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officials of this kind reintroduced. It was quite outside the scope of his ideas that in the new Jerusalem the place of the national political head should be taken by a spiritual one—in fact, by a high priest. Ezekiel, then, retained a political head ; but the latter is, strictly speaking, only the guarantor for the regular performance of the cultus. It is scarcely right to speak of a sovereign prince. If this nds? has a tract of land assigned to him at the eastern and western ends of the tértimah, it is with the strangely distrustful remark added, ‘that my princes may no more oppress my people, but give the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes’ (45° 4616). The prince, indeed, receives a further térémah from the people, levied on wheat, barley, oil, and sheep (451°*:) ; but in return he is to provide all the offerings for the congregation at the festivals, the new moons, and the Sabbaths, as well as the daily morning burnt- offering and meal-offering (46!%*). The one pre- rogative he enjoys is that of entering the vestibule of the east door (which is usually closed), that from its threshold he may behold the preparing of his sacrifices by the priests, and may stand there and pray (44? 462). That Ezekiel does not think of this nas? as the Messiah, is a fact that needs no proof.
(i) When we now ask, finally, What was Ezekiel’s own view about the fulfilment of his programme for the future ?, the answer must be to the follow- ing effect. A distinction must be drawn between expectations the fulfilment of which was in no man’s power (such as the elevation of the temple hill, or the producing of the temple spring, or even the bringing back of the ten tribes), and expec- tations within the range of human effort. With these last Ezekiel was rae in earnest, and he was fully justified by the further course of events. In some instances, it is true, the force of ancient usage was stronger than the theory of the prophet, as, for example, in the case of the Feast of Weeks. Other prescriptions, such as the degrading of the former priests of the high places, evidently could be carried out only after severe conflicts and in a very much mitigated form. But, upon the whole, it remains true that we have now in P a rearrange- ment of the cultus approximating as nearly as possible to the prescriptions of Ezekiel. Particu- larly convincing is the evidence for this which is furnished by the parallels in P to the special rules for the priests contained in Ezk 44”*. To all appearance, the priestly circles—and that, too, at different centres—had already begun during the Exile to reduce the ideas of Ezekiel to a cultus law. The fruit of these labours—varied, yet all inspired with the same spirit—was the great priestly book of history and law, the introduction of which gave to post-exilic Judaism the final stamp which it bears, not only in New Testament times but down to the present day.
But here once more the truth is manifested that historical development is not always in a straight line. Right in the midst of the labours devoted to the codification of a priestly law in the spirit of Ezekiel we come once more upon a powerful ex- hibition of genuine Jahweh prophetism in the form of the so-called Deutero-Isaiah, to which we must next turn our attention.
VI. THE SO-CALLED DEUTERO-ISAIAH.
1. It may now be regarded as finally established that with Is 40 an entirely new book commences, which nowhere makes any claim to be the work of Isaiah. The compass of this so-called Deutero- Tsaiah is still, however, the subject of controversy. According to the view that at one time generally prevailed, it embraced chs. 40-66. But more and
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more confirmation has been discovered for the proposition already propounded by Eichhorn and reaffirmed by Kuenen, that a portion of these chapters can have been composed only at Jeru- salem after the return from the Exile.* At first it was thought sufficient to separate off chs. 63-66 as a later addition, but finally it has become almost the general fashion to distinguish between chs. 40-55 as Deutero-Isaiah, and chs. 56-66 as Trito-Isaiah. The present writer is among those to whom this view commends itself as the correct one. It may be remarked that Is 40-66 is a strik- ing proof that questions of authenticity have little bearing upon the value of the religious and ethical contents—or, in short, upon the character as revela- tion—of an OT writing. The full meaning of the glorious book made up of Is 40-55 could be first appreciated and established only by those who taught men to understand it historically from the last years before the, conquest of Babylon by Cyrus (538 B.C.) and the return of a portion of the exiles as authorized by him.
2. The book of the ‘Great Unknown’ would have had significance enough for his contempor- aries even if it had been nothing more than a book of consolation for the exiles, assuring them of the end of the captivity, return to the Holy Land, and a renewed dispensation of Jahweh’s grace. But it contains infinitely more than this. From an elevated prophetical viewpoint, which is scarcely reached again in the OT period, it brings the whole preceding history of Israel as well as its whole future under the scheme of an original, all-wise, saving purpose of Jahweh, which has for its object the whole world of nations. The barriers of national religion are here completely burst, and the foundation laid for a universal religion, and all this without the old Prophetic ideas of the election and pre-eminence of Israel being given up. How these two apparently heterogeneous notions could be united, wil have to be shown afterwards. The whole, solitary glory of Deutero-Isaiah we shall best appreciate if we compare it with Ezekiel or the nearly contemporaneous passages Dt 4! and 328. In Ezekiel’s future expectations there was no room for any share of the heathen in the salva- tion of Israel. In Dt 41, again, the view is stated without any circumlocution that Jahweh has des- tined the heathen to serve the star-gods (#.e. prac- tically condemned them to idolatry), whereas He has chosen Israel to be His own possession. Quite the same notion is expressed in Dt 328 ‘Jahweh fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the gods’ [omy 32, LXX dyyédwr Ge08, MT wrongly >x7¥: 32], i.e. He assigned to each of the (subordinate) gods a particular people, whereas He declared Israel to be His own heritage.