ii. Anthropomorphisms. — From the earliest period when God is spoken of. He is regarded as a Person. The word ,1" is a personal name. Prom the Exodus downward He is so spoken of in con- temporary literature : ' Sing unto the I.OKi), for he hath triumphed gloriously' (Ex l.T-') ; He is one whom men may 'love' (Jg 5"); He is self- conscious, and swears ' by his holiness ' (Am 4'-'), that is, by His Godhead (Gn 22">). The idea ex- pressed by M. Arnold, that the conception of Goii in Israel was Krst that of some newer external to themselves which they perceived in the world, a power making for a moral order or identical with it, and which they afterwards endowed with personality, inverts tlie OT representation, in which God is fuUy personal from the first, while His moral being becomes clearer and more ele- vated, or, at least, receives fuller expression. Tin- question rather rises whether the very vividness with which Goil's personality was realized in I.srael did not infringe ujion other conceptions neces.sary to a true idea of (iod, such as His transcendence? Was He not conceived as a majjnified human person subject to the limitations of personality among men? Now, of course, all OT statements iilioiit (Jod are given in the region of practical religions life. A theology of the schools where the laws of exact thought prevail was unknown in the OT period. There may be observed, indeed, the be- ginnings of such a theology in the Alexandrian trauslation, and more clearly in the Aramaic ver- sions and in Jewish writings of this age. These e\pre.ss themselves, in regard to Goil, in a form thai seeks to lie more severe and i-xact. using circumlocutions for the anthropoinorphisnis of tlm OT — a fact which in<licatcs that these caused »om«
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ott'ence. But in the OT such anthropomorphisms are freely used, as we use them still. And tlieir use is usuuUy justified by the statement that man was male in the imace of God. It is possible that by some in Israel, just as by some amonc ourselves, liis personality was so vividly realized as to obscure or repress some other conceptions of Him which also have their rights. But this can hardly be charged against the OT. When it speaks of the hand, arm, mouth, lips, and eyes of God ; when He makes bare His holy arm (Is 52'"), lifts up a signal to the nations (4'J--), is seen at the head of the Medes mustering His hosts, and His military shout is heard (13'), all this is but vivid conception of His being, His intelligence. His activity and universal power over the nations whom He directs. The human is transferred to His personality, as it could not but be ; it is transferred graphically, as could not but happen when done by the poetical, vivacious, and power- ful phantasy of the people of Israel. The languiigo only testifies to the warmth and intensity of the religious feelings of the writers.
Another class of passages deserves attention. God is said to have walked in the garden in the cool of the day (Gn 3') ; to have come down to see the tower which men did build (11°); to have been one of three men who appeared to Abraham, and to have eaten that which was set before Him (18'-*); to have wrestled with Jacob (32-'"'-/, and the like. Such passages, in addition to being a testimony to the vividness with which God's per- sonality was conceived, are evidence also of the religious feeling that God did reveal Himself to men, and enter into the closest fellowship with them. Ditlerent minds may estimate these early narratives in different ways. So far as we con- sider the experiences, say of Jacob at Jabbok, real, we may suppose that with these early men a spiritual impression always reflected itself in an accompanying extraordinary physical condition, just as among the early prophets the ecstasy was usual, while, among the later prophets, though still occasional (Is 8"), it became rare. And so far as we may consider the details of the description due to the narrator, it may be evidence that he could not conceive a spiritual experience apart from a correspondin"; physical accompaniment. And if early men so felt, it would not be judicious to deny that God might use an objective pheno- menon, such as the burning bush, as a means of awakening the religious mind, just as our Lord used His miracles as a means of reaching the mind of those for whom He performed them. But these local manifestations of God never suggest that He was locally confined. It has been argued that Sinai was the local seat of J" before the Kxodus, and that it was only later that He was believed to have removed to Canaan. In David's day it was certainly believed that Canaan was His ' in- heritance' (1 S 26") ; and the oldest Pent, narrator speaks of Him ' coming down ' upon Mount Sinai (Ex 19"- '"). When tlie Ark, to which His presence was in son\e way specially attached, was captured by the Philistines, and Shiloh destroyed, the priests continued His worship with all the old ceremonial of shewbread and the like at Nob (1 S 21*). The multitude of altars scattered over the country, if they did not suggest the positive idea of His ubiquity, suggested, at least, that there was no place where He might not let Himself be found, and the idea was confirmed by new self-manifesta- tions in fresh places, as to Gideon (Jg 6*"), to Saul (who seems to have built many altars, 1 S 14"), and to David (2 S 24'«). The idea men had of all these places was that expressed by Solomon in regard to the temple: 'The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this hovise