It cannot occasion us any surprise that ¢his use of the concepts ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’ meets us most frequently in the latest stratum of the Pentateuch, the so-called Priests’ Code, for the latter is concerned, above all, with ritual prescrip- tions. But in this matter it is plain that it simply follows a long-established usage of language, and that, too, even long after the notion of holiness had begun to assume a positive connotation.
At avery early period we already hear (18 21° () not only of ‘holy’ bread (é.¢. bread consecrated to God and hence withdrawn from profane use), but also (v.®) of holy ‘vessels,’ .e. clothes and weapons. The ‘holiness’ is here manifestly produced by special rites such as were customary at the begin- ning of acampaign. This is proved by the expres- sion ‘hallow a war or a festival,’ t.¢. prepare oneself for the conflict or the celebration of the festival by performing certain acts of consecration. There are quite a number of passages which show that this consecration, apart from certain forms of abstinence, consisted mainly in the washing and cleansing of the person and the clothes. Thus ‘holy’ and ‘hallow oneself’? come to be almost synonymous with ‘clean’ and ‘cleanse oneself’ (cf., for example, 1S 20% where rim» x> ‘not clean’ stands for one who, in consequence of a nocturnal pollution, has been incapacitated for taking part in the sacrificial meal at the New Moon festival).
When the demand is made in Dt 7° 14? that Israel shall be a holy people to Jahweh its God, because He has chosen it out of all peoples to be the people of His own possession, the notion of holiness is not here restricted merely to the point that Israel has been separated from the peoples and appropriated by Jahweh to be His property alone. In that case the notion of ‘ holiness’ would be concerned merely with a relation (as in the case of the sacred bread), and would not imply any alteration in the quality of the persons or things dedicated to God.* In reality, however, the ‘holy’ people means one that carefully guards against any defilement that would make it incapable of being called the people of this very God and of taking part in His worship. But here, again, it is far from being the case that moral defilement is primarily in view. What incapacitates for par- ticipating in the cultus is physical or so-called ‘Levitical’ uncleanness. To this category belongs every kind of contact with persons or things belonging to the realm of idol worship, as well as the touching (even unwittingly and uninten- tionally) of a corpse, the partaking of unclean food (Dt 14*!), and other acts of the same kind. Even in the so-called ‘ Law of Holiness’ (Ly 17-26, ef. also 11*:), in spite of such general expressions
* How far removed any such implication was in the oldest linguistic usage, is best shown by the designations D7) and nwap, given to those who prostituted themselves in honour of a deity (cf. above, p. 6625), Here, of course, any thought of a religious-moral quality is out of the question.
as are found in 19? 20%, we have to do, not with a demand for absolute moral holiness, but with the same caution against every species of as bin defilement. The circumstance that the latter may frequently include at the same time a reli- gious offence is left at first out of view in applying the notions of clean or holy. Hence is to be explained the fact, which is so strange from our point of view, that outward, physical, and it may be even unwitting defilement involves guilt, and necessitates the same sacrifices and other means of atonement as actual moral defilement. This view, which characterizes the Priests’ Code, presents itself to us most clearly in Ex 19°, where the ideal goal of God’s ways with Israel is set up as consist- ing in His making them a ‘kingdom of priests,’ a holy people, i.e. a people every member of which answers always to the conditions of perfect (Levitical) purity as these were binding at all times on the priests.
Still more marked is the filling of the concept ‘holy’ with moral contents, when it is transferred to God, and—what is very noteworthy—exclusively to the God of Israel. The earliest passage of this kind is probably 1S 6”, where the inhabitants of Bethshemesh, after the stroke which fell upon them for looking into the sacred Ark, ask in terror: ‘Who can stand in presence of Jahweh, this holy God?’ Here the word ‘holy’ manifestly contains the notion of terrible and unapproachable —nay, death-dealing ; for there is a deep cleft be- tween the imperishable being of the Deity and everything which is subject to decay and unclean- ness. To say that Jahweh is a holy God means thus that He is elevated above all that is outside Him, that He holds a unique position over against all that is created. Hence it has been rightly said that the holiness of Jahweh is not a single attribute (such as ‘moral perfection’), but a de- signation of His essential being, practically iden- tical with the notion of being Divine (Gottsewn). Hence Jahweh in Am 4? swears by His holiness, of 8 as is seen from Gn 22) and Jer 22°, by Him- self.