(e) Jer 315!*4.—We do not find that Jeremiah follows out the above notion elsewhere. But in its place he offers in 31°!4 a prophecy regarding the condition of Judah after the purifying judgment, which goes far beyond the announcement of simple restoration and renewed prosperity. This is the famous prophecy of the ‘new covenant’ which Jahweh is yet to make with Israel [so that the long exiled Northern kingdom is included in the prophecy] and Judah. We pass over the fact that even in Jeremiah the word nya does not denote simply a ‘covenant’ or engagement entered into at will by two parties, and to be abandoned at plea- sure, but, in accordance with the religious use of the term in the OT (cf. above, p. 630°), stands for an ordinance emanating from God and binding uncon- ditionally upon Israel. But this is not inconsistent with what is a fact, that here a wholly new con- ception of the 173 makes its appearance in history. The prophet himself emphasizes this in the words : ‘not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they broke.’ And the continua- tion in v.** teaches plainly wherein the deep-seated difference between the two forms of n3 consists. In the first instance, it was outward ordinances [the prophet is thinking in all probability of the law-book introduced by Josiah in the year 621] that were laid upon the whole body of the people, which always confronted them as external, dead statutes, incapable of penetrating to the heart and conscience of the individual, and producing there an enduring spiritual life. This is now to be quite different : Jahweh will put His law within them and write it in their heart; and wpon this shall henceforward be based the truth, ‘ Jahweh the God of Israel, Israel the people of Jahweh.’ Then
* The authenticity of Is 187, and above all of 1918f, is encum- bered (like that of Is 2?f- and Mic 4ift:) with difficulties too serious to allow of the placing of these passages prior to, Jere- miah. It may be added that Jer 1214 is denied to J eremiah by Stade and Duhm, but (with the exception of v.14> £) is held by Giesebrecht (with whom the present writer agrees) to be authentic.
no longer shall any one need (v.*4) to be taught or exhorted to know Jahweh, for they shall all know Him from the least to the greatest, thanks to the enlightening that shall go forth from Him. For the latter they are prepared, moreover, by the guilt of their transgressions being removed, and their sins being no more remembered against them. True knowledge of God, as well as worship of Him in spirit and truth, can take root only in the soil of pure hearts.
The importance of this prophecy of Jeremiah’s about the ‘new covenant’ cannot readily be ex- aggerated. It means nothing less than a distinct breaking with the conception of the religion of Israel as a merely national religion indissolubly connected with particular outward forms of the cultus, and, above all, with a particular land. The ‘new covenant’ can blossom and bear fruit wher- ever an Israelite looks up to his God with a grate- ful and trustful heart. In place of the general body of the people, which had hitherto constituted the ‘ subject of religion,’ the individual * now comes forward with his claim to the most direct personal communion with his God. Thus the victory is finally won over those particularistic features, nay, features bordering upon nature-religion, which from early times had clung to the religion of Israel.
vi. THE EXTERNAL COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL DURING THE PERIOD OF PRE-EXILIC PROPHECY.—1. After the disruption under Rehoboam, the two kingdoms went each its own way in matters of religion, and, as time went on, these ways always deviated more. and more. Not indeed that there was no longer a consciousness of what was common to all the tribes—the one God and His former mighty acts. That the opposite was the case is shown by the almost complete identity of the conceptions and the institutions found in the two kingdoms. Image worship and the localizing of Jahweh at different sanctuaries had the same vogue in Israel as in Judah, and, if Judah repudiated the bull worship, it sacrificed, down to the time of Heze- kiah, to a brazen serpent, even if the latter had not its place in the temple. Both kingdoms are reproached with over-zealous—only, indeed, exter- nal—practice of the sacrificial cult (Am 5”, Is U1.) In both kingdoms priests and prophets of Jahweh are at work. The high appreciation of Israel for her priests is sufficiently attested by the eulogistic language of Dt 33°", which shows that in their claims they were not a whit behind their brethren at Jerusalem. When, again, Je- hoshaphat (1 K 227), dissatisfied with the bearing of the 400 prophets of Ahab, asks, ‘Is there not yet a prophet of Jahweh here, whom we may consult?’ he assumes that even in Israel there are genuine prophets of Jahweh, and his expectation is not dis- appointed. In short, Israel as well as Judah con- tinues to be the people of Jahweh, and that in the estimation not merely of Hosea, who himself be- longed to the Northern kingdom, but of Amos the Judahite (Am 7!), and of all the later prophets. Otherwise, it would be unintelligible that the ex- pectation of a return of Israel from exile and of its reunion with Judah under one king should have persisted so tenaciously, and that far beyond the time of Ezekiel, whose strong emphasizing of