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PREDESTIXATIOX
PREDESTIXATION
the impression in reading it that the core of God's general decree is His decree of salvation, and that His whole plan for the government of the universe is subordinated to His purpose to recover sinful man to Himself. Of course there is some slight illusion of perspective here, the materials for cor- recting which the OT itself provides, not only in more or less specific declarations of the relative unimportance of wliat befalls man, whether the individual, or Israel, or the race at large, in com- parison with the attainment of the DiWne end ; and of the wonder of the Divine grace concerning itself with the fortunes of man at all (Job 22''' 35"- 3S, Ps 8*) : but also in the general disposition of the entire record, which places the complete history of sinful man, including alike his fall into sin and all the provisions for his recovery, within the larger history of the creative work of God, as but one incident in the greater whole, governed, of course, like all its other parts, by its general teleology. Relatively to the OT record, never- theless, as indeed to the Biblical record as a whole, which is concerned directly only with God's deal- ings with humanity, and that, especially, a sinful humanity (Gn 3" 6' g-', Lv 18=", Dt 9*, 1 K 8«, Ps 14' 51» 130» 1432, Pr 20', Ec T", Is I^ Hos 4', Job 15" 25* 14*), soteriological predestination is the prime matter of importance ; and the doctrine of election is accordingly thrown into relief, and the general doctrine of the decree more incident- ally adverted to. It would be impossible, however, that the doctrine of election taught in the OT should follow other lines than those laid down in the general doctrine of the decree, — or, in other words, that God should be conceived as working in the sphere of grace in a manner that would be out of accord with the fundamental conception entertained by these ^Titers of the nature of God and His relations to the universe.
Accordingly, there is nothing concerning the Divine election more sharply or more steadily emphasized than its graciousness, in the highest sense of that word, or, in other terms, its absolute sovereignty. This is plainly enough exhibited even in the course of the patriarchal history, and that from the beginning. In the very hour of man's first sin, God intervenes sua sponte with a gratuitous promise of deliverance ; and at every stage afterwards the sovereign initiation of the grace of God — the Lord of the whole earth (Ex 19')— is strongly marked, as God's universal counsel of salvation is more and more unfolded through the separation and training of a people for Him- self, in whom the whole world should be blessed (Gn 12» 18'« 22'8 26* 28") : for from the beginning it is plainly indicated that the whole history of the world is ordered with reference to the estab- lishment of the kingdom of God (Dt 32', where the reference seems to be to Gn 11). Already in the opposing lines of Seth and Cain (Gn 4'-^- *) a discrimination is made ; Noah is selected as the head of a new race, and among his sons the preference is given to Shem (Gn 9^), from whose line Abraham is taken. Every fancy that Abra- ham owed his calling to liis own desert is carefully excluded, — he was 'known' of God only that in him God might establish His kingdom (Gn 18'") ; and the very acme of sovereignty is exhibited (as St. Paul points out) in the subsequent choice of Isaac and Jacob, and exclusion of Isbmael and Esau ; while the whole Divine dealing witli the patriarchs — their sejiaration from their kindred, removal into a strange land, and the like — is eWdently understood as intended to cast them back on the grace of God alone. Similarly, the covenant made with Israel (Ex 19-24) is constantly assigned to the sole initiative of Divine grace, and the fict of election is therefore appropriately set
at the head of the Decalogue (Ex 20'; cf. 34«-'); and Israel is repeatedly warned that there was nothing in it whiih moved or could move God to favour it {e.ff. Dt 4^ 7' 8" 9* 10", Ezk 16', Am 9') It has already been pointed out by what energetic figures this fundamental le-sson was impressed on the Israelitish consciousness, and it is only true to say that no means are left unused to drive home the fact that God's gracious election of Israel is an absolutely sovereign one, founded solely in His unmerited love, and looking to nothing ultimately but the gratification of His own holy and lo^'ing impulses, and the manifestation of His grace through the formation of a heritage for Himself out of the mass of sinful men, by means of whom His saving mercy should advance to the whole world (Ps 8', Is 40. 42. 60, Mic 4', Am 4'» 5\ Jer 31", Ezk 17^ 36=', JI 2-»). The simple terms that are employed to express this Divine selection — 'know' iVT,), 'choose' (in;) — are either used in a pregnant sense, or acquire a pregnant sense by their use in this connexion. Tlie deeper meaning of the former term is apparently not specifically Hebrew, but more widely Semitic (it occurs also in Assyrian ; see the Dictionaries of Delitzsch and Muss-Arnolt s^ub voc, and especially Haupt in Beitrdge zur Assyriotogie, i. 14, 15), and it can create no surprise, therefore, when it meets us in such passages as Gn 18" (ef. Ps 37'* and also 1' 31* ; cf. Baetligen and Delitzscli in loc), Hos 13' (cf. WUnsche in loc.) in something of the sense expressed by the scholastic phrase, nosse cum affectu et effcctu ; while in the great declaration of Am 3' (cf. Baur and Gunning in loc), 'You only have I known away from all the peoples of the earth,' what is tlirown prominently forward is clearly tlie elective love which has singled Israel out for special care. More commonly, however, it is ina that is employed to express God's sovereign election of Israel : the classical passage is, of course, Dt 7*-' (see Driver in loc, as also, of the love underljdng the ' choice,' at 4" 7*), where it is carefully explained that it is in contrast with the treatment accorded to all the other peoples of the earth that Israel has been honoured with the Divine choice, and that the choice rests solely on the unmerited love of God, and finds no foundation in Israel itself. These declarations are elsewhere constantly enforced (e.g. 4" 10" 14=), with the effect of throwing the strongest possible emphasis on the complete sovereignty of God's choice of His people, who owe their ' separation ' unto Jehovah (Lv 20=*-=«, 1 K S^) wholly to the wonderful love of God, in which He has from the beginning taken knowledge of and chosen them.