Biblical Theology (Part 2) by Geerhardus Vos

EIGHT:
REVELATION IN THE PERIOD OF MOSES
This part of the subject can most conveniently be divided up into the following parts:
[A] The place of Moses in the organism of Old Testament revelation.
[B] The form of revelation in the Mosaic period.
[C] The content of the Mosaic revelation.
[A] THE PLACE OF MOSES IN THE ORGANISM OF OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION
Whether Moses can be said to have played a prominent part in the development of the religion of the Old Testament depends on the philosophico-literary-critical standpoint from which the matter is approached. It was difficult for the school of Wellhausen not to reduce the importance of Moses as a leader in religious progress, because they felt bound by their premises to ascribe the role traditionally assigned to him to the great prophets of the eighth century. It was held that these, and not Moses, were the creators of what is distinctive and permanently valuable in the Old Testament religion, namely ethical monotheism. Moses was said not to have been a monotheist, and to have had no conception of God as a spiritual being. This school of criticism regarded all the legal and narrative contents of the Pentateuch, even the Decalogue, as of much later origin than the Mosaic age. Moses was regarded as having united several Hebrew tribes in the worship of Jehovah as the god of their confederacy, but it was held that to this god he gave no other conception qualitatively than had been his before. The relation in
which the newly adopted god stood to his people was regarded as not based on ethical principles, nor cultivated for ethical purposes.
From these statements it will be readily seen how hard it must be for the adherents of such views rationally to account for the prominence of Moses in the religious tradition of Israel. Some, in fact, realizing the impossibility of this, reach the conclusion that the whole figure of Moses is unhistorical, no less than that of the patriarchs. There may have been a Moses-clan, but no person of that name ever existed. For the exodus from Egypt, Mizraim, they substitute a migration of the Moses-clan from Mizrim, a region in Northern Arabia. So Cheyne, for the further details of whose views on this matter an article in the Encyclopaedia Biblica may be compared.
The majority of the Wellhausen school of critics by no means adopt this extreme view. They draw the line where the legendary period ceases and that of history begins in the time of Moses. Hence at least they cannot forego trying to answer the question, how Moses earned the credit of eminent religious leadership that is his by right of tradition. One answer frequently given is that by his political leadership he laid the foundations on which subsequently the higher spiritual religion could be built. But in that case Moses builded better than he knew. Having no intention of producing something religiously new and better, he can claim no credit for the consequences derived from his work. And after all, the very point that the later higher conditions were actually consequences of his political activity is the point standing in need of proof. No successful effort had or has been made to demonstrate in what way precisely the praiseworthy political leadership in course of time gave rise to the raising of the moral plane of life, so that a better God could be born out of them.
It is sometimes said that the great deliverances wrought by Moses in the name of Jehovah established in the consciousness of the people a claim upon their loyalty to Him who through His servant Moses had done all this for them. And this sense of loyalty became the great
lever, of which availing themselves, later leading spirits succeeded in moralizing the religion of Israel. This, however, solves the problem only in words, not actually. Other tribes cannot have lived without similar experiences of deliverance wrought, nor been utterly lacking in a sense of loyalty due, and yet no ethicizing results in their case sprang from this. True, the experiences of the Israelites were extraordinary, and therefore might account for greater results than the mere average good fortunes enjoyed by average nations, and likewise derived by them from their gods. But to appeal to this would come perilously near to admitting that in the case of Israel there was a supernatural factor at work, and this is precisely the thing this class of writers wish to avoid by their construction. After all, loyalty is, considered in the light of ethics, a neutral conception. To be loyal to some god for deliverances received, while not as yet ascribing an ethical character to this god, will not lead to a higher ethical type of religion. It may tighten the hold of divine commands upon man, but it will not alter the nature of the commands from non-ethical to ethical.
The same criticism must be applied to another effort towards solving the same, from the critical standpoint fundamental, problem. It has been suggested that Moses sank the seed of ethical fruitage into the soil of Israel’s religion, when through free choice he caused them to adopt Jehovah as their God. Jehovah and Israel did not originally belong together. Thus the religion instituted by Moses was not a nature-religion, but a religion of free choice. To this it should be replied that free choice as such, and not motivated by ethical considerations, is not particularly valuable from a historico-religious point of view. All depends again on the motives from which the choice is directed. Free choice is not a divinity out of whose womb righteous gods and righteous men are born together. It lacks spiritual pregnancy. Unconsciously writers who use this explanation would seem to have put behind the process their own Pelagian appraisal of free choice. Still further, these writers are not willing themselves to admit that the free choice postulated for the time of Moses created an actually free religion for Israel. Some of them
doubt that such a thing as a freely-entered berith took place in that day between Jehovah and Israel. And practically all of them insist that the whole religious relationship remained one of necessity, Jehovah being as much bound to the people as they were bound to Him. Finally, instances are not lacking in the history of religion where other groups have adopted or coadopted new gods after the fashion of a more or less free choice. Syncretism has by no means always been an unconscious or compulsory process. And yet no ethical results have followed.
THE PROMINENCE OF MOSES
We must now show that from very early times Moses did occupy a most prominent place in the religious consciousness of Israel. This can be done without venturing out into the labyrinth of Pentateuchal criticism with all its confusing paths of authorships and dates. Without dispute, in the oldest Pentateuchal stories Moses stands out as the great religious leader of his people, and these stories are, according to the critics, even in their written form, older then the eighth-century prophets. The stories as orally circulating must have been, of course, much older still. In the oldest writing prophets, Amos and Hosea, a supreme place is given to Moses. Hosea says: ‘By a prophet Jehovah brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved’ [Hos. 12:13]. Amos, while not mentioning him by name, evidently thinks of Moses in connection with the words: ‘the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt’. And that an ethical purpose was connected with this act of redemption is shown in the next words: ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities’ [Amos 3:1, 2; cp. Isa. 63:11; Jer. 15:1].
The true, inward significance of Moses, when we place him within the unfolding scheme of revelation, can be made clear in several directions. For one thing he was, retrospectively considered, instrumental in bringing the great patriarchal promises to an incipient fulfilment, at least in their external, provisional
embodiment. Israel became in truth a great nation, and this was due not exclusively to their rapid increase; the organization received through Moses enabled them to attain national coherence. Moses likewise led them to the border of the promised land. With regard to the third promise, it must be admitted that Moses contributed to its fulfilment after a negative fashion only. Before a blessing could actually proceed from Israel to the nations, it was first of all necessary that the fundamental difference between Israel and the nations, that is, the principal difference between the true religion and paganism, should be clearly exhibited. And this was done through the conflict between Israel and Egypt which Moses precipitated. It will be shown afterwards, that this conflict was not superficially confined to the national-political sphere, but sprang from deeper religious principles. Therefore, after a negative fashion, credit for preparing the way for the fulfilment of the third promise also cannot be withheld from Moses.
Prospectively considered Moses also occupies a dominant place in the religious development of the Old Testament. He is placed not merely at the head of the succession of prophets, but placed over them in advance. His authority extends over subsequent ages. The later prophets do not create anything new; they only predict something new. It is true, Moses can be co-ordinated with the prophets: [Deut. 18:18; ‘a prophet like unto thee’]. Nevertheless the prophets themselves are clearly conscious of the unique position of Moses. They put his work not so much on a line with their own, as with the stupendous eschatological work of Jehovah for His people expected in the latter days [cp. Isa. 10:26; 11:11; 63:11, 12; Jer. 23:5– 8; Mic. 7:15]. According to Num. 12:7, Moses was set over all God’s house. It is entirely in keeping with this prospective import of Moses and his work, that his figure acquires typical proportions to an unusual degree. He may be fitly called the redeemer of the Old Testament. Nearly all the terms in use for the redemption of the New Testament can be traced back to his time. There was in his work such a close connection between revealing words and redeeming acts as can be paralleled only from the life of Christ. And the acts of Moses
were to a high degree supernatural, miraculous acts. This typical relation of Moses to Christ can easily be traced in each of the three offices we are accustomed to distinguish in the soteric work of Christ. The ‘prophet’ of Deut. 18:15, reaching his culmination in the Messiah, is ‘like unto’ Moses. Moses fulfilled priestly functions at the inauguration of the Old Berith, before the Aaronic priesthood was instituted [Ex. 24:4–8]. Our Lord refers to this as a typical transaction, when inaugurating the New Diatheke at the institution of the supper [Lk. 22:20]. Moses intercedes for Israel after the commission of the sin of the golden calf, and that by offering his own person vicariously for bearing the punishment of the guilty [Ex. 32:30–33]. A royal figure, of course, Moses could not at that time be called, for Jehovah alone is King of Israel. None the less, through his legislative function Moses typified the royal office of Christ.
All this reflected itself in the peculiar relation the people were made to sustain toward Moses. This relation is even described as one of faith and of trust [Ex. 14:31; 19:9]. The resemblance of this relation of the Israelites towards Moses to the relation of the Christian towards Christ had not escaped the notice of Paul, who says that ‘our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea’ [1 Cor. 10:1–3]. Just as in baptism an intimate relation is established between the believer and Christ, based on the saviourship of Christ, even so the mighty acts of divine deliverance wrought through Moses pledged Israel to faith in him. And, as during the ministry of Jesus faith and unbelief proved the two decisive factors, so during the wilderness journey a great drama of faith and unbelief was enacted, deciding the people’s fate [Heb. 3; 4].
[B] THE FORM OF REVELATION IN THE MOSAIC PERIOD
Here we must distinguish between the revelation directly communicated to and through the person of Moses, on the one hand, and forms of revelation emerging in his time, but not directly passing through his person.
In harmony with the important role played by Moses, we find a special clearness and directness affirmed of the intercourse between him and God. There was no prophet who was honoured with the direct and continuous access to Jehovah that Moses enjoyed. In this respect also Moses seems to have prefigured Christ. As Christ reveals the Father in virtue of a most direct and an uninterrupted vision of Him, and not as a result of isolated communications, so Moses, though to a lower degree, stands nearer to God, and is more, in all that he speaks and does, the mouthpiece of God than any subsequent prophet. The distinction between Moses, on the one hand, and Aaron and Miriam on the other, is formulated in Num. 12. Here he is called ‘my servant Moses’, not in the menial sense of merely a servant, but in the high sense of a trusted servant, initiated into all that his master does. He is faithful in all God’s house. This name ‘Servant of Jehovah’ is afterwards given to the Messiah, in the prophecy of Isaiah. Moses appreciated the unique distinction implied in this [Ex. 33:12].
Most strikingly Moses’ intimate relation to God and the honour it conferred are symbolized by the reflection of divine glory on his countenance after the forty days and forty nights spent with God upon the mountain [Ex. 34:29ff.]. Paul, while recognizing the greatness, dwells rather on its limitations, as compared with the glory of his own ministration under the New Diatheke, in 2 Cor. 3. The Pentateuch itself recognizes these limitations. According to Ex. 33:17–23, Moses was not permitted to see the ‘face’ of God, but only as it is anthropomorphically called, his ‘back’. It is no contradiction to this, when in Num. 12 Moses is said to behold the temunah, the ‘form of God’, for this is not identical with the ‘face’. True, it is also said that God spake with him ‘face to face’ [Ex. 33:11]. ‘Face to face’ is an adverbial phrase synonymous with ‘mouth to mouth’, and by no means equivalent to a vision of the divine face [Num. 12:8]. Compare further, Ex. 34:5: ‘stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Jehovah’. Also 33:18, 19: ‘Show me thy glory’…. ‘I will make all my goodness [probably “goodliness”, “loveliness”] pass before thee and will proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee’. On the occasion of
Ex. 24:10, when Moses with the others had gone up on the mountain, after the making of the berith, in order to ‘see’ the God of Israel, what they actually saw was not the divine face, but only, as it were, God’s ‘feet’. This is the same idea as is expressed in the figure of the ‘back of God’ [Ex. 33:23].
The forms of revelation connected with the work of Moses, though not communicated through him personally, are four in number: The pillar and the cloud, the Angel of Jehovah, the Name of Jehovah, the Face of Jehovah. These have in common that they express the permanence of the divine presence, and are distinguished in that respect from the fleeting, ephemeral forms of manifestation in the patriarchal period. The significance of this can be understood only if it be placed in the larger setting of the divine communication with mankind in general. Before the fall there was such an abiding presence of God with man in paradise. After the fall a certain remnant of this continued, though not in the old gracious form. The throne with the Cherubim still stood in the East of the garden of God. God still walked with Enoch. With the flood all this is changed. God has, as it were, withdrawn this sacramental revelation-presence into heaven. This, however, was an abnormal state of things, for the ultimate design of all God’s converse with man is, that He may make His abode with His people. Consequently from now on all revelation tends towards the realization of this design. The theophanies of the patriarchal period must be regarded as incipient fulfilments of it. But the fulfilment was only partial. The presence was there only at times; it was granted to a few select persons only; it was confined to the great turning-points in their history; it was veiled in deepest mystery. With the time of Moses there came the opposite to this in all respects.
THE PILLAR OF CLOUD AND FIRE
Of the pillar of cloud and fire we read in the following passages: Ex. 13:21, 22, where it is explicitly stated that Jehovah was in the phenomenon, and that it did not depart from before the people;
afterwards it moves to a position behind them so as to be between them and their Egyptian pursuers before the passage through the Red Sea [Ex. 14:19, 20]; through the pillar Jehovah looks forth upon the Egyptians to discomfit them [Ex. 14:24]; when the people murmured because they doubted the divine presence with them, the glory of Jehovah appeared in the cloud [Ex. 16:10]; next we meet with a cloud revealing Jehovah on Sinai at the giving of the law, which cloud is also called a ‘fire’, although nothing is said about a pillar on this occasion [Ex. 19:9, 16, 18]; in Ex. 24:16 this same cloud upon Sinai is mentioned again as containing the glory of Jehovah, the appearance of which is described as ‘like devouring fire’ [vs. 17], and Moses enters into the midst of the cloud [vs. 18]; after this we meet with the pillar again in Ex. 33:9; where it descends (from the mount or from heaven?) and stands at the door of the provisional tent pitched by Moses, while all the people worship every one at his tent door [vs. 10]; according to Ex. 34:5, Jehovah descends from heaven in the cloud upon Mount Sinai. It is altogether probable that the so-called Shekinah, the glory in the holy of holies of tabernacle and temple, was a continuation of all this; in fact the feature of permanence so strongly emphasized almost requires it. Of this, however, we shall speak later when dealing with the tabernacle.
THE ANGEL OF JEHOVAH
Of the Angel of Jehovah we read first in Ex. 3:2, where He appears to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush, and His identity with God is shown by the fact of God’s calling unto Moses out of the bush. Next we find Him referred to in Ex. 14:19; here He goes before the camp of Israel, and with the pillar moves from before to behind. In Ex. 23:20, 21 a formal promise is made regarding Him; He is to accompany Israel: ‘Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee by the way, and to bring thee unto the place which I have prepared; take ye heed before him, and hearken unto his voice; provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgression: for my name is in him’. The entire tenor of this passage forbids our thinking that an ordinary angel is spoken of, although the text reads ‘an angel’, not
‘the angel’. From the Septuagint reading ‘my angel’ we may infer that this form (with the suffix) stood originally in the Hebrew text. We learn from the statement that the Angel’s function was the comprehensive one of leading the people to Canaan. We further learn that, in respect of sinning against Him, He is identical with God. On the other hand, in Ex. 32:34 we meet with ‘my angel’, and in Ex. 33:2 with ‘an angel’. The situation here requires this, for the sending of the angel appears as a retraction of Jehovah’s original promise that He Himself would go with the people [Ex. 33:3–5], and the sending of ‘the Angel of Jehovah’ could not have been represented as anything less than Jehovah’s own going. It is only after Moses’ expostulation at the changed proposal that God finally is prevailed upon to abide by the original agreement: ‘my Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest’ [Ex. 33:14].
The Angel of Jehovah appears in the history of Balaam, Num. 22, where he frustrates Balak’s design for cursing Israel. This forms a concrete instance of His general task consisting in the guidance and defence of His people [cp. Num. 20:16].
THE NAME AND THE FACE OF JEHOVAH
In two of the Angel contexts discussed we have already met with the two remaining revelation forms, ‘the Name’ and ‘the Face’ of Jehovah. ‘The Name’ we encountered in Ex. 23:21, where it is affirmed that ‘the Name’ is in the Angel. Nothing short of identification can be meant by this, for it is stated as the ground why sin committed against the Name-bearing Angel will not be pardoned by Him. The other form, ‘the Presence’, met us in Ex. 33:14, ‘My Presence shall go with thee’. This must be equivalent to Jehovah’s own going [cp. vs. 17]. ‘Presence’ stands for the Hebrew Panim which also proves the identification. The Panim is likewise identified with the Angel. Isaiah, referring to the wilderness-journey, says that the Angel of God’s Panim saved the people [Isa. 63:9].
One more identification occurs in Deuteronomy. It is that between the ‘Name’ and the glory in the sanctuary. Jehovah is said to have put His ‘Name’ in the place of the sanctuary. The place where His ‘Name’ is, is called His habitation. Jehovah causes His ‘Name’ to dwell there [Deut. 12:5, 11, 21; 14:23, 24; 16:2, 6, 11; 26:2]. It is plain, especially from the latter way of speaking, that the phrase is meant to be understood realistically. It is not a mere figure of speech for saying that the sanctuary is God’s property, nor that His magnificent Name is in the exercise of the cultus pronounced or called upon there. Of ‘dwelling’ in the sanctuary God Himself is always the subject.
From the foregoing it will be noted that to the three meanings previously found for the Name of God in a religious sense a fourth one must be added. In this fourth sense the Name is not something in the apprehension of man; it is objective, equivalent to Jehovah Himself. Still there always remains a difference in point of view between Jehovah as such and His ‘Name’. The ‘Name’ is God in revelation. And the same distinction applies to the use of the Shekinah, the Angel and the Presence.
[C] THE CONTENT OF THE MOSAIC REVELATION
We now come to the discussion of the content of the Mosaic Revelation. This part of the subject is complex, and hence it will be necessary clearly to place before ourselves at the outset the main divisions belonging to it. These are:
(a) the factual basis of the Mosaic organization given in the redemption from Egypt;
(b) the making of the Berith with Israel with which the organization entered into being;
(c) the general nature of the organization, the theocracy; (d) the Decalogue;
(e) the ritual law, its symbolical and typical character, with the three strands composing it, that of divine indwelling, that of sacrifice, that of purification.
[1] The factual basis of the Mosaic organization consisting in the redemption from Egypt
The exodus from Egypt is the Old Testament redemption. This is not an anachronistic, allegorizing manner of speaking. It is based on the inner coherence of Old Testament and New Testament religion itself. These two, however different their forms of expression, are yet one in principle. The same purpose and method of God run through both. If, as is frequently urged nowadays, the Old Testament should be rejected and scorned as unworthy of the ideal religion, one may be sure that this attitude is due to abandonment of the entire soteric strain of the Biblical religion as such. There may be, of course, single uncongenial features telling in the opinion of some against the Old Testament, but the source of the antagonism lies deeper, and will be found, on closer examination, to relate to what Old Testament and New Testament have in common, the realism of redemption. The substance upon which the impression was made under the Old Testament may have been earthly clay; none the less the matrix that stamped it bore the lineaments of eternal law and truth. We can here observe again how inseparably revelation through words is united to facts, nay how for whole stretches the demarcation line between acts and words may even seem to have been lost altogether.
There is an irreconcilable difference between the religious consciousness that is at all times clearly or dimly aware of springing up and drawing nourishment from this soil of facts, and the consciousness that has emancipated itself from belief in the reality of the facts. Nor is it a difference in belief only; it is a difference in atmosphere and feeling of self. In spite of all his limitations the Old Testament believer stands nearer to us in this respect than the so- called modern idealizer or spiritualizer of the Christian religion. The closest linking together of the facts and the practice of religious life is
observable at this very point now reached by us. The Decalogue opens with one of the most profound references to the soteric procedure of God in delivering the people from Egypt [Ex. 20:2]. The first offer of the Berith is preceded by an even more elaborate statement that seems baptized in the very warmth of divine affection [19:4]. And the long introductory discourse of Deuteronomy, semi- prophetic in spirit, partakes of the same tone and character. As late as Isaiah the people are called upon to remind themselves of the ultimate roots of their religious origin in the things Jehovah did for them in the remote past [Isa. 51:2].
What then are the outstanding principles of the exodus-deliverance that were thus made regulative of all future salvation and bind things past and things to come indissolubly together?
DELIVERANCE FROM FOREIGN BONDAGE
First of all, redemption is here portrayed as, before everything else, a deliverance from an objective realm of sin and evil. The favourite individualizing and internalizing of sin finds no support here. No people of God can spring into existence without being cut loose from a world opposed to God and to themselves in their very origin. The Egyptian power is in this respect as truly typical as the divine power that wrought the deliverance. Its attitude and activity were shaped with this in view. What held under the Hebrews was not mere political dependence, but harsh bondage. Their condition is represented as a condition of slavery. The Egyptians exploited them for selfish ends regardless of Israel’s own welfare. Ever since, redemption has attached to itself this imagery of enslavement to an alien power. John 8:33–36 as well as Rom. 8:20–21, reach back into these far origins.
Further, to this enslaving power a high degree of malignity is ascribed, that it might fitly typify the mind of sin in the world. In part at least the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is explainable from the same reason. His obduracy was to reveal the true inward nature of
that of which he was a figure. Of course, this hardening was by no means an arbitrary divine act; it was a judicial process: the king first hardened himself, and then, in punishment for this, he was further hardened by God. It is the well-known Scriptural law of sin being punished by irretrievable abandonment to sin, a law by no means confined to the Old Testament, but found in the New Testament as well. The ethics of the matter, however, do not concern us here. This kingdom of evil headed up in Pharaoh embraces first of all the human elements of paganism. Probably, however, the account does not mean to confine it to this. Sin is at every point more than the sum-total of purely human influences it brings to bear upon its victims. A religious, demonic background is thrown back of the human figures that move across the canvas. Not merely the Egyptians, but likewise the Egyptians’ gods are involved in the conflict. The plagues come in here for notice. They are inextricably mixed up with the Egyptian idolatry. This idolatry was nature- worship, embracing the good and beneficent as well as the evil and baneful aspects of nature. Jehovah, in making these harm their own worshippers, shows His superiority to this whole realm of evil. This is stated in so many words: ‘Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Jehovah’ [Ex. 12:12]. The same demonic powers that were concerned in the antitypical redemption wrought by Christ, and there displayed their intensest activity, had a hand in this opposition to the redemption from Egypt.
DELIVERANCE FROM SIN
So much for the objective side of the matter. There was, however, a subjective side to it also. The Hebrews were delivered not merely from outside foreign bondage, they were likewise rescued from inward spiritual degradation and sin. Two views have been taken as to the religious condition of the people at this time. According to one they had practically lost all knowledge of the true God, and were deeply immersed in and identified with the idolatrous practices of the Egyptians. This was the view of John Spencer, an English
theologian of the Seventeenth Century, advocated in his work De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus.
Connected with this theory was a peculiar opinion concerning the origin of the ceremonial laws imposed upon the people in the time of Moses. The purpose of these laws was to leave room for a gradual weaning away of the Hebrews from their idolatrous Egyptian customs. God, fearing lest a too sudden prohibition of these customs should cause an utter relapse into heathenism, condescended to tolerate their observance for a season. The other view falls into the opposite extreme. It assumes that the Israelites had on the whole kept themselves from contamination with the idolatry of Egypt. Both views in their extreme form must be rejected. The true religion had not entirely vanished from among Israel. They still knew enough to perceive that Jehovah was the God of their fathers, for in the name of the God of the patriarchs Moses was sent to them. Names compounded with El are found in the record. They must have felt themselves to some extent specifically Shemitic in their religious traditions.
On the other hand we are not warranted in passing this relatively favourable judgment upon the people as a whole. From Josh. 24:14 and Ezek. 23:8, 19, 21, we learn that Israel served idols in Egypt. The history of the wilderness journey with its repeated apostasies, such as the worship of the golden calf, becomes unintelligible, unless we may assume that the people had left Egypt in a corrupt state religiously. Perhaps also the worship of the calf-image, and the demon-worship related in Lev. 17:7, might be interpreted as of Egyptian origin. As will be later shown, however, there is no evidence that the ritual law was a mere accommodation to the corrupt tendencies of the people. But it remains true that there must have existed enough of religious decline and corruption among them to make their deliverance from Egypt more than a mere external national benefit to them without deeper spiritual significance.
It should be remembered that in the history of God’s people external bondage is frequently a concomitant of spiritual unfaithfulness to Jehovah. We need not deny, of course, that the secondary causes of Israel’s oppression lay in political considerations and racial antipathies. Only, political developments never furnish a sufficient explanation of what happens in Sacred History. The Egyptians were but instruments in carrying out the designs of God. That God had ordered the bondage beforehand for a specific purpose is made probable by its having been foretold to Abraham on the occasion of the making of the Berith [Gen. 15:13].
A DISPLAY OF DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE
Next we observe, in regard to the method of the deliverance, the emphasis throughout thrown on the divine omnipotence for bringing it about. Above all else Jehovah’s might is celebrated in the account. This furnishes the keynote to the song of Ex. 15, a profound poetical interpretation of the exodus from this point of view [vss. 6, 7, 11]. As remarked above, there is a unique accumulation of miracles in this part of the history. The number of the plagues is ten, the Scriptural number of completeness. The dividing of the waters of the sea is the culminating act in the great drama of redemption. The sacred poetry of later times was fond of celebrating these acts of God and basing on them the assured hope of future similar deliverances. Jehovah’s omnipotence and the exodus remain from this time onward associated in the tradition of Israel.
With this emphasis on the element of power, it is no wonder that everything in the history is carefully arranged to place it in the proper relief. When Moses in his own strength sought to deliver the people, the result was a failure. When, after an interval of forty years and actually commissioned by Jehovah to guide and effect the redemption, he assumes the task in the totally opposite spirit of absolute dependence upon God, thoroughly recognizing his own unfitness, God promises that He will smite Egypt with all His wonders [Ex. 3:20]. He puts His wonders into the hand of Moses
[4:21]. He proceeds to redeem Israel with a stretched-out arm and great judgments [6:6]. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, while intended to make him a pronounced exponent of evil, had also the further intention of prolonging the process of deliverance, thus creating room for the fullest display of miraculous power. This is said in so many words: ‘I will harden Pharaoh’s heart. and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt’ [7:3]. The task had to be made more difficult in order that the omnipotence effecting it might be the more apparent. Nay, Pharaoh’s whole existence and personality and conduct seem to have been shaped with this in view. In Ex. 9:16, Jehovah declares: ‘But in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand, for to show thee my power, and that my name may be declared through all the earth’. Even if the words ‘made thee to stand’ mean ‘kept thee standing longer on the stage of history, whereas under ordinary circumstances thou wouldst have fallen before’, they bear out the view in question. Still more is this the case, if the stronger rendering be adopted: ‘I have caused thee to stand upon the scene’, i.e., have called thee into being [cp. Rom. 9:17]. Finally the conflict between the works wrought by Moses and the signs of the Egyptian magicians show that a transaction in the sphere of power is described.
A DEMONSTRATION OF SOVEREIGN GRACE
Again, the deliverance from Egypt was a signal demonstration of the sovereign grace of God. The Egyptians were judged with respect to their idolatry, and the Israelites were rescued and spared, in spite of having become associated with their oppressors in idolatrous practices. It is plain that the principle of sovereign grace alone will account for such facts. This is called ‘putting a difference between Israelites and Egyptians’ [Ex. 8:23; 11:7]. In harmony with this it is repeatedly stated in the Pentateuch, that the source of Israel’s privilege lies exclusively in free divine grace, not in any good qualities possessed by the people from themselves [Deut. 7:7; 9:4–6]. True, God’s love for the Mosaic Israel is traced back to His love for the fathers. This carries the relationship of free choice one step
further back, but does not in substance alter its nature, for the fathers too were chosen in the sovereign love of God.
The idea of sonship, here for the first time emerging [cp. Gen. 6:2], belongs to the same train of thought [Ex. 4:22; Deut. 32:6]. Sonship is from the nature of the case unmeritorious. We also meet again the peculiar affectionate use of the verb ‘to know’, previously met with in regard to Abraham [Ex. 2:24, 25]. Also the verb ‘to choose’ is used. This is peculiar to Deuteronomy [7:6, 7; 14:2]. Finally, the term ‘redemption’ enters into religious use here. Its specific meaning (different from such general terms as ‘to rescue’, ‘to deliver’) lies precisely in this, that it describes the loving reacquisition of something formerly possessed. There is not yet in the Old Testament any reflection on that element so easily associated with the conception, viz., that a redemptionprice is paid. Only by way of metaphor this thought emerges in an isolated instance [Isa. 43:3]. The sense is in the Pentateuchal passages simply that of attachment shown in the renewal of the ancient ownership. Hence in the later chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah, where the background is that of deliverance from exile, the term attains to great frequency. The passages in the Pentateuch are: Ex. 6:6; 15:13; Deut. 7:8; 9:26; 13:5; 21:8.
THE NAME ‘JEHOVAH’
With this feature of the sovereignty shown in redemption is connected the specifically Mosaic name of God, Jehovah. This form is a pronunciation in which the vowels of Adonai were given to the consonants of the name in question. The writing of these vowels sprang originally from the Jewish scrupulousness refraining from the utterance of this most sacred name altogether. Because Adonai was always read in place of it, therefore, when vowels were added, for convenience’ sake the vowels required for the reading of Adonai were simply attached. It was, of course, never contemplated at that time that the consonants standing in the text, and which it would have been the height of impiety to remove, should have in pronunciation
joined to them these alien vowels. This was first done in Christian reading, when the old Jewish scrupulosity was no longer felt, and thus the hybrid form Jehovah arose. It has been in use since the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, the renderings of the Bible into the various vernaculars continued the Jewish practice of reading Adonai, and so put ‘Lord’ or its equivalent in the other languages, for Jehovah. Modern scholarship thinks it has discovered the original pronunciation of the name, customary up to the time when Jewish superstition abolished it, and it is now commonly found in critical books in the form ‘Jahveh’. Certain, however, this sounding of the word is not. Even if certainty could be obtained in this respect, it would scarcely be advisable to introduce ‘Jahveh’ into the reading of Scripture, especially not for liturgical purposes. Still it is a step in the right direction that the American Revision has restored Jehovah. When the suspicious critical flavour of ‘Jahveh’ shall have somewhat evaporated, and stronger new evidence for the correctness of ‘Jahveh’ shall have been obtained, the latter will perhaps come to its rights again. Meanwhile, there is no excuse for continuing the total non-use of the sacred name, now that ‘Jehovah’ has, through the American Revision, made its reappearance in our Bible.
In Ex. 6:3 we read that the revelation of the name belongs to, and is characteristic of the Mosaic period. Proceeding on the inference that the writer of this passage could not possibly have regarded it as known in older times, the divisive criticism has laid this passage at the basis of the distinction between Elohistic and Jahvistic documents. There are, however, strong objections to this literalistic exegesis of the passage. It is a priori improbable that Moses should have been sent to his brethren, whom he had to recall from forgetfulness of the God of their forefathers, with a new, formerly unknown, name of this God upon his lips. Then there is the fact that Moses’ mother bears a name compounded with Jehovah, in its abbreviated form Jo, viz., Jokhebed. And this name occurs in the very same document to which Ex. 6:3, belongs, so that the additional assumption, unfavoured by aught else, of an interpolation of the name Jokhebed in this document is required. Closely looked at, Ex.
6:3 does not require the absolute previous unknownness of the word. The statement need mean nothing more than that the patriarchs did not as yet possess the practical knowledge and experience of that side of the divine character which finds expression in the name. ‘To know’ in the Hebrew conception, and the same word in our everyday parlance, are two quite different things. The context of Ex. 6:3 even renders probable that a practical, experiential knowledge is referred to. In vss. 6, 7 we read: ‘I will redeem you with a stretched-out arm— and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God’. Through the redemption they will learn, not that there is a Jehovah, but what Jehovah means to them, that Jehovah is their God, or that their God is Jehovah.
Of course, the assumption of a pre-Mosaic existence of the name does not imply that it existed as early as the narrator in Genesis, speaking for his own person, introduces it. How much older than the exodus it is we cannot tell. A priori the hypothesis cannot be excluded that in earlier times it may have had other associations. The name may have been current in small circles; a different etymology from that of Ex. 3 may have been ascribed to it. It may even have come from an extra-Hebrew source. The views, however, proposed in this last-named direction are some of them impossible, all of them highly problematical. An Egyptian origin has been assumed by Voltaire, Schiller, Comte, and others. This is out of the question, because the deliverance from Egypt is represented as involving a conflict between Jehovah and the gods of the Egyptians.
According to Colenso, Land, and others, the name is North-Shemitic, and designated in its former environment the god of heaven, the giver of fruitfulness, in whose honour the orgiastic worship of Syria was practised. There is what purports to be an ancient oracle, in which the name Iao is identified with Dionysos, so that Jehovah would be the Canaanitish Dionysos. At first a relatively high antiquity was ascribed to this piece, so as to render the explanation possible that the Syrian form Iao was the original, from which then the Hebrews would have borrowed their Jehovah. This, of course,
became impossible when the late date became apparent, for at so late a date the Israelites had been long in possession of the name Jehovah. The likelihood on that supposition would be that the Syrian worshippers of such an Iao had borrowed the name of their deity from the well-known name of the God of Israel.
More recently it has been thought that the name was discovered in early Egyptian lists of Canaanitish places, such as Baitiyah, Babiyah. It has also been found in the name of a king of Hamath reading Yaubidi in Assyrian inscriptions. A hypothesis much in vogue among the Wellhausenians is that Jehovah was a god of the Kenites, a tribe in the district of Sinai, to whom the father-in-law of Moses belonged, which would explain Jehovah’s association with that mountain. Then there is still the hypothesis that Jehovah is identical with the form Yahu, or Yah, occurring in Assyrio-Babylonian proper names, which the Hebrew priests would have changed into Jahveh, in order to suggest derivation from hayah, ‘to be’.
Equally futile as most of these theories of provenience are some of the etymologies, largely naturalistic, proposed in explanation of the original sense of the word itself. It has been connected with hawah, ‘to fall’, on the view of its meaning ‘he who rushes, crashes down’, a storm-god, or, even more primitively, a meteoric stone fallen from heaven. Or hawah has been compared in the sense of ‘to blow’, which it has in Arabic. Wellhausen observes: ‘the etymology is quite obvious; he rides through the air, he blows’. Again the sense of ‘falling’ has been introduced after this fashion; Jahveh is a Hiphil form, which yields ‘he who causes to fall’, i.e., the rain-, the storm- god. Thus Robertson Smith, Stade and others. Far less naturalistic is the derivation, likewise from the Hiphil, proposed by Kuenen, ‘he who causes to be’, i.e., the Creator, or, with a more historic turn, ‘he who causes his promises to be’, that is, fulfils them.
All these derivations are purely conjectural. It is obvious that, whatever the original meaning lying behind the Old Testament usage, if such there was, the authoritative sense for the religion of
Israel has been fixed through the revelation of Ex. 3, and with this alone we have here to deal. God says to Moses: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. Then this is abbreviated to Ehyeh, and finally turned from the first into the third person Yehweh. The solution of the mystery must lie in the fuller form.
What can such a sentence mean? Here again, where the inquiry is into the intent of the writer exclusively, opinions of expositors vary widely. There is at the start the issue of construction. We may read the sentence straight down from the beginning: ‘I am what I am’, and attach our interpretation, whatever it is, directly to this. Or, and this is syntactically just as possible in the Hebrew, we may start to read from the middle, placing the first word at the end, which would yield: ‘I, who am, truly am’. Further into the question of rendering there enters the analogy of the similarly constructed sentence, Ex. 33:19, which, since it is likewise associated with the name Jehovah, must needs be regulative, at least as to construction, for the formula of Ex. 3. If there we read: ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious’, we are bound to read here: ‘I am what I am’. On the other hand, if there we construe: ‘to whom I will be gracious I will be (truly) gracious’, we cannot very well do otherwise here in Ex. 3:14: ‘I, who am, (truly) am’.
Keeping this in mind, let us now briefly review the solutions offered. One is that the sentence expresses the inscrutability of God: ‘I am what I am; what I am is not to be curiously enquired into; my being cannot be expressed by any name’. Against this weighs the fact that all the other divine names are expressive of something. A name to express namelessness, i.e., unknowableness, would be under the circumstances quite out of place. It was at this juncture of supreme importance that God should in some striking manner reveal Himself, so as to emphasize and define some aspect of His character, needful for the people to know. On this view, of course, the construction is the one straight down from the beginning.
Another solution is, that God here asseverates the reality of His being. For this the construction will have to set in at the middle: ‘I, who am, (truly) am’. In its more philosophic form this may be called the ontological view. It would approach what the schoolmen have tried to express in the doctrine that God is pure being. But this is far too abstract an idea to be suitable here. It would bear no direct application to the need of the Israelites at this juncture. They, surely, had something else and more urgent to do than to lose themselves in speculations anent the mode of God’s existence. Feeling this, some, while retaining the idea, have endeavoured to give it a more practical turn. Jehovah is called the Being One par excellence, because He attests His being by acting. To the instinct of our modern language such an association is not unfamiliar. We say a thing is ‘actual’, meaning it is ‘real’, although ‘actual’ etymologically means ‘that which acts’. But that this was as familiar to the Hebrew instinct of language formation would be difficult to prove. It is rather an abstract idea, and no traces of it in Hebrew idiom have been discovered.
A third effort to put meaning into the phrase is that of Robertson Smith. He calls attention to Ex. 3:12, where God says to Moses: ‘Certainly I shall be with thee’, and considers the clause ‘I shall be’ an abbreviation for ‘I shall be with you’. This understanding again requires the reading of the sentence to start from the middle: ‘I, who will be with you, surely will be with you’. There are two objections to this. For one thing it changes the singular ‘thee’ addressed to Moses to the plural ‘you’ addressed to the Israelites. Besides this, it assumes that in such a statement the really important part of the import could be left to be supplied. The ‘with you’ is actually the core of the whole promise, and this would have remained unexpressed.
Less open to objection than all these offered solutions is the old view, according to which, reading the clause straight from beginning to end, it gives expression to the self-determination, the independence of God, that which, especially in soteric associations, we are accustomed to call His sovereignty. Considerable support this
receives from the analogously-phrased sentence in Ex. 33:19, where the context seems to call rather for an affirmation of the sovereignty of God in bestowing the favour of vision of Himself than for an assurance to the effect that, promising to be gracious, He will be truly gracious. Thus taken, the name Jehovah signifies primarily that in all God does for His people, He is from-within-determined, not moved upon by outside influences.
But from this there issues immediately another thought, quite inseparable from it, viz., that being determined from within, and not subject to change within, He is not subject to change at all, particularly not subject to it in relation to His people. Thus understood, the name fits admirably into the situation of its revealing. Jehovah, the absolute God, acting with unfettered liberty, was the very God to help them in their unworthiness as regards themselves, and in their impotence as regards the Egyptians. That sovereignty underlies God’s giving Himself to Israel is stated in so many words: ‘I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall know that I am Jehovah, your God’ [Ex. 6:7]. But the other element, that of faithfulness, is equally much emphasized from the beginning: ‘Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations’ [Ex. 3:15]. ‘I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am Jehovah’ [Ex. 6:5, 6, 8], In Ex. 33:19, where God gives a disclosure of His sovereignty to Moses, this is brought into connection with the name Jehovah. In the later Scriptures the second element, that of faithfulness, is especially associated with the name [Deut. 7:9; Isa. 26:4; Hos. 2:20; Mal. 3:6].
THE PASSOVER
The last prominent feature in the Exodus redemption is the expiatory strand running through it. This consists in the Passover. Notwithstanding its sovereignty, grace could not be exercised without an accompanying atonement. In virtue of this rite the Slayer
passed over the houses of the Israelites. In fact the name Pasach is derived from this. The verb means first ‘to leap’, then ‘to jump over’, then ‘to spare’. Both Ex. 12:13 and 27 explain the etymology in this way [cp. also Isa. 31:5]. To be sure, as in the case of Jehovah, so here, other naturalistic explanations have been proposed. The word has been derived from the triumphant passage of the sun through the equinoctial point into the sign of the Ram; Passover would then originally have been the spring-festival of the Equinox. The name has also been explained from the ritual dancing performed at the spring festival.
According to the account the blood put upon the houses was not a mere signal by which the dwellings of the Hebrews could be recognized. It may have been this too, but its real efficacy was derived from its sacrificial character. This is affirmed explicitly, Ex. 12:27: ‘It is the sacrifice of Jehovah’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt’ [cp. Ex. 34:25; Num. 9:7– 10; 1 Cor. 5:7]. Notwithstanding these unequivocal statements most of the old Protestant theologians denied the sacrificial character of the Passover. This was from reaction to the Romish doctrine of the mass. In support of this doctrine the Romanists appealed to the Passover as the corresponding typical sacrifice of the Old Testament. It was in order to deprive them of this argument that Protestants went to the length of denying that the Passover had been a sacrifice.
Now, if it was a sacrifice, the question next arises, to what class of sacrifices it belongs. Some features it had peculiar to itself, but on the whole it will have to be classified with the peace-offerings. Notwithstanding the emphasis thrown on the expiatory element, it cannot be subsumed under the sin-offerings, for of these the offerer was not allowed to eat, whereas it was obligatory to eat the Passover. The idea prominent in every peace-offering was that of berith- fellowship with God. The meal was an exponent of the state of peace and blessedness enjoyed. But precisely because this meal followed the sacrifice proper, there must be recognized in it a reminder of the necessary dependence of such a state of privilege on antecedent
expiation. It is a mistake to think that, in the sin-offerings only, expiation was afforded. Wherever there is slaying and manipulation of blood there is expiation, and both these were present in the Passover. The element of purification, closely connected with that of expiation, is separately symbolized in that the application of the blood had to be made by a bunch of hyssop. Hyssop figures everywhere as an instrument of purification. From the ordinary peace-offerings, later regulated by the law, the Passover had the following points of difference: it had and retained the historical background; through the bitter herbs eaten with it the bitterness of the Egyptian bondage was kept alive in the memory of Israel. Further, it was distinctly a national feast, whereas the ordinary peace-offerings were of a private character. Hence it was celebrated, not on a private, but on a family basis. None of the meat was to be taken out of the house. If one family was not able to consume it, two families had to join. Not a bone of the lamb was to be broken, and for this reason it was roasted in fire, not boiled in water. This close connection with the national life of Israel explains why the Passover was not instituted until the organization of Israel as a nation had come near. Circumcision dates from Abraham, the Passover from Moses.
Modern criticism on the whole denies the historical-commemorative origin of the Passover. Its connection with the exodus was an afterthought. Like the other feasts, it was in existence first as a nature-feast of nomadic or agricultural significance. It is assumed by most writers of this class, that the Passover was originally the feast of the sacrifice of the first-born; so Wellhausen, Robertson Smith and others. This first-born sacrifice is usually understood on the principle of a tribute-payment to the deity. Robertson Smith, however, would exclude this whole idea of tribute-payment from the primitive religion of Israel. He explains the surrender of the first-born from the taboo-character of every first birth. There are some critics who do not favour the connection of the rite with the gift of the first-born to the deity at all. Benzinger (see article in Encyclopaedia Biblica) considers the Passover an ancient blood-rite, by which in times of
pestilence and other occasions of danger, protection was sought from the Destroyer. This comes nearer again, at least in its general conception, to the account of Exodus. There is no need of being overmuch exercised on account of these various theories. They do in no way discredit the Biblical representation. In analogy with what we know of circumcision, the observance of the Passover among Israel might have been placed on an antecedent basis, although undoubtedly it was invested with new meaning. That the Hebrews had been previously accustomed to observe a religious festival in the Spring, we know from their request to Pharaoh [Ex. 8:1, 27]. This may have been a feast of the sacrifice of the first-born. As to the theory of an ancient blood-rite, this likewise God may have incorporated into the historically-instituted feast.
[2] The ‘Berith’ made between Jehovah and Israel
The Making of the Berith between Jehovah and Israel is the next subject for consideration under the head of the Content of the Mosaic Revelation. This memorable event is described in Ex. 24. Some preparations for the promulgation of the Decalogue should be read together with this chapter, Ex. 19. It should be noticed, that here the berith appears for the first time as a two-sided arrangement, although that is by no means the reason of its being called a berith. This reason lies entirely in the ceremony of ratification. As to the arrangement itself, great emphasis is placed on the voluntary acceptance of the berith by the people. It is true, the initiative in designing the terms is strictly vindicated for Jehovah. No parleying, no co-operation between God and man in determining the nature and content are from the standpoint of the narrative conceivable. It is Jehovah’s covenant exclusively in that respect. Still, the berith is placed before the people, and their assent required [Ex. 19:5, 8; 24:3].
It is precisely this emphasis thrown on the voluntariness of the union, that leads the critics to deny the historicity of the event. Previously to the great prophets the religion of Israel did not possess
such a voluntary nature. If here it is represented as bearing that character, the reason can, on the critical premises, only be, that this part of the documents stands under the influence of the prophetic ideas, and does not reflect history. By the prophets the thought was first developed that Jehovah and Israel are bound together in a free and ethical relationship. But even the earliest of these prophets do not yet so represent it, as if a berith existed underlying the religion of Israel. First in the Deuteronomic law-book, written (according to the critical scheme) in the latter half of the seventh century, does this formula appear. Its sudden emergence at that point is supposed to be due to what 2 Kings 22 relates as having happened, viz., the entering upon a solemn league on the part of the people to observe these Deuteronomic ordinances. Now, since for greater impressiveness and effectiveness it had been thought best to derive this newly produced and newly quasi-discovered law-book from Moses, and since the intention was to bind the people to it by a berith, necessity arose and consistency required that the matter be represented as a procedure followed in Moses’ time, all that was now required of the people being simply a reaffirmation of the earlier berith-acceptance of the Mosaic date. In this manner, according to these writers, the berith conception made its entrance into the historiography of the Old Testament religion; it was subsequently introduced, according to them, into all the older documents in which previously it had not occurred.
The weakness of this critical construction lies in two points. Altogether too much importance is ascribed by it to the presence or absence or frequency of the term berith to determine the essential character of the Old Testament religion. The term does not of itself denote either two-sidedness or one-sidedness, voluntariness or necessity, and is not fit to serve as an indicator of the inner nature of the religion itself. A religion might have a berith connected with it, into which nevertheless very little of mutual free choice entered. The critics at this point are still under the spell of the dogmatic preconception that berith is a synonym for ‘compact’ or ‘agreement’. Besides, the narrative of 2 Kings 22 in no wise clears up the origin of
the berith-religion-concept as alleged by the critics. What is described in this chapter is not a berith between Jehovah and the people, but between the king and the people in the presence of Jehovah.
As to the proceedings described in Ex. 24, we notice that they are made up of the same two elements that entered into the Passover transaction. In fact, the latter might properly be called an anticipation of the berith-making at Sinai. There was first the sacrificial expiation or purification. This was followed by the partaking of the sacrificial meal. We find the combination of these two likewise on the present occasion. That the meal upon the mountain represents the goal and consummation of the berith may be inferred from the fact that the account opens with the injunction concerning it, although this could not be executed until all the intervening things were done.
From the circumstances of this separation by seven verses between the injunction and its fulfilment, the inference has been drawn that two different accounts of the berith-making are woven together here, one according to which it was made by the ceremony of eating with Jehovah upon the mount [vss. 1, 2, 9–11], and the other according to which it was made by the sacrifices [vss. 3–8]. This dissection is not only unnecessary, but impossible. The sacrifices consisted in part of peace-offerings, and no peace-offering is complete without a meal. On the other hand, the meal described in vss. 9–11 is so unmistakably a sacrificial meal as to become unintelligible without the preceding account of the sacrifice. The sacrifice includes the element of expiation. For the fundamental berith-making this was indispensable; every one entering upon a union of this kind would first purify himself through sacrifice or otherwise. Already before the giving of the Decalogue the people had been enjoined to sanctify themselves and wash their garments, particularly the priests [Ex. 19:10, 22]. Yet this assumption, so natural in itself, has been rejected by recent writers in favour of a modern theory as to the significance of blood in sacrifice. According to them the function of blood is not
(at least not until comparatively late times) to expiate, but to effect a sacramental union, the parties partaking in the blood of a common life. This would in itself yield a quite suitable meaning here, as the berith might easily be conceived of as a life-union between Jehovah and Israel. While the idea is attractive, there are scarcely points of contact in the Old Testament for such a conception of the berith. The berith lies not in the sphere of mystical life; it belongs to the sphere of conscious assurance. Besides, the division of the blood into two parts and the separated use made of each does not readily lend itself to this theory, since on the basis of it, it would have been appropriate rather to unite most closely the application of the blood to Jehovah on the altar [vs. 6] and its application to the people [vs. 8]. The natural view to take of it is, that before the blood could act for the benefit of the people it had to do its work with reference to Jehovah, and this could scarcely consist in aught else than to make the prerequisite expiation.
The book which Moses wrote, and with reference to which the berith was made, contained all the words of Jehovah, or as vs. 3 expresses it, ‘the words and the judgments’. Some say the words are the Decalogue and the judgments all that follows, up to the close of chap. 23. This is a possible interpretation, although it might be objected to it, that the Decalogue had been addressed to the people by Jehovah’s own mouth. In favour of it speaks the difficulty of understanding ‘the words’ of 20:22–26, in case they are not understood of the Decalogue.
The berith had, of course, a national reference to Israel as a whole. This is implied in the summons to ascend addressed to the representatives of the people [vs. 1], and also by the twelve pillars built together with the altar [vs. 4].
Finally, the meeting with Jehovah at the conclusion of the ceremony must be understood in closest connection with the relation that had been established. The phrase ‘the God of Israel’ is highly significant here. Through the berith-making, Jehovah had become ‘the God of
Israel’ in this new profound sense. The vision spoken of is not an ordinary vision to impart knowledge. It is the fulfilment of sacramental approach to and unusual union with Jehovah. How different it was from the ordinary vision of the Deity is indicated by the words: ‘And upon the nobles of the children of Israel, He laid not his hand’. Ordinarily it is considered dangerous or even fatal to get sight of the Deity. Through the berith this had now been changed. An anticipation of this we met before in the history of Jacob [Gen. 32:30]. That the vision had its limitations is implied in vs. 10b.
[3] The organization of Israel: the theocracy
Next we must consider the general organization of Israel that originated in this berith. This is usually designated as ‘the theocracy’. This name for it is not found in the Scriptures, although it admirably describes what the Biblical account represents Israel’s constitution to have been. Probably the term was coined by Josephus. He observes in regard to the governments of other nations, that some of these were monarchies, others oligarchies, still others democracies; what God set up among Israel was a theocracy. Obviously Josephus finds in this something distinctive and unique. This is correct as far as the great systems of civilization of that day were concerned. But it is not quite correct, if Israel be compared with other Shemitic tribes. The theocratic principle, i.e., the principle of the deity being the supreme authority and power in national life, seems to have been not uncommon among the Shemites. We may infer as much from the observation that Melekh, ‘King’, is a frequent Shemitic name for the deity. But while under ordinary circumstances this was a mere belief, it proved among Israel an undoubted reality. The laws under which Israel lived not merely had the divine sanction behind them in the general sense in which all law and order ultimately derives from God through general revelation by way of the conscience, but in the specific sense, that Jehovah had directly revealed the law. In other words Jehovah in person performed the task usually falling to a human king. And in the sequel also, Jehovah by supernatural interposition, when necessary, continued to act the role of King of
the nation. This fact was so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the leaders of Israel that still in the time of Gideon and Samuel it was felt to forbid the setting up of a purely human kingdom. The union of the religious lordship and the national kingship in the one Person of Jehovah involved that among Israel civil and religious life were inextricably interwoven. If the union had happened to exist in any other person but God, a division of the two spheres of relationship might have been conceivable. The bond to God is so one and indivisible that no separation of the one from the other can be conceived. Hence the later prophetic condemnation of politics, not merely wicked politics, but politics per se, as derogatory to the royal prerogative of Jehovah.
Further it ought to be noticed that between these two concentric spheres the religious one has the pre-eminence. It is that for the sake of which the other exists. For our system of political government such an interrelation would, of course, seen a serious, intolerable defect. Not so among Israel. The chief end for which Israel had been created was not to teach the world lessons in political economy, but in the midst of a world of paganism to teach true religion, even at the sacrifice of much secular propaganda and advantage.
Nor was it merely a question of teaching religion for the present world. A missionary institution the theocracy never was intended to be in its Old Testament state. The significance of the unique organization of Israel can be rightly measured only by remembering that the theocracy typified nothing short of the perfected kingdom of God, the consummate state of Heaven. In this ideal state there will be no longer any place for the distinction between church and state. The former will have absorbed the latter. In a rough way the principle involved was already apprehended by Josephus. In the passage introducing the word ‘theocracy’ he observes that Moses, by giving such a constitution to the Israelites, did not make religion a part of virtue, but made all other virtues to be a part of religion. The fusion between the two spheres of secular and religious life is strikingly expressed by the divine promise that Israel will be made ‘a
kingdom of priests and an holy nation’ [Ex. 19:6]. As priests they are in, nay, constitute the kingdom.
THE FUNCTION OF LAW
From the nature of the theocracy thus defined we may learn what was the function of the law in which it received its provisional embodiment. It is of the utmost importance carefully to distinguish between the purpose for which the law was professedly given to Israel at the time, and the various purposes it actually came to serve in the subsequent course of history. These other ends lay, of course, from the outset in the mind of God. From the theistic standpoint there can be no outcome in history that is not the unfolding of the profound purpose of God. In this sense Paul has been the great teacher of the philosophy of law in the economy of redemption. Most of the Pauline formulas bear a negative character. The law chiefly operated towards bringing about and revealing the failure of certain methods and endeavours. It served as a pedagogue unto Christ, shut up the people under sin, was not given unto life, was weak through the flesh, worked condemnation, brings under a curse, is a powerless ministry of the letter. These statements of Paul were made under the stress of a totally different philosophy of the law-purpose, which he felt to be inconsistent with the principles of redemption and grace.
This Pharisaic philosophy asserted that the law was intended, on the principle of merit, to enable Israel to earn the blessedness of the world to come. It was an eschatological and therefore most comprehensive interpretation. But in its comprehensiveness it could not fail being comprehensively wrong, if it should prove wrong. Paul’s philosophy, though a partial one, and worked out from a retrospective standpoint, had the advantage of being correct within the limited sphere in which he propounded it. It is true, certain of the statements of the Pentateuch and of the Old Testament in general may on the surface seem to favour the Judaistic position. That the law cannot be kept is nowhere stated in so many words. And not only this, that the keeping of the law will be rewarded is stated once and
again. Israel’s retention of the privileges of the berith is made dependent on obedience. It is promised that he who shall do the commandments shall find life through them. Consequently writers have not been lacking who declared that, from a historical point of view, their sympathies went with the Judaizers, and not with Paul.
Only a moment’s reflection is necessary to prove that this in untenable, and that precisely from a broad historical standpoint Paul had far more accurately grasped the purport of the law than his opponents. The law was given after the redemption from Egypt had been accomplished, and the people had already entered upon the enjoyment of many of the blessings of the berith. Particularly their taking possession of the promised land could not have been made dependent on previous observance of the law, for during their journey in the wilderness many of its prescripts could not be observed. It is plain, then, that law-keeping did not figure at that juncture as the meritorious ground of life-inheritance. The latter is based on grace alone, no less emphatically than Paul himself places salvation on that ground. But, while this is so, it might still be objected, that law-observance, if not the ground for receiving, is yet made the ground for retention of the privileges inherited. Here it can not, of course, be denied that a real connection exists. But the Judaizers went wrong in inferring that the connection must be meritorious, that, if Israel keeps the cherished gifts of Jehovah through observance of His law, this must be so, because in strict justice they had earned them. The connection is of a totally different kind. It belongs not to the legal sphere of merit, but to the symbolico- typical sphere of appropriateness of expression.
As stated above, the abode of Israel in Canaan typified the heavenly, perfected state of God’s people. Under these circumstances the ideal of absolute conformity to God’s law of legal holiness had to be upheld. Even though they were not able to keep this law in the Pauline, spiritual sense, yea, even though they were unable to keep it externally and ritually, the requirement could not be lowered. When apostasy on a general scale took place, they could not remain in the
promised land. When they disqualified themselves for typifying the state of holiness, they ipso facto disqualified themselves for typifying that of blessedness, and had to go into captivity. This did not mean that every individual Israelite, in every detail of his life, had to be perfect, and that on this was suspended the continuance of God’s favour. Jehovah dealt primarily with the nation and through the nation with the individual, as even now in the covenant of grace He deals with believers and their children in the continuity of generations. There is solidarity among the members of the people of God, but this same principle also works for the neutralizing of the effect of individual sin, so long as the nation remains faithful. The attitude observed by the nation and its representative leaders was the decisive factor. Although the demands of the law were at various times imperfectly complied with, nevertheless for a long time Israel remained in possession of the favour of God. And, even when the people as a whole become apostate, and go into exile, Jehovah does not on that account suffer the berith to fail. After due chastisement and repentance He takes Israel back into favour.
This is the most convincing proof that law-observance is not the meritorious ground of blessedness. God in such cases simply repeats what He did at the beginning, viz., receive Israel into favour on the principle of free grace. It is in agreement with this, when the law is represented in the Old Testament, not as the burden and yoke which it later came to be in the religious experience of the Jews, but as one of the greatest blessings and distinctions that Jehovah had conferred upon his people [Deut. 4:7, 8; Psa. 147:19, 20; cp. even Paul, Rom. 9:4, 5]. And in Paul’s teaching the strand that corresponds to this Old Testament doctrine of holiness as the indispensable (though not meritorious) condition of receiving the inheritance is still distinctly traceable.
From the above it will be seen how distorted and misleading it would be to identify the Old Testament with law, negatively considered, and the New Testament with gospel. This would mean that there was no gospel under the old dispensation at all. The Pauline statements are
sometimes apt to lead into this error. But they are not meant by the Apostle in this absolute, mutually exclusive sense. An illuminating analogy in this respect is furnished by the way in which Paul speaks of faith and its relation to the two dispensations. In Gal. 3:23, 25, he speaks of the ‘coming’ of faith, as though there had never been any faith before. And yet the same Paul in Rom. 4:16ff., speaks at length of the role played by faith in the life of Abraham, and how it virtually dominated the entire Old Testament system.
It is evident that there are two distinct points of view from which the content of the old dispensation can be regarded. When considered in comparison with the final unfolding and rearranged structure of the New Testament, negative judgments are in place. When, on the other hand, the Old Testament is taken as an entity by itself and as rounded off provisionally in itself, and looked at, as it were, with the eyes of the Old Testament itself, we find it necessary to take into account the positive elements by which it prefigured and anticipated typically the New Testament. And thus we find that there was real gospel under the theocracy. The people of God of those days did not live and die under an unworkable, unredemptive system of religion, that could not give real access to and spiritual contact with God. Nor was this gospel-element contained exclusively in the revelation that preceded, accompanied, and followed the law; it is found in the law itself. That which we call ‘the legal system’ is shot through with strands of gospel and grace and faith. Especially the ritual law is rich in them. Every sacrifice and every lustration proclaimed the principle of grace. Had it been otherwise, then the idea of positive, vital continuity would have to be abandoned. There would be conflict and opposition instead. Such is the Gnostic position, but it is not the view either of the Old Testament itself, or of Paul, or of the Church theology.
And yet again, we must not forget that this revelation and promulgation of the gospel in the Mosaic institutions bore, as to its form, a legal character, and differs, in this respect, from the form it exhibits at the present time. For even these gospel-carrying
institutions were part of a great system of ordinances, whose observance had been made obligatory for the people. Hence there was a lack of freedom even in the presentation of and attendance to the gospel. The gospel was preached under the constraint of law and received under the same. It was not permitted to rise superior to the legal environment in which it had been placed. Only the New Testament has brought the full liberty in this respect.
[4] The Decalogue
The Decalogue strikingly illustrates the redemptive structure of the theocracy as a whole. It is introduced by the summing up of what Jehovah has done for Israel in delivering them from the house of bondage. Considering the time of its promulgation, we might even call it a brief résumé in advance of the whole system regulated subsequently in the detailed laws. But this would overlook the fact that one component element of the law, and that one much in evidence elsewhere, is absent from the Decalogue. It contains no ceremonial commandments. In a sense, therefore, it not so much anticipates as condenses, and in condensing eliminates and idealizes. It joins together the beginning and the end of the entire theocratic movement, the redeeming act of God, and the resultant state of holiness and conformity to the nature and will of God into which the theocracy is designed to issue. At the same time it gives these elements in a form that is adjusted to the practical needs and limitations of the people. Like the theocracy in general it hovers above the life of the people as an ideal never realizable, nor realizable at the then existing stage; and at the same time it descends into and condescends to the abnormalities of Israel.
This in some sense ideal and idealizing character of the Decalogue has not failed of observation by the evolutionary critics, and given rise to the opinion that it could not possibly be a product of the Mosaic age, which, as shown above, is assigned and must be assigned, from the critical premises, to a low plane of religious development. The historico-critical treatment of the Decalogue in
recent times is interesting and instructive in the extreme. There was a time, when even advanced critics were inclined to make an exception for the Decalogue in the midst of their comprehensive denial of the Mosaic origin of the other Pentateuchal laws. It is true, this was conceded with certain qualifications. The second word, forbidding the making and worship of images, could not be Mosaic, because image-worship was considered inoffensive for a long time after the Mosaic age. And of the other words not the present extended form was derived from Moses, but a more simple and compact form containing the gist of the injunction.
The Wellhausen school has swept away even this modest remnant of conservatism. The main ground on which this revision of the view of the older critics is based lies in the ethical character of the Decalogue. Ethical ideas did not become central in the religion of Israel until the time of the prophets. Before their age (middle of the eighth century B.C.) the popular religion was centred in the cult, and of this the Decalologue contains nothing. Hence the present critical view that the Decalogue is the precipitate of the ethical movement of prophecy, possibly not composed earlier than the seventh century, perhaps during the reign of Manasseh.
It must be urged against this that the main burden of the prophetic preaching of ethics keeps in much closer contact with contemporary developments than the Decalogue. The prophetic message revolves round such things as the oppression of the poor by the rich, the corruptness of the administration of justice. These are things not even alluded to in the Decalogue. The situation to which the prophets address themselves, therefore, is much more concrete and complex than that contemplated in the Decalogue. And even if it were true that the Israelites of the pre-prophetic period did not look upon ethical things as the centre of their religion, it would by no means follow from this, that revelation could not have long before singled out the ethical as of supreme importance and in immediate need of attention. The Decalogue, on our view at least, was not the product of the religion of the people, but the revelation of God. The critical
contention, here as in so many other points, holds good only when the philosophy of evolution is made the silent premise of the argument. More recently still, critical writers have begun to see again that the Decalogue breathes a different and more primitive spirit than the preaching of the prophets. It is proposed to return to the view of Mosaic origin, but in a modified form. Moses, it is now alleged, wrote seven of these ten commandments. The three denied him are the first, the second and the fourth. Only, it was not the lawgiver’s intention to forbid the things mentioned in the other seven absolutely. He meant to forbid them within the limits of Israel. Outside of that circle the otherwise prohibited things were permitted. In answer to this it may be observed, that, while the words are primarily addressed to Israel, this was due entirely to the circumstance of the historical situation, and can never prove the existence in the mind of the legislator of a double standard, rendering a thing sinful when done to a fellow-Israelite, and condonable when done to non-Israelites.
OF WORLD-WIDE APPLICATION
The primary application to Israel in no wise interferes with a world- wide application in all ethical relationships. The pronouns and pronominal suffixes are in the feminine singular, because they are addressed to the nation of Israel. Certain features at first sight would seem applicable to Israel alone, for instance what is said of the deliverance from the Egyptian bondage. But these features are rare, especially in the text of Exodus. There are more of them in Deuteronomy; compare the motivation of the fourth word. Deuteronomy repeats the Decalogue for a hortatory purpose, which brings it into closer contact with the momentary situation of Israel. And, apart from this, we must remember that the history of Israel was shaped by God intentionally so as to mirror all important situations befalling the people of God in all subsequent ages. When Jehovah appeals to the redemption from Egypt as a motive for obedience, He appeals to something that has its spiritual analogy in
the life of all believers. The historical adjustment does not detract from the universal application, but subserves it.
RELIGIOUS IN CHARACTER
The most striking feature of the Decalogue is its specifically religious character. It is not an ethical code in and by itself, resting, as it were, on the bare imperative of God. The preamble brings the affection to Jehovah, in view of what He has done redemptively for the people, to bear through a responsive affection upon their conduct. If we may apply the term ‘Christian’ thus retrospectively to the Decalogue, we should say, what it contains is not general but Christian ethics. Ethics is represented as the redemptive product; something else, lying behind, as the source. That there is implied, apart from this, a hegemony of religion over ethics, appears from the far greater volume of elaboration devoted to the four opening words, dealing with the specifically religious side. Our Lord recognized this, when distinguishing in the law between the first and second great commandment. In the light of this redemptive purport the negative form of most of the commandments likewise receives additional significance. Of course, this has a meaning in itself, altogether apart from redemption, in that it issues a protest against sin. But the very fact of God’s issuing such a protest admits of the inference, that He will not leave sin in possession of the field.
It should be observed, however, that not all the words are clothed in this negative form of ‘thou shalt not’. The fourth word, that relating to the Sabbath, has positive import. And the majestic appendix to the second word reaches down into the very depths of the love of God for His own, as well as of His jealousy towards them that disobey the law out of hatred of God. The charge, therefore, is not warranted that the Decalogue is a purely negativistic document, evincing no positive interest for what is good, merely opposing that which is evil. Our Lord implied that the law requires love towards God and man, and love is the most positive of all forces. The practical nature of the Decalogue, both on its religious and on its ethical side, is revealed in
the way it addresses itself to concrete external sins. But this again is not meant to deny the organic unity of sin in its root. On the contrary, this unity is distinctly recognized in tracing the transgression back to the hatred of God. It is likewise implied in the last word of the ten, where the overt sins of killing, stealing, committing adultery, bearing false witness, are reduced to their one source of coveting, evil lust having its seat in the heart.
THE TEN WORDS
As to the distribution of the text of the Decalogue over the ten words various views are held. The text informs us that there are ten, but does not number them singly, for the system of dividing the text of the Old Testament into verses is, of course, not original. The Greek Catholic and the Reformed Churches consider the preamble as standing outside of the circle of ten. The first word then applies to the prohibition of worshipping other gods, the second to the prohibition of images, and so on to the end in the manner familiar to us. This division is as old as the time of Philo and Josephus. The Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches count as one what we reckon as the first and second words. Inasmuch as the number ten is required, this compels the dividing up of what we call the tenth commandment into the ninth (‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house’) and the tenth (‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, etc.’). This is necessary because no other word lends itself to a similar division, except perhaps the fourth, and neither the Romanists, nor the Lutherans, want to count in the preamble. Still a third division, now common among the Jews, reckons the preamble as the first word. This would, of course, ordinarily yield eleven, but this result is avoided through taking the first and second together. The same numbering, with the preamble included was at one time resorted to by some critics, who had lost one word through assigning a later origin to the second word. Of these three plans the first deserves the preference.
The introduction cannot be strictly called a commandment. Still, this difficulty might be relieved by observing that the law does not speak of commandments but of words (Decalogue means ‘ten words’). Probably however, ‘word’ is used in this connection for ‘commandments’, a meaning it not infrequently bears. The objection, therefore, remains. And it is strengthened by the fact that counting the preamble as one of the ten would cut its very vital relation to all the other words. Something can be said in favour of closely drawing together the first and the second words, as will be presently shown, but nothing speaks in favour of dividing the tenth word into two. It exposes, one might urge, to the objection of separating between house and wife as non-covetable objects, but this is more of an apparent than a real objection, because house here does not mean the mere building, but stands for the entire household- establishment, including, of course, and that in the first place, the wife. Augustine was somewhat over gallant, when not perceiving this, he gave preference to the text of Deuteronomy, where the wife precedes the house. But, assuming that ‘house’ means ‘household’, no reason exists why this general term should receive for itself an entire separate word, and then in a next word the enumeration of its several constituent parts be made to follow. The structure of the Decalogue is not of that kind, as may be seen by comparison with the text of the fourth word. And Augustine has improved the matter only in a sentimental respect, for, with all due regard for the honoured position of the wife in the family, it would hardly be in keeping with the feeling of the Old Testament in such matters to give the wife a separate commandment all to herself, especially since her position in one respect had been already defined in the, on our reckoning, seventh commandment.
THE FIRST WORD
Our discussion of the several separate words confines itself to the first four. The following six, regulating the relation between man and man, belong to the department of Ethics. These first four words deal specifically with the relation of man to God. The first three form a
group by themselves, protesting as they do, against the three typical and fundamental sins of paganism, the sin of polylatry, that of idolatry, that of magic.
It will be observed, further, that the first word is not a theoretical denial of the existence of other gods besides Jehovah. Neither is it, of course, an affirmation, either directly or impliedly, of the existence of other divine beings. It leaves this whole question to one side, and confines itself to the injunction that Israel shall have only one object of worship: ‘there shall be no other god (or gods) to thee before me’. But if this, theoretically or legislatively considered, falls short of the abstract enunciation of the principle of monotheism, and reaches, logically speaking, only up to monolatry, it were pedantic to seize upon it, lawyer-like, as evidence of the lawgiver’s intent to leave polytheism untouched. And yet precisely this the critics have been doing, when building on this innocent form of expression the view that Moses had not yet reached the stage of monotheism. When afterwards the dating of the Decalogue came down to much later times this exegesis involved its adherents in a somewhat serious difficulty. It seemed difficult to assume that the prophetic spirits who produced the Decalogue at so advanced a juncture should not yet have reached the standpoint of monotheism. The critics save themselves out of this impasse by saying that, although monotheism had been in process of development since the times of Amos and Hosea, it had not been explicitly formulated until the age of (pseudo-) Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. As for Moses, it becomes doubtful, on this hypothesis, whether he had reached the standpoint of as much as monolatry in his day, for the testimony of the Decalogue to that effect has fallen away.
All this is readily corrected by the simple reminder that the Decalogue, while law, is not law in the modern technical sense of that term. It takes no pains, by means of involved clauses and piled up qualifications, to stop up every loophole for misunderstanding or evasion. Moses was a lawgiver, not a scribe. The plane on which the matter is put by not raising the problem of abstract monotheism is in
reality a higher one than would have underlain the commandment otherwise. To say: there are no other gods in existence, therefore you are shut up to serving me alone, motivates the allegiance of Israel to Jehovah less worthily, than to say, as the Decalogue actually does, ‘I am Jehovah, thy God, who has brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me’. Besides the appeal to the sense of gratitude for deliverance received, there shines through also an allusion to the offended honour of Jehovah, in case other objects of worship should be placed by His side. The words ‘before me’ or ‘beside me’ express the indignity such transgression would offer to Him, subjectively.
THE SECOND WORD
There is some uncertainty in regard to the syntax of the second word. In the Authorized and Revised Versions the word ‘likeness’ is made dependent on ‘thou shalt not make’, and thus co-ordinated with the preceding object ‘graven image’. The likeness, then, is something that can be made; it must be a manufactured object. Attention has, however, been called to the fact that the Hebrew word thus translated may also properly be rendered by ‘shape’, i.e., natural, non-manufactured shape, any one of the forms or likenesses nature offers. If this be adopted, and it seems to be favoured somewhat by the distinction of the ‘shapes’ in three groups—those in heaven above, those in the earth beneath, and those in the water under the earth—then plainly those shapes cannot be the object of the verb ‘thou shalt not make’, since they are not the product of human making.
Consequently the syntactical construction of the sentence must on this view be changed. It will have to read as follows: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, (and), as to the likeness of anything (prefixed accusative phrase of reference) that is in heaven above, etc … thou shalt not bow down thyself unto those, nor serve them, etc.’ Two things are on this view forbidden: the worship of a graven image
(graven means ‘made out of metal’), and the worship of any of the forms of nature.
It must be admitted that this new construction does not read very smoothly. On the other hand the usual interpretation labours under the difficulty of explaining satisfactorily why a ‘graven’ image should have appeared more objectionable than any other kind of made likeness. Still, it seems to be a fact attested also elsewhere in the Old Testament that graven images awakened a special aversion among the opponents of idolatry. Wellhausen thinks the difficulty can be removed by adopting as original the text of Deuteronomy which reads: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image of any of the shapes, etc.’ But even in Deuteronomy the Septuagint and Samaritan versions have the ‘and’ before ‘likeness’: ‘image and all likeness’.
More interesting and important, however, is the enquiry into the ground on which idolatry is forbidden here. The traditional exegesis of the second commandment is wont to find the reason in the spiritual (non-corporeal) nature of God, which causes every bodily representation to be a misrepresentation, and one moreover to the disparagement of God, because in the scale of being the incorporeal ranks above the corporeal, the so-called ‘flesh’. While acknowledging the truth of this idea in itself, we cannot regard it as a completely satisfactory exegesis of the second word. On such a view of the motive the appendix ought to read, ‘for I, Jehovah thy God, have no body’. Instead of this it is the jealousy that is warningly referred to. And ‘jealousy’ cannot here have the general significance of ‘fiery zeal’ which it has sometimes elsewhere, for that would not have made the introduction of the idea more appropriate in this than in any other word of the Decalogue. There must be a special reason why the making or worship of images awakens the jealousy of Jehovah. The word means conjugal zeal specifically, jealousy in the married relation. It implies that, when images come into play, for the monogamic relation between Jehovah and Israel, a polygamous, or even meretricious bond with other religious lords has been substituted.
The question before us, therefore, is why and in what sense imagemaking detracts from the undivided devotion of Israel to God, and places other divine objects of devotion beside Him. Now it is plain that this cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of the image being a symbolic copy of the Deity, so that after all the latter would be but all the more worshipped through the image. For us who think in modern terms admiration or even worship bestowed upon one’s photograph could scarcely excite jealousy. It would be much more apt to give rise to selfish satisfaction. We must set aside this whole modern way of thinking about the matter, and endeavour to reproduce for ourselves the feelings with which the ancient idolatrous mind regarded and employed the image it possessed of its god. This is a far more complex thing than the formula of reality and symbol is able to express. While not easily described in its true inwardness, we may perhaps define it by subsumption under the category of magic. Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose. Magic is full of superstition, and, after a fashion, full of the quasi-supernatural, but it is void of true religion. Because it lacks the element of objective divine self- communication from above, it must needs create for itself material means of compulsion that will bring the deity to do its bidding. From the nature of the case these instruments of magical compulsion will indefinitely multiply. Taking these instruments for his practical use, man will further begin to feel that the powers habitually working through them are somehow subtracted from the deity and stored up in the forms of magic. Thus the magically manipulated image will inevitably tend to become a second god by the side of the original one, and will even tend to outgrow the latter in potency of usefulness. The image is not the symbol; it acts as the rival and substitute of the god. Thus the sensual representation of Jehovah by becoming mixed up with magic leads straightway to polytheism.
In so far, the Romanists and Lutherans correctly sensed that there existed an intimate connection between the first and the second
commandment. Jehovah’s retention of the exclusive right to Israel’s worship became endangered as soon as images were introduced. It is not impossible that the ‘graven image’ refers particularly to Jehovah- images, and that the ‘likenesses’ or ‘shapes’ refer to alien deities. The former no less than the latter excites the divine jealousy, and both are referred to in the commandment, no matter whether this suggestion in regard to ‘graven image’ be correct or not. The first commandment enjoins the having of one God; the second strikes at the chief source of danger for the observance of this. Even in the double-faced meaning of the word ‘idolatry’ this connection of the two things still reflects itself; it means partly the worship of other gods, partly the worship of images. These facts are sure.
THE THIRD WORD
The transition from the second to the third word is a natural one, for we are here still in the sphere of magic. This time it is word-magic that is forbidden. It is not sufficient to think of swearing and blasphemy in the present-day common sense of these terms. The word is one of the chief powers of pagan superstition, and the most potent form of word-magic is name-magic. It was believed that through the pronouncing of the name of some supernatural entity this can be compelled to do the bidding of the magic-user. The commandment applies the divine disapproval of such practices specifically to the name ‘Jehovah’. ‘To take up’ means to pronounce. ‘In vain’ literally reads ‘for vanity’. Vanity is a quite complex term in which the ideas of the unreal, the deceitful, the disappointing, the sinful, intermingle. It designates a large sphere of paganism, which must have occupied a place also in Israel’s past, and must have continually threatened to encroach upon the true religion. The use of the name Jehovah for such a purpose was particularly dangerous, because it seemed to lend the protection of legitimacy.
Although the antique and the modern may in this matter appear to lie at a great distance from each other, nevertheless what we call swearing and blasphemy is not essentially different from this ancient
name-magic, and consequently falls under the condemnation of the third commandment. We must remember that originally the habit of swearing served a far more realistic purpose than at present. If it has become conventional, and therefore, as some would pretend, innocent, this is largely because the modern man has retained such a small amount of religion as to make him feel that swearing cannot at bottom be irreligious. In ages not so very long ago the employment of supernatural names for the purpose of execration and objurgation had a quite realistic intent. The names served to call out the supernal powers for injuring the enemy or for miraculously attesting the truth of a statement. It is from such practices that all our survivals of swearing have descended. And, even where the swearer professes to attach no real significance to his formulas, yet there still clings to the most thoughtless use of them always more or less of the feeling that it does not matter much if the name of a god, perhaps no longer believed in, can be harnessed to the service of man in the most trivial of affairs. This may be the pale shadow of name-magic, but it is in principle not different from the realistic thing. The core of the sin does not exclusively lie in its believed efficacy, but in the disrespect for God that is implied. It is, as all magic is, the opposite to true religion. Hence the emphatic condemnation: ‘Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that pronounces His name for vanity’.
THE FOURTH WORD
The fourth word has reference to the hallowing of the seventh day of the week. This duty is based in Exodus (but cp. Deuteronomy) not on something done to Israel in particular, but on something done in the creation of the world. This is important, because with it stands or falls the general validity of the commandment for all mankind. Traces of a previous Sabbath-observance are not found in the Pentateuch [but cp. Ex. 16:23]. It is certain that the week of seven days was known before the time of Moses [cp. Gen. 29:27]. This mode of reckoning time may have had for its forgotten background the original institution of the Sabbath.
Outside of the circle of Special Revelation two views have been taken as to its origin. By some it is associated with the role played by the planets in astral religion. Saturn, being the chief planet, would have had the last and principal day assigned to him. According to others the seven-days-week is derived from the four phases of the moon, the twenty-eight days divided by four yielding seven. On either view the development would have been a transfer of the worship due to the Creator from Him to the creature. The Assyrians observed the seventh, the fourteenth, the twenty-first, and the twenty-eighth day of the month as a day of rest. This differed, however, from the Old Testament Sabbath observance in two respects: it was dependent on the phases of the moon, and the abstention from labour was due to the supposed ominous character of the day, which rendered working on it inauspicious.
It has been claimed that in two passages of the Old Testament the Sabbath is represented as of Mosaic origin, viz., in Ezek. 20:12; Neh. 9:14. But these passages mean no more than that the institution in its specific Old Testament form dates from the time of Moses. It must be remembered that the Sabbath, though a world-aged observance, has passed through the various phases of the development of redemption, remaining the same in essence but modified as to its form, as the new state of affairs at each point might require. The Sabbath is not only the most venerable, it is likewise the most living of all the sacramental realities of our religion. It has faithfully accompanied the people of God on their march through the ages. With regret it must be admitted that the beauty and comfort of this thought seem to have impressed themselves more deeply upon the Jewish than upon the Christian consciousness.
The principle underlying the Sabbath is formulated in the Decalogue itself. It consists in this, that man must copy God in his course of life. The divine creative work completed itself in six days, whereupon the seventh followed as a day of rest for God. In connection with God, ‘rest’ cannot, of course, mean mere cessation from labour, far less recovery from fatigue. Such a meaning is by no means required by
the Old Testament usage of the word. ‘Rest’ resembles the word ‘peace’ in this respect, that it has in Scripture, in fact to the Shemitic mind generally, a positive rather than a negative import. It stands for consummation of a work accomplished and the joy and satisfaction attendant upon this. Such was its prototype in God. Mankind must copy this, and that not only in the sequences of daily existence as regards individuals; but in its collective capacity through a large historic movement. For mankind, too, a great task waits to be accomplished, and at its close beckons a rest of joy and satisfaction that shall copy the rest of God.
Before all other important things, therefore, the Sabbath is an expression of the eschatological principle on which the life of humanity has been constructed. There is to be to the world-process a finale, as there was an overture, and these two belong inseparably together. To give up the one means to give up the other, and to give up either means to abandon the fundamental scheme of Biblical history. Even among Jewish teachers this profound meaning of the Sabbath was not entirely unknown. One of them, being asked what the world to come would be like, answered that it would resemble the Sabbath. In the law, it is true, this thought is not developed further than is done in the primordial statement about God’s resting on the seventh day and hallowing it. For the rest, the institution, after having been re-enforced in the Decalogue, is left to speak for itself, as is the case with most institutions of the law. The Epistle to the Hebrews has given us a philosophy of the Sabbath on the largest of scales, partly in dependence on Psa. 95 [Heb. 3; 4].
The Sabbath brings this principle of the eschatological structure of history to bear upon the mind of man after a symbolical and a typical fashion. It teaches its lesson through the rhythmical succession of six days of labour and one ensuing day of rest in each successive week. Man is reminded in this way that life is not an aimless existence, that a goal lies beyond. This was true before, and apart from, redemption. The eschatological is an older strand in revelation than the soteric. The so-called ‘Covenant of Works’ was nothing but an embodiment
of the Sabbatical principle. Had its probation been successful, then the sacramental Sabbath would have passed over into the reality it typified, and the entire subsequent course of the history of the race would have been radically different. What now is to be expected at the end of this world would have formed the beginning of the world- course instead.
From what has been said about the typical, sacramental meaning of the Sabbath it follows that it would be a mistake to base its observance primarily on the ground of utility. The Sabbath is not the outcome of an abnormal state of affairs in which it is impossible, apart from the appointment of a fixed day, to devote sufficient care to the religious interests of life. On such a view it might be maintained that for one sufficiently at leisure to give all his time to the cultivation of religion the keeping of the Sabbath would be no longer obligatory. Some of the Continental Reformers, out of reaction to the Romish system of holy days, reasoned after this fashion. But they reasoned wrongly. The Sabbath is not in the first place a means of advancing religion. It has its main significance apart from that, in pointing forward to the eternal issues of life and history. Even the most advanced religious spirit cannot absolve itself from taking part in that. It is a serious question whether the modern church has not too much lost sight of this by making the day well- nigh exclusively an instrument of religious propaganda, at the expense of its eternity-typifying value. Of course it goes without saying that a day devoted to the remembrance of man’s eternal destiny cannot be properly observed without the positive cultivation of those religious concerns which are so intimately joined to the final issue of his lot. But, even where this is conceded, the fact remains that it is possible to crowd too much into the day that is merely subservient to religious propaganda, and to void it too much of the static, God-ward and heaven-ward directed occupation of piety.
The universal Sabbath law received a modified significance under the Covenant of Grace. The work which issues into the rest can now no longer be man’s own work. It becomes the work of Christ. This the
Old Testament and the New Testament have in common. But they differ as to the perspective in which they each see the emergence of work and rest. Inasmuch as the Old Covenant was still looking forward to the performance of the Messianic work, naturally the days of labour to it come first, the day of rest falls at the end of the week. We, under the New Covenant, look back upon the accomplished work of Christ. We, therefore, first celebrate the rest in principle procured by Christ, although the Sabbath also still remains a sign looking forward to the final eschatological rest. The Old Testament people of God had to typify in their life the future developments of redemption. Consequently the precedence of labour and the consequence of rest had to find expression in their calendar. The New Testament Church has no such typical function to perform, for the types have been fulfilled. But it has a great historic event to commemorate, the performance of the work by Christ and the entrance of Him and of His people through Him upon the state of never-ending rest. We do not sufficiently realize the profound sense the early Church had of the epoch-making significance of the appearance, and especially of the resurrection of the Messiah. The latter was to them nothing less than the bringing in of a new, the second, creation. And they felt that this ought to find expression in the placing of the Sabbath with reference to the other days of the week. Believers knew themselves in a measure partakers of the Sabbath-fulfilment. If the one creation required one sequence, then the other required another. It has been strikingly observed, that our Lord died on the eve of that Jewish Sabbath, at the end of one of these typical weeks of labour by which His work and its consummation were prefigured. And Christ entered upon His rest, the rest of His new, eternal life on the first day of the week, so that the Jewish Sabbath comes to lie between, was, as it were, disposed of, buried in His grave. (Delitzsch.) If there is in the New Testament no formal enactment regarding this change, the cause lies in the superfluousness of it. Doubtless Jewish Christians began with observing both days, and only gradually the instinctive perception of the sacredness of the day of the Lord’s resurrection began to make itself felt.
The question can be raised, whether in the fourth commandment there is an element that applies to the Old Testament Church only. The answer depends on the precise construction and exegesis of the words. Is the distinction between six days of labour and one day of rest merely a matter of proportion, or is it likewise a matter of sequence? The latter view seems more probable. In so far, we shall have to say that in this element of prescribed sequence there is a specifically Old Testament feature in the commandment which no longer applies to us. But the general principle on which the sequence, both under the old and the new dispensations, rests has not been changed. Precisely because it remains in force, the sequence required a change when the New Testament had arrived. Besides this, there are other prohibitions in the law, which by the very fact of their having not been incorporated in the Decalogue, are shown not to be universally applicable [Ex. 16:23; 34:21; 35:3; Num. 15:32; cp. also Amos 8:5; Jer. 17:21]. Nor must it be forgotten that the Sabbath was under the Old Testament an integral part of a cycle of feasts which is no longer in force now. The type embodied in it was deepened by the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee. On the Sabbath man and beast rest, in the Sabbatical Year the very soil rests; in the Year of Jubilee the idea of rest is exhibited in its full positive import through the restoration of all that was disturbed and lost through sin. From all this we have been released by the work of Christ, but not from the Sabbath as instituted at Creation. In this light we must interpret certain New Testament statements such as Rom. 14:5, 6; Gal. 4:10, 11; Col. 2:16, 17.
[5] The Ritual [ceremonial] Law
The Ritual Laws: This is what by another name is called the ceremonial law. It forms an integral part of the Mosaic legislation. The elements composing it were not, however, necessarily introduced de novo at the time of Moses. Much of older custom was probably incorporated. Some have thought that the ordinances here prescribed did not originally belong to the structure of the theocracy, but were imposed upon the people as a punishment after their sin
with the golden calf. This view has been held in two forms, a more innocuous and a more serious one. Several of the Church fathers, perhaps out of reaction from Judaism, embraced it. Later the Reformed theologian Cocceius adopted it. In both these instances this was not accompanied by a low or depreciating view of the content of these laws per se.
More serious was the form of the theory proposed by Spencer, stated previously in connection with the redemption from Egypt. Spencer joined, of course, to this view of the pagan provenience of the ritual practices a very sceptical attitude in regard to their typical significance. According to our previous interpretation of the structure of the theocracy it is precisely in these ritual institutions that the greater part of the gospel of Moses is enshrined. The rejection of them as not willed by God, therefore, de-evangelizes the Mosaic revelation to a large extent.
In more recent times the error in question has played a considerable role in the critical appraisal of the several parts of the Old Testament. The Wellhausen school derives many of the ritual customs from the Canaanites, and this again has for its background the extreme, well- nigh exclusive stress placed upon the ethical teaching, which is held to be alone of enduring value. The proof for this last interpretation is found in the general construction of the history of Old Testament religion by this school. By the older advocates of the view Scriptural authority was sought for its adoption. Such was discovered in the time of their introduction, namely, immediately after the idolatry with the golden calf had been committed. It is true that a chronological conjunction exists here. But there was no causal connection as the theory would have us believe. In fact the contents of this part of the law were communicated by God to Moses while he was upon the mount, and it was only after his return that he learned about what in the meanwhile had taken place. In the intent of the Lawgiver, then, the incorporation of all this in the religion of Israel could not have been an afterthought.
Sometimes Ezek. 20:25 is quoted in proof of the penal character of the observance of these things. The prophet here distinguishes between ordinances the Israelites had rejected and ‘statutes that were not good, and judgments wherein they should not live’. Jehovah gave them the latter in punishment for their not keeping the former. These punitive statutes and judgments are then identified with the ritual law. This is an impossible exegesis, especially if we remember that Ezekiel was the priest-prophet, for whom it must have been impossible to treat the very things among which his occupation lay, as things purely imposed for punishment. It is another question what precisely is meant by ‘the statutes that were not good and the judgments whereby they should not live’. Perhaps these words refer to the idolatrous customs which in their later history, for instance in the time of Manasseh, the people adopted. Causing their children to pass through the fire is mentioned as one of them, vs. 26. It is said, however, that Jehovah ‘gave’ them these evil ordinances. This is not easy to explain. Perhaps it may be understood of the providential ordering of the history by God, which led to their apostasy to such heathen cults.
SYMBOL AND TYPE
In determining the function of the ceremonial law we must take into consideration its two large aspects, the symbolical and typical, and the relation between these two. The same things were, looked at from one point of view, symbols, and, from another point of view, types. A symbol is in its religious significance something that profoundly portrays a certain fact or principle or relationship of a spiritual nature in a visible form. The things it pictures are of present existence and present application. They are in force at the time in which the symbol operates.
With the same thing, regarded as a type, it is different. A typical thing is prospective; it relates to what will become real or applicable in the future. In the New Testament the word ‘type’ occurs only once [Rom. 5:14] where Adam is said to have been a type of Christ. This is
the technical, theological meaning of the word, which, therefore, must have been in use before the time of Paul. The Jewish theologians doubtless had their system of typology. The word came to this technical meaning after a very natural fashion. Its primary, physical sense is that of a mark or impression made upon some soft substance by a thrust or blow (tupto, ‘to strike’). This meaning occurs in John 20:25. Out of this developed the sense ‘form’, ‘image’, possibly from the fact that the impression struck on coins produced an image [Acts 7:43]. But the meaning ‘image’ easily passes over into that of ‘model’, ‘example’ [Acts 23:25; 2 Thess. 3:9]. To this third usage the technical use, observed in Rom. 5:14, attaches itself.
To ‘type’, the impression, corresponds ‘antitype’, the counter- impression. This also is used technically in the New Testament. Both Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews employ it. It stands for the copy taken of the technical type. There is, however, a difference between these two writers. Peter finds the technical type in the history of the Old Testament. The water of baptism to him is the antitype of that of the deluge [1 Pet. 3:21]. The writer of Hebrews finds the type, the model, in the heavenly world. To him, therefore, the same Old Testament things that Peter would call types are already antitypes [Heb. 9:24]. The former is a more theological, the latter a more purely historical view of the relationship.
The main problem to understand is, how the same system of portrayals can have served at one and the same time in a symbolical and a typical capacity. Obviously this would have been impossible if the things portrayed had been in each case different or diverse, unrelated to each other. If something is an accurate picture of a certain reality, then it would seem disqualified by this very fact for pointing to another future reality of a quite different nature. The solution of the problem lies in this, that the things symbolized and the things typified are not different sets of things. They are in reality the same things, only different in this respect that they come first on a lower stage of development in redemption, and then again, in a later period, on a higher stage. Thus what is symbolical with regard
to the already existing edition of the fact or truth becomes typical, prophetic, of the later, final edition of that same fact or truth. From this it will be perceived that a type can never be a type independently of its being first a symbol. The gateway to the house of typology is at the farther end of the house of symbolism.
This is the fundamental rule to be observed in ascertaining what elements in the Old Testament are typical, and wherein the things corresponding to them as antitypes consist. Only after having discovered what a thing symbolizes, can we legitimately proceed to put the question what it typifies, for the latter can never be aught else than the former lifted to a higher plane. The bond that holds type and antitype together must be a bond of vital continuity in the progress of redemption. Where this is ignored, and in the place of this bond are put accidental resemblances, void of inherent spiritual significance, all sorts of absurdities will result, such as must bring the whole subject of typology into disrepute. Examples of this are: the scarlet cord of Rahab prefigures the blood of Christ; the four lepers at Samaria, the four Evangelists.
These extravagances have produced in better-trained minds a distaste for typology. In order to weed out the worst, it was proposed to deal only with such types as were recognized to be types in the New Testament. These were called typi innati, ‘inborn types’. The others whose typical significance had to be discovered by research were called typi illati. Then the Rationalists went one step further, claiming that all instances of typology in the New Testament are but so many examples of Rabbinical allegorizing exegesis. This would discredit our Lord and His Apostles as fanciful exegetes. But even the distinction between typi innati and typi illati cannot be upheld. The mere fact that no writer in the New Testament refers to a certain trait as typical, affords no proof of its lacking typical significance. Types in this respect stand on a line with prophecies. The New Testament in numerous cases calls our attention to the fulfilment of certain prophecies, sometimes of such a nature that perhaps we might not have discerned them to be prophecies. And yet we are not restrained
by this from searching the field of prophecy and looking in the New Testament for other cases of fulfilment. The instances of typology vouched for by the New Testament writers have nothing peculiar to themselves. To recognize only them would lead to serious incompleteness and incoherency in the result. A system of types is something rational, the shaping of which we may expect from a God of wisdom, but the insertion here and there of a few isolated allusions would be out of harmony with the evidence of design in revelation.
We have, besides, the direct encouragement of the New Testament to heed the typical import of the Old Testament Scriptures. On the way to Emmaus, our Lord, beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, interpreted to the disciples in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Since the law of Moses is included, some of these things must have been of a typical nature. He rebuked his companions, because they were slow of heart to understand and believe these prefigurations concerning His work and career. The author of Hebrews intimates that about the tabernacle there was much more of typical significance than he was able to work out [9:5]. After the same manner he speaks of Melchizedek as a typical figure whom his readers had failed to appreciate [5:11ff.]. Of course, it is inevitable that into this kind of interpretation of Old Testament figures an element of uncertainty must enter. But after all this is an element that enters into all exegesis.
Besides ritual types there are in the Old Testament historical types. With some of these we have already become acquainted from the foregoing narrative. There had been also ritual types previously. But all this had been more or less sporadic. The new thing is that now, in the time of Moses, a system of types is established, so that the whole organism of the world of redemption, as it were, finds a typical embodiment on earth. The types are shadows of a body which is Christ. If the body called Christ was an organism, then also the shadows of it, that came before, must have borne the same character. In Gal. 4:3; Col. 2:20 Paul speaks of the ritual institution as ‘first
rudiments of the world’. He ascribes this rudiment-character to them because they were concerned with external, material things. In a certain sense (though not in point of formulation) Paul placed the ceremonies of the Old Testament on a line with similar customs of pagan religions. In paganism the religious rites possessed this character through their general dependence on the inclination towards symbolism. In the Mosaic institutions this natural symbolism also lay at the basis, but here there was a special divine control in the shaping of the materials. Because thus the truth found expression in physical forms, we say that it came on a lower plane. Under the New Testament this outward mode of expression has been retained in the two instances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper only, but the entire Old Testament still moves in this physical sphere. Hence, in Heb. 9:1, the tabernacle is called ‘a worldly sanctuary’, that is, a sanctuary belonging to this physical world. It was appropriate that after this fashion a sort of artificial substratum should be created for the truth of redemption to rest upon. The truth shuns suspension in the air. In the New Testament it has the accomplished facts to attach itself to. While these were yet in the making a provisional support was constructed for them in the ceremonial institutions.
From the foregoing it follows that the symbolic and the typical understanding of the ceremonies could not be expected to keep equal pace. Its symbolical function the law performed in virtue of its own inherent intelligible character. It was different with the types. Even though the defective provisional efficacy of the ceremonies might be to some extent perceived, it was far more difficult to tell what was intended to take their place in the future. Here the types needed the aid of prophecy for their interpretation [cp. Isa. 53]. We must not infer from our comparatively easy reading of the types that Israelites of old felt the same ease in interpreting them. It is unhistorical to carry back into the Old Testament mind our developed doctrinal consciousness of these matters. The failure to understand, however, does not detract from the objective significance these types had in the intent of God. But it is also possible to commit the opposite error,
that of perpetuating the Old Testament typical form of religion through importing it into the New Testament. This the Romish Church does on a large scale. And in doing so, instead of lifting the substance of the types to a higher plane, it simply reproduces and repeats. This is destructive of the whole typical relation.
THE TABERNACLE
The tabernacle affords a clear instance of the coexistence of the symbolical and the typical in one of the principal institutions of the Old Testament religion. It embodies the eminently religious idea of the dwelling of God with His people. This it expresses symbolically so far as the Old Testament state of religion is concerned, and typically as regards the final embodiment of salvation in the Christian state. The tabernacle is, as it were, a concentrated theocracy. That its main purpose is to realize the indwelling of Jehovah is affirmed in so many words [Ex. 25:8; 29:44, 45]. It derives its most general name from this, namely, mishkan, ‘dwelling-place’. The English versions render this too specifically, in dependence on the Septuagint and the Vulgate, by ‘tabernacle’. But ‘tabernacle’ signifies ‘tent’; every tent is a mishkan, but not every mishkan a tent. For ‘tent’ there is another Hebrew word, ‘ohel.
The dwelling of God in a house must not be, and was never, conceived, as Spencer would understand it, on the basis of the primitive idea that the Deity needs comfort and shelter. Even as regards the shrines of paganism this can hardly have been the original conception. A shrine is always and everywhere a place established or appointed for intercourse between a god and his worshippers. Had the Israelites associated with their mishkan so low an idea of the Deity, then they could hardly have failed to introduce into the mishkan some image of God, for a god thus physically conceived as needing shelter cannot have been conceived without a body. In the passages quoted it is most distinctly stated, that not a need which God has for Himself, but a need created by His relation to Israel is served by the establishment of the tabernacle. The
tabernacle does not symbolize what Jehovah is in His general Being and operations. Hence also it does not circumscribe or limit Him in any way. The sense in which it is to be understood becomes clear by having regard to the metaphorical sense which the verb ‘to dwell’ frequently has. It means intimate association [Gen. 30:20; Psa. 5:4; Prov. 8:12]. The dwelling with His people is to satisfy God’s desire to have a mutual identification of lot between Himself and them. Thus understood, the concept helps us to feel somewhat of the inner warmth and God-centred affection, and on the part of God, the man- seeking interest of Old Testament religion.
Because such identification of lot is the underlying idea, we can understand that the form chosen for the divine mishkan should be an ‘ohel, a tent. For, since the Israelites lived in tents, the idea of God’s identifying His lot with theirs could not be more strikingly expressed than by His sharing this mode of habitation. Further, the materials out of which the tent was constructed had to come from a free-will offering of the people, so as to symbolize that they desired their God to dwell among them. More precisely the religious intercourse is defined in still another name of the tent: ‘ohel mo’ed, ‘tent of meeting’. The meeting does not refer to the meeting of the people together, but to the meeting of Jehovah with the people. Here again, curiously, the Septuagint and the Vulgate, anticipating the next name, have rendered ‘tent of the testimony’, but in this case the English versions have not followed them. The word that is rendered ‘meeting’ does not designate an accidental encounter, but something previously arranged. It implies that Jehovah makes the provision and appoints the time for coming together with His people. The idea is of importance, because it is one of the indications of that conscious intercourse between God and man which characterizes the Biblical religion [Ex. 29:42, 43; Amos 3:3].
That the coming together is for the communication of thought, the third name, just mentioned, ‘tent of the testimony’, ‘ohel ha’eduth, shows. Testimony is a name for the law. The law was present, and through it a perpetual testimony of Jehovah, in the Decalogue, put
within the ark of the testimony. It was likewise present in the book containing the law as a whole, which was put by the side of (not inside) the ark [Deut. 31:26]. But, while the ‘testimony’ is a synonym for the law it is also a synonym for the berith, and in harmony with this its purport will have to be determined. In part a testimony against Israel [Deut. 31:26, 27], it must be on the whole a testimony in their favour; it emphasizes in this connection the gracious, redemptive nature of God’s revelation to Israel, Psalm 78:5; 119 (passim).
THE MAJESTY AND HOLINESS OF GOD
While all this emphasizes the condescending, friendly nature of Jehovah’s approach to and abode with the people, and brings, as it were, an echo of the Abrahamic mercies, yet there is another side to it, which was only partially brought out in the patriarchal period. The tabernacle still bears another name. It is ‘a holy place’, ‘a sanctuary’, Mikdash. It is somewhat difficult to understand the bearing and full reach of this term, because in New Testament usage the conception of ‘holiness’ has been more or less narrowed, and monopolized by the ethical sense. The older application, out of which the ethical one has sprung, denotes the majesty, the aloofness of God, not, however, as something arbitrarily assumed or maintained, but as something inherent in and inseparable from the divine nature. One might almost say, God’s holiness is His specific divinity, that which separates Him from every creature, as distinct in place and honour.
The state of mind in the creature answering to this is the feeling of profound reverence and fear. The effect may best be seen from such a context as Isa. 6. It is more in evidence in Old Testament revelation and religion than in the New Testament, although in the latter also it is sufficiently present to show that the tendency of modern religion toward an exclusive stress upon the love of God is unwarranted [cp. 1 John 4:18]. The awe or fear inspired by the holiness of Jehovah is not first due to the sense of sin. It is something deeper, lying behind that, although the consciousness of sin is profoundly stirred and
intensified by the feeling of this deeper fact. A comparison between the seraphim, who experience only the sense of the majesty of Jehovah, but have no sin, and the prophet, who has both, is very instructive [Isa. 6]. The sanctuary-character of the tabernacle is expressive of both elements in the idea. The people, though in favour with God, must yet remain at a distance, in fact are confined to the court, excluded from the tabernacle proper. Only the priests may enter, but this is due to the necessity of their ministering within, not to their being outside of the reach of the divine holiness in its exclusive effect. Even the expiation that continually takes place, and whereby the ethical disqualification is in a measure removed, cannot overrule this anterior principle that a proper distance must be maintained between God and man.
The coexistence of these two elements, that of trustful approach to God and that of reverence for the divine majesty, is characteristic of the Biblical religion throughout. Even the religious attitude exemplified by Jesus retains it, for if He teaches us to address God as Father, He immediately adds to this the qualification ‘in heaven’, lest the love and trust towards God should fall to the level of irreligious familiarity with God. Especially the presence of the cherubhim upon the ark in the most holy place gives a majestic expression to the majesty-side of the divine holiness. These cherubhim are throne- attendants of God, not ‘angels’ in the specific sense of the word, for the angels go on errands and carry messages, whereas the cherubhim cannot leave the immediate neighbourhood of the throne, where they have to give expression to the royal majesty of Jehovah, both by their presence and their unceasing praise [Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8, 9]. The second, more ethically coloured aspect of the holiness idea is exhibited likewise in the tabernacle. It is, as already stated, in part responsible for the exclusiveness observed. Positively it finds expression in the demands of purity made of the priests and in the ceaseless expiation of which the tabernacle is the scene.
THE PLACE OF WORSHIP
Still another application of the idea of the presence of Jehovah in the tabernacle appears in this, that it is the place where the people offer their worship to God. It is the palace of the King in which the people render Him homage. This feature belongs more particularly to the ‘holy place’, where it is symbolized in the three pieces of furniture there placed, the altar of incense, the table of the bread of the Face (i.e., the Deity in revelation) and the lampholder. The incense stands for prayer. The symbolism lies partly in that the smoke is, as it were, the refined quintessence of the offering, partly in the ascending motion of the same. That the altar of incense has its place nearest to the curtain before the ‘holy of holies’ signifies the religious specificness of prayer as coming nearest to the heart of God. The offering was of a perpetual character. The notion of the grateful smell of the burning incense in the nostrils of Jehovah is somewhat removed from our own taste of religious imagery, but should not on that account be overlooked, since it is not in the slightest degree felt to be inappropriate by the Hebrew sense of religion. The table of the bread of the Face [Ex. 25:30; Lev. 24:5–8] represents a meat- and drink-offering. As our study of the sacrificial law will show, this is the class of offering symbolizing the consecration of the activities of life to God. What the lampholder precisely represents is not so easy to determine. Its offering must be something on a line with the other two, that of prayer, and that of the good works of Israel, but the problem is to discover in what it differs from the last-named of these two. In connection with Zech. 4:2ff.; Rev. 1:20, it may be found in this, that here the reflex effect of the good works of the congregation upon those without, and thus resulting indirectly in the ascription of praise to God, may be intended [Matt. 5:14]. Light has perhaps more symbolical association in Scripture than any other natural element. It figures significantly in all of the three spheres of religious manifestation. It appears as the light of knowledge, as the light of holiness, as the light of joy.
These various things were symbolized in the tabernacle with close dependence upon Jehovah’s dwelling there. The symbolic character, however, must not be understood as purely symbolic, excluding the
element of real efficacy. There was in all of them a sacramental use; they were real means of grace. For this reason the question becomes interesting, how the divine presence in the tabernacle is to be understood. Was this a symbolical thing, or at least a purely spiritual thing, or was it embodied in some realistic supernatural manifestation? This is the problem of the so-called Shekinah. From very ancient times a realistic view concerning this has prevailed both among Jewish and among Christian theologians. In 1683 Vitringa abandoned this venerable belief and substituted for it the belief in a purely spiritual, invisible presence. He did this on the basis of a modified exegesis of Lev. 16:2, which passage had served up to that time as the main support of the realistic interpretation. His opinion was that the ‘cloud’ spoken of in this verse was the cloud of incense, to be produced by the high priest, not a theophanic cloud of supernatural character. People at that time were sensitive on the point of supernaturalism, and this, on the surface innocent, exegetical innovation roused such a storm of protest that Vitringa retracted his proposal and returned to the old view. About the middle of the eighteenth century the controversy was renewed and this time the anti-realistic opinion prevailed. Since the first quarter of the nineteenth century the realistic view has found new defenders, but some of the objections previously raised against it weighed heavily enough in the somewhat rarified air of the ‘supernaturalism’ of those days to lead to a compromise. It was now thought that the divine glory was actually present by way of supernatural manifestation in the most holy place, but that it had not resided there continuously, being confined to the annual occasion of the high priest’s entrance behind the curtain.
It is plain that opinions in this matter have been influenced more by theological predisposition than by exegetical evidence. Vitringa seems to have been almost the only one who approached the question with an unprejudiced exegetical mind. His exegesis of Lev. 16:2, is, however, untenable. It rests on the identification of the cloud in vs. 2 and in vs. 13. This equation is unfounded, for the mere occurrence of the identical phrase, ‘lest he die’, in both verses does
not, in view of the totally different connection, suffice to prove it. The meaning of vs. 2 is: Aaron must not come at all times within the veil; if he should come at any other than the one appointed time, he exposes himself to the danger of death, for there is within a manifestation of the presence of Jehovah embodied in a cloud. The caution ‘lest he die’ is occasioned by the presence of the cloud. In vs. 13 Aaron is warned that, when entering, he must not enter without veiling himself with a cloud of incense, because disregard of that will expose him to danger of death. The caution ‘lest he die’ here is directed to the production of an artificial cloud of incense. Moreover it will be observed, that in vs. 2 ‘the cloud’, and in vs. 13 ‘a cloud’ is spoken of. ‘The cloud’ must mean the well-known cloud spoken of previously in the history. This can only be the cloud which had accompanied the people on their journeys, namely, the supernatural, theophanic cloud. The cloud of incense had never before been mentioned in the narrative; therefore in vs. 13 ‘a cloud’ was in place. Wherever in the Old Testament the terms ‘cloud’ and ‘appearing’ occur together the reference is always to the theophanic cloud. The construction of vs. 2 must be strained to the utmost to make it speak of a cloud of incense and the necessity of producing it. On the occasion of the inauguration of the tabernacle and of the temple it is distinctly stated that the divine glory entered into the sanctuary [Ex. 40:34, 35; 1 Ki. 8:10–12]. True, on both occasions the glory must subsequently have withdrawn, for the priests, who could not serve on account of its presence at first, afterwards served again. But that the glory entirely withdrew, and no part of it remained, is not stated either. After all, the latter assumption is a most natural one. Ezekiel relates that at the time of the captivity he saw the glory of Jehovah departing from the temple [10:18; 11:23]. Haggai implies that in the post-exilic temple something was lacking in comparison with the temple of Solomon [2:7]. The Psalmists speak of the sanctuary in terms implying that it and the glory belong together [63:2]. And to corroborate all this we have the testimony of Paul, who mentions among the great privileges distinguishing Israel the doxa, ‘glory’ [Rom. 9:4; cp. also Acts 7:2; Rev. 15:8; 21:11, 23].
The tabernacle, then, represented not merely symbolically the indwelling of God among Israel, but actually contained it. But we must enquire more particularly, whether it was Jehovah’s house exclusively, or the joint house of Him and the people. The correct answer to this is that the tabernacle is in its entirety Jehovah’s house. There are not in it two apartments, one for God and one for the people, for the holy place, no less than the holy of holies, is the place which Jehovah owns alone. At the same time it must be maintained that the people are received into God’s house as His guests. That this under the Old Testament was not carried out literally, but only symbolically, cannot alter the fact. For reasons of emphasizing the sinfulness of the people and the provisional nature of their sanctification, this could as yet be only symbolically expressed, but the thought was there as an ideal none the less. As an ideal privilege this belonged to every Israelite [Psa. 15; 24; 27]. If the tabernacle symbolized the heavenly habitation of God, and the ideal destiny of God’s people has always been to be received of Him to the most consummate fellowship there, then there must have been at least an ideal reflex and foreshadowing of this in the tabernacle. In accordance with this principle the names given to God’s celestial palace and to the earthly sanctuary are identical. Ma’on, hekhal, zebhul are used indiscriminately of both. The point raised is not without theological importance. It touches the question of the nature of religion, and the part played in it by God and man respectively. In the ideal covenant-fellowship, here portrayed, the divine factor is the all-controlling one. Man appears as admitted into, adjusted to, subordinated to, the life of God. Biblical piety is God-centred.
CHRIST IS THE ANTI-TYPICAL TABERNACLE
The typical significance of the tabernacle should be sought in close dependence upon its symbolic significance. We must ask: where do these religious principles and realities, which the tabernacle served to teach and communicate, reappear in the subsequent history of redemption, lifted to their consummate stage? First we discover them in the glorified Christ. Of this speaks the Evangelist [John
1:14]. The Word become flesh is the One in whom God came to tabernacle among men, in order to reveal to them His grace and glory. In John 2:19–22 Jesus Himself predicts that the Old Testament temple, which His enemies by their attitude towards Him are virtually destroying, He will build up again in three days, i.e., through the resurrection. This affirms the continuity between the Old Testament sanctuary and His glorified Person. In Him will be for ever perpetuated all that tabernacle and temple stood for. The structure of stone may disappear; the essence proves itself eternal. In Col. 2:9, Paul teaches that in Him the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. With these passages should be compared the saying of Jesus to Nathanael [John 1:51] where He finds in Himself the fulfilment of what Jacob had called the house of God, the gate of heaven. In all these cases the indwelling of God in Christ serves the same ends which the Mosaic tabernacle provisionally served. He as the antitypical tabernacle is revelatory and sacramental in the highest degree.
THE TABERNACLE ALSO A TYPE OF THE CHURCH
But what is true of the Christ is likewise true of the Church. Of that also the tabernacle was a type. This could not be otherwise, because the Church is the body of the risen Christ. For this reason the Church is called ‘the house of God’ [Eph. 2:21, 22; 1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 3:6; 10:21; 1 Pet. 2:5]. An individual turn is given to the thought where the Christian is called a temple of God [1 Cor. 6:19]. It ought to be noticed that ‘house of God’ is not in the New Testament a mere figure of the fellowship between God and the Church, but always refers specifically to the Old Testament dwelling of Jehovah. The highest realization of the tabernacle idea is ascribed to the eschatological stage of the history of redemption. This is depicted by the Apocalypse [21:3]. The peculiarity of the representation here is that, in dependence on Isa. 4:5, 6, the area of the tabernacle and temple are widened so as to become equally co-extensive with the entire New Jerusalem. The necessity of a tabernacle or a temple symbolic and typical, presupposes the imperfection of the present state of the
theocracy. When the theocracy will completely correspond to the divine ideal of it, then there will be no more need of symbol or type. Hence the statement ‘I saw no temple therein’, vs. 22. This does not, however, make it ‘the city without a church’. Using Scriptural terminology, we should rather say that the place will be all church.
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM OF THE LAW
The second main strand entering into the ceremonial law is that relating to sacrifice. The sacrificial ritual forms the centre of the rites of the tabernacle. The altar is in fact a house of God, a tabernacle in miniature. Hence it is described as the place where God records His ‘Name’, and meets with His people [Ex. 20:24]. The laws about the tabernacle in the closing chapters of the Book of Exodus are immediately followed by the sacrificial laws in the opening chapters of Leviticus.
Sacrifices as such did not, of course, begin with the Mosaic law. We read of Cain and Abel bringing their offerings, and of Noah offering sacrifices after the flood. Still it will be observed that these sacrifices belong to the state of sin. From this it may be inferred that the idea of sacrifice has an intimate connection with the fact of sin. In order to determine this connection accurately, we shall have to distinguish between the two main ends served by sacrifice, for the connection with sin is not entirely the same in each. These two main ends are expiation and consecration. It is plain that expiation cannot exist without there being sin to expiate. The expiatory element in sacrifice, therefore, takes its origin from sin. It is somewhat different with the element of consecration. Consecration is not first made necessary by sin. It is as old as religion itself, nay, constitutes the very essence of religion. But from this original existence of consecration in the exercise of sinless religion we may not infer that the specifically sacrificial form of consecration is as old as the practice of the idea itself.
The correct way of putting it is that the externalized form of consecration is a result of sin. In the sinless intercourse between God and man everything is direct and spiritual; no symbol intervenes between the worshipping creature and the Creator. This difference between the two aspects of sacrifice has its bearing upon the question of the purely human origination of sacrifice or its divine institution. For the expiatory use of sacrifice a positive divine institution was obviously required. Even if man could have conceived the idea of expiation of himself, there still would have been required explicit divine sanction to put it into practice. On the other hand, the idea of consecration was innate in man, and it is perhaps conceivable, that, after the fall, man of his own accord proceeded to give to this a new externalized embodiment, because he felt sin to have made such a separation between God and himself as to preclude the direct offering of himself to God.
It must be admitted, however, that the Pentateuch contains no record of the institution of sacrifice either as to its expiatory or as to its consecratory aspect. Some profess to find it in Gen. 3:21. The covering provided by God from the simple skins of animals would have carried the implication that animal life is necessary for covering sin. Agaicst this speaks the fact that the word used for this act of God is not the technical term used in the law for the covering of sin by sacrifice. It is a word signifying ‘to clothe’, a term never employed in the law for the expiation of sin.
While the law does not appoint a separate class of sacrifice for expiation alone, it does devote the vegetable, bloodless sacrifice to the purpose of consecration alone. In the animal, bloody sacrifice, the two ideas find joint expression, and the intimate union between the two is also brought out in the rule that no vegetable sacrifice shall be brought except on the basis of a preceding animal sacrifice. The unbloody sacrifice does not negate the idea of expiation; it presupposes it. Of course, the exclusive use of animal sacrifice for expiation is due to the presence of blood in it. Without blood there is no sacrificial expiation under the law.
OFFERINGS—GIFTS—SACRIFICES
The general category under which sacrifices are subsumed is that of qorban, ‘offering’ (literally, ‘that which is brought near’) or that of mattenoth qodesh, ‘gifts of holiness’. This classification seems primarily to have been taken from the consecration element in them. That consecration is a gift seems natural, but that expiation should bear the same name is not so easy to understand, although there must be some meaning in this also, as we may discover later. This gift character is of the greatest importance for our understanding the nature of sacrifice. The point here to observe is that ‘offerings’ and ‘holy gifts’ are generic terms. They cover sacrifice, but they cover much more than sacrifice proper. All that is devoted in any way whatsoever to the service of Jehovah can be called by these names, but not everything of this nature can be called sacrifice. Every sacrifice is a holy gift, but not every holy gift is a sacrifice. It is unfortunate for our understanding of the matter that the law has no separate, single term for this specific subdivision of the holy gifts, so that in order to satisfy our desire for specification we must fall back on the Latin word ‘sacrificium’, which originally was also far more comprehensive than the use we now put to it. But, if we cannot name the ‘sacrifice’ in one Biblical word, we can at least by way of description single it out from the cognate, but by no means identical, things.
What distinguishes the sacrifice from all other things, however sacred these may be, is that part or the whole of its substance comes upon the altar. Without the altar there would be no sacrifice. This coming upon the altar is a most significant thing: it means the direct consumption of the sacrifice by Jehovah, for Jehovah dwells in the altar. In anthropomorphic language the law expresses the principle of assimilation of the sacrifice by Jehovah, when it speaks of it as ‘food for Jehovah’ or as yielding ‘a firing for the savour of satisfaction for Jehovah’. Much later the prophets still had to protest against a naturalistic interpretation of this conception, as though Jehovah were by nature in need of food and the gratification of His sense of
smell. The meaning of the law is that in virtue of His relation to Israel, as the God of Israel, He cannot exist without this, since for this very purpose He has chosen Israel and instituted the ritual service, that there might be a never-ceasing supply of praise and consecration for Him. The whole tenor of the law is to that effect. Its spirit, especially in the system of sacrifice, is that of a God-centred religion. Since, in the Old Testament, the man-ward activities of religion were relatively restricted, the impression made by this is all the stronger. It belongs, however, to the entire Biblical religion under all circumstances. In it all activity is service, not according to the modern depleted, humanitarian sense of the word, but in the sense of its being in the last analysis directed toward God, a sacrifice in the profound Old Testament understanding of this term.
It is, however, a one-sided exaggeration of this thought, when some have endeavoured to define sacrifice as worship. There is worship in sacrifice, but worship by no means constitutes the whole of sacrifice. Worship covers only the one half of the act, that which extends from man to God. The other half, extending from God to man, is not prayer, but a sacramental transaction, something God does, and in regard to which man is purely receptive, passive. Instead of prayer, it is rather the divine answer to prayer. In this respect again the modern connotation of the word has become deceptive. It savours too much of the pagan etymology, for in sacrificium the notion of facere is too prominent, and that as a human, not a divine facere. Still the designation of sacrifice as worship may be turned to good use. It may help to explain how, even in the case of expiatory sacrifice, a giving on the part of man is involved. Man must put his aspiration and desire and trust into the proceeding; he gives in so far back to God what God has first given to him as a means of grace.
The regulation of the material for sacrifice will further make plain the sense in which it is regarded as a gift to Jehovah. The first requisite is, of course, that all things offered must be technically ‘clean’. But not all that is clean is allowed for sacrifice. Within the animal kingdom the following species are allowed: oxen, sheep,
goats, pigeons. From the vegetable kingdom: corn, wine and oil can be brought. The principle expressed in this selection is two-fold. The sacrifice must be taken from what constitutes the sustenance of the life of the offerer, and from what forms the product of his life. To an agricultural people like the Israelites in Canaan (and to this the law looks forward) the things named naturally came under consideration from the two-fold point of view indicated. Reducing these two, however, to their unitary root, we have to say that they characterize sacrifice as the gift of life to God. Short of the impossibility under the Old Testament of human sacrifice, the principle in question could not have been better expressed than in the way it was. Both negatively and positively an important truth was thus enunciated. Negatively it was brought out that sacrifice is not transfer of value to Jehovah, not a present, in the pagan sense of the word. Jehovah protests against such a perverted notion with the reminder that all the contents of the world are antecedently His property. There is no possibility of enriching Him. And positively it emphasizes that God is not satisfied in the religious converse between Himself and man with anything short of the consecration of life itself.
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE OFFERER AND HIS SACRIFICE
The next point to discuss is the relation assumed by the law to exist between the offerer and his sacrifice. There are varying theories about this, not so much because the law itself is equivocal on this point, but because the argumentation from the ritual law in favour of or against certain theories of the atonement has influenced opinion on this question. This is made possible through the absence from the law of any outspoken philosophy of sacrifice. Here as in other points the law is left to speak for itself. Abuse is made of this, when interpreters, as it were, interrupt the law or even silence it, presuming to speak for it. No preconceived theory of atonement should be allowed to colour our understanding of the law, but the reverse should happen. There is only one qualification of this: the New Testament in certain points speaks so plainly in regard to the fulfilment of certain traits of the ritual in the atonement, as to render
it impossible for us to disregard this. For the rest, however, we must gather our philosophy of sacrifice from careful observation of the manner in which the ritual proceeds. This we shall do presently. By way of preface it may be explained here, that there are three general opinions in regard to the inner meaning of the ritual and the relation it establishes between offering and offerer.
The first may be designated the purely symbolical theory. According to it the sacrificial process exhibits in a picture certain things that must be done to the offerer, and that can and will be done to him with the proper effect. The picture, as a mere picture, must needs remain within the sphere of subjectivity; it exhibits in no way what must take place outside of man for him, but only what takes place within him; we, therefore, call this the purely symbolical theory. Speaking in dogmatic language we might say, that on this view of the matter sacrifice is a pictorial representation of such things as sanctification and return to the favour of God. The utmost that this theory could possibly concede would be, that the ritual perhaps depicts some objective obligation, that might have been imposed upon man, of which by way of a lesson he is reminded in the sacrifice, but which is not further carried out or exacted from man, not even symbolically, in the further process. This interpretation of the sacrificial procedure lies on the line of the moral and governmental theories of the atonement.
The second theory may be designated as the symbolico-vicarious theory of sacrifice. It has in common with the other the assumption of subjectively-turned symbolism at the opening. According to it the ritual begins with portraying the subjective state of man, chiefly as to his obligation. But right there it parts way with the purely symbolical view. If the latter assumes that the further steps continue to portray what will be done within man to modify this, the symbolico-vicarious theory presupposes the recognition by ritual itself that nothing can be done in man himself with the proper effect, and that, therefore, a substitute must take his place. All the successive acts of the ritual apply to this substitute, not to the offerer. Consequently the entire
transaction assumes an objective character. It becomes something done, to be sure, for the benefit of the offerer, but done outside of him. It will thus be seen, that the objectivity and the vicariousness of the process go together. On the same principle adoption of the purely symbolical theory carries with itself exclusion of the vicarious element and of the objectivity.
To be distinguished from these two theories is a third attitude towards the law of sacrifice. This, however, can by no means be co- ordinated with the two preceding views, for it denies that in the law, or the Old Testament in general, any coherent, consistent theory of sacrifice is to be found. This is the opinion, on the whole, of the Wellhausen school of critics. The sacrificial laws are said to be the precipitate of a long development. They contain, loosely conglomerated, customs dating from widely distant times, and based on discordant principles. It belongs, therefore, to the very essence of this hypothesis to deny that the law itself has any intelligent view of the meaning of sacrifice. All that these writers presume to offer is a history, not a theory of sacrifice. During the most ancient, nomadic period, sacrifices were nothing else but means for establishing or strengthening the blood-communion supposed to exist between the deity and its worshippers. This was effected by making both partake of a common blood, the blood of the sacrificial animal. The act did not mean expiation; it meant a sacrament. In a later stage of religious development a considerable change took place in the conception of sacrifice. This change was connected with the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Canaan. Previously their religion had been a nomadic religion, now it became an agricultural one. The sacrifices were presents bestowed upon Jehovah, the richness and frequency of which assumed great importance. The cult became complicated and luxuriant. Underlying it was the naïve popular belief that God could be influenced by the presentation of such gifts, irrespective of the spirit in which they were brought.
This view of sacrifice was essentially of Canaanitish origin. The prophets protested against this popular delusion, and from the
ethical conception of the nature of Jehovah attained by them, drew the inference that sacrifices were not only an unnecessary but even a dangerous form of religious service, something disapproved of by Jehovah. At first this remained a purely theoretical preaching, which never gained any acceptance with the people. The prophets soon saw that in order to make any headway against the popular cult they would have to stoop to some form of compromise. This consisted in pruning, purifying, and elevating as much as possible the practised religion. The results of this compromise are embodied in the various law-codes now found in the several Pentateuchal documents. Especially in the later codes the grosser conceptions of the earlier period were made to the largest possible extent vehicles of ethical, spiritual truth.
THE STAGES OF THE SACRIFICIAL RITUAL
Now, coming to the various acts or stages making up the ritual process, we first consider the selection of the particular animal from within the limits of allowance above specified. The animal must be a perfect specimen of its kind. Both as to age and as to condition it must be free of anything that would detract from its value. This is conceivable from the naïve popular conception of sacrifice as a gift to Jehovah, for to one’s God one gives of the best only. But it is not easily explainable from the standpoint of the purely symbolical theory. According to this the sacrifice must be viewed as a picture, a replica of the offerer. Now the offerer is at the same time supposed to come with an offering, because he feels himself abnormal and imperfect. How then can the perfectly normal and flawless animal figure as his double? At this point, certainly, the symbolico-vicarious view has the advantage; it substitutes for the imperfect offerer the perfect animal-substitute, in order that through its perfection something may be accomplished that would be otherwise impossible. To be sure, the animal exhibits ethical perfection after a very negative fashion only; in that it is not subject to moral distinctions it is incapable also of symbolizing moral defects. It is innocent simply because it cannot be good or bad. But this is inseparable from a
process in which an animal takes the place of a man. And in part it is symbolically obviated by the positive stress laid upon the physical normality and perfection of the animal. Isaiah in chapter 53 speaks of the sacrificial lamb, as though it had semi-ethical qualities, but even these are negative, innocence and meekness, and besides, the description is modelled after the character of the Servant of Jehovah. Still this suggests how the negative could serve as a symbol of the sinlessness of the antitype. And Peter declares that believers are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. And this blameless and spotless character the Apostle does not represent as merely in general enhancing the value of the offering, but as enhancing its efficacy for redemption [1 Pet. 1:19].
The next step in the ritual, after the animal had been brought to the sanctuary, was the so-called laying on of hands by the offerer. The Hebrew phrase is stronger than the English rendering suggests; it literally means ‘the leaning on’ of the hand or the hands [Lev. 16:21]. This ceremony took place in every ordinary animal sacrifice, and in animal sacrifice only. This points to a close connection between what was peculiar to animal sacrifice and the act in question. Peculiar to animal sacrifice is the use of the blood for expiation. With this, therefore, the laying on of hands must have something to do. The significance of the act is indicated by the analogy of the other occasions on which it was performed [Gen. 48:13, 14; Lev. 24:14; Num. 8:10; 27:18; Deut. 34:9]. From these instances it appears that laying on of hands always symbolized a transfer from one person to another. What the thing transferred was depended on the occasion, but the one to whom something was transferred appears everywhere as a second person, distinct from the one whose hands are laid on. This decidedly favours the vicarious interpretation of sacrifice. It means that the animal cannot have been considered the mere double of the offerer; it must have been a second person different from the offerer.
In answering what was transferred to the animal-substitute we cannot, of course, be guided by the above analogies. There is independent evidence to show that the transferred thing was nothing else but the sin, i.e., the liability to death-punishment on the part of the offerer. In the ritual of the Day of Atonement, which we may consider the culminating occasion of the whole ritual system, Aaron is told to lay his hands on the head of the second goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people. This second goat was not a sacrifice to be slain after the ordinary manner; it was sent away into the wilderness for the purpose of symbolically removing the sin. Yet it formed with the other goat in reality one sacrificial object; the distribution of suffering death and of dismissal into a remote place simply serving the purpose of clearer expression, in visible form, of the removal of sin after expiation had been made, something which the ordinary sacrificial animal could not well express, since it died in the process of expiation. We are certainly warranted, when here the hands convey sin, and where the same ceremony occurs in ordinary sacrifice, in drawing the conclusion that on every such occasion sins are transferred.
The interpretation followed is of such great importance, because it virtually determines the construction to be placed upon the next following step in the ritual, the slaying of the animal by the hands of the offerer. The act has thus given the altar its name mizbeach, ‘place of slaughter’. The importance is attested also by the careful injunction that the slaying must take place at the altar and particularly at the north side. The symbolical meaning of this may not be clear, but, unless weight was attributed to the act, the place would have been treated as indifferent. Both these features tell strongly against a theory defended by even such safe interpreters as Keil and Delitzsch, to the effect that the slaying of the animal forms no significant part of the ritual, but is simply the inevitable means for obtaining the blood and the fat, the use of which is truly significant, ritually considered.
In connection with the laying on of hands transmitting sin the slaying of the sin-bearing animal could scarcely have any other purpose than to signify that death is the penalty of sin, vicariously inflicted in sacrifice. And that this point of view is not foreign to the law appears from such cases as that related in Deut. 21:9 (where there is expiation and yet no shedding of blood, but death by the neck being broken), and the offer of himself by Moses to die in the place of Israel [Ex. 32:30–34].
The error of Keil and Delitzsch is due to the fact that the law does not name the slaying, but everywhere the blood, as the means of expiation. This is a correct observation, but the inference drawn from it is wrong. The blood is the most eloquent symbol of death, so that the antithesis, not death but blood, is fundamentally wrong. To be sure, blood can likewise be the symbol of life. But it does not so appear in the ritual. Nor is it fit to appear in such a capacity, because it figures as blood flowed out, and this stands everywhere for the life departing, i.e., for death. Blood in its normal state, blood in the integral animal does not expiate. It expiates as blood that has passed through the crisis of death, and is therefore fit to be the exponent of death. The rule, there is no expiation without blood, cannot be reversed, so as to make it say, there is no blood without expiation. If it still be urged that blood conceived as the exponent of expiating death ought to have had its effect when flowing out of the animal slain, at the moment of its direct conjunction with death, the answer lies in a correct appreciation of what the Old Testament term designating ‘to expiate’ stands for.
We are inclined to draw distinctions here which are necessary for dogmatic precision. Thus we distinguish between the atonement itself and the application of the atonement. The symbolism of the ritual takes these two in one. When it says that ‘blood covers’ (that is the technical term of the law for expiation), it means to describe in one word the atonement as we call it, plus the application of the atonement (which we call justification). Now in this inclusive sense the process of covering is not completed until the blood, as the
symbol of death, has been applied to the altar, i.e., brought into contact with God, who dwells in the altar. This is the simple reason why the law refrains from saying that the slaying atones, and why it is so careful to emphasize that the application of the blood to the altar has this effect. But this cannot be held to prove that the slaying has nothing to do with the effect. Besides, there is also an external reason why the law dwells more upon the manipulation of the blood than upon the slaying of the animal. The latter was simple and the same in all cases, whereas the former was complex, varying in the various classes and for the various occasions of sacrifice. It needed discriminating attention.
So far from negating the expiatory power of death in a vicarious sense, the constant references to the blood rather illuminatingly confirm this. To the conception of the ritual ‘blood’ and ‘life’ are identical. And ‘life’ and ‘soul’ are likewise identical. We need, therefore, only to inquire into the Old Testament signification of ‘soul’ to reach the inwardness of the matter on this point. Besides several others, the classic passage on the subject is Lev. 17:11. Here we read: ‘For the life of the flesh’ (i.e. living flesh) ‘is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make covering for your souls; for it is the blood that makes covering by reason of the life’.
What, then, is the Old Testament conception of ‘soul’? In that the reason is placed for the blood’s efficacy to cover for souls. The two associations of the term ‘soul’ are in the first place that of individuation, secondly, that of sensibility. Both are, of course, physiologically, and hence symbolically, intimately connected with the blood in the body. ‘Soul’ is that which results when the general spirit of life joins breath to a body. This is not meant for an affirmation of trichotomy; it is a practical distinction between spirit and soul, not as two entities, substantially considered, but as two aspects of the same thing. And in the same practical way soul and sensation, feeling, are associated.
The question, therefore, is simply reduced to this: what makes the principle of individuation and of sensibility the proper instrument for expiation? It will be seen at a glance that the answer to this is found in the vicarious theory, and in it alone. That which is a substitute for another person must be an individual, and that which undergoes punishment for another must be capable of feeling, of suffering. Taking it together, then, we may say, that the blood has its rich symbolism in sacrifice, first, because it stands for death, secondly because it stands for the death of an individual, substitutionary person, and thirdly because it stands for a death involving suffering. All this is given in the slaying, but slaying or dying are abstract conceptions, that cannot be made subject to sight symbolically, whereas ‘blood’ and ‘soul’ and ‘life’ are concrete things.
VICARIOUSNESS DEFINED
The passage Lev 17:11 also contains the most explicit statement of the principle of vicariousness to be found in the law anywhere. It virtually amounts to saying: soul works covering for soul. The inherent vicariousness of the statement is recognized by all exegetes, even by such as have no theological use for its teaching. Still a certain latitude of interpretation, within the limits of vicariousness, seems possible.
There are, in the abstract, three possibilities. One can say the passage teaches that for the integral life of the offerer, due to God, another integral life, that of the animal is substituted. This it will be observed, while retaining the principle of vicariousness, rules out entirely the idea of vicarious death, vicarious suffering. Antitypically speaking it would amount to saying that for the positive gift of our life in consecration to God, which we had failed to bring, Christ has, by way of substitution, given God His life of service, to reimburse God for ours, but that the suffering of the Saviour played no part in the matter, inasmuch as God was simply concerned with receiving consecration, and had no interest in the payment through suffering
for offences committed. In other words, the justice of God is entirely ruled out. Christ was our substitute in His active obedience only.
Again one may say: God does indeed reckon with sins but not in the sense of punishment being required for them; the only way in which He reckons with them is by desiring a positive gift that will compensate for the injury offered Him. This would amount to saying that Christ’s active obedience had served for making God forego the punishment of our sins, in view of the rich obedience rendered by Christ. It is again the active obedience that plays the exclusive part, but on this view it plays it at least with a side-reference to the sin that was committed, and had to be made good somehow.
Or, finally, one may say: the sacrificial animal in its death takes the place of the death due the offerer. It is forfeit for forfeit. Christ not merely in His positive service, but through His suffering and death made up for the abnormality of our sin. He satisfied the justice of God. We maintain that the first and second interpretations, while not perhaps absolutely ruled out by Lev. 17:11 alone, do not place the most natural construction upon the words, and, taken together with the general trend of Biblical teaching on the atonement are not plausible.
THE MEANING OF ‘COVERING’
Our next enquiry addresses itself to the precise symbolical conception the law frames for what we call expiation, that of ‘covering’. The Hebrew word is kapper, piel infinitive of kaphar. Covering can be of two kinds, obliterative and protective. It is thought by some that the latter is the idea originally underlying the use of the word for expiation. The symbolism would convey that the offerer through the interposition of the blood between God and himself obtained safety from the reaction of the divine anger against sin. The obliterative interpretation is that the stain of sin and its impurity are put out of the sight of God through the blood smeared over them. It is not a matter of grave doctrinal importance, but one
of historical interest largely, which of the two figures lies at the basis of the Biblical usage. It is not even certain that in Biblical times the etymological associations were still distinctly remembered. The word may have become a purely technical ritual term.
Most seem to speak in favour of the original understanding of the process as one of obliteration. In secular use the term seems to have this for a background. Jacob ‘covers’ the face of Esau through sending a present before himself. In this way the anger on Esau’s face is ‘covered’, put out of sight [Gen. 32:20]. There is further a religious usage outside of the sphere of sacrifice, and in this also the idea of obliteration shines clearly through [cp. Psa. 32:1; 65:3; 78:38; Isa. 22:14; Jer. 18:23]. In these cases the object is almost uniformly the sin, not the sinner, and to the former the idea of protection afforded by God could not properly apply. Then there are the various synonymous phrases in which the Old Testament describes the removal of sin on the part of God. These are most of them of an obliterative sort [Neh. 4:5; Isa. 6:7; 27:9; 38:17; 44:22; Jer. 18:23; Mic. 7:19].
We may infer from all this that in the province of sacrifice likewise the idea of removal of sin through obliteration was the originally prevailing one. A striking difference should be noted, however, between the secular and the religious use of the conception. Outside of religion it is the offender who does the covering, and the person offended is covered. Jacob covers the face of Esau. In the sphere of religion, ritual or otherwise, God, the offended Person, procures the covering, and it is applied to the sinner. Man cannot cover the face of God. The idea, as though man could do anything whatsoever in order to effect a change in the disposition or attitude of God towards sin or the sinner, is utterly repugnant to the spirit of Biblical religion. Between man and man that may be possible, but not between God and man. If the normal relation is to be restored, it is the prerogative of God to resolve this and to put His resolve into operation.
In paganism all this is different. Here the figure employed is that of ‘smoothing’ the gods, that is of removing the wrinkles out of their frowning face. Thus the Greek says hilaskesthai tous theous, the Latin says placare deos. This figure underlies the technical pagan term of ‘expiating’. If the translation of the Scriptures into Greek, or Latin, or the modern languages, could have avoided such terms, there would have been less danger of perverting the Biblical idea through giving it a pagan equivalent grown on a totally different root. But the translators, perhaps, had no choice. Their use of ‘covering’ would probably have made the language unintelligible to the Greek or Roman reader. This state of affairs imposes the duty upon us of not relying on the Greek or Latin or English sound of a term used in such connections, but carefully to consult the Hebrew, and make our construction of the process on the basis of that alone. To neglect doing this exposes in the present case to a very dangerous misconception.
When the Bible says that God ‘expiates’ man, not man God, the inference is easily drawn that the whole abnormality consists in the ill-disposition of man, and that all that is required consists in God’s smoothing this out. The whole process of atonement would become in this way subjectivized. The resulting concept is a hybrid: it has the Biblical construction, and the pagan mould of thought. To escape from the misunderstanding all that is required is to go back from the term ‘expiating’ to the term ‘covering’. Man needs ‘covering’, God needs no ‘covering’. God is the subject, man is the object of the act. The reason why man needs covering is something that lies in him, but it is not something that lies in man considered in itself. It creates the need of covering, because of something that is in God. The sin in man, as calling forth a reaction from the offended holiness of God, is what renders the covering necessary. It is a real help here to keep in mind the full formula in which the law itself describes the process: ‘the priest shall cover upon him on account of his sin’ [Lev. 4:35].
While the protective view of the transaction fits equally well into the true doctrine of the atonement as the other, Ritschl has worked it out
in a manner which leads far away from the Biblical premises of sacrifice. He assumes that the protection which man needs and the law provides does not arise from man’s sinfulness, but from his finiteness as a creature, which endangers his life when entering into the presence of the majesty of God. But, when man appears with the prescribed gifts, and the priests perform for him the appointed rites, he receives adequate protection from this danger, and is enabled to exercise fellowship with God. And from this fellowship with God he receives, besides other things, also the favour of the forgiveness of sin. It will be noticed, that this reverses the usual order of things. We are accustomed to say, and understand the Bible as saying, that forgiveness is the source from which fellowship flows. Ritschl would turn this around, making fellowship the source from which forgiveness proceeds. The whole tenor of the law is against this. As we have seen, the covering is kept by the law in the closest connection with the fact of sin. To deny this is to void the sacrificial system of all ethical content.
The next step in the ritual after the covering is the burning of certain parts of the animal upon the altar. What was the symbolical meaning of this act? Some would find in it a further carrying out of the idea expressed in the slaying of the animal. The consumption of it by fire would then symbolize that more intensified experience of death which awaits the sinner in the hereafter. Against this there are fatal objections. After expiation had once taken place, and the offerer’s soul had been effectually covered, the end of the penal transaction had been reached. Had the meaning of the burning been what is assumed on this view, then the act of expiation ought to have followed, not preceded the burning. The covering ought to have been made by means of the blood and ashes combined. In the vegetable offering the burning was exactly the same as in the animal offering, and yet no expiation entered into the former.
The verb descriptive of the burning is everywhere hiqtir. This verb does not describe burning of the consuming kind, but of the sublimating kind, a process whereby something is changed into a
finer substance. The verb for destructive burning is saraf, and this is actually used for the burning of parts of the animal outside the camp, but never of the burning upon the altar. Moreover, the law speaks of the altar-burning as yielding a sweet odour of delight to Jehovah. While Scripture teaches that the punishment of sin is required by the justice of God, it never speaks of this as giving delight to God. On the contrary, that which is represented as yielding delight to Jehovah is the surrender of man’s life in consecration of obedience. In this sense, therefore, we must understand the burning upon the altar.
The question, however, may be raised, whether this consecration is the vicarious one offered God by the substitute of the offerer, or the consecration of the offerer himself. If the latter were true, we should have to say that at this point the symbolico-vicarious significance of the ritual came to an end, and the purely symbolical one took its place. But this would inevitably have introduced a certain ambiguity and confusion into the ritual. And there is no reason whatever for finding a conflict between vicariousness and consecration. Although expiation cannot be made by man himself, and consecration by the grace of God can be subjectively inwrought into the life of man, yet we also know of an active consecratory obedience offered to God on behalf of sinners by Christ. Our Lord employs ritual language, when affirming that He sanctifies Himself for them (i.e., for the suffering of His death) [John 17:19]. And Paul does the same, when, speaking of Christ’s active obedience, he says: ‘Christ also loved us, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour of a sweet smell’ [Eph. 5:2].
The final stage in the ritual of sacrifice consisted in the sacrificial meal. This was peculiar to the peace-offerings. In speaking of the Passover we have already noticed the main characteristics of this class of sacrifice. The Hebrew name for it is shelamim. The adjective corresponding to this is shalem meaning ‘integral’, ‘uninjured’, ‘living in peace and friendship with somebody’. It is natural to think, in connection with this, first of all of the state of forgiveness following the expiation. But, while this is not excluded, since in the sacrifice
preceding the meal there is real expiation, yet we must take care not to stress this side of the matter one-sidedly.
‘Peace’ is in Scripture a far more positive conception than it is with us. The peace-offering accordingly symbolizes the state of positive favour and blessedness enjoyed in the religion of Jehovah, which at all times includes more than the sacrificial relief obtained from sin. In the Orient a meal can signify both the cessation of hostility and the communion of friendship. The rendering ‘peace-offerings’ in the English Bible, on the basis of Septuagint and Vulgate, is most felicitous; that of other versions, German and Dutch, is less faithful. These render ‘thank-offerings’, but the thank-offerings are only one species of the genus peace-offerings. The state of peace in its two- sided significance is symbolized as a gift of Jehovah, for it is He, not the offerer, who prepares the meal. Hence the meal is to be held at the tabernacle, the house of God. We may compare the meal partaken of by ‘the nobles of Israel’ on the mount [Ex. 24:11] where also Jehovah is obviously the host. Paul in 1 Cor. 10, by implication calls the meal the table of Jehovah, for he compares the Lord’s supper, where Christ is the host, and the pagan sacrificial meals, where the ‘demons’ give the feast at their table, with the practice of the ancient Israelites, who have ‘communion with the altar’.
THE VARIETY OF OFFERINGS
The classification of animal sacrifices represents an ascending scale, beginning, as it were, with the worst point, religiously considered, in the state of the offerer, and ending with the acme of his religious blessedness. The distinction between the classes is not a distinction of exclusive expression of single points, but one of emphasis on particular points, which in the succeeding classes are not dismissed from view, but recapitulated, so that the final class contains the whole in proper arrangement of the several elements. In the sin- offering the idea of expiation stands in the foreground, but, after this has first been stressed, the consecration-idea receives attention likewise, through the burning upon the altar. The intent upon
working expiation before all else is seen in the elaborate manipulation of the blood, not present to that extent in the following classes. The animal in the sin-offering was invariably one, but the species and sex differed according to the persons involved and their rank in the congregation, not, however, as though the guilt of the sin were proportionate to the station of the sinner, but because the more highly-placed member of the theocracy involves more individuals in his sinning [Lev. 4:3].
The distinction between the sin-offering and the trespass-offering is difficult to define. Two features stand out in the latter: on the one hand, it is the only sacrifice of which an appraisal is made; on the other hand, it is the only one to which a sum of money must be added. The value-feature, therefore, is in evidence. This suggests the theory, that it forms the complement of the sin-offering in giving to God the positive thing withheld from Him through sin. Every sin offers to God what ought not to be offered, an offence, and at the same time it withholds from God what ought to have been given to Him, obedience. If the sin-offering rectifies the former, the trespass- offering would then make restitution for the latter. In its ritual procedure it closely resembles the sin-offering, as we might expect on this view. The trespass-offering derives a unique interest from the fact that it is the only class of sacrifice with which the sacrificial death of Christ is directly connected in the Old Testament. In Isa. 53:10, the self-surrender of the Servant of Jehovah is designated an ‘asham, a trespass-offering, and this is quite in harmony with the idea, prevailing in the context, that the Servant not merely atones for the sins of the people, but gives to God what by their disobedience they have withheld.
Finally it will be noticed, that not every sin-offering had a trespass- offering joined to it, as the above theory might seem to imply. The trespass-offering was only required where an actual property-value had not been paid. The material substance in a limited sphere was thus made to symbolize the spiritual in the general sphere of sin.
In connection with the burnt-offering we notice the strong emphasis placed upon consecration, which found expression in the burning of the entire sacrifice upon the altar. With this agrees, that it is the one sacrifice perpetually kept burning. In fact from the latter feature one of its names, the tamid, is derived.
Of the peace-offering all that is essential has been said in discussing the Passover and the sacrificial meal. Three distinct classes of peace- offerings are named: the praise- or thank-offering, the votive- offering, and the freewill-offering. The principle of division is not a strictly logical one, inasmuch as the first class is denominated from the purpose served, the second and the third are named from the subjective attitude of the offerer, which was either obligatory, as in the case of the votive-offering, or spontaneous, as in the case of the freewill-offering. An interesting fact to notice is that the Mosaic law makes no provision for prayer-offerings. Perhaps this was due to a fear of fostering the superstition that the offering could through its natural inherent power compel the bestowal of the blessing desired. As to the votive-offering the sacrifice seems not to have accompanied the making of the vow, but to have been the object promised in the vow, so that it becomes a special kind of thank-offering.
The vegetable offering was considered, like the animal sacrifice, as symbolically food for Jehovah. Hence it is not offered in an unprepared condition, but in the shape of roasted ears, or as fine wheaten flour, or as loaves or cakes prepared in the oven or in the pan. Every meal-offering must be attended with oil. A wine-offering forms its complement. Taking these ingredients together, some have thought to discover in the vegetable offering an exact copy of the animal sacrifice, the meal standing for the meat, the oil for the fat, the wine for the blood. On a line with this the Romish theologians found in the meal-offering a special type of the Lord’s Supper. Both opinions are untenable. In the case of the substitution of a vegetable sin-offering, on account of extreme poverty, the law enjoins that no oil shall be put upon the flour. Had the fat been represented by the oil, then the latter could not have been lacking in the substitute-sin-
offering. There is, of course, a typical connection of these sacrifices with the Lord’s supper, but this it has in common with all other parts of the system. It is true, the elements are vegetable in both, but they are so for a different reason in each case. In the Lord’s supper they are so, because of the substitution of the unbloody for the bloody sacrament under the new dispensation. In the Old Testament vegetable offering the vegetable material was selected, in order to give expression to the idea of consecration in works. In the animal sacrifice too, as we have seen, there is consecration, but there, in harmony with the animal gift, it is a consecration of the entire life as a unit. Here, in the vegetable offering, it is a consecration of fruit, that is, of the diversified product of life. That part of the vegetable offering which is burnt upon the altar bears the name of azkarah, ‘that which calls to remembrance’. Though sometimes in the law the term may be used in an unfavourable sense [Num. 5:26], in the vegetable offering it has favourable meaning. In the Greek it is rendered by mnemosynon. This relates to alms and prayers especially. Thus the angel says to Cornelius that his prayers and alms have gone up for a ‘memorial’ before God [Acts 10:4].
UNCLEANNESS AND PURIFICATION
The third main strand distinguishable in the ceremonial law is that relating to uncleanness and purification. Together with the indwelling of Jehovah in the theocracy, and the process of sacrifice, it forms a fundamental conception, which as such has entered into the permanent fabric of Biblical religion. At the outset we must guard against identifying the unclean and the forbidden. There are processes and acts absolutely unavoidable, which nevertheless render unclean. The law rather seems to have multiplied the occasions for contracting uncleanness, that thus it might increase the material on which to operate the distinction and teach its lesson. Further, we must avoid identifying cleanness with cleanliness, uncleanness with dirtiness. Sanitary significance the distinction does not have. It offers no excuse for identifying Christianity with hygiene. Positively, we may say that the conception has reference to the cult,
that is, to the ritual approach to Jehovah in the sanctuary. We must not view it from the standpoint of inherent content or quality. ‘Clean’ means qualified for the worship of Jehovah in the tabernacle, ‘unclean’ the opposite. The effect which these predicates produce is the thing stressed. If we say that the contrast is symbolical of ethical purity and impurity, it still will hold true that this symbolized contrast is not simply equivalent to goodness and badness as such, but to goodness and badness from the particular point of view that the one admits into, the other excludes from fellowship with God. This is one of the ideas in which the intimate connection between religion and ethics finds expression. From the Biblical standpoint ethical normalcy or abnormality should, before aught else, be appraised with the question in mind: What effect does the state, designated in ethical terms, have on one’s intercourse with God?
There is a distinction between the antithesis ‘clean’ versus ‘unclean’ and that of ‘holy’ versus ‘unholy’. And yet there is a close connection between the two pairs of opposites. Cleanness is the prerequisite of holiness. Nothing unclean can be holy, while it remains in that state. But, suppose it to be made clean, this would by no means ipso facto render it holy. Nor are things clean by nature necessarily holy. There exists a large territory between the unclean and the holy, full of things clean but not on that account holy. But from this territory things are taken and constituted holy by a positive act of God. The Hebrew vocabulary bears out the relation thus defined. It offers distinct terms for the two contrasts involved. The terms for ‘holy’ and ‘unholy’ are qadosh and chol, those for ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ are tahor and tame.
Being thus related to the service of Jehovah, the distinction between cleanness and its opposite obtains for the life of every Israelite comprehensive significance, for in reality the Israelite exists for nothing else but the continual service of God. It creates a bisection of the entire congregation to apply to it this ritual test. The people at each moment divide themselves into two halves, one composed of the clean, the other of the unclean. This finds striking expression in
one of the formulas for designating the people comprehensively. The phrase ‘atsur we’azubh means ‘every Israelite’. It is rendered in the A.V. somewhat mysteriously by ‘shut up or left’, in the R.V. by ‘shut up or left at large’. Its simple meaning is ‘shut out from access to the sanctuary and left free to go’ [Deut. 32:36; Jer. 36:5].
The objects and processes causing uncleanness are regulated by the law chiefly in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14. They belong to the following classes: certain sexual processes, death, leprosy, the eating of certain species of animals, or the touching of otherwise clean animals when these have not been slaughtered but have died of themselves. The distinction, as applied to these several classes of things, is evidently much older than the Mosaic law. The law does not profess to introduce the matter de novo; it simply regulated usages and observances of long standing. Many of these observances must have changed their character in the course of the ages, and the meaning attached to them, if such there were, must have changed likewise. Perhaps there is no sphere of conduct tending more strongly towards the petrification of once significant acts than this world of the clean and unclean.
From the original or subsequently acquired meanings we must, therefore, distinguish the lawgiver’s motives in incorporating these practices into the legislation. First we devote some attention to the possible previous meanings attributed to them, either forgotten, or still remembered at the times of Moses. The subject occupies a very large place in recent study of primitive religion. Not a few writers bring it into connection with what they consider the origin of religion itself. Our remarks confine themselves to the field of Shemitic religion, and that with special reference to the Old Testament laws of uncleanness and purification.
TOTEMISM
A first theory on the basis of which, besides other things, the distinction between clean and unclean has been explained is that of
totemism. Totemism is a form of superstition in which savage tribes and families derive their origin from some animal or plant or some inanimate object, to all the specimens of which they pay religious reverence, after which they name themselves, and which they abstain from killing and eating. Various phenomena in Old Testament popular religion have been explained from it, and then appealed to as traces of its ancient existence among the Hebrews. It is not believed that within the period covered by the Old Testament tradition such things were practised, but survivals, no longer understood, are supposed to occur. As regard animals, the eating of which is forbidden in the law, the view is that these animals were originally sacred to the various totem-groups among the Hebrews. When several tribal groups united, and adopted the cult of Jehovah, the interdiction of eating them was continued, but the motive for the interdict was changed: they were forbidden as food because of their idolatrous character. On this theory the notions of uncleanness and holiness appear materially identical. What is holy in one cult is unclean in another, and it is unclean in the latter precisely because of its holiness in the former. The adherents of this view are wont to apply to these two ideas the common term ‘taboo’. The two ideas have in common not merely the element of prohibition, but also that of contagiousness, and of necessary removal through lustration, holiness as much as unholiness.
Objections that may be urged against this theory in its Old Testament application are numerous. The lists of unclean animals in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14 are so long that all these animals could not any time have been totems within Israel’s ken. The names of persons among Israel derived from animals form a small proportion of the names borne. Even in Arabia the majority of the tribes do not bear animal names: of the big tribes only a few; of closely related tribes the one will have an animal name, the other not. No plants were unclean to the Hebrews, yet totems were made of plants as well as of animals. The tribal names among Israel in which a reminiscence of totemism has been found are Leah, Rachel, and Simeon. The first two of these precisely name clean animals.
ANCESTOR-WORSHIP
A second, likewise partial, explanation of the phenomena of uncleanness is that from ancestor-worship. This is believed to lie at the basis of the uncleanness of the dead. Also the prohibition of certain mourning rites is attributed to worship of the dead, whereas others are supposed to have sprung from some other attitude towards the dead to be spoken of subsequently. On the principle that what is sacred in one cult becomes taboo in another, ancient worship of the dead, particularly of ancestors, is believed to account for the taboo of the dead in the cult of Jehovah.
Of the mourning customs that come under consideration here is the wearing of a ‘sack’, signifying primitively religious submission, therefore extended to the dead as gods. The veiling of the head and the covering of the beard spring from the same motive that leads a person obtaining sight of the deity to veil himself. The putting off of sandals was a common act in stepping on holy ground. Hence, if it occurs in connection with the dead or their graves, it must have been a religious act. The shaving of head or beard is of the nature of an hair-offering. Fasting plays a role in the worship of Jehovah, in mourning it likewise must have been a part of religion. Nakedness and self-mutilation appear elsewhere as religious rites; in mourning they cannot have any different meaning.
Here again the objections that arise are numerous. We mention the following only. There are many of these things, e.g. fasting, that are not forbidden in Israel. On the principle of their being descended from such a pronounced form of idolatry as worship of the dead they most certainly ought to have been. This applies to all practices for which analogy in the service of Jehovah is found. Further the uncleanness arises from the dead body, but the worship of ancestors or the dead in general was not rendered to the body. It addressed itself to the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ of the dead. We can verify this from other circles where worship of the dead existed. To the Greeks the dead body, in one period of their history at least, was unclean, and yet, in
spite of this belief, there was worship of the dead. That the cutting off of the hair was preparatory to an offering to the dead is not proven, since nothing is said anywhere of such hair being left at the grave or in any other way given to the dead. The putting off of sandals is not, strictly speaking, an act of worship. Nor can the blood made by incisions have been considered an offering to the dead. There is no evidence that this blood was brought in contact with the dead. A number of the customs mentioned are not interpretable as acts of worship. Nakedness, the rending of garments, the rolling on the ground are such. That the dust and ashes put upon the head were obtained from the grave or funeral pyre is not proven. But, even if they were, that would not render the custom an act of worship. There must be some other explanation of these things on the basis of superstitious idolatry in general.
Still further, the way in which the matter of mourning for relatives has been ordered for the priests forbids us to derive these mourning customs from ancestor-worship. The high-priest could not come near a dead body at all. But the ordinary priests were permitted to perform the mourning rites for their near relatives, not for remoter ones. Had a protest against ancestor-worship been involved, then the prohibition ought to have been most stringent with regard to near relatives, for these precisely would be likely to receive worship of this sort.
THE ANIMISTIC THEORY
Still a third theory offered in explanation of the facts of uncleanness is the animistic theory. This theory appears in two forms. Both have in common the assumption that to the primitive mind certain things appear as bearers of a sinister supernatural influence that is to be shunned. According to the one form of the theory these bearers are of a personal, demonic kind. According to the other the danger resides in impersonal soul-matter, diffusing itself and attaching itself in certain preferred ways, and in reality as dangerous as the influence of a personal demon. The nature of the first form of the
theory brings with it that the forms of uncleanness are, especially the mourning-practices, but so many self-disguising attempts to escape the notice of these demonic powers. To say that it renders unclean to do this or touch that, only means that danger lurks in the vicinity where uncleanness is held to be contracted. It is an indirect discipline, administered as to children for teaching them to avoid danger by dissemblance in their appearance. The other form of the theory finds in these practices likewise a sort of self-defence, not by means of camouflage, but rather by prophylaxis.
The personal form of the theory attaches itself chiefly to the uncleanness of death and to the mourning customs. The dead body should be held unclean, because the soul hovers around it for some time in not altogether too pleasant a spirit. It is jealous of the relatives, who have entered upon possession of its estate, a feeling extending even to the personal relict of a man, his widow, who therefore, was cautioned not to remarry for a considerable period.
While this theory in the first form may give a fairly plausible explanation of some of the facts, it by no means explains all. There are some mourning customs that cannot have sprung from the desire of self-protection through disguise. Fasting scarcely can have aimed at that, a mistaken exegesis of Matt. 6:16 notwithstanding. The most various explanations of fasting as a religious practice have been presented, none of them so far satisfactory in every respect. Some say it springs from regarding the food in a place where some one has died as unclean. Others say, the fasting person considers himself unclean, and does not want to defile the food. According to still others, it is originally the preparation for a sacrificial meal, on the principle that no other food should come in contact with the holy food. Others again see in it an effort to induce ecstatic conditions. Still others consider it a species of ascetic practice. All this shows how precarious it is to maintain that it must have meant a form of self-disguise.
Nor can the sounds made by the mourners very well be accounted for on such a principle. A person’s voice, when crying or wailing or shouting, may not be as easily recognizable as ordinary speech, but silence would have rendered it far more unrecognizable still. The rending of garments does not hinder identification very much. Nor does walking on bare feet. Nor do incisions made on the body. Nor does the beating of face, breasts or hips. Nor does the putting of dust and ashes on the head. Perhaps the treatment of hair on head or beard most easily lends itself to this explanation from disguise. But in that case the mourning women ought to have treated the hair differently from the mourning men, as was actually the custom elsewhere.
Apart from these individual points of criticism, the theory labours under one general difficulty. How could the spirit of the dead supposedly be ignorant of the simple fact that the people in the immediate surroundings were relatives? If it wanted to injure relatives, the mourning observances would have been the simplest and surest way of informing it where to strike. Personal identification was unnecessary. People could hardly fail to credit the dead with so much knowledge as to be aware of this, the less so, since the dead were known to have been mourners themselves during life on frequent occasions. And why should the dead be jealous of the survivors for entering upon possession of what they had left behind? As a rule among primitive people no such extreme individualism in the matter of property-relations exists. The average man, primitive or civilized, is not jealous of his heirs, but glad to have heirs. Besides, the theory implies that mourning customs are more recent in their origin than the existence of private property. This would be hard to prove. The same mourning practices are found among most nomadic as among settled agricultural tribes.
The impersonal form of the animistic theory holds that the ascription of uncleanness to things and places is a means to bar soul-matter out. When separated from one body this substance seeks to slip into or attach itself to another. Every avenue of entrance is carefully
closed up. The openings of the body are covered up, or made inaccessible. Fasting precludes the hostile fluid from slipping in with the food. The first food eaten after the fasting was not derived from the house of the dead. It was supposed that the soul-matter disliked attaching itself to anything torn or burst. The bystander rent his garment at the very first moment after death had taken place. The simplest, shortest, straightest garment was put on; all folds and creases were avoided; shoes were discarded, so as to leave nothing for the soul to nestle in. The hair was cut off the head with the same fear in mind. The nails were pared. Incisions were made in the body, that the blood might freely flow out. Attention is called to the distinction the law makes between covered and uncovered vessels. The uncovered vessel becomes unclean, the covered one escapes the contagion [Num. 19:15].
It must be admitted that this form of the theory on the whole succeeds better in explaining things than the preceding one. Many of these primitive practices really look like means of seclusion and fortification against an invading spirit-power. This principle admits of application at several points where that of concealment breaks down. Even so, however, many things remain unaccounted for. The rending of garments, one would think, rendered ingress all the easier. To say, that the soul-matter does not like a broken or torn thing, may be true, but this itself requires an explanation which is not given. Entire nakedness also would have been felt as giving the spirit free play upon the body. The taking off of the sandals would be dangerous for the same reason. The rolling on the ground, as well as the putting of dust and ashes on the head, would have been an unsafe act. The self-mutilations, by opening up the body, made only new avenues of ingress.
The theory is distinctly weaker than the other form, when it comes to explain the greater exposure of relatives to attack. If it is a question of personal jealousy, there is at least some apparent reason for this. If, on the other hand, it is a question of soul-matter seeking some lodgement, then it is difficult to see, why precisely relatives should
have felt themselves in danger above others. The range of uncleanness is wider than the mourning circle. Why do the relatives in particular mourn? If the soul-matter, being unintelligent, has no personal feelings about it, if it only seeks some hole or crevice to slip into, then, when a taboo is erected against this through the assumption of uncleanness, and this is further strengthened through the observance of mourning, it becomes difficult to explain why only the relatives engage in the latter. It might be said that the relatives are nearer to the body, therefore subject to greater exposure, whereas the others can simply keep away. But if so, then the rule ought to have been that, not blood-propinquity, but local propinquity, was the decisive consideration. All who came near the dead ought to have mourned.
Besides these three theories, which endeavour to account for groups of phenomena comprehensively, there are attempts to account for single facts. Altogether apart from totemism, certain unclean animals may have derived their taboo from their figuring as sacred animals in some idolatrous cult. This may apply to single cases, although to the entire collection of unclean animals it is not applicable. Many of the unclean animals belong to the smallest species, and certainly never were cult-objects. With bigger animals, such as swine, it is different. Isa. 65:4ff. speaks of a cult, which included the eating of pork. In the circle there referred to, undoubtedly pork was regarded, not as unclean, but as holy. Some similar practice of more ancient date may have occasioned the regulation of the law, that swine shall be unclean animals to the servants of Jehovah. The interdict on unclean animals is in Lev. 20:22ff. significantly brought into connection with the difference between the Israelites and the Canaanites. This indicates that the latter did not treat the animals tabooed in Israel as unclean. On the contrary these very animals must have played a rather prominent role in their religion. It further suggests that on that very account they were debarred from the ritual of the true religion.
The uncleanness of leprosy occupies a place by itself. This cannot be explained from sanitary motives. True, although modern medical
science teaches leprosy to be only slightly contagious, the ancient people might have thought differently about it. But a serious objection is, that other equally serious, and obviously contagious diseases did not render a person unclean, notably the pestilence. It has been suggested that leprosy was ascribed to a special stroke from Jehovah or some evil spirit, and that even the name of the disease bears witness to this; tsara’ath and nega’, the two names for leprosy, both come from roots meaning ‘to strike’. But according to others these terms have no religious significance, being taken from the spots and swellings characteristic of the disease. If the idea of a demonic or divine stroke came into play, we should expect that the same instinct would have expressed itself in regard to insanity and epilepsy. Yet these do not render unclean. Possibly leprosy may have been associated with uncleanness, because of its being, as it were, a living death. In that case the uncleanness of the leprosy would have to be classified with that of death. The words used about the leprosy of Miriam [Num. 12:12] suggest something like this.
But why does death with all that accompanies it render unclean? On the principle that both birth and death cause uncleanness, it has been plausibly suggested that through the uncleanness of these two termini of life the entire natural life as such is declared unclean. The objection has been raised, that on this view of the matter, the law should not have declared giving birth, but being born, as bringing with it uncleanness. It does only the former. The mother is unclean, we are told, not the child. The objection has not much weight. We may observe that the child is actually unclean. This, however, having received a most pointed expression through circumcision, there was no need of stating it separately, and by attaching the uncleanness to the mother the additional truth was taught of the uncleanness not merely of life in its entire course, but in its very source.
While the points of view indicated may contain elements of truth, they do not profess to give a satisfactory solution of the whole problem Some older explanations, frequently discarded by modern writers with amusement and contempt, are not so summarily to be
dismissed as is done by them. Certain animals, like snakes and birds of prey, awaken a natural aversion in the human mind at primitive stages, and this may have had something to do with the shaping of the law.
Far more important than these insoluble problems and their tentative solutions is the consideration of the manner in which the law makes these strange things subserve its purpose of revealing the true religion of the Old Testament. The first thing the law does is to give the whole distinction a religious aspect, no matter whether this inhered in it from the beginning or not. When the law undertakes to regulate a thing, it obtains from that very fact religious significance. The principle is explicitly affirmed. The matter is brought into relation with the holiness of God [Lev. 11:44, 45; Deut. 14:21]. Hence also the process of cleansing is called a ‘sanctifying’. The unclean are debarred from the sanctuary and from the feasts. From the tithes nothing can be taken for the dead, nor eaten in mourning [Lev. 22:4; Num. 9:6; 19:12, 20; Deut. 26:14]. The removal of uncleanness is in part accomplished by ritual ‘covering’ [Lev. 12:7, 8; 14 (passim); 16:29, 30; 15:14, 15; Num. 8:5ff.]. The role played by the number seven in the periods of purification is evidence of the religious character of the latter. The stringency of the regulations with reference to the priests proves that a religious motive was the determining one [Lev. 21:1ff., 22:2, 3].
The uncleanness, thus related to the service of Jehovah, is associated with ethical sin. This is done in two ways. On the one hand the ritual uncleanness is treated as sin. On the other hand the ethical abnormality is made to borrow its vocabulary from the ritual law. We do not always clearly appreciate the latter. When sin of a distinctly ethical kind is called ‘impurity’, we are apt to think this a self- explanatory metaphor. In reality it is a direct borrowing of ritual language. God teaches people to feel about sin as they are accustomed to feel about an ignominious and uncomfortable exclusion from the ritual service. Thus circumcision is made a lever of ethicizing and spiritualizing in Deut. 10:16. This incipient
spiritualizing of the ritual vocabulary is further carried out by the Prophets and Psalmists. Isaiah speaks of ‘unclean’ lips in an ethical sense [6:5]. The earth is ‘defiled’ by transgression of the fundamental laws of God [Isa. 24:5]; blood (i.e. murder) ‘defiles’ the hands [Isa. 1:15; 59:3]; the temple is ‘defiled’ by idolatry [Jer. 32:34; Ezek. 5:11; 28:18]; the people pollute themselves by their sins [Ezek. 20:7, 8, 43; 22:3; 39:24]. Ethical purity is symbolized by ‘clean hands’ and ‘a pure heart’ [Psa. 24:4]. The ethical cleansing is described in terms of ritual purification [Psa. 51:7; Ezek. 36:25; Zech. 13:1].