* Regarding this law-book it must suffice here (cf. also above, p. 671>) to remark that, although not wholly identical with our present Book of Deuteronomy, it must have had the closest affinity with the latter. Further, we have to confess ourselves convinced that the discovery of the book by Hilkiah was really accidental (on the occasion of repairs on the temple) and not due to some collusion between Shaphan and Hilkiah, with a view to imposing upon the king. The fruit of holy zeal in prophetical circles (see above, p. 699»), the expression of a firm conviction that only by the centralizing of the cultus was deliverance still possible, the book may haye been deposited in the temple in the time of Manasseh, in the hope of better days, and afterwards (perhaps on the death of the depositor) forgotten. Only thus is it explicable that 18 years of Josiah’s reign had passed before it was discovered. What object could the authors of the alleged “pious fraud’ have had in waiting so long, when all the condi- tions were extremely favourable for its perpetration ?
| The attempt of Fries (Die Gesetzesschrift des Konigs Josia, Leipzig, 1903) to explain away the demand of Dt 12 for the con- centration of the cultus is a complete failure.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
RELIGION OF ISRAEL 701
but, so far as the inward disposition was concerned, left everything as before. Moreover, the new law- book produced one effect which can hardly have been intended by its authors, but which was in- evitable all the same. The written Law, being apparently the exhaustive revelation of the Divine will, rendered the diving word of the prophets really superfluous, in spite of the promise of Dt 18. The supreme authority now rests with the letter of the Law. It is by this standard that the Deuteronomic redactors of the Books of Kings judge the theo- cratic quality of the different kings (cf. also Dt 17"). All that is really left to the prophets is the task of expounding and enforcing the Law.
The decisive proof that the effect of Josiah’s reform was only an external one, is found in the treatment to which Jeremiah was constantly sub- jected on account of his calls to repentance and his threatenings of judgment (20). The old dogma of the inviolability of the city and the temple still persisted unweakened in the popular imagination. The people, it is true, are on one occa- sion (26'"-) so overpowered by the greatness of the prophet that they shield him successfully from the fury of the priests and the false prophets, and even among the princes of Judah there were not want- ing some that favoured Jeremiah (36!) ; but all this could not check the infatuation of his enemies. Among the latter we have to reckon, above all, king Jehoiakim. With mingled defiance and fear he burned (362) the roll containing Jeremiah’s messages from God, as if the final doom of Judah and Jerusalem could be averted by the destruction of the writing which announced it. And, even after a terrible warning had been furnished by the deportation (in 597) of Jehoiachin and the spirit- ual heads of the people, the activity of the false prophets continued (28! 29), King Zedekiah vacillated continually between fear of the Divine word spoken by the prophet and of the threats of the war-party, until finally his dread of the latter gained the upper hand, and he abandoned the prophet to them (38%), If evidence were still wanting that the Judah of those days was ripe for judgment, it would be supplied by the circumstance that it was a foreigner, an Ethiopian, who rescued the great sufferer from an ignominious death. But even the last drop in Jeremiah’s bitter cup was not to be spared him, namely, to see that even the ter- rible Divine judgment which overtook Jerusalem in 586 had remained without effect on the remnant of the people that was left in the land. In 597 they had refused to believe in the real seriousness of the Divine judgment, but after the murder of Gedaliah at Mizpah they are seized with mad terror, for now they entertain no doubt that Jahweh has for ever forsaken the land and abandoned His people. In Egypt, to which, in spite of all the efforts of the prophet to dissuade them, they fled, taking him along with them, they commenced afresh the cult of the queen of heaven, and attributed all the disasters of recent times simply to the interrup- tion of this cult (by the reforms of Josiah). No wonder that in the effrontery with which they proclaim these sentiments Jeremiah sees a self- condemnation which excluded all thought of re- pentance and forgiveness. aA
If, in spite of all his bitter disillusionings, Jeremiah still expected (see above, p. 697) the re- settlement of the exiles in their native land, and the establishment of a ‘new covenant,’ based on the true knowledge of God, between God and Israel, this is a striking evidence of the uncon- querable certainty with which he clung to the revelations of his God. He looked for the great transformation, consisting in a complete renewal of heart, to be yet wrought by God Himself (313™), His younger contemporary, Ezekiel, sees in a
somewhat different light the further course of God’s ways with Israel. He, too, is aware that the rebellious disposition of the people can be over- come only by a new heart and spirit bestowed by God; but the way to this leads, according to him, through a school of iron discipline, which accustoms the people to quite new forms of worship, and leads to the final triumph of the idea that for all Israel’s acquirements and actions there is but one supreme standard and one final goal—God’s holiness.