Biblical Theology Old and New Testaments
by Geerhardus Vos
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
THE OLD TESTAMENT
PART ONE: THE MOSAIC EPOCH OF REVELATION
1 INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE AND METHOD OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
2 THE MAPPING OUT OF THE FIELD OF REVELATION
3 THE CONTENT OF PRE-REDEMPTIVE SPECIAL REVELATION
4 THE CONTENT OF THE FIRST REDEMPTIVE SPECIAL REVELATION
5 THE NOACHIAN REVELATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT LEADING UP TO IT
6 THE PERIOD BETWEEN NOAH AND THE GREAT PATRIARCHS 7 REVELATION IN THE PATRIARCHAL PERIOD
8 REVELATION IN THE PERIOD OF MOSES
PART TWO : THE PROPHETIC EPOCH OF REVELATION
1 THE PLACE OF PROPHETISM IN OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION
2 THE CONCEPTION OF A PROPHET: NAMES AND ETYMOLOGIES
3 THE HISTORY OF PROPHETISM: CRITICAL THEORIES
4 THE MODE OF RECEPTION OF THE PROPHETIC REVELATION 5 THE MODE OF COMMUNICATION OF THE PROPHECY
6 THE CONTENT OF THE PROPHETIC REVELATION
THE NEW TESTAMENT
1 THE STRUCTURE OF NEW TESTAMENT REVELATION
2 REVELATION CONNECTED WITH THE NATIVITY
3 REVELATION CONNECTED WITH JOHN THE BAPTIST
4 REVELATION IN THE PROBATION OF JESUS
5 THE REVELATION OF JESUS’ PUBLIC MINISTRY
PREFACE
In the words of Thomas Aquinas, Theology a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit. After suffering much from the anti-intellectual and anti-doctrinal temper of our times, Theology is perhaps in somewhat better repute now than during the early years of the present century. This change of attitude is to be welcomed, even
though it must be confessed that even in conservative Protestant circles Theology is still far from receiving the attention and respect which, as the knowledge of God, it ought to have.
The present volume is entitled Biblical Theology—Old and New Testaments. The term ‘Biblical Theology’ is really unsatisfactory because of its liability to misconstruction. All truly Christian Theology must be Biblical Theology—for apart from General Revelation the Scriptures constitute the sole material with which the science of Theology can deal. A more suitable name would be ‘History of Special Revelation’, which precisely describes the subject matter of this discipline. Names, however, become fixed by long usage, and the term ‘Biblical Theology’, in spite of its ambiguity, can hardly be abandoned now.
Biblical Theology occupies a position between Exegesis and Systematic Theology in the encyclopaedia of theological disciplines. It differs from Systematic Theology, not in being more Biblical, or adhering more closely to the truths of the Scriptures, but in that its principle of organizing the Biblical material is historical rather than logical. Whereas Systematic Theology takes the Bible as a completed whole and endeavours to exhibit its total teaching in an orderly, systematic form, Biblical Theology deals with the material from the historical standpoint, seeking to exhibit the organic growth or development of the truths of Special Revelation from the primitive pre-redemptive Special Revelation given in Eden to the close of the New Testament canon.
The material presented in this volume has previously been issued at various theological institutions in mimeographed form. It is a matter of satisfaction to me that it is being made available to the public in a suitable permanent printed form by the Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. The editing of the material for the press has been done by my son, the Rev. Johannes G. Vos, who studied this work as a student at Princeton Theological Seminary and is in hearty agreement with the theological viewpoint of the book. It is my hope
that this volume may help many ministers and theological students to attain a deeper appreciation of the wonders of the Special Revelation of our God.
GEERHARDUS VOS Grand Rapids, Michigan 1 September 1948
The Old Testament
PART ONE
THE MOSAIC EPOCH OF REVELATION
ONE:
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE AND METHOD OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
The best approach towards understanding the nature of Biblical Theology and the place belonging to it in the circle of theological disciplines lies through a definition of Theology in general. According to its etymology, Theology is the science concerning God. Other definitions either are misleading, or, when closely examined, are found to lead to the same result. As a frequent instance, the definition of Theology as ‘the science of religion’ may be examined. If in this definition ‘religion’ be understood subjectively, as meaning the sum-total of religious phenomena or experiences in man, then it is already included in that part of the science of anthropology which deals with the psychical life of man. It deals with man, not with God. If, on the other hand, religion be understood objectively, as the religion which is normal and of obligation for man because prescribed by God, then the further question must arise, why God demands precisely this and no other religion; and the answer to this can be found only in the nature and will of God; therefore ultimately, in thus dealing with religion, we shall find ourselves dealing with God.
From the definition of Theology as the science concerning God follows the necessity of its being based on revelation. In scientifically dealing with impersonal objects we ourselves take the first step; they are passive, we are active; we handle them, examine them, experiment with them. But in regard to a spiritual, personal being this is different. Only in so far as such a being chooses to open up itself can we come to know it. All spiritual life is by its very nature a hidden life, a life shut up in itself. Such a life we can know only through revelation. If this be true as between man and man, how much more must it be so as between God and man. The principle involved has been strikingly formulated by Paul: ‘For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God’ [1 Cor. 2:11]. The inward hidden content of God’s mind can become the possession of man only through a voluntary disclosure on God’s part. God must come to us before we can go to Him. But God is not a personal spiritual being in general. He is a Being infinitely exalted above our highest conception. Suppose it were possible for one human spirit to penetrate directly into another human spirit: it would still be impossible for the spirit of man to penetrate into the Spirit of God. This emphasizes the necessity of God’s opening up to us the mystery of His nature before we can acquire any knowledge concerning Him. Indeed, we can go one step farther still. In all scientific study we exist alongside of the objects which we investigate. But in Theology the relation is reversed. Originally God alone existed. He was known to Himself alone, and had first to call into being a creature before any extraneous knowledge with regard to Him became possible. Creation therefore was the first step in the production of extra-divine knowledge.
Still a further reason for the necessity of revelation preceding all satisfactory acquaintance with God is drawn from the abnormal state in which man exists through sin. Sin has deranged the original relation between God and man. It has produced a separation where previously perfect communion prevailed. From the nature of the case every step towards rectifying this abnormality must spring from
God’s sovereign initiative. This particular aspect, therefore, of the indispensableness of revelation stands or falls with the recognition of the fact of sin.
DIVISION OF THEOLOGY INTO FOUR GREAT DEPARTMENTS
The usual treatment of Theology distinguishes four departments, which are named Exegetical Theology, Historical Theology, Systematic Theology and Practical Theology. The point to be observed for our present purpose is the position given Exegetical Theology as the first among these four. This precedence is due to the instinctive recognition that at the beginning of all Theology lies a passive, receptive attitude on the part of the one who engages in its study. The assumption of such an attitude is characteristic of all truly exegetical pursuit. It is eminently a process in which God speaks and man listens. Exegetical Theology, however, should not be regarded as confined to Exegesis. The former is a larger whole of which the latter is indeed an important part, but after all only a part. Exegetical Theology in the wider sense comprises the following disciplines:
(a) the study of the actual content of Holy Scripture;
(b) the inquiry into the origin of the several Biblical writings, including the identity of the writers, the time and occasion of composition, dependence on possible sources, etc. This is called Introduction, and may be regarded as a further carrying out of the process of Exegesis proper;
(c) the putting of the question of how these several writings came to be collected into the unity of a Bible or book; this part of the process bears the technical name of Canonics;
(d) the study of the actual self-disclosures of God in time and space which lie back of even the first committal to writing of any Biblical document, and which for a long time continued to run alongside of the inscripturation of revealed material; this last-named procedure is called the study of Biblical Theology.
The order in which the four steps are here named is, of course, the order in which they present themselves successively to the investigating mind of man. When looking at the process from the point of view of the divine activity the order requires to be reversed, the sequence here being
(a) the divine self-revelation;
(b) the committal to writing of the revelation-product;
(c) the gathering of the several writings thus produced into the unity of a collection;
(d) the production and guidance of the study of the content of the Biblical writings.
DEFINITION OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
Biblical Theology is that branch of Exegetical Theology which deals with the process of the self-revelation of God deposited in the Bible.
In the above definition the term ‘revelation’ is taken as a noun of action. Biblical Theology deals with revelation as a divine activity, not as the finished product of that activity. Its nature and method of procedure will therefore naturally have to keep in close touch with, and so far as possible reproduce, the features of the divine work itself. The main features of the latter are the following:
[1] The historic progressiveness of the revelation-process
It has not completed itself in one exhaustive act, but unfolded itself in a long series of successive acts. In the abstract, it might conceivably have been otherwise. But as a matter of fact this could not be, because revelation does not stand alone by itself, but is (so far as Special Revelation is concerned) inseparably attached to another activity of God, which we call Redemption. Now redemption could not be otherwise than historically successive, because it addresses
itself to the generations of mankind coming into existence in the course of history. Revelation is the interpretation of redemption; it must, therefore, unfold itself in instalments as redemption does. And yet it is also obvious that the two processes are not entirely co- extensive, for revelation comes to a close at a point where redemption still continues. In order to understand this, we must take into account an important distinction within the sphere of redemption itself. Redemption is partly objective and central, partly subjective and individual. By the former we designate those redeeming acts of God, which take place on behalf of, but outside of, the human person. By the latter we designate those acts of God which enter into the human subject. We call the objective acts central, because, happening in the centre of the circle of redemption, they concern all alike, and are not in need of, or capable of, repetition. Such objective-central acts are the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection of Christ. The acts in the subjective sphere are called individual, because they are repeated in each individual separately. Such subjective-individual acts are regeneration, justification, conversion, sanctification, glorification. Now revelation accompanies the process of objective-central redemption only, and this explains why redemption extends further than revelation. To insist upon its accompanying subjective- individual redemption would imply that it dealt with questions of private, personal concern, instead of with the common concerns of the world of redemption collectively. Still this does not mean that the believer cannot, for his subjective experience, receive enlightenment from the source of revelation in the Bible, for we must remember that continually, alongside the objective process, there was going on the work of subjective application, and that much of this is reflected in the Scriptures. Subjective-individual redemption did not first begin when objective-central redemption ceased; it existed alongside of it from the beginning.
There lies only one epoch in the future when we may expect objective-central redemption to be resumed, viz., at the Second Coming of Christ. At that time there will take place great redemptive
acts concerning the world and the people of God collectively. These will add to the volume of truth which we now possess.
[2] The actual embodiment of revelation in history
The process of revelation is not only concomitant with history, but it becomes incarnate in history. The facts of history themselves acquire a revealing significance. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are examples of this. We must place act-revelation by the side of word-revelation. This applies, of course, to the great outstanding acts of redemption. In such cases redemption and revelation coincide. Two points, however, should be remembered in this connection: first, that these two-sided acts did not take place primarily for the purpose of revelation; their revelatory character is secondary; primarily they possess a purpose that transcends revelation, having a God-ward reference in their effect, and only in dependence on this a man-ward reference for instruction. In the second place, such act- revelations are never entirely left to speak for themselves; they are preceded and followed by word-revelation. The usual order is: first word, then the fact, then again the interpretative word. The Old Testament brings the predictive preparatory word, the Gospels record the redemptive-revelatory fact, the Epistles supply the subsequent, final interpretation.
[3] The organic nature of the historic process observable in revelation
Every increase is progressive, but not every progressive increase bears an organic character. The organic nature of the progression of revelation explains several things. It is sometimes contended that the assumption of progress in revelation excludes its absolute perfection at all stages. This would actually be so if the progress were non- organic. The organic progress is from seed-form to the attainment of
full growth; yet we do not say that in the qualitative sense the seed is less perfect than the tree. The feature in question explains further how the soteric sufficiency of the truth could belong to it in its first state of emergence: in the seed-form the minimum of indispensable knowledge was already present. Again, it explains how revelation could be so closely determined in its onward movement by the onward movement of redemption. The latter being organically progressive, the former had to partake of the same nature. Where redemption takes slow steps, or becomes quiescent, revelation proceeds accordingly. But redemption, as is well known, is eminently organic in its progress. It does not proceed with uniform motion, but rather is ‘epochal’ in its onward stride. We can observe that where great epoch-making redemptive acts accumulate, there the movement of revelation is correspondingly accelerated and its volume increased. Still further, from the organic character of revelation we can explain its increasing multiformity, the latter being everywhere a symptom of the development of organic life. There is more of this multiformity observable in the New Testament than in the Old, more in the period of the prophets than in the time of Moses.
Some remarks are in place here in regard to a current misconstruction of this last-mentioned feature. It is urged that the discovery of so considerable an amount of variableness and differentiation in the Bible must be fatal to the belief in its absoluteness and infallibility. If Paul has one point of view and Peter another, then each can be at best only approximately correct. This would actually follow, if the truth did not carry in itself a multiformity of aspects. But infallibility is not inseparable from dull uniformity. The truth is inherently rich and complex, because God is so Himself. The whole contention ultimately rests on a wrong view of God’s nature and His relation to the world, a view at bottom Deistical. It conceives of God as standing outside of His own creation and therefore having to put up for the instrumentation of His revealing speech with such imperfect forms and organs as it offers Him. The didactic, dialectic mentality of Paul would thus become a
hindrance for the ideal communication of the message, no less than the simple, practical, untutored mind of Peter. From the standpoint of Theism the matter shapes itself quite differently. The truth having inherently many sides, and God having access to and control of all intended organs of revelation, shaped each one of these for the precise purpose to be served. The Gospel having a precise, doctrinal structure, the doctrinally-gifted Paul was the fit organ for expressing this, because his gifts had been conferred and cultivated in advance with a view to it.
[4] The fourth aspect of revelation determinative of the study of Biblical Theology consists in its practical adaptability
God’s self-revelation to us was not made for a primarily intellectual purpose. It is not to be overlooked, of course, that the truly pious mind may through an intellectual contemplation of the divine perfections glorify God. This would be just as truly religious as the intensest occupation of the will in the service of God. But it would not be the full-orbed religion at which, as a whole, revelation aims. It is true, the Gospel teaches that to know God is life eternal. But the concept of ‘knowledge’ here is not to be understood in its Hellenic sense, but in the Shemitic sense. According to the former, ‘to know’ means to mirror the reality of a thing in one’s consciousness. The Shemitic and Biblical idea is to have the reality of something practically interwoven with the inner experience of life. Hence ‘to know’ can stand in the Biblical idiom for ‘to love’, ‘to single out in love’. Because God desires to be known after this fashion, He has caused His revelation to take place in the milieu of the historical life of a people. The circle of revelation is not a school, but a ‘covenant’. To speak of revelation as an ‘education’ of humanity is a rationalistic and utterly un-scriptural way of speaking. All that God disclosed of Himself has come in response to the practical religious needs of His people as these emerged in the course of history.
THE VARIOUS THINGS SUCCESSIVELY DESIGNATED BY THE NAME OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
The name was first used to designate a collection of proof-texts employed in the study of Systematic Theology. Next it was appropriated by the Pietists to voice their protest against a hyperscholastic method in the treatment of Dogmatics. Of course, neither of these two usages gave rise to a new distinct theological discipline. This did not happen until a new principle of treatment, marking it off from the disciplines already existing, was introduced. The first to do this was J. P. Gabler in his treatise De justo discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae. Gabler correctly perceived that the specific difference of Biblical Theology lies in its historical principle of treatment. Unfortunately both the impulse of the perception and the manner of its application were influenced by the Rationalism of the school to which he belonged. The chief characteristic of this school was its disrespect for history and tradition and the corresponding worship of Reason as the sole and sufficient source of religious knowledge. A distinction was drawn between (a) past beliefs and usages recorded in the Bible as a matter of history and (b) what proved demonstrable by Reason. The former was a priori rejected as unauthoritative, while the latter was received as truth— not, however, because found in the Bible, but because in agreement with the deliverances of Reason. If the question was put, what use could then possibly be served by its presentation in the Bible, the answer was given that at an earlier stage of development men were not yet sufficiently acquainted with Reason to base on it their religious convictions and practice, and consequently God accommodated Himself to the ancient method of basing belief on external authority, a method now superseded.
It is important to observe that this so-called Rationalismus Vulgaris was not (and, so far as it still survives, is not) a purely philosophical or epistemological principle, but has a specifically religious colouring. Rationalism has so long and so violently attacked religion that it cannot seem amiss to turn the tables and for a moment
criticize rationalism from the view-point of religion. The main point to notice is its undue self-assertiveness over against God in the sphere of truth and belief. This is a defect in religious endowment. Reception of truth on the authority of God is an eminently religious act. Belief in the inspiration of Scripture can be appraised as an act of worship under given circumstances. This explains why rationalism has by preference asserted itself in the field of religion even more than in that of pure philosophy. This is because in religion the sinful mind of man comes most directly face to face with the claims of an independent, superior authority. Closely looked at, its protest against tradition is a protest against God as the source of tradition, and its whole mode of treatment of Biblical Theology aims not at honouring history as the form of tradition, but at discrediting history and tradition. Further, rationalism is defective, ethically considered, in that it shows a tendency towards glorification of its own present (that is, at bottom, of itself) over against the future no less than the past. It reveals a strong sense of having arrived at the acme of development. The glamour of unsurpassability in which rationalism usually sees itself is not calculated to make it expect much from God in the future. In this attitude, the religious fault of self-sufficiency stands out even more pronouncedly than in the attitude towards the past.
It was formerly considered a merit to have stressed the importance of tracing the truth historically, but when this was done with a lack of fundamental piety it lost the right of calling itself theology. The rationalistic brand of Biblical Theology, at the same time that it stresses the historical, declares its product religiously worthless.
To define the issue between ourselves and this type of treatment sharply, we should remember, that it is not a question of the apprehensive function of the reason in regard to religious truth. Man is psychically so constructed that nothing can enter into his knowledge except through the gateway of the reason. This is so true, that it applies equally to the content of Special Revelation as to the ingress of truth from any other source. Nor is it a question about the legitimate functioning of the reason in supplying the mind of man
with the content of natural revelation. Still further, reason has its proper place in the thinking through and systematizing of the content of Special Revelation. But the recognition of all this is not identical with nor characteristic of what we technically call rationalism. The diagnosis of the latter lies in the atmosphere of irreligion and practical disdain of God which it carries with itself wherever appearing. The main fault to be found with people of this kind is that to the pious mind their whole outlook towards God and His world appears uncongenial because lacking in the most primary sense the sensorium of religion.
Ever since its birth in this rationalistic environment Biblical Theology has been strongly affected, not only in the way in which philosophical currents have touched Theology in general, but in a special manner to which its nature especially lays it open. This is shown in the extent to which, at the present time, the treatment of Biblical Theology is influenced by the philosophy of evolution. This influence is discernible in two directions. In the first place, the qualitative advancement found by the hypothesis of evolution in the world-process is extended to the emergence of religious truth. It becomes an advance, not only from the lower to the higher, but from the barbarous and primitive to the refined and civilized, from the false to the true, from the evil to the good. Religion, it is held, began with animism; next came polytheism, then monolatry, then monotheism. Such a view, of course, excludes revelation in every legitimate sense of the word. Making all things relative, it leaves no room for the absoluteness of the divine factor.
In the second place, the philosophy of evolution belongs to the family of positivism. It teaches that nothing can be known but phenomena, only the impressionistic side of the world, not the interior objective reality, the so-called ‘things in themselves’. Such things as God, the soul, immortality, a future life, etc., cannot enter into human knowledge, which in fact is no knowledge in the old solid sense. Consequently all these objective verities come to be regarded as lying beyond the province of Theology. If the name Theology is still
retained, it is as a misnomer for a classification and discussion of religious phenomena. The question is no longer as to what is true, but simply as to what has been believed and practised in the past. Alongside of this general camouflage of the science of religion under the name of Theology, and inseparable from it, runs the turning inside out of Biblical Theology in particular. This becomes the phenomenology of the religion recorded in the literature of the Bible.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Over against these perversive influences it is of importance clearly to lay down the principles by which we propose to be guided in our treatment of the matter. These are:
(a) the recognition of the infallible character of revelation as essential to every legitimate theological use made of this term. This is of the essence of Theism. If God be personal and conscious, then the in- inference is inevitable that in every mode of self-disclosure He will make a faultless expression of His nature and purpose. He will communicate His thought to the world with the stamp of divinity on it. If this were otherwise, then the reason would have to be sought in His being in some way tied up in the limitations and relativities of the world, the medium of expression obstructing His intercourse with the world. Obviously the background of such a view is not Theism but pantheism.
(b) Biblical Theology must likewise recognize the objectivity of the groundwork of revelation. This means that real communications came from God to man ab extra. It is unfair to pass this off with a contemptuous reference to the ‘dictation’ view. There is nothing undignified in dictation, certainly not as between God and man. Besides, it is unscientific, for the statements of the recipients of revelation show that such a process not seldom took place.
Our position, however, does not imply that all revelation came after this objective fashion. There is an ingredient which may properly be
called ‘subjective revelation’. By this is meant the inward activity of the Spirit upon the depths of human sub-consciousness causing certain God-intended thoughts to well up therefrom. The Psalms offer examples of this kind of revelation, and it also occurs in the Psalmodic pieces found here and there in the prophets. Although brought up through a subjective channel, we none the less must claim for it absolute divine authority; otherwise it could not properly be called revelation. In this subjective form revelation and inspiration coalesce. We must, however, be on our guard against the modern tendency to reduce all revelation in the Scriptures to this category of the ab intra. That is usually intended to deprive revelation of its infallibility. A favourite form is to confine revelation proper to the bare acts of self-disclosure performed by God, and then to derive the entire thought-content of the Bible from human reflection upon these acts. Such a theory, as a rule, is made a cover for involving the whole teaching of the Bible in the relativity of purely human reflection, whose divine provenience cannot any longer be verified, because there is nothing objective left to verify it by.
The belief in the joint-occurrence of objective and subjective revelation is not a narrow or antiquated position; it is in reality the only broad-minded view, since it is willing to take into account all the facts. The offence at ‘dictation’ frequently proceeds from an under- estimate of God and an over-estimate of man. If God condescends to give us a revelation, it is for Him and not for us a priori to determine what forms it will assume. What we owe to the dignity of God is that we shall receive His speech at full divine value.
(c) Biblical Theology is deeply concerned with the question of inspiration. All depends here on what we posit as the object with which our science deals. If its object consist in the beliefs and practices of men in the past, then obviously it is of no importance whether the subject matter be considered as true in any other or higher sense than that of a reliable record of things once prevailing, no matter whether inherently true or not. A Biblical Theology thus
conceived ought to classify itself with Historical Theology, not with Exegetical Theology. It professes to be a History of Doctrine for Biblical times. It treats Isaiah as it would treat Augustine, the sole question being what was believed, not whether it was true or not. Our conception of the discipline, on the other hand, considers its subject matter from the point of view of revelation from God. Hence the factor of inspiration needs to be reckoned with as one of the elements rendering the things studied ‘truth’ guaranteed to us as such by the authority of God.
Nor should it be objected that in this way we can postulate inspiration for so much in the Bible only as pertains to the special occasions when God engaged in the act of revelation, so that as Biblical theologians we could profess indifference at least to the doctrine of ‘plenary inspiration’. The conception of partial inspiration is a modern figment having no support in what the Bible teaches about its own make-up. Whenever the New Testament speaks about the inspiration of the Old, it is always in the most absolute, comprehensive terms. Consulting the consciousness of the Scriptures themselves in this matter, we soon learn that it is either ‘plenary inspiration’ or nothing at all. Further, we have found that revelation is by no means confined to isolated verbal disclosures, but embraces facts. These facts moreover are not of a subordinate character: they constitute the central joints and ligaments of the entire body of redemptive revelation. From them the whole receives its significance and colouring. Unless, therefore, the historicity of these facts is vouched for, and that in a more reliable sense than can be done by mere historical research, together with the facts the teaching content will become subject to a degree of uncertainty rendering the revelation value of the whole doubtful. The trustworthiness of the revelations proper entirely depends on that of the historical setting in which they appear.
Again it should be remembered that the Bible gives us in certain cases a philosophy of its own organism. Paul, for instance, has his views in regard to the revelation structure of the Old Testament.
Here the question of full inspiration, extending also to the historical teaching of Paul, becomes of decisive importance. If we believe that Paul was inspired in these matters, then it ought greatly to facilitate our task in producing the revelation structure of the Old Testament. It were superfluous labour to construct a separate view of our own. Where that is attempted, as it is by a certain school of Old Testament criticism, the method does not rest on an innocent view about the negligibility of the factor of inspiration, but on the outright denial of it.
OBJECTIONS TO THE NAME ‘BIBLICAL THEOLOGY’
We shall now consider the objections that have been made to the name Biblical Theology.
(a) The name is too wide, for, aside from General Revelation, all Theology is supposed to rest on the Bible. It suggests a droll degree of presumption to preempt this predicate ‘Biblical’ for a single discipline.
(b) If it be answered that ‘Biblical’ need not be understood of an exceptional claim to Biblical provenience, but only concerns a peculiar method employed, viz., that of reproducing the truth in its original Biblical form without subsequent transformation, then our reply must be that, on the one hand, this of necessity would seem to cast a reflection on other theological disciplines, as though they were guilty of manipulating the truth, and that, on the other hand, Biblical Theology claims too much for itself in professing freedom from transforming treatment of the Scriptural material. The fact is that Biblical Theology just as much as Systematic Theology makes the material undergo a transformation. The sole difference is in the principle on which the transformation is conducted. In the case of Biblical Theology this is historical, in the case of Systematic Theology it is of a logical nature. Each of these two is necessary, and there is no occasion for a sense of superiority in either.
(c) The name is incongruous because ill-adjusted to the rest of our theological nomenclature. If we first distinguish the four main branches of theology by prefixing to the noun ‘Theology’ an adjective ending in ‘-al’, and then proceed to name a subdivision of one of these four on the same principle, calling it Biblical Theology, this must create confusion, because it suggests five instead of four main departments, and represents as a coordination what in reality is a subordination.
For all these reasons the name ‘History of Special Revelation’ is greatly to be preferred. It expresses with precision and in an uninvidious manner what our science aims to be. It is difficult, however, to change a name which has the sanction of usage.
THE RELATION OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY TO OTHER DISCIPLINES
We must now consider the relation of Biblical Theology to other disciplines of the theological family.
(a) Its relation to Sacred (Biblical) History. This is very close. Nor can it fail to be so, since both disciplines include in their consideration material which they have in common with each other. In Sacred History redemption occupies a prominent place, and to deal with redemption without drawing in revelation is not feasible, for, as shown above, certain acts are both redemptive and revelatory at the same time. But the same is true vice versa. Revelation is so interwoven with redemption that, unless allowed to consider the latter, it would be suspended in the air. In both cases, therefore, the one must trespass upon the other. Still logically, although not practically, we are able to draw a distinction as follows: in reclaiming the world from its state of sin God has to act along two lines of procedure, corresponding to the two spheres in which the destructive influence of sin asserts itself. These two spheres are the spheres of being and of knowing. To set the world right in the former, the procedure of redemption is employed; to set it right in the sphere of
knowing, the procedure of revelation is used. The one yields Biblical History, the other Biblical Theology.
(b) Its relation to Biblical Introduction. As a rule Introduction has to precede. Much depends in certain cases on the date of Biblical documents and the circumstances of their composition for determining the place of the truth conveyed by them in the scheme of revelation. The chronology fixed by Introduction is in such cases regulative for the chronology of Biblical Theology. This, however, does not mean that the tracing of the gradual disclosure of truth cannot reach behind the dating of a document. The Pentateuch records retrospectively what unfolding of revelation there was from the beginning, but it also contains much that belongs to the chapter of revelation to and through Moses. These two elements should be clearly distinguished. So much for the cases where Biblical Theology depends on the antecedent work of Introduction. Occasionally, however, the order between the two is reversed. Where no sufficient external evidence exists for dating a document, Biblical Theology may be able to render assistance through pointing out at which time the revelation content of such a writing would best fit in with the progress of revelation.
(c) Its relation to Systematic Theology. There is no difference in that one would be more closely bound to the Scriptures than the other. In this they are wholly alike. Nor does the difference lie in this, that the one transforms the Biblical material, whereas the other would leave it unmodified. Both equally make the truth deposited in the Bible undergo a transformation: but the difference arises from the fact that the principles by which the transformation is effected differ. In Biblical Theology the principle is one of historical, in Systematic Theology it is one of logical construction. Biblical Theology draws a line of development. Systematic Theology draws a circle. Still, it should be remembered that on the line of historical progress there is at several points already a beginning of correlation among elements of truth in which the beginnings of the systematizing process can be discerned.
THE METHOD OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
The method of Biblical Theology is in the main determined by the principle of historic progression. Hence the division of the course of revelation into certain periods. Whatever may be the modern tendency towards eliminating the principle of periodicity from historical science, it remains certain that God in the unfolding of revelation has regularly employed this principle. From this it follows that the periods should not be determined at random, or according to subjective preference, but in strict agreement with the lines of cleavage drawn by revelation itself. The Bible is, as it were, conscious of its own organism; it feels, what we cannot always say of ourselves, its own anatomy. The principle of successive Berith-makings (Covenant-makings), as marking the introduction of new periods, plays a large role in this, and should be carefully heeded. Alongside of this periodicity principle, the grouping and correlation of the several elements of truth within the limits of each period has to be attended to. Here again we should not proceed with arbitrary subjectivism. Our dogmatic constructions of truth based on the finished product of revelation, must not be imported into the minds of the original recipients of revelation. The endeavour should be to enter into their outlook and get the perspective of the elements of the truth as presented to them. There is a point in which the historic advance and the concentric grouping of truth are closely connected. Not seldom progress is brought about by some element of truth, which formerly stood in the periphery taking its place in the centre. The main problem will be how to do justice to the individual peculiarities of the agents in revelation. These individual traits subserve the historical plan. Some propose that we discuss each book separately. But this leads to unnecessary repetition, because there is so much that all have in common. A better plan is to apply the collective treatment in the earlier stages of revelation, where the truth is not as yet much differentiated, and then to individualize in the later periods where greater diversity is reached.
PRACTICAL USES OF THE STUDY OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
It remains to say something about the practical uses of the study of Biblical Theology. These may be enumerated as follows:
(a) It exhibits the organic growth of the truths of Special Revelation. By doing this it enables one properly to distribute the emphasis among the several aspects of teaching and preaching. A leaf is not of the same importance as a twig, nor a twig as a branch, nor a branch as the trunk of the tree. Further, through exhibiting the organic structure of revelation, Biblical Theology furnishes a special argument from design for the reality of Supernaturalism.
(b) It supplies us with a useful antidote against the teachings of rationalistic criticism. This it does in the following way: The Bible exhibits an organism of its own. This organism, inborn in the Bible itself, the critical hypothesis destroys, and that not only on our view, but as freely acknowledged by the critics themselves, on the ground of its being an artificial organism in later times foisted upon the Bible, and for which a newly discovered better organism should be substituted. Now by making ourselves in the study of Biblical Theology thoroughly conversant with the Biblical consciousness of its own revelation structure, we shall be able to perceive how radically criticism destroys this, and that, so far from being a mere question of dates and composition of books, it involves a choice between two widely divergent, nay, antagonistic conceptions of the Scriptures and of religion. To have correctly diagnosed criticism in its true purpose is to possess the best prophylaxis against it.
(c) Biblical Theology imparts new life and freshness to the truth by showing it to us in its original historic setting. The Bible is not a dogmatic handbook but a historical book full of dramatic interest. Familiarity with the history of revelation will enable us to utilize all this dramatic interest.
(d) Biblical Theology can counteract the anti-doctrinal tendency of the present time. Too much stress proportionately is being laid on the voluntary and emotional sides of religion. Biblical Theology bears
witness to the indispensability of the doctrinal groundwork of our religious fabric. It shows what great care God has taken to supply His people with a new world of ideas. In view of this it becomes impious to declare belief to be of subordinate importance.
(e) Biblical Theology relieves to some extent the unfortunate situation that even the fundamental doctrines of the faith should seem to depend mainly on the testimony of isolated proof-texts. There exists a higher ground on which conflicting religious views can measure themselves as to their Scriptural legitimacy. In the long run that system will hold the field which can be proven to have grown organically from the main stem of revelation, and to be interwoven with the very fibre of Biblical religion.
(f) The highest practical usefulness of the study of Biblical Theology is one belonging to it altogether apart from its usefulness for the student. Like unto all theology it finds its supreme end in the glory of God. This end it attains through giving us a new view of God as displaying a particular aspect of His nature in connection with His historical approach to and intercourse with man. The beautiful statement of Thomas Aquinas is here in point: (Theologia) a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit.
TWO:
THE MAPPING OUT OF THE FIELD OF REVELATION
In the mapping out of the field of revelation, the main distinction to be drawn is that between General and Special Revelation. General Revelation is also called Natural Revelation, and Special Revelation called Supernatural Revelation. These names explain themselves. General Revelation comes to all for the reason that it comes through nature. Special Revelation comes to a limited circle for the reason that it springs from the sphere of the supernatural through a specific self-disclosure of God. It seems best to define the relation between the two separately (a) as that relation existed prior to, and apart from sin, and (b) as it exists in a modified form under the regime of sin.
First, then, we consider the relation apart from sin. Nature from which natural revelation springs consists of two sources, nature within and nature without.
God reveals Himself to the inner sense of man through the religious consciousness and the moral conscience. He also reveals Himself in the works of nature without. It is obvious that the latter must rest on the former. If there were no antecedent innate knowledge of God, no amount of nature-observation would lead to an adequate conception of God. The presupposition of all knowledge of God is man’s having been created in the image of God. On the other hand, the knowledge from inner nature is not complete in itself apart from the filling-out it receives through the discovery of God in nature. Thus first does it receive its richness and concreteness. The Bible recognizes these facts. It never assumes, even in regard to the heathen, that man must be taught the existence of God or a god. When it exhorts to know God, this simply means to become acquainted with Him through knowing what He is.
Now to this antecedent knowledge from the two sources of nature there can be added a supernatural self-disclosure. This is something we usually associate with redemption, but this is not exclusively so. We here consider it apart from man’s need of redemption. The main thing to notice is that it adds a content of knowledge which nature as
such could not produce. This is the very reason why it is called supernatural.
Next we take account of the manner in which the relations described are affected and modified through the entrance of sin. It is a mistake to think that the sole result of the fall was the introduction of a supernatural revelation. As we shall presently see, supernaturalism in revelation, though its need was greatly accentuated by sin, did not first originate from the fact of sin. But, sin entering in, the structure of natural revelation itself is disturbed and put in need of correction. Nature from within no longer functions normally in sinful man. Both his religious and his moral sense of God may have become blunted and blinded. And the finding of God in nature without has also been made subject to error and distortion. The innate sense of God as lying closer to the inner being of man is more seriously affected by this than his outward observation of the writing of God in nature. Hence the exhortation addressed in Scripture to the heathen, that they shall correct their foolish pre-conceptions of the nature of God through attention to the works of creation, e.g., Isa. 40:25, 26; Psa. 94:5–11. The main correction, however, of the natural knowledge of God cannot come from within nature itself: it must be supplied by the supernaturalism of redemption. Redemption in a supernatural way restores to fallen man also the normalcy and efficiency of his cognition of God in the sphere of nature. How true this is may be seen from the fact that the best system of Theism, i.e. Natural Theology, has not been produced from the sphere of heathenism, however splendidly endowed in the cultivation of philosophy, but from Christian sources. When we produce a system of natural knowledge of God, and in doing so profess to rely exclusively on the resources of reason, this is, of course, formally correct, but it remains an open question whether we should have been able to produce such a thing with the degree of excellence we succeed in imparting to it, had not our minds in the natural exercise of their faculties stood under the correcting influence of redemptive grace.
The most important function of Special Revelation, however, under the regime of sin, does not lie in the correction and renewal of the faculty of perception of natural verities; it consists in the introduction of an altogether new world of truth, that relating to the redemption of man. The newness here, as compared with the supernatural revelation in the state of rectitude, relates to both the form and content, and, further, also affects the manner in which the supernatural approach of God to man is received. As to the form of direct intercourse, this is objectified. Previously there was the most direct spiritual fellowship; the stream of revelation flowed uninterruptedly, and there was no need of storing up the waters in any reservoir wherefrom to draw subsequently. Under the rule of redemption an external embodiment is created to which the divine intercourse with man attaches itself. The objective products of redemption in facts and institutions are a reminder of this changed manner of divine approach.
The same change is observable in the perpetuation of the divine manifestations received in the past. Where an ever-flowing stream of revelation was always accessible, there existed no need of providing for the future remembrance of past intercourse. But a necessity is created for this in the looser, more easily interrupted, only in principle restored, fellowship under the present enjoyment of redemption. Hence the essential content of the new redemptive revelation is given a permanent form, first through tradition, then through its inscripturation in sacred, inspired writings. Neither for this objectivity of the content, nor for this stability of the form will there be any further need in the perfected state of things at the end. As to the newness in the content, this is the direct result of the new reaction of the divine attitude upon the new factor of sin. A different aspect of the divine nature is turned towards man. Many new things belong to this, but they can all be subsumed under the categories of justice and grace as the two poles around which henceforth the redeeming self-disclosure of God revolves. All the new processes and experiences which the redeemed man undergoes can be brought back to the one or the other of these two.
It should be emphasized, however, that in this world of redemption the substance of things is absolutely new. It is inaccessible to the natural mind as such. To be sure, God does not create the world of redemption without regard to the antecedent world of nature, nor does He begin His redemptive revelation de novo, as though nothing had preceded. The knowledge from nature, even though corrupted, is presupposed. Only, this does not involve that there is a natural transition from the state of nature to the state of redemption. Nature cannot unlock the door of redemption.
Finally, sin has fundamentally changed the mood of man in which he receives the supernatural approach of God. In the state of rectitude this was not a mood of fear, but of trustful friendship; in the state of sin the approach of the supernatural causes dread, something well to be distinguished from the proper reverence with which man at all times ought to meet God, and which is inseparable from the act of religion as such.
PRE-REDEMPTIVE AND REDEMPTIVE SPECIAL REVELATION
In the foregoing it has been assumed for the sake of distinction that before the fall there existed a form of Special Revelation, transcending the natural knowledge of God. This is the point at which to explain its possibility, its necessity and its concrete purpose. Its subject matter will be afterwards discussed. The possibility and necessity flow from the nature of religion as such. Religion means personal intercourse between God and man. Hence it might be a priori expected that God would not be satisfied, and would not allow man to be satisfied with an acquaintance based on indirection, but would crown the process of religion with the establishment of face- to-face communion, as friend holds fellowship with friend.
The same conclusion may be drawn from the concrete purpose God had in view with this first form of supernaturalism. This is connected with the state in which man was created and the advance from this to a still higher estate. Man had been created perfectly good in a moral
sense. And yet there was a sense in which he could be raised to a still higher level of perfection. On the surface this seems to involve a contradiction. It will be removed by closely marking the aspect in regard to which the advance was contemplated. The advance was meant to be from unconfirmed to confirmed goodness and blessedness; to the confirmed state in which these possessions could no longer be lost, a state in which man could no longer sin, and hence could no longer become subject to the consequences of sin. Man’s original state was a state of indefinite probation: he remained in possession of what he had, so long as he did not commit sin, but it was not a state in which the continuance of his religious and moral status could be guaranteed him. In order to assure this for him, he had to be subjected to an intensified, concentrated probation, in which, if he remained standing, the status of probation would be forever left behind. The provision of this new, higher prospect for man was an act of condescension and high favour. God was in no wise bound on the principle of justice to extend it to man, and we mean this denial not merely in the general sense in which we affirm that God owes nothing to man, but in the very specific sense that there was nothing in the nature of man nor of his creation, which by manner of implication could entitle man to such a favour from God. Had the original state of man involved any title to it, then the knowledge concerning it would probably have formed part of man’s original endowment. But this not being so, no innate knowledge of its possibility could be expected. Yet the nature of an intensified and concentrated probation required that man should be made acquainted with the fact of the probation and its terms. Hence the necessity of a Special Revelation providing for this.
THE DIVISION OF REDEMPTIVE SPECIAL REVELATION ‘BERITH’
This is what we call in dogmatic language ‘The Covenant of Grace’, whilst the pre-redemptive Special Revelation is commonly given the name of ‘The Covenant of Works’. Care should be taken not to identify the latter with ‘The Old Testament’. The Old Testament
belongs after the fall. It forms the first of the two divisions of the covenant of grace. The Old Testament is that period of the covenant of grace which precedes the coming of the Messiah, the New Testament that period of the covenant of grace which has followed His appearance and under which we still live. It will be observed that the phraseology ‘Old Testament’ and ‘New Testament’, ‘Old Covenant’ and ‘New Covenant’, is often interchangeably used. This creates confusion and misunderstanding. For this reason, as well as for the sake of the subject itself, the origin and meaning of these phrases require careful attention. The Hebrew word rendered by the above nouns is berith. The Greek word is diatheke. As to berith, this in the Bible never means ‘testament’. In fact the idea of ‘testament’ was entirely unknown to the ancient Hebrews. They knew nothing of a ‘last will’. From this, however, it does not follow that the rendering ‘covenant’ would be indicated in all places where berith occurs. Berith may be employed where as a matter of fact a covenant in the sense of agreement is referred to, which is more than can be said for ‘testament’. Only the reason for its occurrence in such places is never that it relates to an agreement. That is purely incidental. The real reason lies in the fact that the agreement spoken of is concluded by some special religious sanction. This, and not its being an agreement, makes it a berith. And similarly in other connections. A purely one- sided promise or ordinance or law becomes a berith, not by reason of its inherent conceptual or etymological meaning, but by reason of the religious sanction added. From this it will be understood that the outstanding characteristic of a berith is its unalterableness, its certainty, its eternal validity, and not (what would in certain cases by the very opposite) its voluntary, changeable nature. The berith as such is a ‘faithful berith’, something not subject to abrogation. It can be broken by man, and the breach is a most serious sin, but this again is not because it is the breaking of an agreement in general; the seriousness results from the violation of the sacred ceremony by which its sanction was effected.
DIATHEKE
With the Greek word diatheke the matter stands somewhat differently. The rendering of berith by this word amounted to a translation-compromise. Diatheke at the time when the Septuagint and the New Testament came into existence not only could mean ‘testament’, but such was the current meaning of the word. It was, to be sure, not its original meaning. The original sense was quite generic, viz., ‘a disposition that some one made for himself’ (from the middle form of the verb diatithemi). The legal usage, however, referring it to a testamentary disposition had monopolized the word. Hence the difficulty with which the Greek translators found themselves confronted. In making their choice of a suitable rendering for berith they took a word to whose meaning of ‘last will’ nothing in the Hebrew Bible corresponded. And not only this, the word chosen seemed to connote the very opposite of what the Hebrew berith stood for. If the latter expressed unchangeableness, ‘testament’ seemed to call up the idea of changeableness at least till the moment when the testator dies. Moreover the very term ‘testament’ suggests the death of the one who makes it, and this must have appeared to render it unsuitable for designating something into which God enters. When notwithstanding all these difficulties, they chose diatheke, weighty reasons must have determined them.
The principal reason seems to have been that there was a far more fundamental objection to the one other word that might have been adopted, the word syntheke. This word suggests strongly by its very form the idea of coequality and partnership between the persons entering into the arrangement, a stress quite in harmony to the genius of Hellenic religiosity. The translators felt this to be out of keeping with the tenor of the Old Testament Scriptures, in which the supremacy and monergism of God are emphasized. So, in order to avoid the misunderstanding, they preferred to put up with the inconveniences attaching to the word diatheke. On closer reflection these were not insurmountable. Though diatheke meant currently ‘last will’, the original generic sense of ‘disposition for oneself’ cannot have been entirely forgotten even in their day. The etymology of the word was too perspicuous for that. They felt that diatheke suggested
a sovereign disposition, not always of the nature of a last will, and restored this ancient signification. And in this way they not merely overcame an obstacle; they also registered the positive gain of being able to reproduce a most important element in the Old Testament consciousness of religion.
The difficulty arising from the fact of God’s not being subject to death is a difficulty only from the standpoint of Roman law. The Roman-law testament actually is not in force except where death has taken place, cp. Heb. 9:16. There existed, however, in those times a different type of testament, that of Graeco-Syrian law. This kind of testament had no necessary association with the death of the testator. It could be made and solemnly sanctioned during his life- time, and in certain of its provisions go into immediate effect. The other objection arising from the mutability of the Roman-law testament fell away likewise under this other conception. For not only was changeability foreign to it; on the contrary, the opposite idea of unchangeableness entered in strongly [cp. Gal. 3:15].
From the Septuagint the word diatheke passed over into the New Testament. The question has long been under debate whether here it should be rendered by ‘covenant’ or by ‘testament’. The A.V. in as many as 14 instances translates diatheke by ‘testament’, in all other cases by ‘covenant’. The R.V. has greatly modified this tradition. In every passage, except Heb. 9:16, where the statement allows no escape from ‘testament’, it has substituted ‘covenant’ for the ‘testament’ of the A.V. In all probability an exception ought likewise to have been made for Gal. 3:15, where, if not the explicit statement of Paul, at least the connection leads us to think of ‘testament’. The Revisers were obviously guided in this matter by the desire to assimilate as much as possible the modes of statement in the Old Testament to those in the New Testament. This was in itself a laudable desire, but it seems that in certain cases it prevented due consideration of the exegetical requirements. Since the R.V. was made, the tendency of scholarship has on the whole favoured ‘testament’ rather than ‘covenant’. There are passages still under
debate, for instance those recording the institution of the Lord’s supper, where a further return to ‘testament’ may seem advisable.
The distinction between a ‘former berith’ and a ‘new berith’ or an ‘old diatheke’ and a ‘new diatheke’, is found in the Bible in the following passages: Jer. 31:31; the words of institution of the supper; and a number of times, with varying phraseology, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is, of course, in none of these passages a literature distinction, corresponding to our traditional distinction between the two parts of the canon. It could not be this, because when these passages were written no second division of the canon was yet in existence.
Sometimes 2 Cor. 3:14 is quoted as a Biblical instance of the canonical distinction, because Paul speaks of the ‘reading’ of the old diatheke. It is assumed that to the reading of the old diatheke a reading of a new diatheke must correspond. In that case we should have here a prophetic foreknowledge on Paul’s part of the approaching formation of a second, a new, canon. This, while not impossible, is not likely. Vs. 15 shows why Paul speaks of a ‘reading’ of the old diatheke. It is the reading of Moses, i.e., the reading of the law. Since the law is frequently called a berith, a diatheke, Paul could call its reading a reading of the old diatheke, and yet not suggest that a second canon was in the making. There was an old berith, which existed in written form, there was likewise a new berith, but the latter is not yet represented as likewise destined to receive written form.
The comparison is between two equally completed things, not between two things of which the one possesses completeness, the other still awaits it. The whole distinction is between two dispensations, two arrangements, of which the one is far superior to the other. The designation of the two canons may later have support in this Pauline passage; nevertheless it rests on an inexact interpretation. At first, even long after Paul, other terms seem to
have been used for distinguishing the two parts of Scripture. Tertullian still speaks of the Old and New ‘Instrument’.
Finally, it should be noted that, when the Bible speaks of a two-fold berith, a twofold diatheke, it means by the ‘old’ covenant not the entire period from the fall of man to Christ, but the period from Moses to Christ. Nevertheless, what precedes the Mosaic period in the description of Genesis may be appropriately subsumed under the ‘Old Covenant’. It is meant in the Pentateuch as a preface to the account of the Mosaic institutions, and the preface belongs within the cover of the book. Likewise the ‘New Testament’ in the soteric, periodical sense of the word goes beyond the time of the life of Christ and the Apostolic age; it not only includes us, but extends into and covers the eschatological, eternal state.
THREE:
THE CONTENT OF PRE-REDEMPTIVE SPECIAL REVELATION
We understand by this, as already explained, the disclosure of the principles of a process of probation by which man was to be raised to a state of religion and goodness, higher, by reason of its unchangeableness, than what he already possessed. Everything connected with this disclosure is exceedingly primitive. It is largely symbolical, that is, not expressed in words so much as in tokens; and these tokens partake of the general character of Biblical symbolism in that, besides being means of instruction, they are also typical, that is, sacramental, prefigurations conveying assurance concerning the future realization of the things symbolized. The symbolism, however,
does not lie in the account as a literary form, which would involve denial of the historical reality of the transactions. It is a real symbolism embodied in the actual things. The modern mythological interpretation can at this point render us this service, that it affirms the intention of the mythopoeic mind to relate in the myths actual occurrences.
FOUR PRINCIPLES
Four great principles are contained in this primeval revelation, each of them expressed by its own appropriate symbol. These were:
[1] the principle of life in its highest potency sacramentally symbolized by the tree of life;
[2] the principle of probation symbolized in the same manner by the tree of knowledge of good and evil;
[3] the principle of temptation and sin symbolized in the serpent; [4] the principle of death reflected in the dissolution of the body.
[1] The principle of life and what is taught concerning it by the tree of life
The tree of life stands in the midst of the garden. The garden is ‘the garden of God’, not in the first instance an abode for man as such, but specifically a place of reception of man into fellowship with God in God’s own dwelling-place. The God-centred character of religion finds its first, but already fundamental, expression in this arrangement. [cp. Gen. 2:8; Ezek. 28:13, 16]. The correctness of this is verified by the recurrence of this piece of symbolism in eschatological form at the end of history, where there can be no doubt concerning the principle of paradise being the habitation of God, where He dwells in order to make man dwell with Himself. But this symbolism of paradise with its God-centred implication appears in still another form in the Prophets and the Psalter, viz., connected
with the streams so significantly mentioned in Genesis as belonging to the garden of God, here also in part with eschatological reference. The prophets predict that in the future age waters will flow from Jehovah’s holy mountain. These are further described as waters of life, just as the tree is a tree of life. But here also the waters flow from near the dwelling-place of Jehovah (His mountain), even as the tree stood in the midst of the garden. Still in the Apocalypse we read of the streams of the water of life proceeding from the throne of God in the new Jerusalem, with trees of life on either side. It will be observed that here the two symbolisms of the tree of life and the waters of life are interwoven. For the Psalter, cp. Psa. 65:9; 46:4, 5. The truth is thus clearly set forth that life comes from God, that for man it consists in nearness to God, that it is the central concern of God’s fellowship with man to impart this. In the sequel the same principle appears in negative form through the expulsion of sinful man from paradise.
From the significance of the tree in general its specific use may be distinguished. It appears from Gen. 3:22, that man before his fall had not eaten of it, while yet nothing is recorded concerning any prohibition which seems to point to the understanding that the use of the tree was reserved for the future, quite in agreement with the eschatological significance attributed to it later. The tree was associated with the higher, the unchangeable, the eternal life to be secured by obedience throughout his probation. Anticipating the result by a present enjoyment of the fruit would have been out of keeping with its sacramental character. After man should have been made sure of the attainment of the highest life, the tree would appropriately have been the sacramental means for communicating the highest life. After the fall God attributes to man the inclination of snatching the fruit against the divine purpose. But this very desire implies the understanding that it somehow was the specific life- sacrament for the time after the probation. According to Rev. 2:7 it is to ‘him that overcometh’ that God promises to give of the tree of life in the midst of his paradise. The effort to obtain the fruit after the fall
would have meant a desperate attempt to steal the fruit where the title to it had been lost [cp. Gen. 3:22].
[2] The second principle: Probation and what is taught concerning it in the symbolism of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
This tree also stands in the midst of the garden [cp. Gen. 2:9 and 3:3]. There is more mystery and hence far greater difference of opinion concerning this tree than there is about the tree of life.
(a) First there is the mythical interpretation. It takes the tree as a piece of pagan mythology introduced into the Biblical record. The idea is a thoroughly pagan one, that of the jealousy of the gods lest man should obtain something felt by them to be a private divine privilege. This result is meant to be inherently connected with the eating of the fruit: the prohibition of eating aims at the withholding from man of what is called the ‘knowledge of good and evil’. As to what this knowledge of good and evil was supposed by the myth to consist in, is not interpreted by all in the same way. According to one view it was understood by the myth as the rise of man from the purely animal state in which he existed to the plane of reasonable, human existence. The gods wanted him to remain an animal, and therefore forbade the eating of the reason-imparting fruit.
According to another view the myth puts the original state of man higher; he was endowed with reason from the first. Only, he existed in a state of barbarism below all culture. The gods wanted to keep this rise to civilization from man, considering it a privilege of their own. According to these forms, then, of the mythical interpretation, the motive ascribed to the gods by the framer of the myth was the same; the difference comes in through the varying interpretation of what the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ was conceived to be.
An objection that may be urged against this common feature of the two forms, viz., the ascription of jealousy to the Deity, is, so far as the Biblical account is concerned, as follows: God is represented as
having Himself planted the tree in the garden. This would amount to a solicitation of the very same evil result that His jealousy sought to prevent. Moreover the actual result ill accords with the situation expected in this pagan version of the narrative. After man has actually eaten of the tree, God does not act as though He had anything to fear from the encroachment of man. He retains His absolute superiority. As a poor, helpless sinner, man stands before God.
The objections to the second form of the mythical version of the account according to which the rise to a state of ‘culture’ was the prohibited thing are several. First of all, this view rests on the sub- ethical, physical interpretation of the phrase ‘to know good and evil’. It must on this view bear the sense of knowing what is beneficial and what is harmful in the physical sphere, otherwise the obtaining of the knowledge of good and evil could not stand for progress in civilization. Now our contention is not that the phrase in question cannot and never does have the physically oriented significance. We even grant that such seems to have been an ancient application of the phrase before it was specifically applied to the ethical sphere. Not to know good and evil describes the immaturity of childhood, and also the post-maturity, the dotage of old age, when people are said to have become childish [cp. Deut. 1:39; Isa. 7:15, 16]. But our contention is this, that the phrase does have also the specific sense of maturity in the ethical sphere [cp. 2 Sam. 14:17, 20]; and further that the import of the narrative here requires us to take it in that sense. The concrete symptom from which in the sequel the knowledge of good and evil is illustrated is the sense of nakedness, and nakedness not as an injurious, uncomfortable state, but as something arousing sensations of an ethical kind.
A further objection against this second form of the mythical version may be drawn from the prominent part woman is represented to have played in the transaction. Would an Oriental myth-maker have given this role to a member of what is in the Orient usually regarded as the inferior sex? Could woman be regarded in such a circle as
more efficient than man in the advancement of civilization? Agriculture, one of the most powerful factors in the progress of civilization, is represented in the account as a punishment, not as something desirable from man’s point of view, withheld from him by the gods. In order to escape from these difficulties, of which the force cannot be denied, some writers propose to cut up the narrative into two sections, finding in the one the representation of divine jealousy roused by the fear of man’s advance in culture, and in the other an account of man’s fall into sin as the traditional interpretation assumes. Into this critical phase of the question we cannot enter here.
Dismissing, then, this mythological version of the account, we proceed to examine:
(b) a second interpretation of the tree, and of the phrase ‘knowledge of good and evil’ connected with it. This view attaches itself to the linguistic observation that in Hebrew ‘to know’ can signify ‘to choose’. The name would then really mean ‘the tree of the choice of good and evil’. Some keep this in the general form of ‘the tree by means of which man was to make his choice of good or evil’. This would be equivalent to ‘the probation-tree’. Others give a peculiar sinister sense to the word ‘knowing’, making it to mean ‘the independent autonomous choice over against God’s direction of what was good and what was evil for man’. This makes the name of the tree one of evil omen anticipating the disastrous result. In itself this would not be impossible, although it could hardly be considered a likely view. An objection, however, lies in this, that an arbitrary twist is thus given to the verb ‘to know’, when it is made to mean not ‘to choose’ in general, with a neutral connotation, but particularly ‘to choose presumptuously’, for which no evidence can be quoted. The most serious obstacle to the whole view, in both of its forms, arises from this, that it takes ‘knowledge’ as descriptive of an act, the act of ‘choosing’, not as descriptive of a state, the acquaintance with good and evil. Now in the sequel the symbol of the ‘knowledge of good and
evil’ is found in the consciousness of nakedness, and nakedness stands not for an act but for a condition.
Thus we are led to the view most commonly held in the past:
(c) the tree is called the tree of ‘knowledge of good and evil’, because it is the God-appointed instrument to lead man through probation to that state of religious and moral maturity wherewith his highest blessedness is connected. The physical meaning of the phrase has been transferred to the spiritual sphere. On this view the name does not prejudge the result. To attain to a knowledge of good and evil is not necessarily an undesirable and culpable thing. It could happen in a good way, in case man stood in probation, no less than in an evil way, in case man fell. The name is neutral as to its import. That this is so frequently overlooked is due to the prohibitive form which the probation-test assumed. Because man was forbidden to eat of the tree associated with the knowledge of good and evil, it has been rashly assumed that the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden him. Obviously there is in this a confusion of thought. The prohibitive form of the test has quite a different cause, as will be presently shown.
If now we enquire how the maturity designated as ‘knowledge of good and evil’ was to be attained, either in a desirable or in an undesirable sense, regard must be had first of all to the exact form of the phrase in Hebrew. The phrase is not ‘knowledge of the good and the evil’. It reads, literally translated: ‘knowledge of good-and-evil’, i.e., of good and evil as correlated, mutually conditioned conceptions. Man was to attain something he had not attained before. He was to learn the good in its clear opposition to the evil, and the evil in its clear opposition to the good. Thus it will become plain how he could attain to this by taking either fork of the probation-choice. Had he stood, then the contrast between good and evil would have been vividly present to his mind: the good and evil he would have known from the new illumination his mind would have received through the crisis of temptation in which the two collided. On the other hand,
had he fallen, then the contrast of evil with good would have even more vividly impressed itself upon him, because the remembered experience of choosing the evil and the continuous experience of doing the evil, in contrast with his memory of the good, would have shown most sharply how different the two are. The perception of difference in which the maturity consisted related to the one pivotal point, whether man would make his choice for the sake of God and of God alone.
Of course, it is possible to go back of the mere command of God for finding the bottom-reason for why a thing is good and evil. This bottom-reason lies in the nature of God regulating His command. But in the present instance it was not a question of the ultimate theology or metaphysic of evil and good. For the simple practical purpose of this first fundamental lesson it was necessary only to stake everything upon the unreasoned will of God. And there was a still further reason why this should be done. If the inherent nature of good and evil had been drawn into the scope of the test, then it would have resulted in a choice from instinct alone rather than in a choice of a deliberate character. But it was precisely the purpose of the probation to raise man for a moment from the influence of his own ethical inclination to the point of a choosing for the sake of personal attachment to God alone.
Too much is often made of the purely autonomous movement of ethics, eliminating as unworthy the unexplained, unmotivated demand of God. To do the good and reject the evil from a reasoned insight into their respective natures is a noble thing, but it is a still nobler thing to do so out of regard for the nature of God, and the noblest thing of all is the ethical strength, which, when required, will act from personal attachment to God, without for the moment enquiring into these more abstruse reasons. The pure delight in obedience adds to the ethical value of a choice. In the present case it was made the sole determinant factor, and in order to do this an arbitrary prohibition was issued, such as from the very fact of its
arbitrariness excluded every force of instinct from shaping the outcome.
From the true conception of the purpose of the tree we must distinguish the interpretation placed upon it by the tempter according to Gen. 3:5. This carries a twofold implication: first that the tree has in itself, magically, the power of conferring knowledge of good and evil. This lowers the plane of the whole transaction from the religious and moral to the pagan-magical sphere. And secondly, Satan explains the prohibition from the motive of envy. This also we have already found to be a piece of pagan-mythological interpretation. Again, the divine statement in Gen. 3:22 alludes to this deceitful representation of the tempter. It is ironical.
[3] The principle of temptation and sin symbolized in the serpent
There is a difference between probation and temptation, and yet they appear here as two aspects of the same transaction. The close interweaving reflects itself even in the use of identical words for trying and tempting both in Hebrew and Greek. We may say that what was from the point of view of God a probation was made use of by the evil power to inject into it the element of temptation. The difference consists in this, that behind the probation lies a good, behind the temptation an evil, design, but both work with the same material. It is, of course, necessary to keep God free from tempting anybody with evil intent [cp. James 1:13]. But it is also important to insist upon the probation as an integral part of the divine plan with regard to humanity. Even if no tempter had existed, or projected himself into the crisis, even then some form for subjecting man to probation would have been found, though it is impossible for us to surmise what form.
The problem arises, how we must conceive of the role played by the serpent in the fall, and of its traditional connection with an evil spirit. There are varying views in regard to this. Quite in keeping with the modern aversion to much Biblical realism in general, many
are inclined to understand the entire account as a piece of allegorizing, which in the intent of the writer was not meant to describe a single occurrence but the ever-repeated efforts of sin to find an entrance into the human heart. The serpent then becomes a symbol or allegory with the rest. This view is contrary to the plain intent of the narrative; in Gen. 3:1, the serpent is compared with the other beasts God had made; if the others were real, then so was the serpent. In vs. 14 the punishment is expressed in terms requiring a real serpent.
Others have gone to the opposite extreme of asserting that there was nothing but a serpent. The terms used in the passages just quoted would certainly fit better into this than into the allegorical view. But it ill accords with the Scriptural teaching on the animal world in general to conceive of a simple serpent as speaking. The Bible always upholds against all pantheizing confusion the distinction between man who speaks and the animals who do not speak, Balaam’s ass forming the only exception on record.
It therefore becomes necessary to adopt the old, traditional view according to which there were present both a real serpent and a demonic power, who made use of the former to carry out his plan. So far from there being anything impossible in this, it finds a close analogy in the demoniacs of the Gospels, through whose mouths demons speak. Recent archaeological scholarship has at this point vindicated the correctness of the old exegesis, for in the Babylonian representations there appears often behind the figure of the serpent the figure of a demon. Besides, there is ample Biblical testimony for the presence of an evil spirit in the temptation.
True, the Old Testament throws no light upon the subject. This is for the twofold reason that, on the one hand, the fall is seldom referred to, and, on the other hand, the whole subject of evil spirits and of ‘the Satan’, ‘the adversary’ is long kept in darkness. For reference to the fall cp. Job 31:33; Hos. 6:7; Ezek. 28:1–19. For reference or allusion to the ‘Evil Spirit’ cp. ‘the Satan’ in Job; in 1 Chron. 21:1. Evil spirits
in general appear, 1 Sam. 16; 1 Ki. 22. In none of these passages, however, is the first entrance of evil into the world of men brought into connection with Satan. For the first time, so far as we know, this is done in the Apocryphal book of ‘Wisdom’, where in 11:24, it is stated: ‘By the envy of Satan death entered into the world’. In later Jewish writings also Sammael (The Angel of Death) is called ‘The Old Serpent’. In the New Testament we have the words of Jesus to the Jews, John 8:44, where in the reference to the Devil he is represented as both a liar and a murderer from the beginning. This must refer to the temptation. ‘The father thereof’, i.e., of lying, means the primordial liar. Further, ‘your father the devil’ alludes to the phrase ‘your seed’ addressed to the serpent [Gen. 3:15]. So does the phrase ‘children of the Wicked One’ in Matt. 13:38. Paul in Rom. 16:20 understands of Satan what in the curse is made the serpent’s punishment, viz., his being bruised under foot. 1 John 3:8 says that the Devil sins from the beginning. In Rev. 12:9, Satan is called ‘the great dragon, the old serpent’.
It is said of the serpent that it was more subtle than any other beast of the field. This finds in its subtlety the reason of its fitness for serving as the demon’s instrument. If Satan had appeared bluntly and boldly, the temptation would have been much less alluring. The tempter addresses himself to the woman, probably not because she is more open to temptation and prone to sin, for that is hardly the conception of the Old Testament elsewhere. The reason may have lain in this, that the woman had not personally received the prohibition from God, as Adam had; cp. 2:16, 17.
The process of the temptation divides itself in two stages. In both the central purpose of the tempter is the injection of doubt into the woman’s mind. But the doubt suggested in the first stage is of an apparently innocent kind, a doubt as to the question of fact. Yet there is already mixed with this a carefully disguised allusion to the far more serious kind of doubt consisting in the distrust of God’s word recognized as such. In the second stage of the temptation this serious form of doubt casts off all disguise, because in the meanwhile the
woman has in principle given entrance to the thought so skilfully put before her at the beginning. In the first stage it is at the start a mere question of fact: ‘Yea, has God said?’ Has the prohibition been actually issued? Still even here the suggestion of a more serious aspect of the matter lies in the words ‘of every tree in the garden’. In this phrasing the Serpent hints at the possibility that, should such a prohibition have been actually issued, God has made it far too sweeping through excluding man from the use of the fruit of every tree.
Now the woman reacts to this in two distinct ways. First, as to the question of bare facts, she repudiates the intimation of no prohibition having been actually issued: ‘God had said’. At the same time she rejects the suggestion, as though God had ignominiously extended the scope of the prohibition to all the trees: ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.’ And yet in the more or less indignant form of this denial there already shines through that the woman had begun to entertain the possibility of God’s restricting her too severely. And by entertaining this, even for a moment, she had already begun to separate in principle between the rights of God and her own rights. In doing this she has admitted the seed of the act of sinning into her heart. And still further, in this direction goes the inexact form of her quoting the words of God: ‘ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it.’ In this unwarranted introduction of the denial of the privilege of ‘touching’ the woman betrays a feeling, as though after all God’s measures may have been too harsh.
Satan does not fail to follow up the advantage thus gained. Entering boldly upon the second stage of the temptation he now seeks to awaken in the woman doubt in the pronounced form of distrust of the word of God recognized as such: ‘Ye shall not surely die’. In the Hebrew of these words the placing of the negative at the opening of the sentence should be observed. Where for emphasis’ sake the infinitive and a finite verb are put together, and to this a negation is added, the negation usually stands between. Had this been followed here, the correct rendering would have been: ‘Ye shall surely not die’.
This would merely have cast doubt on the fulfilment of the threat. On the other hand the unusual construction followed makes it to mean: ‘It is not so (what God has said), this: ye shall surely die’. This is intended to give the lie to God’s utterance in the most pointed manner. And to the temptation to charge God with lying the reasons for the likelihood of His lying is added, viz., God is one whose motives make His word unreliable. He lies from selfishness; ‘For God does know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil’.
Thus prepared, the woman needs only the inducement of the delicious appearance of the fruit, apparently confirming the beneficial effect ascribed to its eating, for committing the overt act of sin. It is not, however, the mere sensual appetite that determines her choice, for her motive was complex; ‘She saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise’. In part at least, the pivotal motive of the act was identical with the pivotal motive that gave strength to the temptation. It has been strikingly observed that the woman in yielding to this thought virtually put the tempter in the place of God. It was God who had beneficent purposes for man, the serpent had malicious designs. The woman acts on the supposition that God’s intent is unfriendly, whilst Satan is animated with the desire to promote her well-being.
[4] The principle of death symbolized by the dissolution of the body
According to Gen. 2:17, God said: ‘Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’ [cp. 3:3]. On the basis of these words the belief of all ages has been that death is the penalty of sin, that the race became first subject to death through the commission of the primordial sin. At present many writers take exception to this, largely on scientific grounds. With these as such we have here nothing to do. But, as is frequently the case, strenuous attempts are made to give such a turn to the Biblical phrases as to render them
compatible with what science is believed to require, and not only this, some proceed to the assertion that the Scriptural statements compel acceptance of the findings of science.
Attempts of this kind make for poor and forced exegesis. Scripture has a right to be exegeted independently from within; and only after its natural meaning has been thus ascertained, can we properly raise the question of agreement or disagreement between Scripture and science. In the present case the ‘posthumous’ exegetical arguments depended upon to make the Bible teach in the account of the fall that man was created subject to death, deserve examination as examples of this type of exegesis. They are the following:
Firstly, the tree of life is represented as something from which man had not yet eaten; therefore he was not yet endowed with life and consequently was subject to death.
Secondly, in Gen. 3:19, it is, we are told, explicitly affirmed that man’s return to dust is natural: ’till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return’.
Thirdly, Gen. 2:17 proves that the sense of the threatening was not, sin will cause thee to die; but simply: sin will subject thee to instantaneous, premature death: ‘in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’.
Now each of these three arguments rests on careless exegesis. The first fails to distinguish between the life man had in virtue of creation and that higher unlosable life to be attained through probation. Of the latter the tree of life was the probable prospective sacrament. That it had not as yet been eaten of could not signify such an absence of life in general as would involve the necessity of death. Man enjoyed fellowship with God in the garden, and God is according to our Lord’s statement not a God of the dead but of the living [Lk. 20:38].
The second argument, in order to prove the point, would have to be wrenched from its context. The words ‘dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return’ occur in a curse. If they expressed a mere declaration of the natural working out of man’s destiny, as created mortal, there would be nothing of a curse in them. Nor is it possible to say here that premature death is the element of curse involved. The preceding words forbid this, since they speak of a slow process of exhausting labour issuing unto death. The conjunction ’till’ is not simply chronological, as though the words could mean: ‘thou wilt have to endure hard labour up till the moment of death.’ The force is climactic: ‘thy hard labour will finally slay thee’. In man’s struggle with the soil, the soil will conquer and claim him. Consequently, if the second half of the statement implied the naturalness of death, it would be in contradiction with the first, where returning to dust is represented as a curse. But what then do the final words, which clearly connect creation from dust with return to it, mean? The simple explanation lies in this, that they declare not the natural lot of death, but explain particularly the form in which the curse of death had been expressed in the foregoing, viz., the form of a return to dust. And this was due to the form in which the curse had been described: hard, fatal struggle with the soil. Now the closing words explain not that death must come, but why, when it comes, it will assume that specific form of a return to dust. In other words not death as such, but the manner of death is here brought into connection with the creation. Had man been created otherwise, and through sin death supervened, then death might have assumed a different form. Death is adjusted in its form to the natural, material constitution of man, but it does not spring as a necessity from this natural, material constitution.
Finally the stressing of the phrase ‘in the day’ in 2:17, is not only uncalled for, but, in view of the sequel of the narrative, impossible. As a threat of immediate, premature death the words have not been fulfilled, and that God subsequently mitigated or modified the curse, there is nothing whatever to suggest. Some knowledge of Hebrew idiom is sufficient to show that the phrase in question simply means
‘as surely as thou eatest thereof’. Close conjunction in time is figuratively used for inevitable eventuation. Our English idiom is not unacquainted with this form of expression [cp. 1 Ki. 2:37].
MORTALITY AND IMMORTALITY
It may be well to define the several senses in which man can be called ‘mortal’ or ‘immortal’ in order to clear the situation as to his natural state, in regard to which so much trouble arises from confusion of thought. ‘Immortality’ in philosophical language may express the persistence of the soul, which, even when the body is dissolved, retains its identity of individual being. In this sense every human being is under all circumstances ‘immortal’, and so were our first parents created; so were they after the fall. Next, ‘immortality’ is used in theological terminology for that state of man in which he has nothing in him which would cause death. It is quite possible that at the same time an abstract contingency of death may overhang man, i.e., the bare possibility may exist of death in some way, for some cause, invading him, but he has nothing of it within him. It is as if we should say of somebody that he is liable to the invasion of some disease, but we should not on that account declare him to have the disease. In this second sense it can be appropriately said that man as created was ‘immortal’, but not that after the fall he was so, for through the act of sinning the principle of death entered into him; whereas before he was only liable to die under certain circumstances, he now inevitably had to die. His immortality in the first sense had been lost. Again, ‘immortality’ can designate, in eschatological language, that state of man in which he has been made immune to death, because immune to sin. Man was not, in virtue of creation, immortal in this highest sense: this is a result of redemption accompanied by eschatological treatment. Such ‘immortality’ is the possession, first of all of God, who has it by nature [cp. 1 Tim. 6:16]; next of the glorified human nature of Christ, who has it in virtue of his resurrection; next of the regenerate, here already in principle [John 11:26], and, of course, in their heavenly state.
At the hand of this definition of the various senses of ‘immortality’, as applying to the various stages or states in the history of man, it now becomes easy to determine in which of them, and in what sense, he was ‘mortal’. In the first sense he is never mortal. In the second sense or stage he was immortal and mortal both, according to the definition employed: mortal as not yet lifted above the contingency of death, but non-mortal as not carrying death as a disease within himself. Here, therefore, immortality and mortality coexisted. In the third stage he is in no sense (except the first, philosophical one) anything else but mortal: he must die; death works in him. In the fourth stage, finally, the word ‘mortal’ has only a qualified application to the regenerate man, viz., in so far as during his earthly state death still exists and works in his body, whilst from the centre of his renewed spirit it has been in principle excluded, and supplanted by an immortal life, which is bound in the end to overcome and extrude death. In this case the coexistence of mortality and immortality is based on the bipartite nature of man.
If, then, death is actually the punishment of sin, not merely according to later Pauline teaching [Rom. 5:12], whose import to that effect no one denies, but according to the account of Genesis itself, the question arises: what kind or form of death? Since in theology several aspects of death have come to be distinguished, it can but conduce to clearness to put the question, even though the answer is not easy to give. If there was a symbol here, as in the case of the three other great principles of the revelation, and the symbol is always something concretely external, the answer indicated would seem to be, the reference is to bodily death. But, it is asked, how could there be such a symbolical significance of bodily death, before death was in the world? Some have pointed to the death of animals as occurring regularly before the fall of man. This cannot be discussed here, because the account gives no suggestion to that effect. So far as the language employed goes, it seems necessary to think proximately of momentary, bodily death. The Hebrew words cannot be translated ‘thou shalt become mortal or ‘thou shalt begin to die’. Nevertheless a deeper conception of death seems to be hinted at. It was intimated
that death carried with it separation from God, since sin issued both in death and in the exclusion from the garden. If life consisted in communion with God, then, on the principle of opposites, death may have been interpretable as separation from God. In this way preparation would be made for the working out of the idea of death in a more internal sense. An allusion to the connection of death with the separation from God is found in vs. 23: ‘God sent him forth to till the ground from whence he was taken’. ‘Tilling the ground from whence he was taken’ contains an unmistakable reminder of vs. 19. In other words: expulsion from the garden (i.e. from God’s presence) means expulsion to death. The root of death is in having been sent forth from God.
FOUR:
THE CONTENT OF THE FIRST REDEMPTIVE SPECIAL REVELATION
The term ‘redemption’ is used by anticipation. It does not occur until the Mosaic period. We employ it for convenience’ sake. The characteristics of God’s saving approach to, and dealing with, man immediately appear. Both justice and grace are turned towards fallen man. The justice is shown in the penal character of the three curses pronounced; the grace for mankind lies implicitly in the curse upon the Tempter. It is, however, clearly present in the whole manner of God’s seeking and interrogating man after the fall. In every one of its features this breathes the spirit of One who prepared for the ultimate showing of grace. We can further observe at this point how Special Revelation attaches itself to General Revelation. The feelings of shame and fear were produced in fallen man by General Revelation.
To this God attaches Himself in His interview with man, which was Special Revelation.
The shame arising from nakedness is in its sexual form the most primitive mode in which the loss of innocence reveals itself. Various theological explanations have been worked out in regard to this. According to some, the physical nakedness is the exponent of the inner nakedness of the soul, deprived of the divine image. According to others the shame of sin is localized where it is in order to bring out that sin is a race matter. According to still others, shame is the reflex in the body of the principle of corruption introduced by sin into the soul. Shame would then be the instinctive perception of the degradation and decay of human nature. But for none of these views can we claim the authority of the account itself. It should be noted, however, that the shame and fear operate with reference to God. The man and the woman hide themselves, not from each other, but from the presence of God. The divine interrogation reduces the sense of shame and fear to its ultimate root in sin. God does not permit man to treat the physical as if it were sufficient reason for his sensation, but compels man to recognize in it the reflex of the ethical.
THE THREE CURSES
The three curses are pronounced in the same sequence as that in which the sin had been committed. In the curse upon the serpent lies a promise of victory over the serpent and his seed. His being condemned to go on his belly enables the woman’s seed to bruise his head, whilst the serpent can only bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. The principle of ultimate victory is further resolved into its principal elements in the formulation given to this curse. They are the following:
(a) The divine initiative in the work of deliverance. The emphasis rests on the pronoun: God says ‘I will put enmity’. Here is not primarily an appeal to man but a divine promise. Nor does God merely instigate or promote enmity; He sovereignly puts it.
(b) The essence of the deliverance consists in a reversal of the attitude assumed by man towards the serpent and God respectively. Man in sinning had sided with the serpent and placed himself in opposition to God. Now the attitude towards the serpent becomes one of hostility; this must carry with it a corresponding change in man’s attitude towards God. God being the mover in the warfare against Satan, man, joining in this, becomes plainly the ally of God.
(c) The continuity of the work of deliverance is declared; the enmity extends to the seed of the woman and of the serpent. God’s promise is to the effect that he will keep up the enmity in the line of human descent and will not allow it to die out. The phrase, ‘seed of the woman’ indicates that the organism of the race will be drawn within the circle of redemption, which does not, of course, mean that all individuals are to become enemies of the serpent. The point is that God saves not merely individual men, but the seed of the woman.
With reference to the seed of the serpent, there are two views. According to one, this phrase designates that part of the human race which continues on the side of the serpent. In that case, ‘seed’ is used metaphorically. The objection to this is that thus the seed of the serpent would at the same time be part of the seed of the woman, whereas the two appear distinctly separated. To this it has been answered that henceforth only the allies of God constitute the true humanity; that they alone deserve the name of the ‘seed of the woman’. It seems more plausible to seek the seed of the serpent outside of the human race. The power of evil is a collective power, a kingdom of evil, of which Satan is the head. The evil spirits are called a seed of the serpent to assimilate the figure to that in the corresponding clause. While not descended from Satan by physical propagation, they derive from him their nature.
(d) The issue of the enmity is foretold. In the R.V. the text-rendering reads, ‘he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel’. But in the margin, as an alternative translation, is given, ‘he shall lie in wait for thy head, thou shalt lie in wait for his heel’. The verb, in Hebrew,
is shuf and the marginal rendering makes this equivalent to sha’af. This originally means ‘to snap at’ something, then ‘to seek to snap at’ something, i.e. ‘to lie in wait’ for it. The verb shuf occurs, outside of this passage, only twice in the Old Testament [Job 9:17; Psa. 139:11]. The text in the Psalter seems incapable of meaning either ‘to bruise’ or ‘to lie in wait for’. But in Job the sense of bruising seems indicated. To the text-rendering it is objected that, while appropriate as from the seed of the woman to the serpent, it is not the natural verb for describing what is done by the serpent. This objection is not serious. If one were to substitute for the idea of ‘bruising’ that of ‘lying in wait for’, the same result would follow, viz., its fitting the one clause and not the other. Besides this, nothing would be said in that case concerning the issue of the struggle. Both in Greek and Aramaic the words for ‘beating’ and ‘striking’ are used of bites and stings. Perhaps also the verb in the second clause is repeated from the first in order that the same expression might be retained. In Rom. 16:20, Paul uses the word ‘bruising’ with evident allusion to the passage before us. Observe that the pronoun ‘it’ in ‘It shall bruise thy head’, has for its antecedent ‘the seed of the woman’, not, as the Vulgate would have it, the woman herself, a rendering which has led some Romanist commentators to find the Virgin Mary here.
‘SEED’
As to the word ‘seed’ there is no reason to depart from the collective sense in either case. The seed of the serpent must be collective, and this determines the sense of the seed of the woman. The promise is, that somehow out of the human race a fatal blow will come which shall crush the head of the serpent. Still, indirectly the possibility is hinted at that in striking this fatal blow the seed of the woman will be concentrated in one person, for it should be noticed that it is not the seed of the serpent but the serpent itself whose head will be bruised. In the former half of the curse the two seeds are contrasted; here the woman’s seed and the serpent. This suggests that as at the climax of the struggle the serpent’s seed will be represented by the serpent, in the same manner the woman’s seed may find representation in a
single person; we are not warranted, however, in seeking an exclusively personal reference to the Messiah here, as though He alone were meant by ‘the woman’s seed’. Old Testament Revelation approaches the concept of a personal Messiah very gradually. It sufficed for fallen man to know that through His divine power and grace God would bring out of the human race victory over the serpent. In that faith could rest. The object of their faith was much less definite than that of ours, who know the personal Messiah. But none the less, the essence of this faith, subjectively considered, was the same, viz., trust in God’s grace and power to bring deliverance from sin.
HUMAN SUFFERING
Finally, we note the revelation of justice in the curses upon the woman and the man. The woman is condemned to suffer in what constitutes her nature as woman. (For the precise construction or possible emendation of the Hebrew text, cp. Dillmann’s Commentary, in loco.) The element of grace interwoven with this consists in the implication that, notwithstanding the penalty of death, the human race will be enabled to propagate itself. The punishment of man consists in toil unto death. Not labour as such is a penalty, for man had been placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it. But painful labour, death-bringing labour is referred to. This applies to labour in general, but the form in which the curse puts it is derived from the most primitive form of labour, that of tilling the soil. At the same time, this brings out the idea that man must henceforth labour for the most necessary food. His will be a veritable struggle for subsistence. In the sweat of his face shall he eat bread, and ‘bread’, perhaps, instead of meaning food in general, has reference specifically to food produced from the soil, in contrast to the more easily procured earlier nourishment, the fruit of the garden. Nothing is said about a subjective deterioration in man, making his labour heavy and in the end fatal. The cause assigned is objective, viz., the productivity of nature is impaired. Cursed is the ground for man’s sake; it brings forth thorns and thistles; here the element of
grace mingling with the curse consists in that the bread will after all be bread; it will sustain life. As the woman is enabled to bring new life into the world, so the man will be enabled to support life by his toil.
FIVE:
THE NOACHIAN REVELATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT LEADING UP TO IT
Two features characterize the revelation of this period. In the first place, its significance lies not in the sphere of redemption, but in the sphere of the natural development of the race, although it has ultimately an important bearing on the subsequent progress of redemption. Secondly, revelation here bears on the whole a negative rather than positive character. It contents itself with bestowing a minimum of grace. A minimum could not be avoided either in the sphere of nature or of redemption, because in the former sphere, without at least some degree of divine interposition, collapse of the world-fabric would have resulted, and in the latter the continuity of fulfilment of the promise would have been broken off, had special grace been entirely withdrawn. These two features find their explanation in the purpose of the period in general. It was intended to bring out the consequences of sin when left so far as possible to itself. Had God permitted grace freely to flow out into the world and to gather great strength within a short period, then the true nature and consequences of sin would have been very imperfectly disclosed. Man would have ascribed to his own relative goodness what was in
reality a product of the grace of God. Hence, before the work of redemption is further carried out, the downward tendency of sin is clearly illustrated, in order that subsequently in the light of this downgrade movement the true divine cause of the upward course of redemption might be appreciated. This constitutes the indirect bearing of the period under review on redemption.
The narrative proceeds in three stages. It first describes the rapid development of sin in the line of Cain. In connection with this it describes the working of common grace in the gift of invention for the advance of civilization in the sphere of nature. It shows further that these gifts of grace were abused by the Cainites and made subservient to the progress of evil in the world. We have here a story of rapid degeneration, so guided by God as to bring out the inherent tendency of sin to lead to ruin, and its power to corrupt and debase whatever of good might still develop. So far as this circle of humanity is concerned, the facts bear out the interpretation above put upon the period. The details of the description are evidently chosen with a view to emphasize the result. The slaying of Abel by Cain illustrates a rapid development of sin, issuing into murder in the second generation. Hence the careful manner in which Cain’s conduct before and after the act is described. Cain committed his sin with premeditation, having been warned beforehand. After the act he denies his sin, is defiant, repudiates every obligation to the law of love. Even after God has pronounced sentence upon him, he is exclusively concerned about the consequences of his sin, not about the sin itself. When this is compared with the act committed in paradise, it becomes evident that a rapid progress in corruption of the human heart had taken place. Sin proves powerful enough to prostitute the gifts of God’s common grace in the sphere of nature for purposes of evil. The first step in natural progress is taken by Enoch, the son of Cain, who built a city. Afterwards, in the eighth generation from Cain, the inventions of cattle-raising, of music, of metal- working appear. The inventors were sons of the Cainite Lamech, from whose song it appears that the increase in power and prosperity made possible by them only caused a further estrangement from
God. The song [Gen. 4:23, 24] is a sword-song. Delitzsch well observes that it is an expression of Titanic arrogance. It makes its power its god, and carries its god, i.e. its sword, in its hand. What God had ordained as a measure of protection for Cain is here scorned, and sole reliance placed upon human revenge through the sword. Even Cain still felt the need of help from God; the spirit of Lamech depends upon itself alone. No trace of the sense of sin remains. It is also recorded that Lamech changed the monogamic relation between the sexes into one of polygamy.
CAINITES AND SETHITES
The narrative next proceeds to describe the development of things in the line of the Sethites [Gen. 4:25–5:32]. In connection with this line nothing is said about natural inventions and secular progress. It is the continuity of redemption that is stressed. The two kinds of progress appear distributed over the two lines of the Cainites and the Sethites. God sometimes chooses families and nations standing outside the sphere of redemption to carry on the progress in secular culture. Examples of this are: the Greeks, who were the cultivators of art; and the Romans, who received a genius for the development of legal and political institutions. Notice that, while among the Sethites the continuity of redemption is carefully marked, nothing is said about a new influx of special grace even among them. The import of the narrative remains negative. Not that the Sethites made great progress in the knowledge and service of God, but rather that they kept themselves relatively free from the degeneration of the Cainites; this is the burden of the narrative. Its high-lights are in the contrasts drawn between certain outstanding figures in this line and corresponding prominent figures in the Cainite succession. Thus Cain and Abel are put over against each other. Similarly Enoch, the son of Cain, and Enosh, the son of Seth. But the culmination of the contrast is seen in the seventh generation. Here the Sethite Enoch and the Cainite Lamech are opposites. In distinction from the pride and arrogance of Lamech, Enoch is related to have ‘walked with God’. This means more than that he led a pious life, for the
customary phrases for that are ‘to walk before God’, and ‘to walk after God’. ‘To walk with God’ points to supernatural intercourse with God. The phrase is after this used but twice in the Old Testament, of Noah in the immediate sequel, and in Mal. 2:6 of the priests. Obviously some connection is intended between this unique degree of closeness to God and Enoch’s exemption from death. Through the patriarch’s translation it is once more proclaimed, that where communion with God has been restored, there deliverance from death is bound to follow. The correctness of the view taken of ‘walking with God’ may be verified from the later Apocalyptic tradition of the Jews, which represents Enoch as the great prophet, initiated into all mysteries. With the description of the Cainite Lamech, it will be noticed, the further pursuit of the Cainite line is dropped. The other line is continued until it reaches Noah. In harmony with this the chronology is attached to the Sethite line, for the chronology is the frame-work on which in Scripture the progress of redemption is suspended. The only other point commemorated in the Sethite tradition concerns the utterance of Lamech, Noah’s father, at the birth of his child: ‘This same shall comfort us for our work and toil of our hands, because (not out of the ground) of the ground which Jehovah has cursed’ [5:29]. This saying expresses a profound sense of the burdensomeness of the curse, and in so far of the burdensomeness of sin, the cause of the curse, and it also voices a, perhaps premature, expectation that from this burden relief, comfort, will soon be found. It contrasts vividly once more with the paganistic sentiment of the Cainites, who either did not feel the curse, or, if they felt it, expected relief from themselves and their human inventions.
Notwithstanding these isolated instances of the continuity of redemptive grace, the account as a whole tends to bring out the divine purpose above formulated. Even the good kept alive was not enabled to force back the evil. Nothing is said about any influence proceeding from the Sethites upon the Cainites. While the power of redemption remained stationary, the power of sin waxed strong, and became ready to attack the good that still existed.
The character of the period in this respect finds clearest expression in what is said, thirdly, about the commingling of the Cainites and Sethites through intermarriage. The latter allowed themselves to become assimilated to the wickedness of the former. This was permitted by God to go on to the point where the lesson of the inherent destructive potencies of sin had been fully taught, and where it could not go on any further, because Noah and his family only having remained faithful, the continuity of the work of God appeared in danger, and where the time had been reached to teach the finishing lesson of the judgment, without which the entire period would have failed of its purpose. In the above statement the more usual interpretation of ‘the daughters of men’, and ‘the sons of God’, is followed. The former are women of the Cainites, the latter are the Sethites. This interpretation, however, is disputed by not a few exegetes. They hold that ‘the sons of God’ here designates, as it elsewhere sometimes does, superhuman beings, angels. We shall not discuss all the arguments that may be used in favour of or against each of these two views. The former alone would seem to fit into the construction of the significance of the period as a whole above made. We assumed the period to serve the purpose of showing the necessary outcome of sin, when left to work itself out freely. If the angel theory be accepted, this will tend to obscure the idea aimed at. In that case we shall have no longer a development of human sin left to itself, but a development under the influence of a quite extraordinary superhuman factor ab extra. The illogical nature of the contrast between ‘daughters of men’ and ‘sons of God’ in case the latter also belong to the human race, is not decisive. In Hebrew idiom sometimes a genus is set over against part of the genus, as though the two were mutually exclusive. The explanation lies in the circumstance, that in such cases the whole is thought of as having only the generic characteristics and nothing more, whereas to the part a certain distinction is attributed which raises it above the genus, to which nevertheless logically it belongs. So here: the daughters of men, that is, of those who were men and nothing more, are set over against those who, while being men naturally, had the distinction of being besides this the sons of God. Ps. 73:5 and Jer.
32:20, are cases entirely similar. It has been urged that the name ‘sons of God’ in a spiritual sense would be out of place at such an early stage of revelation, but this overlooks the fact that the use is not carried back into that period; it is employed from the writer’s standpoint. An argument in favour of the angel theory is taken from Jude’s Epistle vs. 7; here, after the description of the fall of the angels in vs. 6, the writer proceeds: ‘Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, having in like manner as these given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh, etc.’ It is urged that the words ‘in like manner as these’ must link together the angels of vs. 6 and the cities of the plain, so that the sin of the former would have also been of a sexual kind, intercourse of angels with human beings. And confirmation for this is still further found in the term ‘strange flesh’ meaning that angels went after human beings. It cannot be denied that this argument from Jude has some force. Closely looked at, however, it is not conclusive, and open to certain objections. ‘In like manner as these’ is by some interpreters taken to link together not the angels of vs. 6, and the cities of vs. 7, but Sodom and Gomorrah and ‘the cities about them’. In that case no fornication of angels is referred to. A serious objection to the theory arises from the phrase ‘taking to themselves wives’, which could mean nothing short of permanent intermarriage, not casual fornication, between angels and women, a difficult thing to envisage. Finally, ‘strange flesh’ seems hard to fit into the angel theory, for the angels according to the Old Testament are not ‘flesh’. On the other hand, the word precisely fits into what was the abomination of the cities of the plain, viz., homosexuality.
It ought to be observed that critical writers often connect with the angel view the further assumption that the narrative in Gen. 6 is meant to give an account of the origin of sin, that the writer was unacquainted with the story of the fall in the earlier chapters, in other words that the two accounts belong to different documents. This is what renders the exegesis of primary importance.
Fourthly, in 6:3, 5–7, we have the divine summing up of the issue of the period, and the judgment pronounced upon the prediluvian race. In regard to vs. 3, there is considerable uncertainty of interpretation. This arises from the two words adhon and beshaggam, especially from the former. The word dun or din may be rendered ‘to strive’ or ‘to rule’. The former meaning is adopted by the A.V., which renders: ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man’. The R.V. in the text retains this, but in the margin offers the alternative: ‘shall not always abide in man’. Beshaggam is a compound form resolvable in two ways: it may be taken as made up of the preposition be, the relative sha (an abbreviation of esher’) and the adverb gam, ‘also’. This yields ‘in that also’. Or it may be resolved into the preposition be, the infinitive of the verb shagag, ‘to go astray’, and the suffix am, ‘their’. This yields ‘in their going astray’. Each of these resolvings may be joined to each of the two given renderings of dun or din. The difference between the latter is of great importance, for the choice in favour of one or the other will place the statement in quite a different sphere. The version with ‘strive’ places it in the ethical sphere. God would mean by this that He will not always continue to let His Spirit exercise the restraining influence hitherto exerted upon sin. A certain limit of time, 120 years, is fixed for the divine abstention from withdrawing this influence; after that comes the judgment. And the reason assigned is either that man also is ‘flesh’, ‘morally and religiously corrupt’, or that in their going astray they are flesh, i.e., the judgment to come suits their condition. The version of dun or din with ‘to rule’ puts the whole matter in the physical sphere. The Spirit of God is according to the general teaching of the Old Testament the source of natural life in man [cp. Psa. 104:29, 30]. God by saying that His Spirit will not indefinitely abide in man announces the purpose of putting an end to the physical existence of mankind after the limit of 120 years. The reason is either that he also is flesh, by reason of sin fallen a prey to physical corruption, or that in his going astray they are become physically subject to corruption, which will actually overtake them after 120 years. The rendering of the verb with ‘rule’ or ‘abide’ deserves the preference. The ethical notion of ‘the flesh’, if it occurs in the Old Testament at all, can hardly be expected to occur
thus early. On the alternate view of the three things mentioned, the Spirit, the flesh, the shortening of humanity’s lease of life, all lie on the same line. Some would understand the 120 years of the length henceforth allotted to the life of individual men. This does not agree with the subsequent facts. It could be accepted only on the basis of a critical view, according to which the passage originally stood in no connection with the later patriarchal narratives, and that it was written by one who knew nothing of a flood, but assumed an uninterrupted development of mankind from the earliest times.
The other part of the divine summing up, the statement of vss. 5–7, offers no difficulty. In the strongest terms the extreme wickedness reached at the end of the period is described. The points brought out are firstly: the intensity and extent of evil (‘great in the earth’); secondly: its inwardness (‘every imagination of the thoughts of his heart’); thirdly: the absoluteness of the sway of evil excluding everything good (‘only evil’); fourthly: the habitual, continuous working of evil (‘all the day’). The same judgment or irremediable wickedness is even more emphatically affirmed in the words: ‘It repented Jehovah that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart’. In anthropomorphic fashion this expresses the idea that the development of mankind frustrated the end for which God had placed man on the earth. Hence God said: ‘I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground; both man and beast and creeping thing and fowl of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them’. The inclusion of the lower orders of life shows that through humanity the entire organism of nature has become infected with evil. Still it is significantly added: ‘But Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah’. The continuity of the race is preserved. God saves enough out of the wreck to enable Him to carry out His original purpose with the self-same humanity He had created.
REVELATION AFTER THE FLOOD
We now come to the Noachian Revelation which took place after the flood. In this positive, constructive measures were taken for the
further carrying out of the divine purpose. Here again the reminder is in place that the principles disclosed and the measures taken did not directly relate to the prosecution of redemption, although an indirect bearing upon that also must not be overlooked. That the development of natural life is proximately dealt with, follows from the following: what is ordained by God and the promise made have equal reference to the entire Noachian family. But we know that the work of redemption was carried on in the line of Shem only; the arrangement made is not even confined to the human race; it is made with every living creature, nay, with the earth herself; that the berith is a berith of nature appears from the berith-sign; the rainbow is a phenomenon of nature, and absolutely universal in its reference. All the signs connected with redemption are bloody, sacramentally dividing signs.
The positive Noachian revelation proceeds in three stages. The first of the three recites the purpose of God, expressed in a monologue, to institute a new order of affairs. The second describes the measures taken that give content and security to this order. The third relates how the new order was confirmed in the form of a berith.
The first section consists of Gen. 8:20–22. God declares, ‘I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake … neither will I smite any more everything living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease’. The regularity of nature in its great fundamental processes will henceforth continue. There is, however, added to this a qualification—’while the earth remaineth’. This pertains to the eschatological background of the deluge [cp. 1 Pet. 3:20, 21; 2 Pet. 2:5]. In vs. 21 the motive is assigned for the divine declaration: ‘for that the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth’. Before the deluge almost identical words were spoken by God to motive the necessity of the judgment, 6:5. How can the same statement explain, first, that the judgment is unavoidable, and then that there will be no repetition of the judgment henceforth? The solution of the difficulty lies in the addition of the words ‘from
his youth’ in the second case. What was described in Gen. 6:5, was the historical culmination of a process of degeneration; that called for judgment. What is here described is the natural state of evil in the human heart as such, altogether apart from historical issues. Because the evil is thus deep-seated, no judgment can cure it. Therefore other means must be resorted to, and these other means would become impossible of execution, if repeated, catastrophic judgments of this nature in the sequel interfered with the ordinary unfolding of history.
The second section [9:1–7] relates the ordinances instituted in order to make possible and safeguard this programme of forbearance. These ordinances refer to the propagation of life, the protection of life, from animals and men both, and the sustenance of life. What relates to the sustenance of life has been inserted into the promise of protection of life from animals, because the permission of animal food for better sustenance naturally attached itself to this. In order to understand these measures we must clearly visualize the reduced state of the human race in which the flood had resulted. Hence the echo of some of the original creative ordinances is heard here. The command and benediction of fruitfulness are anew issued. The importance of this may be inferred from its double occurrence, first in vs. 1, and then again in vs. 7. As to the protection of human life from animals, vs. 2 provides for the subjection of the animals to man: ‘the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens, with all wherewith the ground teemeth, and all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered’. To this is added in vs. 5: ‘And surely the blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it’.
Originally, there was a supremacy of man [Gen. 1:26, 28], but, as instituted at creation, this was of the nature of a voluntary submission. This may be seen from the eschatological pictures given of it by the prophets, on the principles of a return of paradise at the end [Isa. 11:6–8]. In the state of sin the result is obtained by fear and dread instilled into the animals. And God promises to avenge man where devouring animals destroy his life: ‘your blood of your lives
will I require’. It is not possible to tell with certainty how this law works itself out; it has been suggested that every species of carnivorous animals is doomed to ultimate extinction. Intercalated between these references to hostile animals is the permission of animal food. The permission is qualified: ‘but flesh with the life thereof, the blood thereof ye shall not eat’. This being coupled with the promise of vengeance from animals reveals the point of view. Since the animals are not to devour man after a carnivorous fashion, man also is not to eat animals as wild beasts devour their living prey. He must show proper reverence for life as a sacred thing, of which God alone has the disposal, and for the use of which man is dependent on the permission of God. The Levitical law repeats this prohibition, but adds as another ground the fact that the blood comes upon the altar, which, of course, for the Old Testament makes the prohibition of blood-eating absolute. Through failure to distinguish between the simple and the complicated motive this practice of absolute abstention was continued in the church for many centuries. The so-called decree of the Apostles [Acts 15:20] made the restraint obligatory for Gentile Christians, yet not because the thing was wrong in itself, but for the reason that no offence should be given to Jewish-Christian brethren.
The last point relates to the protection of human life from the assault of man, and lays down the divine law for the punishment of murder: ‘At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He man’. Some, in order to evade the institution of the death penalty for murder, would understand these words as a mere prediction, that murder is apt to be followed by blood-vengeance under the lex talionis. This exegesis is made positively impossible by the added clause: ‘for in the image of God made He man’. The image of God in man can never furnish a motivation for the likelihood of the exaction of blood-vengeance.
The question remains what the image of God in man has to do with the infliction of the death-penalty. Two answers have been given to
this. According to the one this clause explains why such an extraordinary power of taking away the life of another man can be conferred upon man’s fellow creature. It is in virtue of the sovereignty of God, being part of the divine image, laid upon him that man can execute justice in capital matters. Others understand the clause as furnishing the reason why assault upon the life of man should meet with this extreme penalty; in life slain it is the image of God, i.e., the divine majesty that is assaulted. The latter interpretation deserves the preference. Notice the difference that here the instrument for the execution of the divine ordinance is clearly indicated: ‘by man shall his blood be shed’, whereas in the case of retribution upon the animals this aspect of the matter is left indefinite. Further, the ground for the institution of the penalty appears to be a twofold one; on the one hand, the larger context in which the ordinance occurs proves it to be a measure of protection for society. At the same time the reference to the image of God shows that something still deeper underlies. It may well be questioned, whether the former alone, and that without an explicit injunction from God, could ever justify the infliction of death from one man upon another. Purely utilitarian, social considerations would be hardly sufficient here. They can come in as a secondary reason only after the matter has been put upon the high ground of the administration of justice sanctioned by God. The argument so frequently met with, that capital punishment adds but a second murder to the first, is an argument based either on total ignorance of the facts of Scripture or on open denial of the obligatory character of what the Bible teaches. How can that be characterized as a duplicated murder that professes to rest on the most explicit command of God, and over against which menhave nothing to put except sentimental objections, and an unproven theory about the meliorating efficacy of forms of discipline which from their very nature exclude the punishment of death?
The last section is 9:8–17. God gives His promise the form of a berith through adding a solemn sign to it. This serves the purpose of bringing out the absolute sureness of the order instituted. Jer. 33:25
speaks in this sense of God’s berith of day and night, i.e., of the unfailing succession of these two. Perhaps, however, there is more here than a comparative introduction of the berith idea: an actual reference to the Noachian episode may be intended. This is certainly the case in Isa. 54:9, where the Noachian berith stands in its infallibility as a type of the even greater perpetuity of the promise of God’s oath of redemption. The promise to Noah has its limit in the eschatological crisis, which shall bring the earth to an end, but, though in that final catastrophe the mountains depart and the hills are removed, yet even then God’s lovingkindness shall not depart from Israel, nor the berith of his peace be removed [vs. 10]. The representation with regard to the sign of the rainbow is anthropomorphic, but for that very reason more impressive than it could possibly be otherwise. The idea is not, as usually assumed, that by the bow man will be reminded of the divine promise, but that God Himself, were it possible for Him to forget, will by the sign Himself be reminded of His oath: ‘When I bring a cloud over the earth, it shall come to pass that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my berith’. With the rainbow it is as later on it was with circumcision; both existed before, and at a certain time, the appointed time, were consecrated by God to serve as signs of his berith. The sign here is connected in its character with the ominous force of nature from which it pledges protection. It is produced against the background of the very clouds that had brought destruction to the earth. But it is produced upon these by the rays of the sun which in the symbolism of Scripture represent the divine grace.
SIX:
THE PERIOD BETWEEN NOAH AND THE GREAT PATRIARCHS
The points to be discussed here are: [1] the prophetic deliverances of Noah with regard to his descendants; [2] the table of the nations; [3] the confusion of tongues; [4] the election of the Shemites.
[1] The prophetic deliverances of Noah [Gen. 9:20–27]
These prophecies are in the case of Canaan (Ham) a curse, in the case of Japhet and Shem a blessing. The words must be regarded throughout as words of prophecy. Even paganism ascribes to such utterances a real influence to affect the persons concerned. This influence was conceived as magical, but in Scripture this is raised to the plane of inspired prophecy. Such prophecies in this early period represent the high-water mark of the advancing tide of revelation.
It will be observed, that the basis for the distinction between cursing and blessing lay in the ethical sphere. The shameless sensuality of Ham, the modesty of Japhet and Shem, marked a difference in common morality. Nevertheless it shaped in a most far-reaching manner the whole subsequent course of redemptive history. The supernatural process of redemption remains in contact with the natural development of the race. These influential traits were typical traits. They were the source of great racial dispositions. The event took place at a critical juncture where no significant event could fail to influence history for ages to come. The Old Testament recognizes that among the Canaanites the same type of sin here cursed was the dominating trait of evil. The descriptions given in the Pentateuch leave no doubt as to this [cp. Lev. 18:22; Deut. 12:29–32]. Even among the ancients outside of Israel (Japhetites) the sensual depravity in sexual life of Phoenicians, and Carthaginians in particular, had become proverbial.
The question has been raised why, instead of Ham, who had committed the sin, Canaan his son is cursed. Some assume that Ham was the youngest son of Noah, and Canaan the youngest son of Ham. The underlying principle would then be that Ham is punished in that son who sustains the same relation to him as he sustained to Noah. This would bring out the fact of its being a sin committed against his father. There would be nothing in this against the Old Testament law of retribution, for the Old Testament is not in such points so morbidly individualistic as we are apt to be. Especially in the earlier part of Old Testament revelation the principle of generic solidarity is stressed [cp. Ex. 20:5, 6, where the operation of the rule both in malam and in bonam partem is affirmed]. Later revelation, especially in Ezekiel, brought the closer working out of the problem involved.
However, the facts of the genealogical relationship above assumed are subject to doubt. The usual sequence in which the names of Noah’s sons are given is Shem, Ham and Japhet, which indicates that Ham occupied the middle place. Nor is there any evidence for Canaan having been the youngest son of Ham. ‘Youngest son’ in the Revised Version, vs. 24, is not conclusive, because the Hebrew word can be comparative as well as superlative, which would yield ‘younger son’ (as in R.V. margin), assigning to Ham the middle place in the triad. Under these circumstances it is best to adopt a modified form of the view proposed, and to say: Ham was punished in one of his sons because he had sinned against his father, and he was punished in that particular son, because Canaan most strongly reproduced Ham’s sensual character. It should be noticed that not all the descendants of Ham are cursed but only the Canaanites; the others receive neither curse nor blessing.
Finally we must in passing touch upon the critical solution of the problem in hand. The divisive critics say that in the original version of the story the three sons of Noah were Shem, Japhet, and Canaan, and that this was afterwards changed into the present enumeration. This, of course, requires the deletion of the words ‘Ham the father of’
in vs. 22, and further of the words ‘Ham is the father of Canaan’ in vs. 18. These words were subsequently added, according to this theory, when the family relationships of Noah were altered. The curse upon Canaan consists in his being degraded to servitude to his brethren. This recurs as a refrain in the sequel to the blessings of Japhet and Shem.
The second member of the prophecy relates to Shem. Here the use of the name Jehovah seems significant. In point of fact this name contains in itself the blessing bestowed upon Shem. It lies in this, that God in the capacity of Jehovah, the God of redemption, gives Himself to this part of the race for religious possession and enjoyment. It is a berith-formula, meaning far more than that the Shemites will worship Jehovah. This is the first time in Scripture that God is called the God of some particular group of mankind. It is so extraordinary a thing as to inspire the patriarch to the utterance of a doxology: ‘Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem’. Resolved into its explicit meaning it would read: ‘Blessed be Jehovah, because He is willing to be the God of Shem.’
The third member of the prophecy is of more uncertain interpretation. It reads: ‘God enlarge Japhet, and let him live in the tents of Shem’. One point of uncertainty is the meaning of the verb (yapht, a play on the sound of the name Japhet). Is this to be taken locally or metaphorically? The former makes it refer to extension of territory, the latter understands it of enlargement, i.e. increase of prosperity. A second point of uncertainty relates to the question, who is the subject of the clause ‘let him dwell’. Is this meant of God or of Japhet? The two questions are interlinked. If the subject of the second clause be Japhet, then it is but natural to understand the first clause of enlargement of territory. To dwell in the tents of some tribe or people is a common way for describing conquest of one tribe by another. For Japhet to dwell in the tents of Shem implies conquest of Shemitic territory by Japhetites. On the other hand, if ‘him’ in ‘let him dwell’ relates to God, then we should have to paraphrase as follows: May God give large prosperity to Japhet, but let Him bestow
upon Shem what far transcends all such temporal blessedness, let Him (i.e. God) dwell in the tents of Shem. In that case a contrast is drawn between the objective gifts bestowed upon the Japhetites, and the personal self-communication of God upon the Shemites. The territorial rendering of ‘enlarge’ carrying with it the reference of ‘him’ to Japhet deserves the preference. The use of the name Elohim favours it, since it is not of Elohim but of Jehovah that such a gracious indwelling is predicated. Understanding it of Japhetites overrunning Shemitic lands, we should not, however, allegorize the statement, as though a spiritual dwelling together between Shemites and Japhetites were referred to. A real political conquest is intended. But ultimately such physical conquest will have for its result the coming of a religious blessing to Japhet. Occupying the tents of Shem he will find the God of Shem, the God of redemption and of revelation, there. The prophecy, both in its proximate political import and as to its ultimate spiritual consequences, was fulfilled through the subjugating of Shemitic territory by the Greeks and Romans. For this blessing became one of the most potent factors in the spread of the true religion over the earth. Delitzsch strikingly remarks: ‘We are all Japhetites dwelling in the tents of Shem’.
[2] The table of the nations
As a piece of word-revelation this does not properly belong to the period with which we are dealing. It is something incorporated into the Mosaic account, from whatever source derived. Nevertheless, in so far as it throws backward its light upon the procedure of God at the post-diluvian time, we are justified in using it for the elucidation of the events of the latter. The table anticipates somewhat in that it speaks of nations, families, tongues, the origin of which distinction is not described till chap. 11. The table of the Shemites comes last, although genealogically this was not the sequence to be expected, which proves that this is not a piece of secular genealogy. It is a chapter belonging to the genealogy of redemption. The idea embodied in the table is that, while for the proximate future the Shemites will constitute the race of redemption, yet the other nations
are by no means permanently dismissed from the field of Sacred History. Their names are registered to express the principle that in the fulness of time the divine interposition meant to return to them again, and to re-enclose them in the sacred circle.
[3] The division of tongues [11:1–9]
The building of a city and tower was inspired first by the desire to obtain a centre of unity, such as would keep the human race together. But the securing of this unity was by no means the ultimate purpose of the effort. Unity was to afford the possibility for founding a gigantic empire, glorifying man in his independence of God. The latest criticism finds here two myths woven together, one describing the building of a tower for preserving unity, the other relating to the building of a city for gaining renown. But this, while resembling the explanation just given, misses the inner connection between the two projects. The tower was for the sake of the city, and there is no need of dissection. God interferes with the execution of this plan, not so much, or at least not only, from opposition to its impious spirit, but chiefly from fidelity to His promise, that the sinful development of humanity will not again issue into a repeated catastrophe on the scale of the deluge. If this were not to happen, the progress of sin had to be checked. If the whole of humanity had remained concentrated, the power of sin would likewise have remained united, and doubtless soon again have reached stupendous proportions. Hence it was next necessary to break up the unity of the race. As Delitzsch has observed: ‘the immoral and irreligious products of one nation are not equally destructive as those of an undivided humanity’, and ‘many false religions are better than one, since they paralyse one another’.
It is true that in the abstract the unity of the race, unbroken by national distinctions, is the ideal. Had sin not entered, this would undoubtedly have been the actual state of things, as it will become so in the final eschatological dispensation [cp. Gal. 3:28]. But for the present intervening period this is not the will of God. Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that
would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.
Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme. Besides this, however, a twofold positive divine purpose may be discerned in this occurrence. In the first place there was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfilment of which depends on relative seclusion from others. And secondly, the events at this stage were closely interwoven with the carrying out of the plan of redemption. They led to the election and separate training of one race and one people. Election from its very nature presupposes the existence of a larger number from among which the choice can be made.
[4] The election of the Shemites to furnish the bearers of redemption and revelation
Here the question must be raised: Was there any inherent fitness in the Shemites to serve this task? The answer is in the affirmative. Two traits come under consideration, the one belonging to the sphere of psychology, the other to the sphere of religious endowment. In connection with the former the following may be noted: The Shemites have a predominantly passive, receptive, rather than active or productive mentality. At first this temperament may have been universally human, as best suited to a primitive stage of knowledge. But at this point, where humanity separates into its great branches, and the racial dispositions become diversified, it seems to have been particularly inherited and cultivated among the Shemites. The form thus originally assumed by the truth secured the possibility of its
translation into the mental world of other groups of the race. It is true, we, as non-Shemites, experience considerable difficulty in understanding the Old Testament Scriptures. But much greater would have been the difficulties of the Hebrew mind in apprehending a revelation given in Greek forms of thought. At the same time the Shemites must have possessed this mental predisposition in a moderate degree. The ease with which the Arabs and Jews have assimilated the Indo-Germanic type of civilization, and the large contribution made by them to the progress of scientific and philosophic thought, prove that they carry within them a twofold capacity, that of receiving the truth in its concrete shape, and that of translating it into other abstract forms of apprehension.
In connection with the antecedent religious endowment the following points may be noted:
(a) The French writer Renan at one time endeavoured to reduce this religious endowment to a psychological one. Observing that the three great monotheistic religions have sprung up on Shemitic soil, he set up the hypothesis of a monotheistic instinct as characteristic of this racial group. Renan did not look upon this instinct as superior, but felt inclined to connect it with a lack of imaginative power. At the present day this theory is entirely discredited. In the prevailing school of criticism a widely different explanation of the origin of monotheism is current. It arose at a comparatively late point in the history of Israel, viz., in the period of the prophets, from about 800 to 600 B.C. The manner of its origin was thus: these prophets had begun to perceive that Jehovah was supremely ethical in his character, which perception was a result of the prospect that the national and religious existence of Israel was about to be sacrificed to the principle of retributive righteousness. Eliminating the element of national favouritism (grace) from the conception of God, and retaining as its content only the idea of strict justice, they were led to perceive, since the core of Jehovah’s Deity lay in this, that the gods of the heathen, who lacked this qualification, were not truly gods, which perception practically amounted to monotheism, although it took a
considerable time for this germinal idea to assume shape and to ripen.
But, apart from these totally different constructions of the critical school, Renan’s hypothesis breaks down before the fact that numerous groups of Shemites appear far from monotheistic at a time when instinct certainly should have made some approach towards the end in view. Edomites and Moabites were Shemites of as pure stock as the Hebrews, yet neither of them became monotheistic in the long time they lie open to our observation in the Old Testament. Passing on from the nearer kinsmen of Israel to the remoter Assyrians, we find them possessed of a rich civilization, but none the less given over to a most luxuriant type of polytheism. The Arabs, to be sure, became in the end fanatical monotheists, but they had borrowed their monotheism from the Jews and the Christians. Nor is this all. The children of Israel themselves continued for a long time to feel the attractions of polytheism, after they had long enough known monotheism (on the critical view) to have become thoroughly imbued with it. Jeremiah complains [2:9–11] that Israel is more inclined to change its God than the heathen nations. It is not difficult to explain this. The pagan nations had no desire to change, because their religion was the natural expression of their disposition. Israel persistently struggled to throw off the yoke of Jehovah’s service, because the old pagan nature of Israel felt is as a yoke. From the standpoint that the Shemites had an instinct for monotheism all this becomes entirely unexplainable.
(b) After all this has been taken into account, it should none the less be noted, that there appears among the smaller groups a certain uniformity of religion. All the deities, however great their number, are more or less modifications of the same fundamental conception. This may be readily seen from the synonymy of the names of the deities. And these names are found with slight variations of form among all the Shemitic tribes.
(c) Significant in this connection is also the element that seems to lie uppermost in the Shemitic religious consciousness. This is the element of submission, cp. the word ‘Islam’, meaning this very thing. This is, of course, an idea that is essential to all religion, but it is not everywhere developed with equal strength. Without it religion can never become the supreme factor in the life of the religious subject, which it must be in order to act as a great historic force. The Shemites have become leaders in the world of religion, because religion was the leading factor in their life, no matter whether for good or for evil.
(d) Still another feature worth considering here is what has been called ‘tribal particularism’. By this is meant the worship of one god by some particular tribe in tribal relations. It does not exclude belief in the existence or right to worship of other gods in other circles, or even in the same circle, in other relationships. This is not monotheism, of course, but it is a pronounced form of tribal monolatry.
(e) These peculiarities of Shemitic religion stand at the farthest remove from every pantheizing form of a tendency towards unification elsewhere observed, and on the surface seemingly like it. Great emphasis is placed upon the personal character of the relationship between the god and his worshipper. The name for the Shemitic religious subject is ebed (servant), and an intensely practical personal name it is. Personal devotion to the deity is the keynote of this service. Negatively the same thing reveals itself in the careful distinction upheld between God and nature. The exaltation above nature of the deity, that which is called in religious terminology the ‘holiness’ of the gods (well to be distinguished from ethical holiness), is an outstanding trait. Where thus the transcendent power and majesty of the deity is felt, the temptation is much lessened to confound God with the world or draw Him down into the realm of nature or matter. Ordinary pantheistic monism may easily tend in precisely the opposite direction. The unity holding the individual gods together may become nothing but the impersonal life
of nature. Here monism and polytheism are not only reconcilable but mutually promotive of each other. Drawing down the deity into the processes of nature leads to the introduction of sex into the life of the divine. From this results a theogony and the consequent multiplication of gods. There seems reason to believe that, wherever such traits appear in Shemitic religion, they are not an ancient Shemitic inheritance, but the result of corrupting influences introduced from without. In Arabia, where the Shemitic tribes lived most secluded, such features were even at the time of Mohammed exceedingly rare. We learn in the records of the time of three goddesses only, and these were not brought into sexual relations with the male gods. In the mind of Israel there always remained a consciousness that the grosser, sensual elements of idolatry were foreign, not only to the legitimate religion of Jehovah, but also to the ancient Shemitic inheritance.
(f) Finally, we must observe that such religious race-dispositions were not self-produced through evolution, on the one hand, nor sufficient of themselves, on the principle of evolution, to produce the higher religion of the Old Testament. It is plain that the traits on which we have dwelt lie rather on the line of a downward than of an upward movement. Outside of Israel we find them in historic times not on the increase, but decidedly on the decrease. Within Israel itself we can trace the downward drift of this natural Shemitic faith, not merely in the struggle with alien influences, but also in a gradual internal decline. What existed, and continued to keep alive, was the remnant of a purer knowledge of God, preserved from extinction by God Himself.
As to the other point, that the higher religion of the Old Testament is not a simple evolution from low beginnings, it is sufficient to point out, that nowhere else in the Shemitic world has a similar higher type of religion made its appearance, except in Israel. The only reasonable explanation for the uniqueness of Israel in this respect is that here another factor was at work, the factor of supernatural revelation.
The connection of subsequent revelation and this ancient Shemitic religion is shown in the two oldest and most common divine names, El and Elohim. The Biblical usage in regard to the word ‘name’ differs considerably from ours. In the Bible the name is always more than a conventional sign. It expresses character or history. Hence a change in either respect frequently gives rise to a change of name. This applies to the names of God likewise. It explains why certain divine names belong to certain stages of revelation. They serve to sum up the significance of a period. Therefore they are not names which man gives to God, but names given by God to Himself.
There is further to be distinguished in the Bible a three-fold significance of the term ‘name’ in its religious connections. First it may express one divine characteristic. That which we call an attribute, the Old Testament calls a name of God. Such an adjectival designation may easily pass over into a proper name. God is holy; that is His name. But it becomes a nomen proprium when the prophet speaks of Him as ‘The Holy One of Israel’. Next, the name of God can stand abstractly and comprehensively for all that God has revealed concerning Himself. This is ‘the name of God’. In this sense it is simply equivalent to Revelation, not, of course, as an act, but as a product. This use applies to both General and Special Revelation. God’s name is glorious in all the earth. The pious trust in the name of God, they make it a high tower. In the third place, the name of God comes to stand realistically for God Himself. The name is equivalent to God in Theophany. Of this we shall speak later.
The name El is probably derived from the root ul meaning ‘to be strong’. So El first meant ‘strength’, then ‘the strong One’. Another etymology makes El come from alah, ‘to precede’, which would yield ‘leader’ or ‘commander’. According to still others El is from the same root as the preposition el. It would then signify ‘the one who stretches himself out towards things’. Or, ‘the One to whom others go out for help’. This, however, is rather too abstract. When explaining that it signifies power we should be careful to take power in the
dynamic sense, because another name seems to express the element of authority.
Originally El must have been in frequent use. It still occurs as an appellative in the phrase: ‘It is in the el (power) of my hand’ [Gen. 31:29; cp. Prov. 3:27; Mic. 2:1]. Gradually El was supplanted by Elohim. In some of the later writings of the Old Testament it does not occur at all. In the Song of Moses [Ex. 15], it is used several times. The later period employed it chiefly in poetry. It also continued to be used in theophoric names, or poetic designations of God. El occurs in the Old Testament somewhat more than 200 times.
The derivation of Elohim is uncertain. It may come from a Shemitic root with the basic meaning of ‘to fear, to be perplexed, and so, to seek refuge’. From that, there is but one step to the notion ‘dread’, and this would be objectified in the sense of ‘the One to be dreaded’, or ‘the One to whom one comes in fear or dread’. A rather novel theory is based on the observation that El has no plural, and Elohim no singular, so that Elohim is considered the regular plural formation of El. There is, however, another singular to Elohim, viz., Eloah, which, to be sure, occurs only in poetic writings, and may, therefore, be an artificial form to supply the lacking singular. Some critics consider this plural a remnant of polytheistic usage, going back to a period in which the people knew many divinities, not only one God. Against this tells the fact that Elohim occurs only among the Hebrews, and such a plural form for a single deity is not found among other Shemitic tribes. Israel, being the only Shemitic nation that developed monotheism, would scarcely have, alone of all others, retained such a trace of original polytheism. Elohim is simply a plural expressing majesty, magnitude, fulness, richness. Probably God was named Elohim, because the fulness of His might extended in every direction. The plural need have no more polytheistic flavour than the Greek word theotes (feminine) proves all original Greek deities to have been females. Elohim is not used in theophoric names. The Hebrew sometimes has to use it as a true numerical plural, e.g. when speaking of pagan gods. In such a case, however, it
is always construed with a plural verb, whereas in a case of reference to the true God it takes a singular verb. The name Elohim occurs in the Old Testament more than 2,500 times.
SEVEN:
REVELATION IN THE PATRIARCHAL PERIOD
CRITICAL VIEWS
The first question to be raised is, whether the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are historical characters. Historians holding the evolutionary theory assert that the descent of families or nations from one man is everywhere else in the field of history a pure fiction. On this view the question becomes urgent, how did these figures arise? The problem involves two elements, one as to the rise of the incidents and characters in the narrative, the other as to the origin of the names.
Common to most explanations of the critical school is the view that the incidents and character-descriptions arose out of a self-portrayal and self-idealization of the later people of Israel, during the time of the kingdom. The Israelites had a strong consciousness of their own distinctiveness as regards other people. So in these stories they mirrored themselves.
In regard to the origin of the names there is no such unanimity of opinion. According to some the names are tribal names, and the
relation of cognateness among these figures reflects tribal relationships. The movements ascribed to the patriarchs stand for tribal movements and migrations. The utmost of historicity conceded from this standpoint is that, for example, Abraham may have been the leader of a tribe named after him. While this destroys the historicity of the patriarchs in the traditional sense, it is considered by many a hyper-conservative position, because it still allows a legendary basis of facts. Dillman, who was reckoned a conservative scholar, took this position.
A second view is much more extreme. Its representatives are found mainly among the Wellhausen critics; especially Stade has worked it out. According to him, the names Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had nothing to do originally with Hebrew genealogical history, but are names of Canaanitish figures. They were borne by Canaanitish demigods, considered by the Canaanitish tribes as their ancestors, and worshipped as such in different places. When Israel occupied the land they began to worship at these places as the Canaanites had long worshipped there, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in their own list of deities. Gradually learning to feel at home in Canaan, they soon came to feel that these sacred places belonged to them, and that therefore the gods worshipped in them must be Hebrew, not Canaanitish. In order to express this and create a sort of legal title for it from history, they framed the fiction that their own ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had previously been in the Holy Land and consecrated these places. Thus Abraham was assigned in the narrative of Genesis to Hebron, Isaac to Beersheba, Jacob to Bethel.
Thirdly, it has also been attempted to explain these names from Babylonian antecedents. Sarah was the goddess of Haran, Abraham a god of the same place: Laban, the moon-god. The four wives of Jacob are the four phases of the moon. The twelve sons of Jacob are the twelve months of the year; the seven sons of Leah are the seven days of the week; the number of men with which Abraham defeated the invaders, 318, constitutes the number of days in the lunar year.
THE HISTORICITY OF THE PATRIARCHS
In answer to these various constructions we must first of all emphasize that the historicity of the patriarchs can never be, to us, a matter of small importance. The religion of the Old Testament being a factual religion, it is untrue that these figures retain the same usefulness, through the lessons that can be drawn from their stories, as actual history would possess. This prejudges the answer to the fundamental question, what religion is for. If, on the Pelagian principle, it serves no other purpose than to teach religious and moral lessons from example, then the historicity is no longer of material importance. We can learn the same lessons from legendary or mythical figures. But, if according to the Bible they are real actors in the drama of redemption, the actual beginning of the people of God, the first embodiment of objective religion; if Abraham was the father of the faithful, the nucleus of the Church; then the denial of their historicity makes them useless from our point of view. The whole matter depends on how we conceive of man’s need as a sinner. If this be construed on the evangelical principle we cannot without serious loss of religious values assign these given figures to the region of myth or legend. If we are ready to be satisfied with the religious and moral tenor of the stories, then the conclusion is inevitable that the historical existence of Jesus likewise has become a negligible matter. Still further: if the patriarchs were not historical and some reality might still seem desirable, it would be difficult to tell why this should begin with Moses. If there be no historicity before that, then the process of redemption loses itself in a prehistoric mist at its beginnings. The only logical position is that, if a history of redemption is needed, it should begin with Adam and Eve.
As to the theory of self-idealization, we observe that this in no wise accounts for all the facts. One would, of course, a priori expect some resemblance between ancestors and descendants. But the resemblance postulated on such a basis does not by any means cover the elements of the description as a whole. Resemblance between
people and patriarch is greatest in the case of Jacob. It is not nearly so great in the cases of the two others. Then there are differences between the patriarchs and Israel in more than one respect. The patriarch Abraham rises far above the highest point the nation ever reached. Faith was never characteristic of Israel as a nation. On the other hand, the narrative dwells on certain weaknesses and sins of the patriarchs, not merely as regards Jacob, but also as regards Abraham. Wellhausen observes that in the documents J and E the patriarchs are represented as standing under an excessive control of their wives. These women, in his view, appear more liberally endowed with character than their husbands. But, one might ask, how could the manly, warlike Israelites of the time of the early kingdom have found their ideals expressed in such figures? Nor is there perfect agreement in customs. We are told that Abraham married his half-sister, and such action was not customary among Israel in later times.
Neither can the names be satisfactorily explained from a personification of tribes. Jacob, it is true, stands as a regular name for the people; Isaac very rarely is put to such use; but Abraham occurs nowhere as a tribal name. Wellhausen admits this, but seeks to explain it on the ground that Abraham was a creation of the poetic fancy, and as such drew to himself all the material for idealization and embellishment that existed, leaving little for the adornment of Isaac and Jacob. This, however, refutes itself, because, in case Abraham were the latest creation, he would have been the poorest and least decorated figure, Isaac and Jacob having pre-empted all the existing material.
The mythological derivation of the names from Babylon is a theory not yet ripe for serious historical discussion. Gunkel, the most brilliant advocate of Babylonian influence upon the Old Testament, admits this to be so. He grants that so far all attempts to derive the names of the patriarchs from the Babylonian pantheon have proved failures. Nowhere does the Old Testament contain a trace of worship addressed to the patriarchs; on the contrary, it emphasizes that they
were not proper objects of cult-address. Cp. Isa. 43:27, ‘Thy fathers sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me’; and Isa. 63:16, ‘For thou art our Father, though Abraham know us not, nor Israel acknowledge us’.
THEOPHANIES
A distinction must be drawn between the form and the content of revelation in the patriarchal period. As to the form, we notice that it is gradually gaining in importance, as compared with the past. Formerly it used to be simply stated that God spake to man, nothing being said as to the form of this speech, nor as to whether it was accompanied by any appearance. Now for the first time more or less circumstantial description of the form appears. On the whole we may say that revelation, while increasing in frequency, at the same time becomes more restricted and guarded in its mode of communication. The sacredness and privacy of the supernatural begin to make themselves felt.
To Abraham at first revelation came after the earlier indefinite fashion. In Gen. 12:4 Jehovah ‘speaks’ to him, but no sooner has he entered the promised land than a change of expression is introduced. In Gen. 12:7 we read that Jehovah ‘appeared’ unto Abraham (literally, He ‘let himself be seen by Abraham’). Here is something more than mere speech. The emergence of a new element is also recognized by the building of the altar, for the altar is a shrine or house of God. In Gen. 15:13 we have again the indefinite statement that Jehovah ‘said to Abraham’. But in Gen. 15:17 a visible manifestation, a theophany, takes place. In the form of the smoking furnace and the flaming torch God passes by. The theophany here assumes the character of something fearful. In chapter 17:1 we read again that Jehovah let Himself be seen by Abraham; and that this was a theophany follows from the statement of vs. 22, ‘And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham’.
From the life of Isaac the theophanies all but disappear, although we read in Gen. 26:2, 24 that Jehovah let Himself be seen by Isaac. In the life of Jacob they return, but with decreasing frequency as compared with the life of Abraham. In Gen. 28:13 we read of Jehovah speaking to Jacob from the top of the ladder, but this was in a dream. Yet in Gen. 35:9 we read, ‘And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him’ [cp. Gen. 48:3]. Still more marked is the absence of theophanies from the life of Joseph.
As stated above, altars were frequently built in places of theophany, indicating a consciousness that the place had in some sense become the seat of God’s presence. The patriarchs returned to these places, to call there upon the name of God. [Gen. 13:4; 35:1–7].
We notice in the next place that most of these theophanies were confined to definite localities, all of which lay within the borders of the land of promise. There is here a beginning of the attachment of Jehovah’s redemptive presence to the land of Canaan. To be sure, the critics, while recognizing the significance of the facts, explain them on the different principle that the stories of theophany were later framed to give divine sanction to ancient shrines. But this does not agree with the fact that there were some theophanies without the subsequent erection of an altar [Gen. 17:1]; and again, we read of the erection of an altar where there is no mention of any preceding theophany [Gen. 13:18; 33:20]. It is true that some of these places later became popular shrines, but this is perfectly explainable from the remembrance of the ancient theophanies remaining in the minds of the people. The patriarchal history did not grow out of the locality; on the contrary, the sacred character of the locality originated from the history.
Specialization of the time of revelation is also observable. Jehovah appeared to the patriarchs at night [Gen. 15:5, 12; 21:12, 14; 22:1–3; 26:24]. In the night the soul is withdrawn within itself, away from
the experiences and scenes of the day. Thus the privacy of the transaction is guarded.
The same effect, to a stronger degree, is obtained where the revelation occurs in the form of a vision. The word ‘vision’ has both a specific and a generalized use. The original meaning is that of receiving revelation by sight instead of by hearing, although, of course, within the frame of the vision hearing of an inner kind is included. Because in ancient times the visionary form was the prevailing one, vision easily became the general term for revelation, and retained this sense, even though afterwards revelation had become more differentiated in form [cp. Isa. 1:1]. Sometimes the body was abnormally affected, or was detached from the inner sense by which hearing took place. The seeing in such cases was an inner sight, a seeing without the help of the bodily eye, yet none the less a real, objective seeing. In the patriarchal history the term ‘vision’ occurs twice [Gen. 15:1; 46:2]. In the latter place we read that God spake ‘in the visions of the night’.
The mention of the night-time leads us to think here of visions specifically so-called. In Gen. 15, the matter is much more complicated. Here also the night-time is repeatedly spoken of [vss. 5, 12, 17]; and undoubtedly vss. 12–17 describe a real visionary experience. In vs. 1 the word ‘vision’ occurs: ‘The word of Jehovah came unto Abram in a vision, saying….’ Now the question arises; how much of the following occurrences does this cover? Does it relate to vss. 1–12, or is it used by way of anticipation of vss. 12–17? The latter is difficult, because the participle ‘saying’ links what immediately follows it closely to the expression ‘came in a vision’ [vs. 1]. And a chronological difficulty also arises if vss. 2–12 are to be understood as plain unvisionary discourse. The marking of the points in time at which the several items happened is such as to be hard to conceive in ordinary waking experience. In vs. 5 it is night, for stars are shining. In vs. 12 the sun is ‘just going down’. In vs. 17 ‘the sun went down’. In a vision the ordinary laws of the sequence of time do not hold good. Consequently to place the whole disclosure in a vision removes the
chronological difficulty, and enables us to consider the whole as a continuous narrative, the discrepancies of time notwithstanding. On this view the vision does not begin with vs. 12; the seeing of the starry heavens in vs. 5 already belongs to it. And yet the ‘deep sleep’ and the ‘horror of a great darkness’ [vs. 12] so unmistakably describe the phenomena of a vision coming on, that we shall have to speak of a vision within a vision, something like the play within the play in ‘Hamlet’. Still, the difficulty is not decisive. The sleep and the horror of a great darkness may perhaps stand for a heightened abnormal psychical state within the already abnormal visionary state as such. If the above, however, should appear too complicated, a simple, though drastic, remedy is afforded by understanding the word ‘vision’ in vs. 1 as meaning generic revelation. To be sure, this does not remove the chronological difficulty between vs. 5 and vs. 12; for this it will be further necessary to place an interval of at least one day between the two points of time mentioned.
With revelation as a night occurrence the dream-form is naturally given, for dreams belong to the night. But still another motive is obviously involved. In dreaming, the consciousness of the dreamer is more or less loosened from his personality. Hence dreams were preferably used as a vehicle of revelation where the spiritual state was ill-adapted for contact with God. In this way the unfit personality was to some extent neutralized, and the mind was a mere receptacle of the message. Heathen persons receive revelation through this medium [Gen. 20:3; 31:24; 40:5; 41:1]. Within the chosen family, dreams were utilized likewise where the spirituality of the person was immature or at a low ebb [Gen. 28:12; 31:11; 37:5, 9]. It should be noted that the divine provenience or truthfulness of the revelation is not affected by its coming in the form of a dream. The same terms are used as in other modes of revelation: God comes in a dream, speaks in a dream [Gen. 20:6; 28:13; 31:24]; the same applies to visions [Gen. 15:1; 46:2]. God has the direct access to the dream- life and complete control over everything entering into it.
THE ANGEL OF JEHOVAH
The most important and characteristic form of revelation in the patriarchal period is that through ‘the Angel of Jehovah’ or ‘the Angel of God’. The references are: Gen. 16:7; 22:11, 15; 24:7, 40; 31:11; 48:16 [cp. also Hos. 12:4, with reference to Gen. 32:24ff.].
The peculiarity in all these cases is that, on the one hand, the Angel distinguishes himself from Jehovah, speaking of Him in the third person, and that, on the other hand, in the same utterance he speaks of God in the first person. Of this phenomenon various explanations have been offered. To explain, two critical views come under consideration. Some have proposed to render the word mal’akh as an abstract noun, meaning an embassy, a mission, which Jehovah despatched from Himself after an impersonal fashion. The reason for this conception is supposed to have lain in the primitive belief that Jehovah, who had so long dwelt at Sinai, could not in person depart from this place, but that, nevertheless, desiring to accompany His people on their journey to Canaan and during their abode in the holy land, He could send an influence from Himself to do what He was unable to do by personal presence. According to this view, the conception is very ancient, dating back at least to the entrance of Israel upon the holy land.
The second attempt considers the formation of the figure of the Angel as due to the late Jewish idea of the exaltation of God. It was thought unworthy of God to come into such close contact and intercourse with the earthly creation as the naive old stories related of Him. Hence the stories were rewritten from this semi-deistical point of view, and all traits and actions of this kind were represented as having been exhibited or performed by an intermediate being of the angel-class. On this understanding the figure is of late origin, as late as the emergence of this deistical way of thinking about Jehovah.
A common objection lies against both of these theories. It is this, that if the design had been to safeguard the non-removability from Sinai or the inappropriateness of mixing with the creature, then the writers or redactors would have been apt to exercise great care not to
leave any instances, where the objectionable features occurred, uncorrected. As it is, side by side with the novel mode of Angel- revelation, theophanies of the old disapproved-of type continue to happen in the narrative. Something in the nature of a subsequent correction in the production of the figure cannot have taken place. Besides, on the second theory, we should expect instead of ‘the Angel of Jehovah’ the other phrase, ‘an Angel of Jehovah’. The objection, that before a proper noun the preceding noun standing in the construct state becomes inevitably determinate, in other words that it would be impossible to make ‘Angel of Jehovah’ indeterminate, even though it may have been intended so, does not hold good. The Hebrew has a way of saying ‘an Angel of Jehovah’. All that is necessary is to insert the preposition lamed between Angel and Jehovah: ‘an Angel to Jehovah’. If the intention had been to keep God and the creature apart, those interested in this would never have allowed the Angel to speak like Jehovah, for this would have obscured the very fact desired to bring out.
Of the two views discussed, the one neglects the distinctness between the Angel and God, the other neglects the identity between both. The problem is how to do justice to both. There is but one way in which this can be done: we must assume that behind the twofold representation there lies a real manifoldness in the inner life of the Deity. If the Angel sent were Himself partaker of Godhead, then He could refer to God as his sender, and at the same time speak as God, and in both cases there would be reality behind it. Without this much of what we call the Trinity, the transaction could not but have been unreal and illusory. But it is not legitimate to infer from this that the proximate purpose of such a mode of revelation was to reveal the truth of the Trinity. A thing can be based on some reality, without which it could not possibly occur, and yet serve to inculcate another fact or truth. Only in a later period and in an indirect way were the Angel-theophanies made to render service for the disclosure of the Trinity. At the time of their first occurrence this could not have been done, because the supreme interest at that time was to engrave deeply upon the mind of Israel the consciousness of the oneness of
God. Premature disclosure of the Trinity would in all probability have proved a temptation to polytheism. For a long time the Deity of the Messiah and the personality of the Holy Spirit were kept more or less in the background.
But, if not the truth of the Trinity, then what was the purpose for which this new mode of revelation was inaugurated? The purpose was twofold: the one not altogether new, the other a new departure. The former we may designate the ‘sacramental’, the latter the ‘spiritualizing’ intent. By the ‘sacramental’ intent we understand the desire of God to approach closely to His people, to assure them in the most manifest way of His interest in and His presence with them. This sacramental intent had underlain all the theophanies from the beginning. It was not first introduced through the appearances of the Angel of Jehovah. Only, without these appearances it could not have been realized in the old simple way without endangering another principle, that of the spiritual nature of the Deity. When God walked with men and ate and drank with them, and in bodily fashion spake with them and listened to them, the instinctive conclusion that these things were the result of His nature, lay extremely near. And yet in reality they had no necessary connection with His nature, but were sacramental condescensions on His part. As such they were indispensable. But necessary as this sacramental condescension was, it was equally necessary that the spiritual nature of God be preserved as its background. And this was accomplished by conveying the impression, that behind the Angel speaking as God, and who embodied in Himself all the condescension of God to meet the frailty and limitations of man, there existed at the same time another aspect of God, in which He could not be seen and materially received after such a fashion, the very God of whom the Angel spoke in the third person. Through this division of labour between God and His Angel the indispensable core of the theophany was saved. The spiritualizing intent was auxiliary to the sacramental one. The Angel is truly divine, for otherwise He could not have discharged the sacramental function of assuring man that God was with him. But the visible, physical
form of meeting this need is not due to the nature of God. The nature of man, chiefly his sinful nature, calls for it.
In the incarnation of our Lord we have the supreme expression of this fundamental arrangement. The incarnation is not the result of any inherent necessity in God. The contrary view, though widely spread, has a pantheizing background. We need God incarnate for redemptive reasons. The whole incarnation, with all that pertains to it, is one great sacrament of redemption. And yet even here special care is taken to impress believers with the absolute spirituality of Him who has thus made Himself of our nature. The principle at stake has found classical expression in John 1:18: ‘No man has seen God at any time; God only begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him’. Because the whole fact of the Angel’s appearance stood from the beginning in the service of redemption, it is but natural that the execution of important movements of redemption should be assigned to Him. Immediately after the giving of the berith He appears on the scene [Gen. 16:7]. Delitzsch well observes: ‘The end and object of these appearances is to be judged by their commencement’. We shall see most clearly in the Mosaic period that the divine carrying out of the berith is on the whole entrusted to His Angel. He guards those in particular whose lives and labours are most intimately connected with the berith. Jacob says [Gen. 48:15, 16]: ‘The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God who has fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads’. Cp. also Mal. 3:1, ‘the Angel of the berith’. Not only in nature, but also by function, is the Angel of Jehovah distinguished from ordinary angels.
The form in which the Angel appeared was a form assumed for the moment, laid aside again as soon as the purpose of its assumption had been served. Usually, but not always, it was a human form. Some have thought that the Angel was during the Old Testament dispensation permanently posssessed of such an appearance-form. This would run contrary to the variableness of the form in which the manifestations took place. It would also anticipate the incarnation, in
which the new feature is precisely that the Second Person of the Godhead assumes a form which remains permanently His own [John 1:14]. A still more serious error is the idea that from all eternity this Person in the Godhead possessed a material form fit to bring Him within reach of the senses. This is inconsistent with the spirituality of God, and would have made the Angel-revelation result in the very misunderstanding which it was intended to preclude.
Finally, in regard to the much-mooted question, whether the Angel was created or uncreated, a clear distinction between the Person and the form of appearance suffices for answer. If, as above suggested, the Angel-conception points back to an inner distinction within the Godhead, so as to make the Angel a prefiguration of the incarnate Christ, then plainly the Person appearing in the revelation was uncreated, because God. On the other hand, if by Angel we designate the form of manifestation of which this Person availed Himself, then the Angel was created. It is the same in the case of Christ: the divine Person in Christ is uncreated, for Deity and being created are mutually exclusive. Nevertheless as to His human nature Jesus was created. The only difference in this respect between Him and the Angel is that under the Old Testament the created form was ephemeral, whereas through the incarnation it has become eternal.
We deal with the elements and principles of revelation contained in the life of each of the three great patriarchs successively. What the three have in common is treated in the discussion of Abraham, so that under the head of Isaac and Jacob only the new material connected with each is examined.
THE PATRIARCH ABRAHAM
[1] The principle of election
The first outstanding principle of divine procedure with the patriarchs is the principle of election. Hitherto the race as a whole had been dealt with. Or, as in Noah’s case, there had been election of
a new race out of an old one given over to destruction. Here one family is taken out of the number of existing Shemitic families, and with it, within it, the redemptive, revelatory work of God is carried forward. This is the tremendous significance of the call of Abraham. Where, after this, revelation is sporadically addressed to those outside the limits of election, the reason is that they have entered into contact with the chosen family. Thus the whole course of the special work of God is confined within the narrow channel of one people. Deists and all sorts of Rationalists frequently argued from this to the incredibility of Scriptural supernaturalism. If, they argued, God had gone to the trouble of introducing such a process of supernaturalism, He would have certainly taken pains to make it universal. Looked at closely, this argument proves a reflex of the general spirit of cosmopolitanism abroad in those times, and which is but one of the unhistorical conceptions of Rationalism. Because the God of Rationalism was at the bottom simply the God of nature, and nature is universal, therefore His self-disclosure must be as wide as nature. No account is had of the abnormal features of a state of sin, nor of the unique exigencies of a procedure of redemption. No distinction is felt between the beginning and early stages of the divine work and its later maturing. It should have been created all- finished, incapable of further progress from the outset. And, owing to this false perspective, or rather lack of perspective, the proximate narrowing and the ultimate universalizing are not kept in mind as mutually conditioning each other.
It must be acknowledged that election has also a permanent significance, of which we shall presently speak. But first of all, its temporal, instrumental purpose comes under consideration, and this is what the Rationalists failed to observe. The election of Abraham, and in the further development of things, of Israel, was meant as a particularistic means towards a universalistic end. Nor is this merely a later theological construction, made from looking back upon the finished process; from the outset there were, accompanying the narrowing steps, indications of an ultimate service to be rendered, by the election just beginning, to the cause of universalism. The very
fact of Canaan being chosen for the abode of the sacred family was an indication of this kind. For although, compared with Mesopotamia, Canaan was a place of relative seclusion, and this entered as one motive for putting the patriarchs there, nevertheless archaeological research of recent times has shown that in itself Canaan was by no means a land lying isolated, aside from the great commerce and international life of the ancient world. It was actually a land where the lines of intercourse crossed. In the fulness of time its strategic position proved of supreme importance for the spreading abroad of the Gospel unto the whole earth.
The ultimate universalistic intent is also signified in the meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek. Melchizedek stood outside the circle of election recently formed. He was a representative of the earlier, pre-Abrahamic, knowledge of God. His religion, though imperfect, was by no means to be identified with the average paganism of the tribes. Abraham recognized the El ‘Elyon, whom Melchizedek worshipped, as identical with his own God [Gen. 14:18, 19]. He gives him the tithe, and receives from him the blessing bestowed in the name of El ‘Elyon, both actions of religious significance.
And not only indirectly or typically was this principle brought out; in the most explicit form at the very beginning Abraham was told that in him should ‘all the families of the earth be blessed’ [Gen. 12:3]. There is some uncertainty as to the exact rendering of the words standing in the Hebrew for ‘shall be blessed’. In some passages where later the same divine promise is repeated [Gen. 22:18; 26:4] the species of the verb employed is the Hithpael. This admits of no other than the reflex rendering: ‘in thee the nations of the earth shall bless themselves’. In other passages the Niphal species is found [Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 28:14]. The Niphal can be either passive or reflexive. It has been proposed, for the sake of uniformity, to make the sense in all passages the reflexive one. The English Versions, on the other hand, have forced the two passages where the Hithpael occurs, to bear a passive meaning, which is against the grammar. Both Peter and Paul,
quoting the promise in the New Testament, translate passively ‘shall be blessed’ [Acts 3:25; Gal. 3:8]. So did the Septuagint before, without discrimination of readings in the original. The quotations by the Apostles necessitate the retaining of the passive force in the Niphal passages. Still the reflexive sense in the other places also is not void of religious import. Reflexively translated, the statement means that the nations of the earth will make proverbial use of Abraham’s name in invoking upon themselves good fortune: ‘Wish that we were as blessed as Abraham’. Delitzsch goes so far as to vindicate for this the full spiritual sense inhering in the passive on the following ground: If the nations of the earth make Abraham’s name a formula of blessing, then they thereby express themselves desirous of participating in his destiny, and under the divine plan of salvation it is so arranged that to the desire for the blessing the inheritance of the blessing is joined. In other words the proverbial use of the patriarch’s name after this fashion would be equivalent to the exercise of faith. It is doubtful, however, whether this can be maintained, since naturally in the case of the wishers the desire would relate to temporal prosperity. Besides, in Gen. 12:2, 3, where the promise appears for the first time, the context indicates that a distinction is drawn between the lower and the higher aspect of the matter. In fact here three things are distinguished; first we have ‘be thou a blessing’, which is actually the proverbial use; then the promise continues, ‘I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curses thee will I curse’, which describes a determination of the lot of outsiders according to the attitude assumed by them towards Abraham; finally the closing words read, ‘and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed’. Here evidently the third part of the promise is climacteric and must reach beyond the first and the second.
The history of the patriarchs is more universalistic than that of the Mosaic period. When the people were organized on a national basis and hedged off from other nations by the strict, seclusive rules of the law, the universalistic design was forced somewhat into the background. Further, through the conflict between Egypt and the
Hebrews the real relation to the outside world became one of conflict. In the patriarchal period the opposite to this was true. Little was done to make the life of the people of God, even in an external religious sense, different from that of their environment. No ceremonial system on a large scale was set up to stress a distinction. Circumcision was the only rite instituted, and since this was also practised by the surrounding tribes, even it did not really differentiate. And positively also the principles on which God dealt with the patriarchs were of a highly spiritual nature, such as would make them universally applicable. Paul has a profound insight into this universalistic purport of patriarchal religion. His main contention with the Judaizers was that they insisted upon interpreting the patriarchal period on the basis of the Mosaic period. The reasoning [Gal. 3:15ff.] is in substance as follows: through the diatheke with Abraham the relation between God and Israel was put on a foundation of promise and grace; this could not be subsequently changed, because the older arrangement remains regulative for later institutions [vs 15], and the law was by no less than 430 years later than the Abrahamic berith. The revealed religion of the Old Testament in this respect resembles a tree whose root system and whose crown spread out widely, while the trunk of the tree confines the sap for a certain distance within a narrow channel. The patriarchal period corresponds to the root growth; the freely expanding crown to the revelation of the New Testament; and the relatively constricted form of the trunk to the period from Moses to Christ.
We must not forget, however, that election forms also a permanent feature in the divine procedure, and consequently remains, although with a different application, in force at the present time, no less than in the days of the Old Testament. In regard to individuals, the divine saving grace is always a differentiating principle. There is a people of God, a chosen people, a people of election, as truly today as in the time of the patriarchs. Of this likewise Paul was intensely conscious. We find him in the Epistle to the Romans reasoning in what at first sight appears to be a self-contradictory manner. On the one hand, as
between Jew and Gentile, he upholds the principle of universalism, and proves it from the patriarchal history [Gal. 4:22ff.]; on the other hand, as between Jew and Jew he insists upon discrimination; not all who are descended from Abraham are children of God and of the promise [Rom. 9:6ff.]. The elective principle, abolished as to nationality, continues in force as to individuals. And even with respect to national privilege, while temporarily abolished now that its purpose has been fulfilled, there still remains reserved for the future a certain fulfilment of the national elective promise. Israel in its racial capacity will again in the future be visited by the saving grace of God [Rom. 11:2, 12, 25].
[2] The objectivity of the gifts bestowed
The second distinctive feature of God’s revelation to the patriarchs concerns the objectivity of the gifts which it bestows. We have here the beginning of a factual religion, a religion attaching itself to objective divine interpositions on behalf of man. Not that the inward, subjective aspect is lacking, but only that it is developed in close dependence on the external support. God does not begin with working upon the inward psychical states of the patriarchs, as though they were subjects for reform—an unbiblical attitude which is, unfortunately, characteristic of too much of modern religion. He begins with giving them promises. The keynote is not what Abraham has to do for God, but what God will do for Abraham. Then, in response to this, the subjective frame of mind that changes the inner and outer life is cultivated.
Closely connected with this feature is another, the historical- progressive character of the religion of revelation. In it the all- important thing is that God has acted in the past, is acting in the present, and promises to act in the future. Those who live under it always look back into the past, that is to say, their piety has a solid basis of tradition. Even when desiring to make progress they do not believe in the possibility of real, healthy progress without continuity with the past; they love and revere what has gone before, and dare to
criticize the present in the light of the past, as well as in the light of reason, where it is necessary. Their contentedness is not of the superficial kind, such as would interfere with profound expectation from the future. At the same time they do not depend for the progress in the future on their own acquired potencies or powers, but on the same supernatural interposition and activity of God, which have produced the present out of the past. Biblical religion is thoroughly eschatological in its outlook.
Above all it is, as it was already with the patriarchs, a religion of modesty, for modesty is in religion as elsewhere a fruit that grows on the tree of historic reverence only. The specific difference in this point between Biblical religion and pagan religions, particularly nature-religions, is easily observable. Nature-religion revolves around the thought of what the deity is for all men and under all circumstances. It presents to the worship of its devotees a face the same yesterday, today, and for ever. There is no action of the deity here, no history, no progress.
The objective action of God was for the patriarchs interlinked with the three great promises. These were first, the chosen family would be made into a great nation; secondly, that the land of Canaan would be their possession; thirdly, that they were to become a blessing for all people.
[3] The promises are fulfilled supernaturally
Next to the objectivity of these three things promised, we notice as the third important feature of the revelation, that it emphasizes most strongly, both in word and act, the absolute monergism of the divine power in accomplishing the things promised; otherwise expressed, the strict supernaturalism of the procedure towards fulfilling the promises. This explains why, in the life of Abraham, so many things proceed contrary to nature. Not as though contrariness-to-nature possessed any positive value for its own sake. The contrariness is simply chosen as the most convenient practical means for
demonstrating that nature was transcended here. Abraham was not permitted to do anything through his own strength or resources to realize what the promise set before him. With reference to the third promise this was excluded by the nature of the case. But in regard to the other two it might have seemed as if he might have contributed something toward the end in view. In point of fact he attempted to proceed on the principle of synergism in proposing to God that Ishmael should be considered the seed of the promise. But this was not accepted for the reason of Ishmael’s being the product of nature, whereas a supernatural product was required [Gen. 17:18, 19; Gal. 4:23]. Abraham was kept childless until an age when he was ‘as good as dead’, that the divine omnipotence might be evident as the source of Isaac’s birth [Gen. 21:1–7; Rom. 4:19–21; Heb. 11:11; Isa. 51:2]. The last mentioned explains the divine philosophy of this, to the naturalistic standpoint, so strange course of action: ‘Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many’. In connection with the second promise we can observe the same thing. Abraham was not allowed to acquire any possession in the land of promise. Yet he was rich and might easily have done so. But God Himself intended to fulfil this promise also without the co-operation of the patriarch; and Abraham seems to have had some apprehension of this, for he explains his refusal to accept any of the spoils from the king of Sodom by the fear lest the latter should say, ‘I have made Abram rich’ [Gen. 14:21–23].
THE DIVINE NAME ‘EL-SHADDAI’
This supernaturalism in God’s dealing with the patriarchs finds expression in the characteristic divine name for the period. This is the name El-Shaddai. In this full form the name is found six times in the Pentateuch, and once in Ezekiel. The passages are: Gen. 17:1; 28:3; 35:11; 43:14; 48:3; Ex. 6:3; Ezek. 10:5. To the six Pentateuch references a seventh may have to be added if the reading in Gen. 49:25 be changed from eth-Shaddai to El-Shaddai. The shorter, possibly abbreviated, form (Shaddai) occurs more frequently in the
other books of the Old Testament. In Job it occurs more than 30 times, and has there been regarded as a symptom either of the antique character of the story, or of its having been written in the style of an older period. In either case it reveals a consciousness of the high age of the name. Further, the name in this shorter form is found twice in the Psalter [68:14; 91:1]; three times in the prophets [Isa. 13:6; Joel. 1:15; Ezek. 1:24]; and once in Ruth [1:21].
Various etymologies have been proposed, some of them quite unworthy of the occasion of its occurrence. Nöldeke finds in the ending ai the possessive suffix, which would yield the meaning ‘my Lord’. But the word is never used in address to God, and God uses it of Himself. Where men use it, it is of God in the third person. Others propose to connect the name with a somewhat similar word meaning ‘demons’ in Deut. 32:17 and Psalm 106:37, two contexts speaking of Israel’s idolatry in the wilderness. But the word there is differently vocalized (shedim). There is also a naturalistic interpretation according to which it would mean ‘the thunderer’. Our choice seems to lie between the two following etymologies: (a) the word is made up of the note of the relative sha and the adjective dai, ‘sufficient’, thus meaning ‘He who is sufficient’, either to Himself or to others. This is to be found in the later Greek versions, which render hikanos. (b) Or it may be derived from the verb shadad, meaning ‘to overpower’, ‘to destroy’. On this derivation the name would mean ‘the Over- powerer’, ‘the Destroyer’, or ‘the All-powerful One’. This is the view of some of the translators of the Septuagint. In that version it is often rendered ho Pantokrator, ‘the All-Ruler’.
The second of these two derivations deserves the preference. It best explains the appearance of the name in patriarchal history. God is there called El-Shaddai, because through the supernaturalism of His procedure He, as it were, overpowers nature in the service of His grace, and compels her to further His designs. Thus the name forms a connecting link between El and Elohim, on the one hand, and Jehovah, the Mosaic name, on the other hand. If the former signify God’s relation to nature, and Jehovah is His redemptive name, then
El-Shaddai may be said to express how God uses nature for supernature. A clear connection between the verb shadad and Shaddai is observed in Isa. 13:6 and Joel 1:15. In the Psalter passages and in Ruth the omnipotence and sovereignty of God are clearly emphasized. The conception also fits into the general tenor of Job and Ezekiel.
FAITH AS FOUND IN PATRIARCHAL RELIGION
It is but a reflex of the supernaturalism in the objective sphere, that in the subjective field of patriarchal religion the idea of faith suddenly springs into prominence. This constitutes the fourth important aspect of the doctrinal significance of our period. Gen. 15:6 is the first explicit Biblical reference to faith. Broadly speaking, faith bears a two-fold significance in Scriptural teaching and experience: it is, firstly, dependence on the supernatural power and grace of God; and secondly, the state or act of projection into a higher, spiritual world. Of late it has been treated in the latter sense by preference, and sometimes with an obvious design to minimize its soteric importance. The psychology of faith has been studied, from the theological standpoint not always felicitously, because the Biblical data have not been carefully ascertained. It may be useful to know something about the psychology of faith, but it is of far greater importance to understand its religious function in redemption, and unless the latter is apprehended, the psychology is apt to turn out, from the Biblical point of view, sheer foolishness.
To the Biblical writers faith is not a common denominator to which after some hazy fashion every religious sentiment and aspiration can be reduced. For the reason indicated, faith was in Abraham’s life the chief religious act and frame of mind. His whole life was a school of faith in which the divine training developed this grace from step to step. Even at the beginning there was a heavy demand on the patriarch’s faith. He was called upon to leave his country, kindred, father’s house. And God at first did not name the land of his destination. ‘The land that I will show thee’ was its sole description.
As Heb. 11:8 tells us: ‘He went out, not knowing whither he went’. The statement in Gen. 12:7, that God would give him that particular country, came as a surprise to him. From Gen. 15 we learn that there was at one and the same time in Abraham a relatively mature faith, and an intense desire to have the insufficiency of his faith relieved by further assurance. When God promised that his posterity should be numerous as the stars, he believed and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. But with reference to the promised inheritance of the land he doubted.
There is fine psychological observation here. Faith and a desire for more faith frequently go hand in hand. The reason is that through faith we lay hold upon God, and in grasping the infinite object, the utter inadequacy of each single act of appropriation immediately reveals itself in the very act. It is the same in the Gospel: ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief’ [Mark 9:24]. The climax of the training of Abraham in faith came, when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, his son. Here again the terms descriptive of the surrender asked are multiplied to bring out its greatness: ‘Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac’. Correspondingly here the strongest terms of divine asseveration are used in restating the promise [Gen. 22:2, 16–18], It ought to be remembered that Isaac was surrendered to God not merely as an object of paternal affection, but as the exponent and instrument and pledge of the fulfilment of all the promises, which thus appeared to perish with his death.
Abraham’s faith offers a good opportunity for analysing the ingredients of faith in general. At first sight it seems to take its point of departure from belief, assent to the veracity of a statement. This then would be followed by trust, as a second act called forth by and based on the belief. In point of fact, however, this sequence is not quite in accord with the psychological process. The matter to be assented to through belief is, in religion, and was in Abraham’s case particularly, not something mentally demonstrable, or axiomatically certain before all demonstration. There entered into it a personal factor, viz., the trustworthiness of God, who made the declaration of
the promises. Religious belief exists not in its last analysis on what we can prove to be so, but on the fact of God having declared it to be so. Behind the belief, the assent, therefore, there lies an antecedent trust distinguishable from the subsequent trust. And this reliance upon the word of God is an eminently religious act. Hence it is inaccurate to say that belief is merely the prerequisite of faith and not an element of faith itself.
To be sure, no sooner has this antecedent trust developed into belief, than this in turn is followed by a trust of far wider reach and more practical significance. For the declarations believed are not relating to abstract, indifferent matters; they are promises relating to vital concerns of life. For this reason, they solicit a reaction from the will and the emotions no less than from the intellect. They become a basis on which the entire religious consciousness comes to rest and finds assurance for its deepest and farthest-reaching practical needs and desires. Faith, therefore, begins with and ends in the trust—rest in God.
In Gen. 15:6, this is strikingly illustrated, although the rendering in the English Bible is not for this purpose the most felicitous one: ‘He believed in Jehovah’. The Hebrew word heemin construed with the preposition be literally means: ‘he developed assurance in Jehovah’. The Hiphil of amen here has a causative-productive sense, and the preposition brings out that the personal point at which this assurance sprang up was nothing else but the personal Jehovah, and that the same divine Person, in whom it sprang up, was also the One in whom it came to rest. And this personal relatedness of his faith to God imparted a strongly God-centred character to Abraham’s piety. It is emphasized in the narrative that the patriarch’s supreme blessedness consisted in the possession of God Himself: ‘Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield, thy exceeding great reward’ [Gen. 15:1]. For this treasure he could cheerfully renounce all other gifts.
But this faith attached itself not merely to God in general; it was strong enough to bear the strain of trusting in the supernatural self-
communication and action of God. It related specifically to the divine omnipotence and saving grace. Salvation requires at all times more than God’s general providence exerted in our behalf. It implies supernaturalism, not as a curious, marvellous self-demonstration of God, but as the very core of true religiousness. On the basis of this part, as well as of other parts of Scripture in general, it is quite proper to maintain that a belief entertained and a life conducted on the basis of a relation to God through nature alone does not yield the Biblical religion at all. It is not merely a partial, it is a different thing. In Abraham’s case this meant negatively, for securing God and the promises, a renouncing of all his own purely human resources. He expected nothing from himself. And positively he expected everything from the supernatural interposition of God. Paul with his penetrating doctrinal genius has given us a striking description of this supernaturalism of Abraham’s faith, both on its negative and on its positive side, in Rom. 4:17–23 [cp, Heb. 11:17–19]. In both passages his faith is represented as rising to the height of trusting the omnipotence of God for the raising of Isaac from the dead, after the divine command to surrender him should have been executed. Here the two poles of negation of self-resource and of affirmation of divine omnipotence are represented by faith and resurrection. This is the reason why the Apostle compares Abraham’s faith at this point to the Christian’s faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This kind of faith is a faith in the creative interposition of God. It trusts in Him for calling the things that are not as though they were. This does not, of course, mean that the objective content of the patriarch’s faith was doctrinally identical with that of the New Testament believer. Paul does not commit the anachronism of saying that Abraham’s faith had for its object the raising of Christ from the dead. What he means is that the attitude of faith towards the raising of Isaac and the attitude of faith towards the resurrection are identical in point of faith able to confront and incorporate the supernatural.
Through this emphasis on faith-trust the original Shemitic consciousness was considerably modified. Hitherto the chief element
in it had been fear and awe. Fear did not, of course, vanish from the religion of Abraham. His forms of addressing God on several occasions clearly prove its continuance as a potent element in his religion [cp. Gen. 18:27]. In fact ‘the fear of Jehovah’ remains throughout the Old Testament the generic name for religion. But henceforth it is a fear that has more of reverence than of dread in it. In this sense it continues to colour the co-ordinate element of friendship and trust with reference to God. There is a peculiar strain of submission, a specific humility mixed with the trustful intercourse [Gen. 17:3; 18:3]; nevertheless, the predominant note is the opposite, the feeling of friendship with God. Nor is this merely a statement of mind cultivated or cherished by Abraham; it is explicitly professed, with divine delight and satisfaction as it were, by God Himself.
The classic expression of this from the divine side is in 18:17–19. God here declares that Abraham stands too near to Him for the thought of hiding his plans from him to be tolerable, for God has ‘known’ him, i.e., set His affection upon him. The theophanies received by the patriarch are a witness to the same fact. They form a record quite unique. At no point of the Old Testament, the life of Moses perhaps excluded, was there such a divine condescension as during the life of Abraham. If we except Gen. 15, there was a remarkable absence of the frightful in these theophanies. There is something here somewhat resembling God’s ancient walk with men in the days of paradise or the life of Enoch. In recognition of all this he was by later generations called ‘the friend of God’, Jas. 2:23. And even in the midst of the terror of 15:12, there was a most impressive witness to the divine condescension in the remarkable setting of the theophany itself. There is probably no case surpassing this in anthropomorphic realism within the Old Testament. The dividing of the animals and the walking of God (alone) between the pieces literally signifies that God invokes upon Himself the fate of dismemberment in case He should not keep faith with Abraham [cp. Jer. 34:18–19].
A further function exercised by faith in the religious life of the patriarchs was that it spiritualized their attitude towards the
promises. This was brought about in the following way: God not only reserved to Himself the fulfilment, but also refrained from giving the promises their divine fulfilment during the lives of the patriarchs. Thus Abraham learned to possess the promises of God, in the promising God alone. The promises had no chance of becoming materialized through detachment from their centre in God. They could only be had and enjoyed as a part and potential outflow of the divine heart itself. For the promises are like an ethereal garment, more precious than the body of the promised thing over which it is thrown. Had the promises been quickly fulfilled, then the danger would have immediately arisen of their acquiring importance and value apart from God. In later times, when much of them had actually gone into fulfilment, this danger proved very real. The mass of the people fell from the spiritual height of Abraham’s faith. The earthly and typical obscured to them the spiritual, and alongside of this there went a fatal losing of interest in Him whose gift the earthly treasures were. In the interpretation of the patriarch’s faith given by Hebrews 11, this side of the matter stands in the foreground. Here it is pictured how the patriarchs were contented to dwell in tents, and did not regret the non-possession of the promised land, and the reason for this frame of mind is carefully added: it was not that through faith they looked forward in the vista of time to a more solid and comprehensive possession of Canaan than was possible in their own days; the real reason was that from the earthly, possessed or not-yet-possessed, they had learned to look upward to a form of possession of the promise identifying it more closely with God Himself: ‘They looked for the city that has the foundations, whose builder and maker is God’ (i.e., because its builder and maker is God) [Heb. 11:10].
Lastly, Abraham’s faith had an important bearing on the practical monotheism of patriarchal religion. Such a reliance upon God left no room for the cultivation of or interest in any other ‘divine’ numen that might have been conceived as existent. It is true, monotheism is nowhere theoretically formulated in the account. But God monopolized Abraham to the extent of the exclusion of all others.
One motive for calling him out of his original environment was the prevalence of polytheism there; this much we learn from later Old Testament statements, e.g., Josh. 24:2, 3; among the branch of Abraham’s family that remained in Haran the worship of other gods continued, at least alongside that of Jehovah [Gen. 31:19]. And according to Gen. 35:2, Jacob, on arriving in Canaan, charged his household to put away the foreign gods that were among them.
ETHICAL ELEMENTS
This finishes the discussion of faith. Side by side with it and the three preceding main topics forming the content of patriarchal revelation (election, objectivity, supernaturalism) we must now, under the same heading of content, examine the ethical elements in the patriarchal revelation. Abraham’s life was conducted on a high ethical plane. Even the modern critical school agrees with this. Only, they explain this from a later ethicizing treatment of the ancient stories by writers imbued with the prophetic spirit. The record clearly means to give the impression that Abraham’s life was not perfect. Why, then, should the idealizing redactors have left so much or any of the less worthy elements uneliminated? While the record does not cover up or condone the patriarchs’ defects, it places, over against these, great virtues. Apart from the specifically-religious traits already touched upon under the head of faith, the main virtues emphasized are: hospitality, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, loyalty. Abraham was taught that the religious favour of God cannot continue except accompanied by ethical living. The purpose of God’s choosing him was, according to Gen. 18:17–19, that he might command his children to keep the way of Jehovah to do righteousness and justice; and on this was suspended the fulfilment of the promises: ‘to the end that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him’. Abraham admits that his prayer for the preservation of Sodom can have no effect, except there be a remnant of righteous men in the city. He recognizes that there is a difference in ethics between the pagans and his own circle, for to Abimelech he says: ‘I thought,
surely the fear of God is not in this place’, though, curiously enough, he resorts to a half-lie to escape the danger of such inferior ethics.
Ethics are not, however, represented as independent of religion, much less as the sole content of religion; but they are the product of religion. Gen. 17:1 contains the classic expression of this: ‘I am El- Shaddai; walk before me, then thou shalt be blameless’. The ‘walking before Jehovah’ pictures the constant presence of Jehovah to his mind as walking behind him, and supervising him. The thought of the divine approval furnishes the motive for obedience. Also the force of El-Shaddai must be noticed. What shapes his conduct is not the general thought of God as moral ruler, but specifically the thought of El-Shaddai, who fills his life with miraculous grace. Thus morality is put on a redemptive basis and inspired by the principle of faith.
Further, the ethical character of Old Testament religion is symbolized by circumcision. This, therefore, is the place for discussing this ceremony. The older theologians were inclined to explain its observance among other nations from their contact with Israel. This is no longer a tenable view. Circumcision was practised not merely by a number of Shemitic proples closely connected with Israel, such as Edom, Ammon, Moab, the Arabs, but it was also widely diffused among non-Shemitic races. It existed among the Egyptians. It has been found among the American tribes, and in islands of the Southern Pacific. It undoubtedly existed before the time of Abraham. We must, therefore, admit that it was not given to Abraham as a previously unknown thing, but introduced into his family invested with a new significance. The rite was everywhere a religious one. Herodotus thought that the Egyptians practised it as a sanitary measure, a view which later found favour among rationalists. At present this notion is well-nigh universally abandoned, although a few writers still assume that, as a secondary motive, the increase of fruitfulness came into play.
In its original conception it was a tribal badge, hence not received in infancy, but when the grown-up young man was for the first time admitted into full tribal rights. But membership in tribe or clan was closely associated with religion. Some have thought of circumcision as a sacrifice, perhaps a remnant of human sacrifice, part doing service for the whole. Others think it a relic of the barbaric custom of self-mutilation in honour of the deity. There is no evidence of this even as regards pagan circumcision. It is absolutely excluded so far as Israel is concerned. The Old Testament forbids every mutilation of the human body, and requires for every sacrifice absolute cleanness, whereas in circumcision precisely the unclean is removed. The removal of uncleanness seems to have everywhere underlain the practice among Israel and outside. It belonged to the ritual sphere, and outside of Israel no deeper ethical or spiritual meaning seems to have been attached to, or developed out of it. But it was God’s intention that the ritual should subserve the teaching of ethical and spiritual truth. This was not, however, done by manner of explicit statement. The ritual was at first left to teach its own lesson. All that is enjoined upon Abraham in Gen. 17 is the external performance. In the time of Moses, according to Ex. 6:12, 30, it had begun to be metaphorically used for the removal of disqualification in speech. In Deuteronomy, however, where the prophetic strain of revelation is anticipated, the concept is transferred outright to the spiritual sphere. In Lev. 26:41, the necessity is spoken of that the uncircumcised heart of the Israelites shall be humbled. In Deut. 10:16, Moses exhorts the people to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts. In Deut. 30:6 the thought assumes the form of a promise: ‘the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and all thy soul’.
These ideas are further developed in the prophets. Jeremiah says: ‘Take away the foreskin of your hearts, ye men of Judah’ [4:4]. This prophet also speaks metaphorically, but with a turn towards the ethical, of uncircumcised ears, meaning inability to hearken [6:10]. He threatens the Israelites with judgment, because, like the Egyptians, Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites, they are
‘circumcised in uncircumcision’, i.e., while having the external sign, they lack the circumcision of the heart [9:25, 26]. The statement implies that, though for others circumcision might be a purely external thing, for Israel it ought to be something more. Similarly, Ezekiel represents Jehovah as complaining that the house of Israel have brought into the temple aliens uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh [44:7]. From the law and the prophets the ethical and spiritual interpretation passed over into the New Testament, where we find it with Paul [Rom. 2:25–29; 4:11; Eph. 2:11; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11–13].
For the doctrinal understanding of circumcision two facts are significant; first, it was instituted before the birth of Isaac; secondly, in the accompanying revelation only the second promise, relating to numerous posterity, is referred to. These two facts together show that circumcision has something to do with the process of propagation. Not in the sense that the act is in itself sinful, for there is no trace of this anywhere in the Old Testament. It is not the act but the product, that is, human nature, which is unclean, and stands in need of purification and qualification. Hence circumcision is not, as among pagans, applied to grown-up young men, but to infants on the eighth day. Human nature is unclean and disqualified in its very source. Sin, consequently, is a matter of the race and not of the individual only. The need of qualification had to be specially emphasized under the Old Testament. At that time the promises of God had proximate reference to temporal, natural things. Hereby the danger was created that natural descent might be understood as entitling to the grace of God. Circumcision teaches that physical descent from Abraham is not sufficient to make true Israelites. The uncleanness and disqualification of nature must be taken away. Dogmatically speaking, therefore, circumcision stands for justification and regeneration, plus sanctification [Rom. 4:9–12; Col. 2:11–13].
THE PATRIARCH ISAAC
Isaac’s life forms a sharp contrast to that of Abraham. The contrast, strange to say, arises from the similarity. Abraham’s history teems with originality; in Isaac’s there is repetition of these originalities on almost every page. In the protracted barrenness of his wife, in his exposure to danger in Gerar, in the treatment received from Abimelech, in the differentiation of character between his two sons— in all this the similarity is too striking to be regarded as accidental. It has not escaped the critics, many of whom think that Isaac is a mere genealogical link serving to express the unity between Edom and Israel. All the inventive genius of the legend having been squandered upon Abraham, nothing new remained that could be used to embellish Isaac. But this explains nothing if, as Wellhausen thinks, Abraham’s is the latest figure in the patriarchal triad. Dillman offers the genealogical solution of the problem in a different form. According to him there were certain elements in the Abrahamitic immigration, which more faithfully preserved the original customs than the others, and the legend symbolizes this by portraying their representative, Isaac, as doing the same things over again, and repeating the acts and experiences which characterized the life of Abraham.
To this it must be rejoined that similarity in acts and experiences does not fitly symbolize similarity in customs and modes of life. It would have been more expressive in such a case to represent Isaac as dwelling in the same places where Abraham had dwelt, and this is precisely what the Biblical narrative does not do. Hengstenberg comments upon the character of Isaac, which he thinks was passive and impressionable: ‘the powerful personality of Abraham made such a deep impression on the soft nature of his son, that he follows him even where imitation is reprehensible’. But this overlooks the principle that, in the history of revelation, character is not to be regarded as an ultimate datum; the revelation does not spring from the character; on the contrary, the character is predetermined by the necessities of the revelation. If, therefore, there be such a scarcity of the new, such a lack of assertive originality, in the story of Isaac, the
reason for this must lie in the need of thus expressing some important revelation principle.
What this principle is we believe has been best expressed by Delitzsch in his observation that ‘Isaac is the middle member of the patriarchal triad, and as such throughout a more secondary and passive than active member. The historical process usually illustrates this principle, that the middle part of it is relatively weaker than the beginning, the fundamental figure of its rhythmical motion being the amphimacer’. He seems to affirm this of history in general. It is sufficient for our present purpose to apply it to the history of redemption, and to patriarchal history as a typical part of this. The redeeming work of God passes by its very nature through three stages. Its beginnings are marked by a high degree of energy and productivity; they are creative beginnings. The middle stage is a stage of suffering and self-surrender, and is therefore passive in its aspect. This in turn is followed by the resumed energy of the subjective transformation, characterizing the third stage. Now the middle one of these stages is represented by Isaac.
The principle finds expression, however, not merely in the general lack of originality, but more positively also in the account of the demanded sacrifice of Isaac. As furnishing an illustration of Abraham’s faith this has been already discussed; here we are concerned with its objective significance only. Not a few critics have attempted to explain the narrative of Gen. 22 as a polemic of the later prophetic spirit against human sacrifice, which was at that time still sporadically occurring among the Israelites. But there is no trace whatsoever of polemic in the narrative. The statement that God commands Abraham to offer up Isaac distinctly implies that in the abstract the sacrifice of a human being cannot be condemned on principle. It is well to be cautious in committing oneself to that critical opinion, for it strikes at the very root of the atonement. The rejection of the ‘blood theology’ as a remnant of a very barbaric type of primitive religion rests on such a basis. Other writers have assumed that there is a protest here, not, to be sure, against human
sacrifice, as such, but against that particular form of it which prevailed in Oriental systems of nature-worship, where the gods are believed to be subject to birth and death, and consequently it behoves their devotees to immolate themselves in fellowship with them. But not of this either is there any indication in the narrative. The transaction is not intended to throw light on the mode, but rather on the fundamental principle of sacrifice.
Sacrifice occupies an essential place in the work of redemption. Hitherto this work had been almost exclusively represented as a work of supernatural power. In the life of Abraham this had been most strongly emphasized. Hence there might have easily resulted a certain inadequacy in the expression of the work as a whole. Divine power, while absolutely necessary, covers only one aspect of the process. Sin is disturbance in the moral sphere, and here not power alone but passivity, suffering, atonement, obedience, are required to restore the normal status. All Biblical sacrifice rests on the idea that the gift of life to God, either in consecration or in expiation, is necessary to the action or the restoration of religion. What passes from man to God is not regarded as property but, even though it be property for a symbolic purpose, means always in the last analysis the gift of life. And this is, in the original conception, neither in expiation nor in consecration the gift of alien life; it is the gift of life of the offerer himself. The second principle underlying the idea is that man in the abnormal relations of sin is disqualified for offering this gift of his life in his own person. Hence the principle of vicariousness is brought into play: one life takes the place of another life.
These two principles can here be simply stated; the proof of their Biblical basis must wait till our discussion of the Mosaic system of sacrifice. All that is necessary here is to observe how clearly the two ideas mentioned find expression in the narrative. Abraham is asked by God to offer life, that which in point of life is dearest to him, his only son. At the same time it is declared by the interposition of the Angel and the pointing out of the ram in the thicket, that the
substitution of one life for another life would be acceptable to God. Not the sacrifice of human life as such, but the sacrifice of average sinful human life, is deprecated by the Old Testament. In the Mosaic law these things are taught by an elaborate symbolism. Here on this primordial occasion they find expression through a simple symbolism of an even more eloquent and realistic kind. Thus there was placed side by side with the emphasis on the divine creative omnipotence the stress on the necessity of sacrifice. It is not difficult to trace the coexistence and joint-necessity of both factors in the doctrinal teaching of the New Testament. Paul speaks of the atonement by Christ in words borrowed from this occurrence, Rom. 8:32. It has been suggested that the place where the event happened, one of the mountains of the land of Moriah [Gen. 22:2] links this sacrifice through its locality with the sacrificial cultus in the temple at Jerusalem.
THE PATRIARCH JACOB
The main principle embodied in the history of Jacob-Israel is that of subjective transformation of life, with a renewed stress on the productive activity of the divine factor. This must be kept in mind in order to read the history aright. Of the characters of the three patriarchs, that of Jacob is least represented as an ideal one. Its reprehensible features are rather strongly brought out. This is done in order to show that divine grace is not the reward for, but the source of noble traits. Grace overcoming human sin and transforming human nature is the keynote of the revelation here.
[1] Election
In order to prove this, first of all the principle of election is placed in the foreground, and that not in its racial and transitory, but in its individual and permanent significance. That this should be done here, and not earlier, we might a priori expect. Election is a principle entering specifically into the application of redemption; therefore it should appear in the last member of the patriarchal triad. Election is
intended to bring out the gratuitous character of grace. With regard to the objective part of the work of redemption there is scarcely any need of stressing this. That man himself has made no contribution towards accomplishing the atonement is obvious in itself. But no sooner does the redeeming work enter into the subjectivity of man than the obviousness ceases, although the reality of the principle is not, of course, in the least abated. The semblance easily results, that in receiving and working out the subjective benefits of grace for his transformation, the individual man has to some extent been the decisive factor. And to affirm this, to however small a degree, would be to detract in the same proportion from the monergism of the divine grace and from the glory of God. Hence at this point by an explicit declaration the principle is rendered for ever secure, a principle which the finest psychological observation could never have raised above all possibility of doubt.
This also explains why the declaration comes in at the very beginning of the third part of the patriarchal history, even before the birth of Jacob and Esau. For, from the subsequent lives of these two men it would have been no less difficult than from the lives of ordinary saints to prove that all human goodness is exclusively the fruit of divine grace. For although Jacob, in comparison with Esau, revealed some ethically ignoble qualities, yet in spiritual appreciation of the promise he proved himself the superior of the two. In order to guard against all misunderstandings arising from this, the principle was established at a point where no such considerations, pro or con, could possibly enter into the matter. Even at the risk of exposing the divine sovereignty to the charge of arbitrariness, the matter was decided prior to the birth of the two brothers.
It may indeed be thought that there had been in patriarchal history an earlier occasion, viz., in connection with the birth of Isaac and of Ishmael, for inculcating the lesson involved. Undoubtedly election entered as the determining factor on that occasion likewise; but the point to observe is that there the circumstances were so shaped as to stake everything on the issue of supernaturalism in producing the
seed of the promise. The contrast is between the younger woman, able to bear children by nature, and the older woman, already as good as dead. For making it an exhibition of the moral aspect of election, the fact that Sarah was the free woman and Hagar the slave woman would have stood in the way; whereas for bringing out the factor of omnipotence this contrast between free and slave was negligible. On the other hand, in the case of Jacob and Esau everything is carefully arranged so as to eliminate from the outset all factors tending to obscure the moral issue of the absolute sovereignty of God. The two children are born of the same mother, and moreover at the same birth; and to exclude every thought of natural preference, the younger is preferred to the elder. No conceivable way remained of accounting for this differentiation except to attribute it to the sovereign choice of God. The statement about the elder serving the younger has its proximate reference to the racial relations between the Israelites and the Edomites. But that its import was not exhausted by this appears, apart from the general typical bearing of Old Testament history, from the use made by Paul of the event to establish the principle of individual election [Rom. 9:11–13].
It will be observed that Paul here adds an explanation of the end which the disclosure of this purpose served in the plan of God. The phrase ‘the elective purpose of God’ is explained in the following words: ‘not of works but of Him that calleth’. This is equivalent to: ‘not of works but of grace’, the idea of ‘calling’ being with Paul an exponent of divine monergism. Revelation of the doctrine of election, therefore, serves the revelation of the doctrine of grace. God calls attention to His sovereign discrimination between man and man, to place the proper emphasis upon the truth, that His grace alone is the source of all spiritual good to be found in man. Election, consequently, is not according to Scripture a blind unreadable fate; it serves to the extent indicated an intelligible purpose. In this respect it differs from the fate of the pagans, which hangs, an impersonal mystery, even above the gods. The observation thus made is, of course, not capable of solving all the enigmas of the doctrine of election. There may be many other grounds of election, unknown
and unknowable to us. But this one reason we do know, and in knowing it we at the same time know that, whatever other reasons exist, they can have nothing to do with any meritorious ethical condition of the objects of God’s choice.
[2] The Bethel dream-vision
The next occasion on which an important revelation element was introduced into the life of Jacob was the dream-vision he received at Bethel [Gen. 28:10–22]. Jacob was on a journey away from the land of promise, moreover on his way to a family infected with idolatry and worldliness, for the imitation of whose sins his own nature predisposed him. There was special need, therefore, at this time, of a personal communication from God to him, whereby subjectively he should be brought under the influence of the promises. The fact of the revelation assuming the form of a dream points, as before noted, to the low ebb of the receiver’s spirituality. The vision beheld in the dream is that of a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending whilst Jehovah stands at the top and repeats to him the ancient promises. The angels are the ministers of God’s interposition for the sustenance, guidance, and protection of Jacob.
In connection with this the name Elohim seems to be significant, all the more because in the sequel of the statement it gives way to Jehovah, where the closer religious relationship is spoken of. The angels ascend, as it were, to carry up Jacob’s wants and entreaties; they descend to bring down to him the grace and gifts of God. Dillman finds significance in the feature that the ascending of the angels is mentioned before their descending: the angels were already there ministering in Jacob’s behalf before he became aware of their presence. With the tenor of the vision agrees the fact that in the subjective transformation wrought upon the patriarch various subjective experiences and instances of discipline played a large part. But this was only one side of the meaning of the vision. Besides being a reassurance for Jacob’s future life, it also bore a sacramental
significance with regard to the continual intimate presence of Jehovah with him. He said ‘Surely Jehovah is in this place, and I knew it not’ and ‘this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’.
These words do not necessarily imply surprise at God’s general presence and agency in the place, as if Jacob conceived of God as by nature bound to the land of Canaan. We have already seen that what was peculiar to the holy land were the redemptive theophanies, theophanic appearances of God. Jacob evidently wondered at this, that these appearances, if but in a dream, nevertheless remained attached to his person, and followed him in his wanderings. Although now exiled from his father’s house, as Ishmael had been, he was not like the latter placed outside of the line of sacred inheritance through which the promises were to be transmitted. And the core of it all lay in the abiding of Jehovah with him wherever he went. Our Saviour Himself placed this deeper second interpretation upon Jacob’s vision. When declaring to Nathanael, ‘Ye shall see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ [John 1:51], He implied that in His own life and ministry the idea of communion with God illustrated by Jacob’s vision had received its supreme realization.
The vow pronounced by Jacob at the close of the vision combines the two elements contained in it in such a way that the ministration for which the angels stood results in binding him to the acceptance of Jehovah as his personal property and object of service. The construction adopted by the Authorized Version, which makes the main clause begin with the words, ‘then shall Jehovah be my God’, is to be preferred to that of the Revised Version, in which the main clause begins with ‘then this stone, etc’. This is the only case in patriarchal history of the promising of a vow.
[3] The wrestling at Peniel
The third event in the history illustrating the specific principle involved is that described in Gen. 32; it relates Jacob’s wrestling with a strange person on his return to the land of promise. The transaction is highly mysterious. Many modern interpreters consider it mythical in character. It is asserted that this particular myth was common in various forms among the Shemitic tribes, and that through this episode it obviously found entrance into the patriarchal legend. Varying answers are given to the question, Whom does the strange wrestler represent? Some say, he is the patron-deity of the land disputing Jacob’s entrance into it. Or the story is believed to have been originally entirely detached from the given figure of Jacob, and to have represented the contest of the Sun with the demon of Winter. Still others think the story explains the sacredness and popularity of the shrine at Peniel. The shrine was more frequented than others, because there Jacob had wrestled with the deity and compelled the latter to bless him.
In all these modern interpretations the wrestling is interpreted after a purely physical fashion. Jacob was physically stronger than the one who wrestled with him. An over-spiritualizing view often fell into the opposite extreme, interpreting the event as a purely spiritual, internal, perhaps visionary, transaction. But there must have been an external bodily side to the experience, since it left a physical mark upon Jacob. On the other hand, it cannot have been entirely physical either; the terms are not realistic enough for that and differ widely from those in which the pagan myths adduced for comparison are clothed. The veil of mystery overhanging the account is peculiar to it and absent from pagan mythology. In harmony with the character of revelation in the early period the spiritual and physical must have gone hand in hand. Side by side with the physical struggle there must have run an inward contest of the spirit. But these two accompanied each other from beginning to end.
The view has been wrongly advocated, that the outward wrestling and the inward contest are mutually opposed elements, successive the one to the other. The former half would then be a symbolical
summing up of Jacob’s entire previous attitude and conduct, placing before him what he had been doing from the beginning, wrestling with God in his natural perversity, and that with such a persistence that, in spite of all His discipline, God did not prevail against him. This wrong wrestling with God symbolized the cunning and deceitful efforts by which he had striven to seize the promises. The encounter showed that these had brought upon him not merely the enmity of Esau but also the displeasure of God. This first stage of the wrestling lasted till the break of day. Then God touched the hollow of his thigh. This symbolized an act by which God forced him to change his previous course of conduct. It was the symbol of the terrifying encounter with Esau that proved the crisis of his life. After this there was no more wrestling by physical force, i.e., by human endeavour. Its place was taken by wrestling in prayer: ‘I will not let thee go except thou bless me’. This second stage of the experience, then, would stand for Jacob’s subsequent life, purified by divine grace.
The interpretation, while attractive in itself, runs contrary to the plain intent of the narrative. The account evidently wishes us to understand that the touching of the thigh, so far from inducing Jacob to give up the struggle, only made him all the more determined to persist. And only by virtue of this heroic persistence did he in the end obtain the blessing from the stranger. The first stage, therefore, symbolized not a reprehensible but a commendable thing. The very point of the account is that he did not let himself be overcome even by an apparently insurmountable disqualification. It cannot be said that he first had recourse to prayer after his bodily strength was taken away from him. The correctness of this criticism of the view in question is confirmed by the inspired interpretation of the event given in Hosea 12:4, 5: ‘In his human strength he fought with God, and he fought with the Angel and prevailed; he wept and made supplication unto him.’ Here no two stages of opposite spiritual import are put in contrast; the whole is of one and the same tenor, a glorious example of heroic conduct before God, commendable throughout. It symbolized the strenuous efforts Jacob was making
through the better part of his nature to secure the divine favour and blessing.
In so far it is quite correct to find here an illustration of the persistency of faith and prayer, the Old Testament prototype, as it were, of our Lord’s encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman. Only, while true in general, this view is not specific enough. It is not merely said that Jacob wrestled with the stranger, but also, and even primarily, that the latter wrestled with Jacob. We must, therefore, take into account the element of divine displeasure Jacob had to overcome, always remembering that this entered into the whole transaction from beginning to end. And this fact coloured the frame of mind in which the patriarch prayed, and makes his experience an example for us of prayer, not so much in general, but of a specific kind. It is prayer for forgiveness of sin and the removal of divine displeasure on account of sin that we here find illustrated. And in consonance with this the blessing craved and received was the blessing of pardon and a return to normal relations with God. The event taught Jacob that inheritance of the promises can rest on forgiveness of sin and a purified conscience only.
The change wrought finds expression in the change of name from Jacob to Israel. Jacob means ‘he who takes by the heel or supplants’. Israel means ‘he who wrestles with God’. Yet, notwithstanding this solemn change of name, the two names Jacob and Israel continue to be used side by side in the narrative. It was different in the case of Abraham. But Abraham was a new name given to express a change in the objective sphere, a destiny assigned by God, exempt from relapse or imperfection. In a subjective transformation, on the other hand, the old is never entirely done away with. As before, side by side with Jacob’s perversity, there had been an element of spirituality, so also afterwards, side by side with the now matured spirituality, there remained traces of the old nature. Hence God continued to subject the patriarch to the discipline of affliction even to his old age.