rophets—on questions of religious or moral duty. od (45) attributes the crimes prevalent in Israel (vv.!:?) to the priests’ forgetfulness of the Térah of their God (ef 81-2): this passage is important, as showing that the priestly ‘torah’ included a moral element (cf. Ex 23%, Lv 19), and was de- pendent for its effectiveness upon the ‘knowledge’ of God. The word is used similarly, of moral and spiritual teaching, in Am 24. In Is 1" the ‘ Térah of our God’ is the exposition which follows (vv."17) respecting the true character of religious service ; Is 5% the Térah which Judah has rejected consists of the precepts of civil righteousness and morality, the disregard of which the prophet has been de- nouneing (vv.%); Is 81620 it denotes the half- political half-religious advice just given by the prophet (vv.!245): it is used similarly in 30° (see v.; and ef. v.”, where the prophets are called by the corresponding participle, the ‘directors’ [teachers] of the people of Jerusalem). In Jer 6 918 16 264 8258 4410. 58. the reference may be partly (see 264) to the preaching of the prophets, partly (notice the context, and the addition in 9! 264 4410 of ‘which I set before you’) to the teaching of Deuteronomy. Other examples of the same gene- ral sense of direction, though not specially given by prophets, are Ps 78! (of a didactic Psalm), Job 22” (‘ Receive now direction from his [God’s] mouth’); in the mouth of a mother, Pr 18 6”; of a teacher of practical wisdom, Pr 3! 4? 6% (cf. RVm) 7? 134; of the model woman, 3136 (‘ law,’ in all these passages, is a misleading rendering). It is also used of the guidance, or direction, to be given by J”, or His representative, in the future ideal age: Is 2° (=Mie 4°), Jer 31%, Is 42 (of the preaching of J”s ideal servant), 514. (3) Side by side with this broader prophetical application of the term, there was, however, a narrower one, in which it was particularly associated with the priests, and (like the cognate verb Adrah) denoted the oral direction given by them in Jehovah's name, especially on matters of ceremonial observ- ance, such as the nature of the ditlerent kinds of sacrifice, the cases in which they were respectively to be offered, the criteria of leprosy, the conditions upon which it depended whether a thing was ‘clean’ or ‘unclean,’ ete.; the laity came to the priests for instruction on all such points, and the answer given to them was ¢érdah, ‘direction.’ Hag 2, though a late passage, shows what ‘torah’ was very clearly: the prophet is told to inquire of the priests whether in two particular cases an object becomes ‘holy,’ or ‘unclean,’ in the words ‘Ask now direction of the priests’ [not as RV, ‘concerning the law’: there is no art. in the
Heb.], the answer to the inquiries being the ‘ diree- * Cf. Maine’s Ancient Law, ch, 1. VOL. 111. .-ὸ
tion’ or ¢érah (cf. Mal 2° ‘truthful direction was in his mouth’; ν.7 ‘they seek direction from his mouth’; v.8 ‘ye have caused many to stumble by your [false] direction’; v.® ‘and have respect of persons in direction’ [not ‘in the law’]). For earlier instances, partly of the subst., partly of the cognate verb, see Dt 17" (of decisions given by the supreme court of priests and lay-judges on cases of civil or criminal law) ‘ace. to the direction wherewith they direct thee, and ace. to the judg- ment which they tell thee, thou shalt do, 248 ‘take heed that thou do according to all that the Levitical priests direct you’ (in the case of leprosy), 33” ‘they teach τὴν thy judgments [Ex 214], and Israel thy direction,’ Mic 34 ‘her priests direct for hire,’ Jer 28 (‘the handlers of the térah [πύρα wan], i.e. the priests, know me not’), 18/8 ‘direction will not perish from his mouth,’ i.e. the priest and his functions will never come to an end (said by those who disbelieved Jeremiah’s pre- dictions of disaster), Zeph 34 (‘her priests have profaned what is holy, they have done violence to térah,’—an 3029), Ezk 758 (‘direction shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the elder’: cf. La 2° ‘without [priestly] direction’), 227° (‘her priests have done violence to my ¢érah, they have proeen my holy things, they have made no ifference between the holy and the common’), 448 (cf. Ly 1457) ‘they shall direct my people between the holy and the common, and make them to know between the unclean and thie clean’ (notice in these two passages the connexion of térah with ceremonial distinctions), Hab 14 ‘ there- fore térah is numbed’ (i.e. is paralyzed, inetfec- tual: the violence and disorder, vy.2* +>, incap- acitates even the priests in the discharge of their duties). These passages show clearly the associa- tion of térah with the priests (cf. also 2 K 1727-8, 2 Ch 15%) ; they show not less clearly that, although it denoted a simply oral direction, this ‘direction’ was regulated by certain fundamental principles, which might be neglected or violated by unfaithful riests. (4) In process of time, térah came further to Nencte a body of technical direction on a given sub- ject: in this sense it occurs frequently in P, esp. in the expression ‘this is the ¢éra@h (‘law’) of the burnt-offering, of the cereal offering, of leprosy, of the Nazirite,’ etc., Ly 6% 4-25 7! 1-87 1}46 107 1359 145. 82. 54. 57 1582 2648, Ν 5539. 30 G18. 21 1.92. 14 3151 As, however, Wellh. has pointed out (Hist. 59, 395; ef. Nowack, ii. 98), the more original sense of tdrah even here will have been that of diree- tions given to the laity, not (as in Lv 6-7) rules regulating the priests’ own praxis at the altar.