*It would of course be a gross exaggeration to deny any individualistic traits to the religion of Israel prior to the time of Jeremiah. Such an assertion would be contradicted by such notices of individual prayer as we find in 18 129f: ete. But, on the other hand, we are not entitled, with Sellin (Beitrage zur israel. und jiid. Religionsgeschichte : Heft 1, ‘Jahwes Verhaltnis zum israel. Volk und Individuum nach altisrael. Vorstellung,’ Leipzig, 1896), to deny the profound difference between Jere- miah’s position and that which was maintained prior to his time.
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this expectation (371°"-) is strange enough when we take into account his sternly condemnatory judg- ment of Samaria in chs. 16 and 23.
2. But, in spite of all this, it cannot be over- looked that a difference between the two kingdoms showed itself early and sank deep, The Northern kingdom had inherited, along with the name of Israel, the claim to represent the proper continua- tion of the Davidic-Solomoniec empire—a claim which finds drastic expression in the words of king Joash in 2 K 14°, as well as in Dt 337, In the political sphere it might be to a large extent justi- fied: the strength of the whole nation was, above all, represented by Israel, whereas Judah—notwith- standing the silence of its historians—was in all probability a vassal of Israel, not only in the time of Jehoshaphat, but on other occasions as well. But in the religious sphere it was only in a very precarious sense that Israel could be called the heir of the ancient traditions. Everything indicates that the religious conceptions as well as the cultus of the Northern kingdom were far more strongly permeated with relics of the once prevailing nature -religion than was the case in Judah. Thesyncretism between Baal and Jahweh, which Hosea still found it necessary to denounce so sharply, proves how far removed the people were (only a generation before the fall of Samaria !)
from a consistent henotheism, not to speak of a
real monotheism. We find also in Amos and Hosea
abundant indications of the extent to which the ritual customs in Israel were full of imitations of
Canaanite practices.
But yet another element entered into the situa- tion. Israel was drawn earlier than Judah into the vortex of the great world of politics, which turned mainly on the question of Assyria’s supre- macy in Western Asia and its designs upon Egypt. Now, the tendency of political experience was to produce, not indeed leanings towards the gods of the world-powers as the stronger, but—as could hardly happen otherwise from the standpoint of a purely national religion—an involuntarily depre- ciatory judgment of the power of the God of the land, as compared with the immense superiority of Assyria, and a consequent depreciation of this God himself. However much in the narrower sphere men might still look to Him for all kinds of blessing and aid, His power appeared inadequate
’ to meet the needs of the people at large, struggling for their existence, and it was thought necessary to look around for other resources and allies. We understand now why Hosea displays such holy zeal, above all, against his people’s wooing the favour sometimes of Assyria, sometimes of Egypt: such conduct amounted to a flat denial of the God of Israel, even to a species of blasphemy. And
it is easy to comprehend that a religion and a
cultus with such a notion of God could be no source
of moral renewal to the life of the people. One dynasty after another fell a prey to assassination and the bloody strife of factions ; terrible corrup- tion prevailed among the heads of the people and the priests ; and even among the lower classes the last relic of loyalty and trust, reverence for any kind of authority, not to speak of regard for the holy will of God, had disappeared. We hear no longer of 7000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal (which is now the same thing as reposing fleshly confidence in worldly resources). The rottenness to which the body of the nation had fallen a prey wrought its effects without intermission. In 722 Israel, after a protracted struggle of despair, fell before the conquering might of Sargon. The cir- cumstance that the name of not a single leader has come down to us from the period of the fall of the kingdom can be explained only on the ground that the religious factor was completely over-
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shadowed at this crisis in Israel’s history. Had it been otherwise, the Judahite historical narra- tive, which still shows a religious interest in the remnant of the inhabitants of Samaria (2 K 1774*:), would surely have preserved for us one name.
3. As a matter of course, the fall of the Northern kingdom was bound to exercise a very powerful influence on the condition of things in Judah. The immediate result, indeed, was simply to strengthen the national religion. Samaria had fallen, Jerusalem remained. Consequently, it was felt, Jahweh had rejected the Northern kingdom, the apostate from Judah (Is 7"), whereas Judah was now ‘the people of Jahweh,’ the continuation of the totality of Israel, and henceforward it, too, came readily to be called ‘Israel.’ But, above all, the course of events raised the prestige of the temple in the eyes of the people. Although primarily only the palace-sanctuary of Solomon, the possession of the temple must have served, after the disruption of the kingdom, to give a great advantage to Judah, so that Jeroboam I. deseried in the halo that surrounded it a danger to the permanence of his monarchy (1 K 12”), ‘To the sacred Ark, which now stood in the temple in mysterious darkness, attached the most sacred recollections of the Heroic Age of the nation ; while the proud building of Solomon, with its