* Of., on the above, the admirable discussion by F, Giese- brecht in Die Geschichtlichkeit des Sinaibundes, K6nigsberg, 1900; on ‘Jahweh’s relation to the people of Israel according to the ancient Israelitish conception’ in general, see Sellin in the Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1894, pp. 316 ff., 376 ff. [also published separately under the title Beitrdge zur israel. und jiidischen Retligionsgeschichte, Heft 1, Leipzig, 1896] ; Wildeboer, ‘Tahvedienst en Volksreligie in Israél, Groningen, 1898 [German tr., Freiburg, 1899].
632 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
primitive Semitic notions, the duty of blood- revenge lay, did not first inquire whether the bloody expiation was justifiable on moral grounds as well. Blood demands blood: this principle held good for the god as much as for every individual among the people.
From all this it is clear that from the very first there was a far-reaching difference between the national religion of Israel and other national religions. At its very foundation the religion of Israel made a notable advance beyond the naive, purely naturalistic basis which we have just noted in the religion of Moab. Jé¢ was not Israel that Jjirst chose Jahweh, but Jahweh that chose Israel. Their mutual relation does not therefore rest upon blood relationship,—such a notion is sufficiently contradicted by the circumstance that at the time of the Exodus a community of the same blood, or a nation, was not yet in existence,—but upon the free determination of a mighty God. This de- termination, however, was no arbitrary one; it sprang from the fundamental attributes of this God, namely righteousness and mercy. He saw the misery of the people as they pined under cruel and yet wholly undeserved oppression, and was filled with compassion for them; He determined to deliver them, and with a strong hand He carried this purpose to a victorious issue. The religious ideas which flow from this did not first originate, as some in recent times never weary of assert- ing, as a product of the ‘ethical monotheism’ of the prophets; they already lay to hand for the Israel of Mosaic times. Righteousness and mercy are essentially moral qualities. If they were the motive for the choice and the deliverance of Israel, the religion derived from them bore from the first an ethical stamp in quite a different sense from anything that had ever been conceivable in a purely national religion. It is thoroughly ap- propriate that the Deuteronomist * in a number of passages should urge gratitude as the leading motive for love to God and obedience to His com- mandments, But this, again, is no naturalistic but a specifically ethical motive, and, as such, could be appreciated even by the contemporaries of Moses. —And, finally, it was self-evident that the God who in His very choice and deliverance of Israel had exhibited moral attributes, would require from the people the same qualities on which His relation to them was based. Hence we are quite entitled to claim—not ethical monotheism in the strict sense of the term, but—ethical henotheism for the time of Moses. -
And so at last the way in which this God fulfils His promise, putting the mighty host of Egypt to shame before a petty people of shepherds, gave occasion for the triumphant question: ‘Who is like thee, O Jahweh, among the gods; who is like thee, glorious in loftiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?’ But this power of His is not thought of as mere brute force arbitrarily exer- cised, but once more as serving moral ends. In this lies the pledge of its final triumph over all unrighteousness and impiety, whether within or outside the people of Israel. It may be that this idea was not yet realized with perfect clearness in the time of Moses, that all its consequences were not yet deduced. But in germ it was already there as certainly as faith in the power of right, or desire that it should always prevail, is implanted by nature in the hearts of men in general. The religion of Israel was able from the first to supply nourishment to this faith as no other national religion could. Those who deny this, and who recognize everywhere simply development in a straight line from crude or at least naive naturalism to more and more purified moral conceptions, quite
* So also Ezk 165 in a striking comparison,
overlook the circumstance that their contention is opposed by demonstrably historical facts. Epoch- making religious ideas generally come upon the scene in full strength and purity; it is only in course of further development that these products of religious creative genius, or, better, of Divine impulse, are corrupted and disfigured by the intru- sion of vulgar human ideas and selfish interests. Such was the fate of the religion of Jesus Christ in the Roman Church with its popes and monks; and the same thing happened to many of the great fundamental ideas of the Reformation at the hands of Protestant scholasticism. And we are quite safe to assume something of the same kind in the process of the development of Jahwism. The great fundamental ideas upon which its institu- tion rests were often forced into the background during the wandering period of the people’s his- tory and in the time of endless struggles for national existence under the Judges. Besides, as was pointed out already (see p. 615f.), these ideas still continued for long to be supplemented by powerful remnants of the Polydemonism common to the Semites. But they did not die out for all this, and, when in the 8th cent. B.C. they were put forward by Amos and others with the greatest clearness and precision and urged upon the con- science of the people, these prophets had a perfect right to claim that they were making no new and unheard-of demands, but only proclaiming what from Sinai downwards had been recognized as a fact: ‘A God of right is Jahweh; blessed are all they that wait on him’ (Is 30%).