THE
DIVINE DISCIPLINE
OF ISRAEL

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE
DIVINE DISCIPLINE
OF ISRAEL

AN ADDRESS AND THREE LECTURES ON
THE GROWTH OF IDEAS IN THE
OLD TESTAMENT

G. BUCHANAN GRAY, MA.
LECTURER IN HEBREW AND OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY IN
MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD

LONDON
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1900
[All Rights Reserved]

TO
MY FATHER AND
MY MOTHER
THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY
DEDICATED

PREFACE

The deepest interest of the Old Testament
centres in its ideas ; and the surest way to
understand those ideas lies through the
study of them in their genesis and growth.
Such study must share with all others the
possibility of uncertainty in detail, and the
liability to error. But it is unwise to defer
the attempt to understand anything till
everything subsidiary to that understanding
is certain and beyond dispute.
The address and the lectures of which
this volume consists were alike given and are
now published in the belief that the readiness
to accept the main conclusions of the modern
literary criticism of" the Old Testament is
already sufficiently widespread to justify an
exposition and interpretation of the history of
some of the Old Testament ideas based on
those conclusions, yet without reference to the
processes by which they have been reached.

PREFACE

The subject of the lectures is large, and
the lectures themselves must be regarded
merely as illustrations of it. They are pub
lished in accordance with the request of some
who heard them. I should have preferred, on
many grounds, to have dealt with the subject
on a more adequate scale, and in a less
fragmentary manner. But for this I have
not at present the requisite leisure. And
it is not unlikely that those who may care
to read the present brief discussion, would
have had little inclination to devote time to
one that was longer and more elaborate.
The volume will serve its purpose if to
some small extent it succeeds in showing how
vividly the Old Testament illustrates the fact
that men have differed in different ages in
their apprehension, and consequently in their
expression, of the abiding realities.
G. BUCHANAN GRAY.

Mansfield College,
Oxford, November 1899.

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE
OF ISRAEL
A PAPER READ BEFORE
THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES
AT LEICESTER
On 1st OCTOBER 1896.

THE
DIVINE DISCIPLINE

OF

ISRAEL

That Israel was a chosen people, elected of
God for the accomplishment of a particular
purpose — the spiritual enlightenment of the
nations through the revelation of the true
God — is an idea which is deeply rooted in
the Scriptures, and which has in manifold
ways dominated Christian thought. For the
Christian thinker has been quick to trace in
the chequered fortunes of the chosen people
the consistent working of the Divine mind
shaping for itself out of the natural Israel a
fit instrument for the fulfilling of its design.
Now during the last century, exploration,
linguistic study, critical investigation, and

10 ' THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
historical research have all contributed data
which render the history of Israel a very
different story from that which was thus
interpreted. Is it, then, still possible to
discern in it the discipline of a nation for a
Divine purpose ? This is the question I
propose to raise ; and, within the limits of
time at my disposal, to throw out suggestions
for an answer to it.
In the first place, let me indicate the
general result of discovery and research.
Generally speaking, these have brought to
light a much greater original likeness between
Israel and the neighbouring peoples, and the
continuance of much of this likeness to a
far later period in the history than was
formerly recognised.
So long as our knowledge of other ancient
Semitic peoples was based only on the frag
mentary and but partly intelligible accounts
of the classical authors, Israel appeared
all the more peculiar as being the only
Semitic people known to us through native
sources. But the discovery and interpreta-

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 11
tion of other native Semitic records quickly
brought to light many points of resemblance.
Thus it became impossible any longer to hold
that a part of Israel's peculiar task was to
preserve an account of the origin and early
history of the world, so soon as it was seen
that that account was derived from Babylon,
and consisted not of matters of fact, but of
legend and myth. In this particular instance,
it is true, comparison has revealed dissimi
larity no less than similarity ; the Divine
revelation of which Israel was the channel
is now seen to consist in the spiritual truth
which shines through the legend and the
myth. Again, the discovery of an important
inscription1 of Israel's near neighbours, the
Moabites, showed that there was an even
more far-reaching similarity between the re
ligious ideas of Hebrews and Moabites so
late as the ninth century — that is to say,
down to the early years of Elijah. The
Babylonian narratives are distinguished from
1 A translation of part of this is given in the Appendix,
pp. 126-128.

12 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
the Hebrew by their polytheistic standpoint ;
but to the Moabite scribe his god, Chemosh,
is scarcely less unique than is Jehovah to
the contemporary Hebrew writers. These
familiar examples must suffice to illustrate
the manner in which the discovery of fresh
facts through exploration has stripped many
elements in the religion, history, and litera
ture of Israel of their uniqueness and pecu
liarity. For what has been done in another
direction by the study of comparative religion,
and especially by the comparative study of
Semitic religions, I need only refer to the
works1 of the late Professor Robertson Smith,
who has traced many a custom and many a
sacrificial rite, which once ranked as the
peculiar mark of the Hebrews, to their
origin in the customs and religion of the
common ancestors of the various Semitic
nations. But if the similarity of the early Hebrews
has only recently become clear, the long-
recognised peculiarity of the later Hebrews
1 More especially The Religion of the Semites.

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 13
or Jews is still an undisputed fact. Nothing
has arisen to call in question the unique part
the Jews have played in history, nor that
that uniqueness consists in their religion.
In other words, no new facts, no new theories
which those facts have generated, have dimin
ished the importance of the history of Israel ;
for, together with Greece and Rome, Israel
still exercises a mighty influence over the
life of to-day. Greece remains none the less
supreme in art because discovery and research
have shown that the efflorescence of her art,
instead of being sudden, was preceded by long
ages of growth, and that it owed something
to the influence of foreign models ; nor Israel
in religion, because it can no longer be denied
that that religion which has rendered her
unique was not the birth of a day, but the
slow growth of centuries out of an original
common to other peoples. It is the finished
product, the culminating point, which in each
instance alike establishes the claim to supre
macy and gives a consequent importance to
the prior history.

14 tTHE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
While, therefore, the historian to-day has
to make clear the extent of the common
basis of the religions of Israel and other
peoples, a yet more important part of his
task is to trace the transition from similarity
/to dissimilarity, to mark the crises of the
history, and to account as best he may for
the fact that this people, once merely one of
several similar Semitic confederations, came
in the course of its history so to diverge
from the rest that, while they have passed
away leaving behind them little discernible
\ influence, it, through its religion, remains the
\most potent and beneficent factor in the life
of our own times. The Christian thinker,
the theologian, has yet another task : accept
ing the facts, he has to consider their bearing
on his conception of God, and then to give
them their final interpretation in the light of
that conception. In attempting to indicate
how that task may be discharged, under the
changed circumstances occasioned by fresh
knowledge, I must content myself with a
single illustration. For this purpose I take

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 15
the growth of the monotheistic idea or belief. "
Ultimately the most essential peculiarity of
the Hebrew religion in the realm of belief was
its monotheism ; originally this was not the
case ; for in common with the neighbouring
nations the early Hebrews were not mono-
theists. Kuenen, with a true sense of the resem
blance of the Hebrew to other Semitic religions,
sought the ground of similarity in a common
polytheism : as in other countries men wor
shipped at the same time many gods, so, he
argued, David and Saul and other Hebrew
leaders worshipped other gods besides Jehovah.
Renan, on the other hand, with a keen sense
of the supremacy, for example, of Jehovah
among the Hebrews, or of Chemosh among the
Moabites, propounded his famous theory of a
common Semitic monotheism, and argued that
Hebrews and other Semites alike were gov
erned by a monotheistic tendency. Further
research, greatly stimulated by the writings
of both these scholars, has confirmed them in
their point of agreement — the similarity of

16 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
the Hebrews and other Semites, but has cor
rected both where they disagreed, viz., in the
ground of that similarity. The Semites were
not monotheists in the sense that they had a
common belief in one supreme God of the
whole world, nor were David and his con
temporaries polytheists in the sense that they
worshipped many gods. Polytheism is not
the only alternative to monotheism ; and the
outcome of investigation has been to show that
the Hebrews, not excluding the great teachers
and leaders down to the eighth century, be
lieved in many gods, but served only one —
viz., Jehovah. In other words, they were
monolatrists, not monotheists : polytheists in
thought, though not in practice. Thus the
author of the Decalogue recognises the exist
ence of other gods in the. very command in
which he enjoins the sole worship of Jehovah ;
Jephthah sees in Chemosh a god as real as
Jehovah, and as capable of giving a land to
his worshippers as Jehovah to Israel. David,
the devoted servant of Jehovah and famous
as fighting the battles of Jehovah, yet looks

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 17
upon Jehovah as confined to his own land,
and therefore regards a decree of banishment
as equivalent to being compelled to serve
other gods.
It is true that Bsethgen, the author of a
comparatively recent work1 of outstanding
merits on Semitic religion, has striven, while
granting the correctness of the foregoing state
ment of early Hebrew thought, to prove the
•dissimilarity even in this respect of the
Hebrews. He argues that the Hebrews,
though they believed in many, yet worshipped
only one God, and therefore differed from all
other Semites, who not only believed in but
also worshipped more gods than one. I am
convinced that this is unsound. Bsethgen
has himself shown the tendency towards
simplicity as we follow the stream of Semitic
history upwards. Everything goes to indicate
that a common stage of religious thought and
practice in the particular which I am discuss
ing, through which many, if not all, the
Semitic peoples passed, was that in which we
1 Beitriige zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (1888).

18 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
find the Hebrews down to the time of Amos.
Others have, with greater reason, sought in a
deeper moral conception of their God a differ
ence between the early Hebrews and their
neighbours. This I must not discuss ;l I will
only remark that in the present dearth of
records of the religious thought of Moabites
and similar people, it can be nothing more
than an inference from the ultimate diversity
of Israel. But whether the inference be
correct or not, it does not affect the fact that
the Hebrews down to the time of Amos wor
shipped only one but believed in the existence
of many gods ; nor does it diminish the
extreme probability that in both these respects
there was a thorough -going similarity between
the Hebrews and their neighbours.
The peculiarity of Israel in these particulars
first emerges, strikingly enough, in an act of
resistance — in a successful attempt to main
tain the existing belief and practice against
1 See, however, the three lectures which follow, and especially
the observations on, and illustrations of, early Hebrew morality
on pp. 92-97.

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 19
the introduction of others fraught with moral
evil ; in other words, in the maintenance of
the worship of Jehovah only against the
attempted introduction of the worship of other
gods also. This was the inestimably valuable
work of Elijah : Israel under his guidance
came to differ from all other Semites by over
coming a temptation to which they yielded.
So long as a Semitic people lived a com
paratively secluded life, or had intercourse or
waged warfare only with other nations of
similar beliefs and equal power, there was
little temptation to exchange their worship of
one God for the worship of many. But as
the national life expanded, commercial or
diplomatic or political reasons made the tran
sition easy. The commercial Phoenicians were
tempted, and very early yielded to the temp
tation, to add to the worship of their own
god that of the peoples with whom they
traded ; Ahab, having contracted alliance with
Tyre by marriage with a Tyrian princess,
would, out of diplomatic courtesy, have added
to the worship of Jehovah the worship of the

20 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Tyrian god ; stricken before the irresistible
march of the Assyrian, the peoples of Syria
were only too easily led to seek the help of
the apparently omnipotent gods of Assyria.
This in each case was to follow the line of
least resistance. Many in Israel also followed
it ; but Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah
remained firm to the sole worship of Jehovah.
How shall we account for this but by the
working in these men of the Divine Spirit ?
For, if we have regard only to so-called
natural causes, the line along which they thus
led the better part of their people was that of
greatest resistance.
Elijah succeeded in maintaining and re
awakening the single-hearted loyalty of the
people to Jehovah by mere resistance to an
innovation, because nothing had happened
which even to the people suggested that
Jehovah had forfeited their trust. It was
different with the prophets of the eighth
century. Up to a certain stage, and under
certain conditions, a monolatrous worship is
free from the moral imperfections of a poly-

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 21
theistic worship, and practically as effective
as monotheism. But the belief in a national^
god makes that god's first concern his people :
if his people suffer temporary defeat he may
be merely angry ; but, if they suffer permanent
subjection, he is proved impotent, and the
.people have a right to seek protection from
others. It was this very natural line of
argument that in the eighth century led many
of the Hebrews, and apparently all their near
neighbours, to add to their worship of one
national god that of other and strange gods.
And it was then, also, that the greatest step
was taken towards the dissimilation of Israel.
It had become impossible on the old mono-
latrous grounds to explain the course of events
consistently with the power of Jehovah. The
prophets, therefore, rose above it by insisting
that Jehovah's first concern was not Israel but
righteousness ; they came to perceive and
teach the unity and moral order of the world.y
The claim of Kuenen that the prophets were
the creators of ethical monotheism is therefore
(in spite of the criticism it has received) sub-

22 TEE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
stantially correct. There were, of course,
moral elements in the earlier conception of
Jehovah, but that is not to the point. It is
the prophets who first explicitly teach that
the moral is the fundamental element in the
personality of Jehovah, and that the guiding
principle of His activity is righteousness, and
not the interests of a single people. Not to
see this is to lose sight of the fact that the
growth of the monotheistic idea in Israel is
ever along moral rather than speculative lines.
It is most significant that Israel passes out of
a monolatrous into a monotheistic stage of
religion just when the former must otherwise
have given place to one which would have
involved a lower morality.
In order to illustrate afresh the moral
character of the development, let me refer to
another movement. Monolatry — the worship
of one god — may pass into polytheism either,
as we have just seen, by syncretism — i.e., by
the addition of fresh objects of worship — or by
differentiation — i.e., by dividing the original
single object of worship into many. This

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 23
latter danger in Israel was associated with the
high places ; here Jehovah was worshipped,
probably with an ancient Canaanitish cultus,
as the Baal or owner of such and such a place.
While the worshippers did not explicitly
differentiate Jehovah as the Baal of one place
from Jehovah the Baal of another, this differ
entiation virtually took place ; Hosea refuses
to identify the popular Baals with Jehovah,
and .insists that, as a consequence of this
worship, Jehovah the national God, the source >
of righteousness, was regarded as different '
from the bountiful giver of the fruits of the
earth. The moral danger of separating
Jehovah, the source of law and justice, from
the Baal who gave the gifts of harvest, can
easily be seen, and when realized explains the
centralization which marked the Deuteronomic
reformation. It was on moral grounds that
the reformers insisted both by word and symbol
that " Jehovah our God is one Jehovah." Thus
the great keynote even of Deuteronomy is not
a speculative monotheism, but the unity of
Jehovah, and this is put forward as a reason

24 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
for living with a single purpose and unmixed
love of God.
The advance made by the prophets and
the Deuteronomic reformers was secured by
the Exile and the Restoration. Certainly
these great events have lost nothing by the
new setting of the history. In Babylon the
people were weaned from their worship at the
high places ; by the Restoration they were
convinced that Jehovah governed the move
ments of all nations, and not alone of their
own. How greatly, rather, has the discipline
of the Exile l become clearer now that the
great prophecy at the end of the book of
Isaiah has been placed in its true position !
That boundless outlook, that unquenchable
faith ; those exalted conceptions of the
uniqueness, the omniscience, the omnipotence,
the tenderness of Jehovah ; that inspiring
belief in the mission of the suffering people,
— these are not the result of a Divine open
ing of Isaiah's eyes to the affairs of a distant
i For the influence of the Exile in certain other respects, see
below, pp. 86 ff., 115 ff.

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 25
century : they are the lessons of the discipline
of a nation described, at the very time that
he was learning them, by one of its noblest
spirits. The centuries that followed served still
further to strengthen and diffuse the lofty
conception of God which had now been
attained. The dispersion of the Jews in
many countries — Babylon, Egypt, Greece,
Rome — during this period was preparing the
soil for the later preaching of the Gospel.
Among the Jews themselves we have been
accustomed to discern during the centuries
between the Restoration and the time of Christ
an almost too great intensification of the
transcendental idea of God. No longer as of
old can Jehovah be approached in many places
where he records His name ; His name is but
in one place. He is removed far above men
by either priest or law. This period has been
regarded as pre-eminently legal, and almost
its only purpose, to serve as a dark back
ground to the teaching of Jesus. But critical
research, while in one direction it has intensi- c

26 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
fied the legal character of the period, has in
another modified it. The post-exilic period
was not only the period of the law, but also of
the Psalms. For then, to refer only to what is
generally admitted, the Psalms were constantly
edited and gathered into fresh collections
— an indication that they were treasured
and influential. Men were, therefore, not
only taught through the law the exaltation
and holiness and uniqueness of God, but
through the Psalms learnt to hold personal
communion with Him. Thus was the way
prepared for the final revelation of God in
the Incarnation ; among a people whose belief
in the unity and uniqueness of God had
through the discipline of these last centuries
become so intense, the final truths of the
manifoldness of God and of man's divine
nature could be safely unfolded without
danger of a divided worship and a divided
moral allegiance.
With this I bring to an end this necessarily
very inadequate sketch of the growth of the
monotheistic idea. But I hope I have been

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 27
able to make clear that the reconstruction of
the history has, in many important respects,
increased rather than diminished the evidence
for a divine discipline of Israel. We have
lost, it is true, all ground for accepting as
historical fact the revelation of an elaborate
ritual at Sinai ; but we have gained insight
into the real work of the prophets, and, may
I not add, a firmer conviction, if a less
mechanical conception, of the working in
them of the spirit of God. We see them
standing at the parting of the ways when
two courses" alone were possible — an upward
and a downward ; we see many of their
countrymen, all their Semitic neighbours,
taking the easy downward path to polytheism
with all its moral confusion ; and we see the
prophets leading a spiritual nucleus of their
nation amid the difficulties and confusion of
the time, upward to a loftier and sublimer
faith in the moral unity of the universe and
the righteousness of God. Surely to those
who hold that God takes greater pleasure in
the rightness of a man's conduct than in the

28 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
correctness of his ritual, this exchange must
be welcome.
Less welcome, no doubt, because less im
mediately explicable, will be the manner in
which I have described the early Hebrew
conception of Jehovah. And yet it is, I am
convinced, a perfectly well-established fact
that the early Hebrews believed that many
gods existed, and that by their existence the
power of Jehovah was limited ; I am also
convinced that the attempt to make Moses,
and David, and others, exceptions to this
rule has broken down. I will, in conclusion,
offer, though with all diffidence, one or two
suggestions as to the meaning of this fact.
Christian theology has always had to take
account of the fact that the final and com
plete revelation in Jesus Christ was preceded
by centuries of incomplete revelation. Nor
has it found it in any way impossible to
understand and interpret this fact. But if,
the perfect revelation in Jesus Christ was
preceded by the imperfect revelation through
the prophets, there can surely be nothing

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 29
inexplicable in the prophetic revelation having
itself been preceded by a yet more imperfect
stage such as I have indicated ; in other
words, there is no incongruity between the
fact that, to cite a single name, Moses believed
in the existence of many gods, and the belief
that he was a vehicle of revelation. The
belief underlying monolatry is the partial
perception of monotheism, just as simple
monotheism is the partial perception of the
manifold monotheism of the Christian faith.
Monolatry is not practically false ; and underx
certain circumstances, to which I have already
alluded, and in which the early Hebrews lived,
it is morally as effective as monotheism. It
is, therefore, wholly different in character
from polytheism, which is practically as well
as speculatively false.
But there is a further question which all
those will ask who see in the history of Israel
the Divine discipline of a nation — viz., What
purpose was served by this monolatrous stage
in revelation ? This would, I imagine, be
satisfactorily answered if we could point to

30 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
valuable elements in the later idea of, or
belief in God, which were derived from this
early period. But may we not trace back to
it the intensity of the belief, and the sense, if
I may so phrase it, of a personal and peculiar
interest in God ? There can scarcely be a
doubt that intensity was gained by limitation ;
that the early Hebrew sense of Jehovah was
deeper from the fact that He was their God
alone, maintaining their cause against rival
nations and rival gods. Through these cen
turies of monolatry the personality and com
plete reality of Jehovah became so graven in
the national consciousness, that when in due
time the higher and fuller idea of Jehovah
was reached, it was reached without loss of
the life-giving elements in the earlier and
narrower conception. When Israel no longer
believed that Jehovah was one of many gods,
nor God alone of Israel, it could yet say
Jehovah is my shepherd, my portion. In.
other words, the very phrases and thoughts,
that spring naturally out of the earlier are
still necessary for the full expression of the

THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL 31
later and higher conception. How great a
part the Psalms have played in intensifying
and making effective the religious conscious
ness of all generations, who shall say ? And
yet is it not reasonable to assert that without
that earlier national discipline they would
never have gained that power which they
possess. I have throughout this paper intentionally
avoided all attempts to prove the facts to
which I have referred. Many have been
disputed, some are still. But I am hopeful
that in devoting my whole time to the
presentation and interpretation of them, I
have adopted the course most likely to initiate
a discussion which may requicken for us a
belief which has won the attention in former
ages of the Church of her most illustrious
thinkers, and which has been one of the
greatest factors in giving breadth and grandeur
to Christian thought and Christian culture.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS
IN THE
OLD TESTAMENT
THREE LECTURES DELIVERED TO
THE FRIENDS' SUMMER SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT BIRMINGHAM
On 11th, 12th, and 13th SEPTEMBER 1899

THE
GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS

IN THE

OLD TESTAMENT

INTRODUCTORY  THE DIVINE MORALITY
For good or evil, directly or indirectly, the
Bible has exercised a supreme influence over
the moral ideas and the moral conduct of
Christian societies. Its influence has been
most powerful and most direct where, as in
Protestant countries, it has been in the hands
of the people, and not simply imparted to
them with an authoritative interpretation ;
and at times when a theory of scriptural in
fallibility has prevailed. At such times
whatever happens to be directly commanded

36 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
or prohibited in the Bible tends to become
earnestly striven for or avoided ; and what
ever was done by eminent and, in general,
praiseworthy individuals whose doings are
recorded in the Old Testament, has been apt
to call forth a ready, though often a very
immoral, defence.
In consequence, the moral influence of the
Bible, great and powerful as it has been for
good, has not been unmixed. To take a single
illustration : the crusade undertaken for the
abolition of slavery met with an opposition
made all the more stubborn because the laws
of the Old Testament, and the examples of
its heroes, could be cited in favour of the
institution. This abuse of the Bible cannot, of course,
be fairly made a charge against the Bible
itself. But the very power of the Bible for
good, when rightly used and rightly inter
preted, renders any wrong use or interpreta
tion of it correspondingly mischievous. And
¦one of the most mischievous misuses of it is
to regard it, in all its parts and all its judg-

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 37
ments, as an absolute and final arbiter in
matters of morality. The best corrective for
this particular misuse is to realize through
systematic study that the morality of the
Bible is progressive ; that its moral ideals
change with the progress of time ; and that,
in consequence, the laws in which those ideals
express themselves vary to the extent, in
some cases, of direct contradiction.
The subject, then, which lies before us has
a very practical bearing ; for while, in its
extreme forms, the doctrine of the Bible, out
of which springs the misuse to which I have
referred, is obsolete, its influence still lingers,
affecting us often almost unconsciously. But
it must suffice merely to indicate this practical
bearing of the subject. The present treat
ment of it is intended to be primarily
historical. Our purpose is to examine, though of
necessity very incompletely, the moral ideas
of the Hebrews, to discover that course of
conduct which appeared to them best, the
motives with which they pursued it, and the

38 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
changes through which both ideas and practice
passed in the course of history.
But in the first place a few words
must be said with regard to the limitations
under which such a study can alone be
pursued. The moral ideas of an age can only be
satisfactorily discovered by means of contem
porary evidence, and more especially the
evidence of contemporary literature. I must
here assume, what on a former occasion1 I
endeavoured to prove, that Hebrew literature
earlier than the ninth or tenth centuries B.C.
exists only in the most meagre fragments, the
most notable among these being the song of
Deborah. Of Hebrew moral ideas and practice
prior to that period our knowledge must be
to a large extent inferential — deduced in part
from what we know to have been the ideas

1 In a course of lectures delivered to the Friends' Summer
School at Scarborough in August 1897. A fairly full summary
of these lectures appeared in The Friend of Sept. 3rd,
10th, and 17th, 1897. But the reader who wishes to appreciate
the reasons for the literary conclusions which the following
lectures assume, should turn to Professor Driver's Introduction
to Old Testament Literature.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 39
of the Hebrews later, in part from the ideas of
kindred peoples in a similar political condition.
But when we come to the earlier periods of
extant Hebrew literature — the tenth, ninth,
or eighth centuries B.c. — there is still need of
caution. Our literary material is still com
paratively small in extent, and is in the main
of one type — it is the product of prophetic
circles. What we directly obtain, therefore, is
the moral ideals of the prophets ; indirectly
we sometimes glean facts relative to the
popular ideals, which were in some cases very
different from the prophetic. The same state
ment is largely true of the literature of the
seventh century, though in the case of Deuter
onomy we have the combined product of priest
and prophet, and the fusion, in so far as they
were distinct, of the ideas of these two classes.
In much of the literature of the post-exilic
period the priestly ideals predominate.
Again, if we turn from ideal and theory to
practice, there is also need of caution in draw
ing our conclusions. The literature, as we
have seen, is largely prophetic ; but the pro-

40 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
phets were moral censors. It is necessary to
bear this in mind, and so to allow for the fact
that our evidence is to a large extent one-sided.
There scarcely exist, therefore, sufficient
data to enable us to trace in detail, and at
the same time with certainty, the growth of
many individual moral ideas,. and the extent
to which they were realized at different times
in the life of the people. We must be con
tent, at any rate on the present occasion,
with what is possible without discussing the
more obscure and uncertain details of the
subject — the study of some of the leading
and influential ideas, and the observation of
certain great and far-reaching changes.
There is one outstanding characteristic .of
Hebrew morality which must be considered at
the outset. It is, if I am not mistaken, the
most effective cause of the influence of Hebrew
moral ideas. I refer to the close relation
between Hebrew theology and Hebrew mor
ality. This connection is far from necessary.
Among the Greeks theology was not less
strikingly divorced from morality than among

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 41
the Hebrews it was conjoined with it. The
Greek gods were notorious for conduct which,
when practised by men, called forth severe
moral reprobation. In a, word, the Greek gods
were immoral, and judged to be immoral by
their worshippers. We may, it is true, find
incompletely ethical elements in the early
Hebrew conception of Jehovah ; but Jehovah
never by His conduct offended the moral con
sciousness of His worshippers. He demanded
by His example a standard of life in men
higher than that which was prevalent ; He
never by His conduct excused in men what
was lower than the standard of the time.
Closely connected with this fact is another.
It is characteristic of the Hebrew teachers
that the divine conduct and nature become
the ideal for man, for the Hebrew at least, to
aim at. The saying " Ye shall be holy ; for
I, Jehovah, your God, am holy," is indeed the
utterance of a comparatively late code of
laws ;x and " the righteous Jehovah loveth
1 Lev. xix. 2 belongs to a code (known as the ' Law of Holi
ness'), drawn up in the early part of the sixth century .B.C. D

42 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
righteousness " x of a post-exilic psalmist ; but
the principle these sayings inculcate is cer
tainly as old as the earliest literary prophets.
The burden of the preaching of Amos was
this — Israel chosen by Jehovah for special
intimacy with himself must perish and sur
render this intimacy, because it has failed to
show that righteous conduct which can alone
maintain such intimacy.2
Morality thus acquired among the Hebrews
all the force and power of a personalized ideal.
Morality was no abstract matter appealing
only to the cultured and trained intellect ; it
appealed to men at large, being strengthened
by its union with religious emotion. To the
Greeks the gods, regarded as often immoral
in their conduct, were ideals of the human
form ; and Greece has handed down to all
time the standard of beauty, and done more
than any nation to inspire men with the
sense of it. To the Hebrews, God was the
ideal of human conduct and human character ;
and if the Hebrews have not given to men
1 Psalm xi. 7. 2 See especially Amos iii. 2.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 43
ideals of life nobler and loftier than those of
some of the sages of Greece and Rome, they
have certainly inspired a more general and a
deeper passion for morality.
I intend to bring before you the subject
of Hebrew moral ideas, so far as time will
permit, by means of three discussions. We
have just seen how closely related are the
theology and the morality of the Hebrews,
and how powerful an influence was exercised
by their conception of God over the moral ideas
and practice of the Hebrews. In the first
place, therefore, we will consider the morality
of Jehovah as it appears in the Old Testament,
especially in its relation to human conduct ;
next we will examine the growth of the sense
of individual responsibility, and glance at some
Hebrew and Jewish ideals of conduct ; and
thirdly, we will observe the deepening of
the motive of conduct.

44 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
THE DIVINE MORALITY, ESPECIALLY IN ITS
RELATION TO HUMAN CONDUCT
The most important elements in the Hebrew
conceptions on this subject will come to light
as we seek answers to three questions : (1)
How was Jehovah related to mankind at
large ? (2) What did the Hebrews mean by
holiness ? (3) What did they understand by
righteousness ?
(1) The early faith of Israel has been accu
rately and succinctly expressed in the phrase —
Jehovah was the God of Israel, and Israel was
the people of Jehovah. In a word, Jehovah
was a national God, demanding homage from
His people who were to have no other gods
before Him — i.e., in His presence or beside
Him — expecting homage from no other people;
in return for the loyalty of His people Jehovah
fights their battles (the battles of Israel are
"battles of Jehovah"1) and maintains them
in possession of the land in which He had
1 Num. xxi. 14 ; 1 Sam. xxv. 28 ; the phrase in the original
is the same in both passages.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 45
settled them. He is fitly worshipped only in
the land which could indifferently be termed
after its immediate owner, ' the land of
Jehovah,' or after its sub-owners, the land
of Israel.1 Other lands, as the property of
other gods, are ' unclean ' from the point of
view of Jehovah and Israel ; food eaten in
them, since it cannot be properly rendered fit
for use by the appropriate religious rites, is
unclean food.2 Exiles from the land of
Jehovah can no longer worship Him ; and an
army of Hebrews fighting beyond the borders
of their country is apt to be discomfited by
the wrath of the god of the land.3
Jehovah's interests, then, are limited to
Israel ; Israel's worship and allegiance to
Jehovah. Jehovah is especially Israel's
champion in battle ; but He is also the
source of Israel's law and the patron of justice
within Israel. It is the statutes of Jehovah
1 See, e.g., Hos. ix. 3. 2 Hos. ix. 3 f. ; Am. vii. 17.
3 1 Sam. xxvi. 19 ; 2 Kings iii. 27 ; c/. 2 Kings v. 17. For
the national conception of Jehovah, see also Judges xi. 12-28 ;
for similar national conceptions of Chemosh, god of Moab, see
the inscription of Mesha, especially the passage quoted in the
Appendix, pp. 126-128.

46 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
that the Hebrew law-givers give to the people ;
the decisions of Jehovah that their priests and
prophets obtain for them.1
The consequence of this national conception
of Jehovah wTas that there was no religious
and moral bond regulating the conduct of the
Hebrews with men of other nations. Conduct,
which between fellow-Hebrews was offensive
in Jehovah's eyes, was inoffensive when prac
tised by a Hebrew towards one who was not
a Hebrew. For example, the exaction of in
terest on money lent was considered by the
Hebrews, as indeed also by the ancient Greeks
and Romans, to be an injury to the debtors,
and was consequently forbidden. " If thou
lend money," so runs the ancient Hebrew law
as it stands in a code of the eighth century
B.C., "to any of My people with thee that is
poor, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor ;
neither shall ye lay interest upon him." 2
1 Cf. especially Ex. xviii. 12 ff.
2 Ex. xxii. 25 ; cf., in the Law of Holiness (a code of the sixth
century B.C.), Lev. xxv. 35-37. The Revised Version mislead-
ingly retains the term 'usury' ; in modern English 'interest' is
the true equivalent of the Hebrew term. The law forbids not
merely exorbitant interest, but interest altogether.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 47
But the prohibition is strictly limited to deal
ings between Hebrews and Hebrews ; the
Deuteronomic law (seventh century B.C.) is
explicit on the point — " Thou shalt not make
thy neighbour, i.e., thy fellow Hebrew, give
interest ; . . . but a foreigner thou mayest
make give interest." a
There are, it is true, one or two passages
that may seem to the English reader directly
to condemn this limitation of moral obligation
to fellow-countrymen. Perhaps it is hardly
necessary to point out that the ' neighbour '
who is mentioned in Lev. xix. 18 is of neces
sity a fellow-countryman, and that the term is
not to be interpreted, historically, as it is inter
preted in the parable of the good Samaritan ;
the contrast makes the point quite clear —
" Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear
any grudge against the children of My people,
but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
But in another passage 2 the English transla
tion is more deceptive — "Ye shall have one
manner of law, as well for the stranger as for
1 Deut. xxiii. 19 f. - Lev. xxiv. 22.

48 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
the home-born ; " for the term ger here used for
stranger is quite distinct from that translated
above foreigner (nohri). Ger has a clearly de
fined significance, and means a person of another
tribe or nation settled in Israel and enjoying
certain privileges and rights of protection.
/The stranger or ger is no mere foreigner,
and the law has no reference to the conduct
\ of Hebrews towards foreigners with whom
\they were brought into temporary relation.
Of the change in the significance of the term
ger and in the status of the persons so defined,
I shall have something more to say. But
first let us see how the general ethical limita
tion which we are now considering illustrates,.
and is illustrated by, certain familiar incidents.
Jehovah is the God of Israel and the patron
of justice within Israel ; theJHebrews conse
quently were bound by moral obligation and
the sanction of religion in their dealings with
one another, but were entirely free of these
in their dealings with foreigners. In the
latter case they were governed purely by con
siderations of expediency. This ethical limita-

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 49
tion is the real explanation of the ' spoiling
of the Egyptian,' on which so much apolo
getic ingenuity has been mis-spent. Had the
Hebrews treated their fellow-countrymen as
they treated the Egyptians, they would have
offended against the moral standard of their
time. But since it was foreigners whom they
' spoiled,' they did not. Again, in the story
of Abraham's lie to Abimelech,1 it is Abraham
who, judged by our moral standard, deserved
punishment ; but according to the contem
porary Hebrew moral standard, Abraham had
committed no sin, for he was under no moral
obligation to the foreigner Abimelech. Con
sequently Abimelech and his servants who
had offended quite unwittingly are plagued,
while Abraham is not only left untouched,
but by his prayers is the means of releasing
Abimelech from his sufferings. In Abimelech's
reproach, " Thou hast done deeds unto me that
ought not to be done," we may probably
observe a growing sense that certain conduct
was open to reprehension even when practised
1 Gen. xx.

50 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
towards foreigners ; but the whole spirit of
the narrative is only intelligible when we
remember that moral obligation was only
strongly ielt in the case of one's countrymen.
In this limited range of moral obligation
there is nothing peculiar to the Hebrews ; it
was equally characteristic of early Greek and
Roman morality ; indeed the Greeks and
Romans, as we may see in the teaching of
their most eminent moralists, were consider
ably later than the Hebrews in extending
moral obligation beyond the limits of the
nation. In the fourth century B.C. Aristotle
taught that " Greeks had no more duties to
barbarians than to wild beasts," though it is
true that Socrates, a century earlier, had
proclaimed himself a citizen of the world, and
the Greek language had already coined the
term ' philanthropy.' Again, it is not till
about the period of the rise of Christianity
that the Romans, under the influence of
Stoical teaching, experienced that " enlarge
ment of moral sympathies, which having at
first comprised only a class or a nation, came

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 51
at last, by the destruction of many artificial
barriers, to include all classes and all
nations." 1
In the case of the Hebrews the transcen
dence of this early limitation was achieved
in the first instance in the theological sphere,
and was due to the prophets. Face to face
with the approaching destruction of Israel by
the Assyrian power, the prophets had two
alternatives : to infer in common with their
contemporaries, and according to the natural
logic of then prevalent religious thought, that
Jehovah was impotent, or at least inferior
in power to the gods of Assyria ; or to insist
on a new doctrine which at once enhanced the
power of Jehovah, and profoundly modified
the conception of the manner in which, and
the purposes for which, He manifested it. It
was, as we are well aware, the latter alter- \
native that the prophets actually took. They
taught that Jehovah has power over all
nations of the world as well as over Israel,
1 Lecky's History of European Morals (Cabinet Edition),
vol. i. pp. 227 ff.

52 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
and that He guides the movements of history ;
but that He exercised this great power in the
interests of the righteous government of the
world at large, and not merely in the interests
of Israel's material wellbeing. This is per-
'haps the most momentous change to be
marked in the history of Old Testament
moral ideas ; and its full effect was only
worked out in the course of centuries. On
the one hand it clearly and decisively brought
into relief the moral as the essential element
in the divine nature ; Jehovah's action was
seen to be governed by moral ends, not by
racial preferences. On the other hand it
broke down the sharp distinctions between
nation and nation. If Jehovah had ceased
to be the God of Israel alone and was
felt to be interested in other nations as well
as in Israel, it was only a matter of time for
the conviction to grow up that he demanded
conduct between different nations and between
men of different nations similar to that which
he had always demanded between Hebrew
and Hebrew. ' But a matter of time un-

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 53
questionably it was. The full implications of
a new doctrine are only gradually perceived.
It is a question which we have no sufficient
means to decide, whether even Amos himself
clearly saw the full effect on human conduct
of his larger conception of Jehovah's morality.
How, for instance, would he have felt bound
to conduct himself towards a foreigner ?
Would he have felt it wrong, following the
example of Abraham in the story, to de
ceive a foreigner for his own advantage and
convenience ? We cannot say. But it is
certainly remarkable that the prophet who
taught men to enlarge their conception of
Jehovah's interest, finds the cause of the doom
which is to fall on the various nations in their
inhumanity. "It is plain that the sins for
which Damascus, Ammon, Moab, and the
rest are judged cannot be offences against
Jehovah, as the national God of Israel. Amos
teaches that heathen nations are to be judged,
not because they do not worship Israel's God,
but because they have broken the laws of
universal morality. The crime of Damascus

54 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
and Ammon is their inhuman treatment of
the Gileadites ; the Phoenicians and Philistines
are condemned for the barbarous slave trade,
fed by kidnapping expeditions, of which Tyre
and Gaza were the emporia. In the case of
Tyre this offence is aggravated by the fact
that the captives were carried off in defiance
of the ancient brotherly alliance between
Israel and the Phoenician city ; and in like
manner the sin of Edom is the unrelenting
blood-feud with which he follows his brother
of Judah. These are the common barbarities
and treacheries of Semitic warfare ; and it is
as such that they are condemned, and not
simply because in each case it is Israel that
has suffered from them. Moab is equally
condemned for a sin that has nothing to do
with Israel, but was a breach of the most
sacred feelings of ancient piety — Lthe violation
of the bones of the king of Edom."1 ^j1) :
Now Amos here deals with definite eS tifrete
cases ; he formulates no general px^ipie.
We are not justified in inferring, therefore,
1 W. ft. Smith's The Prophets of Israel (2nd ed.), pp. 134 f.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 55
that he had reached a belief in ' universal
morality,' or that he would have laid down
the principle — Jehovah requires that every
Hebrew should be under the same moral obliga
tion to any man of any other nation that he is
under towards a fellow Hebrew. As a matter
of fact all the nations concerned were regarded
as closely akin ; in a certain sense they were
brothers one of another ; the Tyrians, as the
prophet expresses it, had not remembered ' the
brothers' covenant ' existing between the
Edomites and themselves. But there seems
no doubt that the prophet would have con
demned the conduct of David when he placed
his Ammonite captives " under saws and under
harrows of iron and under axes of iron, and
made them pass through the brick-kiln."1
Amos, therefore, so far, at least, felt the
significance of Jehovah's interest in other
nations besides Israel that he directly tran
scended in his teaching the prevalent view
that the moral obligation of the Hebrew was
limited to his fellow Hebrew.
1 2 Sam. xii. 31.

56 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Probably a perfectly distinct perception of
the claims of ' universal morality ' was not
reached by the Jews within the period of the
Old Testament. Certainly it was not im-
/mediately and generally recognized. For the
Deuteronomic Law, which was published some
four or five generations after the lifetime of
Amos, definitely permits the exaction of in
terest from foreigners, though the law-givers,
regarding the practice as injurious, forbid it
in the case of Hebrews. But the principle
of universal morality was implicit in the new
doctrine of God, and did not remain without
\effect on conduct.
It is impossible to enter here into a detailed
examination of its influence. But its limita
tions may be illustrated by the change in the
character of the strangers or gerim. In early
Israel the ger was a person of another tribe
or nation enjoying, as distinguished from the
mere foreigner (nohri), certain social privileges
and a certain protection, but he was still
sharply distinguished from the genuine
Hebrew in his religious duties and privileges.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 57
He might, for example, eat " that which dieth
of itself," though this was strictly forbidden on
religious grounds to the Hebrews.1 In course
of time the assimilation of the ger to the
Hebrew in matters of religion became increas
ingly close ; until at last the religious rights
and duties of both were practically identical.2
This may be gathered from repeated state
ments in the priestly code, especially in its
secondary or later sections, that " ye shall
have one law for the home-born and the
stranger." 3 Ultimately the term denotes
any full adherent of the Jewish religion who
was not of Jewish origin. What was origin
ally a political has become a purely religious
term. The ger in the latest Old Testament
and subsequent Jewish literature is the term
for the proselyte. It has come to denote one
who seeks union with the Jews in religion,
whereas formerly it denoted one who sought
union with them in social life.
Now this is significant enough. Under
1 Deut. xiv. 21.
2 Contrast, e.g., the later law of Lev. xvii. 15 with Deut. xiv. 21.
3 E.g., Exod. xii. 49 ; Lev. xxiv. 22 ; Num. ix. 14, xv. 15.
E

58 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
the influence of prophetic teaching the Jews
extended the feeling of moral obligation
beyond the limits of the Jewish race, but
they limited it in its completeness to members
of the Jewish religion. Jehovah was more
than God of the Jewish race ; but He remains
the God of members of the Jewish religion.
Foreigners are no longer excluded from
Jehovah's care ; but in order to enjoy it
they must enter into relation wdth the Jews.
This limitation really marks most of the appa
rently universalistic visions of the prophets.
The nations are to enjoy the privileges of the
Messianic age, yet in order to do so they must
go up to Zion.1 In a word, the borders of
Israel may be indefinitely enlarged to receive
all who are willing to enter, but it is Israel
still that is the peculiar care of Jehovah.
(2) THE HOLINESS OF JEHOVAH AND MAN
The fundamental meaning of the root
(Ms) from which the words in Hebrew
1 E.g., Isa. ii. 2-4.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 59
denoting holy, holiness, and the like are
derived, appears to be that of ' separation,'
as this is certainly the meaning of a root of
kindred significance which is used alike in
Hebrew and Arabic, and through the latter
has passed into English in the word harem
— the quarters in a house separated off for
the women.
Holiness is by no means a conception
peculiar to the Hebrews. The Phoenicians
not less than the Hebrews termed their gods
'holy.' This fact is important. The term
in Hebrew remains to the end one of some
what mixed, and, to our thinking, incon
gruous meanings. This is due to the fact
that in the Old Testament the earliest
meanings of the term and the conceptions
expressed by them were never wholly cast
off. In the first instance it must be observed
that the term holy is far from being a purely
ethical term. Things as well as persons may
be holy ; and it often happened that persons
quite accidentally, involuntarily, or even

60 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
against their will contracted holiness.1 ' Holi
ness ' was more easily ' caught ' than a con
tagious or infectious disease. How far removed
a ' holy ' person might be from what we
regard as moral may be most strikingly seen
in the use of the term ' holy ones ' for those
who gave themselves up to licentious practices
in connection with divine worship.
But while, as I have said, the term
never becomes purely moral in the Old Testa
ment, the manner in which it acquires a
considerable ethical connotation strikingly
illustrates the growth of moral ideas.
Holy things or seasons are an antithesis
to ' common ' things or seasons. That
which is common is open to use without
restriction ; that which is holy is open to
use only under certain conditions. On holy
ground Moses must take off his shoes ; on
the Sabbath, as the holy day, men must
abstain from ordinary occupations.
In its application to Jehovah ' holiness '
1 See, e.g., Lev. vi. 18, 27 ; and further, W. R. Smith's Religion
of the Semites, pp. 431 ff.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 61
means in the first instance his ' separation,'
' distinction ' from men. It expresses, in
a word, divinity with all its peculiar attributes.
How far it was ethical depends, therefore, on
how far Jehovah was regarded as a moral
being. At times Jehovah's holiness seems
to be particularly His awful power ; 1 in this
there is, of course, nothing peculiarly moral.
Closely allied with this is the unethical con
ception of the Divine anger as an almost
mechanical reaction against involuntary or
well-meaning approach to Him or to things
and precincts sacred to Him.2
But at other times, and especially with the
prophets, the holiness of Jehovah gains a
large degree of ethical import. This is
nowhere better seen than in the account of
Isaiah's vision. The prophet's immediate
thought, on perceiving that he is in the holy
presence of Jehovah, is that his own iniquity
and the iniquity of his people offend that
holiness ; it is only when his iniquity is
1 1 Sam. vi. 20 ; Isa. viii. 13.
2 1 Sam. vi. 19; 2 Sam. vi. 1 ff; Num. i. 53.

62 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
purged away that he can volunteer for the
service of the Holy One of Israel.1
The same incompatibility between Israel's
iniquity and Jehovah's holiness is clearly
implied in other parts of the prophet's, writ
ings; as, for example, in his address to Israel:
"Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with
iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that
deal corruptly. They have forsaken Jehovah,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are estranged (and gone) back
ward." 2
It may appear strange, and an instance of
retrogression in moral ideas, when we find that
in the priestly parts of the Hexateuch, though
they are so much later in date than Isaiah,
the ethical meaning of the term is much less
apparent. Holiness in these writings is
physical rather than moral ; it is contagious.
And severe, even fatal punishment, falls on
those who offend Jehovah's holiness, not by
some moral offence, but by the transgression
of some ritual regulation or undue approach
1 Isa. vi. 2 Isa. i. 4.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 63
to the sacred precincts. It must be admitted
that retrogression as well as progress is cer
tainly possible, and that it is probable that
many of the later priestly writers associated
morality with holiness less intimately than
Isaiah. But it would be easy to do these
writers less than justice. It would, for
instance, be quite unfair to infer from the
literature which they have left us that they
had no moral conception of Jehovah in rela
tion to the conduct he required from men.
For it must be remembered that the main
subject of their laws is ritual, and that they
have, in consequence, less occasion for letting,
us see their distinctly moral ideals. In the
closing section of the book of Ezekiel (chaps.
xh^xlviii.) the same physical conception of
holiness is also prominent ; but we learn
from other parts of the same book that the
prophet's ideal of conduct included much
more than the preservation of such holi
ness as this. It is only reasonable to
infer that the same was true of the priestly
writers.

64 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Again, if the severity with which the
violation of this physical holiness is punished
seems extreme and incompatible with a high
morality, it must be remembered that this
severity is only part of the general rigour
that marked post-exilic Judaism. A parallel
may help us to judge fairly. Many of the
regulations for the observance of the Sabbath
which were enforced by the Puritans were
not in themselves of any special moral value,.
yet the violation of them was punished with
severity. It by no means follows that Puritan
morality was not lofty. On the other hand,.
the very severity with which actions then,.
but now no longer, regarded as immoral, were
punished, was but the necessary outcome
of that strenuousness of life and that firm
adherence to principle which were peculiarly
characteristic of the Puritans.
Still, when every allowance has been made,
it is true that as long as ritual offences were
regarded as of such extreme gravity, a purely
moral conception of holiness was impossible.
The result of the stress laid by post -exilic:

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 65
Judaism on ritual was unquestionably serious.
It kept the conception of sin morally con
fused. Unintentional pollution of what was
holy was sin just as much as an intentional
moral offence.
On the other hand we can clearly see that
' holiness ' in man included the performance
of certain moral duties. This manifestly
follows from some of the contexts in which
the saying " Ye shall be holy, for I am holy/'
occurs.1 Much more significant are the quali
fications for dwelling in Jehovah's ' holy ' hill
specified by a Psalmist of the same period :
" Jehovah . . . who shall dwell in Thy holy hill ?
He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness,.
And speaketh truth in his heart.
He that slandereth not with his tongue,
Nor doeth evil to his friend,
Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.
In whose eyes a reprobate is despised ;
But he honoureth them that fear Jehovah.
He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.
He that putteth not out his money to interest,
Nor taketh reward against the innocent." 2
The subject of the divine or of human:'
1 Lev. xix. 2 ; xx. 7. 2 Ps. xv. ; cf. xxiv. 3-5.

66 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
holiness is very large, and in many details
obscure and incapable of succinct statement.
But enough has perhaps been said to show
that a term, at first entirely unethical, be
comes in the course of history enriched with
moral elements. In conclusion, I will cite
Mr Skinner's admirable summary of the
subject : " From a theological point of view,
the chief interest of the 0[ld] T[estament]
doctrine of holiness lies in this progressive
spiritualizing of the idea under the influence
of an expanding revelation of God. Although
the various steps of the process are obscure,
the fact is certain that holiness did come to
be conceived more and more as a moral
quality. It is probable that the ethical
aspect was first introduced in the application of
the term to God, and thence transferred to the
holiness He requires in his worshippers. In the
0[ld] T[estament] the development is arrested
at a certain stage, because of the material
associations with which the use of the word
was invested. One step remained to be
taken in order to reach the full Christian

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 67
sense of holiness, and that was the abroga
tion of the ceremonial as a term of fellowship
with God. When our Lord enunciated the
principle that a man is defiled, not by what
enters into him, but by what comes out of
him, He raised religion to a new level, and
made it possible to liberate the moral essence
of holiness from the imperfections which clung
to it throughout the older dispensation." x

(3) THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OP JEHOVAH AND MEN
The original, etymological sense of ' right
eousness,' like that of 'holiness,' is obscure.
But a starting-point for most of the meanings
of the term as actually used, or a general
idea under which they may be subsumed, is
that of correspondence to a norm or standard.
Thus ' just ' or ' righteous weights ' 2 are
standard weights ; the man who is, judicially,
righteous, i.e., innocent or in the right in a
1 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, art. " Holiness."
2 Lev. xix. 36.

68 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
particular matter, is one whose conduct in the
case in question has conformed to the stan
dard of law or custom ; righteous speech is
speech which corresponds to the facts de
scribed1 — a Hebrew mode of expressing 'truth'
for which the language, at least in its earlier
stages, possessed no very distinctive term.
The term ' righteousness ' as an ethical
one, is, it will be thus seen, very elastic.
Everything depends on the conception of the
standard which determines whether conduct
and character is righteous enough.
In their earliest usages the various words
(nouns, adjectives, and verbs) had, at least
predominantly, a(^rensicj)sense. They do
not refer to character and conduct in general,
but to specific acts. Here the standard was
clear and fixed ; it was that of law or custom.
There are not a few passages in the English
Bible in which the rendering of these forensic
terms by words of such general ethical import
as ' righteous,' ' righteousness,' has obscured,
or even perverted, the sense of the original.
1 Ps. Iii. 3.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 69
For example, the Hebrew judges were not
instructed to decide the rights of two parties
in a dispute out of regard to the whole char
acter of each ; but they were to " pronounce
him that was in the right " in the particular
matter under dispute "to be in the right,
and him that was in the wrong to be in the
wrong." 1 Bribes were forbidden, because
they were apt to deprive a man of the verdict
to which he had a right ; 2 they induced the
judge who was bribed to pronounce him that
was in the wrong to be in the right, and
to deprive the innocent man of his verdict
of acquittal.3
The forensic use of the terms in question
is particularly characteristic of the earlier Old
Testament literature, though it was never
discarded. But it becomes, comparatively >
speaking, less common in the later literature ;
for it is these terms that the language very
naturally employed — and more and more in
course of time — to express the very different
and larger conception of righteousness of
1 Deut. xxv. 1. 2 Exod. xxiii. 8. 3 Isa. v. 23.

70 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
conduct, character, life as a whole, that was
excellent and approved.
This fuller, this more generally ethical use
of the terms is particularly obvious in the
Psalms. The parallelism of Hebrew poetry
is in this case, as so often, a great means of
interpretation. The synonymous or antitheti
cal terms which appear in the parallel lines
show how general the words ' righteous '
and the like have become. For example : —
" Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous ;
But the way of the wicked shall perish. " :
" The wicked plotteth against the righteous." 2
" The eyes of Jehovah are towards the righteous. . . .
The face of Jehovah is against them that do evil."3
" Be glad in Jehovah, and rejoice, ye righteous :
And shout for joy, all ye that are upright>in heart." 4
Nothing, again, but this larger and fuller
meaning of righteousness satisfies the require-
1 Ps. i. 5-6 ; cf. oxl. 11-13. 2 Ps. xxxvii. 12.
3 Ps. xxxiv. 15 f.
4 Ps. xxxii. 11 ; cf. xxxiii. 1, lxiv. 10, xcvii. 11, cxxv. 3-5.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 71
ments of the context in the well-known
passage, "By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant make many righteous."1
Now what was that more exact standard
which had to be adhered to before any one
could be pronounced righteous in this larger
sense ? In the present instance, we may
conveniently consider the case of human
righteousness first. And here the standard^
is obvious : it is the will of God as expressed
in the utterances of priests or prophets and,
at a later period, especially as expressed in'
the written law.2 The Hebrews were not
given to philosophical speculation and the
analysis of philosophical ideas. Consequently
the question which has been so much debated
— viz., whether a thing is right because God
wills it, or whether God wills it because it
is right, scarcely presented itself to them
in this sharply-defined form. Certainly, in
general, the Hebrews did not attempt to go
behind the will of God : what God willed,
1 Isa. Iii. 11 : cf. Dan. xii. 3.
2 Gen. xviii. 19 ; Ps. i., xviii. 20 f.

72 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
that it was their duty to do. But we do,
no doubt, get something corresponding to the
discussion referred to in the Book of Job, -
where the sufferer appeals from the God of
the traditional kind forced upon him by his
friends to a God of a higher morality.
In the case of God the standard of the
divine action by which it is adjudged
righteous is God's previous action. From
the human standpoint the divine righteous
ness is the self-consistency of the divine
conduct ; the adherence of His conduct in the
present to the standard of His already self-
revealed character. The fulness and ethical
purity of this idea also may, it is quite
manifest, vary greatly. The incomplete aban
donment of the national limitation occasionally
appears. In the Deutero -Isaiah in particular
the three ideas righteousness, deliverance,
vengeance, frequently appear side by side.;
in these cases righteousness is the principle,
deliverance the action in which it manifests
itself towards Israel, vengeance the action in
which it manifests itself towards Israel's foes.

THE GROWTH OF MORAL IDEAS 73
But whatever its limitations, this idea of
the divine self-consistency was in itself a
valuable one, and owed much to the prophets.
Jehovah, exalted by them into the God of the
whole world, rules the world not capriciously,
but in accordance with His unchanging char
acter. The world and its history is a scene
of order, being subject to the guidance of
such a God.
Thus, starting with the conception of
Jehovah as a national God, whose interests
were bound up with those of 'Israel, and who,
in consequence, was pre-eminently a god of war,
though also within Israel the patron of justice,
we move forward in the Old Testament to the
higher conception of Jehovah as God of the
whole world, whose interests, therefore, cannot
remain mostly those of war, but who more
and more becomes the vindicator of justice
and righteousness throughout the world. At
first, there is often something capricious
about Jehovah's anger ; it is provoked by in
voluntary acts of men. And though within
the Old Testament this is never entirely out-
F

74 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
grown, yet more and more the Divine anger
is the manifestation of moral indignation ; it
grows less and less capricious, and more in
harmony with the growing sense of the self-
consistency of the Divine action.

II

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY — IDEALS OP
HUMAN CONDUCT
In the previous Lecture we have considered
some of the leading elements in the Divine
character as conceived by the Hebrews, and
the influence of these on human conduct.
We now approach our subject from the" other
side, and are directly to consider what the
Hebrews counted human excellence. Indi
rectly this will fill out the picture we have
already obtained of the Divine character.
For, as we have seen, excellence in human
conduct was, from the Hebrew standpoint,
what Jehovah approved.
What the Hebrew ideals of conduct were may
be gathered from different sources — partly
from their laws, which show us what things
were definitely prohibited or commanded,
partly from the characters which they ideal
ized in their legends or histories, or celebrated

76 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
in their songs — the patriarchs, for instance,
or national leaders such as Moses, David,
Josiah ; partly from the prophetic censures of
the present and visions of the future ; partly
from the maxims of life which form the pro
verbial literature of the Old Testament.
Unquestionably the ideals changed with
time ; there is a marked difference between
Moses, as he appears in our early sources, or
David, the heroes of the early Hebrews, and
Ezra or even Nehemiah, who as man of action
may be the better compared with Moses and
David, the heroes of post-exilic Judaism. So
we may trace changes in the later as compared
with the earlier laws, in moral as well as in
ritual matters. Unfortunately it would be
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to
use the book of Proverbs for tracing these
changes ; for though, no doubt, many of the
maxims contained in the book are of suffi
ciently ancient lineage, yet the book in its
present form, as well as the various collections
contained within it, appears to be of post-
exilic origin.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 77
But apart from changes in details, there is
one general change of great importance, and
to this we must give our main attention. It
is the changed estimate of the value of the
individual seen in the increased sense of indi
vidual responsibility, which marks the later
periods ; the transition is especially manifest
in Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
In ancient times the family or the clan,
rather than the individual, formed the unit
in society. This lies at the basis of the
characteristic institution of primitive societies
— the blood-feud. If a man of one clan slay
a man of another, the duty lies upon all
members of the clan to which the murdered
man belongs of exacting a life from the clan
of the murderer. It is a matter of com
parative indifference whether the life exacted
be that of the murderer himself, or that of a
fellow-clansman ; for it is the clan, not the
individual, which is guilty, and it has to
purge its guilt by the forfeiture of a life, or
an equivalent. It is as a survival of this
institution and as an outcome of the feeling

78 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
of solidarity on which it rested, that we must
explain David's action when he handed over
to the Gibeonites for execution in expiation of
a crime of Saul's seven innocent members of
Saul's family.1 Another effect of this mode
of thought which exercised great, if somewhat
lessened, influence on the Hebrews long after
they had exchanged the nomadic for settled
life, was the institution of the ban, or herem.
The effect of putting the ban into execution
was to destroy all who were connected with
an individual offender or offenders — the whole
of a family, of the population of a city, or of
captives in battle. Familiar instances are
the destruction of the whole family of Achan,
and of the whole of the Amalekite prisoners
captured by Saul.2 Deuteronomy contains a
law providing that the ban shall be put into
execution in the case of any city in Israel that
is seduced into serving other gods : " Thou
shalt surely smite the inhabitants with the
edge of the sword, banning it, and all that is
1 2 Sam. xxi. 1 ff.
2 Jos. vii. (especially 20-24 f .) ; 1 Sam. xv. 1-9.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 79
therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge
of the sword."1
The ease with which the Hebrews re
garded a collection of people as a unity
resulted in literary usages which frequently
mislead the English reader, and, in particular,
cause many of the Psalms to be misunderstood.
In their turn these literary usages help us to
realize the force and influence of this mode of
thought, so alien from our own. It will be
worth our while, therefore, to observe a few of
the more striking and unmistakable instances.
The general principle of the linguistic
usage in question is this : a people, or a clan,
or a group .of individuals, being conceived as
a unity, speak of themselves in the first person
singular, or are addressed in the second person
singular. For example : finding that they
drove heavily, " Egypt said, Let me flee from
the face of Israel ; for Jehovah fighteth for
them against Egypt."2 Israel's reply to the
1 Deut. xiii. 15.
2 Exod. xiv. 25. In this and many other cases the English
version translates the singulars of the original by plurals, and
«o conceals the usage from the reader.

80 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Gibeonites affords us another striking instance :
" and the men (a collective noun) of Israel
said unto the Hivite, Perhaps thou art dwell
ing in my midst ; how, then, should I make a
covenant with thee ?"x Sometimes singulars
and plurals interchange, at one time the unity,
at another the multiplicity of the people
being uppermost in the writer's mind. For
instance, in the narrative of Israel's request
to pass through Edom, we read : " And Edom
said unto him (i.e. Israel), Thou shalt not
pass through me, lest I come out with the
sword against thee. And the children of
Israel said unto him, We will go up by the
highway ; and if we drink of thy water, I and
my cattle, then will I give the price of it ;
let me only, without (doing) anything (else),
pass through on my feet. And he said,
Thou shalt not pass through." 2
Connected with this general view of society,
with this primitive mode of thought which
survived in customs and literary usages long
after it had itself become obsolete, is the fact
1 Jos. ix. 7. * Num. xx. 18-20.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 81
that the unit in religion is the people. The
two sides to the covenant are Jehovah and
Israel ; directly the individual as such has
no relation to Jehovah, but only in virtue of
forming part of Israel. And so the offence of
the individual offends Jehovah, because it pol
lutes that holiness which ought to characterize
the people. The audience of the prophets
is Israel as a whole ; their concern is not
primarily with individuals. And the same is
frequently true of the laws : " Hear, 0 Israel,
Jehovah our God is one Jehovah ; and thou,
i.e. Israel, shalt love Jehovah thy God with
all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy might." 1 It is due to the fact
that it is the people, and the individual only
as a member of the people, that has relation
with Jehovah that exile from the land of
Israel involves cessation of intercourse with
Jehovah.2 Certain important results for our present
subject follow from this ancient view of life.
Since the people, or under certain circum-
1 Deut. vi. 5. 2 Cf. p. 45 above.

82 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
stances a smaller group such as the clan or
the family, is the social and religious unit,
it follows that the full force of the religious
sanction is only felt in the case of what we
may term the national morality. Israel as
a whole is to be holy because Jehovah is
holy. Indirectly this unquestionably affected
the individual ; so much so, indeed, that the
unholiness of an individual polluted the nation.
But it is to the nation as a whole rather
than to the individual offender himself that
Jehovah manifests His displeasure at the un
holiness produced by the fault of an individual.
Achan, an individual, violates the command
of Jehovah not to take of the devoted stuff
of the Canaanites, but it is not himself merely
that sins ; Israel, as a whole, is, by his error,
rendered guilty.1 Achan alone took of the
' devoted stuff,' but it is thus that Jehovah
addresses Joshua : " Get thee up ; wherefore
art thou thus fallen upon thy face ? Israel
hath sinned ; yea, they have even transgressed
my covenant, which I commanded them ; yea,
1 Jos, vii. 11.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 83
they have even taken of the devoted thing ;
and have also stolen, and dissembled also,
and they have even put it among their own
stuff." And because through the offence of
an individual Israel as a whole has sinned,
Israel as a whole is also punished by ill-success
in battle ; and it is only through this national
disaster that attention is drawn to the offend
ing member.1
In the same way Jehovah manifests His
anger at the entirely unintentional offence of
Jonathan by refusing to give Saul an answer
and so troubling the whole people.2 An
unexpiated crime renders the whole com
munity guilty before Jehovah ; 3 and, as a
consequence, in Deuteronomy Israel is fre
quently exhorted to punish crime, and so "to
exterminate the evil" from its midst.4
But where the morality of the individual
is thus so closely bound up with that of the
people as a whole, it almost necessarily follows
that morality will be externally regarded.
1 Jos. vii. 12 ff. 2 1 Sam. xiv. 37 ff.
3 See, e.g., Deut. xxi. 1-9.
4 Deut. xiii. 5, xvii. 7, xix. 19, xxi. 21, xxii. 21-24, xxiv. 7.

84 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Morality is a matter of outward act, not of
inward disposition. For the deeper concep
tion of morality a clear perception of individual
responsibility is requisite.
Now the growth of this sense of individual
responsibility is to be traced within the Old
Testament. In importance it ranks with the
transition from the national to the universal
conception of God, and the consequent widen
ing of the range of moral obligation. In the
one case the moral sense is enlarged, in the
other it is deepened and intensified. Through
the one ^change the Israelite came to feel his
obligation to all men irrespective of race ;
through the other his immediate and direct
responsibility to God. Neither the one
change nor the other exercised at large its
full effect ; the influence of old and discarded
doctrines lingered long ; but in both cases
the new principles were at work.
Some signs of the breaking down of the
old conception of the indifference of the
individual may be already traced in the
older stories. We recall Abraham's question

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 85
relative to Sodom — " Wilt thou destroy the
righteous with the wicked ? " 1 or David's plea,
" Lo, I have sinned and I have done per
versely ; but these sheep, what have they
done ? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against
me, and against my father's house." 2 The
last case is of double interest. The prayer
is that the effect of David's individual sin
may be limited, yet not to himself only, but
to his father's house.
In Deuteronomy we have a law which
would read strangely indeed except in the
light of the prevalence of ideas to which I
have been drawing attention. This law
directly forbids a practice which quite natur
ally sprang out of the conception that the
family, not the individual, is the social unit.'
The law runs : " The fathers shall not be put
to death for the children, neither shall the
children be put to death for the fathers ;
every man shall be put to death for his own
sin." 3 1 Gen. xviii. 23. 2 2 Sam. xxiv. 17. ,
3 Deut. xxiv. 16 ; cf. 2 Kings xiv. 6.

86 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
But we can see the change most clearly in
the teaching of the prophets Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, and it is by no means accidental that
they both lived at the time when the Hebrew
national life was closed by the Babylonian
conquest and the exile of the greater and
most influential part of the nation to Babylon.
In Ezekiel we ,see all the force of extreme
reaction, and a consequently very exaggerated
counter-doctrine. Individualism has never
been more baldly stated. The prophet chal
lenges the popular proverb : " The fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's
teeth are set on edge," x i.e. the children
suffer for the father's sins. This proverb the
exiles were constantly throwing in the teeth
of the prophet as he tried to move them to
penitence. We, they said, are innocent ; our
sufferings in exile are the punishment for our
fathers' sins. In reply the prophet asserts
that in future at any rate this proverb will be
untrue : each individual shall suffer for his
own sin. In this, of course, the prophet is
1 Ezek. xviii. 2.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 87
false to the facts of life ; suffering is not pro
portioned to the sin of the individual. It is
this false view of the meaning of suffering,
to which we shall return in our last discussion,
that vitiates to so large an extent Ezekiel's
doctrine of the individual. But the ground
on which he bases it is sound as it was novel.
These are the words in which he states it,
speaking in the name of Jehovah : " Behold,
all souls are mine : as the soul of the father,
so also the soul of the son is mine ; " -1 that is
to say, the individual in himself and inde
pendently belongs to Jehovah ; the relation
ship is not, as in the old doctrine, mediate
and based on the individual's relation to the
-nation, but direct and immediate. It will be
observed, then, that Ezekiel brings out the
value, independence, and direct responsibility
of the individual in connection with the ques
tion of sin and punishment. We shall see
that Jeremiah regards these moral factors
from a very different standpoint. But before
leaving Ezekiel, let us take account of a very
1 Ezek. xviii. 4.

88 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
instructive instance of the limited extent to
which a new doctrine affects even the person
who promulgates it. Ezekiel, the author of
as sharp and unqualified an individualism as
it is possible to conceive, nevertheless gathers
together in his allegory in chap. xvi. all the
sins, as it were, of past generations, and
charges them upon the Israel of his day.
Israel of all time is thus regarded as a moral
unity. Jeremiah, the earlier contemporary of
Ezekiel, never so clearly enunciates a doc
trine of individual responsibility ; but he is
far more influential in securing a sense of the
religious and moral value of the individual.
He, too, was led to this new position by the"
fact of exile ; and what he teaches is that
the relation which had been thought to
exist between Jehovah and Israel might exist
between Jehovah and the individual. It is no
mere question with him of retribution. While
of old the relation had been between Jehovah
and the nation, Jehovah had nevertheless made
known His will to the nation through certain

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

individuals — prophets or priests or national
leaders. Faced by the certain approach of
exile and the destruction of the national life,
Jeremiah rose to the conviction that what in
the past had been the privilege of special
individuals — direct intercourse with God —
might be the privilege of all. In the case of
every man, the law of Jehovah might be
written on the heart ; that is to say, the
Divine voice might speak within him as it
had spoken to the prophet.1 Exile might
come ; the nation might perish ; but with it
Jehovah would not perish ; rather out of the
disaster would come a higher privilege for
those individuals who would claim it — direct
participation in Jehovah, instead of a merely
intermediate relation to him through the
national life.
What Jeremiah perceived beforehand, the
exile necessarily enforced practically. Ac
cording to the conception prevalent in David's
time, the exiles could not have worshipped
Jehovah.2 As a matter of fact, they did ; and
1 Jer. xxxi. 23 f. 2 See above, p. 45. G

90 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
in so doing, realized that, as sacrifice and burnt-
offering which could not be offered in exile
were unnecessary to religion,1 so also residence
in the land of Jehovah or the existence of the
nation were unnecessary, but that the indi
vidual, wherever he was, was the true religious
unit, and, as such, capable of intercourse with
God. With the return from exile, sacrifice
was resumed, and something of a national life
revived ; but the individualism which Jeremiah
had taught and the exile must have fostered,
though it may have been in some way re
tarded by the change, and did not become
universally prevalent, survived as a new ele
ment in religious life, and as a new and potent
factor in morality.
To the combined effect of the two great
changes which we have now observed — -the
transcendence of the national conception of
God and the development of a sense of the
moral and religious value of the individual
— we may trace a new type or ideal of life
which comes before us in the post-exilic
1 Psalms li. 16 ; xl. 6 ff.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 91

period — that of the humble man. In early
times' men trembled at the manifestation of
Jehovah's anger.1 But there is a fear that
is not craven, and is not inspired by a purely
unmoral exhibition of power; there is a sense
of the immeasurable moral difference between
the individual man and his Maker — man in
his sin and imperfection, God in His purity
and might. Now this sense, this feeling which
we term ' humility,' first becomes prominent
after the exile, and is surely due on the one
hand to the greater and nobler idea of God,
and on the other to the new conviction that
it is individual men who have intercourse with
Him. The ideal is thus described in perhaps
its most classic setting : " I dwell in the high
and holy place, with him also that is of a
contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit
of the humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite ones. For I will not contend for
ever, neither will I be always wroth : for the
spirit should fail before me, and the souls,i.e. the
individuals, which I have made."2 Or again, in
1 See, e.g., 1 Sam. vi. 20. 2 Isa. lvii. 15 f . — a post-exilic passage.

92 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
another late piece of literature: " the sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a
contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not despise." x
This praise of the crushed in spirit is unknown
to the early literature. In another form we
find this ideal of humility in the eighth
Psalm, which brings together the frailty, and
yet the greatness of man, in consequence of
God's visitation of him ; or again, in admis
sions of Job.
This is one of the most striking among
the new virtues or moral ideals that were
created during the course of Israel's history.
It will only be possible in the very briefest
way to refer to some of the more general
aspects of Hebrew ideals of life.
In the light of what has been said as to
the nation or family rather than the indi
vidual being the social unit, it is not sur
prising to find the value attached to public
spirit, to devotion to the common cause. It
is praise of public spirit and condemnation of
the lack of it that characterizes the earliest
1 Psalm li. 17.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 93
extant piece of Hebrew literature — the Song
of Deborah : —
" For that the leaders took the lead in Israel,
For that the people offered themselves willingly ;
Bless ye Jehovah."1
These opening words form the keynote of the
song. The tribes that participate in the
battle are honourably mentioned ; those that
kept to their own concerns are reproached ;
and — most significant of all — Jael's public
spirit more than covers her treacherous
murder of Sisera, which must otherwise have
offended the moral feeling even of her age ;
for Sisera was her guest, and the guest,
whether foreigner or fellow-tribesman, had
the right of protection and safety.
Again, the famous characters of early Israel
are the national leaders — Moses, who created
the nation ; the judges, who recovered the
people from subjection to their enemies ; Saul
and David, who created the monarchy, and so
consolidated the national unity and power.
Perhaps, beyond any other, David presents
1 Judges v. 2.

94 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
in actual life the early Hebrew ideal of ex
cellence ; his magnanimity towards Saul, his
love for Jonathan, the success he achieved
for his people, and other kindred virtues,
made him renowned in song and story.
Elements in his character and practice which
offend us — his sensuality, his cruelty to his
foes — did not offend his contemporaries..
But the history of David not only affords a
concrete instance of Hebrew ideals of con
duct : it also brings strikingly 'to light the
moral sensitiveness of the people. For
simple beauty, for moral earnestness, the
story of Nathan's rebuke of David's sin,1
which was probably written within a gene
ration or two of the event, stands unsur
passed in the moral literature of the world.
The moral standard of the age of David was
not our standard ; it approved things that
the moral sense of our time condemns ; the
range of moral obligation was limited. But
the moral spirit of the people was quick and
sensitive ; and when their moral standard
1 2 Sam. xii.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 95
was violated, they did not shrink from con
demning it even in their most popular hero.
If we glance at the early laws, we again
see the noble elements which already charac
terize early Hebrew morality. Some injus
tice is done to that morality by the undue
stress laid on the Ten Commandments and
the constant recital of them. Hebrew moral
ity, much less Christian morality, is far from
even being summarized in these. One limi
tation, however, which extends beyond these,
and was characteristic of Hebrew morality,
may be noticed in passing : the Ten Com
mandments forbid false witness — i.e., forbid
lying to the manifest hurt of another ; but
they do not forbid lying as such. Truthful
ness in the abstract is not a virtue that is
much appraised in the Old Testament, parti
cularly in its earlier parts ; and indeed the
Hebrew language has no very specific and
distinctive term to express the idea. The
word generally translated ' Truth ' means
originally and very frequently in usage,
simply steadfastness or faithfulness.

96 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Far more illustrative of the character of
Hebrew morality than the Ten Command
ments are such laws as these which I will
cite from the earliest Code (eighth century
B.C.): "Ye shall not afflict any widow or
fatherless child. If thou afflict them in
any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I
will surely hear their cry : and my -wrath
shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the
sword." 1 "If thou lend money to any of
my people with thee that is poor, thou shalt
not be to him as a creditor : neither shalt
thou take interest of him. If thou at all
take thy neighbour's garment in pledge, thou
shalt restore it unto him by the time that
the sun goes down ; for that is his only
covering, it is his garment for his skin ;
wherein shall he sleep" — viz., if you keep it
over-night ? 2 "If thou meet thine enemy's-
ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely
bring it back to him again." 3 " Thou shalt
not (unduly) favour a poor man in his.
1 Exod. xxii. 22 f. 2 Exod. xxii. 25-27.
8 Exod. xxiii. 4.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 97
cause." x These laws may illustrate the
humanity and high-mindedness of the early
Hebrews in their dealings between man and
man.2 The conduct which is here implied
was, it will be remembered, only exacted or
expected within the limits of the Hebrew
nation. But within this limitation, it was
not in some respects easy of being im
proved. The same warm humanity, and espe
cially the same tender regard for the weak
and helpless, breathes through the Deuter-
onomic legislation, which has been so well
characterized by Dr Driver. " Humanity is
the author's ruling motive, wherever con
siderations of religion or morality do not
force him to repress it. Accordingly, great
emphasis is laid upon the exercise of

1 Exod. xxiii. 3.
2 Certain laws sometimes cited as illustrating the humanity
of the Hebrews are, however, not true instances. One of these
is the law of Exod. xxiii. 19 (=Deut. xiv. 21), which is cited
{e.g., by Mr Lecky in his History of European Morals, ii. p.
162, n. 4, Cabinet Edition) in proof of the kindness of the
Hebrews to animals. But the prohibition is in all probability
based on the superstitious rather than on the cruel character
of the act. Deut. xxii. 6 f . is, perhaps, another case in point.
On both passages, see Dr Driver's Commentary.

98 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
philanthropy, promptitude, and liberality to
wards those in difficulty or want, as the
indigent in need of a loan (xv. 7—11 ; xxiii.
20 (19 f.), a slave at the time of his manu
mission (xv. 13-15), a neighbour who has
lost any of his property (xxii. 1—4), a poor
man obliged to borrow on pledge (xxiv. 6,
12 f.), a fugitive slave (xxiv. 7), a hired
servant (xxiv. 14 f.), and in the law for the
disposition of the triennial tithe (xiv. 21 f.) :
the landless Levite (xii. 12, 18 f. ; xiv. 27,
29; xvi. 11, 14; xxvi. 11, 12 f.) ; and 'the
stranger' — i.e., the unprotected foreigner
settled in Israel — 'the fatherless and the
widow,' are repeatedly commended to the
Israelite's charity or regard (xiv. 29 . . .),
especially at the time of the great annual
pilgrimages (xii. 12, 11 ; xiv. 27 ; xvi. 11,
14 ; xxvi. 11), when he and his household
partook together before God of the bounty of
the soil, and might the more readily respond
to an appeal for benevolence. Gratitude,
and a sense of sympathy, evoked by the re
collection of Israel's own past, are frequently

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 99
appealed to as the motives by which the
Israelite should in such cases be actuated
(x. 19; . . . xv. 15 ; xvi. 12 . . .). A spirit of
forbearance, equity, and regard for the feelings
of others underlies the regulations of v. 14b. ;
xx. 5—9 ; xx. 10 ff. . . . Several of these
provisions are prompted in particular by the
endeavour to ameliorate the condition of
dependents, and to mitigate the cruelties of
war. Not, indeed, that similar considerations
are absent from the older legislation, . . .
but they are developed in Deuteronomy with
an emphasis and distinctness which give a
character to the entire work. The author
speaks out of a warm heart himself ; and he
strives to kindle a warm response in the heart
of every one whom he addresses. Nowhere
else in the Old Testament do we breathe
such an atmosphere of generous devotion to
God, and of large-hearted benevolence to
wards man ; nowhere else are duties and
motives set forth with greater depth and
tenderness of feeling, or with more winning
' and persuasive eloquence ; and nowhere else

100 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
is it shown with the same fulness of detail
how high and noble principles may be applied
so as to elevate and refine the entire life of
the community." x
The considerations of religion or morality
to which the author just quoted refers, as
limiting the humanity of Deuteronomy, re
mind us of certain marked differences between
our own and the Deuteronomic standpoint.
Any such thing as religious toleration was,
of course, unknown to the Hebrews.
The spirit which characterizes the two
codes already referred to, still governs the
earliest section of the Priestly Code — the so-
called Law of Holiness, which appears to
have been compiled in the early part of the
sixth century B.C. It is succinctly expressed
in the saying of which the Old Testament
origin is sometimes forgotten : " Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself." 2
Certainly in the last great body of law — •
1 Driver, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deutero
nomy, pp. xxiv. f.
2 Lev. xix. 18 ; and compare in detail, e.g., Lev. xxv. 25,
35-39. For the limited application of the saying, see p. 47.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 101
— the main part of the Priestly Code — this
spirit is less manifest. But the chief subject
of that law was ritual rather than political
and social. This needs to be borne in mind.1
Further, if we would judge the spirit of the
age out of which it springs, and in which it
was influential, we must also take account of
other characteristic products of the age, such
as the Book of Proverbs, and at least many
of the Psalms.
But although the discussion, even in brief,
of the moral ideals of post-exilic Judaism is,
on the present occasion, precluded by the
limit of these Lectures, it must not be sup
posed that the details of Hebrew morality
become less worthy just when, as our previous
discussions have shown us, the people were
learning that moral obligation was not limited
to men of one's own race, and that the indi
vidual was directly and immediately respon
sible to God for his life and conduct. There
is one passage in the post-exilic literature
which by itself may suffice to prevent so false
1 See above, p. 63.

102 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
a conclusion. It has not unfitly been said that
if we want a summary of moral duties from
the Old Testament, it might better be found
in Job's soliloquy as he turns away,from his
friends and reviews his past life, than in the
Ten Commandments. Let me conclude this
brief summary of Hebrew ideals of life by
quoting part of this speech. With the book
of which it forms a part, it can hardly have
been written before the fifth century B.C., and
' it may have been written a century or two later.
The speech is mainly a repudiation of certain
crimes or neglected duties. It is easy to
gather from it what was the author's positive
ideal of life.
" If I have walked with vanity,
And my foot hath hasted to deceit.
If my step hath turned out of my way,
And mine heart walked after mine eyes,
And if any spot hath cleaved to my hands ;
Then let me sow, and another eat ;
Yea, let the produce of my field be rooted out.
If I did despise the cause of my man-servant, or of
my maid-servant,
When they contended with me ;

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 103
What, then, shall I do when God riseth up 1
And when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him '
Did not He that made me in the womb make him 1
And did not ono fashion us in the womb 1
If I have withheld the poor from (their) desire,
Or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail ;
Or have eaten my morsel alone,
And the fatherless hath not eaten thereof ;
(Nay, from my youth he grew up with me as with a
father,
And I have been her guide from my mother's womb,)
If I have seen any perish for want of clothing,
Or that the needy had no covering ;
If his loins have not blessed me,
And if he were not warmed with the fleece of my
sheep ;
If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless,
Because I saw my help in the gate ;
Then let my shoulder fall from the shoulder blade,
And mine arm be broken from the bone.
If I have made gold my hope,
And have said to the fine gold (thou art) my
confidence ;
If I rejoiced because my wealth was great,
And because mine hand had gotten much ;
. • . . •
If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him that
hated me,
Or lifted up myself when evil found him ;
(Yea, I suffered not my mouth to sin,
By asking his life with a curse ;)
If ... I covered my transgression,

104 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
By hiding mine iniquity in my bosom ;
Because I feared the great multitude,
And the contempt of families terrified me,
So that I kept silence and went out at the door.
If my land cry out against me,
And the furrows thereof weep together ;
If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money,
Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life ;
Let thistles grow instead of wheat,
And cockle instead of barley."1
1 Job xxxi. 5 ff.

Ill

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT
We have now seen, to some extent, what
ideals of conduct prevailed among the Hebrews,
what were the virtues they approved and the
vices they condemned, and within what limi
tations they felt bound to exercise these
virtues. Another important question arises
in considering the morality — actual and
theoretical — of any people, though it can
only be satisfactorily answered when the
people under consideration have left behind
them a literature of reflection. The question
I refer to is this — Why did the people or
the individual pursue the conduct that com
manded their moral approbation ? What
was their motive in doing right ? Why were
they prepared to do what they thought right
at the cost of present inconvenience and
suffering ? Why, to take a concrete instance

106 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
from one of the Psalmists, when a man
swore, as he subsequently discovered, to his
own hurt, did he not repudiate his oath ? x
This, it will be at once recognized, is one of
the fundamental questions in speculative
ethics, and closely allied to the still more
fundamental question — What is right ? What
is the ultimate difference between right and
wrong ? This most fundamental of all ethical
questions is never directly raised in this form
in the Old Testament. So far as the attitude
of the Hebrews towards it can be discovered,
they tacitly held that whatever was the will
of Jehovah was right. Certainly they were
not in this respect deliberate utilitarians ; they
did not define right as that which produces
pleasure, wrong as that which produces pain.
On the other hand, they did not, as we have
already observed, go behind the will of
Jehovah ; they had no clear conception of a
moral law independent of that will.
But when we turn from the question of
what is right to the motive with which what
1 Ps. xv, 4.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 107
was held to be right was done, we certainly
find it emerging in the Old Testament. In
directly it is answered again and again in the
law, in the prophets, in the proverbial litera
ture ; directly it is raised and tentatively
answered in the book of Job — the most
striking instance in Biblical literature of the
actual discussion of a moral problem.
There can be no question that the motive
which is predominant in Hebrew literature is
thoroughly utilitarian. The people as a whole
and the individual are alike exhorted to do
what is right on the ground that it is advan
tageous so to do. Let us illustrate this.
The great objects of a Hebrew's desire — and
not alone of his — were wealth and long life.
Personified wisdom is commended to men on
the ground that "length of days is in her
right hand ; in her left hand are riches and
honour " — that is to say, she can bestow
these things on those that love her.1 Solomon
is commended because, when he had the
opportunity of obtaining whatever he wanted,
1 Prov. iii. 16.

108 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
he did not ask for either long life or riches.1
Remember this, and then recall the com
mandment with its motive — Honour thy
father and thy mother : that thy days may be
long upon the land which Jehovah thy God
giveth thee.2 Or this exhortation of Isaiah's :
If ye be willing and obedient (i.e. to the
word and will of Jehovah), ye shall eat the
good of the land ; but if ye refuse and rebel,
ye shall be devoured with the sword.3 Or of
Amos : Seek good and not evil, that ye may
live.4 The passages which I have just cited — the
one from a law-giver, the other two from the
prophets — are not isolated and exceptional
instances ; they are thoroughly characteristic
expressions of the motives which both the
law and the prophets constantly suggest.
Deuteronomy is a law addressed to Israel
as a whole ; it exhorts the people to obey
Jehovah's commandments, promising that obe
dience will ensure the long continuance and
1 1 Kings iii. 11. 2 Exod. xx. 12.
Isa. i. 19. 4 Amos v. 14.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 109
prosperity of the nation, disobedience its im
mediate destruction. Sayings such as the
following occur again and again : " Observe
and hear all these words which I command thee,
that it may go well with thee, and with thy
children after thee for ever, when thou doest
that which is good and right in the eyes of
Jehovah thy God." 1 "Ye shall walk in all
the way which Jehovah your God hath com
manded you, that ye may live, and that it
may be well with you, and that ye may pro
long your days in the land which ye shall
possess." 2 " Behold I set before you this day
a blessing and a curse : the blessing if ye shall
hearken unto the commandments of Jehovah
your God ; and the curse, if ye shall not
hearken unto the commandments of Jehovah
your God."3
A similar motive is eloquently set forth in
the concluding homily to the Law of Holiness,
which opens with these promises of Jehovah :
" If you follow my statutes, and keep my
1 Deut. xii. 28 ; cf. iv. 40, v. 29, vi. 18, xxii. 7.
2 v. 33 ; cf. iv. 40, xi. 9, xxx. 18-20. 3 xi. 27 f.

110 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
commandments, and do them, then I will give
you your rains in their seasons, and the land
shall yield its increase, and the trees of the
field shall yield their fruit. And your
threshing shall last to the vintage, and the
vintage shall last to the sowing time ; and
you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell
in your land securely. And I will give you
peace in the land, and you shall lie down,
and none shall make you afraid. I will cause
wild beasts to disappear out of the land, and
the sword shall not go through your land.
And you shall chase your enemies, and they
shall fall before your sword. . . . And I will
look with favour upon you, and make you
fruitful and multiply you ; and I will fulfil
my covenant with you. And you shall, eat
old stores long kept, and you shall take out
the old to make room for the new." x Sub
sequently a long series of the misfortunes
which are to befall the people in case they are
disobedient is recounted.
1 Lev. xxvi. 2-10 (Driver and White's translation in th&
" Polychrome " Bible).

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 111
And when we turn to that great Hebrew
compendium of individual morality, the book
of Proverbs, we find the same motive con
stantly brought forward, " Honour Jehovah
with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of
all thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled
with plenty, and thy fats shall overflow with
new wine." x " The fear of Jehovah pro-
longeth days, but the years of the wicked
shall be shortened." 2 " There shall no mis
chief happen to the righteous ; but the
wicked shall be filled with evil." 3 But it is
unnecessary to multiply instances ; the same
motive is implicit in every part of the
book. The same note appears in many of the
Psalms ; for example : " What man is he that
desireth life, and loveth many days, that he
may see good ? Keep thy tongue from
evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. De
part from evil and do good ; seek peace and
pursue it." i " Wait on the Lord, and keep
1 Prov. iii. 9 f. z x. 27.
3 xii. 21. * Ps. xxxiv. 12- 14.

112 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
His way, and He shall exalt thee to inherit
the land."1
We shall have to observe immediately the
awakening of the Hebrew consciousness to a
higher motive of conduct. But that awaken
ing took place in individuals rather than in
the mass of the people. And side by side
with the lofty motives that appear in the
book of Job, and in some of the Psalms, we
find in literature at least as late, if not later,
the old utilitarian motive still dominant. The
books of Chronicles are among the latest
books of the Old Testament : they were obvi
ously not compiled much before 300 B.C. But
they are peculiarly distinguished by a fond
ness for representing " a great calamity or
deliverance as the punishment of wickedness
or the reward of virtue." 2
Now, to infer from these characteristics of
the legal, prophetic, and moral writings of the
Hebrews that their morality, the morality of
1 Ps. xxxvii. 34.
2 Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament
(sixth edition), p. 526, where proof and illustrations of the state
ment may be found.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 113
the people as a whole, and of all the indi
viduals among them, was a mere calculation
of what course of life would give them the
greatest length of days and the largest
amount of material prosperity, would be ille
gitimate and unfair — illegitimate partly be
cause we can see in actual life that many men
have other than the utilitarian motives of the
maxims they profess, and partly because a
further examination of the same literature
that we have been considering indicates the
presence of other motives.
This latter fact is especially true of Deuter
onomy, which, in its turn, for this side of
its teaching, is dependent on the prophets,
and, above all, on Hosea.
"The love of God, an all-absorbing sense
of personal devotion to Him, is propounded
in Deuteronomy as the primary spring of
human action (vi. 5) ; it is the duty which is
the direct corollary of the character of God,
and of Israel's relation to Him ; the Israelite
is to love Him with undivided affection, to
1 cleave ' to Him (x. 20 ; xi. 22 ; xiii. 5 ;

\

114 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
xxx. 20), to renounce everything that is in
any degree inconsistent with loyalty to
Him." x
This is a thoroughly just appreciation of the
great law-book, and enables us to see that
there was room, at any rate in the religion of
the seventh century, for a far nobler motive
to conduct than that of a careful calculating
self-interest. At the same time, the pres
ence of the motive previously discussed is a
very important fact, and not to be neglected.
The truth is, we have side by side two
motives — a higher and a lower ; whether the
higher was clearly primary in the mind of
the authors we cannot say, but it is only too
probable that the lower motive was the more
largely effective. It needed an actual test
clearly to distinguish between them ; to de
termine how far the " love of God " could
secure the doing of His will when it not
merely failed to bring any striking material
prosperity, but, on the contrary, entailed
material loss and suffering.
1 Driver, Deuteronomy, p. xxi. ; cf. pp. xxxi, f.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 115
In the case of the nation, this test was
afforded by the exile ; in the case of the
individual, the test was often enough present,
but only became clearly perceptible after the
sense of individual responsibility had become
highly developed ; and the old belief, based
on the theory of solidarity,1 that a man was
justly punished in his descendants,2 had been
discarded.3 Consequently, the meaning of
disaster and suffering alike in the case of the
people and the individual only gained any
considerable attention in and after the exile.
It is the Deutero-Isaiah who gains a new and
higher standpoint with regard to the national
disaster ; it is the author of the book of Job
who refuted the prevalent theory of suffering,
and in so doing weakened the hold of the
utilitarian motive of conduct on the indi
vidual, and thus made way for a nobler
motive. I can merely refer in the briefest way
possible to the Deutero - Isaiah's position,
1 See above, pp. 77-90.
2 Cf, e.g., Job xxi. 19.
' Deut. vii. 10 ; Ezek. xviii.

116 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE- OF ISRAEL
simply stating the view that seems to me
the correct one of the crucial passages with
out attempting to defend it in detail.
In the opening words of his prophecy the
great exilic prophet announces that Jehovah's
people have received double for all their sins a
— i.e., that all their suffering has not been
penal. In the course of the prophecy, the
people comes before us personified as the
servant of Jehovah.2 We find that this
servant has entrusted to him the charge of
enlightening and instructing the Gentiles,3
and that to carry out his task, the servant
had " to give his back to the smiters and his
cheeks to those that plucked out the beard." *
Ultimately Jehovah exalts His much-despised
servant Israel, and the nations confess that it
was for their transgressions that Israel had suf
fered, and that through the stripes which had
fallen on Israel they had obtained healing.5
Here, then, we find a new national ideal ;
it is no longer with this writer material pro-
1 Isa. xl. 2.
2 So quite obviously in xii. 8 ; xliv. 1, 2, 21.
xiii. 1-4 ; xlix. 6. 4 1. 6. « Isa. Iii. 13-liii. 12.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 117
sperity in the land which Jehovah has given
to Israel; it is co-operation with Jehovah, even
at the cost of national disaster and suffering,
in the work of enlightening the world.
We turn to the question of individual
suffering and its relation to the motive of the
conduct of the individual.
The Satan immediately raises the question
of motive in the prologue to the book of Job.
"Doth Job fear God for nought?"1 God
may be right in claiming that Job is perfect,
but — so the Satan insinuates — that, after all,
only means that Job knows how to get the
best of things. His piety pays him. God's
method of governing man leaves no room for
disinterested piety — no room, at least, for
really putting it to the test. Job lives a
good life, because it makes him rich in cattle.
It is unnecessary to repeat the familiar story ;
we know how the test comes. Job is stripped
of all his wealth, smitten with disease, and on
the point of death. Piety no longer pays
materially : can it stand the test ?
i Job i. 9.

118 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
The speeches of the friends illustrate the
prevalent doctrine that the motive of good
conduct is the material prosperity that it
brings and the length of days that it secures.
In the case of Eliphaz we seem to detect
that double motive that marks the book of
Deuteronomy ; he, in his last speech, shows
some feeling that the possession of Jehovah,
harmony with His will, is the highest reward
of a righteous life. " If thou return to the
Almighty, thou shalt be built up ; if thou
put away unrighteousness far from thy tents.
And lay thou thy treasure in the dust, and the
(gold of) Ophir among the stones of the brooks,
and the Almighty shall be thy treasure and
precious silver unto thee. For then thou shalt
delight thyself in the Almighty, and shalt lift
up thy face unto God." 1 But even this fine
passage is also marked by the presence of the
lower doctrine, that it is well to be righteous
because it ensures material prosperity, that
man gets a good return for his service of God.
It is in the attitude of Job himself that we
1 Job xxii. 23-26.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 119
see the new motive coming to light in its
purity. It is important to bear in mind that
the author of the book held no doctrine of
reward in a future life. He is faced terribly
and simply enough with this question — Has
he been wise in his mode of his life ? He
has been righteous, but his righteousness has
met with the reward of dire misfortunes. In
consequence, every one, even of his friends,
considers that he must have sinned greatly,
and this is the final and greatest aggravation
of his sufferings. Why, then, has he been
righteous ? Why should he still " hold fast
to his integrity " ? And the answer the book
gives to this question is, that he has not been
unwise ; that his motive in being righteous
had not been the wealth which his good life
had at first brought him ; and, therefore, that
he cannot and will not follow the request of
his friends to be unrighteous, and admit sins
which he had never committed in the hope of
an alleviation of his sufferings. In spite of
all, he holds fast to his integrity, and rises
to the belief that, if not in this life, yet here-

120 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
after, God will vindicate his character. He
appeals, as I have said in a previous Lecture,
from the traditional God whom he knows now
to be unreal to a truly moral God ; and in
communion with Him he finds more than
compensation for all his sufferings. This is
his true wealth, that whereas a godless man
cannot come before God, he is confident that
he will do so.1
Briefly expressed in modern terms, the
answer of the book to the Satan's question
— Does Job fear God for nought ? i.e., do
not men do what is right because it pays
them best ? is this — Job does not fear God
for nought ; but the return which he gets, as
he sees when put to the test, is not wealth,.
and comfort, and esteem of men, but the
possibility that comes by it of living in God's.
presence and enjoying His society. He loves-
and serves God for God's own sake, and not
for any of the accidental outward advantages
of a good life.
The same problem is raised, and a similar
1 Job xiii. 16.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 121
answer given, in some psalms written by
men of kindred spirit with the author of
Job. For instance, the author of the 73rd
Psalm was at first distressed at the contrast
between the wicked who enjoy all manner
of prosperity, who have no torments, whose
body is sound and plump, who partake not
of the travail of mortals, nor are plagued
like other men,1 and his own distress, plagued
as he was all the day, rebuked every
morning. And in his mind, too, there arose
the question — Had he been wise in being
righteous? At first he was inclined to say,
" Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart,
and washed my hands in innocency " 2 ; but
his final answer is, that the possession of God
outweighs all his troubles.
Whom have I (to care for) in heaven 1
And possessing thee I have pleasure in nothing upon
earth.
Though my flesh and my heart should have wasted
away,
God would for ever be the rock of my heart and my
portion. 1 Ps. lxxiii. 4 f. * ver. 13. I

122 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
For behold, they that go afar from thee shall perish ;
Everyone that wantonly deserts thee, dost thou clean
put out.
But as for me, to be near to God is my happiness ;
I have put my trust in the Lord Jehovah.
That I may rehearse all thy works.1
Somewhat later we find in a remarkable
saying attributed in the Mishna to Antigonus
of Soko, who lived in the. second century
B.C., a direct exhortation to the disinterested
service of God. This noble-minded Jewish
teacher used to say, " Be not as slaves that
minister to the lord with a viewto receive recom
pense; but be as slaves that minister to the
lord without a view to receive recompense." 2
It is no small matter that, quite apart from a
doctrine of a future life, which may, and often
does, tend to the confusion of motives, the
quasi-utilitarian motive which runs through so
much of the Old Testament is thus clearly and
deliberately discarded by some of the latest
of the sacred writers ; that alike the Hebrew
nation and the Hebrew individual were taught
1 Ps. Ixxiii. 25-28. The translation is from Cheyne, The
Booh of Psalms.
2 PirM Abhdth, i. 3.

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 123
by them that conduct had a higher aim
than the outward prosperity which it might
bring, to wit, co-operation with God in
action, communion with Him in spirit. The
change has been noted by Lord Bacon, who is
sometimes a keen-sighted interpreter of Scrip
ture. " Prosperity is the blessing of the Old
Testament ; Adversity is the blessing of the
New ; which carrieth the greater benediction,
and the clearer revelation of God's favour.
Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen
to David's harp, you shall hear as many
hearse-like airs as carols ; and the pencil of the
Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing
the afflictions of Job than the felicities of
Solomon." x
New ideas obtain their full effect but slowly;
the old ideas which they in part replace, in
part remain effective ; and in part it is in
some cases well that they do, for the new
idea is not the whole truth. Of these general
laws of the growth of ideas, the three main
changes which we have discussed in these
1 Essay on Adversity.

124 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
Lectures furnish illustrations. It was long
after Amos before the great mass, even of the
Jews, realized that Jehovah was God of the
whole world, and that in consequence moral
obligation extended to all men, and not only
to one's fellow-countrymen. Indeed, the old
doctrine, at least in the form that one's obli
gations are largely confined to those of the
same religion, is not even yet fully outgrown.
In the case of the second change, by which a
due sense of individual responsibility was
developed, we have an illustration of abiding
elements of truth in the old doctrine.
Ezekiel, as we saw, in enunciating his bald
individualistic doctrine, was blind to facts of
life — stern, yet indisputable facts — which re
mind us that the individual life is no isolated
thing. In the New Testament both ideas
gain due recognition, and are harmonized —
there we find the strongest insistence on indi
vidual responsibility ; but there we find also
the idea and ideal of a common life of the
whole — the kingdom of God is a unity, the
ideal is the single body of Christ of Avhich all

THE MOTIVE OF CONDUCT 125
are members. And the motive of conduct —
how slowly, how inadequately, does motive
become purified ; how long the old doctrine
of the direct and proportionate suffering for
sin lingers with its almost necessary corollary,
that we should do right in order that we may
prosper and have comfort. But, again, the
Old Testament culminates in the New ; and
low and impure motives for good outward
conduct give way, where the truly Christian
spirit enters, to that which makes the inward
character and the outward action a pure and
noble harmony — " the constraining love of
Christ."

APPENDIX

I HAVE referred in the foregoing pages more than
once to the similarity between the thought of the
Moabites with regard to their god Chemosh and that
of the early Hebrews with regard to Jehovah. No
one who reads the inscription of Mesha (who lived
in the ninth century B.C.) can fail to observe this.
It has been very frequently reproduced, but, for the
convenience of the reader, I give here a translation
of the first part of it. The latter part contains little
reference to Chemosh. My translation is based on
that of Dr Driver {Notes on the Hebrew Text of the
Boohs of Samuel, p. Ixxxvii, f.), but I have changed
the order of the words in accordance with the demands
of English idiom, and I have omitted marks of inter
rogation and the like. The uncertainties as to the
decipherment or meanings of a few words thus in
dicated do not affect the general tenour of the
inscription with which alone it is my present object
to enable the reader to acquaint himself. For all
details he should refer to the commentary accom
panying Dr Driver's text and translation.
" I am Mesha, son of Chemoshmelek, King of Moab,
the Daibonite. My father reigned over Moab for

APPENDIX 127

thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I
made this high place for Chemosh in QEHH, a high
place of salvation, because he had saved me from all
the kings, and because he had let me see my pleasure
on all them that hated me. Omri was king over
Israel, and he afflicted Moab for many days, because
Chemosh was angry with his land. And his son
succeeded him ; and he also said, I will afflict Moab.
In my days said he thus ; but I saw my pleasure on
him, and on his house, and Israel perished with an
everlasting destruction. And Omri took possession
of the land of Mehedeba, and it {i.e. Israel) dwelt
therein during his days, and half his son's days, forty
years ; but Chemosh restored it in my days. And I
built Ba'al-Maon, and I made in it the reservoir;
and I built Qiryathen. And the men of Gad had
dwelt in the land of 'Ataroth from of old; and the
king of Israel had built for himself 'Ataroth. And
I fought against the city and took it. And I slew
all the people of the city, a gazing-stock unto Chemosh,
and unto Moab. And I brought back thence the
altar -hearth of Davdoh, and I dragged it before
Chemosh in Qeriyyoth. And I settled therein the
men of SHEN, and the men of MHETH. And
Chemosh said unto me, ' Go, take Nebo against Israel.'
And I went by night, and fought against it from the
break of dawn until noon. And I took it and slew
the whole of it, 7000 men and . . . , and women
and . . . and maid-servants; for I had devoted it
to 'Ashtor-Chemosh. And I took thence the vessels
of Yahweh, and I dragged them before Chemosh.
And the king of Israel had built Yahaz, and abode

128 THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE OF ISRAEL
in it, while he fought against me. But Chemosh
drave him out from before me."
In estimating the similarity in the matter of
religious thought and sentiment between this in
scription of the Moabite king and the early historical
sources of the Hebrews, it must be remembered, when
the latter are read in the authorized or revised ver
sions, that the Hebrew proper name Jehovah (strictly,
as in the inscription above, Yahweh) is replaced by
the common title Lord. In this way many passages
in the English version lose much of their point ; this
is particularly the case where, as e.g., in Judges xi.
23 f., Jehovah and another god are brought into con
nection with one another.

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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BIBLICA:
H Dictionary of tbe Bible.
EDITED BY
The Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D.,
Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, and formerly
Fellow of Balliol College, Canon of Rochester ;
AND
J. SUTHERLAND BLACK, M.A., LL.D.,
Assistant Editor of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica.'

THE following are special points that have been kept steadily in view
in the preparation of this work :
i. The primary aim has been to supply a much felt want by applying
to every detail within the scope of a Bible Dictionary the most exact
scientific methods now in use, so as to provide, in dictionary form, the
results of a thoroughgoing critical study of the Bible, with a completeness
and conciseness that has never yet been attained in any language.
2. The policy adopted is to give a carefully considered account of the
subjects dealt with, based on and starting from the latest that has been
written on the subject by the leading scholars, rather than to attempt to
calculate the average opinion in the world of Biblical studies.
3. Generally speaking, the subject-matter of ihe ' Encyclopaedia Biblica '
is that of Bible dictionaries in general. Some large important headings
will, however, be found here for the first time, and archaeological facts
have been treated with greater fulness than has been usual in works of
this class. By a careful system of cross-references to general articles, and
by the admission of only such parts of a subject as directly affect Biblical
questions, it has been found possible to treat many headings with greater
brevity than in previous works in the same field. For facility of reference
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headings printed in clear type.
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with the view of avoiding repetitions, and attaining the greatest possible
condensation, especially in minor matters, so as to secure adequate treat
ment of all questions of primary importance.
5. The work has, on the whole, proceeded simultaneously throughout
the alphabet, so that all the articles, from the largest to the very smallest,
might be collated with each other in as far as they are mutually dependent
or illustrative ; ihe results of this collation being given in very full refer
ences to the numerical section of the cognate article.
6. By delaying the stereotyping to the very last, it has been possible to
work the results of new discoveries or fresh discussions, as they appear
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