 
 The genuine prophet is the Lord's exegete and 
 
 1 " Prophets of Israel," pp. 78, 209 ; c/. also M'Curdy's 
 "History, Prophecy, and the Monuments," Vol. I. p. 345. 
 "Their patriotism received its chief inspiration from the 
 thought that their people was the people of the living God ; 
 and even the outward preservation of Israel became to them 
 of less consequence than their fidelity to Jehovah." 
 
 2 A. B. D., " Old Testament Prophecy," pp. 107, 17. 
 
128 Israel's Ideal 
 
 mouthpiece ; for it is his to come forth from the 
 audience chamber of Jehovah, and say, with 
 respect to any new circumstances that may hare 
 arisen, " Thus saith the Lord." " Surely the Lord 
 God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret 
 unto His servants the prophets " (Amos iii. 7). 
 
 The derivation of t^il2, the Hebrew term for 
 prophet is much disputed, but generally it bears 
 out the present estimate of the prophet's high 
 function and calling. As distinguished from 
 nSlh or T\ir\, a seer (1 Sam. ix. 9) or one who is 
 "illuminated in the eyes of his heart" (Eph. 
 i. 18), the term Nabi introduces the idea of 
 a speaker or interpreter — one who, like the Greek 
 Hermes, is the messenger and spokesman of the 
 gods. The same root is found in the name Nebo, 
 the God of Eloquence, the Mercury of Babylonia. 
 As Nabi, one speaks God's word, announces God's 
 oracle, proclaims God's oath. He utters in the 
 ears of the covenant people a God-inspired 
 message (c/. Ex. vii. 1 ; iv. 16 ; Jer. i. 7-9 ; xv. 9). 
 If the seer may be likened to one who searches 
 into the mysteries of divine revelation, and tries 
 to discover the secret of truth wrapped up in 
 them, the term Nabi points to one who has been 
 successful in his search, one who has gazed on the 
 ineffable vision, and who now turns round as the 
 
Old Testament Prophecy 129 
 
 Lord's mouthpiece to speak to men what he has 
 seen and heard. The one goes into the holy 
 place and sees; the other comes out from the 
 inner sanctuary and declares. The seer and the 
 prophet together give us the divine unveiling. 
 The seeing and the speaking combined give us 
 God. 
 
 The message they bear is not always a light 
 thing to carry. It is often weighted with warn- 
 ing and doom. It is a heavy burden pressing 
 upon the soul (Mai. i. 1), a fire shut up in the 
 bones (Jer. xx. 9), fermenting wine in new wine- 
 skins (Job xxxii. 18-19) ; and willingly would the 
 messenger be relieved from the hardness and 
 thanklessness of his task. But the true prophet 
 dare not be a preacher of smooth things. This, 
 in Old Testament times, is the mark of a false 
 prophet (Jer. vi. 13-14) — the mark of men whose 
 one desire is to stand well with the people, and 
 whose one object is to secure an easy and luxurious 
 life. Standing on no higher ground than that 
 occupied by the mass of the people, they shared 
 their aspirations and approved their projects, 
 saying, " Peace, peace, where there is no peace." 
 Yet what saith the Lord by the prophet Ezekiel ? 
 The time will surely come when God will destroy 
 these refuges of lies. They have daubed the wall 
 with untempered mortar, and it shall not be able 
 
130 Israel's Ideal 
 
 to abide the whirlwind of His fury. It shall fall, 
 and they shall be consumed in the midst thereof, 
 even the prophets of Israel who have seduced My 
 people, saith the Lord (Ezek. xiii. 10-16). 
 
 The true prophets of Jehovah have a very 
 different mission. They are the watchmen whom 
 God has set on the city walls; and like Amos, 
 when he heard the thundering tread of Assyria 
 drawing near to judgment (iii. 11), they are able 
 to raise the alarm before it be too late (c/. iii. 6). 
 They stand on their watch tower, and their 
 spiritual vision pierces the darkness of the night, 
 and they are able to discern coming events before 
 the people can understand them. And such men 
 are the eyes of the nation and the pillars of the 
 State even yet. We all feel the safer by so much 
 as we know that there are amongst us men who 
 will not be silent in the presence of wrong, but 
 who will lift up a testimony in the name of 
 righteousness, though there be none to cheer 
 them with one word of encouragement. These in 
 any age are the watchmen whom God has set on 
 the city walls, and God Himself will reward 
 them. 
 
 They never proclaim, like the false prophets, 
 unconditional happiness and salvation. They 
 always condition these on moral and spiritual 
 reformation (Hos. xiv. 1). And in this we see 
 
Old Testa/ment Prophecy 131 
 
 the deep, ethical character of their calling. They 
 are likened to the refiner who has to separate 
 the dross from the precious metal. And this 
 separation can only be effected in one way — not 
 by preaching smooth things, but by demanding 
 on the part of the people a genuine repentance 
 and spiritual renewal : a rending of their hearts 
 and not their garments, a whole-hearted return 
 unto the Lord their God. 
 
 This, then, is the high vocation and function of 
 a prophet. He is a " seer," gazing intently into 
 profound, spiritual verities. He is a " pro pl^e t " 
 who speaks out fearlessly the message he has 
 received from Jehovah. He is a " maBLfiLGod " 
 (1 Kings xvii. 24) who is great in faith, but 
 specially great in intercession (Ex. xxxii. 31 ; 
 1 Sam. xii. 33 ; Isa. xxxvii. 2-4). And chiefly, he 
 is a " watchman " or sentinel on the city walls, 
 who receives and announces in the meekness of 
 faith the decrees and warnings of Jehovah. In 
 this large and deeply spiritual sense, who would 
 not echo the prayer of the ancient lawgiver, and 
 say, " Would God that all the Lord's people were 
 prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit 
 upon them." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE MESSIANIC FULFILMENT 
 
 Old Testament prophecy finds its efflorescence 
 and fruit in the doctrine of a Messiah — H'^ttto, 
 "annointed." It is not the whole truth to say 
 that the prophets were the statesmen, preachers, 
 and guides of their own tirbe ; they were men for 
 all time. They gave utterance to truths which 
 ran out like threads from the web of the present, 
 until, in the warp and woof of the latter days, they 
 helped to produce the fabric of a Messianic golden 
 age — the so-called Hebrew Utopia. True, their 
 prophecies were indissolubly connected with 
 history; but as Delitzsch reminds us, "History 
 supplies the occasion for prophecy, but not its 
 measure." Their messages were also pregnant 
 with the future — gravida Christi, as TertuUian 
 said of their law — and they are not to be inter- 
 preted as if they began and ended in themselves. 
 They are voices crying in the wilderness, " Prepare 
 ye the way of the Lord " — murmuring sea-shells 
 
 that are filled with the music of the sea. Both 
 132 
 
The Measiomic Fvlflment 133 
 
 web and threads must be frankly recognized. The 
 prediction no less than the history is to be care- 
 fully examined and appraised. To neglect the 
 history for the sake of the prediction, or to sacrifice 
 the prediction for the sake of the history, is about 
 equal in perverseness. Neither doctrinaire ortho- 
 doxy, nor anti-supematuralism does justice to 
 Old Testament prophecy. 
 
 1. The Messianic Predictions 
 
 On the assumption that Zech. ix.-xi. is pre-exilic, 
 Schultz speaks of a "trilogy" of Messianic 
 prophecy in the Assyrian period which is never 
 again equalled in after days. The historical 
 situation offered a suitable canvas for the painting 
 of such a picture. The dangers of the Assyrian 
 invasion, and a figure like that of Hezekiah, helped 
 to stamp upon the minds of the prophets the 
 importance of a powerful kingdom, and never 
 again were the lineaments of the ideal king so 
 firmly grasped and limned as in this classic age of 
 Old Testament prophecy. 
 
 The trilogy in question is as follows: — (1) The 
 prophecy of the king with the four names in 
 Isa. ix. 6, concerning which Robertson Smith has 
 said that in this last conception — the conception 
 of perpetual peace and everlasting dominion — we 
 
134 Israel's Ideal 
 
 meet for the first time with the idea of a personal 
 Messiah. (2) The announcement of Messiah's 
 birth and world-wide sovereignty in Micah. v. 2-5, 
 where a fresh scion of the house of David, whose 
 goings forth are from of old, triumphantly repels 
 the attacks of Assyria,- and stands and feeds his 
 flock like a shepherd in the plenitude of divine 
 power. (3) The picture of the Prince of Peace in 
 Zech. ix. 9, who comes like a second Solomon, 
 " lowly, riding upon an ass," not as a proud warrior, 
 but in the simplicity of ancient custom ; and yet, 
 "thy king," daughter of Zion. These three 
 passages are direct Messianic prophecies, exhibit- 
 ing a conscious reference in the prophet's own 
 mind to the greatness and glory of the latter days. 
 They are not to be regarded as containing a 
 double reference, like Calvin's view of the 
 Messianic Psalms; but without any intervening 
 type or figure whatever, they point explicitly to 
 the person of a coming Messiah. Not a few 
 would go a step further, and include in the present 
 Messianic list the allusions to Immanuel in 
 Isa. vii. 14; viii. 8 — the description being too 
 august to be limited to any unborn son of Ahaz, 
 or the prophet's own child, or even the child of no 
 one in particular.'^ " The language forces upon 
 
 1 See paper in Expository Times for August, 1894, by 
 A. B. Davidson. But cf. also " Sermons in Syntax," p. 90. 
 
The Messianic Fulfilment 135 
 
 us the conviction that the figure of Immanuel 
 is an ideal one. It is the Messianic king whose 
 portrait is here for the first time in the Old 
 Testament sketched distinctly." ^ 
 
 Albeit, when we come to August, 1895, and 
 read Professor Cheyne's " Introduction " to Smith's 
 ''Prophets of Israel," we find that so far as Micah 
 and Isaiah are concerned, the ground is "entirely 
 cut away from under our feet. The great 
 Messianic prophecy in Micah v. 2-5 does not 
 belong to the age of Hezekiah, and therefore could 
 not have been written by Micah, but — and this is 
 the only crumb of comfort left us — what is Micah's 
 apparent loss is another's clear gain. It helps " to 
 give definiteness to the thoughts of a period 
 which has been unduly depreciated" (p. xxvii.). 
 Then, with respect to Isaiah, it is added, on 
 p. xxxviii. that " the result of denying his author- 
 ship not only of xxxii. 1-8, but the justly admired 
 prophecy of the king with the four names, and of 
 the shoot from the stock of Jesse, involves nothing 
 less than the abandonment of Isaiah's claim to be 
 a preacher of the Messiah." Human nature, it is 
 admitted, would gladly clutch at straws, and hope 
 that this conclusion may be avoided. But "all 
 the comfort that I can offer is that though, so far 
 as the contents are concerned, the composition of 
 1 Driver, " Isaiah, his Life and Times," p. 42. 
 
136 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the prophecies (Isa. ix. 2-7 ; xi. 1-9) can most easily 
 be understood in the post-exilian age, yet the 
 phraseological data are not on the whole markedly 
 inconsistent with the authorship of Isaiah." 
 
 Now on reaching this result, there is no neces- 
 sity for the student losing his head, throwing up 
 his hands in despair, and imagining that every- 
 thing is lost. The matter is not just so serious as 
 that. It may readily occur to him that, apart 
 from the question of authorship altogether, these 
 prophecies were written hundreds of years before 
 the actual New Testament fulfilment; and are 
 therefore, even from the latest post-exilic date, 
 essentially Messianic predictions. What is 
 Micah's loss is unquestionably another's gain. If 
 Isaiah did not pen the " El Gibbor," mighty God, 
 a second, or, it may be, a fifth Isaiah most certainly 
 did so. And whether it was Shakespeare who 
 wrote these plays, or another man called Shake- 
 speare, the plays are written ; and they are not 
 of the nature of a vaticinvu/m ex eventu, but are 
 predictions in every sense of the term, and must 
 be read and interpreted accordingly. 
 
 This point being clearly fixed that the predictive 
 element is not seriously impaired whatever be the 
 date of composition, we may proceed dispassion- 
 ately to face the question whether Isaiah's claim 
 to be a preacher of the Messiah may not be 
 
The Messianic Fulfilment 137 
 
 sufficiently attested after all. Why must 
 that claim be abandoned? Not because the 
 phraseological data are markedly inconsistent 
 with the Isaianic authorship, but because, so far 
 as the contents are concerned, the composition of 
 Isa. ix. 2-7 and xi. 1-9 can most easily be under- 
 stood in the post-exilic age. But what are the 
 contents? They are partly history and partly 
 prediction. The prophecies are firmly rooted in 
 a historical situation ; and they point forward to 
 a coming Davidic king in the era of Israel's 
 restoration. Yet in neither of these respects are 
 the contents conclusive for a post-exilic date. The 
 overthrow of the Assyrian oppressor, and therefore 
 something quite within the Isaianic horizon, 
 supplies a suitable enough historical situation ; ^ 
 and we refuse to believe, with respect to the 
 element of prediction, that a great leader, like 
 Isaiah — " the first man in Judah " — could not have 
 been fired with the highest Messianic ideals — 
 ideals that were simply the sequel to his trans- 
 cendent faith and hope. 
 
 The figure of a personal Messiah must have 
 come in somewhere during the growth of Old 
 Testament religion ; for it cannot be disputed 
 that long before the advent of Christ, the Jewish 
 nation was inoculated through and through with 
 
 ' So Robertson Smith, Driver, Davidson, and Schultz. 
 
138 Israel's Ideal 
 
 this grand spiritual conception. Even a degraded 
 woman by the well of Jacob could say, " I know 
 that Messias cometh." But why leave the high 
 table-lands of prophecy in the Assyrian period to 
 seek on the lower levels of any post-exilic age the 
 initial inception and development of the Messianic 
 ideal ? Was even the greatness of a Maccabean 
 era equal to the task of rivalling, far less surpass- 
 ing, the spiritual insight and lofty idealism of the 
 prophet Isaiah ? Professor Cheyne does not 
 deny that Isaiah's imagination was sometimes 
 open to idealistic pictures ; but he thinks that 
 he " rigorously restrained his idealism " — a state- 
 ment which may be true enough within certain 
 limits, but one that does not carry with it the 
 further contention that the idealism was never 
 exercised at all. The playful sarcasm of the 
 following passage is not a whit too strong : — " What 
 a glorious view the Maccabean age presents to our 
 admiring eyes ! How rich the period was in 
 literature ! The great writers of the Psalter have 
 shown us how every skirmish of the day had its 
 poet, and how every rise and fall in the spirits of 
 the little army have been photographed in 
 the Psalms which we sing. And now Prof. 
 Duhm (in relegating twelve or fourteen chapters 
 of the first half of Isaiah to the Maccabean age) 
 draws the curtain aside and exhibits a company of 
 
The Messianic Fulfilment 139 
 
 prophets no less numerous than the poets we knew 
 before. But why, then, should the people be so 
 often represented in the Book of Maccabees as 
 complaining and lamenting that they have no 
 prophet ?"i 
 
 The supposition is incredible. The intellectual 
 superiority of the prophets themselves, the great- 
 ness of their spiritual endowments, the fact that 
 a point must be found somewhere for the inception 
 of the Messianic ideal, and the admitted truth 
 that Isaiah's imagination, at any rate, was not at 
 all times closed to idealistic pictures — all this 
 constrains us to leave the Messianic predictions 
 where we have found them, and to regard Isaiah, 
 as also Micah and Zechariah (ix.-xi.) — the trilogy 
 mentioned by Schultz — as pre-eminently the 
 teachers and preachers of a personal Messiah. 
 
 2. The Messianic King 
 
 Messianism we have already described as the 
 efflorescence of Old Testament prophecy. This 
 does not mean, however, that Messianic hopes in 
 general originated in the eighth century B.C. No 
 doubt the low estate to which the Davidic king- 
 dom had then fallen was the external occasion for 
 directing the prophetic glance the more vividly to 
 * A. B. D., in Critical Seoiew, Jan., 1893. 
 
140 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the future ; but it is by no means true that the 
 contemplation of this contrast begat the idea or 
 image of the Messiah. Messianic views belonged, 
 in a certain sense, to the very essence of this 
 religion. Their God was the God of heaven and 
 earth, and His salvation must ultimately be 
 extended to all nations. And thus a belief in the 
 victory of Jehovah's people — i.e., the Messianic 
 idea in its widest sense — is part and parcel of 
 Israel's faith. Before the ideal of a Messianic 
 king, we have the existence of a Messianic 
 people. In this sense we may go back, even 
 to the Protevangelium of Gen. iii. 15, and 
 find in the promise of a seed to bruise the 
 serpent's head, the first grand glimpse of a 
 future Messianic victory — the moral triumph of 
 the higher nature of man over the sensuous and the 
 selfish. It is this promise of a seed that furnishes 
 the clue to the subsequent unfolding of the 
 doctrine. The seed of the woman, which may 
 mean the whole human race, is gradually narrowed 
 in scope and application, until, on the horizon of 
 the eighth century prophets, it is focussed into 
 the portrait of an ideal Messianic king. The race 
 gives place to the nation (Gen. xii. 2; xiii. 15), the 
 nation is followed by the family (2 Sam. vii. 12), 
 and the family, in turn, is idealised in an indi- 
 vidual. Both the sceptre of Judah (Gen. xlix. 10) 
 
The Messianic Fulfilment 141 
 
 and the star of Jacob (Num. xxiv. 17) are taken 
 up and developed in the Davidic kingdom. The 
 whole nation is seen to be prophetic. The prophet, 
 priest, and king are "men of portent." Moses, 
 Aaron, but especially David, are typical of the 
 latter days. " David is the third and by far the 
 most important type of the Consummator." ^ 
 
 The form of the idea, however, even within the 
 range of the Davidic kingdom, is largely deter- 
 mined by history. In Amos and Hosea, for 
 instance — the two prophets who prophesied in the 
 northern kingdom — it is the house of David, 
 rather than the figure of the king, that is placed 
 well in the foreground. Doubtless, the sad con- 
 trast between the two kingdoms, accenuated, as 
 it was, by the wild dynastic confusion of Ephraim, 
 is a sufficient explanation of this fact (Amos ix. 11; 
 Hos. xi. 12). Isaiah and Micah, on the contrary, 
 behold the figure of a glorious personality pro- 
 jected on the shifting screen of the future — an 
 illustrious ruler who smites the earth with the 
 rod of his mouth, and wins for his people imperish- 
 able glory and everlasting dominion. Probably, 
 as already suggested, the hopes centred on 
 Hezekiah himself as the successor of the profligate 
 Ahaz, and the consciousness that something must 
 be done to cast oflf the hated yoke of Assyria, 
 > Schultz, Vol. n. p. 353. 
 
14)2 Israel's Ideal 
 
 encouraged the formation of such thoughts, and 
 generated the conception of this bold Messianic 
 ideal. Afterwards, when Jeremiah and Ezekiel 
 came to deal with the folly and doom of Jerusalem, 
 it is the moral degeneration of the people, rather 
 than the ideal greatness of the king, that absorbs 
 all their interest, and evokes all their energy. 
 Righteousness and worth are now the main 
 features of the Messianic character ; for it is the 
 lack of these on the part of Israel that has over- 
 whelmed the nation in such dire disaster. The 
 same sacred title, " the Lord our righteousness" 
 is successively applied to both (Jer. xxiii. 6 ; 
 xxxiii. 16); for the Messianic splendour of the 
 one is allowed to pale before the clamant needs 
 of the other, until, in the period of the Exile, as 
 represented by the second half of Isaiah, the 
 figure of the king passes almost entirely into the 
 background, and gives place to that profoundest 
 of all the Old Testament types — the suflfering 
 servant of the Lord. 
 
 The anointing of the Messianic king is fully 
 described in Isa. xi. 2-5. If the latter part of ver. 4 
 bad stood alone — "He shall smite the earth with the 
 rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips 
 shall he slay the wicked," — we might have imagined 
 that we were reading the inscription of some 
 Ramman-nirari, "the destroyer of all enemies 
 
The Messianic Fulfilment 143 
 
 above and below . . . the trampler and sweeper- 
 away of armies." But Isaiah's picture of the 
 David king is quite different. " The spirit of the 
 Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and 
 understanding" — and this stamps at once the 
 moral character of his rule and the essential 
 spirituality of his kingdom. As Schultz has so 
 finely expressed it, there is mention here not of 
 seven spirits, but of one spirit, the working of 
 which is described in three double expressions. 
 "This spirit works in the Messiah (1) as the 
 spirit of wisdom and knowledge — i.e., of religious 
 and moral intelligence, and of spiritual clearness 
 of perception ; (2) as the spirit of a wise and brave 
 ruler ; (3) as the spirit of religious knowledge, and 
 ,of pious devotion to God. Thus He is perfect 
 alike as Sage, King, and Saint." ^ In fine, the 
 Messiah is a King, but a King that rules in 
 righteousness. The anointing He has received is 
 the chrism of a spiritual consecration. He shall 
 not judge after the sight of the eyes, neither 
 reprove after the hearing of the ears; for he is 
 endowed with the spirit and fear of the Lord, and 
 righteousness shaU be the girdle of his reins. 
 This is the first of all the Messianic functions — 
 the Messiah is anointed to reign. 
 1 Vol. n. p. 405. 
 
144 Israel's Ideal 
 
 3. Prophetical and Priestly Functions 
 
 Kingship is the greatest of the Messianic func- 
 tions, but prophecy and priesthood stand by to help 
 and to consecrate. With a slight variation of the 
 phrase used in Zech. iv. 14, these may be 
 regarded as " the two sons of oil " that stand by 
 the Lord of the whole earth. The Messianic king 
 is so filled with the Spirit of the Lord that he 
 absorbs into himself both figures — the figure of 
 the prophet (Isa. xi. 2 ; cf. Ixi. 1), and, as in the 
 priestly figure of Melchizedek (Ps. ex.), the figure 
 also of the priest (Jer. xxx. 21 ; Zech. iii. 8 ; vi. 13). 
 In other words, prophecy and priesthood, like a 
 second Moses and Aaron, come in to complete the 
 glory of the Messianic kingdom. The King is 
 anointed both to preach and to serve. Grace is 
 poured into his lips, and God, his God, hath 
 anointed him with the oil of gladness above his 
 fellows. 
 
 Deut. xviii, 18 has already assured us that a 
 prophet, like unto Moses, would never be awant- 
 ing to God's covenant people. And while, 
 in view of the context (vers. 14, 20), this 
 promise must be understood primarily of the 
 prophetical order, it is also sufficiently idealistic 
 to justify the confidence of later times, that in the 
 era of Israel's redemption, the prophet, like unto 
 
The Messianic FvlfiJ/ment 145 
 
 Moses, would certainly appear (John i. 21). It is 
 
 especially in Isa. xl.-lxvi., however, that the figure 
 
 of the prophet is given the utmost prominence. 
 
 Israel the prophetic people, or rather the faithful 
 
 nucleus of the people, is idealised into a 
 
 personal being who exclaims, " The spirit of the 
 
 Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath 
 
 anointed me to preach good tidings unto the 
 
 meek ... to give them a garland for ashes, the 
 
 oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for 
 
 the spirit of heaviness." And if the King of 
 
 the future is to absorb into Himself the spiritual 
 
 endowments of the prophet, He must come forward 
 
 in the age of fulfilment and satisfy a great, 
 
 spiritual conception like that. He must be at 
 
 once a prophet, like unto Moses the leader and 
 
 lawgiver of the people, and the God-inspired 
 
 preacher and bringer of an evangel to the poor 
 
 (Luke iv. 18). 
 
 What Deut. xviii. 18 does for prophecy, 
 
 passages like Ex. xxix. 9 ; xl. 15 do for priesthood. 
 
 It is secured to Aaron and his sons by a " perpetual 
 
 statute." It is established throughout their 
 
 generations as an "everlasting priesthood." 
 
 Hence the ministration of the priest, no less than 
 
 the preaching of the prophet, is represented by 
 
 Jer. xxxiii. 18-22 as passing over into the final 
 
 era. To find an epoch, however, that gives 
 10 
 
146 Israel's Ideal 
 
 prominence to the figure of the priest, at all 
 analagous to that of the prophet in Deutero- 
 Isaiah, we must turn to the history of the second 
 temple. There, as already seen in Haggai and 
 Zechariah, the figure of Joshua, the high priest, is 
 as prominent as that of Zerubbabel (Haggai i. 1 ; 
 Zech. iii. 1 ; vi. 11). Joshua himself is a sign of 
 the coming "Branch" (Zech. iii. 8) — a typical 
 man who, with the crowns of silver and gold upon 
 his head (vi. 11-13), foreshadows the royal and 
 priestly functions of the Davidic king. Hence, 
 if the coming Messiah is to absorb both functions 
 alike. He must appear in the latter days, not 
 simply as the mouthpiece of God, but as the 
 advocate and representative of man ; a prophet 
 and lawgiver like unto Moses, but also a priest 
 for ever after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. vii. 
 17). And the fulfilment of all this in Jesus of 
 Nazareth is obvious. This is another part of His 
 Messianic anointing. He is at once a King, a 
 prophet, and a priest. The Messiah is anointed 
 to reign, to preach, and to serve. 
 
 4. The Function of Suffering 
 
 This is the profoundest of all the figures, and 
 the most subduing of all the functions, the 
 Servant of the Lord is anointed to suffer. 
 
The Messianic Fulfilment 147 
 
 " God did anoint thee with. His odorous oil 
 To wrestle, not to reign." 
 
 But who is the Servant of the Lord, so firmly 
 grasped and delineated by Deutero-Isaiah ? Cf. 
 chaps, xlii. 1 ; xliv. 1 ; xlix. 3, and especially 
 lii. 13-liii. 12. Even a cursory reading of these 
 passages is enough to show that the conception 
 of the " Servant " is not single but complex. It 
 has been likened by Delitzsch to the proportions 
 of a pyramid. Its lowest base is collective Israel, 
 its middle part is Israel according to the spirit, 
 its apex the person of the Messiah. In other 
 words, the Servant of the Lord is, at first, identi- 
 fied with Israel as such ; then, when Israel proves 
 unfaithful to her calling, it is restricted to the 
 faithful nucleus that remains loyal to God even 
 amid the sufferings of the Exile; until, to the 
 founders of the New Testament Church, if not to 
 the great prophetical author of Isa. liii., the whole 
 conception is elevated and transmuted into one 
 glorious personality — God's righteous Servant 
 who, by His knowledge, justifies many and bears 
 their iniquities. " It cannot be doubted that, as 
 Christendom from the beginning has seen, the 
 character thus delineated by the prophet with 
 such genius and power was realized in Jesus of 
 Nazareth." ^ 
 
 1 Driver, " Isaiah, His Life and Times,'' p. 180. Whether 
 
148 Israel's Ideal 
 
 "What, on the other hand, is the significance of 
 His suffering ? He did no violence, neither was 
 any deceit in His mouth ; what, in view of 
 such innocency and patience, is the meaning of 
 His pain ? " No biologist has as yet attempted to 
 explain the science of pain."^ The science of 
 pain! the pain, especially, of God's suffering 
 servants ! that, alas ! is not to be explained by any 
 science, not certainly by the law of the survival of 
 the fittest ; it must be lifted up into the sphere of 
 vicarious self-surrender and interpreted as the 
 suffering of the best. Josiah, for instance, a king 
 after God's own heart, is trampled underfoot of 
 the stranger (2 Chron. xxxv. 23-27). Job, in 
 spite of his innocency, is overwhelmed with 
 innumerable woes. Jeremiah, the weeping 
 prophet, is subjected to such obloquy that he 
 becomes a prototype of Him who was the 
 Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. While 
 Israel, the faithful remnant, is carried away into 
 captivity, not because of its own sins, but because, 
 
 the prophet himself was able to grasp this truth, and to 
 catch a glimpse of the very apex of the pyramid rising above 
 the storm-clouds of the Exile, may very reasonably be 
 doubted. Though, even in that case, the view of the human 
 author does not exhaust the subject. See under 
 " Christology,'' p. 166. Also a suggestive notice of Dr. 
 Driver's book by A. B. Davidson in the Theological Semew, 
 Vol. II. 337. 
 
 ^ Peyton's " Memorabilia of Jesus." 
 
The Meaeianic Fulfilment 149 
 
 in the inscrutable wisdom of Jehovah, it is decreed 
 that out of the sufferings of the righteous the 
 redemption of the world is to spring. In these 
 various instances the lesson is being taught that 
 suffering may come upon an individual or a 
 community, not because of their own iniquities, 
 but because of their closer relationship to God. 
 The dictum of Zophar, the Naamathite, notwith- 
 standing, the measure of a man's suffering, is not 
 always the measure of his sin ; it is sometimes 
 the token of his sanctity. " For thy sake we are 
 killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep 
 for the slaughter." 
 
 Such suffering is vicarious; it is endured in 
 behalf of others. The servant of God, it is said, 
 is never fully equipped for his work until he has 
 received a baptism of fire. He learns lessons in 
 the furnace of affliction, he could never have 
 learnt anywhere else. But may not these lessons 
 be acquired at the couch of another ? He sits 
 and gazes at the altar fire which is slowly con- 
 suming the sacrifice of one he loves ; and he 
 quails and trembles not because the agony of 
 pain is piercing his own flesh, but because 
 the fiery tongue is licking up the life-blood of 
 the other. The wrestling of the latter is teach- 
 ing him how to wrestle. The baptism of fire is 
 vicarious. 
 
150 Israel's Ideal 
 
 " God did anoint thee with His odorous oil 
 To wrestle, not to reign : and He assigns 
 All thy tears over, like pure crystallines 
 Por younger fellow- workers of the soil 
 To wear for amulets. So others shall 
 Take patience, labour to their heart and hands 
 From thy hands, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer, 
 And God's grace fructify through thee to all." i 
 
 Hence suffering is not, and cannot be, the last 
 word, even in the school of the Exile. It melts into 
 the promise of an exceeding great reward. " He 
 shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and 
 the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." 
 The picture of the Suffering Servant shades off 
 into the splendour of the Messianic King. " There- 
 fore will I divide him a portion with the great, 
 and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; " 
 for the Suffering Servant in all ages is anointed 
 to reign. And how luminous all this becomes 
 when read in the light of the New Testament 
 fulfilment! The Man of Sorrows was anointed 
 to reign even in this world. His cross became 
 His throne. Did ever earthly conqueror possess 
 an empire like His? Did Alexander, or Caesar, 
 or the little Corsican wield a sceptre like that of 
 the lowly Nazarene ? No, His cross is exerting 
 an influence that all the armaments of war never 
 possessed. And the explanation is not far to seek. 
 
 I E. B. Browning. 
 
The Messianic FvZJUment 151 
 
 He conquers by stooping ; He rules by love. 
 Both in His work and in His suffering, He is 
 anointed to reign. " I, if I be lifted up from the 
 earth, will draw all men to Me." His humility 
 is the measure of His dignity. 
 
 " So be it, Lord : Thy throne shall never. 
 Like earth's proud empires pass away. 
 But stand, and rule, and grow for ever. 
 Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT CONTRIBUTION TO 
 CHEISTOLOGY ^ 
 
 The New Testament doctrine of the Son is 
 sufficiently well marked. St. John, who saw 
 more and heard more, but spake less than all the 
 other disciples, gives it the utmost prominence in 
 his teaching. " In the beginning was the Word, 
 and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God." As in Gen. i. 1 he plants his foot "in 
 the beginning," just at the point where the 
 heaven and earth are about to commence. But 
 instead of travelling down the stream of history, 
 as the ancient historian had done, he soars away 
 upward and backward into eternity to seek the 
 absolute and eternal Word who created both. 
 Before he thinks of either creation or time, he 
 longs to gaze for a moment on the ineffable glory 
 of the Godhead. And what does the Apostle find 
 in that vast and infinite past ? Not simply the 
 
 I- A. B. Davidson has even spoken of the vague " Christ- 
 ology of heathenism," "Biblical Essays," p. 11. 
 152 
 
Old Testcument Contribution to Christology 153 
 
 great I Am, but Another whom he describes as 
 the Word. Not the absolute God alone, dwelling 
 alone and unapproachable, but a Second who 
 could justly say in the language of divine wisdom, 
 " I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before 
 Him." And as the New Testament seer gazes 
 upon this vision of the ever-living Word, he gives 
 expression to these three truths regarding Him: — 
 (1) that He is eternal ; (2) that He is personal ; 
 (3) that He is one with God. This is the New 
 Testament doctrine of Christology. The creative 
 Word is the Only Begotten of the Father — the 
 very impress of His substance — God of very God. 
 
 " Can a mere man do this ? 
 Yet Christ saith, this He lived and died to do. 
 Call Christ, then, the illimitable God." > 
 
 But is there any trace of this in the sphere of 
 Old Testament theology? The purpose of the 
 present chapter is to make inquiry. 
 
 1. The Angel of the Lord 
 
 Old Testament Angelology may be considered 
 from a twofold point of view, according as it is 
 approached from the side of Semitic heathenism, 
 or from the higher plane of ethical monotheism. 
 The one is a natural, the other a supernatural 
 development ; and as the two strands are not 
 1 Browning, "A Death in the Desert." 
 
154 Israel's Ideal 
 
 always easy to untwine, their ultimate bearing on 
 the growth of Hebrew religion is not so simple as 
 it looks. 
 
 Viewed from the standpoint of a purely natural 
 development, we may think of angelic beings as 
 the degraded gods of ancient Semitic monolatry. 
 They are the tribal deities of antique religion, 
 who have shrivelled up, in the course of centuries, 
 into subordinate heavenly existences. When the 
 various tribes were fused together, so as to produce 
 the nation, and the different local divinities lost 
 their identity in one national god, the latter were 
 not annihilated by this centralising and unifying 
 process, but remained within the same circle of 
 existence to which the divine being belongs ; not, 
 indeed, as rival gods in an ever-growing pantheon, 
 but as mere attendants and ministers in a heavenly 
 court — the B'ne Elohim, or " Sons of God," who 
 form the council of Jehovah (Job i. 6 ; xxxviii. 7). 
 Probably, it is to these subordinate members of the 
 divine assembly that the well-known expressions 
 are to be referred, " Let us make man," " Let us go 
 down and confound their language," " Who will 
 go for us ? " (Gen. i. 26 ; iii. 22 ; xi. 7 ; Isa. vi. 8). 
 These passages are to be explained by the natural 
 expansion of early Semitic idiom that, while the 
 nature-spirits of antique religion had been subor- 
 dinated under one national deity, they were still 
 
Old Testa/ment Contribution to Ghristology 155 
 
 conceived as superhuman existences, or "beings 
 oftheElohimkind."! 
 
 It is not along this line, however, of a purely 
 natural development that any suggestion of an 
 ultimate doctrine of Ghristology is to be derived. 
 It may have furnished one of the elements which 
 was afterwards worked into the doctrine of 
 angelology ; but it is doubtful whether the earlier 
 forms of this belief had any close or vital 
 connection with these B'ne Elohim at all. One 
 fact is sufficient to show how precarious this 
 connection is. Old Testament angelology is very 
 little developed in the earliest records. It is only 
 in post-exilic literature that we find the angels 
 represented as having special names and arranged 
 according to their ranks, as Michael and Gabriel 
 in the Book of Daniel. Would this have been 
 the case if the angels of the Old Testament had 
 been regarded as the attenuated deities of a 
 primitive monolatry? Would not the tendency 
 have been all the other way — not a growing 
 clearness in definition as the monotheistic faith 
 advanced, but a gradual fading into uncertainty of 
 outline as the Semitic conceptions receded into 
 the past ? It is nowhere stated in the Old Testa- 
 ment that the " Sons of God " and the angels are 
 to be identified ; and therefore, instead of 
 " " Religion of the Semites," p. 445. 
 
156 Israel's Ideal 
 
 approaching the doctrine in question from the 
 side of Semitic heathenism, one is on much firmer 
 ground if he turns to the conception of the Mal'ach 
 Yahweh — the Angel of the Lord, and view it in 
 the light of ethical monotheism. All other angels 
 are closely connected with this Mal'ach, " forming, 
 as it were, many fainter copies of him." ^ 
 
 Who, then, is the Angel of the Lord ? The 
 main passages are Gen. xvi. 7'; xxi. 17 ; xxii. 11-15 ; 
 xxxi. 11-13 ; Ex. iii. 2 ; Judges ii. 1-4 ; vi. 11-24 ; 
 xiii. 3-22 ; with the narrative of the three men 
 who visited Abraham in Gen. xviii., the story of 
 Jacob's wrestling in xxxii. 24, and the incident 
 described in Joshua v. 14, where the captain of 
 the Lord's host appears to Joshua, armed as a 
 man of war. In all these passages we have some- 
 thing more than a subordinated being of the 
 Elohim kind. We have one whose appearance 
 and speech are represented as equivalent to the 
 appearance and speech of Jehovah. We have a 
 theophany. "The Angel of the Lord found 
 Hagar by a fountain of water in the wilderness 
 . . . and I she called the name of l^the Lord that 
 spake unto her. Thou God seest me." " And the 
 Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame 
 of fire out of the midst of a bush . . . and Moses 
 hid his face ; for he was afraid to look upon Ood." 
 1 Oehler's "Old Testament Theology," I. 197. 
 
Old TeBtament Gontribution to Ghristology 157 
 
 So marked, indeed, is this feature in the 
 representation that many of the Greek fathers and 
 Lutherans saw in this Angel of the Lord the 
 personal Logos Himself They found in these 
 early narratives the ripest New Testament Ghrist- 
 ology. But theone fatal objection to thisassumption 
 is, that while the later Judaism finds completed 
 dogmas in the Old Testament, as Mohammedanism 
 does in the Koran, the element of growth desider- 
 ated by biblical theology renders such a contention 
 untenable. The acorn may be here, the germinal 
 principle which may yet bear abundant fruit in the 
 future ; but the oak itself is still a thing to come, the 
 time of blossom and fruit belongs to Christianity. 
 Two divergent views of the Mal'ach Yahweh 
 have been put forward by expositors ; but neither 
 of them seems to do justice to the fulness of the 
 delineation. (1) The Angel of the Lord is a 
 finite spirit under subjection to God, and when 
 he speaks and acts as Jehovah, he does so as His 
 representative ; cf. Acts xii. 7, 17, where we find the 
 act of an angel of the Lord represented as an act 
 of the Lord Himself. But does not this trench 
 on the error already alluded to, of reading the New 
 Testament doctrine into Old Testament theo- 
 logy? And is not the expression " the Angel of 
 the Lord" quite different from the phraseology 
 of St. Luke ? (2) The Mal'ach in question is not 
 
158 Israel's Ideal 
 
 anything substantial or hypostatical, but only an 
 unsubstantial appearance of Jehovah Himself — 
 a momentary descent of God into visibility, which 
 again returns into the divine being. But the 
 three men who visit Abraham by the oaks of 
 Mamre ; the angel who wrestles with Jacob until 
 the breaking of the day, and the captain of the 
 Lord's host who appears to Joshua with a drawn 
 sword in his hand, are not so unsubstantial and 
 visionary as this view tries to make out. Besides, 
 if all that is meant be a momentary manifesta- 
 tion of Jehovah, why should the writers go out 
 of their way to call it an "angel" or a thing 
 sent ? There is no sending in the matter. We 
 have simply an unveiling of God Himself; 
 and as such it should be described, not as a 
 Mal'ach, a messenger, or even as a message, but 
 solely as an appearance or manifestation of God — 
 a theophany. 
 
 Oehler concludes that the doctrine of the 
 Mal'ach Yahweh "vacillates so much between 
 a modalistic and a hypostatic conception, that 
 it seems impossible to bring the matter to a 
 definite intelligible expression." All we can say 
 is that, in the Angel of the Lord, a beginning is 
 made towards the doing away of the separation 
 between God and the world. So that we may 
 rest, finally, in the equally well-weighed words 
 
Old Testament Gontrihution to Christology 159 
 
 of Schultz, that "there is undoubtedly in the 
 Angel of God sonaething of that which Christian 
 theology means to express by the doctrine of the 
 Logos. Only the self-revealing life of God is 
 not yet human, nor does it yet exist as a per- 
 manent, personal life." ^ 
 
 2. The Divine Wisdom 
 
 Old Testament wisdom has sometimes been 
 described as "the philosophy of the Hebrews." 
 It is the nearest approximation within the 
 biblical writings to the wisdom or philosophy 
 of ancient Greece : " The Greeks seek after 
 wisdom." Her sages pored long and earnestly 
 over the problems of human existence. They 
 sought to discover the laws that operate in the 
 physical world, and to lay bare the springs of 
 conduct that regulate the different forms of 
 society ; and so comprehensive and penetrating 
 were they in their method of research, that their 
 labours will ever be cited as the source of philo- 
 sophical speculation, and their investigations, 
 both in physics and ethics, be accepted as one 
 of the feeding-springs of modem thought. Old 
 Testament wisdom, however, is essentially differ- 
 ent from Greek philosophy. It dififers both in 
 
 1 "Old Testament Theology," "Vol. U. 223. 
 
160 Israel's Ideal 
 
 standpoint and in method. It assumes, at the 
 outset, what is really the august conclusion of 
 philosophical investigation, the presence and 
 activity of a personal God, or the existence of 
 the Supernatural. The object of Greek philosophy 
 was " to observe the streams of tendency, and, by 
 following them up against the current, to reach 
 the one source which sent them all forth. Thus 
 to name God was its latest achievement. . . . But 
 the problem of the Hebrew wisdom was quite 
 different. It started with this analysis already 
 effected. . . . The efforts of the wise man were 
 not directed towards the discovery of God whom 
 he did not know ; what occupied him everywhere 
 was the recognition of a God whom he knew." ^ 
 Hence, when the patriarch — in that crowning 
 argument of the Book of Job (xxxviii.-xli.) — was 
 taken out to nature, that he might contemplate 
 the works of God in that panorama of natural 
 objects which passed before his eyes, it was not 
 to prove, either from causality or design, the 
 Being and activity of a personal God, but to 
 suggest a medium of revelation between the 
 divine and the human, and to furnish, not 
 a proof of God's existence, but a means of grace, 
 a sacrament. In fine, the conclusion of Ruskin 
 was more than justified, that the universe was 
 1 A. B. D., " Biblical and Literary Essays," p. 30. 
 
Old Testament Contribution to Christology 161 
 
 not a mirror that reflected to proud self-love 
 
 her own intelligence. It was a mirror that 
 
 reflected to the devout soul the attributes of 
 
 God. 
 
 The existence of a personal God being thus 
 
 postulated, two other correlated facts immediately 
 
 followed. Israel was at once the possessor of a 
 
 divine revelation, and the custodian of a divine 
 
 law. There was, on the one side, the series of 
 
 gracious deeds by which they had been shaped 
 
 into a nation ; and on the other, the promulgation 
 
 and acceptance of the ten words by which their 
 
 covenant-relationship with Jehovah had been 
 
 solemnly framed and ratified. These two facts 
 
 were neither argued nor questioned. They were 
 
 accepted as they stood ; and the problem of the 
 
 Hebrew wisdom was not to prove their veracity 
 
 or historicity, but to try, in the light of their 
 
 admitted teaching, to interpret the way of God 
 
 in the government of the world, and to expound 
 
 the true character of human duty. In a word, 
 
 given these three foundation truths — a God, a 
 
 revelation, and a law — what is the right view of 
 
 the world around us, and what is the summum 
 
 bonum of human life? The Hebrew sage 
 
 believed that he had got the answer to both 
 
 questions when he was able to lay his finger on 
 
 the doctrine of the divine wisdom. Wisdom, 
 11 
 
162 Israel's Ideal 
 
 divine and human, must be the ruling principle 
 in both realms. It has been written large over 
 the external universe, and it ought to be written 
 large upon the fleshly tablets of the heart. In 
 short, Old Testament wisdom is both objective 
 and subjective. It is the plan of God everywhere 
 exhibited in the natural world ; and it may be 
 the regulating principle in each individual life. 
 " The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and 
 the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." 
 With respect to the objective wisdom of God 
 depicted in the world, the classical passage is 
 Prov. viii. 22-31. Wisdom is there personified 
 and made to speak like soi;ne second person in 
 the Godhead. "The Lord brought me forth as 
 the beginning of His way . . . then I was by 
 Him, as a master workman : and I was daily His 
 delight, rejoicing always before Him." Schultz 
 has emphasised the " free, poetic fashion " of this 
 representation, and warns us that the various 
 expressions are not to be taken too literally. But 
 he himself is not convinced as to the extent of 
 this reservation, and what he seems to withdraw 
 with the one hand, he amply restores with the 
 other. The Eastern mind, especially, is very 
 intuitional, and " passes much more readily from 
 a poetic picture to the actual idea of an 
 independent personal existence than a Western 
 
Old Testament Contribution to Ghristology 163 
 
 thinker does." So that Oehler's conclusion, on 
 this particular point, may be accepted as a 
 sufficient approximation to the truth, that " even 
 when full justice is done to the poetical element 
 in the personification, wisdom is no longer regarded 
 as a mere attribute of God, but as that creative, 
 arranging, and energising thought of the world 
 which proceeds from God and is objective even to 
 Himself." The divine may be illustrated by the 
 human. Just as the artist puts a great deal of 
 himself into his pictures, or the author a great deal 
 of himself into his writings, so the Great Artificer 
 stamped upon the material universe a distinct 
 impression of His own thought and character. 
 He impressed upon the work of His hands an 
 image or reflection of Himself This original 
 divine plan was then gradually filled up and 
 charged with meaning. Each line and curve in 
 the building bore the impress of divine thoughts. 
 A divine intelligence beamed forth from every 
 column and capital, until over against the divine 
 worker, like one personality over against another, 
 He beheld the world's plan reflected, embodied, 
 personified, and made objective to Himself — a 
 world's plan, however, which is not a mere 
 thought or purpose, but a powerful and divine 
 efficiency. 
 
 Little marvel if, in every age,Christian expositors 
 
164 Israel's Ideal 
 
 have found in this passage a distinct echo of the 
 subsequent idea of God's eternal word. It is a 
 loftier conception in every way than the doctrine 
 of the Mal'ach Yahweh. If the latter be the first 
 movement of a personal God downwards — a 
 momentary descent of God into human relati6ns 
 — the former, like the New Testament seer, soars 
 away upwards and backwards into eternity to 
 depict the first movement of the Eternal Mind 
 outwards, when, as the first impulse towards self- 
 realisation, the activity of the divine wisdom 
 becomes an objective reality. 
 
 The Lord brought me forth as the beginning of His way, 
 The first of His works of old (ver. 22). 
 
 " This remarkable conception is the contribution 
 which the literature of the Wisdom furnishes to 
 the Christology of the Old Testament." ^ In this 
 chapter the philosopher becomes the prophet. 
 He is lifted above himself by the Spirit of 
 Revelation. And although he may not be able 
 to sound the depths of his own inspired words, he 
 portrays in shadowy outline the august personality 
 . of God's eternal Son. " There can be no doubt 
 that the conceptions of wisdom just referred to 
 entered into the Messianic consciousness of Israel, 
 and enriched it, and they are reproduced in 
 
 1 A. B. Davidson, " Biblical Essays," p. 34. 
 
Old Testament Contribution to Christology 165 
 
 the New Testament in connection with the 
 Son."i 
 
 3. The Messiah 
 
 Messianic prophecy has been discussed already 
 in Chapter VIII. ; but in the present instance some 
 further allusion must be made to the Messianic 
 King as illustrating the subject of Old Testament 
 Christology. The term "Messiah," or the 
 Anointed One, is primarily an ordinary title 
 given to the human king whom Jehovah has set 
 over Israel (1 Sam. xxiv. 10). Yet Jehovah 
 Himself is Israel's King ; for, according to the term 
 introduced by Josephus, Israel is a theocracy, 
 and each human agent who sits on David's throne 
 is simply Jehovah's representative. This is the 
 nature of the anointing which the human agent has 
 received. He is the visible deputy or delegate of 
 Israel's invisible king — God's vicegerent on earth. 
 Consequently, when we read in passages like 
 Ps. ii. 6; Isa. ix. 6, "Yet have I set my king upon 
 my holy hill of Zion." " His name shall be called 
 Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting 
 Father, Prince of Peace," the question immedi- 
 ately arises, of whom is the psalmist or prophet 
 thinking when he pens these words? Is he 
 portraying an actual human king sitting on the 
 ' Idem, p. 81. 
 
166 Israel's Ideal 
 
 throne of his father David, or is he raised above 
 himself to picture the ideal and perfect king of 
 Israel's restoration ? The question is not so simple 
 as it looks. It really resolves itself into two 
 questions. The author, by whom the allusion is 
 made, no less than the king to whom the words 
 refer, may admit of a twofold reference. The 
 Spirit of Revelation, who sees the end from the 
 beginning, may be specially operative in both 
 (Micah iii. 8 ; Isa. xi. 2). Hence the question of 
 authorship is not fully answered by pointing to 
 the Hebrew writer ; it must also have respect to 
 the Spirit of Jehovah who equips both king and 
 prophet for the perfect exercise of their task. 
 
 From this point of view we cannot but 
 demur to the teaching of the following passage : — 
 "The question whether Isaiah looked forward 
 to a time when an immortal God-man should 
 sit on the earthly Zion must, I think, be 
 answered in the negative. . . . Isaiah's ideal is 
 only the perfect performance of the ordinary 
 duties of monarchy ; for this end he sees a king 
 to be required who reigns in Jehovah's name 
 and in the strength of His Spirit, but there is 
 no proof and no likelihood that he thought of 
 more than this." ^ The answer to this is obvious. 
 It makes due acknowledgment of the spiritual 
 1 Smith's " Prophets of Israel," p. 306. 
 
Old Teetatnent Contribution to Chriatology 167 
 
 equipment of the king, but entirely overlooks 
 the spiritual endowment of the prophet. Taught 
 by the Spirit of Revelation, the prophet is 
 describing not what any actual king ever was, 
 but what, as God's vicegerent, he ought to be. 
 In our author's own language, " It is the function 
 and equipment of the kingship, not the person of 
 the king, that absorbs all his attention." He is 
 dealing with the kingship in its ideality, and is 
 expressing the conviction that the day will yet 
 dawn when the ideal will become real. A just 
 ruler, ruling in the fear of the Lord, will come 
 forth out of the house of David, like tender 
 grass springing out of the earth, through clear 
 shining after rain (2 Sam. xziii. 1-5). And there- 
 fore the prophet adds, "Of the increase of his 
 government and of peace there shall be no end 
 upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, 
 to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment 
 and with righteousness from henceforth even for 
 ever." We are not underrating the intellectual 
 and spiritual possibilities of a great leader like 
 Isaiah. For, as Principal Whitehouse reminds 
 us, the history of mankind has its " Alpine peaks 
 of personality to break the monotony of normal 
 evolutional progress." And to a mind like that 
 of Isaiah we may well ascribe such forecasts of the 
 future as are found in Isa. ii. 2-4 ; xix. 19-22, with 
 
168 Israel's Ideal 
 
 the Messianic ideals portrayed in ix. 1-6, and 
 xi. 1-9.^ But apart from the human agent 
 altogether, we press the point already mentioned, 
 that no understanding of these prophecies is 
 possible which does not grapple seriously with the 
 mind of the Spirit of God. The Messianic 
 prophecies are not mere tidal rivers feeling a 
 refiex influence from Christ.^ They are tidal 
 rivers in every sense ; even their feeding-springs 
 among the hills have come from the sea. Isaiah, 
 in any given case, may not have thought of any- 
 thing more than a merely earthly king ; but this 
 would not involve that the Messianic reference 
 must thereby be excluded. The Spirit of Revela- 
 tion knew more than the human author; and 
 what is of vaster interest, He grasped not only 
 the scope of one particular truth, but the whole 
 scope of the general scheme of which any 
 particular truth was a fragment. And to assert, 
 in spite of this, that a prophet, like Isaiah, 
 inspired by the Divine Spirit, could not, or did 
 not, use language that is prophetic of the New 
 Testament fulfilment, is altogether unwarranted. 
 If it be true anywhere in the history of poetry 
 
 1 See Critical Review, July, 1895, with Prof. Cheyne's 
 reply in his " Introduction " to Robertson Smith's "Prophets 
 of Israel," p. xxxix. 
 
 2 For this beautiful figure, see Geo. A. Smith's "Isaiah," 
 I. 143. 
 
OM Testa/rnent Gontribution to Ghristology 169 
 
 and prophecy, it is true here, that the prophet, 
 being full of the Spirit, has said more than he, in 
 all probability, meant to say, and more, it may be, 
 than he himself understood. He has introduced 
 into the picture another of the great converging 
 lines that are conclusive for Old Testament 
 Ghristology. The titles "Mighty God" and 
 "Everlasting Father" can denote nothing else 
 than the Messiah's participation in the divine 
 dignity. As Schultz has so forcibly expressed it, 
 they correspond to the predicate 6eo<;, and exalt 
 the Messiah to the position of one who reigns and 
 rules in the name and with the dignity of God. 
 Thus the Messiah appears as the perfect King. 
 
 In fine, divine revelation is all of one piece. 
 The end is already anticipated in the beginning. 
 In germinal form and after the manner of 
 presentiment, the Old Testament has grasped the 
 idea of an essential distinction in the Godhead. 
 It is no abstract monotheism, such as we have in 
 the later Judaism and in Mohammedanism. It is 
 monotheism that recognises the truth that God is 
 plurality as well as unity — that in Him there is a 
 manifoldness of life, a fulness and diversity of 
 powers and manifestations such as is expressed 
 even by the name Elohim. In other words, the 
 Old Testament has suggested great lines of 
 inquiry that are only gathered up and consummated 
 
170 Israel's ' Ideal 
 
 in the Word of God made flesh. Jesus is Angel, 
 Wisdom, and Messiah all in one. All these have 
 prepared the way for Him who is the Only 
 Begotten of the Father — the very image of His 
 substance. On the basis of the Old Testament 
 preparation, therefore, and not simply on the 
 standpoint of the New Testament fulfilment, we 
 are entitled to speak of the " Vanward glories of 
 the Sun of Eighteousness," ^ and to say, " In the 
 beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God." 
 
 "Call Christ then the illimitable God." 
 
 1 A. B. D., "Biblical Essays," p. 7. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN 
 
 To pass from the doctrine of God to that of man 
 is a step of far-reaching significance. The deeps 
 on either side are abysmal. Who by searching 
 can find out God ? Who can find out the Almighty 
 unto perfection ? There may be one gleam of an 
 attribute here, one suggestive hint of a presence 
 there, and one fragment of design somewhere else 
 — and all shining like stars on the outer robe of 
 deity ; but the divine being itself is for ever eluding 
 our gaze, like the trackless regions of space, 
 unfathomable. And what of man ? Who can scale 
 the heights and sound the deeps of his person- 
 ality? Has anyone found a solution for all his 
 problems — the enigma of free-will, the com- 
 plexity of human need, the mystery of human 
 suffering, or the riddle of human sin ? No, 
 both beings alike are unsearchable. The being 
 of God, like the deep blue of the sky, and the 
 being of man, like the deep blue of the sea, 
 
 can only reflect and respond the one to the 
 
 171 
 
172 Israel's Ideal 
 
 other, as " deep calleth unto deep " in their 
 loneliness. 
 
 This is the true standpoint from which to 
 estimate the Old Testament doctrine of man. It 
 is not anthropological nor psychological, but 
 popular and religious — not scientific in any sense, 
 but general and even poetic in its treatment. 
 Gen. i. is not a manual of philosophy, much less 
 is it an introduction to a scientifie treatise ; it is 
 the magnificent prologue to the religious history 
 of man, and as such has no peer or rival. Albeit 
 its philosophical and scientific value is not so 
 infinitesimal as some would have us to believe. It 
 is invariably accurate in its description of natural 
 phenomena. It is remarkably free from the 
 vagaries of pagan error. And it contains an 
 instructive progression from lower to higher forms 
 of life, such as is desiderated both by Geology 
 and Biology. And all this presents a feature 
 which is worthy of serious consideration — a feature 
 which cannot be conceived as fortuitous, but is 
 clearly a trace of divine guidance enabling the 
 sacred writer to walk in the light of truth, and to 
 produce a picture which has no parallel in ancient 
 history. But were its claims to scientific accuracy 
 an hundredfold less than they are, its paramount 
 interest as a chapter in human history would not 
 be a whit diminished. It stands there as a preface 
 
The Creation of the World and of Man 173 
 
 to the religious history of the world, and as such, it 
 is altogether unique. It is an a/nthropogony rather 
 than a cosmogony. It is an account of creation 
 which would never have been written except to 
 lead up to the grand subject of the whole Bible — 
 viz., the moral and religious history of Tnan, 
 Gen. i. is not a lecture in science ; it is a sermon 
 in religion. 
 
 1. The Creation of the Wobld 
 
 It seems a natural thing to us, with our modem 
 ideas and training, to use the doctrine of creation 
 as a proof of the existence of God. We argue 
 that every effect must have a cause, that the 
 world of nature exhibits marks of intelligence, 
 that both telescope and microscope supply evid- 
 ence of a marvellous divine purpose, and that 
 from every side of the subject, from causality, 
 order, and design, we are led into what is techni- 
 cally called the teleological argument for the 
 existence of God, until we see 
 
 In nature's most minute design. 
 
 The signature and stamp of power divine. 
 
 This line of argument, however, is never 
 broached in the Old Testament. It nowhere feels 
 the need of proving the existence of God, any more 
 than an individual man feels the need of proving 
 his own existence. The spiritual and personal 
 
174 Israel's Ideal 
 
 God of Israel is simply taken for granted. And 
 if the heavens and the earth are introduced at all, 
 it is not to prove the truth of thig grand postulate, 
 but to bring home to heart and conscience the value 
 and weight of some deep, spiritual reflections. 
 
 (1) The doctrine of creation is used at times 
 to strengthen the faith of God's people, by 
 reminding them that the God of their salvation 
 was also the Almighty Maker of the heaven and 
 the earth. "Why sayest thou, Jacob, and 
 speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, 
 and my judgment is passed away from my God ? 
 ... The Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, 
 fainteth not, neither is weary ; and to Him that 
 hath no might He increaseth strength " (Isa. xl. 
 27 ; cf. Ps. cxxi. 2 ; cxxiv. 8 ; cxxxiv. 3 ; Isa. li. 12- 
 16). He who sitteth as Creator above the circle 
 of the earth, and as God Almighty subdues 
 nature to the ways of His Kingdom, is also able, 
 as the Covenant God of Israel, to defend and 
 deliver His people, and to make even the wrath 
 of their enemies to work out their good. Why, 
 then, should they be dismayed in the presence of 
 human impotence? "My help com eth from the 
 Lord which made heaven and earth." 
 
 (2) Another use made of the doctrine of. 
 creation is to rebut the insolent murmurs of 
 those who would contend with the Almighty. 
 
The Creation of the World and of Man 175 
 
 They are warned that all such contention is 
 utterly futile. It is the clay striving against the 
 potter (Isa. xxix. 16 ; xlv. 9 ; Jer. xviii. 6). It is 
 not rebellion against God, but submission to His 
 will, which is the sum of human wisdom : walk- 
 ing humbly with thy God, and not the sin of the 
 high hand, which is the essence of Old Testament 
 piety. Consecration to God is the secret of all 
 spiritual blessing. Even one man along with 
 God is in the majority. 
 
 (3) But the main purpose served by creation is 
 to reflect as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the 
 firmament showeth His handywork." By its 
 beauty and goodness it chants the praises of 
 Him who called it into existence. And by 
 revealing to man the divine power and wisdom, 
 it summons him to add his voice to the same 
 ascription of praise. He is enjoined to show forth 
 the excellences of Him who is clothed with 
 honour and majesty, and to express gratitude to 
 the Holy One of Israel at every remembrance of 
 His goodness. " Lord, our God, how excellent 
 is Thy name in all the earth, who has set Thy 
 glory above the heavens." 
 
 It is in view of this last-named result that we 
 can understand the rapture of the Old Testament 
 saint when ushered into the presence of external 
 
176 ^ Israel's Ideal 
 
 nature. " The characters of nature which every- 
 where meet the eye are not a common, but a 
 sacred writing ; they are the hieroglyphics of 
 God " (Trench). All God's natural perfections, 
 His sovereign wisdom, power, and goodness, are 
 gloriouslj- displayed in the physical universe. 
 And, as John Foster reminds us, "it is our own 
 fault, if any of the great vicissitudes of the 
 natural world shall pass by us without yielding 
 instruction ; for there is some peculiar inscription 
 by the finger of God on each presented view of 
 His works." Of. especially the panorama of 
 animate and inanimate nature in Job xxxviii. ff., 
 where God answers the patriarch out of the 
 thunderstorm ; or the glowing imagery of Ps. civ., 
 which Oehler has described as " a commentary on 
 Gen. i." Each word and phrase is aglow with the 
 light of heaven. Each bush is burning as a 
 sanctuary for the King of kings, until filled with 
 awe, and rapt in adoration before Him who 
 maketh the clouds His chariot, the psalmist 
 exclaims, " Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! 
 In wisdom Thou hast made them all : the earth is 
 full of Thy riches." 
 
 And the same truth has been written large for 
 us. On the basis of this Old Testament concep- 
 tion a believer's attitude towards external nature 
 is conclusively settled. It cannot be wrong for 
 
The Creation of the World and of Man 177 
 
 ns to ponder what the fingers of God have framed. 
 Nay, it cannot be right for us to, neglect what the 
 Word of God has established. We are to com- 
 mune with nature in all her moods — her golden 
 sunsets, her towering mountains, her unfathomed 
 seas, even her microscopical grains of sand. For 
 by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, 
 and all the host of them by the breath of His 
 mouth. He who built up the walls of salvation 
 has also founded and fashioned these. These are 
 the outer vestibule of the Lord's great temple. 
 The illuminated lettering of gem and flower and 
 shell is the sacred writing of the deity. 
 
 2. Ceeation Crowned in Man 
 
 The creative Word and Spirit do not reach the 
 goal of their labours, until they have set over 
 against themselves the divine image in man. It 
 follows that "the self-delineation of God, the 
 unveiling of His essence, is the final aim of the 
 creation of the world " (Oehler). Two lines of 
 thought are suggested by this notable result. 
 
 (1) Creation is a thing of gradual growth. It 
 
 rises from lower to higher stages of existence, 
 
 ever moving forward to one definite end and aim. 
 
 If one may, with reverence, use the figure, the 
 
 Divine Worker bends over the formless void like 
 12 
 
178 IsraA's Ideal 
 
 the refiner bending over the glowing metal, and 
 never rests in His creative labours until He 
 beholds in His completed work the reflection of 
 His own image. On the first day He made the 
 light, and divided the light from the darkness; 
 but the glory that lingered in the day's first dawn 
 was not a sufficient delineation of His purpose. 
 There must be a brighter reflection of the divine 
 image than that. And thus He calls into existence 
 the firmament, the sea, and the dry land; the 
 herbs, the grass, and the trees. He even set the 
 sun in the heavens by day, and the moon and 
 stars to recount His glory to the listening night. 
 And He made the fowls of the air, the fish of the 
 sea, and the cattle and creeping things of the 
 earth. And yet, in all that profusion of natural 
 life, in all that palpitating exuberance of animal 
 existence, the Divine Worker was not fully 
 satisfied. There must be a closer approximation 
 to the divine image than even these. And there- 
 fore the great Designer again bends His energies 
 to the work — the refiner once more bends over the 
 glowing metal, until, in the creation of a human 
 soul, the Maker of the heaven and the earth has 
 gained His object; for there in a human being, 
 possessed of mind, and heart, and will, the eternal 
 God beholds His own image and likeness. 
 
 (2) Creation is also a series of divine acts 
 
Hie Creation of the World and of Man 179 
 
 ■which are intrinsically and separately good. 
 Each stage in the process, and each development 
 of life at that stage, is expressly commended and 
 accompanied by a divine benediction. The ever- 
 recurring phrase is, " And, behold, it was good " ; 
 for each part considered in itself was a source of 
 unalloyed enjoyment to the Divine Worker. The 
 earth is full of the goodness of the Lord, and His 
 tender mercies are over all His works. And who 
 can wonder at this divine pleasure ? Recall, for 
 instance, the initial creation of light. Yonder, on 
 the verge of the first daybreak, was the earliest 
 streak of grey that had ever pierced the blackness 
 of primeval night. See how it broadens and 
 brightens as the first sun begins to mount to the 
 horizon. The red passes into crimson, the crimson 
 into safifron and gold, until on the fourth morning, 
 if not on the first, yon great eye or globe of fire 
 rises above the horizon and gazes upon the new- 
 bom earth. Could the great Creator look upon 
 a vision like that and not be filled with admira- 
 tion? Could even a Divine Worker behold so 
 glorious a sight and not exclaim, " It is good " ? 
 And surely men, in any age, must be fools and 
 blind, if they can gaze upon the radiance of a sun- 
 rise, and not be constrained to say, " The heavens 
 declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
 sheweth His handywork." 
 
180 Israel's Ideal 
 
 And yet, God sees in man something grander 
 
 and more satisfying than even the glory of the 
 
 sunrise. He beholds in him a mind capable of 
 
 comprehending divine thoughts, and not all the 
 
 brightness of the sunlight can boast of any such 
 
 possession. He sees in man a human heart, 
 
 capable of responding to the wooing power of His 
 
 love, and not the melody of the sea or the 
 
 fragrance of the breeze can thus respond to its 
 
 Maker. In fine, He sees in man the reflection of 
 
 His own image ; and He who said at every 
 
 previous stage, "It is good," must now express 
 
 Himself in the superlative, and say, " It is very 
 
 good " (ver. 31). The self-delineation of God is 
 
 at last a completed fact : man is at once the goal 
 
 and crown of creation. 
 
 " Thus God dwells in all, 
 From life's minute beginnings up at last 
 To man — the consummation of this scheme 
 Of being. . . . And from this grand result 
 A supplementary reflux of light 
 Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
 Each back step in the circle." ^ 
 
 3. The Constituent Elements in 
 
 Human Nature 
 
 It is generally accepted, that " the whole man 
 
 is included in the basar and nephesh (body and 
 
 ' Browning, in " Paracelsus." 
 
The Creation of the World and of Man 181 
 
 soul) which spring from the union of the spirit 
 with matter " (Oehler) — cf. Isa. x. 18 ; Ps. Ixxxiv. 2. 
 In other words, the terminology of the Old Testa- 
 ment does not speak of three co-ordinate elements 
 in human nature — a body, soul and spirit, or a 
 trichotomy ; but only that " a distinction is always 
 drawn between the bodily substratum and the life 
 revealed in it " (Schultz). Hence the Old Testa- 
 ment view, throughout, is dichotomous. Man is 
 a bipartite, not a tripartite being. According to 
 this view, the basal element in human nature is 
 the conception of the flesh — (itoi) — a conception 
 which is taken up and developed in the Pauline 
 doctrine of the adp^. It is that part in man 
 which distinguishes him from all immaterial 
 beings, as angels and demons, and brings him into 
 relation with the lower animals which belong as 
 he does to the sphere of material life (cf. Gen. iL 
 7 ; vii. 15). It describes that side of his nature 
 that looks toward time and sense ; and contrasts 
 him especially with the ever-living and unchange- 
 able God, before whom he is mere dust and ashes. 
 All flesh is weak, frail, and prone to sensuous 
 living ; it cannot look upon God (Isa. xl. 6 ; Job 
 xxxiv. 15; Deut. v. 26). But flesh, as such, is 
 not single, but complex. It includes within it 
 the notion of a soul (tiJSi). It denotes a creature 
 
182 Israel's Ideal 
 
 which is actually alive. Without life, matter is 
 not flesh but dust ("^Qy), as when we read in Gen. 
 ii. 7 that man's body was formed of the dust of 
 the ground. Flesh, on the contrary, is matter 
 instinct with vitality — whether it be the breath 
 of life that animates the beasts that perish, or the 
 fuller breathing of the Divine Spirit that throbs in 
 the soul of man. In animals and men alike the 
 primary conception of the flesh is twofold — the 
 bodily substratum already referred to, and the 
 nephesh or life revealed in it. It is a body plus 
 a soul. 
 
 What, then, is the difiference between the 
 animal and the man ? According to the Old 
 Testament, it is one both in origin and result. 
 The animal springs from the ground in the course 
 of a common terrestrial creation (Gen. i. 24), 
 but man is brought into existence by a special 
 creative act. The life in either case is derived 
 from the divine fountain of life, but both in origin 
 and outcome, the two are placed in quite different 
 categories. The life of the animal is to be ex- 
 plained by Gen. i. 2, where we have the living 
 activity of the brooding spirit drawing near to 
 the lifeless chaos. The cosmical spirit has 
 entered the material universe as the principle of 
 animation, and it is from this original influx of 
 
The Creation of the World and of Mom 183 
 
 creative energy that all living creatures take their 
 rise. But the creation of man is something 
 unique. Instead of reading, " Let the earth bring 
 forth man after his kind," we have the august 
 words — " Let us make man in our image, after our 
 likeness . . . and the Lord God formed man of 
 the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life, and man became a 
 living soul." It is principally a difference in 
 result. If the soul of the animal may be 
 described as a life in the sense of anima ^ — a 
 vital element that pulsates in the blood, and 
 permeates the living flesh in all directions ; the 
 soul of man is a life richer and more divine, a life 
 in the sense of animus — a living soul which is 
 mental and moral no less than sensuous, and 
 therefore the natural seat or subject of a,ll the 
 higher activities of reason, ethics, and religion 
 (c/. Deut. It. 29). 
 
 It is not enough, then, to speak of the nature 
 of man as a fundamental dualism or dichotomy. 
 The life of the soul, like the closely-allied notion 
 of the flesh, is not single, but complex ; and the 
 complexity will only gain clearness in definition, 
 when the development of revelation and the 
 progress of reflection have prepared the way for 
 th^ New Testament fulfilment. The body and 
 1 Of. Oehler, Vol. I. 221. 
 
184 Israel's Ideal 
 
 its twofold life will then become a body, soul, and 
 spirit — three co-ordinate elements in human 
 nature — a trichotomy. Cf. Weiss' "Biblical 
 Theology," •'^ where the further point is adduced, 
 that the trichotomy in question is the possession 
 of the spiritual man alone. The natural man may 
 have a bodily substratum, animated by a twofold 
 life — a body, soul, and inind {cf. Rom. vii. 23) — 
 but this is in no sense the Pauline conception of 
 the term " spirit," which he has reserved for the 
 new moral life in man that has its origin in 
 regeneration. It is only on the basis of the New 
 Testament gifts of grace that such a tripartite 
 division is possible. The avdpwiTo<i Trvev/jLaTiKo?, 
 and he alone has a body, soul, and spirit. 
 
 Still, the Old Testament has prepared for this 
 result by its conception of the dual character of 
 the nephesh. The soul of man possesses some- 
 thing that the life of the animal does not possess, 
 and whatever be the term used to express it — 
 whether the Hebrew Hl'^, " spirit," or the Greek 
 vow, " mind," — it is still that higher side of man's 
 inner nature that brings him into relation with 
 the life of God, and as such, it leads the way to 
 the stronger and more definite terminology of St. 
 Paul. Even in the Old Testament the spirit 
 
 I Vol. I. 347. 
 
The Creation of the Woi'ld and of Man 185 
 
 of man is not to be identified with the human 
 nephesh or soul. A. B. Davidson, who tries to 
 reduce the difference to a minimum, is far from 
 being satisfied as to the certainty of his results.^ 
 In particular, we are informed that there is no 
 more ground for Delitzsch's opinion that the soul 
 is distinct from the spirit, than there is for an 
 opinion that flesh is something different from "^Sy, 
 "dust." But this is just the point which our 
 author has already conceded in the immediately 
 preceding sentence. Flesh and dust are not 
 treated as if they were identical. The former is 
 the latter made alive. It is defined as living, or 
 ensouled matter. Hence, to say that there is no 
 more ground for distinguishing soul and spirit 
 than there is for distinguishing flesh and dust, is 
 to say practically nothing. We prefer to regard 
 both parts of the dualism in man, as being not 
 simple but compound. The bodily substratum 
 is both d/wst and flesh ; and the life revealed in it 
 is at once soul and spirit. The Spirit of God, 
 which is especially operative in both, is the 
 original source of the complexity. It has entered 
 into relation with the dust, as the principle of 
 animation, and produced the hasar or flesh ; and 
 it has entered into relation with the soul, as the 
 
 1 " The Theology of the Old Testament," p. 203. 
 
186 Israel's Ideal 
 
 principle of intellectual and moral power, and has 
 raised it into the region of ruach or spirit. The 
 result, as thus attained, may be far enough 
 removed from the idea of a trichotomy ; but no 
 more is it to be conceived as a simple dichotomy. 
 It is rather a complex personality which belongs 
 to two different worlds — the world of matter 
 and the world of spirit — with the nephesh or 
 soul, like a protoplastic link, uniting the two 
 sides into one personal existence. The New 
 Testament fulfilment may still be a thing 
 to come; but this bodily substratum indwelt- 
 by a twofold life undoubtedly points the way 
 to that conclusion. 
 
 Be this as it may, the distinction here drawn 
 between soul and spirit is not so important for 
 Old Testament theology as the relation between 
 soul and heart (Iv). We may conclude the 
 present section by a brief allusion to this con- 
 ception. The soul as anima has its seat in the 
 blood (Lev. xvii. 11). By a bolder figure, the 
 life or soul is the blood (Gen ix. 4, cf. Isa. liii. 12). 
 The blood is the vital element in which the life 
 of the creature pulsates, and by which the living 
 flesh is permeated in every part. Hence, when 
 the blood is shed, the life or soul departs — the 
 streaming forth of the blood and the breathing 
 
The Creation of the World and of Man 187 
 
 forth of the soul being viewed as synonymous. 
 But as the heart is the centre from which the 
 blood circulates, it came to be regarded also as 
 the centre of all the soul's activities — the natural 
 seat of feelings and impulses, the place in which 
 the process of self-consciousness is carried out, 
 and the source or organ of all the spiritual 
 functions, the counsels of the understanding, and 
 «ven the decisions of the will. "It is not the 
 head or the brain but the heart which the 
 Hebrew considers the seat of thought, of counsel, 
 ■of conscience, and of moral guidance." And 
 therefore the pious in Israel must keep the heart 
 with greater solicitude than any other possession, 
 for out of it are the issues of life (Prov. iv. 23). 
 It is there that sin has its haunt or lurking-place, 
 and issues forth, like a moral miasma, to corrupt 
 the entire circuit of the life (Jer. xvii. 9)'. But 
 there, also, the restored and spirit-possessed soul 
 may be made susceptible to the divine law 
 and mercy, until, issuing forth in streams of 
 heart-felt devotion and beneficence, it loses 
 itself in the service of righteousness, and in 
 the growing life of humanity. And thus, from 
 the standpoint of creation, the Old Testament 
 saint is led to pray for the highest creation 
 of all. " Create in me a clean heart, Ood, 
 and renew a right ^rit within me" (Ps. 
 
188 Israel's Ideal 
 
 li. 10 ; cf. Deut. vi. 5-6 ; Jer. xxxi. 33 ; Ps. 
 Ixxiii. 26). 
 
 " I know a bosom whicli withiu 
 
 Contains tte world's sad counterpart : 
 'Tis here — the reign of death and sin, 
 God ! evangelise my heart." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT DOCTBINE OF SIN 
 
 Sin is the one element in human experience that 
 
 refuses to be ignored. In these days, when the 
 
 sensitiveness of a former Puritanism is apt to be 
 
 sneered at as prudery and priggishness, and when 
 
 the awful gravity of moral evil is in danger of 
 
 being expunged from the public conscience, the 
 
 fact of sin continues to haunt the inner chambers 
 
 of the soul, and refuses to allow itself to be 
 
 effaced or lost in the lethal stream of oblivion. 
 
 Through superficial views of its nature or sheer 
 
 indifference to the fact, we may come to aay, like 
 
 some in the Apostolic age, that we have no sin 
 
 (1 John i. 8); but we gain nothing by this 
 
 assertion of our ignorance or apathy. For as the 
 
 well-known device of the ostrich does not save it 
 
 from the weapon of the hunter, so the mere 
 
 shutting of one's eyes to the reality of evil does 
 
 not make it vanish, but delivers us all the more 
 
 surely into its power. Sin, according to Seneca, 
 
 is the " universal insanity." It is a dark and 
 
 189 
 
190 Israel's Ideal 
 
 dismal nightshade casting a gloom over every 
 department of human life. Grace may change 
 the nature of a man, but nothing can change the 
 nature of sin. Enemies may be reconciled, but 
 enmity cannot, and sin is enmity. 
 
 1. The Possibility of Sin 
 
 From what has been said in a previous chapter 
 concerning the joyous character of antique reli- 
 gion, it may readily be assumed that the conscious- 
 ness of moral evil would not bulk very largely in 
 early Semitic ritual. Robertson Smith has even 
 argued that the sense of sin, in any proper sense 
 of the word, did not exist at all.^ The attitude of 
 early man consisted largely of the happy abandon 
 of a child which had not as yet felt the weight of 
 moral obligation ; and therefore the true percep- 
 tion of wrong-doing, or the necessity of repent- 
 ance, was quite outwith the range of its primitive 
 conceptions ; for within the sphere of insouciance 
 or indifference to moral sanctions neither penit- 
 ence nor morality is possible. It is only in the 
 higher faith of Israel, where man is confronted by 
 the claims of ethical monotheism, that such a 
 development in moral ideas is rendered practic- 
 able, or that the naive confidence of early Semitic 
 
 1 " Religion of the Semites,'' p. 410. 
 
The Old Teatament Doctrine of Sim 191 
 
 belief is inoculated with the salutary consciousness 
 of moral evil Not, indeed, that the fact of sin is 
 to be traced to the arrangement and will of God. 
 He may devise the means whereby the inexperi- 
 ence of man is put to school. He may plant the 
 tree of knowledge in the midst of the garden, and . 
 confront the will of the creature by an objective 
 prohibition. But this does not imply either that 
 man will decide against the good, or that the 
 element of sin is necessary for the moral develop- 
 ment of mankind. God forbids sin ; hence it can 
 never be explained as due to His will. Nay, He 
 threatens to punish sin ; hence it can never claim 
 to have been decreed by Him. The time of proba- 
 tion might have ended quite differently. The 
 test devised might have issued in a splendid 
 moral victory. So that to complain with the 
 poet that " the light that led astray was light from 
 heaven," cd,n never be defended from the stand- 
 point of Old Testament theology. The well- 
 merited retort of another poet is far nearer the 
 truth — 
 
 " spurn the guilty thought away, 
 Eternity will tell, 
 The only light that led astray 
 Was light that shone from Hell." 
 
 The possibility of sin, or a basis for temptation, 
 is to be found, not in the arrangement of God, but 
 
192 Israel's Ideal 
 
 in the life of man himself; whether we consider 
 his unique endowment of free-will or the earth- 
 ward tendency of his sensuous nature. 
 
 (1) His endowment of free-will. The birds 
 and beasts are not capable of sinning against God. 
 The stars that shine on ihe brow of night cannot 
 do otherwise than shine ; for that is the law of 
 their being. Man, however, is a star that may 
 cease to shine. He who is far more, may, in a 
 sense, become infinitely less ; for he has the power 
 of self-determination — he has the power of saying 
 "No" to his Maker, free-will! Alas! what 
 possibilities of good or evil were tied up in that 
 gift. It might be the opening of a door to lead 
 man to untold heights of moral excellence, or it 
 might be the hole in the ice through which his 
 innocence would disappear for ever. It was so 
 difficult to go beyond the mere life of the animal 
 and not go too far ; so hazardous to impart any- 
 thing of self-conscious existence, without running 
 the risk of introducing a possible moral antagonism. 
 And yet the risks were run in view of possible 
 moral victory. "God breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of life, and man became a living 
 soul." 
 
 (2) The earthward tendency of his sensvxyws 
 natv/re. In contrast with his higher and more 
 spiritual endowment, this becomes to man a source 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Sin 193 
 
 of rivalry and a basis of temptation. The " desire 
 of the flesh," which is nothing but good in the 
 animal, may become in man the principle and 
 cause of moral evil. It may lead him to hate the 
 limits imposed upon him by the claims of the 
 spiritual life; and by making the transient and 
 inferior good to appear the highest pleasure, it 
 may give it, as being forbidden, a charm which of 
 itself it could never possess. And thus along the 
 lines of unbelief, concupiscence, and contradiction, 
 the actual conceiving and bringing forth of sin may 
 become an ominous possibility. Both in his endow- 
 ment of free-will and in his sensuous human nature, 
 man may be tempted with evU. In actual fact, 
 it is just in these two ways that man is tempted 
 as set forth in the symbolism of the sacred 
 narrative (Gen. iii. 1-6). The temptation appeals 
 now to the instinct of self-assertion, and then to 
 the impulse of self-gratification. It insinuates 
 that the divine prohibition has unduly limited a 
 man's legitimate rights; and it emphasises the 
 lusciousness and desirableness of the fruit. It is 
 a skilfully designed plan to ensnare both the will 
 and the affections ; and he who had received the 
 Godlike faculty of self-determination walked into 
 the snare. He coveted what the Lord God had 
 prohibited, and the image of God was marred. 
 
 The pride of life and the lust of the flesh had 
 13 
 
194 Israel's Ideal 
 
 become his own evil angels, and his eyes were 
 opened. 
 
 2. The Nature of Sin 
 
 It is an attitude of the soul which is rightly 
 described as rebellion (1 Sam. xv. 23). Con- 
 sidered in itself, it is both unbelief and disobedi- 
 ence. It is not 80 much a wrong done to man, as 
 an insult offered to God (Ps. li. 4). It is unfaith- 
 fulness, refusal to hear, apostasy. The same view 
 is presented in the narrative of the Temptation. 
 The definite prohibition in Gen. ii. 17 is openly 
 questioned and impugned in iii. 1-4 ; and only 
 then, after self-seeking has been awakened in 
 opposition to the will of God, does sensuous charm 
 exert its power (ver. 6). In essence and outcome 
 sin is both selfishness and sensuality ; but first,, 
 and chief, it is a positive denial of the divine 
 command. 
 
 Hence, in the teaching of the prophets, the 
 nature of sin is always determined by their con- 
 ceptions of the divine character. Whatever side 
 of divine revelation is entrusted to each, this 
 decides, for the period in question, the peculiar 
 tone and hue of Israel's sin. Amos, for instance, 
 the herdman of Tekoa, is sent to Bethel with the 
 epoch-making demand of righteousness. What 
 doth the Lord require of thee, Israel, but to- 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Sin 195 
 
 " do justly " ? Morality is that for the sake of 
 which all other things exist; it is the alone 
 essential thing in the world. Sin, therefore, is 
 unrighteousness — ^nothing more and nothing less. 
 It is the refusal to do justice between man and 
 man; and without that, even worship is an 
 abomination. " Hate the evil and love the good, 
 and establish judgment in the gate ; it may be 
 that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious 
 unto the remnant of Joseph." Hosea, on the 
 other hand, came, but a few years later, with the 
 soul-subduing message of the divine love. " How 
 shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shall I deliver 
 thee, Israel ? how shall I make thee as Admah ? 
 how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? Mine heart is 
 turned within me, my compassions are kindled 
 together " (xi. 8). It is impossible to read these 
 words and not feel that Hosea goes a great deal 
 deeper than Amos. He began deeper — not with 
 the righteousness of conduct, but with the love 
 of the heart. " Amos judges the moral offences 
 of Israel as breaches of universal law aggravated 
 by the possession of special privileges. Hosea 
 judges them as proofs of a heart not true to 
 Jehovah, out of sympathy with His character and 
 ungrateful to His love."* Israel, what doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to " love mercy " ? 
 ' Robertson Smith, "Prophets of Israel," p. 164. 
 
196 Israel's Ideal 
 
 Return, even now, to the Lord thy God ; for thou 
 hast fallen by thine iniquity (xiv. 1). It simply 
 remained for Isaiah, the greatest man in 
 Jerusalem, to complete the triad by placing his 
 finger on human pride as the sum and essence of 
 all moral evil ; for it was his to proclaim the 
 sublime thought of the divine holiness, before 
 which man can only " walk humbly," and tremble 
 at His word (vi. 5; cf. Ixvi. 2). Until his con- 
 temporary Micah, the peasant-prophet of 
 Moresheth-Gath, deeply read as he is in the 
 teaching of his predecessors, combines all the 
 three in one supreme requirement : " He hath 
 shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what 
 doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
 and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God " (vi. 8). 
 
 Thus the general Hebrew name for sin is 
 Jlb^lfln, a missing of the mark, or a deviating 
 from the right way laid down in the divine law 
 (cf. Prov. viii. 36 ; xix. 2, R.V.). Man has care- 
 lessly allowed himself to listen to the siren voices 
 of evil, and they allure him, like the untried 
 mariner, from his course. " The intellect and 
 will give way simultaneously through carelessness, 
 just as the first step towards the capture of a city 
 is remissness on the part of the guards " (Bengel). 
 
The Old Testa/ment Doctrine of Sin 197 
 
 Once admitted, however, into the life of man, sin 
 does not remain in isolation. It immediately 
 adopts a policy of expansion. In Gen. iiL 12, the 
 sin of disobedience is already followed by self- 
 excuse, and deceitful palliation of the ofifence, 
 just as David's sin of uncleanness is quickly 
 followed by the crime of blood-guiltiness ; or the 
 betrayer's pilfering from the common purse 
 prepares him for the selling of his Master. 
 Facilis descensus Averno. One sin makes 
 another easy and necessary. The treacherous 
 slope gives momentum and acceleration to the 
 falling stone. Thoughts become desires, desires 
 become actions, actions produce habits, and habits 
 issue in an evil inclination ; until, through the 
 hardening influence of moral evil, that terrible 
 stage in wickedness is reached, when a man 
 delights in sin because it is sin, and on a lower 
 level than the brute beast, seeks after his own 
 hurt (Jer. vii. 6; Micah iii. 2; Ps. lii. 3; Isa. 
 i. 2-5). 
 
 The Old Testament, therefore, is fully aware of 
 different degrees of sin. It knows of sins of 
 ignorance, or sins that are simply due to human 
 frailty (Lev. iv. 2 ; v. 15 ; Josh. xx. 3) ; and sins 
 of rebellion, sins that are committed with the 
 full intention of violating the law of God, sins 
 " with a high hand " (Num. xv. 30). And just as 
 
198 Israel's Ideal 
 
 there are degrees of guilt, there are also degrees 
 of punishment. Some sins may be cancelled by 
 a compensation (Lev. iv. 27), but others can be 
 expiated only by the death of the sinner (Deut. 
 xvii. 12). Such is the case when the Flood comes, 
 when Sodom perishes under the judgment of God, 
 when Canaan spues out its inhabitants, and when 
 God determines to harden by means of His 
 prophets (Isa. vi. 9 ; cf. Num. xvi.). Moses sinned 
 and suffered ; but he did not sin as Pharaoh. 
 David sinned most grievously ; but he did not 
 sin as Saul. All sin is culpable, and all sin is 
 punishable ; but some sins are more heinous in 
 the sight; of God than others, and they are counted 
 worthy of many stripes. 
 
 3. The Universality of Sin 
 
 This is not taught as a dogma in Hebrew 
 Scripture. Perplexed by reason of Israel's 
 degeneracy, the Old Testament writers have some- 
 thing quite different to occupy their thoughts — 
 not a theoretical exposition of human sinfulness, 
 but the nature and fruits of practical repentance 
 (Amos. V. 15; Isa. i. 16-17). From the first, 
 however, such universality is clearly taken for 
 granted. There is none that doeth good, no, not 
 one. The best of them is as a brier, the most 
 upright is worse than a thorn hedge. They have 
 
The Old Testament Doctrvne of Sin 199 
 
 transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, 
 broken the everlasting covenant (Ps. xiv, 3 ; 
 Micah vii. 4 ; Isa. xxiv. 5). 
 
 This depravity may operate with special 
 intensity in certain races, especially among those 
 that have fallen under the divine curse. Gf. the 
 Cainitea, the descendants of Ham, the children of 
 Moab and Ammon, &c. Still Israel itself is not 
 clean. The pious in Israel know well that they 
 have not escaped the breath of this moral miasma. 
 They are ever ready to exclaim, " If thou, Lord, 
 shouldest mark iniquity, Lord, who shall stand ? " 
 They can only hope for mercy through repentance 
 and heartfelt confession (Ps. xxxii.); for Israel, 
 alas ! doth not know, my people doth not consider. 
 They are a veritable " people of Gomorrah " (Isa. 
 i. 10). 
 
 The explanation of this universality is not hard 
 to discover. It lies in the fact of heredity. A 
 morally vitiated nature is transmitted from parent 
 to child. Who can bring a clean thing out of 
 an unclean 1 Not one. Behold, I was shapen in 
 iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me 
 (Job. xiv. 4 ; Ps. li. 5). " From the very first, the 
 human embryo grows in a soil positively evil" 
 (Schultz). No one by any voluntary act of his 
 own gives the animal life the predominance it 
 has. He receives it along with his human 
 
200 Israel's Ideal 
 
 nature. He is born into a corrupt race. And 
 here, for the most part, the Old Testament is 
 content to leave it. It does not seek, like the 
 Pauline Epistles, to trace back the universality of 
 sin to the first sin of Adam. With the exception 
 of Gen. iii., no attempt is made to bring these two 
 facts together. ,The prophets generally are more 
 concerned about the fall of Israel than the fall of 
 Adam — the grievous backsliding of the covenant 
 people from the ideal holiness of their calling, and 
 not the thought of universal depravity, introduced 
 by the first father of the race. Prosperity, alas ! 
 had betrayed them with its kiss (Amos. vi. 4 ; 
 Hos. xiii. 6). The fear of man had become their 
 snare (Jer. ii, 13, 18). They had forsaken the 
 fountain of living waters, and fallen away from 
 God. But for the rest, we are referred simply to 
 the sensuous nature of man, which is ever ruled 
 by the impulses of sensuality and selfishness. 
 
 Gen. iii., on the contrary, does take us back to 
 the first sin of Adam. Symbolical or otherwise, 
 it certainly gives us the view of Israel with 
 respect to the origin of moral evil. Jacob, their 
 first father, had sinned (Isa. xliii. 27), but behind 
 Jacob, Adam, the first father of the race, had 
 opened the flood-gates of evil, and through that 
 initial transgression the world was lost. Out far 
 and wide the waves of evil sptead, laying down in 
 
The Old Testa/ment Doctrine of Svn, 201 
 
 human nature a substratum of sinful bias — an 
 under-bed of evil inclination, out of which the 
 mountain peaks of individual transgressions 
 successively take their rise. Or to change the 
 figure, Adam had become a stable variation ; he 
 had originated a new species. The first man, says 
 Martensen, was not only one in a series of 
 individuals constituting the human family ; he 
 was the personal starting-point likewise for the 
 development of the whole organism of the race ; 
 and in like manner sin, which was introduced 
 into the world by the first Adam, was not only a 
 single instance but an active beginning, exercising 
 a disturbing influence upon the entire develop- 
 ment. So that there is more than destiny or fate 
 in our connection with the'great progenitor ; there 
 is the actual appropriation by us of the activity of 
 his sin. And thus, on the standpoint of the New 
 Testament fulfilment, the Apostle is prepared to 
 write, " So death passed upon 'all men ; for that 
 all sinned." 
 
 4. The Effects of Sin 
 
 (1.) An evil conscience. — Adam and Eve knew 
 that they were naked, and they hid themselves 
 from God. They felt that they had incurred 
 the just anger of an offended deity, and like Cain, 
 
202 Israel's Ideal 
 
 in Gen. iv. 14, they went forth as wanderers in 
 the earth, bearing with them "the clogging 
 burden of a guilty soul." This was the bitter 
 fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. " They 
 lost Eden, and they gained a conscience." 
 Ps. xxxii. 3-4 shows how cutting a lash the 
 conscience may become in driving home the 
 truth of personal guilt. Everything seemed to 
 go wrong. The heart was ill at ease. The con- 
 cealment of the sin was well-nigh unbearable. 
 The conscience was filled with a thousand thorns 
 to prick and sting him. And as conscience is 
 the voice of God, it never ceased to arraign him 
 day and night before God's judgment bar. This 
 was one of the ways in which the enormity of 
 his sin had come home to roost. Conscience is 
 the worm that never dies. It need scarcely be 
 said that this is not always the effect produced 
 by sin. Sometimes the conscience is seared as 
 with a hot iron. The first poetry in the Bible 
 is Lamech's Song of the Sword (Gen. iv. 23-24) ; 
 and for insolent defiance and Titanian arrogance 
 it could scarcely be surpassed by any modern 
 apostrophe chanted in praise of war. It recalls 
 the old Egyptian and Babylonian kings who 
 vied with each other in erecting colossal statues 
 of themselves, and covering them with the most 
 shameless recital of their own greatness and 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Si/n 203 
 
 glory. Imagine the man calling in his two wives 
 to listen to his empty bravado ! The conscious- 
 ness of guilt has been blunted into bold self- 
 satisfaction. And one may say it with all 
 seriousness, that such Titanian arrogance is 
 infinitely worse than the crime of the first 
 fratricide ; the insolence of the braggart, whether 
 seen in kings or peasants, is deeper than the sin 
 of the man who said, " My punishment is greater 
 than I can bear." 
 
 But where does it all end ? — the sullen hatred 
 of Cain, the insolent defiance of Lamech, and the 
 unnameable abominations of the antediluvian 
 world ? In yon gathering thunderstorm of 
 •God's most righteous wrath, where the great 
 deeps are broken up, and the whole creation 
 seems to revert to primeval chaos, until, in that 
 terrible cataclysm of lightning, wind, and wave, 
 the whole of that guilty race is swept from the 
 sight of heaven. A troubled conscience may be 
 unbearable, but a callous conscience is insuffer- 
 able. They that are hardened in sin are fit only 
 for the fire. 
 
 (2.) Hereditary guilt. — " As far as the dominion 
 of sin extends, so far also, in the view of the Old 
 Testament, dpes its objective effect guilt extend " 
 {Schultz). The iniquity of the fathers is visited 
 upon the children unto the third and the fourth 
 
204 Israel's Ideal 
 
 generation (Ex. xx. 5) ; cf. also Gen. ix. 18-25, 
 where Canaan, the son of Ham, is made to inherit 
 a curse because of his father's sin ; and Jer. xv. 4, 
 where the better generation under Josiah is com- 
 pelled to expiate the guilt contracted by the sins 
 of Manasseh. Guilt, like sin, is not limited to 
 individual men. It develops as in an organism 
 throughout the entire community, and is trans- 
 mitted from father to son. As the Jews com- 
 plain in Lam. v. 7, " Our fathers have sinned, 
 and are not ; and we have borne their iniquities." 
 This, of course, does not mean that the children 
 are entangled in a net which cannot be broken. 
 The case of the tribe of Levi teaches a very 
 different lesson. Smitten by a curse in the 
 person of their first father (Gen. xlis. 7), they 
 yet win for themselves a deathless name by their 
 zeal for Jehovah in the matter of the golden 
 calf (Ex. xxxii. 26-29). Their zeal catches fixe, 
 not for the wounded family honour, but for God's 
 honour, and the curse is not only removed, it is 
 turned into a blessing. Their dispersion in Israel 
 becomes a scattering abroad of priests. Levi 
 has obtained its consecration (Deut. xxxiii. 8-11). 
 The inheriting of guilt must be read in the light 
 of another truth — the transmission of sin. Guilt 
 is inherited, because sin is transmitted. The 
 children remain partakers of the parents' nefari- 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Sin 205 
 
 ous deeds, and the dire heritage of a common 
 punishment is meted out to both. Of. Lev. 
 xxvL 39, and Jer. xxxii. 18-19, where the two 
 things are placed side by side : " Thou recom- 
 pensest the iniquity of the fathers into the 
 bosom of the children ... to give every one 
 according to his ways, and according to the fruit 
 of his doings.'' 
 
 The question of guilt, then, is simply another 
 reading of the hard, grim fact of heredity. " A moral 
 condition of life is introduced by the father of the 
 race, which continues to act as a power in the 
 family " (Oehler). " The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge " 
 (Jer. xxxi. 29). And the poignancy of that truth 
 is not lessened by being draped in the language 
 of modern science. Call it what we may, the thing 
 itself refuses to be ignored, that children even 
 in a Christian country sufifer, and that most 
 grievously, for the misdeeds of their parents. 
 And if the Jew, influenced by very different 
 habits of thought, by a feebler grasp of secondary 
 causes, and a less developed sense of individual 
 rights, gave a somewhat deeper colouring to the 
 idea than we would care to give it, this, in view 
 of his recognised place in history, is just what 
 might have been expected. 
 
 Besides, individual responsibility is not over- 
 
206 Israel's Ideal 
 
 looked. Even in Deut. xxiv. 16, it is distinctly- 
 taught that the children are not to be put to 
 death for the father's sin. And in the age of the 
 prophets, when the self-righteous people would 
 palliate their iniquity by quoting the ancient 
 proverb regarding the eating of sour grapes, the 
 Man of God was ever ready to reply, " Every one 
 shall die for his own iniquity : every man that 
 eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on 
 edge " (Jer. xxxi. 30 ; Ezek. xviii. 2). True, the 
 iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children 
 unto the third and fourth generation of them 
 that hate Me ; but what if the children cease to 
 hate ? What if the wicked turn from their 
 wickedness and do that which is lawful and right 
 in the sight of God ? Shall they die ? No, they 
 shall surely live (Ezek. xxxiii. 14-20). None of 
 the sins which they have committed will be 
 remembered against them ; for the moral law of 
 individual responsibility is set higher than the 
 natural law of heredity. 
 
 (3.) Death. — Death is not always regarded as 
 the outcome of sin. There are passages in the 
 014 Testament where frailty and mortality are 
 predicated of man according to the ordinary course 
 of human nature. The death of the body is 
 viewed as a natural effect of the transient 
 character of all material things. In Bible 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Sin 207 
 
 language, man is but dust and ashes, and must 
 return to his mother earth the day the spirit 
 leaves him. He cometh forth like a flower and 
 is cut down, he fleeth also a shadow and con- 
 tinueth not (Oen. xviii. 27 ; Ps. cxlvi. 4 ; Job xiv. 
 2 ; Ps. ciii. 14). All this, however, does not imply- 
 that death belonged originally to man's nature 
 and destiny. It expresses simply his present 
 experience of human frailty and decay. In 
 his original condition it was possible for man not 
 to die, and if the possibility has not been turned 
 into actuality, it is because sin has entered as a 
 moral cleavage between the two parts of man's 
 complex being and prevented the normal develop- 
 ment of his inherent and primitive powers. The 
 mortal has not been drawn up into the immor- 
 tality of the spiritual ; but the two having been 
 separated and alienated, and the Spirit of God, 
 which is the principle of life in man, having been 
 withdrawn, the spiritual part in human nature is 
 at once weakened and limited, and drawn within 
 the sphere of the perishable. " My spirit shall 
 not rule (or abide) in man for ever ; in their 
 going astray they are flesh : therefore shall 
 his days be an hundred and twenty years" 
 (Gen. vi. 3). 
 
 It is from this standpoint that we are to under- 
 stand the threat of punishment contained in Gen. 
 
208 Israel's Ideal 
 
 ii. 17 : "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou 
 shalt surely die." Man did not die, physically at 
 least, on the day that he transgressed the divine 
 command, any more than the ungodly Cainites 
 died on the day when they overstepped the limits 
 of nature by seeking alliance with the Elohim. 
 But in either case they died spiritually. They 
 separated themselves from God who is the divine 
 fountain of life ; and as sin is the great divider, 
 death is the great division. There is (a) death 
 spiritual, or the separation between the soul and 
 God; (6) death physical, or the separation 
 between the soul and body ; (c) death eternal, or 
 that which is the end of the process — an end 
 already foreshadowed in the seared conscience — 
 the separation between the soul and its faculty 
 for the divine. All this is the outcome of moral 
 evil — an evil conscience, hereditary guilt, and the 
 great deep we call death. Instead of mortality 
 being swallowed up of life, immortality is 
 swallowed up of death. "Sin entered into the 
 world, and death through sin " (Rom. v. 12). 
 
 Well may the soul of man linger on the shore 
 of this great deep, and catch up Goethe's dying 
 cry, " More light." Shall it ever find an answer ? 
 Yes, standing like Sir Bedivere on the highest 
 ridge of some iron crag, or like the Old Testament 
 prophets waiting for the dawn of the Messianic 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Sin 209 
 
 fulfilment, it may watch under an arch of hand 
 the speck that bears the king, pass on and 
 on, and go firom less to less, and vanish "into 
 Ught" 
 
 " And the new sun rose bringing the new year." 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SALVATION 
 
 It is possible that in ancient Israel the mass of 
 
 the people rested in a barren observance of the 
 
 ceremonial law as an adequate and appropriate 
 
 means of salvation. This need surprise no one 
 
 who has any acquaintance with the unreflecting 
 
 mind in any dispensation. The Hebrews were 
 
 not alone in this nalveM. The mass of the 
 
 members of the new covenant is in much the 
 
 same spiritual condition. Witness their regard 
 
 for the Christian sacrament as a mere opus 
 
 operatum, or for good works, or even for the 
 
 atoning death of Jesus as the one indispensable 
 
 condition of salvation, without any inward 
 
 appropriation of its saving efficacy. External 
 
 ceremonial from its very nature tends to become 
 
 fixed and mechanical. Representing as it does 
 
 the traditional side of religion, it is apt to 
 
 degenerate into a merely formal service ; and so 
 
 far from welcoming new aspects of truth like the 
 
 expanding creed of the prophets, is content to 
 210 
 
The Old Testa/ment Doctrine of Salvation 211 
 
 reproduce the traditionalism of the past, but 
 bereft of the creative genius that originally gave 
 it birth. 
 
 If man, in any age, is to experience the truth of 
 a divine salvation, he must dig much deeper than 
 the observance of a mere ceremonial law. He 
 must pass behind the ritual and grasp the 
 spiritual — appreciating and assimilating the 
 energising principles that give unity and value 
 to the whole. In short, he must enter intelli- 
 gently into the profound spiritual ideas of 
 the prophets — ideas which were never better 
 summarised than in the language already quoted 
 from Micah the peasant-prophet of Moresheth- 
 Gath, who, when setting the ceremonial and the 
 ethical side by side, exclaims, " Wherewith shall 
 I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the 
 high God ? shall I come before Him with burnt- 
 offerings, with calves of a year old ? . . . He hath 
 showed thee, man, what is good ; and what doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to 
 love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God " 
 (vi. 6-8). 
 
 " He whose one oblation 
 Is a life of love — 
 He shall win salvation 
 With the blest above." 
 
212 Israel's Ideal 
 
 1. To DO Justly 
 
 Righteousness (np"!^), or doing justly, is the 
 first note struck loud and clear by the earliest of 
 the eighth century prophets, Amos, the herdman 
 of Tekoa. "Let judgment roll down as waters, 
 and righteousness as a mighty stream " (v. 24). 
 It is a terrible picture the prophet gives us, 
 especially of the ruling classes in Samaria. They 
 displayed great extravagance. They had their 
 winter and summer residences, which were built 
 of hewn stone, panelled with ivory, and furnished 
 with couches inlaid with the same costly material ; 
 and there they feasted and drank to excess amid 
 delicate perfumes and soft strains of delicious 
 music (vi. 4-6). And how was all this kept up ? 
 By what Amos bluntly calls violence and robbery — 
 oppression of the poor, dishonest trading, false 
 weights and worthless goods. They bought the 
 poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, 
 and sold the refuse of the wheat (viii. 4-6). And 
 yet alongside of all this unrighteousness and self- 
 indulgence, what sticklers they were for the 
 observance of prescribed rites and ceremonies ! 
 They brought their sacrifices every morning and 
 their tithes every three days (iv. 4, R.V.) 
 Whereas the slightest reflection ought to have 
 convinced them that the value of the sacrificial 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation 213 
 
 offerings was not to be applied to aggravated 
 transgressions like these. The entire scope of the 
 ritual was restricted to the so-called sins of 
 ignorance ; and it was not to be extended to the 
 crimes of robbery and oppression which had 
 covered with infamy the age of Jeroboam II. It 
 was not through inadvertency or human frailty 
 that these acts of oppression had been committed, 
 but with the deliberate intention of violating 
 their covenant obligations ; and therefore, instead 
 of being atoned for by the ordinary legal sacrifices, 
 they were in danger of being put under the " ban " 
 of an Assyrian captivity. 
 
 The redemption of Israel must be sought in 
 another and totally different direction. It lay in 
 the pursuit of righteousness, both human and 
 divine. Human righteousness, as when the sinner 
 turns from the evil of his ways, and strives to " do 
 justly " as between man and man ; and divine 
 righteousness, as when Jehovah, who is not un- 
 mindful of His covenant promise, hastens to 
 reassure the returning penitent that He is both a 
 righteous God and a Saviour (Isa. xlv. 21). " It 
 may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will he 
 gracious unto the remnant of Joseph " (Amos v. 
 15). Both sides are frankly recognised and 
 equally indispensable. In itself, the human 
 obligation to conform to a moral standard is apt 
 
214 Israel's Ideal 
 
 to rank no higher than the authority of a 
 legal statute ; and as such may only serve to 
 chill or repel the earnest seeker by the stringency 
 of its legality. Besides, the quickened moral 
 sense instinctively harks back to the record of its 
 own evil past — a past which no amount of future 
 obedience will ever be able wholly to wipe out ; 
 and if the returning penitent is not to be 
 soured by the restriction, or discouraged, beyond 
 measure, by the guilt, the whole transaction 
 must be lifted up into the light of a divine 
 readiness to forgive, and the human search 
 after righteousness be interpreted as a reflection 
 of the divine. 
 
 In the last resort, Israel must betake herself to 
 the pardoning mercy of Jehovah. For penitence 
 and obedience, however genuine, can only deal 
 with the present and the future ; they have no 
 alchemy with which to erase or wipe out the past. 
 That past will continue to dog Israel's steps, in 
 spite of all her penitence and prayers, unless, like 
 the hunted man-slayer, she betake herself to a 
 divine city of refuge, where, surrounded and safe- 
 guarded by covenant love, she may find an 
 asylum from the fell sweep of the avenger. 
 " Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth 
 iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the 
 remnant of His heritage ? He retaineth not His 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation 215 
 
 anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy " 
 (Micah vii 18). 
 
 Still, the same general conclusion might have 
 been deduced from a closer examination of civil 
 righteousness. For in this connection we may 
 rightly argue from the human to the divine. A 
 righteous man is one who always acts justly in 
 the ordinary affairs of life. A righteous ruler, for 
 instance, will always count it a sacred duty to 
 clear the innocent and condemn the guilty, when- 
 ever he is called upon to adjudicate between the 
 parties ; though, at the same time, if the guilty 
 one should repent and confess his sin, it will not 
 be considered an infringement of the claims of 
 righteousness, if the one who has been wronged 
 should exercise the prerogative of mercy, and 
 show himself willing to forgive his brother. Even 
 in the domain of human relations, righteousness 
 and grace are by no means mutually exclusive ; 
 and it is the contention of all the sacred writers 
 that the same twofold character of justice and 
 mercy may be ascribed to the righteousness of 
 God. Both in the Old Testament and in the New 
 it is represented as an essential part of the divine 
 rectitude, that Jehovah should forgive the return- 
 ing penitent when he cries unto Him for forgive- 
 ness. " Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, God, 
 Thou God of my salvation ; and my tongue shall 
 
216 Israel's Ideal 
 
 sing aloud of Thy righteousness" (Ps. li. 14). 
 " If we confess our sins, He is faithful and 
 righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse 
 us from all unrighteousness" (1 John i. 9). So 
 that there is no real opposition between 
 righteousness and grace even in the relationship 
 between man and God ; for the exercise of grace, 
 goodness, and forgiveness is one part of the 
 righteousness of Jehovah. 
 
 And here, for the most part, the preachers of 
 righteousness are content to leave the doctrine of 
 salvation. It aims at the attainment of a 
 righteous life ; and is based not upon the observ- 
 ance of ritual, however elaborate and costly, but 
 upon the two correlated facts of a divine readi- 
 ness to forgive, and human penitence and obedi- 
 ence. The one is the complement of the other. 
 The simple fact that God is righteous moves Him 
 to forgive and save men •, but it is the presence of 
 contrition on the part of the creature that 
 brings him within the sphere of the divine mercy. 
 Israel comes to God in the right spirit (Isa. Ixvi. 2), 
 and is covered by God with the garments of 
 salvation (Ixi. 10), and now righteousness, or doing 
 justly, as between man and man, is the gracious 
 and divinely approved result. This is the first, as 
 it is the most practical of all the prophetic ideas. 
 Judgment must be established in the gate. 
 
The Old Teatatnent Doctrine of Salvation 217 
 
 2. To Love Mercy. 
 
 As contrasted with Amos, the preacher of 
 righteousness, Hosea, the second of the writing 
 prophets, is the preacher of forgiving and redeem- 
 ing love — ^Ipn, loving-kindness. His entire 
 message must be read in the light of that truth. 
 Jehovah was not only a King or "Ruler who 
 demanded civil justice as between man and man, 
 or moral righteousness as set forth in the higher 
 sphere of ethical monotheism ; He was also a divine 
 husband and father who had taken Israel to 
 Himself in a covenant of saving mercy, and who 
 still yearned over the unfaithful wife, or over the 
 disobedient son, after she or he had been guilty 
 of spiritual apostasy. Both as Jehovah's spouse 
 and Jehovah's son, Israel was pledged to a life of 
 fidelity and affection ; but, alas ! she had gone after 
 other lovers, and bowed the knee to other gods 
 (ii. 13); and therefore, as in the prophecy of 
 Amos, the sore discipline of exile would be her 
 portion (ix. 17). And yet Israel's husband and 
 father yearned over her with a great love. " How 
 shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shall I 
 deliver thee, Israel ? how shall I make thee as 
 Admah ? how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? mine 
 heart is turned within me: my compassions are 
 
218 Israel's Ideal 
 
 kindled together " (xi. 8). The puDishment, 
 though richly deserved, would not be the " ban " 
 of an utter extermination ; it would be chastise- 
 ment, the proof of his love.-"^ 
 
 Hosea's contribution to the doctrine of salva- 
 tion must be interpreted in terms of this covenant 
 love. See especially v. 15 ; vi. 1-6, and the whole 
 of chapter xiv. It is impossible to read these 
 passages, and not feel that Hosea goes a great deal 
 deeper than Amos. He began deeper — not with 
 the righteousness of conduct, but with the love of 
 the heart. " He pierces beneath the visible con- 
 duct of the nation to the disposition that underlies 
 it. Amos judges the moral offences of Israel as 
 breaches of universal law, aggravated by the 
 possession of special privileges. Hosea judges 
 them as proofs of a heart not true to Jehovah, out 
 of sympathy with his character and ungrateful to 
 His love." ^ And the nature of the sin determines 
 the character of the restoration. It must be based 
 in a radical change of heart — a following on to 
 know the Lord (vi. 3). Or to take our other 
 figure, it is like the return of the Prodigal Son. 
 " In thee, the fatherless findeth mercy " (xiv. 3). 
 
 ' For the sad story of Hosea's home-life, and the way in 
 which it prepared him for this deeper insight into God's 
 covenant mercy, see the Author's " Minor Prophets," 
 p. .35. 
 
 '■^ See above, p. 195. 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation 219 
 
 So that in Hosea's teaching we have one of the 
 closest adumbrations of the great New Testament 
 •doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood — not, it may 
 be, in the familiar language of " put a ring on his 
 hand and shoes on his feet ; " but in language no 
 less beautiful in its imagery, " I will be as the dew 
 unto Israel : . . . they shall revive as the corn, 
 and blossom as the vine : the scent thereof shall 
 be as the wine of Lebanon." 
 
 " And then thou too shalt, after many days, 
 Turn in thine anguish to the Eternal Lord. 
 And, -wearied out with evil, seeking peace, 
 Dwell in His Goodness everlastingly." * 
 
 The term " anguish," here introduced, is aptly 
 ■chosen to express what is really unique in Hosea's 
 message. It is emphatically a thing of the heart ; 
 and if the penitent has been stung with regret 
 because of his ungracious treatment of covenant 
 love, he can only hope to alleviate the pungency 
 ■of his remorse, by losing himself in the divinely 
 implanted heart-trust which brings him into 
 fellowship with his Lord. All moral and spiritual 
 forces operate from within. The spirit of son- 
 ship has been reawakened in the returning one's 
 heart, and it is this that gives buoyancy to the 
 step. The spell of the Father's house is already 
 
 1 See Plumptre's beautiful poem "Gomer" in "Lazarus, 
 And Other Poems." 
 
220 Israel's Ideal 
 
 upon him, because the Father's Spirit (c/. Prov, 
 i. 23) has come to glorious birth in the profound 
 heart-hunger of a child. And it is in view of 
 this spiritual heart-trust, which is the nearest 
 approach to a doctrine of saving faith contained 
 in Hebrew literature,^ that we can understand 
 how a barren performance of the ceremonial law 
 is rendered totally inadmissible. " I desire mercy 
 
 ("^PD) ^^^ '^^^ sacrifice ; and the knowledge of 
 
 God more than burnt-oflferings " (Hos. vi. 6). The 
 
 end in view is not a doctrine, but a life — a life 
 
 which has been melted and subdued by the 
 
 pardoning mercy of Jehovah, and which is now 
 
 guided and inspired by the same gracious 
 
 example. Human mercy, like human justice, is a 
 
 reflection of the divine. Not mercy alone, and 
 
 not justice ; but mercy and justice combined. To- 
 
 "do justly," and to "love mercy," rose like a 
 
 binary star in the sky of the eighth century 
 
 prophets, and though humanity has been long in 
 
 laying to heart the fulness of its teaching, it is- 
 
 still shining in all its brightness for us. And 
 
 here, in the pages of Amos and Hosea, no less- 
 
 than in the wisdom of a modern " Daniel come to- 
 
 judgment," we may learn that 
 
 " Earthly power doth then show likest God's 
 When mercy seasons justice." 
 
 1 Cf. Proverbs iii. 5, Camb. Bible. 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation 221 
 
 3. To Walk Humbly 
 
 It was left to Isaiah, the first man in Jerusalem, 
 to strike the highest note in the teaching of the 
 eighth century. He lived to see what Amos and 
 Hosea had only threatened and feared — the actual 
 overthrow of the ten tribes — and it was his, not 
 simply to interpret that calamity in behalf of 
 Judah and Jerusalem, but also to "justify the 
 ways of God to men" by bringing it under the 
 wider category of ethical monotheism. And he 
 did so, not by fixing on any one attribute of the 
 divine character — His universal justice, as set 
 forth by Amos, or His saving mercy, as developed 
 in the teaching of Hosea — ^but by embracing all 
 the attributes of deity in one expressive synthesis, 
 and depicting it as the rich and incomparable 
 sublimity of the divine holiness. Of. the Trisagion 
 of the seraphim in Isa. vi. 3. " Holy, holy, holy, 
 is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of 
 His glory." 
 
 Etymologically, the idea of the root jjj-jp is 
 somewhat uncertain ; but when brought into 
 relation with other words beginning with the same 
 letters, as Kaho'i, cedo, cut, and the like, the general 
 meaning of separation or tuithd/rawal from the 
 sphere of what is ordinary may be accepted as the 
 root idea of the word. Robertson Smith was of 
 
222 Israel's Ideal 
 
 opinion, that it was used at first in a purely 
 physical sense, as when the primitive Semites 
 feared and shunned the sanctity of the gods 
 as an infectious disease. Everything sacred 
 was placed under restrictions, or withdrawn 
 from human contact, under a system of taboos; 
 and so charged did the object become with super- 
 natural danger, because of this withdrawal, that 
 anyone who presumed to approach it unduly, or 
 come within the reach of its powerful currents, 
 might be destroyed or shrivelled up on the spot 
 (c/. 2 Sam. vi. 7). There was nothing ethical or 
 spiritual in such a conception ; holiness, like taboo, 
 was propagated by physical contagion. 
 
 It is obvious, however, when we come to a great 
 passage like Isaiah's vision, and analyse the 
 imagery in which he describes his call to 
 be a prophet, that we are faced by a very 
 different problem, and are breathing the air 
 of a totally different atmosphere. The fear 
 that seizes the prophet in the presence 
 of the divine holiness is not the slavish 
 dread with which the early Semites regarded the 
 terrible god who annihilates what comes near him 
 and kills what is dedicated to him. It is entirely 
 an ethical conception. It is the feeling of human 
 sinfulness and impurity which is not worthy to 
 approach the God of holiness. The thought of a 
 
The Old Teatmnent Doctrine of Salvation 223 
 
 moral deity has changed everything. It has 
 heightened the sense of duty, deepened the 
 consciousness of sin, and intensified but also 
 purified the element of fear (Isa. vi. 5). Unlike 
 the God of Mohammed who spares the sins the 
 Arab loves, Jehovah, the God of Israel, has said, 
 "Be ye holy, for I am holy." And it is no 
 exaggeration to say, that whatever man's attain- 
 ments in other departments of knowledge may be, 
 this is the grandest energy working for peace and 
 progress that ever came into his history or into 
 his heart. 
 
 Holiness, however, is not single, but complex. 
 It describes not any one element in the divine 
 character, but the entire contents of the covenant- 
 relation which God has adopted towards His 
 people. It has been referred to the breaking 
 forth of a brilliant light. Of. Isa. x. 17, where the 
 light of Israel corresponds to the Holy One who 
 burneth as a flame. As such, it is capable of 
 a twofold reference. It may be applied to 
 the unapproachable majesty of Jehovah, or to the 
 no less unparalleled splendour of His mercy. 
 God is infinitely high, but He is also infinitely 
 near ; and both in moral sublimity and in match- 
 less loving-kindness He is the One whose name 
 is holy — the One whose garment is the light, and 
 in whom is no darkness at all. Both elements 
 
224 Israel's Ideal 
 
 are beautifully combined in Isa. Ivii. 15, where the 
 High and Lofty One, who inhabits eternity, 
 dwells also with the man who is of a contrite and 
 humble spirit. The greatness of His majesty is 
 the measure of His grace. 
 
 It is manifest that holiness, as thus defined, 
 demands an ethically holy people — a people who 
 will stand in awe before that adorable majesty, 
 and respond with a child's trust to the revelation 
 of that love. And it is in the light of this 
 necessity that we can appreciate at once the 
 prophet's solution of the dreaded Assyrian 
 invasion, and his no less significant contribution to 
 the Old Testament doctrine of salvation. The 
 key to both is the divine purification by fire, 
 which formed the next essential element in Isaiah's 
 vision. " Lo, this hath touched thy lips ; and thine 
 iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged" 
 (chap. yi. 7). What the symbol of the hot stone 
 did for Isaiah, the reality of the Assyrian conquest 
 was designed to do for Israel. It also was 
 purification by fire. It was as the burning of a 
 divine flame, which was meant to separate the 
 dross from the metal in God's people, until the 
 holiness and uniqueness of their spiritual calling 
 should be seen to be something better than the 
 attainment of a merely ceremonial ideal. The 
 divine discipline, in other words, was not for 
 
The Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation 225 
 
 destruction, but for purification ; and when the 
 purging fiame had done its work, a faithful 
 remnant should be left as the nucleus of a more 
 perfect church and nation. In fine, the concluding 
 element in Isaiah's vision, and the symbolical 
 meaning of his son's name, Shear-jashub, would 
 be gloriously verified. The oak of Israel might 
 be felled to the ground, but the abundant sap in 
 its roots would again put forth fresh shoots in the 
 springtime. A remnant would survive, and a 
 new Israel would arise and flourish on the ruins 
 of the old ; and this, both in mercy and judgment, 
 would be the real vindication of the appalling 
 Assyrian invasion (Isa. vi. 13 ; vii. 3). 
 
 And in view of this wider movement in history, 
 what is Isaiah's contribution to the doctrine of 
 salvation ? If the Light of Israel burneth as a 
 flame — if He appear with the fire of holiness to 
 burn up the alloy, yet with the gentler flame of 
 redeeming love to purify and preserve the gold — 
 what is required on the part of the pious in Israel, 
 that they may endure the one and profit by the 
 other, and win a place in the new Israel that will 
 outlive the solemn purification ? Passages like 
 Isa. ii. 10-22 ; vi. 5, and the fuller statements of 
 Deutero-Isaiah, Ivii. 15 ; Ixvi. 2, furnish the 
 answer. " To this man will I look, even to him 
 that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that 
 15 
 
226 Israel's Ideal 
 
 trembleth at my word." "For thus saith the 
 Highand Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose 
 name is holy : I dwell in the high and holy place, 
 with him also that is of a contrite and hwmhle 
 spirit, to revive the heart of the contrite ones." 
 In one word, the Lord demands humility. 
 
 " Humility ! the fairest, loveliest flower 
 That bloomed in Paradise, the first that died, 
 Has never blossomed since in mortal soil ; 
 It is so fair, so delicate a thing, 
 That if it look upon itself, 'tis gone, 
 And she who ventures to esteem it hers 
 Shows by that simple thought she has it not." 
 
 And yet humility is not a single conception. 
 It contains various shades of meaning. It is 
 fear, reverence, and submission all in one. It is 
 fear, because of sin (Isa. vi. 5) ; reverence, because 
 of divine majesty (Ps. xcvi. 4), and submission, to 
 the ever wise will of the Eternal, who has decreed 
 that from the sufferings of the faithful remnant 
 the redemption of the world is to spring (c/. Isa. 
 liii. 5 ; Ps. xliv. 22). In fine, it is Micah's 
 expressive phrase — "walking humbly with thy 
 God." 
 
 Righteousness, loving-kindness, and now 
 spiritual humble-mindedness — these are the three 
 main lines along which Israel is to work out her 
 salvation with fear and trembling. Not along the 
 line of traditional ceremonial, but along the line 
 
The Old TestaTnent Doctrine of Salvation 227 
 
 of spiritual self-surrender; until, at the feet of 
 Him who is justice, mercy, and humility all in 
 one, she, and we, kneel and say^ " My Lord and my 
 God." " He hath showed thee, O man, what is 
 good : and what doth the Lord require of thee, 
 but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy God." 
 
 [Index of Passages. 
 
INDEX OF PASSAGES 
 
 Gen. 
 
 228 
 
 
 
 PAGK8 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 n. i. 1 . . 
 
 40, 152 
 
 Gen. XV. 10 . 
 
 . 96 
 
 2 . . 
 
 55, 182 
 
 18 
 
 . 98 
 
 24 . 
 
 55, 182 
 
 xvi. 7 . 
 
 156 
 
 26 . . 
 
 . 154 
 
 xvii. 1 . 
 
 105 
 
 31 . 
 
 31, 180 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 98 
 
 ii. 3 . 
 
 . 106 
 
 xviii. 19 . 
 
 101, 105 
 
 4-25 
 
 . 24 
 
 27 . 
 
 . 207 
 
 7 . . 
 
 57, 181 
 
 xxi. 17 . 
 
 . 166 
 
 8 . 
 
 . 27 
 
 32 . 
 
 . 95 
 
 15-17 
 
 . 32 
 
 xxii. 11-15 
 
 . 156 
 
 17 . ] 
 
 194,208 
 
 18 . . 
 
 94, 104 
 
 19 . 
 
 . 25 
 
 TTTTTi. 11-13 
 
 . 156 
 
 iii. 1-6 . 
 
 . 193 
 
 44 . 
 
 . 95 
 
 8 . 
 
 . 27 
 
 54 . 
 
 75,95 
 
 12 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 xxxii. 24 . 
 
 . 156 
 
 15 . 
 
 . 140 
 
 xlix, 7 . 
 
 204 
 
 17-18 
 
 . . 25 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 140 
 
 22 . 
 
 . . 154 
 
 Ex. iii. 2 . 
 
 . 156 
 
 iv. 3-4 
 
 . . 5 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 121 
 
 4-5 
 
 : . 75 
 
 14 
 
 . 45 
 
 14 . 
 
 33, 202 
 
 iv. 10 . 
 
 . 121 
 
 17 . 
 
 . . 21 
 
 16 . 
 
 . 128 
 
 23-24 
 
 . 202 
 
 22 
 
 . . 102 
 
 vi. 3 . 
 
 . . 207 
 
 vii. 1 . 
 
 128 
 
 vii. 15 . 
 
 . . 181 
 
 xii. 13 . 
 
 88 
 
 ix. 4 . 
 
 . . 186 
 
 xix. 4 . 
 
 . . Ill 
 
 9 . 
 
 . . 97 
 
 5 . 
 
 . 94 
 
 11-18 
 
 . . 98 
 
 6 . 
 
 . . 99 
 
 18-25 
 
 . . 204 
 
 XX. 1-17 
 
 . . 106 
 
 23 . 
 
 . . 108 
 
 5 . 
 
 . 204 
 
 X. 
 
 
 . . 104 
 
 xxiv. 4-11 
 
 . . 99 
 
 xi. 
 
 
 . . 104 
 
 6 . 
 
 . . 96 
 
 7 
 
 
 . . 154 
 
 7 . 
 
 . 106 
 
 xii. 2 
 
 
 . . 140 
 
 , 8 . 
 
 . . 95 
 
 xiii. 15 
 
 
 . . 140 
 
 xxix. 9 . 
 
 . . 145 
 
 XV. 6 
 
 
 . . 112 
 
 14-22 
 
 . . 82 
 
Index 
 
 229 
 
 
 FAGBB 
 
 
 PAQIS 
 
 Ex. Mxii. 13-14 
 
 . . 101 
 
 Judges vi. 34 . 
 
 . . 66 
 
 26-29 
 
 . . 204 
 
 xiii. 3-22 
 
 . . 156 
 
 31 . 
 
 . 131 
 
 1 Sam. ix. 9 . 
 
 . . 128 
 
 32 . 
 
 . . 91 
 
 X. 6-9 
 
 . . 64 
 
 xl. 15 . 
 
 . . 145 
 
 xii. 33 . 
 
 . 131 
 
 LcT. i. 4 . 
 
 . 86 
 
 XV. 22 . 
 
 • ,78 
 
 ii. 13 . 
 
 . 95 
 
 23 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 iv. 2 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 xvi. 14 . . 
 
 59,61 
 
 27 . 
 
 . 198 
 
 18 . 
 
 . 120 
 
 T. 15 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 xviii. 3 . 
 
 . 95 
 
 vi. 25 . 
 
 . 90 
 
 xix. 9 . 
 
 . 61 
 
 xvi. 21 . . 
 
 . 90 
 
 20 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 xvii. 11 . . 
 
 88, 186 
 
 24 . 
 
 . 123 
 
 zsir. 16 . 
 
 . 45 
 
 xxiv. 10 . 
 
 . 165 
 
 xxtI. 39 . . 
 
 . 205 
 
 2 Sam. vi. 7 . 
 
 . 222 
 
 Num. xi. 25 . 
 
 . 63 
 
 vii. 
 
 . 99 
 
 29 . 
 
 . 62 
 
 2 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 xii. 6-8 
 
 . 125 
 
 12 . 
 
 . 140 
 
 XV. 30 . . 
 
 86, 197 
 
 xxiii. 1-5 
 
 . 167 
 
 xvi. . . 
 
 . 198 
 
 xxiv. 11 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 xviu. 19 . 
 
 . 95 
 
 1 Kings ii. 19 . 
 
 . 108 
 
 xxiv. 13 . 
 
 . 122 
 
 viii. 41 . 
 
 . 104 
 
 17 . . 
 
 . 141 
 
 xvii. 24 . . 
 
 . 131 
 
 Deut. iv. 29 . 
 
 . 183 
 
 xU. 16 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 V. 6-21 . . 
 
 . 106 
 
 xxi. 22 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 26 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 2 Kings ii. 15 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 vi. 6-6 
 
 110,188 
 
 V.17 . 
 
 . 34 
 
 10-11 . 
 
 . 22 
 
 Isa.i. 2-5 
 
 . 197 
 
 vii. 6-8 : 
 
 100, 111 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 199 
 
 xviii. 15 . 
 
 . 117 
 
 16-17 
 
 . 198 
 
 18 . 
 
 144, 146 
 
 ii. 2-4 
 
 105, 167 
 
 xxi. 21-22 . 
 
 . 91 
 
 10-22 
 
 . 225 
 
 xxiv. 16 . . 
 
 . 206 
 
 vi3 . 
 
 . 221 
 
 xxvi. 5 . 
 
 . 20 
 
 -r 
 
 21, 196, 
 
 xxxii. 8 . . 
 
 . 104 
 
 223 
 
 10 . . 
 
 94, 111 
 
 7 . 
 
 . 224 
 
 xxxiii. 5 . 
 
 . Ill 
 
 8 . 
 
 . 154 
 
 8-11 
 
 . 204 
 
 9 . 
 
 . 198 
 
 Josh. V. 14 . 
 
 . 166 
 
 IS . 
 
 . 22S 
 
 ix. 6 . 
 
 95,97 
 
 vii. 3 . 
 
 . 225 
 
 XX. 3 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 14 . 
 
 99, 134 
 
 xxii. 5 . 
 
 . 110 
 
 viii. 8 . 
 
 . 134 
 
 Judges ii. 1-4 
 
 . 156 
 
 16 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 iv. 4-6 
 
 . 117 
 
 ix. 1-6 
 
 . 168 
 
 vi. 8 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 2-7 
 
 . 136 
 
 11-24 
 
 . 156 
 
 6 . 
 
 133, 165 
 
230 
 
 Index 
 
 PAQES 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 iBa. X. 5#. . . 35 
 
 Jer. vii. 6 . . 
 
 . 197 
 
 17 . . . 223 
 
 22-24 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 18 . . . 181 
 
 25. 1 
 
 14, 116 
 
 xi. 1-9 136, 168 
 
 XV. 4 . . 
 
 . 204 
 
 2 . 67, 166 
 
 9 . . 
 
 . 128 
 
 2-5 142, 144 
 
 xvii. 9 . . 
 
 . 187 
 
 6 ... 25 
 
 xviii. 6 . . 
 
 . 175 
 
 10 . . . 105 
 
 XX. 9 . . 
 
 . 129 
 
 xix. 19-22 . . 167 
 
 xxiii. 6 . . 
 
 . 142 
 
 23-25 . . 104 
 
 24 . . 
 
 . 38 
 
 xxiv. 5 . . .199 
 
 XXX. 21 . . 
 
 . 144 
 
 xxix. 16 . . . 175 
 
 xxxi. 29 . . 
 
 . 205 
 
 xxxi. 1 . . .126 
 
 30 . . 
 
 . 206 
 
 xxxii. 1-8 . . 135 
 
 33 . . 
 
 . 188 
 
 15-17. . 67 
 
 xxxii. 18, 19 . 
 
 . 205 
 
 xxxvii. 2-4 . . 131 
 
 xxziii. 16 . . 
 
 . 142 
 
 xxxix. 1 . . .126 
 
 18-22 . 
 
 . 145 
 
 xl. 6 . . . 181 
 
 xxxiv. 18 . . 
 
 . 96 
 
 13 ... 57 
 
 xlviii. 47 . . 
 
 . 104 
 
 27 . . . 174 
 
 Ezek. i. 28 . . 
 
 . 124 
 
 xlii. 1 . . .147 
 
 xiii. 10-16 
 
 . 130 
 
 5 ... 58 
 
 xvi. 8 . 
 
 . 102 
 
 xUv. 1 . . . 147 
 
 xviii 2 . 
 
 . 206 
 
 xlv. 9 . . . 175 
 
 xxxiii. 14-20 
 
 . 206 
 
 19 ... 93 
 
 xxxvi. 26-27 . 
 
 65,69 
 
 21 . . . 213 
 
 xlvii. 12 . 
 
 . 27 
 
 xlviu. 9-11 . . 101 
 
 Hoa. ii. 13 . 
 
 . 217 
 
 xUx. 3 . . . 147 
 
 V. 15 . 
 
 . . 218 
 
 li. 12-16 . . 174 
 
 vi. 1-6 
 
 . . 218 
 
 lu. 13-liii. 12 147 
 
 3 . 
 
 . . 218 
 
 liii. 5 . . .226 
 
 6 . 
 
 . . 220 
 
 12 . . . 186 
 
 ix. 7 . 
 
 . . 63 
 
 Iv. 3 ... 97 
 
 17 . 
 
 . . 217 
 
 Ivii. 15 . . . 224 
 
 xi. 1 . 
 
 . 1,49 
 
 Ixi. 1 . .144 
 
 3 . 
 
 . . 3 
 
 10 . 89, 216 
 
 8 . 
 
 195, 218 
 
 Ixiii. 10, 11 . 68 
 
 12 . 
 
 . . 141 
 
 Ixvi. 2 . 196, 216 
 
 14 . 
 
 . . Ill 
 
 18 . . . 104 
 
 xii. 13 . 
 
 . . 116 
 
 Jer. i. 6 . . .121 
 
 xui. 6 . 
 
 . . 200 
 
 7-9 . . 128 
 
 xiv. 
 
 . . 218 
 
 ii. 11 ... 41 
 
 1 . 
 
 130, 196 
 
 13, 18 . . 200 
 
 3 . 
 
 . . 218 
 
 iii. 4, 19 . . 102 
 
 Joel ii. 28 . 
 
 . . 62 
 
 14 . . . 102 
 
 Amos i. 
 
 . . 116 
 
 vi. 13-14 . . 129 
 
 ii. 9-10 
 
 . . 115 
 
Index 
 
 231 
 
 
 FASBS 
 
 
 FAGBS 
 
 AmoB ii. 10-12 
 
 . 116 
 
 Pb. Ii. 5 . 
 
 . 199 
 
 iii. 2 . 
 
 . 101 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 188 
 
 7 . 
 
 63, 128 
 
 11 . 
 
 59,68 
 
 8 . 
 
 . 121 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 216 
 
 11 . 
 
 . 130 
 
 Iii. 3 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 iv. 4 . 
 
 . 212 
 
 Ixvii. 4 . 
 
 . 104 
 
 V. 15 . 
 
 198, 213 
 
 Ixxiii. 26 . 
 
 . 188 
 
 24 . 
 
 . 212 
 
 Ixxxiv. 2 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 25 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 Ixxxix. 30-34 
 
 . 101 
 
 vi. 4 . 
 
 200, 212 
 
 xcvi 4 . 
 
 . 226 
 
 5 . 
 
 . 115 
 
 6 . 
 
 . 41 
 
 vii, 14 . 
 
 . 114 
 
 ciii. 14 . 
 
 . 207 
 
 viii. 4-6 
 
 . 212 
 
 civ. . 
 
 . 176 
 
 ix. 7 . 
 
 34, 115 
 
 2 . . 
 
 38,52 
 
 11 . 
 
 . 141 
 
 30 . 
 
 . 68 
 
 Micah iii. 2 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 ex. 
 
 . 144 
 
 8 . 88,65,166 
 
 cxxi. 2 . 
 
 . 174 
 
 V. 2-5 
 
 . 134 
 
 cxxlv. 8 . 
 
 . 174 
 
 vi. 7 . 
 
 . 28 
 
 uxxxiv. 3 . 
 
 . 174 
 
 8.P 
 
 10, 196, 
 
 cxxxv. 4 . 
 
 . Ill 
 
 211 
 
 cxxxix. 7-9 
 
 . 35 
 
 vii. 4 . 
 
 . 199 
 
 oxlvL 4 . 
 
 . 207 
 
 18 . . 
 
 . 215 
 
 Prov. J. 23 . 
 
 . 220 
 
 Nahum i. 3 . 
 
 . 38 
 
 iii. 5 . 
 
 . 220 
 
 Haggai i. 1 . 
 
 . 146 
 
 iv. 23 . 
 
 . 187 
 
 Zech. iu. 1 . 
 
 . 146 
 
 vui. 22-31 
 
 . 162 
 
 8 . 
 
 144,146 
 
 36 . 
 
 . 196 
 
 iv. 14 . 
 
 . 144 
 
 xix. 2 . 
 
 . 196 
 
 vi. 11 . 
 
 . 146 
 
 Job i. 6 . 
 
 . 154 
 
 13 . 
 
 . 144 
 
 xiv. 2 . 
 
 . 207 
 
 vii. 12 . 
 
 . 63 
 
 4 . 
 
 . 199 
 
 ix. 9 . 
 
 . 134 
 
 xxvi. 13 . 
 
 . 53 
 
 xii. 10 . 
 
 . 67 
 
 xxxii. 8 . 
 
 . 57 
 
 Mai. i. 1 . 
 
 . 129 
 
 18-19 
 
 . 129 
 
 11 . 
 
 . 104 
 
 xxxiii. 4 . 
 
 . 57 
 
 Pb. ii. 6 . 
 
 . 165 
 
 xxxiv. 15 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 xiv. 3 . 
 
 . 199 
 
 xxxviii. ff. . 
 
 . . 176 
 
 xvi. 7 . 
 
 . 59 
 
 7 . 
 
 . 154 
 
 xxzii. 
 
 . 199 
 
 Lam. V. 7 . 
 
 . 204 
 
 1 . 
 
 . . 88 
 
 2 Ohron. ix. 29 . 
 
 . . 116 
 
 3-4 
 
 . 202 
 
 XXXV. 23-27 
 
 . . 148 
 
 xxxiii. 6 . 
 
 . 67 
 
 Dan. viii. 17 . 
 
 . . 124 
 
 xliv. 22 . 
 
 . . 226 
 
 
 
 xlvi. 10 . 
 
 . . 104 
 
 St. Luke ii. 12 . 
 
 . . 100 
 
 1.12 . 
 
 . . 79 
 
 iv. 18 . 
 
 . . 145 
 
 Ii. 4 . 
 
 . . 194 
 
 St. John i. 13 . 
 
 . . 51 
 
232 
 
 Index 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 St. John i. 21 . 
 
 . 145 
 
 Eph. iv. 13 . 
 
 . . 1 
 
 iv. 24 . 
 
 . 52 
 
 Col. ii. 16 . 
 
 . 100 
 
 vi. 65 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 Heb. iv. 16 . 
 
 . 32 
 
 xii. 32 . 
 
 . 100 
 
 vu. 17 . 
 
 . 146 
 
 Acts vii. 25 . 
 
 . 121 
 
 25 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 xii. 7,17 
 
 . 157 
 
 ix. 15 . 
 
 . 97 
 
 xvii. 27 . 
 
 39,93 
 
 xiii. 13 . 
 
 . 91 
 
 28 . 
 
 . 50 
 
 15 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 Eom. V. 12 . 
 
 . 208 
 
 1 Pet. i. 12 . 
 
 . 53 
 
 - vii. 23 . 
 
 . 184 
 
 2 Pet. i. 21 . 
 
 63, 123 
 
 viii. 9 . 
 
 . 83 
 
 1 John i. 8 . 
 
 . 189 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 51 
 
 9 . 
 
 . 216 
 
 1 Cor. ix. 16 . 
 
 . 122 
 
 Rev. i. 17 . 
 
 , 124 
 
 2 Cor. xii. 2 . 
 
 . 124 
 
 iii. 20 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 Eph. i. 18 . 
 
 . 128 
 
 vii. 14 . 
 
 . 89 
 
 iii. 19 . 
 
 . 46 
 
 xxii. 1 . 
 
 . 27 
 
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