This testimony of Jeremiah weighs all the more
* The usual rendering, ‘more than in burnt - offerings,’ by which, after all, a recognition of sacrifice is introduced into the saying, would be in itself linguistically possible, butis absolutely excluded by the first half-verse ; midpn means simply ‘ apart from (or to the exclusion of) burnt-offerings.’
that he himself was a priest. His denial that God gave any commands as to sacrifice appeared so unheard of that men did not shrink from the most incredible exegetical operations in order to com- pel him to say something different from what he actually says. But no wresting of the text can alter the fact that Jeremiah is as little acquainted as the prophets before him with a law-book which issued in God’s name statutes as to sacrifice. This does not mean that the Book of Deuteronomy was unknown to him. This book, however, as we saw a little ago, never sets itself to distinguish in prin- ciple the value and the necessity of sacrifice, but simply takes sacrifice for granted as a present fact, an old-established custom. And so the result of our whole inquiry is that no one has any right to depreciate the merit which belongs to the above-named prophets, of having discovered the ideal of true service of God in the worship of Him in spirit and in truth, without any outward cere- monies and performances.
We may anticipate a little by adding that this Prophetical conception was not so very quickly obliterated even in the post-exilic period, which is mostly thought of as the era of torpid, rigid legalism. Even Ps 407 (6 roundly declares: ‘Sacri- fice and offering thou hast no delight in; ears hast thou opened [lit. digged] for me [namely, that I may hear and obey thy will]; burnt-offering and sin-offering thou requirest not.’ In Ps 50% the writer repels as a piece of childish imagination, not to say ridicules, the notion that the flesh of bulls and the blood of goats are to be offered as food to God, the Lord of the whole world of beasts. Ps 51/8 (@% insists once more that God does not desire sacrificial victims and has no pleasure in burnt - offerings, but with the very weighty addition (v.!9 @”)) that the true sacritices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. We may compare, finally, Ps 69%10%?-, according to which Jahweh has more pleasure in grateful praise than in a young bullock with horns and hoofs.
We have not here to inquire how it was possible for these Psalms, with their very emphatic setting forth of the Prophetic view of sacrifice, to find their way into the ‘song-book of the post-exilic congregation,’ which was at all times profoundly penetrated with the notion of sacrifice as a sacred and quite indispensable duty. Was it that a forced interpretation was put upon the actual expressions so as to remove what was offensive to the later, priestly view of sacrifice? This would really appear to have been the case, in view of the present conclusion (v.” (!8)*) of Ps51. Here the Prophetical view expressed in v.18(6)* has evidently this turn given to it: all this applies as long as Israel languishes under God’s wrath ; in this situa- tion sacrifices are useless and displeasing to God. But once He has compassion again on Zion, and
has built again the walls of Jerusalem,—a proof that the time of wrath is finally over, and the
long-promised great restoration begun,—then once more will He take pleasure in right offerings, then shall bullocks be offered on His altar. The most recent commentators on the Psalms are in part — disposed to regard this conclusion as original, and to find in it the simple solution of the problem how a Psalmist could have given utterance to such revolutionary sentiments. But the present writer agrees with Duhm in holding that it is quite im- possible to remove the difficulty in this way.* It implies the doing of quite unseemly violence to the language of v.% (7, A saint, who had reached so * We are compelled to pronounce completely mistaken also the argument of Jacob (ZAT'W xvii. [1897] 265)and Matthes (ib. xxi. [1901] 73 ff.), according to which the meaning is that God asks for thank-offerings and votive offerings in preference to
others (in which, however, He also takes pleasure, the teaching of the Psalms being uniformly favourable to sacrifice).
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
thoroughly purified and truly evangelical a con- ception of the proper service of God as we find in that verse, could never have sunk to such an appreciation of external sacrificial worship as manifestly underlies v.?! 0),
In view, of all this, it cannot surprise us that, apart from sacrifice and from frequent denuncia- tions of false worship, the Prophetical references to matters of the cultus are scanty, and are based, moreover, rather upon accommodation to the pre- vailing popular view than upon an independent appreciation of it. To the people, to be sure, it is a terrible threat that Jahweh is to put an end to all their festivals, new moons and sabbaths (Hos 2"); that in exile they shall be without king and ruler, without altar* and mazzébadh, ephod and téraphim (34); that there, in an unclean land, where no cult of Jahweh is possible, they shall have to eat unclean food, and be unable to present offerings of any kind (9**). But all that the prophet is concerned about is simply to threaten something that shall sound terrible to his hearers, not to express approval or disapproval of the cultus and its necessary apparatus. Elsewhere, too (Am 8°, Is 29! [Jer 172# is a later addition, prob- ably from the time of Nehemiah]), it is only in a secondary way that the festivals, New Moons and Sabbaths, are mentioned. We have already ex- plained the sense in which Deuteronomy com- mends the observance of the yearly festivals (ch. 16) and the use of the tenth for sacrificial meals (1422#-), Moreover, this book seizes every oppor- tunity of substituting humanitarian for ritual motives, or at least of putting them alongside the latter: so, for instance, with the command- ment to hallow the Sabbath (52%); the tithe every third year (1478 26); the year of release (15'-) ; and the letting go of a Hebrew slave in the seventh year (15%-). And if Deuteronomy, as is only reasonable, requires the punctual fulfilment of vows once they have been taken (237), it does not omit to add that the man who forbears to vow is guilty of no sin (v.”). .