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HE THAT COMETH
HE THAT
COMETH
S. MOWINCKEL
Translated by
G. W. ANDERSON
Lecturer in Old Testament Literature and Theology,
St, Mary's College, University of St. Andrews
ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK . NASHVILLE
VI
Preface
Grayson Kirk and to Secretary Richard Herpers, as well
as to President van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary,
for their kindness and helpfulness in connection with the
delivery of the lectures. To the large audience which
crowded the rotunda of Low Memorial Library on those
sultry summer evenings I owe a further debt of gratitude
for their most indulgent hearing.
My friend, Professor J. Y, Campbell of Westminster
College, Cambridge, and formerly of Yale University, has
been good enough to read the proofs for me, and I have
greatly profited from his comments. My brother, the late
Professor Donald M. Baillie of St. Andrews University,
read my original typescript shortly before his death and
suggested many most necessary emendations.
JOHN BAILLIE
Edinburgh, Scotland
February, 1956
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
TO THE
REVEREND G. W. ANDERSON
IN FRIENDSHIP AND
GRATITUDE
Author's Preface to the American Edition
This book originated in a series of lectures delivered in the early
years of the Second World War to theological students at the
University of Oslo. After the War, when normal communications
with other countries were restored, and the most recent literature
on the subject became accessible, it seemed desirable to discuss
various theories which had been advanced by other scholars. This
explains the extensive notes, which are carried at the bottom of
the page in order not to cumber the actual text of the book with
the details of technical discussion. The translation has been
made from a partly revised Norwegian text.
I am very glad to know that arrangements have been made for
an American edition. Before the Second World War, it was
already evident that the English-speaking countries, and not least
the United States of America, had gained a leading position in
oriental and Biblical scholarship, especially in the philological
and archaeological fields. In the post-war years, it has been still
more evident. It is also a matter for satisfaction that these ad-
vances in scholarship have been made by fruitful interconfessional
co-operation, and are thus a real element in the ecumenical
enterprise.
But scholarly co-operation between generations is also both
rewarding and necessary. Here the European exegetical tradi-
tion, with its all-round continuity, has a value alongside the recent,
fresh viewpoints and the advances which have been made in the
new world. We know that we have much to learn from our
collaborators across the sea. We also believe that we have some-
thing to give in return. If this book can help to promote further
fruitful interchange of ideas and viewpoints, it will give me great
satisfaction.
I wish to repeat here the thanks expressed in the preface to
the English edition to the translator, the Rev. G. W. Anderson,
for his careful and devoted work, not least for his help in checking
and often correcting the many hundreds of references. As an
expression of my gratitude, I dedicate this American edition to
him,
SlGMUND MOWINGKEL
I: Historical Reminder
What do we mean by revelation ? It Is a question to which
much hard thinking and careful writing are being devoted
in our time, and there is a general awareness among us
that it is being answered in a way that sounds very differ-
ently from the traditional formulations. What I have in
mind to do is to define as precisely as possible the position
which has now emerged, and I shall do it very largely by
means of a study of the more recent contributions to the
subject, attempting to discriminate between them where
they conflict, and pulling together as much of them as
appears acceptable. But let us first, in this chapter, remind
ourselves of the stages by which the change has come
about It is a story which has often been told and may be
resumed very briefly.
REVELATION IN SEVENTEENTH- AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
THOUGHT
Throughout the greater part of Christian history the
question was not thought to be a difficult one. It was
answered in terms of the distinction between revealed and
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
the indexing, Mrs. M. Noble for typing a substantial part of the
translation and my wife for unstinted help in typing and check-
ing.
Advent, 1954 G. W. ANDERSON
NOTE. The Norwegian edition of this work was published in 1951,
under the title Han som kommer, by G. E. C. Gad of Copenhagen.
Xll
Contents
PART!
THE FUTURE KING IN EARLY JEWISH
ESCHATOLOGY
Chapter Page
I. THE TERM 'MESSIAH' AND ITS CONTENT 3
1 . The Messiah an Eschatological Figure
2. The Messiah Originally a Political Figure
II. SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL 10
1. Supposed Messianic Prophecies of Early Date
2. The Authentic Messianic Prophecies
III. THE IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL 21
1 . The Royal Ideology of the Ancient East
2. The Israelite Ideal of Kingship: TahweKs
Anointed
IV. THE FUTURE HOPE 96
1. Realized and Unrealized Elements in the Ideal of
Kingship
2. Specific Applications of the Kingly Ideal
The Birth of the Child, ha. ix, 1-6
The Immanuel Prophecy in Isa. mi
The Prophecies about fyrubbabel
3. The Source of the Messianic Conceptions
xiii
CONTENTS
Chapter page
V. THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE 125
1 . No Pre-prophetic or Prophetic Eschatology
2. The Origin of the Jewish Hope of Restoration
3. The Religious Basis and Transformation of the
Future Hope, Its Connexion with the Ex-
periences and Ideas Associated with the Cult
4. The Content of the Future Hope
5. From the Hope of Restoration to Eschatology
VI. THE PLAGE OF THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE:
THE MESSIAH 155
1 . The Origin of the Messianic Faith
2. The Scion of David
3. The Name and Titles of the Future King
4. The Scion of David as a Sign of the Restoration
of David's Line
5. The Kingly Rule of the Scion of David and the
Kingly Rule of Tahweh
6. The Equipment, Call, and Work of the Future
King
7. Mythical Elements in the Conception of the King
VII. THE SERVANT OF THE LORD 187
1 . The Servant Songs
First Song
Second Song
Third Song
Fourth Song
2. The Work of the Servant
3. Prophet, not Messiah
4. The Historical Background of the Thought of
the Servanfs Resurrection and the Atoning
Significance of His Suffering
5. The Historical and Religious Background of the
Conception of the Servant
6. Is the Servant a Historical Person?
7. The Poet-Prophet and His Circle
8. Relationship of the Songs to the Messianic Idea
xiv
CONTENTS
PART II
THE MESSIAH IN LATER JUDAISM
Chapter Page
VIIL THE ESGHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM 261
1 . The Future Hope and Eschatology
2. Dualism
3. The Influence of Theology
4. The Last Things: A. The Earlier Tendency
5. The Last Things: JB. The Dualistic, Apoca-
lyptic Tendency
IX. THE NATIONAL MESSIAH 280
1. Two Conceptions of the Messiah — The National
Messiah
2. The Messiah a Historical Person
3. The Messiah's Descent. The Scion of David.
Other Conceptions
4. The Names and Titles of the Messiah
5. When Will the Messiah Come?
6. The Forerunners of the Messiah
7. The Day of the Messiah and His Appearing
8. The Hidden Messiah
g. The Equipment of the Messiah for His Mission
10. The Work of the Messiah and His Kingdom
1 1. The Influence of Prophet and Scribe on the Idea of
the Messiah
12. Was the Messiah an Eternal Individual?
13. The Suffering and Death of the Messiah
14. The Varying Forms of the Conception of the
Messiah
15. The Place of the Messiah in Later Judaism
xv
16 THE MYSTERY OF UNITY
manifest far more than a simple humanitarian love of all
men, for we are one family, the family of God. Indeed, in
order to serve the unity of that human family — and for
motives still more profound— the Church must reflect, in
the light of the supreme mystery, on her unity and on her
own witness to unity.
PARTI
The Future King in Early Jewish
Eschatology
CHAPTER I
The Term c Messiah5 and its Content
i . The Messiah an Eschatological Figure
'TI/fESSIAH' (Greek, Messias) represents the Aramaic mesiha\
XVJlHebrew ham~mdslah^ 'the Anointed One'. The word ex-
presses an idea characteristic of later Judaism and early Christi-
anity. In the time of Jesus the Jews were awaiting a Messiah; and
it was part of the message of Jesus, and later the central point in
the teaching of His disciples, that He was this Messiah, 'He that
cometh5.1
'Jesus Messiah9, or in Greek c Jesus Christ3, were His name and
His title in the speech of the community, until the term 'Christ'
also came to be regarded as a personal name. In order, therefore,
to understand the consciousness and the message of Jesus it is
necessary to have as a background some idea of the Messianic
conceptions of His time.
In later Judaism the term 'Messiah5 denotes an es£h^olo^cd^
figure. He belongs to 'the last time5; his advent lies in the future.
To use the word 'Messiah' is to imply eschatology, the last things,
It is, therefore, a misuse of the words 'Messiah' and 'Messianic'
to apply them, for instance, to those ideas which were associated
in Israel or in the ancient east with kings who were actually reign-
ing, even if, as we shall see, these ideas were expressed in exalted
and mythical terms. The word 'Messiah5 by itself, as a title and
a name, originated in later Judaism as the designation of an escha-
tological figure; and it is therefore only to such a figure that it
may be applied.2
In Christian eschatology, too, the Messiah (Christ) became the
central figure in the expectation of the last time. The expected
day of judgement became 'the day of our Lord Jesus Christ'.
That is why theologians have sometimes used the expressions
e Messianic prophecies' or 'Messianic expectations' as synonymous
with * eschatological expectations'. This is done by F. Delitzsch
1 Matt, xi, 3; Luke vii, 20. 2 See Additional Note i.
3
THE TERM 'MESSIAH' AND ITS CONTENT
and F. Buhl in their books which bear this title.1 But the use of
the term is incorrect.3 The Messiah is not the central and domina-
ting figure in the future hope of later Judaism, and even less so
in that of the Old Testament. The fact is that the Messiah as a
concrete eschatological figure, the king of the final age, the founder
of the glorious kingdom, is far less prominent in the Old Testament
than in the New.3 The title c Messiah ', cthe Anointed One', as
a title or technical term for the king of the final age, does not even
occur in the Old Testament.
Nevertheless it was above all to the Old Testament that the
early Church turned for evidence in support of its belief that Jesus
was the Messiah. In the thought and theology of the early Church
(if it is legitimate to speak of a theology at that period) the Old
Testament was the ground and source of the conception of the
Messiah. A survey of Messianic conceptions in later Judaism, in
the teaching of Jesus, and in the early Church must therefore of
necessity begin with the Old Testament.
2. The Messiah Originally a Political Figure
The expression ham-ma$iah is really a shortened form of me$iah
THWH, cYahweh's Anointed', i.e., the reigning king of Israel.
In the ancient east both persons and things were anointed by
having sweet-smelling oil poured or smeared over them.4 For
instance, the cultic stone (massebdh) was anointed; and thereby
worship was offered to the deity who inhabited it or was repre-
sented by it.5 The first anointing of the stone was regarded as
the power-conferring act in virtue of which it was set apart as a
holy stone; to anoint a stone meant simply to make it a holy stone.
When a temple was consecrated, the building, its several parts, and
the holy vessels were anointed. There are accounts of the same
practice in Babylonia. Anointing was also used in cultic purifica-
tion from sickness and defilement. Thus the act had a sacral
1 Delitzsch, Messianische Weissagungeni Buhl, De messianske Fonaettelser i det garnie
~ ' **»»««** aSWtr^UBw «*WMMMMHMM?WWMMMffl* ' ' ."But mMnammmtvm ft**""* ««»«>«w%w,< MM*** *ta» "** fitmwt m
Gressmann, U^yn^ p. 7. In his DerMessias Gressmann does not seem to
adhere so strictly to this manifestly correct terKnoTogyT
8 See below, pp. is8ff., 21 off. 4 See Gressmann, D$r Messias, pp. aflf,
6 The moffebaht or sacred stone pillar, formed part of the sanctuaryTnboth the
Canaanite and early Israelite periods. Gf. Isa. xix, 9; see (?. T.M.J\£*A£. Ill, ad loc,;
Stade, Biblische Theotygie des Alien Twtojn^I, pp. U4f£, andTfnclcx, s.v.; Cook, 73^
Jfo/tg0£^ ioo, 140, 160; Albright,
^^^^^jjT^T^ie"^M^on o^TjrSTpP' 4?T7B^" 106, 144. It symbolized the presence of
e deity at the cultic site; an3u is perhaps connected with the ancient stone-cult;
cf. Robertson Smith, TJie -R^ffi21^%*%ffito3> PP- 2031!., 456^, 568^;
verehrungbei den IsmeU^^ppTSu^izS,
4
THE TERM c MESSIAH5 AND ITS CONTENT
significance. The original idea was, no doubt., that the oil pos-
sessed an abnormal, choly3 power, or 'mana',, to use the familiar
term from the phenomenology of religion. In the act of anointing,
this power and holiness were transmitted to the person, anointed,
or the holiness and supernatural power with which he was already
endowed were renewed and strengthened. Practical experience
of the power and usefulness of oil, both as a food and as a medicine,
readily explains this belief in its sacral, mana-like character.
Among all the persons and objects which may be anointed there
is one who is 'Yahweh's Anointed5 in a special sense, one who is
'the Anointed5, namely the king. In the Old Testament the
primary and proper sense of the expression ' Yahweh' s Anointed5
is the king, the earthly king who at any given time is reigning over
Yahweh's people. The expression implies his close relationship
to Yahweh, the sacral character of his office and his person (as
priest-king), and the abnormal endowment of holy power which
is his because he has been anointed king. The^essential characteris-
tic of a king is that he has been anointed. The Israelite speaks not
of crowning a man, but of anointing him in the sense of making
him king (himlik] ,
The custom of anointing the king in order to install him in his
sacred office was taken over by the Israelites from the inhabitants
of Canaan.1 It is presupposed in the Amarna Letters (the corres-
pondence from the vassal princes in Canaan to their overlord, the
king of Egypt, dating from the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries
B.C.);2 and there is also some evidence that it was practised in
Egypt and Assyria. The references to anointing in connexion with
Melchizedek, king of Jerusalem,3 and with Phoenician kings, show
that it was primarily as a priest-king that a king was anointed,
that is, as a sacral king who represented his people befoire the
deity, and thus also took a leading and active part in the cult.
Anointing made him a choly3 person, similar to the priest in
character and function. In practically every passage in the Old
Testament where the expressions 'Yahweh's Anointed', or cthe
Anointed One5, occur, the reference is to the reigning king of
David's line, the king in Jerusalem, designated, installed, and
anointed by Yahweh through His cultic representative the priest.
For a prophet to perform the anointing seems to have been
1 References to sources and literature in Gressmann, J2tf Messias, pp. 5!!
2 The best edition of the Amarna Letters is still the one by*K5\icitzon -in V.A.J
8 Gen. xivj 18; Ps, ex, 4. ***""
THE TERM c MESSIAH' AND ITS CONTENT
irregular and exceptional; and, in the main, only usurpers were
so anointed. Samuel is regarded as a priestly seer,, not as a nabi*
(prophet).1
Yahweh's Anointed is, of course, king of Yahweh's people Israel,
or of Judah, which is also called Israel in religious usage.2 It is
quite exceptional for a prophet like Deutero-Isaiah, in the exu-
berant enthusiasm of his faith, to call a heathen king like Cyrus
'Yahweh's Anointed',3 because Yahweh has made him king in
order to fulfil His plan for Israel. This use does not help to define
the meaning of the term.
In the post-exilic age the High-priests became in many respects
the heirs of the kings. As early as the period of the monarchy there
is evidence that the authentic professional priesthood tried to
exclude the king from the exercise of cultic functions. This was a
stage in the struggle of the Levitical or Leviticized priesthood4 to
monopolize the cult. Both in the legend about King Uzziah's
leprosy5 and in Ps. ex we have echoes of rivalry of this kind between
the king and the priesthood. In the post-exilic age it was estab-
lished that the cult was the exclusive privilege of the priesthood;
and the High-priest claimed kingly status through his anointing
and the wearing of the diadem.6 In time it became customary to
anoint all priests when they were installed in their office.7 Thus
the original sacral significance of the custom survived and pre-
vailed., when the political monarchy had disappeared, and the
High-priest's claim to political power remained little more than
theory. 'The Anointed One', or the indefinite form of the term,
can anointed one3, could also be applied in the later period to the
High-priest or to any priest. Usually, however, we find the explicit
designation, cthe anointed priest', i.e., the High-priest.8
It appears that on occasion prophets also were anointed when
they were consecrated and admitted to the prophetic guild.9 It is
1 i Sam. ix; see Ps.St. V, pp. sof., 24f.
2 See Rost, Israf^jen Pmjbketm, p. 1 15; Danell, Studies in the Nj^ns Israel m the Old
Testament, p. 1291 ana passim. "" »'---*• «~ — ~3""Isa." xTv, i".
"""^On the spread of Levitical ideas and ideals among the Israelite priesthood 'see
Meyer, £& ^^^JL^ *!%£ y^hbaa^tSmm^ pp. 85, Qof,, 138, 167; Holscher, Die
Projet^ pp. iBBHT ~*
^TGhron. xxvi, i6ff. 6 Exod. xxviii, 36ft; xxxix, 30*?.; Lev, viii, 9.
7 Exod, xxix, 2 1 j Lev. viii, 30. We find among the Mandeans an interesting parallel
to the transference to the priest or the High-priest of the ideology and ritual of priest-
hood; see Engnell, Divine Kin^s^, p. 17 n. 6, with references.
8 Dan, ix, 25fF.;Tev7Tv, 3> 5> l6J ?vi, 15.
9 i Kings xix, 16, On the organization of * temple prophets', see Mowinckel
PP- i98ff-» £f.«S? HI; Johnson, J^ Q$fc Pn&Mt in Israel;
Haiaar, Associations. *** '***" •**•**' "
6
THE TERM c MESSIAH' AND ITS CONTENT
to this custom that the prophet alludes in Isa. Ixi, i : c Yahweh has
anointed me.' Consequently we find one incidental example in
late linguistic usage, and in the idiom of religious poetry, of
Yahweh's calling the patriarchs 'Mine anointed ones':1 in the
later Old Testament period and subsequently, all the great reli-
gious figures of the past, 'the patriarchs', were regarded as
prophets.
At one time many scholars maintained that the term 'Yahweh's
Anointed' could denote the Israelite people.2 This view was
based on erroneous exegesis, and in part on erroneous assumptions
about the date of the sources, particularly of the Psalms.
The expression cthe Anointed One' does not occur in the Old
Testament as a technical term for the Messiah. On the other hand,
cthe Anointed One', or 'His', or 'My Anointed One' does occur
as the ceremonial religious title of the reigning king in Israel, king
'by the grace of God'. To the content of this title we shall return
below (pp. s6ff.). It is, however, obvious that there must be a
historical connexion between the two titles; and there can be no
doubt which is the older. As title and name for the eschatological
king, Messiah does not occur in the Old Testament, but appears
first in the literature of later Judaism; and as we have already seen,
the word 'Messiah' is an abbreviation of the fuller expression,
'Yahweh's Anointed'. This shows that the eschatological Messiah
derived his name from the sacral title of the ancient kings of Israel.
This historical association of ideas is further corroborated by the
fact that the Messiah was not only an eschatological figure, but
always had a measure of political significance. The Messiah is*
he who shall restore Israel as a people, free her from her enemies,
rule over her as king, and bring other nations under her political
and religious sway. This conception of the future king as a this-
worldly political figure is clearly and explicitly present in most if
not all of the passages in the Old Testament which refer to him.
According to the express testimony of the evangelists it was against
this political conception of the Messiah, present in the minds and
thoughts of the disciples and of the multitude, that Jesus had to
contend. Just as the word 'Messiah' has an eschatological charac-
ter wherever it has become a clearly defined term, so too it has
a political sense from the beginning.
1 Ps. cv, 15 = i Chron. xvi, 22,
* See, e.g., Gesenius-Buhl16, s.v., 2; Buhl, &ate»13 on Ps. ii; similarly Wellhausen,
^Kjgg2 un£ Vorw^tm VI, pp. i63ff.; Baethgen, Die Psalmen9', and other older com-
ixientanes onlEePsalms. ****** '^^^^
7
THE TERM c MESSIAH3 AND ITS CONTENT
Both the term and its content reveal a clear connexion between
the idea of the Messiah and the Old Testament conceptions of
'Yahweh's Anointed5, the earthly king of Yahweh's people. What
is the character of this connexion; and what is the difference
between the two ideas? In other words, in what way did the
concept of e Yahweh's Anointed5 develop, so that the earthly,
political king became the eschatological figure? Is this an instance
of development in religious thought (the word 'development' does
not, of course, here imply a purely immanent evolutionary pro-
cess) ; or is it possible that in the course of time, and as a result of
certain factors in the history of religion, the term c the Anointed
One5 was transferred to an eschatological figure, and that this
figure existed independently of, or side by side with, the thought
of the earthly and political 'Anointed One5?
In either case an examination of the political concept of c the
Anointed One ' must precede any investigation and exposition of
the idea of the Messiah in the Old Testament and in later Judaism.
This means that at the outset we must take account of the ancient
Israelite conceptions of the king and of kingship. But Israel took
over the monarchy and many of the ideas associated with it from
the older civilized nations which were her neighbours. If, then,
Israelite conceptions of kingship are to be rightly understood, it is
essential to relate them to the general oriental background.
But we must also try to ascertain to what wider religious context
the idea of the Messiah belongs. If that idea is eschatological, then
it must be seen against the background of the general eschatologi-
cal conceptions of the Old Testament and later Judaism; and its
relation to them must be more precisely defined. Is the connexion
of the Messiah with eschatology original or not? Does history
show that he is an essential and indispensable element in these
concepts?
In the chapters which follow, the content of the Messianic idea
will be unfolded in such a way as to make it still more evident that
in its strict sense it is bound up with the future hope and eschato-
logy of Israel and Judaism. An eschatology without a Messiah is
conceivable, but not a Messiah apart from a future hope. All
genuine Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament point forward.
But can it be taken for granted that Jesus simply took over the
ideas about the Messiah (in the strict sense) which were to be
found in the Old Testament? Clearly He did not. Between them
there lies the entire development of intertestamental Judaism.
8
THE TERM ' MESSIAH5 AND ITS CONTENT
The Messianic concepts of later Judaism are readily seen to have
developed in many ways beyond those of the Old Testament, and
indeed to be in a measure different in character. It will become
apparent that thoughts derived from many quarters and from
many other religious figures were laid under tribute before the
conceptions of the Messiah reached the stage at which we find
them in the time of Jesus. But it goes without saying that the
later Jewish Messianic ideas form the most natural background
to those of Jesus Himself. It was to those current Jewish concep-
tions which His disciples held that He had to relate His own
thought of Messiahship, in part positively by confirming them, in
part negatively by correcting them. The New Testament docu-
ments themselves readily make this clear.
But the very fact that Jesus related His teaching both positively
and negatively to the Messianic ideas prevalent in later Judaism
shows that He did not adopt them just as they were. The Gospels
depict Him as constantly in conflict with certain aspects of the
Jewish Messianic ideal which was in the minds of His disciples.
This raises a new problem. What was the historical origin of
these unusual, and possibly new, elements in Jesus' thought of the
Messiah? Is it possible that, in His conflict with the Jewish
Messianic ideal, Jesus adopted other biblical or late Jewish ideas
which had, perhaps, originally no connexion with the figure of the
Messiah, and combined them with the Jewish Messianic ideal,
that He might use it to express His own thought of His person and
vocation? We shall see that this was so. This is true not only of
the thought of 'the Son of Man', which was already associated
with the idea of the Messiah in some circles in later Judaism, but
above all of the presentation of the suffering and atoning c Servant
of the Lord' in Deutero-Isaiah,
CHAPTER II
Survey of the Material
TO understand the Messianic faith of the Old Testament and
of later Judaism we must approach it historically; and every
historical inquiry must begin with a critical investigation of the
sources: their dates, their relation to each other, and their relia-
bility must first be established. ' Only in this way is it possible to
reconstruct the true historical background of an idea and of its
origin, and the historical development through which it has
passed. We must therefore devote one chapter to this critical
examination of the sources. The reader may skip it if he wishes,
or leave it to the end.
The great and decisive line of demarcation in the religious his-
tory of Israel and in the development of its religion is the Exile,
the destruction of the political life of the nation and the deporta-
tion of its spiritual leaders in 598 and 587. Accordingly we speak
of the pre-exilic age, the age of the monarchy, the age of the
national religion of Israel, and of the post-exilic age, when the
monarchy had disappeared and the national state was replaced
by the Jewish religious community, which from 520 onwards was
gradually consolidated in the province of Judca with Jerusalem
as its centre. Besides this Judean, Jewish community in the home-
land, a considerable part of the Jewish people continued to live
in the Dispersion or Diaspora, the Babylonian Diaspora being the
most important and for long the leading one. The spiritual and
religious life of Judaism was sustained by the cLaw3 and the future
hope, the belief that Israel would again be established as an
independent nation.
The question, £ Pre-exilic or post-exilic?3 is therefore an impor-
tant one if we are to date the sources which have been transmitted
to us, and it provides a useful framework for arranging them. But
not all the Old Testament passages which in the past have been
regarded as 'Messianic' deal in fact with the Messiah and the
Messianic faith. It is therefore necessary first of all to draw
10
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
attention to a number of passages which have nothing to do with
the subject of this book.
I. Su^osed Messianic Prophecies o£JEarlj> Date^
Without more ado we begin with the passage which from early
times has been regarded as the oldest Messianic prophecy, namely
Gen. iii, 1 5, which refers to the offspring of the woman, who will
bruise the serpent's head with his heel It is now generally ad-
mitted by those who adopt the historical approach to theology
that there is no allusion here to the Devil or to Christ as "born of
woman ', but that it is a quite general statement about mankind,
and serpents, and the struggle between them which continues as
long as the earth exists. The poisonous serpent strikes at man's
foot whenever he is unfortunate enough to come too near to it;
and always and everywhere man tries to crush the serpent's head
when he has the chance.1
What needs to be said of the ^a^ps^s^ in this connexion will
be reserved for later discussion.2 They do not speak of a future,
much less an eschatological, Messiah, but of the contemporary,,
earthly king of David's line, who has just been enthroned. The
poet-prophet addresses him as 'my lord5 (Ps. ex, i), and proclaims
to him Yahweh's oracle about his future as king (Ps. ii). Or the
king is present in the temple and takes part in the cultic acts,
presenting his offerings (Ps. xx), receiving the blessings and inter-
cessory prayers of the people (Pss. xx; xxi; Ixxii), or himself offering
his psalms of lamentation and prayers for help (Pss. xxviii; bdii),
his thank-offerings and psalms of thanksgiving (Ps. xviii), or
registering his promise or 'charter' before the face of Yahweh
(Ps. ci).
In connexion with the royal psalms we may also refer to those
other jftfd™ in which traditional theology, sometimes even since
1 See the interpretation in the commentaries on Genesis by Gunkel and Procksch,
the former being what is commonly called * liberal' and the latter 'positive'. Both in
fact take the same view of Gen. iii, 15, although Procksch rejects Gunkel's treatment,
and in spite of the Christian homiletical application (in itself justifiable) of the theme,
which Procksch finally adopts,
2 See Gunkel, *Die Konigspsalmen' in Q^stsche^Jahrbucher clviii, 1914; Gunkel-
Begrich, Sjskitoigg in^ di^Pjdmm^ pp. 1401!,; MowTnSceI7^^^^£^-ffl^^^^ ch. Ill,
with furtnelnrefe * royal psalms' must beTaKrTin a mucBwi&er sense
than that adopted by Gunkel or by myself in ^°^^^^,'> see Birkeland, Die Feinde
dgs In^wi^um in der israelitischen Psalm^ter^^^^ay' "of the individual psalrnlToT
IJjjgjjjjg^ psalms, even if the worshipper does
not expressly refer to himself as king; cf. next note. Engnell, however, goes too far in
regarding practically all psalms with the title PdSund as royal psalms (Divine Ki
p. 176).
II
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
the days of the primitive Church, has found prophecies of Christ.,
for instance Ps. xxii with its description of the suffering of the
worshipper. Of this and other similar psalms it must be said that
if they may be applied to Christ at all, it is by typological interpre-
tation and not because they are directly Christological or Messianic
prophecies. That is to say that in the thought of the poet, the
worshipper, and his contemporaries they have an immediate, con-
temporary reference; they are in fact not prophecies but prayers.,
issuing from a real, contemporary situation, that of the poet or
the worshipper himself; and they express what he then felt, and
thought, and said. The fact that the worshipper is in many
instances a historical king of Israel does not alter the fundamental
fact that the psalms are not prophecies but prayers with con-
temporary reference.1 But the words of these psalms have proved
to be more enduring and far-reaching. So powerful are they in
faith and in realism that in the fullness of time they could give
expression to the situation and the achievement of Jesus, His soul's
conflict, His trust in God, His cry of distress, His fellowship with
His brethren. The early Christian community therefore regarded
them as a perfectly valid expression for what they themselves had
witnessed in their Lord and Master. The worshippers of ancient
times became 'types' prefiguring Christ. The words of the psalms
found their true realization and fulfilment in Jesus Himself. In an
account of the history of the Messianic concept all these psalms
must be considered again in the appropriate context as sources or
documents concerning the thoughts about the Messiah which were
current in the Christian community, But of the origin and earliest
history of the Messianic idea they can tell us nothing; for, in the
thought and feeling of the poet and those for whom he wrote, they
referred not to the Messiah but to the conditions of their own
time.
Nor is any Messianic prophecy intended by the phrase in the
lay of Balaam2 about the 'star3 and 'sceptre', or rather 'comet',
1 The fundamentally sound view of this psalm oflameatalion dates back to the last
century's historical interpretation of the Bible; but it is most clearly demonstrated and
worked out by Gunkel in Die Psalmen (on Ps. xxii) and Einleituni in die P$dj^ pp.
i73ffl Note further that tlaTwoJMpper in Ps. xxii may inTScl beTTangT^Emerto
the most consistent demonstration that many psalms of lamentation were put into the
mouths of kings is that of Birkeland in Die Fmnde des Individuums. See now also my
Ojer^ar^ og san^&r, ch. Ill, and preceding note?" """"* ~-~~~~~—«"
^For me Interpretation of the Balaam lays see Gressmarm in^.A^TA, I, s2, pp.
ii3ff., and Mcwinckel in 2»:A.W. xlviii, 1930, pp. 24 iff. I am^unconvinced by
Albright's attempt (^B.L. Ixiii, 194
.. , 1944, pp. 2070 to date all four Balaam lays in the
period between the middle of the thirteenth arid the end of the twelfth century B.C.
12
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
which c shall rise out of Israel, and shatter the temples of Moab
and the skulls of the children of Sheth5 (Num. xxiv, 17). Both
this and the other older Balaam lay are intended as poems in
honour of Israel, and are put into the mouth of the ancient,
legendary Aramean seer and sage, Balaam. They tell of Israel's
greatness, good fortune, and power, and of her supremacy over
the other Canaanite peoples, among whom are mentioned Amalek,
Moab, the children of Ammon, and Edom. It is in keeping with
the character and style of this type of poetry that the poems are
put into the mouth of a sage of former days, and that they take
the form of a blessing (or, sometimes, of a curse) which accounts
for the destiny of the people in question, whether it be good fortune
or ill Thus, because of their character, they take the form of
prophecy from ancient times; but in fact it is the poet's own time
or the immediate past that they thus describe. In this lay there is
also an allusion (one might almost say inevitably) to David, who
laid the foundation of Israel's supremacy in Canaan, and subjected
Edom, Moab, and Ammon to Israel. It is to David that the poet
refers when he speaks of the 'star3 and e comet' (E.VV. 'sceptre')
which the ancient seer 'sees, but not now; beholds, but not
nigh'.
It is in much the same way that we must interpret the expression
in the Blessing of Jacob1 about 'Shiloh' or 'the ruler'2 of Tudah
*"-«W8»pWii>i>W(Bia«m «"**» *i*w~>*~*~* tj
(Gen. xhx, 10), who is to make Judah the ruling tribe among the
children of Israel, and to whom the sceptre will always belong.
The reference is to David, who made Judah the ruling tribe, and
whose house thus won an enduring right to the throne in Israel.3
1 For a fundamentally sound interpretation of the Blessing of Jacob in Gen. xlix and
a classification of its literary type, see Gunkel, Genegjg*, ad loc.
2 The word &loh does not call for emendatio*nTiK)r has it anything to do with the
name of the town Shiloh, as has often been supposed. It is a poetical word borrowed
from Accadian, and means here simply 'his (i.e. Judah's) ruler'; Accadian Zelu or Hlu
==( ruler, See Notscher in Z.A.W. xlvii, 1929, pp. 323$., and Sellin's observations,
ibid., lix, 1944, pp. 57f. Independently of Notscher, Driver gives the same explanation
of the word; see^.JT.£. xxiii, 1922, pp. 6gf. Eisler, too, has hit upon this explanation;
see JM'G.W.J^ Ixix^pp. 444f. For the application to David see the article by Sellin
referrecl to above.
3 When Wolff in ^.A W£. liv, 1936, pp. loyf., though adopting the correct historical
interpretation (vatitimum ex eventu), nevertheless would regard these passages as
'Messianic', he is assuming a definition of the idea of prophecy which actually leads
to a typological interpretation. They are 'Messianic', because they presuppose a
* Messianic* conception of, e.g., the king (see Additional Note x), and because they
The allusions to David and the Israelite monarchy are too clear to be explained away.
Albright also fails to notice the theological difference between the first two lays and
the last two. That $£*/, 'sceptre', in Num. xxiv, 17, must be interpreted as 'comet',
has been shown by Gemser in^.A.W, xliii, 1925, p. 301.
13
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
All those scholars (such as Gressmann and Sellin) who have
sought to maintain that eschatology and the idea of the Messiah
were ancient in Israel admit frankly that the royal psalms and the
other passages mentioned above must be interpreted in historical
terms. But they maintain that these poems nevertheless presup-
pose the existence in Israel of a conception of the Messiah, since
it is in accordance with the Messianic pattern that they describe
and extol David and the other historical kings, who are depicted
more or less as the realization of the Messianic hope, or as kings
who have attained or will attain to the heights of the Messianic
ideal.
In the texts themselves there is simply no foundation for this
theory; and no measure of probability can be claimed for it on
exegetical grounds. Gressmann argues as follows:1 the descrip-
tions of kings in the Psalter include not only contemporary his-
torical references, but also many superhuman, mythical traits
which must be derived not from the earthly ruler, but from a
mythical, heavenly figure. In reply to this it may first be observed
that even if the figure had traits which had to be explained as
borrowings from a mythical figure, from a deity of some sort, it
would not necessarily follow that this figure was an eschatological
Messiah, or that the king in question was thought of as a Messiah
because of his borrowed divine plumes. In the second place, the
strongly mythical, superhuman colouring is no proof of the
existence of any other figure from which it might have been de-
rived for the royal portraits in the psalms. The same extravagant
and celestial language is applied by Babylonian and Egyptian
poets to their kings; and their descriptions are not drawn from
any Messiah, for these peoples had neither eschatology nor a
Messiah (see below, p, 127). A comparison with the more or less
divine kings of other peoples ought to make it immediately clear
that the mythical traits have not been borrowed from any quarter.
As we shall see below, they belong to the oriental conception of the
king, simply because he was a 'divine king', a superhuman being,
1 See Gressmann, ]£% M££»O*> PP- ?ff-J cf. Hn^XM^ PP- 25 iff. In his review of
Der Messias in Deutsche Ljj^to^irj^^^ 13, ix, 1930, cols. lyagff., Holscher gives a short,
jpoTnte^and fa5uafl:riticism of GressmamYs exegetical and chronological treatment
of the individual passages, such as Gen. xlix and Num. xxiv, in which Gressmann
thinks that the Messianic idea is presupposed.
were fulfilled or realized in Christ, though this was not in the mind of the writer. As
elsewhere (see below, p. 172 n. i), Wolff here treats the problem as one of Christian
doctrine rather than of Old Testament criticism.
14
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
a superman endowed with abnormal gifts and power, precisely
what oriental peoples meant by a cgod': a being with super-
human power or 'mana'.1 The mythical traits and colouring in
the portrait of the king are derived from the divine realm, because
that is where the king belongs: he has faculties, characteristics,
and endowments which ancient man could express only by mythi-
cal ideas and in mythical terms. They belong to the king, not
because he is a Messiah, but simply because he is an oriental king,2
We shall discuss this oriental conception of the king in greater
detail in the following chapter.
It is therefore bad scientific method to do as Gressmann, Sellin,
and others have done, and to base our inquiry into the origin of
the conception of the Messiah on an assumed oriental Messianic
theology of which we know nothing, but which is supposed to have
influenced the Psalmists and other royal bards. On the other hand,
there are good grounds for the connexion (to which Gunkel and
Gressmann drew attention) between the royal psalms and the
oriental conceptions of kingship, and for the prominence given to
this idea in recent study. There is, in fact, a close connexion be-
tween the idea of the Messiah and the ancient Israelite conceptions
of the king and kingship, which in turn are closely linked with the
general oriental idea of the king.
2' !?£ Messianic
The true sources for the Old Testament conceptions of the
Messiah are the^ Qro^hetw books', and it is by the traditio-historical
and literary criticism of these books3 that we may discover whether
there was any conception of a Messiah in the pre-exilic age.
At this stage we shall not discuss the origin and antiquity of the
hope of restoration, of the belief in a Messiah, and of eschatology.
It will suffice to establish the date of the actual Messianic prophe-
cies in the prophetic books. It is of course impossible to undertake
here any detailed exegetical and critical discussion of individual
passages; we must be content to indicate the probable result of
such an inquiry.
The passages which have to be considered are the following:
1 This is the primary sense of the general Semitic term '£/, ilu, etc., and of the
Egyptian neter. See Beth in Z^A^. xxxvi, 1916, pp. I2gff., xxxviii, 1919-20, pp. 876°,
2 This was first maintained" by the present writer inPs.Stf II, pp. 2971!., and proved
in detail by Engnell in Etiwe J^ingsj^,
3 On the prophetic books and meir relation to the original sayings of the prophets,
see Mowinckel in MT.T. xliii, 1942, pp. 656°.; Progh^ aJM? ^
""** 15 ~
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
Isa. iv, 2; vii, 10-17; v^? 8b, lob; ix, 1-6; x, 21; xi, 1-9; xi, 10;
xvij 5; xxxii, 1-8; Iv, 3f.; Jer. xvii, 25; xxiii, 5f. = xxxiii, lyf; xxx,
9, 21; Ezek. xvii, 22-4; xxxiv, 23f.; xxxvii, 22-5; Hos. iii, 4f.;
Amos ix, n; Mic. iv, 8; v, 1-3; Zech. ix, gf.1
The decision which of these passages belongs to the pre-exilic
age is important, not only for a survey of the probable historical
development of the Messianic faith, but also for the solution of a
major problem which has been discussed during the past genera-
tion or more, namely the age and origin of the Messianic faith.
Is it of pre-exilic or post-exilic origin? Yet ultimately the question
has only a relative interest. For, as we shall see below, even if the
Messianic faith belongs, in the main, to the age of Judaism, its
actual content goes back to conceptions which are much older,
As was indicated above in relation to the royal psalms, we have in
the Old Testament a series of sayings and conceptions which may
be regarded as preliminary stages in the development of the
Messianic faith and as the ideological basis of that faith. The
question will then be whether those sayings which appear to be
pre-exilic are to be regarded as genuine products of the Messianic
faith, or as belonging to the preparatory stage of its development.
As we shall see, several of the passages mentioned above have
been handed down in collections of prophetic sayings attributed
by tradition to prophets who lived before the collapse of the state
and the monarchy in 587. The question then arises, is this tradi-
tion correct in every instance? This critical question cannot be
evaded. It is a fact that the prophetic books consist of collections
of prophetic sayings, which were handed down over a long period
by word of mouth within the circles of these prophets' disciples,
until at last they were written down and finally edited. During
this process of transmission there were added sayings which
originated within the circle of disciples, and come from later
anonymous prophets.2 It is therefore an assured and inescapable
result of criticism that each of the extant prophetic books includes
sayings which are later than the prophet with whose name the
collection is associated. We need only refer to the book of Isaiah,
the latter part of which (xl-lxvi) is undoubtedly the work of a
prophet who lived 200 years later than Isaiah (the so-called
Deutero-Isaiah), and of the circle of his disciples.3
1 Bentzen, in A.f.O. vi, 1930, pp. 28off., tries to find the Messianic expectation in
Mai. iii, i, by a modification of the text. This is too precarious.
2 See above, p. 15 n, 3, and also the survey in G.T.M.^.^L III, pp. 33fF.
8 See G.TMM.M. Ill, pp. iSsff.
""""""" * * 16
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
Of the passages mentioned above only two or three can be
attributed on good grounds to the pre-exiiic period.
There is no ground for doubting that Isa. vii, 10-14 goes back
to Isaiah's own time, and contains reliable tradition.1 Isa. ix, 1-6
also belongs to the period of the monarchy, as will be shown at
greater length below (pp. losff.) . We shall therefore return to both
these passages, and see that they really express the old ideal of
kingship, which is the ideological background of the Messianic
faith. They are not Messianic in the strict sense.
Many critics regard Isa. xi, 1-9 as Isaianic. If it is, then we are
dealing again with the preparatory ideological background of the
Messianic faith. But the fact cannot be ignored that both here and
in Job xiv, 8 the word gezcf means the stump of a tree which has
been felled, from which a new shoot is to issue, and that Jesse's
family tree is here regarded as hewn down, with only a stump
remaining. This must mean that the royal family is no longer a
tree, but only a stump; i.e., it is no longer a ruling house, but it
will be restored. Thus the passage presupposes the fall of the
monarchy.2
Concerning the date of Isa. xxxii, r-8, nothing can be said with
certainty. But the passage is not primarily a prophecy, still less a
Messianic prophecy, but a wisdom poem which describes in
general terms the blessing enjoyed in the reign of an upright king,
of any upright king. It is based on the current ideal of true king-
ship; and it was only in the later Isaianic tradition that the poem
came to be interpreted as a specific promise of the upright king of
the future for whom they were then hoping.3
All the other Messianic passages are post-exilic. This is cer-
tainly true of the passage in Deutero-Isaiah (Iv, 3f.), of Zech.
ix, gf., and of the passages in Ezekiel These last come in all
probability not from the exilic prophet Ezekiel, but from the
circle of disciples who were responsible for the transmission of the
1 As against Gressmann, Der Messm, pp. i36ff.; Kraeling in JJ3-L. 1, 1931, pp.
s>95fF. It does not, of courserBllo\\T3iat because Isaiah here expressesms belief in the
miraculous power of Yahweh, the passage is legendary.
Pedersen, ImdJlI^lV^ p. 678 and Hammershaimb inSt.Th. Ill, 2, 1949/1951,
p. 141, point outtoat gesyf may also be used of the living sternsoTa plant, so that the
word does not necessarily imply the fall of the dynasty. It is true that in Isa. xl, 24,
the word is used of the stock or slip which might take root in the earth. But this does
not alter the fact that in Isa. xi, i and Job xiv, 8, the word denotes the hewn stump
from which new shoots sprout. Moreover, even the slip is a stem which has been cut
before it takes root and sprouts. There ought to be no doubt about this, in view of the
primary sense of the root gz* : to cut, cut off, clip.
8 See Mowinckel in Z-^M- xlv> r927» P- 495 G.T.M.MJ^Illt pp. i6yf.
""^ ' ""*
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
book, and who made EzeklePs sayings the basis of a prophetic
appeal to the community, related to conditions in Judea after the
consolidation of the community there.1
Isa. iv, 2 is part of a passage which is actually a secondary para-
phrase of some words of Isaiah applied to a later age. It pre-
supposes the existence of the Diaspora. The alien rule and dis-
persion of the post-exilic age are also presupposed by Isa. x, 2 1 ;
xi, 10; and xvi, 5. There, too, we have later paraphrases of
Isaianic themes.2
Isa. viii, 8b-io is in all probability a later expansion of the
original words of Isaiah in vv. 5~8a, which it interprets in the light
of the Immanuel prophecy in vii. At all events the last word in
vv. 8b, io3 'immanffel, is not intended as the name of the future
king or used as a vocative (so A.V. and R.V. in 8b). As the
Massoretic vocalization and the context show, the word is used
in its general sense, ' (but) with us is God5, cfor with us is God'.3
* Whether the end of the book of Amos (ix, 11-15) comes from
Amos himself or from later tradition in the circles of prophetic
disciples4 has often been debated. Most scholars adopt the latter
opinion. Recently Hammershaimb has attempted to infuse new
life into the traditional view, but is obliged in the end to admit
that there are good grounds for the later dating.5 The matter is
in fact quite clear. No exegetical skill can explain away the
prophet's assumption that cthe tabernacle of David is (already)
1 All recent interpreters of Ezekiel are agreed that a number of the speeches in the
book reflect conditions in Judea after the return. Gf., e.g., Holscher, Hesekid. Der
Dichter und das Buck; Bertholet, Hesekiel", and inF.u.F, xiii, I, Jan., 1936, pp!^TfTorrey^
P^3b'JE5kST aril the On^naL Prophecy^ Herntrich, E^schieljrobleme^ Messel, Ezechiel-
ffajlen- Hie nucleus' of truth in Holscher's penetrating but" one-sided and acTIBSlSI
literary criticism of the book is that the sayings and name of Ezekiel were used as a
rallying point for the prophetic activity carried on by his followers after the return to
Judea. Possibly we owe the greater part of the book to the circle of his disciples (in
Holscher's terminology, 'the redactor'). But I attribute more of the tradition to
Ezekiel than Holscher does; and I also hold that the disciples often used as a starting
point prophecies derived from the exilic prophet Ezekiel. I also attribute to him some
of the sections which Messel refers to his post-exilic * Ezekiel ', and some of the peculiar
oracles in xxv-xxxii, which Messel attributes to an unknown X, whose date and
character he declines to establish. A review of Ezekiel criticism is given by Rowley in
aDDCvi9 *' X953» PP- 146-90-
n these passages see G. T.M.M.MJ.II, ad locc. ; in greater detail, Cheyne, /n
but in 8b he takes it as a proper noun.
* This is the real question, not whether ix, i iff. is a later literary insertion into a
written book which was already in existence. See MowinckeL Jesajadisiplew. pp. ioff.:
G.T.M.M.M. III, pp. 619-21, 651. ^4***&~* **
*° Hammershaimb, Amosfortott^ pp. i34ff., 139.
18
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
fallen \ and therefore that the Davidic monarchy no longer exists.
The passage is concerned with the restoration of the family and
tabernacle of David.
If Hos. iii, 4f. comes from Hosea himself, the reference in it is
not to the future Messiah but to the reigning 'David5, i.e., the
king of Judah at the time at which the conversion of the northern
Israelites (to which the prophet alludes) will take place. But it is
most probable that in the form in which Hos. iii has come down
to us it must be classed with those sayings of the prophet which
have been modified in the light of the conditions and needs of
later Judaism.1 The assumption then is that Judah is also dis-
persed and in exile; but the prophet expects that one day the
monarchy and the dynasty will be restored, and then Israel, too,
will submit to the new David.2
Mic. iv, 8 also presupposes the fall of the monarchy. The
situation which is here prophesied to Zion is c the former dominion,
the monarchy over Jerusalem'. Consequently this dominion was
no longer in existence in the time of the prophet.3
Mic. v, 1—3 must be interpreted in the same way. The context
shows that the coming king's brothers are the e remnant3 which
survives the great catastrophe which befell Judah in 598 and 587.
They have been carried off; and therefore this prophecy foretells
that they cwill return5.4
t It is only in a very restricted sense that Jer. xvii, 25 can be
called a Messianic oracle. It prophesies that if the people will
observe the Sabbath, there will always be in the future 'kings and
princes sitting on the throne of David'. Moreover, the oracle is
considerably later than Jeremiah. 6
Jer. xxiii, 5f. = xxxiii, I5f. (cf. Isa. xi, 1-9, 10) uses the word
c shoot' (semah) of the future king. This symbolic title also occurs
in Zechariah, when in veiled prophetic style he uses Zerubbabel's
name (c shoot from Babylon') in this way (iii, 8; via 12). There
can be little doubt that Zechariah's references are the earlier.6
He had a real point of historical association for the symbolic name;
and with Zerubbabel he linked those expectations of the restora-
tion and realization of the ideal monarchy which are so character-
1 See G.T.M.M. III, p. 569.
2 In^pf^xE7i930, pp. 8i2ff. Caspar! expresses well-founded doubts concerning
GressmaliaVMessianic interpretation of Amos and Hosea.
8 See Lindblom, Micha Jtigrwisch untersucht. pp. 8 iff.; G.T.M.M.M., pp. 68 if.
4 See Lindblom, d^CRM^fT^
6 See G.TMM.M, III, pp. 357^ VoIz,TBg?2^< J^SJLPP- l88ff"
6 Cf. t^owTpfTiigff., i6
SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL
istic of Jewish Messianic theology. Later this figure of Zechariah's
became a technical Messianic term, at once veiled and allusive,
after the fashion of the later eschatology and apocalyptic. The
above-mentioned passages in Jeremiah, and probably also Isa.
xi, 10, are thus dependent on Zechariah and later than his time.1
As we shall see below (p. 161), it is possible that Isa. xi, 1-9 also
dates back to Zechariah's time.
The other passages in Jeremiah (xxx, 9, 21) are also certainly
post-exilic. They imply a situation in which for the time being
Israel is under foreign rulers; but a time will come when e David'
will be raised up, i.e., the house of David will be restored as a
royal house, which it therefore no longer was in the prophet's
time.2 We shall return to all these passages in the appropriate
contexts below.
A preliminary survey of the sources thus shows that all the
genuinely Messianic passages in the Old Testament date from the
time after the fall of the monarchy and the destruction of the
Israelite states. Of those passages which are commonly held to
be Messianic, only Isa. vii and ix, iff. can with certainty be
referred to the pre-exilic age,3 but they are not Messianic in the
strict sense. This may seem to the reader to be a petitio principii]
but it is not. Anticipating the results of the inquiry in the following
chapters, the argument may be stated as follows, i. The concep-
tions of the king in the old royal ideology and in the doctrine of
the Messiah are in all their main features identical. 2. The over-
whelming majority of the Messianic passages belong to the post-
exilic age, when the monarchy no longer existed. It is therefore
at least possible, and in fact very probable, that the few remaining
pre-exilic sayings about the ideal king are concerned with the
actual historical kingship, and not with the Messiah. In a later
chapter it will be shown that this view provides a full and satisfac-
tory explanation of these passages.
1 See G.T-M.M.M^. Ill, pp. 37if.; on the post-exilic origin of these two passages
see Volz, dp."cit7pp. 230, 31 off.
2 See&T.M,M.AL III, pp. agiff., 39if.; Volz, op. cit, pp. 3o6fE, 3iofT.
3 It is impossible to present here in detail the arguments which lead me to maintain
the late dating of all the passages referred to; that would lead too far. I have, however,
discussed the matter briefly in G.T.M.M.M. III, pp. 6gfF., and in the notes ad locc.
Berry in 2*?-L* *&> J926, pp. ^5f!^e]faro!s Isa. ix, iff. and xi, iff, as later than all
the other Messianic passages, but his arguments lack cogency.
CHAPTER III
The Ideal of Kingship in Ancient Israel
ET has been observed above that there must undoubtedly be a
ogical and historical connexion between the concept of the
Messiah and the ancient Israelite idea of the king as 'Yahweh's
Anointed'. 'The Messiah3 is simply cthe Anointed3. This raises
the question of the meaning of the expression £ Yahweh's Anointed',
which in turn involves an inquiry into what the ancient Israelite
meant by a true king, into his ideal of kingship.
The present writer has already maintained in his book on the
origin of eschatology (Ps.St. II) that the conception of the Messiah
was derived from the ideal of kingship, or 'king-ideology', to use
the term now in vogue. A few preliminary observations must now
be made to clear the ground. We must distinguish between two
problems: that of the origin of the actual ^ectation of a future
saviour king or Messiah, and that of the source from which is
derived the conterrtf of the Messianic figure with all its varied traits.
In the present chapter it is the latter problem that we shall discuss,
in order thereby to prepare the way for an answer to the former.
This much can be said at once: the content of the Messianic figure
was derived from the kingly ideal of ancient Israel as we see it
with particular clarity in the place and function of the king in the
public ritual of the national festivals.
The Israelite monarchy came into existence long after the
nation had invaded Canaan; and Old Testament tradition bears
witness to the fact that it was a copy of Canaanite kingship. When
the people ask Samuel to anoint a king to rule over them, they say,
'A king will we have over us, that we also may be like all the
nations' (i Sam. viii, 5, igf.). This is precisely what historical
considerations would lead us to expect. In the time of Moses,
Israel was a 'primitive' people as compared with her neighbours.
Her social customs, her political institutions, and her material
and spiritual culture were still at the level of simple, semi-
nomadic life. In all these respects both the Canaanites and the
21
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
neighbouring great powers, who represented the advanced civiliza-
tion of the ancient east, had progressed much further. The settle-
ment in Canaan involved an entirely new way of life; and its
inevitable consequences were a new social structure, and new
political institutions and agencies, which in turn called for new
forms and fashions. It was from the Canaanites that the Hebrews
learned what a king was like, first in the clash of war, when they
often had to withdraw before their chariots of iron and their
superiority in arms and organization, and later on in peaceful
intercourse, and in c covenant5, when chieftain, peasant, and herds-
man had opportunity in visiting the towns to admire the wealth,
the splendour, and the power displayed in royal courts. In legal
and commercial transactions they often had to resort to the
tribunals of these kings, and they had to use or, of necessity, to
submit to regulations for trade and agriculture which they had not
had to develop when they were nomads. By observation and
experience they learned that the monarchial system lay behind
every attempt to establish a great empire, and that only a monarchy
had the power to hold together scattered tribes and settlements,
since only a king could have an army big enough for the purpose.
It was precisely in the struggle against the Philistines, who threa-
tened to put an end to Israel's independence, that there arose the
pressure towards a closer association between the scattered settle-
ments, tribes, and clans, so that the idea of the monarchy was
practically forced upon men's minds.
Together with the monarchy it was natural (and, indeed,
inevitable) that Israel should take over from the Canaanites a
great many ideas and conceptions of kingship, the royal ideology,
the c manner (mifpSt) of the kingdom5, its etiquette and customs,
the whole pattern of life which was bound up with it. The Old
Testament does not conceal the fact that in many ways it was a
new and alien 'manner5: indeed, Samuel announces explicitly the
character of the new despotism.1
It has, however, become more and more apparent that Gunkel
and Gressmann (see below) were right in pointing out that the
ideal of kingship which Israel took over from the Canaanites was
actually a special development of the common oriental concept of
kingship. By way of background, therefore, we must first offer an
account of the royal ideology of the ancient east.
1 See the later of the two sources In the Samuel tradition, i Sam. viii, 11-17;
x, asff.
22
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
i. The Royal Ideology q£thejfincient East^
The Canaanite monarchy was not an indigenous creation,
independent of foreign influences. The entire culture of the country
was in large measure composite, mainly Syrian, but, like Syrian
culture itself, subject to strong influence from Mesopotamia
(Human- Mitannian), from Babylonia and Assyria, from Asia
Minor (Hittite), and from the neighbouring country of Egypt.1
Closer examination reveals so intimate an interaction among all
these cultures, that it is correct to speak of a common oriental
culture, just as in the Middle Ages we speak of a common European
Christian culture, and in our own day of a western culture which
in its main features is uniform. Among those elements in the cul-
ture of the ancient east which in all essentials are homogeneous,
we must include kingship with its special character and status.
On these grounds, and partly also on the basis of older works
on religion and ethnology which deal with kingship and the cult,2
a number of English and American scholars have taken up the
question of the oriental concept of kingship. Reference must be
made to the two collective works edited by Hooke: Myth and Ritual
and The Labyrinth, and to Hooke's own work, The Origins of Early
Semitic Ritual.* This last is a stimulating book, and contains a
wealth of material, but shows a tendency to artificial schematiza-
tion. The author maintains that the cult of all ancient near
eastern religions was dominated by a coherent complex of ritual
and myth, which served as a 'pattern' for all these religions, and
which had its home in Babylonia. Babylonian cultic practice in
historical times, and also Canaanite, Israelite, and other cultic
systems are variations of this original 'pattern'. At its centre
stands the king, himself divine, the offspring or the incarnation of
the god, who in the cult J£ at the same time the god himself, so
that in dramatic form he lives or endures the entire cmyth5 of the
god, his deeds and his experiences. The god is thought of particu-
larly as the god of fertility and creation. The most important
cult festival is that of the New Year, when the world is created
anew. In it the king goes through the humiliation and death of
1 This is clearly shown in Albright's books: ^rjjn^th^ Stong
and the Religion oflsraeL See also Millar " """* ""^
w» ^ » -si ^ 'otmd of the Bible.
e z 'dious ^grmmote
2 Above all, iSSefTworks on these subjects:
and The M<M^ 4^Lanc^ ^ ^Sfefe^^JS^K-
8 XmongfoEESr worJ^oiTsimilar line?' we may mention Hocart,
? Councillors; James, Christian Myth and Ritual^ and
-*—~*f4;7ft •*-— - ~ —
23
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
the god (originally in actual fact, later in the person of a substitute
king, who was really put to death, and finally only symbolically),
his resurrection, combat, and victory, and his c sacred marriage '
with the fertility goddess, and thereby creates the world and makes
its prosperity and blessing secure for the New Year. As we have
seen, it is thought that this pattern left its stamp on the cultic
practice of the entire Near East, including that of Israel, but
partly in such a way that the pattern was 'disintegrated'. Indi-
vidual practices, ideas, and phrases were taken over, more or less
correctly interpreted or re-interpreted, so that, for instance, con-
ceptions originally associated with the king came to be used of
the ordinary worshipper, as a result of the tendency towards
'democratization5 which is prevalent in all religion.1
The views of the e ritual pattern5 school as expounded in the
works mentioned above have the character of a provisional thesis
to be demonstrated by further research rather than an assured
position based on detailed investigation. Against the background
of these general theories, and along the same lines as the myth
and ritual school, I. Engnell has undertaken, in his Studies in
Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, a thorough investigation of
the royal ideology of the ancient east. His treatment of the prob-
lem in relation to the Western Semites is based on a thorough
acquaintance with the texts and an extensive knowledge of the
history of religion. His book is valuable and important both be-
cause of the fullness with which the sources are presented and
because it attempts a consistent interpretation of the royal ideology
in terms of a clear principle. It also has the merit of not mixing
religions and peoples, for it treats each are,a separately. In a
series of treatises by Widengren, EngnelPs ideas have been de-
veloped and amplified on a number of important points,2
It is obvious that there is a core of truth in this idea of a ritual
pattern. The ancient Near East did in fact possess a common
culture; and within this Kulturknis there was a constant inter change
of ideas and of cultural factors. Phenomenological study reveals
1 Jastrow had already drawn attention to this process of democratization in Baby-
lonian cultic rites and psalms in his Die Rttij^on Ba^qjQ^und ^SESKJ-^ PP* I06ff.,
117; and the same tendency in severaTdiHerent types loflsra^tepsalDas was pointed
PP
.^, 1945, pp. .; andaso $g^wy$£h pp. 249,
theories 61" a ritual pattern and royal ideology are maintained almost
to the point of caricature by Haldar, e.g., in Studies m, the
24
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
an extensive common stock of ideas and forms in religion and the
cult. Hugo Winckler and his so-called Pan-Babylonian school had
already maintained that all the religions of the Near East were
identical, and were ultimately Babylonian in origin. In them
mythological and cultic expression was given to the scientific
astronomy and astrology of ancient Babylonia, and to the concep-
tions of the world, life, religion, and history which were based on
that science.1 The Yahweh of the Old Testament was a god of
the same type as Marduk, Tammuz, or the like; and the religious
texts of Israel were to be interpreted in accordance with their
supposed Babylonian patterns. The theories and the programme
of the school found perhaps their clearest expression in Winckler's
Himmels- und Weltenbild der Babylonier als Grundlage der Weltanschauung
und Mythologie alter Volker, and in A. Jeremias's Handbnch der
altorientalischen Geisteskultur and his Das Alte Testament im Lichte des
alien Orients.
This grandiose hypothesis has long since been refuted by an
extensive series of exact studies of the sources. The Pan-Babylonists
made the mistake of forcing texts from different countries into a
ready-made scheme, without due allowance for the varied spiritual
structures of the different religions, without making the necessary
study of them, or overlooking such as had been made. Neverthe-
less the underlying idea of a common oriental Kulturkreis was
sound. H. Gunkel, H. Gressmann, and die religionsgeschichtliche
Schule of biblical scholars saw and often proved that a good many
of the religious ideas and literary forms in the Old Testament
were actually of non-Israelite and frequently of Babylonian
origin, and could be adequately understood only when interpreted
against this background. The great discovery involved in Gunkel's
interpretation of the Psalms was just this, that the different types
of psalm presupposed definite cultic situations, which in part were
attested by the legal parts of the Old Testament and in part could
be reconstructed from allusions in the psalms themselves. This
reconstruction could often be supported and supplemented from
similar cultic acts in Babylonian religion, which had obviously
been the c cultic pattern9 for those in Israel. On the basis of this
discovery the present writer sought in his Psalmenstudien to present
a more detailed picture of the cultic background of the psalms in
the Old Testament, and, in particular, rediscovered the main
1 See A. Jeremias, H^"^^^ PP- i7*ff-J Das A.T. im Luhte^ des alten Omn^'Motiv-
register*,s.v. 'Kdixigjri*2!!im3a^rn, %,um Stf^TumT^e 'T^^^^t^pPT'ls more sober; cf.
also Die Vergottlichwig des JfCordgs LipWJ^^^. CpWMi reference to texts, note <?,
-..,._ ,. . 25
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
features of the ancient Israelite New Year festival, in which one of
the chief ideas was the enthronement of Yahweh as king of the
world, the symbolic representation of His victory over His enemies,
both the forces of chaos and the historical enemies of Israel. The
result of this victory was the renewal of creation, election, and the
covenant, ideas and rites from the old fertility festivals which lay
behind the historical festival. One of the most important elements
in the symbolic ritual was the great procession, in which Yahweh,
represented by His ark, * went up3 to His palace, the temple. This
festival ritual shows so many striking similarities to the other New
Year festivals of the ancient east that the present writer felt
justified in concluding that ZH tjyji resgect^ the Israelite festival had
been developed under the influence of Canaanite c patterns \ which,
in their turn, depended on influences which were more or less
common to the entire Near East. It seemed also to be a sound
procedure cautiously to supplement the biblical evidence from
Babylonian and other oriental sources, where these were really in
harmony with the spiritual structure of Israelite religion. In
Ps. St. II the opinion was also expressed that the real, living myth
always has a connexion with the cult and the ritual, the myth
being the expression and the epic elaboration of the existential
realities which were experienced in the cult.
In the same connexion Gunkel, Gressmann, and the present
writer dealt also with the Israelite ideal of kingship: Gunkel in
cDie Konigspsalmen' in Preussische Jahrbiicher clviii, 1914, in his
commentary on the Psalms, and in his and Begrich's Einleitung;
Gressmann in his Ur sprung, and in Der Messias; the present writer
in his Kongesalmerm i Det gamle Testamente, and in Ps.St. II, III.
In these works I have sought to show that the c mythological ' con-
ception of the king, which is found in Israel as well as elsewhere,
is not to be regarded as the result of stylistic influence only (Gress-
mann's Hofstil), but was the expression of a real religious and
sociological faith, and was closely connected with cultic life and
experience. The ideal of kingship has to be seen as an element in
those religious ideas which found their expression in the cult.
Pedersen, too, in his Israel I-II, III-IV, has recognized the
validity of most of the views and conclusions mentioned above.1
There is, then, in the writer's opinion, real ground for the
theories of the ritual pattern school. What they have added to
earlier investigations appears to be, in the first instance, the
1 Isnul III-IV, pp. 384-425, 428-36; cf. pp. 737-45.
26
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
combination of them with the views of Frazer and his school on
primitive life and anthropology. They also reveal a tendency to
generalize, and to overemphasize the unity of the culture of the
ancient east. It is not to be denied that Engnell, Widengren, and
other representatives of this school show a marked tendency to
go beyond the evidence, and, it may be said, to push their theories
rather dogmatically to extremes. They reduce the various religions
and texts to uniformity, and construct a ritual pattern which is
found everywhere, though it existed nowhere; and they do not
take sufficient account of the frequently varying and distinctive
structures of the different religions. The same thing said or done
in different contexts takes on different meanings. This is true,
above all, in religion. Yet in dealing with each individual religion,
tEe advocates of the ritual pattern theory seem to presu^pos^ a
common oriental pattern into which the texts must fit. For
instance, because Egyptian religion consistently treats the king as
a divine being, and Suniero-Accadian religion does so rather less
consistently, the same tendency must needs be found in other
eastern peoples as well. But to interpret the scanty and fragmen-
tary sources in the light of a partly conjectural Babylonian pattern,
and to supplement the material in accordance with this pattern,
is naturally a doubtful undertaking, which can hardly be carried
out without dogmatic regimentation of the evidence.1
Closer examination, such as has been undertaken by Henri
Frankfort in Kingship and the Gods> shows that there are profound
differences between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian conceptions
of kingship, and that if we are to avoid the danger of Procrustean
generalizations, we must pay far more attention to the general
structure of each of the various religions and cultures, and to the
social conditions which lie behind them, than the ritual pattern
school has done.2 Individual expressions and statements about
the king in Egypt and in Mesopotamia may resemble each other
fairly closely; but the precise content of any given conception can
be discerned only when it is considered in the context of the par-
ticular system of thought to which it belongs. If proper allowance
is made for this, the picture of the Mesopotamian royal ideology
appears rather different from that painted for example by Engnell.
1 For a criticism of the extreme ritual pattern theory, see Albright, From theStone A^
to ChnsUm^Vf p. 36, and now Frankfort's excellent Frazer Lecture7?7i£ Tr 'roftwmj^
^rnlSff^^TAncient Near Eastern Religions. •— ««—
^^^T^:^^^^^^pp\ ffCTand the critical notes, pp. 355 n. 13, 382 n. 5,
405 n. i, 408 nn. 66, 6^09.
27
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
In the static Egyptian view of life,1 kingship is an essential factor
in the eternal cosmic world order, and the basis of all ordered
existence.2 Only savages have no king. The order of the world and
creation are expressions of an eternal law, ma9 at, 'right order',
which is active in both kings and gods. Life is in itself imperish-
able: death is but a transition.3 Everywhere the object of the cult
is to maintain and renew life when the powers of death threaten
to prevail;4 but in Egypt it appears rather as an affirmation that
after a momentary disturbance the world order has again been
stabilized through the activity of the divine power and law.
This happens because society always has at its centre the intense
power of the godhead. Pharaoh, the king, is himself a real god,
in whom all divinity is incarnated. This is manifest even in art,
where Pharaoh is always represented in superhuman proportions
as the only person who acts, makes war, storms fortresses, slays
the enemy, offers sacrifice, and so on. He is the equal of the gods,
and himself an object of worship.5 Officially he is called 'the
good god3. His title, 'Lord of the two lands', implies that he
rules over the entire dualistic universe.6 In himself he embodies
and holds in harmonious equilibrium the two powers, Life and
Death, the gods Horus and Seth, who are in conflict, and yet, by
the very tension between them, create and renew life. Hej^Horus
and Seth, cthe Two Lords';7 he is 'Lord of Years',8 'Lord of all'.
He is officially styled Horus,9 and as such is the reborn god of
death and life, Osiris.10 As king, he may be said to span two
generations, for he is at one and the same time father and son.
By death he becomes Osiris, and exercises his beneficial activity as
creator of fertility in field, herd, and nation; and as the living one
he is at the same time Horus, the son who avenges Osiris and
brings him to Ufe again.11 The king is identified with all the gods. 12
As the expression of the eternal order of creation from its very
beginning, he is the son of the sun god Re, and so on.
This is all expressed in the titles which are applied to the king;18
1 In addition to Frankfort's extensive researches into Egyptian kingship, we may
refer to Erman-Ranke, AegyJMen*, pp. 6off,; Steindorff-Seele, Pf^J!^(%Wfe-%/,
pp. Ssff.; Engnell, Divine^m^M^ pp. 4ff.
2 Frankfort, -SafijSBTpP- "P^
8 Cf. Brede Kristensen, UvetjBat djMgk pp. 7fF.
4 Gf. Mowinckel, Retig^n og %^, pp. 551!. (= RejKgton ^^@to» PP» 6off.).
5 Frankfort, ^^sKpp. 6ff. 8 Op tit., pp. 158". ' Op, cit, p, 21.
8 Op. cit., p. 32, """* Op, cit,, pp. s8ff. 10 Op. cit., pp. iSiff. u Op. cit, pp. s8ff,
12 Engnell, Divine^ AM^^J PP- 6f., formulates the thought with undue theoretical
precision wherTKe'sp^E^oT Pharaoh as identical with the 'high god* and with the
*god of fertility', 13 Frankfort, Kingship pp. 361!,
28
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
and it is also taken literally in a metaphysical sense. Re takes the
form of Pharaoh, goes in to the queen, and of her begets the new
king.1 The king is divine from birth.2 He is the sun god, who has
' shone forth' on the earth.3 All goddesses may be regarded as his
mothers. As Osiris-Horus, he is the son of Isis, who ought prob-
ably to be thought of as the personification of the royal throne,
charged with divine power.4
Thus Pharaoh is the absolute master of the whole country, or
6 the two lands '. In theory all power and property belong to him.5
It is he alone who acts in war and peace.6 As Osiris he is wor-
shipped after death, for from him all blessing proceeds.7 He
causes the Nile to rise and overflow its banks, making the fields
fruitful; and it is he who makes the corn grow.8 He upholds
justice (me? at] ; *md!at is in him'. According to a hymn to Pharaoh
Merneptah, he maintains the whole natural order.9 He it is, too,
who gives life to men. He is the 'Ka' or life-force of all his
subjects.10 His own Ka is personified and worshipped as a god.11
The god Re can be represented as Pharaoh's Ka.12 Many mythical
forms may be used to express the king's abundant resources of
divine power. He has been suckled with the milk of goddesses,
and with it has imbibed the life-force.13
The Egyptians also reckoned with dangerous periods of transi-
tion in life, when order and harmony with the divine powers had
to be strengthened, and vigour renewed by means of the effective
power of cult festivals.14 The New Year was a transition period of
this kind, at which every year the king's accession was celebrated.15
Another important festival of renewal was the ^-festival, which
has been called a 'jubilee', but which was celebrated at irregular
intervals of years, 16 when the divine world order, the king's power,
and his dominion over the earth had to be strengthened.17
Pharaoh is one with his transfigured, divine, life-giving ancestors,
who live and work through him. This is expressed above all in
the festival of Min, the god of the life-force, and particularly of
procreative power. He, too, is Pharaoh.18 Taken together,
Pharaoh's ancestors form a collective source of power, to which
1 Op. cit, pp. 42fF. 2 Cf. Engnell, ^j^L^jr^hi^ pp. 4f.
8 Frankfort, JKjsSSiHu P- 57- 4 °P* cit> P- 43- nr0p. ^ pp. 5if.
6 Op, cit., p. 55. 7 Op, cit., pp. 55, 59. 8 Op. cit, p. 57.
9 Op. cit., p. 58; cf. Erman, The LU^atiire of the Ancient ^y^^PP- 27^*
10 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 60, 65F. — ~ — — «T3proE, pp. 6gff.
12 Op. cit., pp. 77f. 18 Op. cit., p. 74. M Cf. van Gennep, l^sr^
16 See Diirr in Tfmjogie imd Gtaube xx, 1928, pp. 305^. *""""*
i* Frankfort, opToCp, 1$ """""^ Op. cit., pp. 86ff. 18 Op. cit, pp. 89, x88f.
29
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
each king is added at death.1 The living king is cthe elder son5,
and as such is identical with the god Upwaut; 2 and it is through
him that the ancestors bestow life and power.3
Therefore the king's death and his entrance into the world
beyond (where he shares in the eternal, living circuit of Re and
the heavenly ones), together with the accession of the new king,
form a 'transition5 of vital significance.4 It is consummated in the
accession festival, which has been called 6 the Mystery Play of the
Succession3.5 In it there is re-enacted with complete realism, and
with the same result, all that took place at creation, when the
world order was established, and at the historical institution of the
monarchy. The god, who at one and the same time has joined his
ancestors and been reborn in his son, stands there again in the
fullness of divine power, holding the world order in his hand and
securing life and blessing. What takes place and is symbolically
realized in the cult is this: Seth has killed Osiris; but as Horus, the
new king avenges his father, triumphs over Seth, and unites in his
own person the two essential powers of existence in settled har-
mony. World order and justice again repose securely in the divine
king. This cult festival and its 'Mystery Play' are a creative
drama.6 Through the realistic symbolism of the ritual, what it
represents actually comes to pass. It is essential that something
should really happen7 in order that harmony between the cosmos
and society may be restored and secured; and it does happen, in
that c Horus5 once again triumphs and takes his place on the
throne.8 To prepare the way for this change, the old king often
takes as his co-regent the new king (usually the eldest son), who
has been designated by the god, c Osiris takes Horus in his arms';
and the heir apparent is already Horus, and is filled with new
divine power. 9 Then, at his death, c Osiris ' transmits to c Horus ' his
entire divine power and sovereignty. In this way the danger
involved in even the shortest interregnum is avoided. The acces-
sion takes place immediately after the old king's death; and the
coronation, which is also the outward symbolic transference of the
fullness of divine power, has to take place at some appropriate
new beginning in the natural order, a 'New Year5 of some kind.
1 Op. cit., pp. gof., 95. 2 Op. cit, pp. gaf. 3 Op. cit., pp. 97f.
4 Op. cit., pp. loiff. 5 Op. cit., pp. i23ff.
6 Cf. Es^St. II, pp. igff.; -M^^L%fe» PP- 68ff- (=* R*M°n M^^Mte» PP-
art. 'Drama, religionsgeschichthch' in' &££•.* II, cols. 20008! ***** — s*8*®""
7 Cf. van der Leeuw, JJggggfl inJ2ss§%£e a^M^/^staHon^m. 33gff«, 447*1
8 Frankfort, jtinjg^, pp. i24f. ^"CSOS^SIJT&wwy £^f^> P- 5
3°
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
The dead king's crossing to the world beyond and his full
identification with Osiris through the ritual of embalming and
burial, and the new king's accession to the throne, are equally
important elements in this new transition.1 The entire world order
has thereby been secured; the world has been created anew. As
the order of nature is derived from the creator god, so the order
and welfare of the land are derived from the king.2 The new
king is the Atum, the creator god. 3 All these accession festivities
conclude with the coronation with the two crowns. Thereby the
king receives all the fullness of Re's power and dominion: he
is Re. This means that the creation of the world has again been
accomplished. A new era of prosperity follows the menacing state
of chaos which resulted from the king's death and the breach
between nature and society.4 All these interpretations of men's
experience of reality find expression in the hymns sung in honour
of Pharaoh as of any other god.5 It follows, then, that the king,
whether alive or dead, is an object of worship;6 and similarly it is
he who (in theory) carries out the entire cult, and is the priest of
all the gods.7 It is he who invokes and stimulates all the other
gods to grant blessing to himself and his people.
Behind this conception of kingship lies a thought which is
found among many primitive peoples, and particularly among the
Hamitic tribes of Africa, with whom the Egyptians had close
ethnological and cultural connexions. The thought is that of a
mana-filled chief of the type called 'rainmaker-king', who after
death remains a source of power, and who, inter alia> is incarnated
in his successor, though he himself also exists elsewhere, and acts
in other ways.8 This is shown, for instance, by the fact that it is
in his character as the dead king that Osiris is the power of nature
1 Frankfort, Kingsh^ pp. noff.
2 Gf. op. cit., p. 105. 3 Gf. op. cit., p. 1 08, 4 Cf. op. cit., p. 150.
5 Op. cit., pp. 58, 60; for the hymn to the royal crown, which is also divine, and may
be personified and regarded as identical with the various gods, see op. cit., pp. 43, 108;
cf. also Erman-Ranke, -jjgj^te^, pp. 72, 76, 466, 469, 471, 473, 479; Erman, The
Literature oftheAmentE^^tzans^pp. ioff., 134!!, 254^, 258!?., 2741!., 2781!.; Steindorff
§t3^Wfm'^fttI^MJhi^st, p. 83.
6 Gf. Erman, I^'ae^^^h^T^mQp^^ pp. 92, 219, 229. 7 Op. cit., p. 67.
8 Gf. Frankfort, jffi^jg^pTiST'ssf.; see also Index, s.w. * Africa1, * Africans',
'Hamites*, 'RainmaEe^mg'. Gf. below, p. 33 n. 3. For 'primitive* ideas about the
rule of mana-filled chiefs and kings, and on the chief as a 'sacral' bearer of divine,
creative energies, and possibly as the incarnation of a deified ancestor, see, among
others, Frazer, Adonis, Atti£, Osiris (TtwGdden Bou^hlV, that vast collection of material,
which will always rietaln^its'^ortn, evenTTtheones and interpretations change). See
further Hocart, -^^£^££,van der Leeuw, Religion in JEsse^and Mani^Mion^ pp. 214?.;
Widengren, R^Qpne^ vdrld*f pp. 2 54$ T" (generalizing a Tittle too much); Briem,
.ftf toy Jm^Tp^sC^^rrmg to Junod, T/$ Li^ejfjz So
3* ~"~
40 The Divine Self-Disclosure
ural life" as has been granted to us is proportionate to the
whole revelation received by the prophets and apostles. No
claim of that kind can possibly be here in question. The
only proportion we should be concerned to affirm is be-
tween such revelation as the prophets and apostles were
enabled to receive and the measure of "supernatural life"
which they themselves were enabled to enjoy. To say that
God directly injected into their minds archetypal images
or symbols which did not grow out of, and were not
matched by, the living communion with God which had
been granted to them, and by the love of God shed abroad
in their hearts by the Holy Spirit which was given to
them,31 would be a reversion to that mechanical idea of in-
spiration which is absent from the prophetic and apostolic
writings themselves and from which, though it has been
common enough in later Christian thought, most of us
are anxious to depart.
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
But the individual has no prospect of lasting life, as in Egypt:
' when the gods created man, they gave him death for his portion,
but life they withheld in their own hands5, says the Gilgamesh
Epic. The aim of the cult is to safeguard the continued life of the
world, of nature, and of the race in ethe land5. But even the gods
need to be strengthened and renewed by the c service' and cfood'
of which the sacrifices consist. The gods created men to perform
this service, and set a king over them. He is, indeed, c the great
man' (Sumerian, LUGAL), but nevertheless a man like other men.
His task is to serve the gods, and carry out their will on earth.1
Mesopotamian art, in contrast with Egyptian, always depicts the
king as leader of his men, and yet as one of them: his army and
his servants are active comrades in arms, and co-operate with him.
His relation to the gods is that of a worshipper, not an equal: he
represents his people before them.2
This theological conception is in harmony with the sociological
and historical origin of the monarchy in Mesopotamia. Here
too, of course, there is a background of the common primitive
ideas of the mana-filled chief and leader of the cult, in whom the
'power' of the community is concentrated, and who is the channel
of divine life and power to the community.3
* Kingship developed in the earliest Sumerian cities from a primi-
tive patriarchal democracy, under the leadership of the elders.4
The real clord5 is the god of the city. He is regarded as the actual
owner of the common land which belongs to the tribe and the
city. The king (the great man) seems originally to have been one
of the elders who was designated as leader in a situation of par-
ticular danger or importance. His authority lasted only until this
particular task was accomplished.6 Behind him stood the temple
congregation, the community of citizens. Even in the divine polity
the kingship is conferred on Marduk, according to the Epic of
Creation, as the result of a decision in the assembly of the gods.6
But behind the congregation stands the god of the city. It is at
his instance, and in defence of his land, and temple, and congrega-
tion that the king is to play his part.7 Accordingly, we find that
1 Cf. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule in the ^n^£nji East^pp. 3, 34; Frankfort, op. tit.,
PP-239, 33*- *"^ * .-•*-—'-
2 Frankfort, op, cit., pp. 8f., 224!*.
3 Cf. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manif^tion, pp. 115!?., 191-241;
Frazer, Lectures on the Edffi*nvfafry of'^Ki^sh^, ^najTie ^Golden Bough, pp. 2648:.:
Hocart, ^m^ and others. OTabove, pT$in. 8. *-**-'" «—***
4 FranBoHTop. cit, pp. 2151!. 6 See Jacobsen in ^.MRS^v, 1943, pp. 1598
* Frankfort, op. cit., p. 236. 7 Frankfort, op. cit., p°pT22if.
33
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
even after the emergence of permanent personal rule, the rulers
do not usually call themselves 'kings', but the 'vicegerents '
(Sumerian, ENSI; Accadian, issakku) and priests (sangfi) of the god
of the city.1 The real king is the god of the city.2 When the city
state expands and subdues other cities, each with its ENSI, and
when the position of the king acquires a more political and military
character, based as it is on force, a distinction may arise in practice
between the king and the vice-gerent priest; but it is still the king
who is the link between the god and the community. He has a
sacral character, inasmuch as he is an intermediary between the
god and the people.3
In Mesopotamia the king always retained this close and dis-
tinctive relation to the deity; and the conception of this relation-
ship was moulded by theological ideas about kingship. Kingship
in Mesopotamia was a sacral institution; and the king shared the
holiness of the institution to such an extent that we are justified in
speaking of his divinity.4 This accounts, too, for the fact that some
of the kings of the larger city states put the sign for 'god* (the
divine ideogram) before their names.5 Much less frequently the
king is depicted in art with the attributes of a god, with horns, for
instance, or as a figure of supernatural stature. As a rule he is
presented as a man among men.6 In so far as the Babylonian king
is endowed with divine powers and qualities, he may be regarded
as a * divine' being; but he is not a cgod} in the same sense as
Pharaoh. The express attribution of divinity by the use of the
divine ideogram and other symbols is relatively so infrequent that
we may well suspect Egyptian influence, which, however, has not
altered the genuine Babylonian conception.
As already mentioned, the king is the vice-gercnt and proxy of
the gods, either of the city gods, or, in the larger states, of the
supreme god. In accordance with the will of the god he adminis-
ters and governs the whole land, which is really the god's property,
1 Gf. Labat, Roysytf, pp. iff.; Frankfort, op. cit, p. 223.
2 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 22 1. 3 Labat, op. cit., p. 8. 4 Labat, op. cit., pp. 36iff.
5 Labat, op. cit., p. 8; Frankfort, K^juj^, pp. 224fT. The first is Naram-sin of the
Accadian dynasty; later, the kings of tneuSrd dynasty in Ur, and several kings of Isin,
Rim-sin, of Larsa in his later years, Samsu-iluna of the Hammurabi dynasty, and a
few Kassite kings, Assyrian and neo-Babylonian kings never use it. These tendencies
towards deification have nothing to do with * Semitic' custom, as Labat seems to think.
They disappear as the Semites prevail in Babylonia. Nor are they (as Frankfort has
pointed out, op. cit., pp. 225f.) a consequence of basic Sumerian conceptions and the
beginnings of monarchy. There must, therefore, be a special reason for them, to
which we shall return below.
6 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 3ff., 224f.; cf. above, p. 33.
34
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
or the world and mankind, whom the gods created for their own
service (see above, p. 33). The gods had kingship in mind from
the time of creation, even if it is not, as in Egypt, a fundamental
element in the cosmic order itself.1 From the very beginning the
potent insignia of royalty lay 'before the throne of the god Ami5.2
Among the mythical kings of primeval times we also find gods like
Tammuz, Etana, and Gilgamesh.3 The king is king 'of the land'
(that is, of the whole world of men), of c the four quarters of the
world' (far kibrdt irbitti}^ of the universe (far kiffati): these latter
two titles both belong originally to the gods.4 In theological
terms this means that kingship came down from heaven as a
supernatural power embodied in the royal insignia, the crown
(tiara) and sceptre,5
The dominant thought is that the king has been designated and
chosen by the gods,6 called by name, equipped with power,
'thought of beforehand cin the heart of the god5; he is the man
' after the god's own heart', and so on.7 This idea can be expressed
in different mythological forms. Gudea of Lagash calls himself
c the shepherd envisaged by (the god) Ningirsu, steadfastly re-
garded by (the goddess) Nanshe, endowed with strength by (the
god) Nindar, the man described (?) by (the goddess) Baba, child
borne by (the goddess) Gatumdug, endowed with dignity and the
sublime sceptre by (the god) Ig-alirna, well provided with the
breath of life by (the god) Dunshagar, he whom his (special) god
Ningishzida has made to appear in the assembly with (proudly)
raised head'.8 The king has been suckled by goddesses, taught by
gods.9
In accordance with a common religious tendency, this divine
election of the king is often regarded as predestination.10 Naboni-
dus says that the gods Sin and Nergal have destined him for
dominion from the time when he was in his mother's womb; and
Ashurbanipal says that his name was uttered for kingship from
time immemorial. This predestination may even be dated back to
creation itself. In the introduction to the code of Hammurabi it
is stated that when the great gods Anu and Enlil created the
1 Frankfort, op. cit, pp. 23 if.
# /"*i _ ..i j TJ ^./* rv* * ^ r»..j_ • ji
4 Frankfort, op. cit,, p. 228?*
5 Op. cit., pp. 237ff. 6 Op. cit., p. 229. 7 Op. cit, p. 238.
8 Gudea Statue B II, 8ff.; see Frankfort, op. cit., p. 238.
9 Frankfort, op. cit., pp, 30of.; Labat, Rw ir " ~° ^~
10 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 238f.
35
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
world, cthey also uttered my name', that is, as a future king, just
as at that time they also decided the destiny of the world, and
e pronounced the name of Babylon', that is, decreed that Babylon
was to be the capital of the world. We are not concerned here
with the pre-existence of the king, or with the question whether,
as has been said, e the enthronement of a king is always a repetition
of a primeval act',1 but rather with a singular and unusually
strong expression of the religious belief in predestination, and the
high estimate of the matter which is implied in that belief.2 This
is clear from the very fact that the expression alternates with the
idea of election from birth.3
Nor is the idea that the king is 'born' of such and such a goddess,
or is the 'son5 of such and such a god, or is ethe man who is the
son of his god', and the like4 anything more than a 'mythopoeic'
expression of the idea of election and of the close relationship
between the king and the god which election establishes. This is
obvious, for instance, from the many different ideas in the passage
quoted from Gudea.5 It is obvious, too, in the statement made by
the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal of himself, that he *was born
among unknown mountains', and that the goddess Ishtar brought
him thence to be ca shepherd of men'.6 He was in fact the
legitimate son of king Shamshi-adad, and born in the royal
palace. The myth of the birth of the sun god is used here to express
divine election and predestination. Nor Is anything more implied
when, for instance, in invoking the god, the king sometimes says,
CI have no mother; thou art my mother. I have no father; thou
art my father'.7 This does not mean that he has been super-
naturally begotten and born of the deity in a literal, metaphysical
sense. It gives vivid expression to the fact that he has none but
1 See Additional Note II.
2 It seems, on the whole, to be characteristic of the religious mode of expression and
its relationship to the * mythopoeic ' way of thinking that it prefers to use categories of
time in order to express judgements of value. What is old is valuable and * right*.
Age and primeval origin are proof of high value.
8 Therefore, to use later theological terminology, we are here concerned with the
* ideal pre-existence' of the king in the divine decree. Surely this thought does not
have its origin in the annual installation of the king which was associated with the
yearly recreation of the world and the repeated experience of the primeval situation.
We can deduce too much from cultic experience. The same religious estimate of
vocation, expressed in terms of predestination, is present in the statement that Yahweh
appointed Jeremiah a prophet * before I formed you in the belly' (Jer. i, 5).
4 See Engnell, Dimte^^rigsjiipy Index, s.v, 'Son of the God'; Labat, fi£3ffi^> PP« 5*^
5 Gf. Frankfort/^^E^^Tpp.' 2381!.
6 Op. cit., p. 239jMowinckel, J^ongesat^tm, pp. 3of.
7 Gudea Gyl. A II, 6f.; Engnell, Dmne "KngsM^, p. 16, reads too much into the
language.
36
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
the god on whom to rely.1 The king's sonship is not understood
metaphysically, as in Egypt. He is not the 'son' of any particular
god, but may be regarded as the son of all gods and goddesses.
The god is his c creator ', and has 'brought him into being'; but
the god or goddess has not 'begotten3 or 'conceived' him; but
'fashioned him with the hands in his mother's womb'.2 There is
a distinction between this mode of bringing into existence and the
physical relationship of father or mother.3
Sonship signifies an intimate relationship of trust and obedience.
As a 'son', the king is the object of care, love, and protection from
the god or goddess (or from all the gods) ; and he owes them filial
obedience in their service. He is chosen to be a son; but, in
accordance with Babylonian ideas, this means that his relation
to them is regarded as that of adoption.4 Indeed, the formula of
adoption is, 'You are my son, whom I have begotten'.5
The thought of the divine choice of the king appears in a purely
mythical form in statements about several ancient Babylonian
kings (in part mythical kings of primeval antiquity), or about
legendary founders of dynasties, to the effect that they grew up in
the garden of the gods as their favourites. This is doubtless a
reflection of the cultic function of the king in tending the tree of
life, or its cultic counterpart, and making it grow, that is as
ensuring life and security on earth and for men.6
The election of the king implies that he has a definite vocation *
and a definite task, namely to represent the gods before men and
vice versa.7 This is what is meant by the statement that he has
been 'sent' by the gods.8 Obviously this does not imply that the
king has come from heaven, or from the world of the gods.9
1 Engnell's expression, 'divinization from nativity* (e.g., Divine -?53fi$?&.P* I7)>
like 'identity with the god', is therefore misleading. Labat also warns against making
too much of the mythical forms (Ro^yj^ pp. 55ff-)«
2 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 300. 3 Labat, op. cit, p. 58; but see below, p. 43.
4 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. aggff.; Labat, op. cit., pp. 55f. Nor do the sources referred
to by Christliebe Jeremias (IJz<^J^^^ pp. 5ff.)
prove more than that the kingfwas adopted and brought up"by the gods.
6 See the references in Gunkel, DieJPsalmen^p. 7 (on Ps. ii, 7).
6 Widengren, ^^gmns varld*, p. i$££o.B.^ii9 i94-33 PP- 58ff. It is possible that
ideas drawn from the myth about the Urmensch are present here; see below, p. 55 n. 3.
It may be that the mythical sometimes veils political reality, i.e. the king in question
was originally a priest and the god's 'governor ' (ENSI, ffiakku) at the main temple of the
city state, or a feudatory prince who had attained royal status.
7 Gf, Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 252, 258ff. 8 See Widengren in JS.0..g.ji, 1943, pp. Sgff.
9 For the idea of 'being sent' among the Semites, see E. von TSobschiitz in ^B^L*
xli, 1922, pp. 2i2ff. Of course the expression is not used in so specific a way as to
justify us in deducing from it ideas about the sending of the prophets, or of the Messiah
as one sent, as Widengren seems to think. The word is obviously a natural term to
apply to any one with a divine mission.
37
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Normally the vocation comes through an oracle; and the gods
restrict their choice for the most part to the family of the ruling
king, but are not inevitably committed to it. In actual fact the
outcome of the struggle for power between the claimants to the
throne would often decide whom the gods had chosen and sent.1
He is actually equipped with divine power when he is designated
crown prince, and when he is crowned.2 The regalia, crown and
sceptre, are 'divine'. They are charged with power and transmit
power; and they can be regarded, in mythopoeic fashion, as gods.
The Sumerians spoke of the goddesses Ninmenna and Ninpa, 'the
Lady of the Crown \ and ethe Lady of the Sceptre'.3 At the
coronation the king acquires a new nature, which is expressed in
a new name.4 He assumes command, for instance, by authority
of King Ashur,5 as a man divinely endowed, but still a man.6
The king is the intermediary between gods and men. By means
of oracles (asked for or sent), he must discover the will of the
gods and accomplish it on earth. He must represent men before
the gods, and govern his realm in accordance with the law of the
gods.7 In principle, therefore, he is also priest ($angu)^ even if
there are professional priests,9 who in practice carry out the daily
routine which forms part of his duties. The king is their head;10
and on all important occasions he takes the leading part in the
cult, in which he has important functions, both at the annual
festivals and at those of penitence and expiation. He also receives
oracles directly, for instance, through dreams in the temple.11 He
conducts sacrifices and performs rites. In relation to the gods, he
is 'servant', subordinate to them and dependent on them.12 The
god is his 'king5 and 'lord'. But the title of servant also implies
that he has a task to perform by the god's authority. The gods
and the king are united by powerful bonds. The gods visit him in
his palace; and he writes letters to them and submits his concerns
to them.13
But he also represents the people before the gods, and is res-
ponsible for relations between them.14 He must expiate and atone
1 Frankfort, op, cit, pp.
2 Op. cit., p. 245. a Op. cit., pp. 2451!. 4 Op. cit., p. 246-
5 Op. cit., loc. cit. Engnell's interpretation of the cry of homage during the corona-
tion procession, 'Ashur is king* (Divine KJQgshte, p. 17), reverses the sense.
*«— * «— «»
6 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 248. 7 Op. cit., pp. 252,
8 Op. cit., loc. cit.; Labat, ^^^ pp. 1311!,, cf. pp. 3000.
8 Labat, op. cit., pp. 134^
10 Labat, op. cit., pp. 202ff.; Frankfort, op. cit., p. 252.
11 Labat, op. cit., pp. 147^, 255!?,; Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 25iff.
12 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 255^ 1S Op. cit., p. 266. 14 Op. cit., pp. 258fF.
38
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
for the people's sins, and must personally submit to the rites of
atonement.1 He may even have to suffer death for the sins and
impurity of the people. That is why the Assyrians had a £ substi-
tute king ' (far puhi) when disaster threatened the land. He had,
for instance, to take upon himself the dangers of evil omens, in
order to avert the judgements which were threatening the king, or
had already befallen him.2 This may be a survival from the old
primitive conception of the king as the mana-filled man who bears
in his own person the power that creates good fortune for the
entire community, and who must die when experience shows that
power has left him. The same mode of thought is also found among
the old Northmen.3
We see then that in Mesopotamia even the king's religious attitude
to the gods differs from what we find in Egypt.4 The conception
of the king is most clearly seen in his position in the cult,5 especially
at the great New Year festivals, the ritual of which is known to us
from the Babylonian festival of Marduk at the spring equinox.6
As we have seen, the basis of the life of society is the establishment
and maintenance of harmony between the powers of life; and
society must be sustained by the positive forces of existence, the
gods with their vital power.7 But this harmony was not regarded
as something stable, as inherent in the cosmic order itself. It was
dependent upon the often inscrutable will of the gods. The gods
6 decided the fate ' of lands and peoples as they pleased. Admittedly
their will was c right5 and 'justice ' ; but what right was was often be-
yond human comprehension.8 The cult was a system instituted
by the gods themselves to enable men to learn their will, to serve
them, and to ensure their help.
But even in the gods' own world harmony has to be restored.
In the beginning, they defeated the powers of chaos and death;
but every year these powers escape again, and threaten life with
1 Op. cit, pp.
2 Labat, op. cit., pp. 1036°., 353ff.; Frankfort, op. cit., pp.
8 Cf. van der Leeuw, Rdijim in Essence an^Mat^esMion^ pp. U5ff.; cf. p. 217.
Hooke's presentation of fESj^a'T^SrTJrjj^?1 ^TjBgsj^ 'Sem^cJRitud^ pp. loff.) is
marked by undue theoretical generalization, and gives it a^wider application than it
had in Mesopotamia.
4 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 26yf. This more sober interpretation of the sacral king in
Babylonia and Assyria is also maintained by Ravn in Illustrejret ReUgion^dsto/^, pp.
*6 See the summary in Hooke, TA0 Origin^ o£Earfa Semitic Rtiud^p. 6ff.
6 See Zimmern, ^^ntbab^lomscjlien J^^a^^^^^—l^^i^^r^l^i ^^^^&- 4^^L
^£fsiivali Frankfort, A^Sjj^pp^Si'sB^ Forniore^detailed references touteratoe, see
EngneTT, J^WL^^^^^>' 20 if.
7 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 103, 277. 8 Op. cit., pp. 278f,
39
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
drought, and flood, and all such things as make life hazardous.
The changes in the life of nature show that sometimes the god
himself falls into the power of the forces of chaos. This concerns
not only the gods of fertility and vegetation properly so called.
Even the great gods like Marduk may for a season be 'imprisoned3
in cthe mountain 5, in the power of the forces of death.1 £The
suffering god' is an essential aspect of Mesopotamian gods, not
only of Tammuz, the god of fertility, but also of all the other gods
of the power of life, who are in reality identical in character with
him, and are sometimes simply Tammuz under other names, or at
least could easily be identified with him.2 At the height of summer
nature itself shows that the god has departed, is 'dead', 'im-
prisoned', 'overpowered', has 'descended', and the like. His
counterpart is the mother goddess and goddess of fertility, his
'mother', or c sister3, or 'beloved', who mourns for him, searches
for him, and finally finds him and sets him free again.3 The dying
or suffering and rising god represents that side of the whole power
of nature which creates and generates life in plants, animals, and
men.4
In Babylonia, as elsewhere in the East, the chief annual festival
was regarded as an actual re-creation of the world, a deliverance
from the domination of the powers of chaos, which had again
brought about the withering of nature and the death of the god of
fertility, which had held Marduk 'prisoner', and now threatened
all life and order with destruction. The god's advent, victory, and
resurrection or deliverance, which are brought about through
effectual rites, signify therefore that the world is created anew.
The myth of creation is the muthos of the festival. In later times,
the poetic epic of creation is its 'lection', or 'legend3;5 and the
cultic 'drama' is a visible and more or less symbolic presentation
of what is taking place; and as it does ctake place' in the drama,
it becomes reality.6
1 See Additional Note III.
^ 2 Frankfort, Kwg£ki$* p. 288. As a rule, a god is not originally limited to aay par-
ticular natural process, but is from the beginning and always simply *a god', i.e., one
who represents all the life, and power, and holiness which society needs for its existence,
the powers of nature, the institutions and ideals of society, and the sacred harmony
which they express and maintain. Cf. op. cit., p. 279.
8 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 283.
4 Op. cit., pp. sSsf.
5 For the myth of creation as a cultic legend in Egypt, see Kees in N.G.Wjg^ 1930,
pp. 345fT.; in Babylonia, Meissner, B^lojmnu1^ Assyrim II, pp. 65T" 9
Frankfort, Kingskifa p. 319; in Isracl,r^^.TT,*]pp. 458!; Humbert
'
n
PfjSt* II, pp. igff., and art, 'Drama, religionsgeschichtlich ' in ft
4°
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
In this drama the king plays an important part. For the gods
and for society he is 'instrumental in procuring for the community
the boon of a harmonious integration with nature5/ with the order
and powers of existence. Particularly important is his role on the
day of atonement, the fifth of the twelve days in the festival
sequence.2 Here the king must first relinquish his office into the
hands of the god, and then receive it back from him and be
reinstated as king. On behalf of the people he must first do pen-
ance, be divested of his regalia, submit to humiliating treatment at
the hands of the high priest, make a confession in which he protests
that he has not sinned, that he has not neglected the worship of
the god, that he chas not injured Babylon5, and so on. He then
receives the promise of Marduk's favour, and is again arrayed in
crown and sceptre and reinstated as king. The rite is a penitential
ceremony, and at the same time symbolizes the lowest depths of
the state of chaos and degradation. The whole established order
of existence has been disintegrated, even kingship itself which was
divinely instituted to help to maintain the harmony of existence.
But at the same time the rite signifies the 'absolution', the begin-
ning of the restoration of society and its c world5 through the
restitution of its representative and link with the gods. The New
Year festival is also a repetition of the king's coronation, as is
evident from the fact that the first year of Ms reign was officially
reckoned from the New Year festival following his predecessor's
death. The rest of the preceding year was 6 the beginning of his
reign5 his r$$ farruti.*
By means of the rites of penance and lamentation, king and
people share in the experience of Marduk's imprisonment and
humiliation, which are the occasion of these rites.4 The king heads
the procession cin search of the imprisoned god'.5 In Assyria
the king thus 'represents' the god Ninurta, who here takes the
place which Marduk's son, Nabu, has in the liberation of the god.
But this does not mean that he cis' Ninurta in a literal sense.6 He
is his visible representative and champion in the cultic drama, just
as he is normally the representative of the gods before men.
1 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 318.
2 Labat, J^^a^ pp, 24of£, 323^.; Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 3196°., 409 n. 14.
3 See Diirr uii^e^^^w^Jjlaube xx, 1928, pp. 3i3ff.
4 Frankfort, oprcit, pp, 32117*"'^
* Op. cit., p. 324.
^ 6 Gf. the commentary, JFC.A.R., 307; see Labat, op, cit., p. 245. Here we read, 'The
king, who is carried out onEEIr with the gold crown on his head, and sitting on the
throne so that they can carry him, and who walks (sic) to the castle, (that is) ," "
41
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Thus Marduk's 'liberation3 and 'resurrection' from, the under-
world are celebrated, and in the great assembly of the gods the
fate is fixed once again, when dominion has been restored to
Marduk. The king here plays the part of 'master of ceremonies '
in the assembly of the gods.1 This is the personal function of a
royal priest, not of a divine being.
The king also appears as leader in the campaign of the gods
against the forces of chaos. In Assyria, he sometimes represents
the chief god, Ashur himself, or his son Ninurta, in the war
chariot.2 This, too, is doubtless to be understood as representa-
tion, and not as an actual identification of the king with the god.
In fact, both the god and the king are thought of as being present.3
The king is, so to speak, the commander of the god's army in this
combat of ragnarok (the judgement of the gods in the old Norse
mythology).4
The climax of the procession is a symbolic presentation of the
victory over Tiamat-Chaos.5 The king must take part in it all
as the god's indispensable instrument, through whom human
society enjoys the benefit of the victory.6 He is the link between
gods and men, and the representative of both. What happens to
the king symbolizes what has happened to the god. When the
king is borne in triumph on his throne from the temple to the
palace, the meaning is that ' Ninurta has avenged his father'.7
Another part of this festival was the * sacred marriage', the
effectual symbol of the renewal of life.8 Here the king appears
1 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 325. 2 Op. cit., p. 327.
8 King Sennacherib had this ritual scene portrayed on the copper doors of the house
(temple) of the New Year Festival in Ashur; and in an inscription he describes the
picture; see Frankfort, op. cit., p. 327. It seems to me to be most natural to interpret
the text as indicating that both the god and the king were represented, standing in
Ashur's chariot. This is confirmed by the beginning of the list of gods who took part
in the procession: * Image of Ashur, going to war against Tiarnat; image of Sennacherib,
king of Assyria.* This seems to imply two images, one of the god, and the other of the
king.
4 I cannot find that Labat's examination of the commentary on the festival ritual,
K. 3476 ^Rc^aM, pp. 241 ff.), provides any evidence that the king is Marduk incarnate.
He carrlesouTlhe symbolical rites, and plays his part as representative of the god;
but nothing more. Even Labat (op. cit., pp. 244^) has to admit the possibility of this
interpretation.
5 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 327f. 6 Op. cit., p. 328. 7 See above, p. 41 n, 6.
8 Labat, op. cit., pp. iisE, 247!?.; Frankfort, op. cit., p. 295.
who has avenged his father.* But this cannot mean that the king literally is Ninurta,
but that this part of the festival ritual signifies or symbolizes that Ninurta is victorious.
The commentary gives a theological and symbolical interpretation of all kinds of
detail in the ritual. We read, for instance, that the 'horses which have been yoked'
are 'the sceptres of Zu* (i.e., the storm bird, here representing the power of chaos).
Obviously the horses do not embody the sceptres.
42
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
sometimes (but not always, nor even as a rule) as the consort
of the goddess, chosen by her to be her bridegroom; and through
his intimate association with her he obtains, on behalf of the
community, a share in the divine fertilizing power, which he
transmits to the entire community.
The king assumes this role, not because, through the entire
cultic drama, he is supposed already to have become one with the
risen god, but because, on certain occasions, the goddess 'selects'
him, presumably by means of an oracle.1 He then, no doubt,
represents Tammuz2 or Marduk, but as a proxy. In a still higher
degree he represents human society3 which, through him and his
divinization in the cult, shares in the renewed vital force which
belongs to Tammuz.4 At this moment he cis3 also the 'son5, the
'lover', and the 'husband' of the goddess. In the cultic hymns he
is therefore called c Tammuz3, as is stated, for instance, of King
Idin-Dagan of Isin.5 He experiences what Taminuz has experi-
enced, and is therefore filled with the same vital force, the same
faculty of creating and transmitting life, to which the resurrection
of Tammuz and his union with the goddess bear witness. But it is
as the representative of mankind that he has this experience. The
initiative in this nuptial act is taken by the goddess herself, the
king being even then her 'servant5.6
We may take it that this rite, too, goes back to the 'primitive5
conception of the mana-filled great chief whose mana is renewed
by immediate sexual intercourse with the goddess. If this be so, it
shows still more clearly that we cannot speak here of a real
'identity' of the king with Tammuz.
So intimate an association with the goddess naturally gives the
king concerned a lasting stamp of divinity; and there are grounds
for believing that it was precisely those kings who were selected
as bridegrooms of the goddess who continued to regard themselves
as divine and put the divine ideogram before their names.7
Here then we have the starting point for a further development
of the idea. There appears to be one single instance of the idea
that the king was the physical offspring of the god and the goddess.8
1 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 297.
2 Cf. the hymn to King Shu-Sin of Ur, translated and discussed by Falkenstein in
Qif It^^ftjjrt&^ii, 1947, pp. 43ff.
3 FrankfortTojTcit., p. 297. 4 Op. cit., pp. 296, 299; Labat, op. cit., p. 280,
5 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 295f.; Labat, op. cit., pp. 249?. For Sumerian hymns of
homage to the king see also Kramer 'm^B^^Q^ 88, Dec. 1942, pp. loff.
6 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 297. "^ ""'vSprcit., pp. 297$.; see above, p. 34.
8 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 301 (Eannatum of Lagash).
43
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
In particular, when one of the kings subdued other city states, it
would, for political reasons, be natural for him to emphasize this
divine character in relation to his vassals.1 It might then come
about that the vassal would erect a temple for his divine overlord,
as did a vicegerent in Ur for chis god' King Shu-Sin of Ur. So
did Ituria, governor of Eshnunna, for King Shu-Sin: after the
liberation Ituria rebuilt it, making it part of his own palace.2
Dungi of Ur is once called cthe god of his country.3 The great
King Hammurabi himself is once called 'the god of kings'.4 We
hear, toos of the worship of the royal statues.5 In accordance with
normal primitive thought, a person's likeness is regarded as the
bearer of his being and soul power, the perfect representative of
the person himself. When the king's statue was erected in the
temple of the god, it was in order that it might constantly represent
the king himself 'before the god', remind the god of the king, and
intercede on his behalf. Thus King Gudea instructs his statue in
the inscription, * Statue, say to my king' (i.e., the god). The king's
clife' is in the statue; but 'life' must be nourished with sacrificial
food and drink. Such a statue was not really regarded as a god.6
But a statue which was endowed with power and life in this way
might sometimes be invoked with gifts to intercede with the gods.7
To the ordinary man, the powerful 'divine' king might easily
seem to be in the same position as the gods, since it was through
him that all their blessing was conveyed to the people. The
ordinary man enjoyed protection and life in the 'shadow' of the
'godlike3 king, as the king himself lived under the protection of
the 'shadow of the god'.8 Consequently in proper names the king
may often take the place which usually belongs to the god: 'The-
king-is-my-life ', 'Rim-sin-is-my-god', 'The-king-is-my-god', and
1 Op, cit, pp.
2 Op. cit., p. 302. Ghristliebe Jeremias, Die Vergottlichung der babyloni$ch~as$yrischen
ICdmge,p. 17. ***** -w *- , . .„- -..**,
****^Jeremias> °P- ci^ j P- ID^ 4 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 302*
5 Frankfort, op. cit., pp. soafZ; Jeremias, op. cit,, pp. 13, 15, 17, 18.
6 An offering to a god was described as '(offering) to the god X', whereas gifts to
the royal statue were described as *to the statue of King Y*, without any divine
ideogram; see Frankfort, op. cit., p. 303.
7 This is in accord with the well-known fact that cultic objects which are charged
with power, such as the door or the door-handle of the temple, may be personified and
invoked as intercessors; see Frankfort, op. cit.s pp. 305f. For the statue or the memorial
as a living being of divine character with a 'soul', see also Euler in 2^tj& lv, 1937,
p. 291.
8 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 304. Against the interpretation of this statement advanced
by Engnell (and by Ghristliebe Jeremias in Die VQgqttli
Konige), see Frankfort, op. cit., p. 406 n. 35TTlf. also <
Shadow of the King' mB.A&O.R. 107, Oct. 1947, pp. 7!
44
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
the like,1 Or a man may take an oath cby the god and by the
king',2 thereby filling himself with the sacred power3 which resides
in the gods and in their representative the king. It is also under-
standable that such deified royal statues might become objects of
worship after the death of the king, and that we hear of temples
where the cult of great kings was practised after their death.4 This
comes from the same primitive idea of the dead ancestor or chief
as a being filled with power and blessing, which also lies behind
the worship of the dead Pharaoh (see above, p. 31), but of which
only occasional traces occur in Babylonia.
As we have already said, the intention of the gods in creating
kingship and the king is that he shall see to it that men render to
the gods the 'service' which they were created to render. But the
king should also care for the material and moral welfare of men.
Hammurabi, 'who fears the gods', has been called to the throne
eto make justice prevail in the land, to destroy the evil and the
wicked, that the strong should not harm the weak, to rise like the
sun god upon mankind (lit., the black-headed), to give light in the
land, and increase the well-being of men3.5
Through his good relationship with the gods, a relationship
which is strengthened and made effective by means of the cult,
the king is able to convey to men the blessings of nature, good
crops, abundance, peace, and so on. He is the channel through
whom the blessing flows down.6 He is 'like a god'.7 In poetic
language he may be called £ the sun.8 He is clike the tree of life V
and so on. He does not himself create blessing, but he prays to
the gods to give it;10 and he imparts it by being the cinan after
the gods' own heart', who in the cult establishes the mystical
union between gods and men.
The Mesopotamian royal texts are full of effusive descriptions
of the material, social, and moral prosperity which abounds in the
land when the rightful king has come to the throne, or when he
has performed his cultic duties in the right and proper way, and
complied with the will of the gods: then they reward him with
years of prosperity and with every conceivable blessing.
1 Frankfort, op. cit, pp. 3o6f.
2 Op. cit., p. 3065 Labat, Ro^aut^ p. 226. This custom seems to have lasted only foi
short periods.
8 For this interpretation of the oath see Pedersen, Der Eid leidm Semilm^pp. I28ff.:
Jjjgrf III-IV, p. 450. 4 See JeremSTopI cit, pp. 13; 1 6, 17, 1 8.
^^Introduction to the Code of Hammurabi.
6 Cf. Frankfort, op, cit., pp. 307fF. 7 See the quotation, op. cit, p. 309
8 Op. cit., p. 308. e See Additional Note IV. 10 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 311
45
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
When Thou, O faithful shepherd Gudea,
shalt have begun work for me on Eninnu, my royal residence,
I will call up in heaven a moist wind.
It shall bring thee plenty from on high
and in thy days the country shall spread its hands over wealth.
Wealth shall accompany the laying of the foundations of my
house.
All the broad fields will bear crops for thee;
dikes and canals will swell for thee.
Where the water has not been wont to rise,
On the high ground it will gush forth for thee.
Oil will be poured abundantly in Sumer in thy time,
Good weight of wool will be given in thy days.
says the god Ningirsu to King Gudea.1 And when Ashurbanipal,
'the husbandman' of his land, had come to the throne, 'Adad
(the rain god) sent his rains, Ea opened his fountains; the grain
grew five cubits tall in the stalk, the ear was five-sixths of a cubit
long; heavy crops and a rich yield made the fields constantly
abound, the orchards yielded a plentiful harvest; the cattle brought
forth their young successfully, — in my reign there was fullness to
overflowing, in my years there was abundant plenty5.2 There are
many such expressions of the 'blessing' (to use the Hebrew term)
which men thought themselves justified in expecting that the gods
would 'fix as the fate' of the righteous king and his people when
they met to 'fix the fate5 in the 'assembly of the gods' in the
chamber of fate.3 When we apply to this the term 'paradisal'
fertility, the metaphorical expression is ours and does not reflect
the ancients' own ideas. There is no ' paradise myth ' behind these
hyperbolical expressions of oriental imagination. The Babylonians
had no conception of a primeval paradise, now lost, which the
new king restored when he inaugurated a new epoch.4 It is just
1 Gudea Gyl. A XI, 58*.; cf. Frankfort, op. cit,, pp. 257f.; cf. Thureau-Dangin in
VA.B, I, pp. icof.
*" "* Kassam Cyl. 1, 45; see Streck, 4^^^2^Sf •*•*> PP- 6f-'» c^- Frankfort, op. cit., p. 310.
3 Like several others, Labat hermSestKe term *the Messianic King'; but see
Additional Note I.
4 A. Jeremias, Handbuch, p. 207; Gressmann, DerMes£$a$, p. 220, etaL, has maintained
that the SumeriaxTSaTBabylonian texts refer tothclong'as the one who is to * restore *
paradise to mankind. This is not correct; see Dxirr, Urs^m^ un^ ^^^ p. 103 n, 24,
with references to the literature. Vriezen arrives at the same conclusion in his Onderzoek
war de paradijsvoorstelling bij de oude semietische volken, * paradise as a garden with the
first man and the tree of life is typically prophetic*. This conception appears first
among the Persians, who (unlike the Egyptians and Babylonians) had a definite
eschatology,
46
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
conceivable that a few features in the description of the happy state
under the righteous king may contain echoes of Babylonian ideas
of the wondrous garden of the gods at cthe mouth of the rivers',
which is mentioned in the Gilgamesh epic and elsewhere. * But such
stylistic influence from one motif upon another is a very different
thing from conscious identification of whole systems of ideas.2
If we would sum up in one word what the people expected of
the king who had been chosen and endowed with power, we may
use the Mesopotamians3 own expression and call him cthe shep-
herd'. Hammurabi, for example, so describes himself. The king
is to be 'the shepherd of the black-headed ones5. But we may also
sum it up in the Hebrew expression ethe saviour of his people'.
The king will c work salvation', ylsa\ in the true sense of the word,
'width3, 'spaciousness'.3 It means not only deliverance from
earthly, cosmic, and demonic enemies, and from distress and
misfortune, but good conditions, well-being, outward and inward
prosperity, fertility in field, flock, and nation, quietness and order
in the state, 'peace', and the like* When, in the course of the year,
prosperity and vital energy have been exhausted, then the king,
by performing and leading the appropriate, re-creating, cultic
acts, seeks to ensure that the gods will again be victorious over
the powers of chaos, create the world anew, and bless the land.
By his vicarious and representative rites in the festival, he will
atone for the impurity which has accumulated (see above, p. 41).
Accordingly, every new king, and not least the founder of a dynasty,
maintains that through himself the gods have brought prosperity,
salvation, and abundance to land and people. We often find the
king presenting himself as ethe saving shepherd* (re'u muMlimu),
or 'the shepherd who brings justice', 'the righteous or just shep-
herd', as Hammurabi calls himself;4 just as it is often said of the
gods that they 'save', i.e., provide all the good things which are
needed for life and well-being. The adjective 'saving' is not a
special term regularly applied to a king-god, like 'Soter' in the
Hellenistic period. It is the natural linguistic expression to convey
the function and work of the righteous king.
1 The Gilgamesh Epic IX,
2 It is possible that the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and others had the idea that
the blessed garden of the gods had its counterpart in the temple garden of which the
king was the gardener; see Widengren, faoJ^ii, 1943* pp- 58f. But that does not mean
that the king is an incarnation of the kmg ofparadise, much less that such an idea lies
behind the royal ideology; see below, p. 81.
8 See Pedersen,j£^I-II, PP- 33off.
* Code of Hammurabi, Epilogue; cf. also Staerk, Soter II, p. 240.
47
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
We may sum up as follows. The king is not a god, as in Egypt;
but he has been endowed with a divine vocation and with a super-
human power and quality, which in some respects puts him on the
same plane as the gods. He possesses a 'divinity' shared by no
other mortals.1 He is elike a god'; he is cthe image of the gods/2
He has been filled with divine power, and has authority on earth
from the gods, as long as he acts in accordance with their will,
with 'justice'. Hymns may, indeed, be sung in his honour on his
festival day;3 But men do not pray to the king; on the contrary,
they pray the gods to bless him.4
It follows from all that has been said> that in Mesopotamia the
king was not a real god in the same way as in Egypt.5 Nor is it
the case, as some have maintained, that in the cultic drama the
king is identical with the god, and that in the cult the god is
incarnate in the king, so that it is the king who dies, and rises
again, and is victorious over the powers of chaos, who creates the
world anew, marries the goddess, provides fertility and life, and
is worshipped as a god.6 We cannot assert that the king generally
plays the part of the god in the cultic drama.
But it is certain that in Babylonia, too, the king has a super-
natural divine quality, which distinguishes him from other men.
He is divine, a god to his land and people, the image of the
deity, surrounded by the divine glory,7 the breath of the
people's life, as the Amarna Letters often put it, using an
expression which reflects Egyptian ideas.8 His throne is a 'divine
2 See the sour^rcierred to by Staerk, 5gfer.II, pp. 5O2f.
8 For Surnerian royal hymns, see Kramer, Summon Mj>thdogyt p. 13; Zimmern,
Die Ve^ottlickun^ des Konigs Zjfe&//|gy& pp. 3f.j CXte^^rKcfcln^T^S. xiii, 1936, pp. s6ff.
iTliTXangdonin^??;A£ I93J> PP- 367ff-> cf. ibid., pp. 42 iffTTEe style of these royal
hymns is echoed inthe royal inscriptions in the first person (the * epiphany' style); see
Mowinckel, Statholderen Nehemia^pp. 15 iff.; JS^Amj^nw^I, pp. 31 gf.
4 See Stammer mj^f&'iv, 1927, pp. lojflf.
5 The above account oFMesopotamian kingship agrees in essentials with that given
by de Fraine in jVajfMt rJ^S^i\ *n Mesopotamia, the king qua king shared in the
divine authority '"[^une^articrpation fonctionelle de Panutu'); he was not considered
a divine being perse. Real deification (Tapotheose d'une divinisation') took place only
with some kings of the first Accadian dynasty, the third dynasty of Ur, and some
Kassite kings (cf. above, p. 34 n. 5) . I have been unable to refer fully to de Fraine's
valuable book.
6 This seems to sum up fairly the views of Engnell, Widengren, Haldar, and others.
Engnell often speaks of the king as being identical with the god. Labat, whose thought
is usually clearer, also speaks of the king in the festival as being *the national god
incarnate' (JitaffiJ^ P- ?4°)* ^ut on ^ cu^ °f ^e king, Engnell expresses himself
more cautiously: 'the direct cult of the divine king cannot have been of great signifi-
-««—3 (op. cit., p. 46). Engnell's criticism of Labat' s still more cautious statement
Mt p. 372; cf. p. 368) does not seem justified.
_ifTChristliebe Jeremias, S^^^j^chu^der ^^^K^SS^^^' &Si^> PP*
8 Detailed references are given by
A
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
throne'.1 In him all power and justice dwell; and he is the earthly
administrator of the divine government.
From the time of his election in the womb and his accession, he
is filled with Supernatural-, divine powers and qualities, so that he
can always be the appropriate link between gods and men, and
represent both in their mutual relationship. He becomes the
palladium of the community, the bearer of its divine powers, the
channel through which divine energy, vitality, blessing, and good
fortune flow from gods to men. It is he who in his own person
receives all this on men's behalf, and lets it stream out into the
community. In certain respects a union of divine and human2
takes place in his representative person.3 Through him the powers
of life come in visible and tangible form to human society. His
person is imbued not only with justice and righteousness, but with
the creative, life-giving, life-preserving, fertilizing powers, which
are thus available for the land and the people. To that extent
we may say hyperbolically that he creates life, fertility, and the
like.4
It is through his participation in the cultic drama and the usual
1 Accad. kussl iluti; see Christliebe Jeremias, op. cit., p. 10.
2 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 286; cf. also Labat's carefully considered summing up,
/fowzu&, PP- 36 iff- 9 notwithstanding his divine character, the king is a man subordinate
fotKFgods; he 'is the link uniting gods and men, and to a certain degree shares in the
divine character'.
3 In view of the general tendency of primitive thought to regard the representative
and the symbol as identical with what they represent (cf. Le"vy-Bruhl, Lesfonctions
mentales dg$s les SQgjfajs injMewes9 pp. 68fT.), we might suppose that the BaEylwiians
fflctl;hat in*CEe cult trie goa momentarily revealed himself in the king. But this
identity would be only temporary, and could not be made the basis of an understand-
ing of the entire royal ideology. We are not justified in simply identifying the
Mesopotamian royal ideology with primitive ideas of a chief and medicine man, who
is endued with mana and divine properties; cf. Nyberg's statement: * Sacral kingship
is not a primitive Semitic idea; it is a historical innovation, which was never native to
the desert, but is an invention of agricultural and civilized countries' (Sakkunnigutldtan-
det qngdende hdfe fo'rkl. professorsambetet i exegetik (Exj^rfs Rj^p^t on th^Vacant Chair^^
Sagm$", 'p.TjJJ. Tvtore~over, the tho"ught of "the ancient Babylonians Tiad leTftTthe
primitive, pre-logical stage behind, and had a far more * rational* character, as may
be seen from their attempts at science. Their approach to things was 'empirico-
logical5, to use Albright's expression (From tj^ Stone Age to Christianity2, pp. 8aff.;
cf. pp. 123, I34f., 147? 228, 257ff., 365; ^Kieolog^ andJnTj^el^mij^Th^) pp. 26ff.).
4 In fact, Engnell's definition of the king's divinity (whenev¥rneTo1raLum as attempts
to give any clear definition; see jQjggtf ^^^MP^ P- 31) does not §° mucn beyond this.
Of course, Engnell is right in saying tfiattKe king is cin no way just "another feeble
creature," ' (Witzel's expression) . But the question is not the legitimacy of this phrase,
but rather the sense in which v/e must understand the 'identity* of the king with the
god. If Engnell adheres to his definition, then the king and the god are simply not
identical; but then Engnell's statements in many other parts of the book about the
full identity of the god and the king become obscure or directly misleading. It may be
that many differences of opinion to which Engnell alludes (Hocart, Langdon, Witzel,
and others) are the result of the difficulty of expressing 'pre-logical' realities in terms
of modern, rational ideas.
49
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
cultic acts that this 'divinization5 takes place and is constantly
renewed. In the cult, the king is not the god, but represents him,
in some instances more palpably than in others, but never in such
a way that the clear distinction between the god and the king is
obscured. Here, as in other ways, he is the connecting link,
representing both the god and the people. This is evident even
from his role in the drama of the New Year festival, in which his
'divinity' is in general most prominent, and in which, in many
ways, he appears as one who shares in the power and nature of
the gods. But he appears even more clearly and consistently as
the representative of the world of men. As the connecting link
between both worlds, however, he manifestly shares the experience
of the fate of the gods, their impotence, their struggle, their victory
and triumph, the experience of the death and resurgence of life
in the reality of the cult, which determines and creates the reality
of daily experience.1 In the sacred marriage he has the same
experience as Tammuz, and, to that extent, is for the time being a
'Tammuz5; but it is not as a god but as a man that he has the
experience. It is as the representative of the people that the
experience comes to him; and through it he imparts to the whole
community for which he stands a share in the renewal of the vital
forces, the resurgence of life, the blessing and salvation of the new
creation. That is why he acts as priest in so many important
cultic situations (see above, pp. 33, 38). His supernormal equip-
ment enables him at one and the same time to transmit the divine
energies, and to receive them on behalf of the people, as, for
example, when he performs the effectual rites of fertility.2
Through one-sided exaggeration of the 'divinity' of the king in
eastern religions, and of his position as representative of the god in
the cultic drama, several scholars have recently contended that it
was inherent in the king's character as identical with the god, and
in the royal ideology, that he should be the suffering, dying, and
rising god; and they have spoken of 'the aspect of suffering5 as a
constant element in the royal ideology.3 This is, in fact, a mis-
understanding. The presupposition of the theory (the king's
absolute 'identity3 with the god) is incorrect; and the individual
1 Cf. my review of Engnell's Divine ^ng^^nNJ^f. xlv, 1944, pp. yoff.; Bentzen,
Det sakrale kor^edgnme^ pp. ^L^ King <53^^£z^ p7 26 -
"^ CaBat, Twjwjffip. 288ff.; GaHH, ^^^SmneR^inj^^nci^EasL pp. 49, 9 if.
3 EngnelirSSSS* K^s^^ see Index^.v. ^^Passion. , penitence^ ana "death" of
the king'; audfmTE^x^ig^ pp. 3 iff, (= £JLRJf. xxxi, 1948, pp. $ff.); Widengren
in SJSjt x, 1945, pp. 66ff.
50
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
arguments advanced in support of the theory of the suffering and
dying king are untenable.1
In other parts of the ancient east, too, we find the influence of
the ideas about kings and kingship which were held in the ancient
civilizations. We find it, for instance, among the Hittites of Asia
Minor.2 Here, too, the starting point is the ancient tribal system,
with the chosen chief as the leading man in the assembly of warrior
nobles. When the name of Labarnash, the founder of the dynasty,
is used as a royal title, this is doubtless an echo of ancestor wor-
ship, and of the conception of the ancestor as filled with power and
made divine. The king is the chero',3 equipped by the deity with
superhuman faculties. He is hedged about by tabus of many
kinds, doubtless inherited from an older cmana-chieftaincy'.
As the kingdom increased in political power, and began to take
part in international relations, it was also influenced by ideas from
the ancient civilizations: from the east through the extensive
intermingling of the Hittites with the Hurrians of northern Meso-
potamia, through ancient Assyrian influence in Asia Minor, and
through strong Assyrian trading colonies there, and so on; from
Egypt, inter alia, through direct political connexions in war and
peace. The use of the winged sun's disk (Horus-Re as the sun-
hawk) as a royal symbol is the result of Egyptian influence. The
king himself is the c sun-majesty'. 'My sun' is his way of referring
to himself in the official formula. Like the Mesopotamian kings,
he may also be called 'the son of Teshub', the god of storm, rain,
and war. The king's mother is called cthe mother of the god',
i.e., of the divine king.4 After death the king enters the world of
the gods and 'becomes a god'; the expression simply means that
the king dies. This is probably a combination of ancient ancestor
worship with the Egyptian royal ideology. Traces of Egyptian
1 See Additional Note V.
2 See Gotze, J^ldmsien, pp. 8off; Engnell, JSiffi^ $^£$M^PP' 52^-
3 See Gotze, (jpj^Jf^)> 82 : * In der Bezeichnung <THeH*7"konimt die Steigerung der
menschlichen Eigenschaften zum Ausdruck, die den Konig an die Sphare des Gott-
lichen heranfuhrt'; cf, Engnell, Divine Kjnssbjjk p. 76. In the Ugantic text SS, the
new-born god is called mt = HeETplur. me$im, Accad. mutu = 'man', 'hero1. Of
course this has nothing to do with the conception of the Urmnsch, as Engnell thinks
(op. cit, p. 169, n. 3); cf, Mowinckel in SLTh. II, i, 1948/9, p. 80.
4 See Engnell, op. cit., p. 58. It ought InioTfo be concluded from this (as is done by
Engnell) that the king was regarded as the issue of a (cultic) divine marriage. Nor
does anything suggest that the king was regarded as divine from birth (op. cit., p. 57).
On the whole, Engnell draws too sweeping conclusions from slender evidence, seeking,
as far as possible, to find his common eastern pattern of royal ideology even among the
Hittites; see, e.g., op. cit, pp. 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 64.
5*
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
influence seem to be frequent; but they are not integrated in a
coherent theological system like the Egyptian royal ideology
itself. As in Babylonia, offerings were made to the king's statue,
thought of as charged with power. The king was the c image' of
the god.
It appears that we are here dealing with individual borrowed
elements, rather than with any consistent ideology of a divine
king. But it is clear that the Hittite king, too, was regarded as a
superhuman, godlike3 being, endowed with divine faculties and
qualities.
Similar ideas to those of Mesopotamia are found in Canaan,,
Israel's immediate environment, whose culture the Israelite set-
tlers had assimilated. Admittedly, we have little direct knowledge
of the royal ideology, and of the part played by the king as the god's
representative in the cult and in the mind of the community.1
The Ugaritic texts provide the most rewarding sources. The first
of these which call for consideration are the Karit Epic and the
Dan'il-Aqhat legend. Some scholars have taken the Karit Epic
as a purely ritual text for cultic use, relating to the sacred marriage,
in which Karit is both god and king in one person.2 This can
hardly be correct. As the poem now stands it is not a ritual text,
but a poetic epic about Karit, a legendary king and the founder
of a dynasty,3 who appears as a demigod, but is at the same time,
in relation to the gods, a human being.4 It is possible, and even
probable, that behind the mythical, legendary King Karit there
stands a divine figure of the same type as Aleyan-Baal, the dying
and rising god of life: Albright has drawn attention to the fact that
Nu'man, one of the epithets applied to Karit, is identical with
one used of the fertility god Adonis.5 If so, 'the god Karit' has
undergone the same development as the Babylonian Gilgamesh,
who 'was two-thirds divine and one-third human' and who went
forth in order to escape death and yet had to die. Originally King
1 See Additional Note VI.
2 See Engnell, op. cit.} pp. I43ff., with the summary of earlier interpretations; see
also his study 'The Text II K from Ras Shamra* in Home Soederbtomianae I, i, pp. iff,
8 With this interpretation, cf. the rather similar one Sy^aSHS7In Berytus VI,
I94I> PP- 63^.; cf. also his ' Kana'anaeisk Religion' in Illustrent RdiewnsKistom\
pp. aoyff. —•'— ~* ~^™^^ ^
4 See my remarks in JV.7V£. xlii, 1941, pp. isgff.; xliii, 1942, pp. 24^,; xlv, 1944,
p. 73. Gf. de Langhe, j^tfe*%/z K^-gejjfak^ H. L. Ginsberg, T
"**"* *""
Albright in &A&&8. 65, Feb. 1937, p. 28 n. 20; cf. W. von Baudissin,
Adorns undj&§g$j^, pp. 86fF.
™^^ 52
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Gilgamesh was the god of vegetation, 'the god Tree3.1 In the
same way the god Thor in Asgard has become in the folksong
'Thor, Knight of Hafsgard'. The Karit epic cis unmistakably a
legend about men3.2 But Karit is no ordinary historical king.
The theme of the epic is the securing of posterity to perpetuate the
dynasty. Pedersen is surely right in taking Karit as a hero, claimed
as ancestor by a dynasty which was still reigning at the time when
the epic was composed. The poem treats of Karit,, the ancestor
of the royal house, who lives on in later kings, and of his military
expedition to win the bride, cthe young woman ', who cwill bear
a son to Karit3 and perpetuate the life of the dynasty. The birth
of a son means that life and prosperity are assured for his land and
people in the coming generation. cThe Keret text presents the
life of the king as the bearer of society, by describing the wedding
festival of the ancestor king, the birth of the family, the fertiliza-
tion of the fields through the cult.' The same thought underlies
the Dan'il-Aqhat legend.3 'Behind the accounts of Daniel and
Keret in these two royal texts lies the interplay between the souls
of the god and the king.'4
Whether Karit was originally a divine figure or a legendary
king, the historical and legendary elements in the epic are in part
presented in the form and the language of myth. The motif of
the epic is derived from the 'sacred marriage', which was one of
the chief features in the Canaanite cultic drama. The entire
religion was dominated by the idea of the dying and rising fertility
god, by the thought of clife out of death'.5 The myth and the
cultic drama describe how Baal dies in the conflict with Mot,
the power of death, and how his beloved, cthe virgin Anath',
searches for him, how she defeats Mot, how Baal rises again or is
bom again in the son he begets by Anath, and, further, how he
defeats the hostile powers of chaos, is enthroned on the divine
mountain in the north as king of gods and men, how he is united
with Anath, the mother goddess and goddess of fertility, how he re-
creates the universe, symbolized by the restoration of his temple,6
1 Mowinckel in. Act. Or xv, 1937 pp. 1408".
2 Ginsberg, The %jj^o£J£bg SjS^ P- 7> *°ot» ^ot^ ^c LanSne and Ginsberg under-
estimate the niytnic^diernent iiTTEs epic. The correct view, that Karit and Dan'il
are heroes, is also maintained by Eissfeldt in -Be^&ge^^r -AnMsti 8®™$*^ und_lslatrif
pp. s67ff. —»--" .
*^^*KeFShsberg in JB.A.S.O.R. 97, Feb. 1945, pp. sff.; 98, April 1945, pp.
4 The last two quotaSonTare from Pedersen in 4feS^ ?£i!S?'9^S3S!3& P* ^P*
5 Gf. Brede Kristensen's book with this title, demonstratingTne'eStence of this idea
in Egyptian and Greek religion.
6 We are indebted to Hvidberg (Graad og Latter i det GamU
53
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Themes from this cultic myth have been used as formative
elements in the plot of the epic of Kant/ just as the motif of the
death of the god has been used in the description of the death of
the son Aqhat in the Dan'il Epic.2 Karit is the specially chosen and
trusted 'servant'3 and cson'4 of the supreme god EL He is one of
'the gods'.5 As in Babylonia, the royal child has been suckled
by goddesses.6 His bride, 'the noble Virgin',7 has several features
which belong to the fertility goddess; and the birth of the son
guarantees life and prosperity to the royal dynasty and the people,
like the birth of the son of the god in the myth. The life and health
of the king mean blessing and righteous rule ('judgement') in the
land. This last element also occurs in the Dan'il legend.8 The
supreme god, 'the Bull El', is his father.9 The goddess promises
immortality to the king's son, and as many years and months 'as
Baal when he is alive'.10 There are vestiges of the cult of the king's
dead ancestors.11 In the literal sense these hero kings are not
themselves immortal, although they are sons of El,12 and although
for them, as for all eastern kings, men wish everlasting life (i.e.,
exceedingly long life). We hear that both Karit and Dan'il must
die. 'The king occupies a dual, or rather, an intermediate, posi-
tion between gods and men'.13
Whether the king of Ugarit played a part in the cultic drama
as the god's 'representative5, we do not know for certain, though
1 This is the kernel of truth in Engnell's cultic interpretation of the epic.
2 There seems to me to be no ground for Engnell's statement (op. cit., p. 141) that
Dan'il £is here [i.e., in I D, col. I, 38f.] simply identified with Ba'lu'. The text speaks
of Dan'il 'conjuring the clouds' (cf. Hos. ii, 23^) in order to make Baal keep back the
rain for seven years.
3 See Mowinckel in J£.TJ1> xlin* 1942, pp. 24!?., with references to the texts.
4 Krt A, 41, 59, 76f.7"iD9; Krt G cols. I-II, iof., 20-4, ic^f., nof. (according to
Ginsberg's enumeration of the lines) .
6 Krt G I-II, 22.
6 Krt B II, asff.
7 mft bryi Ginsberg translates *Lady Hurriya'.
8 Dan'il V, 46°.; Engnell, op. cit., p. 137.
8 Dan'il I, 24; Engnell, op. cit., p. 136.
10 Dan'il VI, aGff.; Engnell, op. cit., p. 138.
11 Dan'il I 24^.; Engnell, op. cit., p. 136.
12 It is brought out clearly enough in the description of Karit's illness in Krt G I, iff.
Gf. Ps. Ixxxii, 6f. It is an inversion of the truth when Engnell states (op. cit., p. 138) :
'the king — although he is "immortal" — has to "die" like everyone else, or, more
exactly, for everyone else J. Being in himself mortal, the king has an unusually long
life in virtue of his kingship, because he is full of divine power.
18 Pedersen in lUt^treret ^eUgionsMston^ p. 207.
f°r making clear these fundamental features in the Aleyan-Baal
Itic meaning. Gf. my critique of Hvidberg's Graad o^Latter in JV", T. T.
xl, 1939, and Kapelrud in J^TVT^ 3di, 1940, pp. 38fF.; see 1^^*"
.jigs SJyawL, Texts, «-*—•** ^
54
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
there may be some grounds for thinking so.1 If so, we have the
same identification in experience of the king (as representative of
the cultic assembly) with the deity, which was also characteristic
of the position of the Babylonian kings in the cult (see above, p. 50).
It has sometimes been maintained that this oriental royal
ideology must go back to a specific myth about a celestial, divine,
'saviour king' of the future, of whom individual kings were re-
garded as realizations or incarnations. But no such general,
oriental, saviour myth (eschatological in greater or less degree)
ever existed.2
Equally untenable is the theory that the royal ideology was
originally associated with or derived from an Urmensch. Nor is
the myth of the Urmensch a concept common to the ancient east.
The fact that descriptions of the Urmensch sometimes contain
kingly traits is in no way connected with the royal ideology as
such, or with its origin.3
In spite of the great differences between, for instance, Egyptian
and Babylonian views of the king, there are certain common basic
features. As we have seen, both go back to the primitive concep-
tion of the 'mana-chief 3 as a being endowed in a special way with
power, and possessed of divine faculties and energies. In Egypt,
the king has become an incarnate god; in Babylonia, he appears
with greater or less distinctness as a deified man, a superman,
standing between the gods and ordinary mortals. It is chiefly in
this Babylonian form that the royal ideology occurs among other
eastern peoples, though certain traces of Egyptian ideas and
etiquette occasionally appear, particularly among the Hittites.
Thus when some modern scholars attribute 'identity' with the
1 The features adduced by Hooke (Earh fiMElf $lte?> PP- 35> 42) as evidence that
in the cult the king appeared in the roTTof the god, areonly vague possibilities lacking
positive proof. Nor does Engnell's rendering of the texts in Divine Kingship provide
certain evidence of this; all the evidence is obtained with the help^tfie rituaT pattern
scheme; cf. op. cit., pp. 112, 127, 136 foot, 139 foot, 141, 150, 151, 152 foot, 155?.,
161, 167. Engnell's own summary of the evidence (op. cit., pp. i68fF.) is obviously
only sufficient to show that Karit has the same * divine* features as for instance all the
other earthly kings of Babylonia, and that the epic is modified by conventional motifs
from the divine myth; but from this no certain conclusions can be drawn as to whether
at Ugarit the king was identical with the god and played the part of the god in the
cult. Cf. also Pedersen's indefinite statement in Illustreret Rejtigionshistorie*, p. 207: *It is
probable that at any rate in the early period tfieTong played tEerpart of the leading
god in the festival.'
2 See Mowinckel in St.Th. II, i, 1948/9, pp. 76ff.
3 For further detailsTScTSy^II, i, 1948/9, pp. 7iff, Against EngnelTs assertion
that ben *o$fm is a term dmotog the Urmensch and a royal tide, see Sjoberg mSJTJC^
xxvi, 1950, pp, 35fT.
55
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
deity to eastern kings, and regard the 'pattern' of royal ideology
as both uniform and common to the whole Near East, we must
qualify their views in several ways.1 Nevertheless the fact remains
that sacral kingship played an important part in all these ancient
civilizations. Even among the Babylonians, whose thought was
more 'rationalistic3 than that of any other eastern people, there
was ascribed to the king a superhuman, we may even say a
supernatural, divine quality. The king was a kind of god on
earth. He had divine faculties and qualities. He was the repre-
sentative of the gods before men, as he was the representative of
men before the gods. He was the channel through which the
power and blessing of the deity and of nature flowed to society;
and he had an important and active part to play in the cult,
whereby every year the gods created the world anew, and kept
the universe and society in harmony with each other. Naturally,
these thoughts often appear in mythical forms, in accordance with
contemporary modes of thought and expression.
2. The Israelite Ided of^ingsfn^: Tdaml^s A^mj^d
It is against the background of these eastern conceptions of
kingship that the Israelite conception has to be considered.2
When Israel came from the desert into Canaan, assimilated
Canaanite culture, and finally, as the Old Testament sources
themselves state, adopted kingship after the Canaanite model, it
goes without saying that she also adopted and imitated Canaanite
ideas of kingship, its forms and etiquette, and the like, just as the
Roman emperor became the prototype of the national kings of the
Teutons, the kings of the Franks, the Saxons, and others, and just
as Charlemagne in his turn was to determine the character of the
old Norse monarchy. The Ho^M in Israel would naturally be a
more or less faithful imitation of that of Canaan, which in turn
was only a special form of that found throughout the Near East,
1 We are probably justified in saying that Widengren (Re^ionens varld*, pp. 2541!.)
ascribes too great general phenomenological importance to i!E?3eveIoj>ea ideology
associated with sacral kingship. He rightly says that some fundamental ideas seem, to
be common to a particular level of culture. But the inquiry into sacral chieftainship
ought to have been related more closely to the mana-filled chief and medicine man,
and to the cult of ancestors, than Widengren has done.
2 This was first maintained by Gunkel in Preussische TedMcfwr dviu, 1914, pp. 42f.,
and by Gressmann in ^^gg^ pp. s>5ofF. TSSS^iiso Mowmckel, KgyesMyjerjyf, pp.
2off.; Ps.St. II, pp. agSIET'Gunkel-Begrich, Einltitung, pp. issff.; Pe3ersen, Israel
- *
, , . . ,
III-IV, pp. 33JBT. The strong emphasis on thirpomt of view by Hooke and his*coP
. '
sid
56
, . .
laborators (hjyjji jond Ritual, Index, s.w. 'King*, 'Kingship*; The La^^^ Index,
s.w, 'King, Divine })Tre1f5resents a one-sided exaggeration of tFe "viewof earlier
scholars,
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
as it developed in the great states on the Euphrates and Tigris, and
on the Nile.1 This style and etiquette were an expression of the
conception of sacral kingship.
But Israel did not take over either Canaanite religion,2 or the
sacral kingship which was connected with it, unaltered. In
Yahwism the royal ideology underwent profound changes. Even
in the purified, Yahwistic form of the tradition in the Old Testa-
ment, there are many indications that the forms and ideas asso-
ciated with the monarchy, which were originally adopted in the
court ceremonial of David and Solomon, were strongly influenced
by common oriental conceptions. But we must also be prepared
to find that many ideas were adopted in a sense different from that
which they originally carried in Canaan or Babylonia. Many a
cultic rite may have been dissociated from its original context3
when it was appropriated for Yahwism, so that it now appears
either as a survival or with a new meaning. This meaning is
determined not by what it may have signified in another context,
but by its context in the structural unity of which it now forms a
part. As for expressions and phrases in the royal etiquette, many
of these may have been just rhetorical or poetical forms, adopted
simply because they belonged to the traditional literary style.
For we must not forget that the Israelite monarchy also inherited
traditions from the old chieftainship of the semi-nomadic period
and the time of the settlement.4 In the traditions about Saul, the
account of his simple household, court, and bodyguard are
reminiscent of the establishment of an ancient chieftain rather
than of an oriental king's court.5 The chieftainship was in a
measure hereditary. But the position of a tribal chief or sheikh
depended primarily on his personal qualities, his ability to lead,
advise, and help, and to settle disputes within the tribe or between
tribes and clans.6 All the traditions about the Judges show that
they attained their position because, in a given historical situation,
they were able to rally the tribe, or several tribes, around them-
selves, to beat off the enemy, and thus 'save' their people. In
1 Gf. Gressmann, Der Afek^ pp. 44ff.
2 The viewpresuppose^^rHaldar (e.g., in Th$ Notion of the Desert inSwnm^Accadian
Qffd West-Semitic ReU^on^is just as monstrous as was SaTonfTWrnSlder in his remarks
on IsradfiT^giSpLmEis Geschichte Ijraeh^ or in gJLT*, pp. 2Q4ff., passim.
3 See above p. 24. Gf. furlheFTranBort, nTTrobUm o^Swnttar^ in^ 4«£Hn£ Near
Eastern Religions. ^— «-
^fcfcTOfeSSn, Israel III-IV, pp. 41 ff.
5 See Buhl, DeTSraetitiskt Folks Histp^, pp. i8sf.; cf. McGown, Tl^Lwfder o£
Proems in PalesSSf9 ^^^^
~. KSSSSSr Israel III-IV, pp. aisff.
^~~ 57
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN AN.GIENT ISRAEL
time of peace they retained the authority thus gained; and the
example of Gideon shows that it could also be transmitted to sons,
provided they were able to uphold their father's 'honour'. But
apart from the influence which the chieftain's honour won for
him (and in honour there were of course included wealth, a good
and numerous family, and personal moral qualities such as
resourcefulness, courage, sagacity, knowledge of the traditions of
justice, generosity, skill as a negotiator, and the like), his position
was that of a primus inter pares.
The comprehensive expression for all these qualities and activi-
ties was that he 'judged3. He was 'judge', i.e., ruler, and leader,
and magistrate, by virtue of his ability to do mifpat, and his in-
herent 'righteousness' (sedakdh). This chieftainship has been
called 'charismatic',1 as dependent on Yahweh's 'grace-gift';
and the legends2 often emphasize that the Judges were called to
the task of liberation by a revelation from Yahweh Himself. We
also hear that they performed their heroic deeds because Yahweh's
spirit came upon them and endowed them with unusual power
and insight.3 When the spirit seized them in the hour of crisis,
the effect was ecstasy, a high tension of all the powers and faculties
of the soul Then they 'went in this their might', with Yahweh
as their protector and helper (Judges vi, 14; cf. i Sam. x, 1-7).
There is no mention of a permanent endowment with the spirit,
but of an abnormal communication of power from time to
time.
In his activity the chief was dependent on the fact that he repre-
sented ancient use and wont and conceptions of justice, and on
the approbation of the leading men of the tribe, 'the elders'. He
had no independent power to enforce his commands. His au-
thority was founded on the trust he enjoyed, the spiritual influence
he exercised, and the approbation of public opinion and the com-
mon sense of justice.4 If he had the tribe or a personal following
behind him, he might also enforce his will on other tribes (see
Judges xii, iff.).
1 See Alt, ^^StaaUnbMmg der iifag^^t^fltoMj^pp. 9!; Michekt, Fra Mose til
^^^ ""*"" '*"****'
jrjigg -
*~J**Tl5£ttcrm * legend' is here used to translate the Norwegian sagn; and 'legendary*
elsewhere usually represents sagnaktig. The use of such terms does not, of course, imply
that the narratives so designated are wholly unhistorical. Of. Bentzen, Introduction to
the Old Testament* I, p. 233 n. 4 (Translator). ^~^^^ ^
"""* "See 13aa!er73Mjr #// Gamla tes^eM^^Jorestdllnin^ar om AndwL pp. iff. Linder is
scarcely right in nomTng thaHh Israel this conception Is^ofSeTtEan that of the spirit
in the prophets. See below, pp. 78f.
* Cf. Jos. xxiv, 15; Judges vi, 25-32; viii, 1-3; xi, 4-11.
58
s
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Besides his activity as a judge, the chief was also in charge of the
public cult of his tribe.1 The ancient unity of chief and seer-priest
is reflected in the traditions about Moses; the chief Ehud
appears as the bearer of an oracle from Yahweh (Judges iii,
19); Gideon receives oracles (Judges vi, tiff.); and Samuel is
presented both as seer-priest and as judge (i Sam. ixf. and
viif.). The memory of this twofold office appears occasionally
in the tradition when it gives to the individual judge a man
of oracles, or prophet, to advise and support him (Judges iv, ^ff.;
i Sam. ixff.).
This all shows, of course, that the chief is closely associated with
the god of the tribe; more so in practice than his fellow- tribesmen.
This is reflected, for instance, in such phrases as c the god of so-
and-so (the chief or ancestor) '.2 Alongside of it we also find the
thought and the expression, 'the god of my house (i.e., of my
family)'.3 And a great many personal names from nearly all
'primitive5 Semitic national groups show that the god of the
tribe was looked upon as the father, or brother, or kinsman of the
one who bore the name.4 But this does not mean that the god was
supposed to have physically begotten this particular individual.
Here terms like 'father5 have a sociological reference, not an
individual and physical one. The god is the father, and brother,
and kinsman of the whole tribe. The expression points to the
tribe's origin, inasmuch as the god is often looked upon as its
ancestor; but he is not the father of the chief in a sense different
from that in which he is the father of the whole tribe and of all
its individual members.
The Israelite monarchy is the result of the fusion of the tradi-
tions of the old chieftainship with the laws, customs, and ideas of
Canaanite kingship. Thence arose the early attempts at tribal
kingship under Gideon and Abimelech; and IshbaaPs kingdom
east of Jordan was of the same character.5 In contrast with these,
Saul represents a conscious attempt to create a comprehensive
national kingship embracing all the tribes; and he probably had
1 Judges vi, 24, 25E; via, 124-7; ix, 27; xvii, 1-5.
2 Cf. Alt, J2gr Got* der Vater.
8 See Euler in 23£E£T^9$» PP- 3ooff'
4 See RobertsonSrSth, P^wn^o^tJ^ >Senu^, pp, 45ff., sogff.; von Baudissin,
$ u$d $£&** PP* 43^*5 sEorterlsurvey, e.g., in Schofield, The R^^otJ^B^^mt^
Bible, pp. 64ff.; M. Noth, Du^ israelitischen Pmoi^namen i^^.alwun3^ gemeinsemi-
^""^ ^mm^"rVf^ea^ "" ' *-*•"'•* **'-^r--, *^» ,«— ~»»Wp_
f7ivf iff.; cf. Eissfeldt in l^J$W*lk X95rj PP-
59
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
behind him the old Israelite amphictyony of ten tribes.1 This
appears to be the kernel of the tradition about the solemn choice
of a king at Gilgal and Mizpah (i Sam. x, lyff.; xi, isff.). On the
other hand, the kingship of David and Solomon represents a
national and religious syncretism. The powerful position of David's
dynasty was based on hereditary control of the Canaanite city
state of Jerusalem, which lay outside tribal territory;2 and Solo-
mon's administrative division of the realm had as its object and
result the complete fusion of the Israelites with the native popula-
tion.3 The temple was a * royal temple5, and gave expression,
according to the Canaanite pattern, to the close connexion be-
tween the national god and the king.
But in Israel the tension between the traditions of chieftainship
and those of kingship, and, in general, the hostility of the c desert
ideals' to the monarchy were always present.4 This is evident in
the opposition between the old standard of justice and the despotic
mispat of the new monarchy. In the affair of Naboth they clash
in the persons of Elijah and Ahab (i Kings xxi). The opposition
is still more plainly seen in. the theory that Yahweh alone should
be king in Israel, and in the clear awareness that kingship was a
Canaanite innovation, thoughts which find expression in one of
the collections of traditions about Saul and Samuel (i Sam. viii;
x; xii; xv). When the cultic functions were transferred to the king,
and the chiefs entered his service, it was left to the circles of old
seers and prophets to conserve the traditions of nomadic times, or
rather, what they believed these traditions to be. In the traditions
about Moses he is not, as has been maintained,5 a partial reflec-
tion of the figure of the king: on the contrary, he represents the
ideals and traditions which were opposed to the monarchy. It was
this prophetic opposition which constantly renewed the claim that
the king's task was to submit to and maintain 'the justice of
Yahweh', and not to claim to be more than he was, or to exalt
1 On this amphictyony see Noth, Das ^jem der zwolf Stdmme Israels. But Noth is
wrong in maintaining that it was a feHeration oHwHve trlBeTfaccorSmg to Judges v
it consisted of only ten; see Mowinckel, x£t/r jVa^g nach dokumentarischen Q^eUen in Josua
I3-I99 pp. 2 if. *""" * ~~ *-"" ***
Wfc*lCF. Alt, Die S^tenMLdunsder Israeliten in Palastina.
3 cf. Ait, sr^cTE^^ESJtg, ppTfiT"*"'" <w**™*^>
4 Gf. Budde, 'Das nomaHiscfie Ideal im alten Israel' iftJftwjSSjj&fw ij^Mto" Ixxxv,
1896; Nystrorn, 3^^^^, und B^^mn^^^ pp. 79!?. This point is alsorigmly empha-
sized by de ^^^^^^j^ ^^^^^^^
6 E.g., Pedersen, Isr^TfR-TvT^' 66af.; Engnell, Gffife JSfeffi^ *» PP- 9^» !34>
with references to tEeTiterature, «— •»
GO
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
himself over his 'brethren3.1 It is emphasized that it was ca
warrior chosen from among the people3 that Yahweh exalted
when he made David king (Ps. Ixxxix, 20). King Ahaz is a man
like other men, asserts the prophetic tradition; and in the moment
of danger chis heart and the heart of his people shook as the trees
of the forest shake before the wind3 (Isa. vii, 2, 13). That the
bodies of the kings have been interred beside Yahweh's temple is
for Ezekiel the gross c defilement3 which has called down Yahweh's
punishment upon the city (Ezek. xliii, yff.).
It is, therefore, only to be expected that, if not at the outset, at
least in the course of time, the common oriental royal ideology
would undergo in Israel quite fundamental changes under the
influence of Yahwism and the wilderness tradition, and that many
of the forms which were borrowed would acquire a modified or
new content. In consequence, those common features which do
exist must not be interpreted solely in terms of the meaning they
had in Babylonia or Egypt, but in the light of the entire structure
and the fundamental ideas of Yahwism. Rites originally associated
with the worship of the king may have been adopted in the Israelite
cult without any thought of their original meaning.2
In the ancient Aramaic inscriptions from north Syria we have
an interesting analogy which corroborates the way in which the
old nomadic view of the relation between the king and the god
prevailed over the oriental royal ideology. These inscriptions bear
witness to the invasion of the semi-nomadic Aramean tribes into
the small states of northern Syria, and their usurpation of political
power in the tenth and ninth centuries B.C. They shed much light
on the relation of the king and the royal family to the gods. Euler
sums up the results of his thorough investigation in the following
words: cThe king is not held to be of divine origin3 and conse-
quently is not the son of any god whatsoever, No text hints at
anything of the kind/3 Nor does the king become divine after
1 i Sam. viii, iofF.; x, 25; cf. xii, iff.; Deut. xvii, 14-21, 'his brethren'; Jer. xxii, 13,
* his neighbour' (compatriot).
2 In the search for such rites, scholars sometimes read into the evidence what they
are looking for. So, e.g., whenHooke (J.M.E.Q.S. xvi, 1931, pp. 231?.) finds Yahwistic
reaction against Canaanite riles of the^^elHcaSbn of the king in Exod, xx, 26; xxiii,
igb; Lev. ii, 1 1 . It is correct to speak here of reaction against the ritual of the Canaan-
ite cult; but to find any reference to the king is arbitrary.
3 See Euler in ££$£• Ivi, 1938, p. 296. EngnelPs polemic against Euler (^mw
JnngA^, p. 205) taESslbr granted what needs to be proved (viz., that the conception
mtnSe inscriptions is the same as that in the general oriental pattern), and does not
take account of the essential point, that we are dealing here with a new, recently
immigrated people with its own conceptions.
61
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
death; he is the agent of the divine will, entirely subordinate to
the god, but not a more or less 'identical incarnation3 of him.
In spite of all this, however, it is clear that, even in the official
Israelite conception of the king, the idea which is central and
fundamental is that he is a superhuman, divine being.1 The king
is also an *€lohim, a powerful, superhuman being. He is a god;
and is, at least once, directly addressed as such (Ps. xlv, 7). Like
the deity, he is also called ' lord ' (addn} ; 2 and he is called e Yahweh's
son5.3 Sometimes the prophetic poet may describe the king's
filial relationship to Yahweh in purely mythological figures. e On
the holy mountain I have begotten you from the womb of the
morning,' says Yahweh to the king, according to one reading in
the oracle in Ps. ex. The language used is probably derived from the
myth of the birth of the new sun god on an c unknown mountain ', as
is recorded of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal.4 The birth of the
new king brings back to the earth the fertility of the garden of the
gods, and the peace which originally reigned among animals.5
It is but natural that the birth of the king should be described in
pictures taken from the birth of the god. The new god belongs to
the garden of the gods on the divine mountain (Mount Zion) in
the far north (con the sides of the north'),6 a conception which is
1 Cf. Mowinckel, ^gr^js^nerjie^pp. 25!?.; Ps.St. II, pp. 2g8ff.; Pedersen,
III-IV, pp. 485, 493^7X008 in M,JS£kiM^ x? J93O, pp. 209-21. Johnson (i;
«2S2ZSfS>- PP* T1^-)' ^S116^ Widengren, and others lay great stress on this funtJz?
mentaTlaea; and in principle they are right. But their excessive emphasis on the
correspondence of the Israelite ideal of kingship with 'the general oriental pattern'
(particularly concerning the identity of the king with the god) is exaggerated and
unhistorical. On the other hand, North's attempt to minimize the religious aspect of
the Israelite conception of the king (&AW. 19 1932, pp. 8ff.; cf. his paper mjA.J.$.L.JL.
xlviii, 1931, pp. iff.) gives the impresslolf of attempting to explain away thTevBffinceJ'
and does not seem to take sufficient account of the connexion with ancient oriental
cult and religious vocabulary. The same is true, to some extent, of the sober paper by
Lauha in S.E.A. xii, 1947, pp. 183:8:".; and of that by Puukko in Teologisk Tidskrift
(Abo), ig^^T""*"** «—«--. _»*~
2 Ps. ex, i; Jer. xxii, 18; xxxiv, 5; Gen. xl, i; Isa. xxii, 18, etc.
3 Ps. ii, 7; cf. ex, 3, in the text of the Hexapla (see B.H*).
* See Mowinckel, •^^^feSS PP* 20> x35^-» ^Jamow, Qj$ -^Ikfi
* s garvu^H-1? (s^ below, p. no); xi, 6-9 (see below, p. 182),
6 Ps. xlviii, 3. On the garden and the mountain of the gods, see Gunkel, ^/JPOW ,
pp. 33ff. The idea of the mountain of the gods in the north, 'the northern mountaui*
(fdgSn) was taken over by Israel from the Ganaanites. In Ugarit the idea and the name
were connected with the mountain $apan or Ba'd $apdn (Accad., Ba'lu fap&na) = Mons
Gasius (see Eissfeldt, Baal ^^A^jj %&£ Kasios ur^der Durch^u^ der IsraelUen $urjjw Afeen
1941, ppr^TrT), l^ereTaSerTiis^resurrection, Baal takes his seat on the"ffi?o1ae7 and
becomes king over gods and men (cf. Hvidberg, Gm^l og Latter i det Gamte ~*
pp. 27, soffj. " - *f *" ^^ "" • '
62
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
now also known from Canaanite sources. The crise' of the royal
family is likened to the rise of the sun in the east.1 It seems also
to have been customary to swear by the name of the king.2
It is in the light of the fundamental thought of the king's divinity
that all the other features in the conception of the king have to be
understood. Even if these features did not owe their historical
origin to it, they were naturally associated with it in the mind of
the Israelite.3
The Israelites' attitude to their king is most characteristically
expressed in the term used of his relation to Yahweh, Yahweffs
Anointed. Anointing was an act which first and foremost ratified
the king's status as the chosen of Yahweh, and as duly installed.4
It was a holy ceremony, a cultic act, which conveyed extraordinary
'holy' or 'divine' faculties and qualities.5 It was an essential
element in the cultic installation of the king.
The anointing of the king6 was performed at the holy place, in
Jerusalem normally in the temple. That one of the king's sons
(usually the eldest) whom Yahweh had designated by an oracle7
was conducted in solemn procession to the holy place, where the
ceremony took place 'before Yahweh'. The king's son was
mounted, and surrounded by the bodyguard, on foot and in war-
chariots.8 We may assume that the holy spring of Gihon (now
the Virgin's Fount) down in the Kidron valley was originally the
site of the anointing and installation of the kings of Jerusalem.9
It seems that even in later times the ceremonial at the installation
of the kings of Jerusalem included a rite of purification at the
spring and of drinking its holy water which was imbued with
1 Bentzen (SJE-^- xii, 1947, p. 43) is right in finding this pun in Mic. v, i: the
mdsd'ot of the royallamily mik-fadem.
2 Ps. Ixiii, 12; see Gunkel, Die Psalmen^ ad loc.
3 For literature, see above, ^56 n. a^nd further, Diirr, Urs^nm^ undAusbau, p. 74;
Bentzen, Det sakrale kon^ed^mm^ Widengren in |uoJ?. ii, 1943, pp. 4<pST"*In Divine
Jl^jAz^EngneirSIy nTntTaTme Israelite concepEoSTof the king. The same mayTSe
saM olTPrankfort's sketch (^igshi^f pp. 33?ff.)» which, *n contrast to the main parts
of his book, is not based upon any critical study of the sources, but simply expresses a
traditional, popular view. Although Frankfort is right in emphasizing the differences
between the royal ideology in Israel and elsewhere, he completely overlooks the many
far-reaching similarities.
4 Ps. ii, 6. Gf. de Boer, I^konin^sch^in^Oud-Israel^
5 Cf. Gadd, Ideas ofDiv^^^£"m^A^'e^^a7t^pp. 4gf.
6 The sourceTare me accounts in 2" SamTxv, i off, ; i Kings i, 32-53; 2 Kings xi,
gf. Cf. Ps.St. II, pp. 6ff.; von Rad in T.L.Z. Ixxii, 1947, cols. 21 iff.; Widengren,
Psalm iioocK det sakrala kungadomet i Israel, "™~*
«*T»£ Sa^l^j'Trrf^^olFr; £T3QH^Tx,T>fF.; Pss. ii, 7; ex, i ff.
8 i Kings i, 33; Zech. ix, 9; i Kings i, 5, 38; 2 Kings xi, 8.
9 i Kings i, 33; cf. Bentzen, Studier over det zadokidiske Praesteskabs Historie^ p. 9.
63
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
power and able to bestow increase of strength.1 This was probably
in preparation for the main act in the temple. In the temple
court the 'runners' (the guard) lined the route between the altar
and the temple (2 Kings xi, 11). The priest led forth the king's
son and made him ascend the dais2 in view of all the people. At
this point, presumably, the prophet uttered the oracle concerning
Yahweh's choice and legitimation of the king,3 and the priest
placed the diadem (cthe crown5) on his head and handed 'the
testimony' to him,4 which contained his divine appointment and
the ground of his royal prerogative. The priest then anointed him
and so made him king.5 As the king now stood there cin holy
array'/ the whole people paid him the solemn act of homage,
the trumpets rang out, the people clapped their hands, uttering
the PrA'at melek, 'the shout of a king':7 'Solomon is king!' cGod
save the king!' (lit. cMay the king live!')8 Sacrifice was offered;
and the sacrificial feast was celebrated with rejoicing, possibly
both before and after the anointing.9 Then followed the other
main part of the festival, the solemn procession from the holy
place to the royal palace, and the accession to the kingly office.
With dancing gait,10 to the accompaniment of fanfares, 'so that
the earth rent', the ascent was made to the palace. There the king
took his seat on the throne, which symbolized the mountain of
the world,11 and thus assumed his place cat Yahweh's right hand'
(Ps. ex, i). He received the congratulations of his bodyguard and
his people (i Kings i, 47). We may also conclude from Ps. ii
that at this point he issued a proclamation in which he communi-
cated Yahweh's decision, referred to his legitimate, divine installa-
tion, and admonished his vassal kings and chiefs to pay homage to
him and to submit to his own and Yahweh's overlordship: Tor I
have been established as His king upon Zion, His holy mountain*,12
1 This may be inferred from Ps. ex, 7; see Widengren, Psalm 11^ osk.dgt sakrala
jsisys^^ L^3ssi» PP» 22^"- ta~"™ *" "" ~~"
<~~*zKffi&:x!^to 2 Ghron. xxxiv, 31. Similarly in Assyria; see Frankfort, Kingship,
P- 247-. --*— v.
3 This may be inferred from Ps. ex.
* a Kings xi, 12; see von Rad in TX.£. hcxii, 1947. 5 2 Kings xi, 12 (G).
6 '"
M dej^sakrala ku^gadgmet i Israel^pp, 9, iaff.
rite Biblique,
— — - .-*— „ « «JUA
6 Ps. ex, 3; see Widengren,
7 Gf. Num. xxiii, 2 1 ; PL&. ^
* i Sam. x, 24; 2 Sam. xv, 10; i Kings i, 39; 2 Kings ix, 13; xi, 12.
9 i Sam. ix, 22ff., xi, 15; 2 Sam. xv, 12; i Kings i, 9, 19.
10 i Kings i, 40 (G); 2 Sam. vi, i4f.
11 See Widengren, Psalm iiojoc^det sakrala kungadomet £ Ismd^ pp. sfF.
Ps. ii, 6. In the Ugaritic texts, "Baal announces his Enthronement in exactly the
same words; see II AB, col. VII, 43 (cf. Hvidberg, T ' ------ - -
P- 34)-
64
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
The day was celebrated by the people as a festival.1 With it
there was also associated the king's extirpation of his enemies
(2 Kings ii, iff.), and, in some instances, the granting of an
amnesty:2 the day of his enthronement was to be a day of joy.
Anointing was the really sacramental act in this festival ritual.
Through it Yahweh's choice was confirmed and consummated,
the king was 'made king',3 and divine power and equipment were
conferred upon him.4 He who has been anointed by Yahweh has
thereby been established as chief and ruler over His people
( i Sam. x, i ) 5 and has received power to c deliver it from its enemies
round about3 (i Sam. ix, 16). To him 'belongs all that is best in
Israel5 (i Sam. ix, 20). His sceptre of kingship is a 'righteous
(i.e., legitimate) sceptre'.5 Being anointed, he is tabu and sacro-
sanct. It is sacrilege and a capital offence to lay hands on him.6
Even to cut off the skirt of his cloak is sacrilege (i Sam. xxiv, 6).
Compared with the king the ordinary man is just c a dead dog, a
flea' (i Sam. xxiv, 15).
Behind this, of course, lie the common primitive ideas of the
mana-filled chief and medicine man surrounded by tabus. But
in Israel the tabus and sacred character of the king have a differ-
ent basis. In ancient Israel, when a man was equipped with super-
natural powers, it was thought that it was Yahweh's spirit that
had ecome into him', had 'clothed itself with him', had been
'poured out into him5, and the like. It is the charismatic, divine
equipment with power, the ability to perform superhuman deeds,
the quality of 'holiness' as a miraculous power and as a faculty
akin to that of a divine being, which is expressed by this concep-
tion (probably Egyptian in origin) 7 of the life-giving, wonder-
working, power-filled 'wind' or 'breath' of the deity, or, more
hypostatically conceived, His 'spirit'. Just as the sacred martial
ecstasy of the ancient heroes, and the sacred frenzy of the prophets
were explained as the effects of Yahweh's spirit (as can be seen in
the narratives about the heroes in the Book of Judges and about
Saul in i Sam. xi), so anointing was related to endowment with
1 i Kings i, 45; 2 Kings xi, 20; i Sam. xi, 15.
2 i Sam. xi, 13; i Kings i, 5off.; cf. 2 Kings xxv, ayff.
8 Gf. 2 Kings xi, 12: the chief priest 'made him Mng', wayyamliM (for M.T.'s
wqyyamlikil) .
4 i Sam. x, i~6; Isa. xi, 2fF.
6 Ps. xlv, 7. In the Baal myth, even the sceptre of the usurper Mot is described by
the regular, traditional expression 'a righteous sceptre' (I AB, col. VI3 29).
6 i Sam. xxvi, 9; 2 Sam. i, 146:".; iv, gfF.
7 See Hehn, in £-A'W> xlni> 1925, pp. 21 off., and below, p. 78.
65
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
the spirit. The later tradition says explicitly that when David
was anointed, cthe spirit of Yahweh leaped upon him'. When
the earlier tradition relates that the first experience which Saul
had after being anointed was that Yahweh's spirit came upon him,
so that he 'raved' in ecstatic frenzy together with the nebt'im
(i Sam. x), the writer certainly does not regard it as a mere
coincidence, but as the appropriate and natural consequence of
the anointing. In Isa. Ixi, i3 too, the prophet presupposes as
generally acknowledged the connexion between anointing and
endowment with the divine spirit.
In virtue of his endowment with the divine spirit, the king is
filled with superhuman power. He receives ca new heart'; he is
changed into a new man (i Sam. x, 6, 9). He receives a soul filled
with supernatural power instead of an ordinary human soul. He
receives a new disposition expressed, according to oriental custom,
in the giving to him of a new name1 which indicates his new,
intimate relationship with the god who has chosen him, and whom
he represents.
Through his anointing and endowment with the divine spirit,
the king also receives superhuman wisdom. cAs an envoy (angel)
of Yahweh' he discerns all things, and accomplishes what he wills
(2 Sam. xiv, zyff.). He knows the future.2 'Eternal' (i.e., ex-
tremely long) life is attributed to him.3 Wonderful experiences
are his; and he can do what others cannot do.4 He rules cby the
strength of Yahweh',5 and performs mighty, superhuman deeds
on earth.6 The anointing expresses Yahweh's * choice' of him eto
be king over His people'.7 He is the cman after Yahweh's own
heart'.8 In the legend about the birth of Saul (ethe requested'),
the founder of the monarchy, we hear an echo not only of the
thought of election from the womb, but also of the idea that the
conception of the heir apparent was the result of a wonderful
divine intervention and of predestination. The c requested ' saviour
1 On change of name among the Hebrews at the king's enthronement, see Honeyman
in 3J8JL. Ixvii, 1948, pp. isff.; in Egypt, Frankfort, Kwgsh&9 p. 103; among the
Sumenans, op. cit, p. 246; cf. above, pp. 35, 38.
2 Ps. ii, 7; 2 Sam. xxiii, iff.
i Kings i, 31; Pss. xxi, 5; Ixxii, 5; cf. Jenni, Das^ ^fel^^l !£L4^ Te3tam8nti
pp, .
4 i Sam. x, iff.jcf.xi, 6f.
B Cf, Mic. v, 3 (of the future king).
6 Ps. xc, sf.; i Sam. xi, 6ff.
7 Pss. xlv, 8; Ixxxix, 2152 Sam. vii, 8. On the election of the king, see Rowley,
MBiblical Doctrine o^Ekctim^jfp. gsfF.; cf. Alt in V.T. i, 1951, pp. aff.
8 ""*
66
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
king was bom as a gift from Yahweh to the childless mother.1 At
the anointing, as we have seen, there is proclaimed the oracle or
'decree \ telling of his election by Yahweh (see above, p. 64).
The king stands in a closer relation to Yahweh than anyone
else. He is His 'son' (Ps. ii, 7). In mythological language it is
said that Yahweh has 'begotten5 him, or that he was born of the
dawn goddess on the holy mountain (Ps. ex, 3; see also pp. 62,
75). The people say to the king, 'Yahweh your God3.2 He is the
servant of Yahweh in a different sense from anyone else.3 As the
son of Yahweh., the God of all the earth, he has a rightful claim to
dominion over the whole world.4 In David's supremacy over the
other small states in and around Palestine, nationalistic religious
circles in Israel and Judah saw a foretaste of the universal domin-
ion over the peoples, which as goal and as promise was implicit
in the election of the king as Yahweh's Anointed and deputy on
earth. Hence the prophetic author of Ps. ii can describe the situa-
tion at the accession of a new king in Jerusalem as if in fact all the
kings and peoples of the world were plotting to throw off the
yoke of Yahweh and His Anointed, but were awed into submission
by Yahweh's words promising the throne to the chosen king, and
threatening His opponents with destruction, unless they submit in
time and 'kiss his feet with fear and serve him with trembling5.5
The endowment which Yahweh has bestowed on the king may
be expressed in two words, the 'righteousness3 and 'blessing5 of
the king. * Righteousness ' , £ being right ', means living by Yahweh's
1 i Sam. I. It was observed long ago that the legend of the birth of Samuel was
originally associated with Saul, the first king. This is evident from the explanation of
the child's name in i, 20-8; 'I have asked him (P'iltiw) from Yahweh ', 'he is one who
is asked (Sa'dl) of Yahweh1, which is really an explanation not of the name Semu'el9
but of oa'w/. See Hylander, JDer_ literan^h^ S^TW^rSaul-'K^Mex (i Sam. 1—15) traditions-
geschichtlich u^r^ht^ pp. I2:t •—*-•««»• *-«-™ ^^ ^^^^w^,
S^-g^g^ x^^Tyfsee Birkeland, Die FeMe^ des Jnjwiduum in der israelitischen Psalmen-
Uteratur^ pp. I24f. •— *.^ - ** • **. *^ <•*** .-*. , . .»,~ -
"^"^TJsed of David: Pss. xviii, i; xxxvi, i; Ixxxix, 4, 21; of Solomon: i Kings iii, yif.;
of Zerubbabel: Hag. ii, 23; Zech. iii, 8; of some other king or of the king or leader of
the people in general: Pss, Ixix, 18, 37; xxvii, 9, and elsewhere; see Birkeland, Die.
Fwnae dg^Mmdwrns in der israejitischin P^almnliterat^ pp. i24f. Of the king of BaEy^*
lonTJer. xxv, 9; xxvi^*6; xTiu7 *Ojf"c£ tKe corresponding expressions used of Cyrus,
'the friend of Yahweh', Isa. xliv, 28 (pointing re'i for ro'i); *the beloved of Yahweh',
xlviii, 14. See £• TJ^J^.^JIl, note on Hag. ii, 23a.
4 Pss; ii, 8; Ixxii^-ioHxxxix, soff.
5 Ps. ii, i if. As Bertholet has observed, the meaningless words wew$$ekd bar must
ecede wegttfi, and the whole read w*na$$*k£ beragldw. Morgenstera's objection
^ (N.S.) xxxii, 1942, pp. 37iff.) that ndfafc is nowhere else construed with, b,
tKat therefore Bertholet's ingenious proposal is groundless, is scarcely valid.
Morgenstern's own emendation is much farther from the consonants of the received
text. On the kissing of the feet as a token of subjection and homage, see Gunkel,r JJi^
PsG^im. p. 8.
— 67
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
justice and according to Israelite custom. In the widest sense it
includes the will and the ability to maintain the customs, rights,
and prosperity of the community under the covenant, the ability
to € judge ', i.e., to rule rightly, to do the right thing, and in general
to maintain due order in affairs. Yahweh Himself gives to the
king His own judgements and righteousness, i.e., His own ability
to rule justly (Ps. Ixxii, 2). The royal sceptre is the c sceptre of
righteousness' (Ps. xlv, 7).
The righteousness of the king includes first of all the ability to
esave his people from their enemies round about' (i Sam. ix, 16;
x, i). The chosen king is the invincible warrior, filling the places
with dead bodies. With his mighty sceptre he rules from Zion in
the midst of his enemies: Yahweh makes them his footstool (Ps.
ex, 2, 5f.). All his enemies will be clothed with shame (Ps. cxxxii,
1 8). His hand finds out all his enemies. His right hand finds out
those that hate him. When he but shows his face, he makes them
as a fiery oven. Their offspring he destroys from the earth, and
their seed from among the children of men. When they plot evil
against him and frame a malicious scheme, they achieve nothing;
for he makes them turn their backs when he takes aim at them
from his bowstring (Ps, xxi, gff). At home and abroad he secures
to his people justice, prosperity, and salvation.
The true king judges Yahweh's people with justice, relieves the
oppressed, the helpless, and the unprotected, gives justice to the
widow and the fatherless, protects them from the oppression of the
wicked, and avenges them when their rights have been violated
and their blood shed (Ps. Ixxii, 2-4, 12-14). Therefore the righ-
teous (i.e., good people) will flourish in his days, and the land will
enjoy great prosperity (Ps. Ixxii, 7).
The righteous king also conveys good fortune; he is an 'if
masUah (Gen. xxxix, 2). This element is also included in the term
saddik. He possesses blessing and the powers which bestow good
luck, and is therefore able to impart blessing to his surroundings.
He is radiant like a star, and like a comet in the firmament of
nations determines their destiny (Num. xxiv, 17). He will be as
the light of the morning when the sun rises (2 Sam. xxiii, gf.;
Mic. v, i). He will come down like rain upon the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth. In his time there will be abund-
ance of corn on every hill in the land; its fruit will shake like
Lebanon; and men will blossom forth from the cities like the grass
of the earth (Ps. Ixxii, 6, 16). Under his shadow the people will
68
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
live safely; he Is the breath of their nostrils (Lam. iv, 20). Without
him the people would be as water spilt on the ground, which
cannot be gathered up again (2 Sam. xiv, 14). But under such a
king, the land and the people, his 'household5, reap all that the
Israelite wished for himself, all that he meant by p^eacejoi ^hdeness
(M6m) and blessing: fertility of man, beast and crop, health, a
large family, rain and sunshine and a succession of good seasons,
good living conditions, good relations between old and young,
master and servant, victory over the enemy, spoils of war, honour
and reputation, dominion over the neighbouring peoples, loyalty
and contentment amongst the brethren under the covenant, on
every hand the fear of God, decent living, good demeanour, and
sound morals, the maintenance of justice for everyone and the
protection of the weak, the extermination of all who play false, of
all sorcerers and villains — in a word, all that is meant by the
word ye$a\ salvation, (literally, 'wideness9, 'spaciousness5, i.e.,
favourable conditions, both in external political relationships, and
in internal social, moral, and religious conditions). Thus the king
is the saviour to whom the people look for salvation, both in the
negative sense of deliverance from enemies, danger, and need,
and in the widest positive sense of good fortune and well-being.
It is his duty to provide this ye fa'.1 This is the picture which the
royal psalms give of the king and his 'righteousness3*
Considered from one point of view, then, the king is more than
human. He is a divine being, possessing this superhuman quality
because Yahweh has 'called' and 'chosen' him to be the shepherd
of His people, and has made him His son, has anointed him and
endowed him with His spirit. He performs the will of Yahweh,
and transmits His blessing to land and people. He represents
Yahweh before the people.
But as a human being, a man from among the people (i.e., a
representative man from the chosen people of Yahweh) he also
represents the people before Yahweh; and gradually the main
stress comes to be put on this aspect of his vocation.
According to the common primitive mode of thought, which
Israel naturally shared in the early period, the chief, the ancestor,
and after them the king, were each, so to speak, the visible embodi-
ment of the supreme ego, society. The entire soul of the society is
embodied in the king in a special way; and, in particular, the
1 Cf. Pedersen, Israel III-IV, pp. 46, 81.
"
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
ancestor lives on through him. Land and people are his house-
hold and family, just as the family is the household of the ancestor
or the household-father ('abt-b£t-'ab). Bit-Humri, 'the household
of "Omri" ', is the oldest name given to Israel by the Assyrians,
who first encountered it during the Omrid dynasty. Just as the
family lives in the ancestor or the head of the family in whom its
csouP is concentrated, so the soul, honour, and power of the people
are concentrated in the king. He is the breath of his people's life;
and they live under his shadow (Lam, iv, 20). To have to live
without such a source of power entails profound unhappiness, and
is like being deprived of the cult and the other symbols of the
divine presence (Hos. iii, 4). The concerns of the king, therefore,
are the people's concerns. His honour is their honour, his defeats
their shame. King and people have common interests, and are, in
a sense, identical, since the entire people is embodied in the king.
It is for the king to make a normal existence real for them — their
c wholeness' (s&Wm), their peace and happiness, their desire for
self-assertion (sedek, fdakdh}) their immanent blessing. Blessing,
happiness, and righteousness are centred in the king. He should
be in accord with the esoul' of the people, with the character
which is typical of them as a whole and to which they lay claim.
He should in his own person realize the nature and essence of
their being, what is characteristic of them, their destiny and voca-
tion, to use modern terms. Since Israel, through her faith in
election and covenant, became conscious of her special vocation,
of being chosen by Yahweh for a glorious future, it would naturally
be the king's task to make real to the people her peculiar character
and destiny in the world. In other words, the king became (or
'should have become) the visible bearer and expression of the
religious and moral ideals of Israel.
If the king fulfilled this requirement, it would again react on
the people by virtue of that mutual participation in each other's
soul which, in ancient thought, existed between the leader and
the community.1 The people would become what their kings
were. If the king was righteous, pious, and godly, the people
would be the same. If the king turned from the commandments
of Yahweh and worshipped Him wrongly, or worshipped other
gods, then the people would also be ungodly and guilty. This is
the fundamental idea of the Deuteronomistic Book of Kings.2
1 Cf. L&vy-Bruhl, Les functions nwntafa dans les^sod^s iftffiiggffii We might here
borrow a term from tr^itio^STdo^iaiLlcs an^spealTofa commumcatio idiomatum.
2 Cf. i Kings xi, isf., 32; 2 Kings xx, 6; xxii, i8f.
70
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
This applied whatever might be the actual inner attitude of the
individual to Yahweh and His law. The king, therefore, had great
responsibility. He held in his hands the destiny of his people,
according to the kind of man he was. The piety of the king was
reckoned by God as the merit of the people. His sins infected the
whole people and led to their destruction.1 The true king knew
that he was pledged to Yahweh's law, and that he ought to
represent the ideal of piety and righteousness which lived in the
mind of Israel (Ps. ci). When the psalmists praise him in the
royal psalms, they do so because in him this ideal is embodied.
They do not in fact speak of any particular king, with the defects
which, unfortunately, many of them had, but of the ideal of the
king as he ought to be, ca man after Yahweh's heart'.
Both as representative of the people, and in virtue of Yahweh's
choice of him, of his sonship, his divine equipment, and his sacred
character, the king of Israel-Judah (like kings everywhere else in
the ancient east) was clearly the mediator between his God and
his people. Such a king might boldly draw near to Yahweh as a
representative mediator without forfeiting his life, which would
have been the fate of anyone else who sought to esee Yahweh3
(cf. Jer. xxx, 21). In other words, the king is a priest-king, the
true chief priest of his people. 2 Several traditions make it plain
that the king (or his sons) acted as priests and were theoretically
the legitimate priests and responsible for carrying out the cultus. 3
It is only to be expected that the king should appear as leader
of the cultus just at the great national religious festivals. On
ordinary days he would leave his cultic functions to a professional
priest, a 'Levite'. For practical reasons this would be necessary
at the great state temples, because of the gradual development and
extension of the cultus there. But, as has been suggested above,
we also see that, as the cultus and the central sanctuary increased
in importance, so the professional clergy became more conscious
of their vocation and increased their claims to power. Before long
they consciously tried to force the legitimate holder of the office,
the king, to content, himself with the position of protector of the
cultus and guarantor of the expenses involved in it, while the pro-
fessional priests claimed for themselves all the economic advan-
tages, a share in the sacrificial gifts, in the first-fruits, the tithes,
and so on, and the spiritual authority over the people which was
1 Cf. 2 Kings xvii, 7f£; xxi, xoff.; xxii, i6f.
2 Cf. Morgenstern in A^SJLL. Iv, 1938, pp. iff,, iSsff.
8 i Sam. xiii, gf.; 2 Sam. vi, iyf.; vii, 18; i Kings viii, 54f.
, 71
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
the consequence of the power and right to perform sacrifices, to
proclaim the law and justice of Yahweh, and to bless or curse in
the name of Yahweh.1 We ought probably to bear in mind these
very real spiritual and material consequences when the oracle of
installation in Ps. ex promises to the king that he is to be e a priest
for ever after the order of (or, more correctly, 'on behalf of, or
'for the sake of) Melchizedek5. The king made a point of securing
his divine right to the priesthood, based on his being the legitimate
successor and heir of the ancient king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek,
who was also the priest of El Elyon, possessed the power of blessing,
and was entitled to tithes. The central part played by the king
in the official cultus is seen quite clearly in the tradition about the
removal of the ark of Yahweh to Jerusalem, and also in the tradi-
tion about the consecration of the temple by Solomon, who per-
sonally offered both sacrifices and prayers, and pronounced the
blessing over the people, all of which were priestly functions.
King Ahaz himself arranged the details of the temple and cultus;
and King Hezekiah, on his own authority, did away with a cultic
object which, according to temple tradition, dated back to Moses
himself.2
Being a priest endowed with divine power, the king became the
channel through which blessing flowed from the deity to the
people. He was the point of union between God and the con-
gregation. Gradually the main stress came to be placed on this
human side of the king's office. This was partly due to the fact
that his subordination to Yahweh was more strongly emphasized
than was usual in the oriental royal ideology. The king was in a
1 Deut. xxxiii, 10; x, 8; Num. vi, saff.
2 2 Sam. vi; i Kings viiij a Kings xvi, roff.; xviii, 4. We have interesting evidence
about the functions of the king at the feast of Succoth (the harvest and New Year
festival), if Widengren is right in his opinion (in Horae Soederblomianae I, iii, pp. isff.)
that the Samaritan Succoth ritual (see Cowley, T^T^m^itmvLitij,rg/^.'~lI) pp. ySsff.),
with its close parallels to Deut. xxvi, iff., really represents an ancient and pure tradi-
tion from the old festival at Bethel. In this Samaritan ritual it is 'the king of Israel'
who places the basket with the tithes on the sacred spot before Yahweh and says a
prayer which corresponds in all its main features with Deut. xxvi, §ff. We cannot,
however, exclude the possibility that this is an example of midrashic archaizing by
Samaritan traditionalists (cf. the many 'archaeological5 midrashim in the Talmud),
and is based on Deut. xxvi itself. The strange circumstance that the king has to give
the basket to * the priest J arouses suspicion. If this really were an example of old
Israelite ritual, we might expect the king himself to be the priest who had to place the
basket beside the altar. On the other hand, it is beyond all doubt that the liturgy in
Deut, xxvi reflects very ancient customs; and it seems quite possible that in earlier
times the king said this prayer, and that it was originally framed to fit the king's part
in the liturgy of the festival. We then have, as Widengren maintains, a clear instance
in Deut. xxvi of the democratization of royal rituals, i.e., the use by the ordinary
worshipper of ancient royal rites and phraseology.
72
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
special way Yahweh's servant or slave; and, as we have seen,
analogies of this are to be found in royal texts from Mesopotamia.
The term expresses the position of trust held by the king as the
deputy of Yahweh, and also his complete dependence on and
subordination to Yahweh. That is why the prophetic promises to
the king, both at the regularly repeated festivals and on the special
cultic occasions such as the days of humiliation and prayer before
war,1 constantly emphasize the fact that the good fortune and
blessing of the king are dependent on his obedience to the will and
law of Yahweh.2 The conditions of good fortune are godliness and
righteousness, in the sense of a right relationship with Yahweh.
When a just man rules over men,
ruling in the fear of God,
then shall the sun rise in the light of the morning,
his splendour in a morning without clouds.
<As the grass sprouts> after rain,
as the tender grass springing from the earth,
<so am I toward Yahweh, >
so is my house with God.
The poet puts this into the mouth of the royal ancestor David
(2 Sam. xxiii, 3-5). The king may expect to enjoy the everlasting
favour of Yahweh, as long as he keeps His commandments and
does not neglect His statutes.
Although the blessing was generally regarded as an inherent
power, it nevertheless came to be looked upon more and more as
a gift from Yahweh. The blessing was of Yahweh's own making.
It was the reward of obedience to the commandments of Yahweh,
of piety and godliness. ' Yahweh has remembered (his) offerings
and accepted (his) burnt sacrifice5, 'rewarded (him) according to
(his) righteousness, according to the cleanness of (his) hands',
because call His judgements were before (him), and (he) did not
put away His statutes from (him), but was blameless before Him
and kept (himself) from (his) iniquity'.3
> But if the king departs from Yahweh, the power and good for-
tune of a king will fail him. Instead of the good spirit of a king
with which Yahweh has endowed him, an evil spirit from Yahweh
1 See Mowinckel, Xjoggwfl/wzgjw, pp. 63ff.; Ps.St. Ill, pp. ySff.; i
2 Pss. xx, 7-9; xxi; xxviiijtf^^Tffli^-^T'l^ScScrSo^sS; cxxxii, 11-18.
3 Hos, ii, 10; Pss. Ixxxix, sof.j cxxxii, 12; xx, 4; xviii, 22-5.
73
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
will trouble him, and a destructive strife arise between king and
people (Judges ix, ssff.; i Sam. xvi? 14).
Just because king and people are truly one, the king embodying
the supreme ego of the people, the destiny of king and people will
be the same in good and evil. If the king is righteous and blessed,
the whole people will be blessed, and righteous, and happy. If the
king is ungodly and does what is evil in the sight of Yahweh, then
the whole people will be infected with ungodliness and misfortune,
and must suffer all the adversity which is the result of the king's
sin* The whole record of the monarchy has been written from this
point of view.
Extravagant descriptions of the good fortune of kings, with the
same emphasis on its conditions, are also to be found in other
oriental religions and in their royal ideology. We must recognize
that practically every trait in the above picture of the king has
obvious parallels in the other oriental peoples. No doubt a certain
divinity was ascribed to the king in Israel too, the feature having
been derived from surrounding cultures and religions through
Canaanite channels.
Brief reference may be made to a few details. Anointing itself/
the sacramental act which more than anything else linked the king
with Yahweh, seems originally to have been adopted from the
Canaanites,2 and was probably also practised among the Egyp-
tians and the Babylonians. 3 The lion throne of Solomon on a
podium with seven steps was originally meant to be the throne of
the God of heaven on the top of the mountain of the world with
seven terraces, symbolized by the tower of the temple with seven
stories. The king sits on the Deity's own throne (Ps. ex), or, in
more prosaic terms, on a throne of the same divine type as
Yahweh's throne.4 David's title dawidum (for the word was origi-
nally applied as a title)5 was also a foreign borrowing, like the
1 See Gressmann, ,ggr MsSS&s* PP- 2rL; Hempel, art. 'Salbung' in
2 Sec Knudtzon, Qg jS-Jwama-Toj^^No, 51, p. 319,
See Bert3iolet, JL-^^S^fiT-S^SSK. Q£2%2feuP- rI33 Meissner,
rien^J.> p. 63; Frankiort7-§!HJ§^fc P- 247-
SceGunkel-Begrich, Jinto^ p. 151. Yahweh's throne is a cherub-throne (sec
Pedersen, J5ogg£III-IV, PpTSSPCiSflff-. 651:8:), as are the thrones of other oriental
gods; The Israelite royal throne is also a cherub-throne (op. cit., pp, 771!, 6766), and
David's throne stilHs in the synagogue painting of Dura-Europos (see Rachel Wisch-
nitzer, Thg Mesmanu Theme in the Paintings ofthe^Dura Syna^ogyte^i^ 34).
5 In the Mari texts ffornT:Ke*rIrst TialFoTme~secof^^ B.C. the word dawidum
is an appellative with the meaning * chief, 'prince'; see Dossin in Syria xix, 1938,
pp. logff.; cf. Engnell, Dimn^Ki^^, pp. lyGff.; Bentzen, Det s^^^^dmrg^ pp.
54*"- *— .*— -«•
74
V; The Response to Revelation
REVELATION AS DEMAND
When, at the beginning of our study, we traced the
break-up of the medieval conception of revelation in the
thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we
were forced to notice among other things a determined
shift of emphasis from the theoretical to the practical
Something of die kind is already present in the writings of
the first Reformers, and most of all in Luther. There are
frequently quoted words of Melanchthon, spoken in di-
rect criticism of the scholastic theology, that "to know
Christ is to know His benefits"; words which are taken up
later in the preface to the Augsburg Confession of the
Lutheran Church.1 Among the more free-thinking phi-
losophers of the period from Spinoza to Kant we found the
bold affirmation that what revelation does for us is not to
increase our knowledge or enlighten our intellects but to
give us practical guidance; but such formulations appeared
to escape the danger of an identification of religion with
1 Melanchthon, Loci theologid, Corpus Rcformatorum, XXI, 85;
Apology for the Augsburg Confession, II,,ioi.
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
effect is seen primarily in the conception of the divinity of the
king.
If we compare the common oriental conception of kingship
with that found in Israel, we find that it is characteristic of the
latter that all naturalistic elements in the relation of God and the
king have been discarded, and that the concept of identity or
physical incarnation (which might well be found in the Canaanite
environment, so strongly influenced by Egypt) is absent. In the
cult the king was primarily the representative of the people before
Yahweh, and only secondarily the representative of Yahweh. Yet
the Israelites did not discard the idea that the king really was^ the
representative of Yahweh in the cult as well as in the political and
social life of the nation3 or the ancient idea of the king as a super-
man with supernatural equipment or divine powers, standing in a
peculiarly close relationship of sonship to Yahweh. They often
continued to express this in terminology and ideas which originated
in the oriental royal ideology and which reflected more mytho-
logical conceptions.
Only occasionally do we find in such mythological pictures any
indication of an interpretation in physical and natural terms of
Yahweh's relation to His son. The Israelite view of the king is
akin to the Babylonian rather than the Egyptian view. The king
is manifestly a man, 'one chosen from the people' (Ps. Ixxxix, ajo),
subordinate to Yahweh, and dependent on Him for everything.
The growing tendency in Yahwism to give all honour to Yahweh
and to subordinate to Him all that is human1 has reduced the
mythological element in the court etiquette. From the very first
(or, at least, from a quite early date) it prevented the divine
character of the king from resulting in any idolatrous worship of
man in rivalry with the worship of Yahweh. In the Old Testament
we find no trace in the cult of any worship offered to the king, even
though laudatory songs may have been sung in his honour.2
This will all become clearer if we consider what the Israelites
meant by 'a god5. They could use the word 'god' (9*lShtm) of
many kinds of subordinate supernatural beings, such as the dead
soul, the ghost that might be raised: CI saw a god coming up out
of the earth,3 says the woman with a familiar spirit to Saul, when
the ghost of Samuel appears.3 The word may also be used of a ,
1 Gf. Pedersen, j£md,in-IV, pp. 6isff. a Ps. xlv; cf. Ps. xxi. See below, p. 87.
«, -^r Sa/?' xxviii' '3' In the u&aritic te*ts, II D, I 27, 45, a ghost rib « Heb, '$,
E.W., familiar spirit') is called a 'god'; see Albright, Aivhaeohgy and the Religion
pp. 106, 123 n. 31. ,^~^~ —v ^ ,._*—
76
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
demon which causes disease.1 It is used to indicate the lower,
heavenly beings (literally, cthe sons of God5) surrounding the
throne of Yahweh, who are sent out by Him as His messengers,2
corresponding to the angels of later times (Judges xiii, 22). Even
of man as such the poet may say that Yahweh has 'made him but
little lower than a god5 (A.V., 'than the angels', Ps. viii, 6). But
this saying in itself shows that there is an essential difference
between such a cgod' and Yahweh. What is characteristic of a
'god' is superhuman, supernatural power and insight (Gen. in,
5, 22). A god is holy,3 and partakes of all the attributes and
qualities of holiness. Man's likeness to 'god' in Ps. viii consists
primarily in his dominion and authority over all other creatures,
in the all but divine glory and honour expressed in dominion
over creation. The prophet is an "is 'elohim, 'a man of god (of
divinity) ', i.e., c a divine man',4 because he is endowed with divine
insight and power.
What then distinguishes all these 'gods' from Yahweh? First
of all, the fact that Yahweh is the only one who really i^ eHe who
is what He is5 (Exod. in, 14), who is 'He', as Deutero-Isaiah
repeatedly says,5 the only one who is really stirring, creating,
acting, and working behind all that is happening, in nature as
well as in history.6 There is also the point which is so clearly seen
in Ps. Ixxxii, where Yahweh 'judges among the gods': 'You are
1 This is obviously the case in Job. xix, 22.
2 bene *elim or bene 'eloMmf Pss. xxix, i, Ixxxii, 6; Gen. vi, 2, 4; Job i, 6, xxxviii, 7;
Deut. xxxii, 8 (reading '£/ with G, V, for yUrffel}. The expression is also found in
Phoenician (Karatepe inscriptions; see Eissfeldt, El im ugaritischen Pantheon^ p. 7) and
Ugaritic texts (op. cit., pp. 631!., cf. pp. 20f.). It means quite simply those who belong
to the divine category, 'the divine beings'; cf. tfnt haf~tfrepim, 'the members of the
goldsmiths' guild', 'the goldsmiths1; bene han-rfbpim, 'the members of the. prophetic
community'. It does not mean, as Morgenstern thinks (H.U.C.A^-xivt 1939, pp. agfF.,
4ofL), gods of a younger generation; cf. the Ugaritic dr flnTS^tKe family of the divine
beings'.
3 Pss. xvi, 3; Ixxxix, 6-8; Deut. xxxiii, 3; Zech. xiv, 5; Job v, i; xv, 15; Dan. iv, 5f.,
10, I4f, 20; v, ii j viii, 13; Ecclus. xlii, 17.
4 i Sam. ii, 27; i Kings xiii, i; Judges xiii, 8; i Sam. ix, 6ff.; i Kings xii, 22; 2 Kings
iv, 7; Jer. xxxv, 4. The genitive is attributive.
6 Isa. xli, 4; xliii, iof.; xlviii, 12; cf. xliii, I2f.; xliv, 6. Clearly it was precisely this
meaning which Deutero-Isaiah found in the name * Yahweh' when he represented
Yahweh as saying, 'I am He'; it is * Yahweh-He' who is 'the first and the last'; by all
His mighty deeds and fulfilled prophecies Israel can realize 'that I am Yahweh', the
One *who performs this'. It is very probable that Deutero-Isaiah is here really in
agreement with the original meaning of the name: yahweh < yahuwa = ya hu(wa)t
*O He'; see my remark in Otto, Aufsatze das Numinose be^^^, pp. tiff.; similarly
Morgenstern in JJBUL. htii, 1943, pp.'^Ggff^Mo^^&eTTuT^y^.I. Ixiii, 1944, pp.
i6iff. s^""" ~
6 'To be* (haydh) does not in Hebrew denote mer.e existence in the abstract sense,
but the expression of oneself in creative activity. 'I am* means * I assert myself through
deeds', *I work', *I make or create things'. Gf. Ratschow. Werden und Wirken. eine
77
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
gods; and all of you are sons of the Most High. But you shall die
like men, and fall like one of the princes.3 When man in paradise
had gained divine insight and wisdom, Yahweh prevented his
attaining perfect likeness to God by refusing him immortality.
Any other cgod' ma% die, even if normally he is immortal. Even
the 'divine' earthly king is mortal; but Yahweh is 'the living
God', cthe holy God who does not die3.1
Therefore, in spite of all the mythological metaphors about the
birth of a king, we never find in Israel any expression of a c meta-
physical' conception of the king's divinity and his relation to
Yahweh. It is clear that the king is regarded as Yahweh's son by
"adoption. When, in Ps. ii, 7, Yahweh says to the king on the day of
his anointing and installation, cYou are My son; /have begotten
you today', He is using the ordinary formula of adoption, indica-
ting that the sonship rests on Yahweh's adoption of the king. The
act of adoption is identical with the anointing and installation.
The king is chosen as the adopted son of Yahweh (Pss. xlv, 8;
Ixxxix, 21). Yahweh Himself has taken care of him like a mother
and father, has educated him, teaching him, among other things,
the art of war (Ps. xviii, 35).
It is not only the idea of adoption that bears witness to this, but
also the fact that the king's divine equipment is traced back to the
spirit of Yahweh (see above, p. 65). The idea itself is old, as can
be seen in the stories about the Judges, the ancient heroes whose
abnormal equipment and powers are explained in this way.2 We
find the same conception among the Canaanites, the Babylonians,
and the Egyptians.3 Even in the pre-Israelite period, the ecstatic
manifestations of the power with which prophets were endowed
were explained by the idea of the life-giving and creative 'breath'
or 'spirit' of the deity. When Israel believed that the spirit of
Yahweh was in the king, this was not merely a direct continuance
of the idea of the endowment of heroes and judges with the spirit.
It was certainly already connected with the thought of Yahweh's
spirit as the source of the ecstatic inspiration of the nebi*im or
prophets. But as an explanation of prophetic inspiration it has
1 Hab. i, 12, original text; see B.H.3. M.T. is a 'correction of the scribes'
soperim), and, as usual, a false one, dictated by dogmatic prejudice.
~2 Gf. Linder, Studier tij^ (jrfflnla, t^mm^fores^Umn^^m -Andm^ pp. iff,
3 See Hehn in ^^^T3iii, iga^PP^^SETlnH abov^p!
des woj^ hajah afo Beitrag gar^ Wj^^hhj.tserf^ssmg des Alien Testament?.
TheSrelscertalnly a moretEanlncitoital connSi^
For the ancient Hebrews, life meant will and activity.
78
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
here clearly replaced an older, Canaanite conception, of which it
must be regarded as a conscious Israelite transformation. There
are many indications that the Ganaanites believed that the god
in question himself entered into the nabi ' and worked through him. x
But such a view was incompatible with the Israelite faith in the
sublime transcendence of Yahweh. It was therefore replaced by
the thought of His representative, the spirit, which He c sends3 and
6 pours into' the nabi*.* When the idea of the spirit is transferred
to the king, this means that the king is not one with Yahweh, or
an incarnation of Him, but endowed by the spirit of Yahweh with
supernatural powers.
An additional, though indirect, argument against the theory
that the Israelite king was regarded as identical with Yahweh, or
was equated with Him in. the cult, is the prophetic polemic against
kingship in its empirical manifestation (Jer. xxi, n-xxiii, 6;
Ezek. xxii, 25 G; xxxiv). In the book of Ezekiel, in which the
historical kings of Judah are rebuked for their sins more vehemently
than in any other prophetic writing, the climax of the attack is
the accusation of blasphemy, because they put the royal palace
side by side with the temple; they have even put the royal tombs
there, so that they have defiled Yahweh' s holy name by their
idolatry and by their carcases (Ezek. xliii, 7-9). 3 What would
Ezekiel have said if the kings had made themselves the equals of
Yahweh, and had played the part of God, and had had divine
worship offered to them in the cult? The records inspired by the
prophets, and also the Deuteronomic narratives, do not charge the
kings with self-deification, but with tyrannizing over their sub-
jects.4 Even Ezek. viii, which gives a detailed description of all
the abominations in the temple, says nothing about the deifica-
1 So, e.g., clearly in Wen-Amon's account of the prophet at Byblos; see Ranke in
A.O.TJR., p. 1226; Wilson in A.N.E. T.} p. 26. Traces of the idea of ecstatic possession
By^ne^gbd himself are also folSnTInlhe phraseology and the forms of the Old Testa-
ment; see Holscher, Die Proj^jm^ pp. 140!?., 1471?.
2 See Mowinckel irTD. !R0JVf . M. Ill, p. 13.
3 Neiman (JJBJL. jx^~^-«jg- $$&.) has tried to demonstrate that in the Old
Testament, as in Canaanite, peger often means not * carcase', * corpse', but a cultic
* stele', and finds this meaning in Ezek. xliii, 7, 9. It fits the context perfectly in Lev.
xxvi, 30, but seems less certain in the Ezekiel passages. Even if Neiman were right,
the passage would not refer to 'idolatrous stelae', as he renders it, but more probably
to votive stelae with the king's image as representations of intercessory prayer; see
above, p. ooo. Even then we should have an instance, not of the deification of the king,
but of an image in Yahweh's temple representing a human being, in the eyes of the
prophet an unseemly thing.
4 Cf. i Sam. viii; xii. Gf. Noth, ^^S^S^^SHfJiS^^ .SMtgy I, p. 57. The
favourable attitude which DeuteronolKyTi^ adopts to the
monarchy would have been, impossible if kings had been guilty of direct self-deification,
79
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
tion of the king, and does not allege that the king had usurped
the prerogatives of Yahweh.
Though the king is described as the channel of fertility and of
the felicity of paradise, yet we find in Yahwism no trace of any
mythological or cultic identification of the king with the fertility
god. Thus there is in the Old Testament sources no evidence
whatsoever that the king was identified with the tree of life, which
in its turn is supposed to be identical with the deity.1 That the
king was the representative of Yahweh in the cult did not imply
in Israel what 'representing' may formerly have signified in primi-
tive thought: that the representative was the person whom he
represented. The great prophets would never have thought of
maintaining that they were Yahweh, although they did emphati-
cally maintain that they had been authorized and sent by Him as
His envoys. Similarly, the religion of Israel could never tolerate
the thought that the king was identical with Yahweh or acted as
if he were. He represents Him in the sense that he receives divine
power and equipment from Him, and conveys His blessing.
Yahweh has indeed made man 'little lower than a god3, as Ps. viii
puts it; and, in still higher measure than ordinary men, the king
is a god on earth. But the distance between Yahweh and an
ordinary god is as great as that between ordinary men and the
'divine beings5 (b'ni 'elohim}.
We have already referred to the king's priestly office. This is,
of course, expressed in the part he plays in the cult, in which he is
the leader. Through the cultic acts, and especially through the
enthronement ceremonies, the king is endowed with divine power
and made the instrument of blessing and salvation. It is therefore
important that the power with which the king is endowed should
be constantly maintained and renewed.
There are several indications that in Israel, as in Babylonia,2
the enthronement of the king was repeated as an annual festival,
probably in connexion with the chief festival of the year, the
autumn and New Year festival, which was also the festival of the
enthronement of Yahweh.3 This festival was celebrated as a re-
enactment of creation, and as the establishment of fertility of
1 See Additional Note VII.
2 See Pedersen, J^adlll-IV, pp. 746fF,; Diirr in 'T^o^^im^Glau^ xx, 1928,
pp. 305^-3 Frankfort, jjj[ngshipt pp. 3*8fF. Gf. above, pp. ^j|y^
3 Volz, Die bW^i^y^^^^r, p. 452; Pedersen, op. cit., p. 432; Bohl, ,
en ^^d^inS^^or^ enjn Israeli Diirr, op. cit., pp. 3191!. In Judah, too, at least
_ 8o
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
every kind, of well-being and of blessing for land, flocks, and
people; to this we shall return. Then earth, and nature, and all
growing things were created anew as at the first. It was therefore
quite natural that the installation of the king and the New Year
festival should be regarded as the preservation and re-creation of
the primeval splendour. To the Israelite, all the glory of the earth
was summed up in the thought of c Yahweh's garden', 'the garden
of God3, told of in the ancient creation myths.1 At that time earth
itself was 'paradise3. No wonder, then, that the enthronement or
birth of a new king is taken as an omen that the conditions of
paradise are about to return: both the child and his people 'will
eat curds and honey5 (Isa. vii, 15, 22. See below, pp. noff.), the
food of the gods, and wild and tame animals will live peaceably
together (Isa. xi, 6-9. See below, p. 182).
But this does not meanj as some have held, that the thought of
the king as cldng of paradise5 forms an essential part of the concept
of kingship, or that the royal ideology has its roots there. The
parallel with the garden of god is only one of the features associated
with the concept of kingship both in Babylonia (see above, p. 47)
and in Israel, because the king is divine and is described in terms
of different myths about gods. There is a connexion between
divinity and the garden of god; therefore the king and the blessings
of his rule are described in terms of the latter.
Still less may we conclude from this that the king was regarded
in Israel as an incarnation of the Urmensch, even if it is true that the
Urmensch is sometimes associated with paradise. None of the
passages in the Old Testament which have been adduced as
evidence of this idea proves that the king is the Urmensch* or that
this conception was the source of the Israelite royal ideology.
Somewhat more important, however, than the connexion be-
tween the New Year festival and its oriental pattern is the charac-
ter which the festival acquired in Israel. In Yahwism it was, in
fact, completely transformed. Its basis in the natural order is,
indeed, still clear, even in Israel: what is created is, in the first
instance, life on earth, fertility, crops, the cosmos. But the Canaan-
ite thought that the god himself is renewed has disappeared; and
1 Gen. xiii, 10; Isa. li, 3; Ezek. xxviii, 13; xxxi, 8f.; xxxvi, 35; Joel ii, 3.
2 See Mowinckel in St^Th., II i, 1948/9, pp.
towards the close of the monarchy, the interval between the death of the old king and
the next New Year festival was reckoned as * the beginning of the reign' (reHt mamleMts
Jer. xxvi, i) of the new king, the next New Year festival being the beginning of his
first year. See Mowinckel in A^Or. x, 1932, pp.
81
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
what the king obtains in the cultic festival is not primarily new
life and strength, but the renewal and confirmation of the covenant,
which is based on Yahweh's election and faithfulness, and depends
upon the king's religious and moral virtues and constancy. To the
renewal of nature there has been added another element of
increasing importance, the renewal of history. It is the divine acts
of election and deliverance in the actual history of Israel which are
relived in the festival. Election and the covenant are ratified. In
the cultic drama the historic events are experienced anew; and
victory over the political foes of contemporary history is promised,
guaranteed, and experienced in anticipation, * It is Israel's future
as a people that Yahweh comes to guarantee; and the king is His
instrument.
This entailed an essential change in the cultic drama and in the
role of the king. In Canaan the drama enacted the god's own
fortunes, his birth, conflict, death, resurrection, victory, and cultic
marriage with the goddess. It is possible that in all this the king
played the part of the god (see p. 55, above). But it is more
probable that, as in Babylonia, the cultic drama was in large
measure presented by means of symbolic rites, as, for example,
Adonis gardens. 2 In Egypt, too, the resurrection of Osiris was
represented by the raising of the Osiris pillar.3 In Israel we find
no trace of the representation of the fortunes of Yahweh by the
king. The Jerusalem cult had its own drama, which presented
vividly and realistically Yahweh's epiphany, His conflict and
victory, His enthronement, and His re-creation of the world, of
Israel, and of life on the earth. To this drama of the New Year
festival we shall return in another context. But here Yahweh was
not presented bodily, in flesh and blood. His advent, His epiphany,
and His presence were made perceptible to experience and faith
by means of symbols, above all by the festal procession with the
sacred box, the ark. In an earlier age, the ark may possibly have
contained some pictorial representation of Yahweh Himself; but
in later times, at least, symbols were substituted: the ark itself, an
empty chair of state, some sacred object such as the lots for the
holy oracle, or something of the kind.4 The cultic dance which
1 SeeJj^- **» PP- 54~74s i46ff.; Noth in Christentum und Wissmschaft iv, 1928,
PP» 30 I flu ~ nrn-m-n. — n ri. ~"
2 On the Adonis gardens see von Baudissin, Moms undEsmtm. pp. 88f., cf. Register I;
further, Baumgartner in &faggtg. Archivfur FoZCTrngxTiii, 1946, pp. mff. (based on
the material collected by jOTewinjr8" "^ — —
8 See Erman, Die aevbtische ReU^ionz? pp. 22, 64; Frankfort, Kingship, pp. i69ff.
4 See Mowinckel in R.H.Ph.&. TSc, 1929, pp. 2i2ff.; Act.Or. ^1930; pp iwfF.
82
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
David performed was, from, the standpoint of ritual, an ancient
means of creating power and victory, and in David's time may for
Israelite thought have expressed and guaranteed the ecstatic
divine power which flowed into David and the people through the
presence of Yahweh. But David did not share in that power
because he was thought of as having become one with Yahweh.
The dance was performed c before Yahweh3, and in His honour.
Probably Yahweh's victory over the enemy was presented
dramatically by means of a sham fight, as was done among
neighbouring peoples.1 Some passages in the festival psalms seem
to point to this.2 But in virtue of the marked historical emphasis
which is characteristic of Yahwism from the beginning, it is not
the conflict with chaos and the dragon which is enacted (as, for
instance, in Assyria; see above, p. 42), but Yahweh's victory over
His own historical enemies and those of Israel. This can be de-
duced from the text of a similar dramatic episode from the cult
contained in Ps. cxxxii. The institution of the cult of Yahweh in
Jerusalem, and the first entry of Yahweh and the ark into the city
are here enacted. The king assumes the role not of Yahweh but of
David. He appears at the head of the Israelite army, seeking the
ark which has been lost in the conflict with the Philistines, and
brings it up in triumph to Jerusalem to its place in the temple.3
Presumably something similar took place in the sham fight.
When the king led the hosts of Israel, the priests, and the temple
staff, and with a greater or less measure of symbolism enacted the
deeds of Yahweh, His emblematic and archetypal triumph over
His enemies past and present (the actual and possible enemies of
Israel), and when with realistic symbolism he shattered the bow
and cut the spear in sunder, and burned up the shields with fire
(Ps. xlvi, gf.), he did so in the power of Yahweh, but not through
any cultic or mystical identity with Him. That the phrase 'the
acts of Yahweh5 may be taken in this sense is shown by an expres-
sion such as 'the wars of Yahweh' as applied to Israel's victories
over her enemies.4
But both in Ps. cxxxii and in other cultic contexts, Israel's king
generally appears as the representative of the congregation before
1 On the important role of such mock battles and sham fights and the king's part in
them, see Engnell, Piping Kirgshid, Index, s.v. 'Sham fight*. A vivid description of an
Egyptian cultic combat Is given by Erman, Die agyfetisch^Religion*, pp.
2-Pss. xlvi, gf.; xlviii, gf.; see Ps.St. II, pp". i isST"^ ' ...... ^ JL
3 See Mowinckel, Kom^almr^^ . 751!.; cf. Bentzen, in .^.B.Z/. Ixvii, 1948, pp.
4 Num. xxi, 14. dn'^tJtie'EooK of the Wars of Yahweh ' , see ^Lowinckel in
ii, 1935, PP- JS^ff.
83
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Yahweh, not as the representative of Yahweh before the congrega-
tion. He dances and sings and plays 'before Yahweh'5 and leads
the festal procession (2 Sam. vi, 5, i^ff.; cf. Ps. xlii, 5). In the
cultic drama he represents David: Yahweh is represented by His
holy ark, by the * footstool3 before the throne on which He is
invisibly seated. l The king intercedes with Yahweh for the people,
standing before Him as a servant. It is not he but the cultic
prophet who in the festival ritual speaks Yahweh's words to the
congregation (Ps.St. III). In Ps. cxxxii we hear the temple pro-
phet's intercession for the king and his oracle to him in Yahweh's
name.2
It is the king who receives Yahweh's promises, His blessings, and
His power; and he transmits them to the community which he
represents.3 But in misfortune, too, he is the representative of his
people and has to bear their fate. On the days of humiliation and
prayer and in the atonement liturgies, it is the king who, as a cor-
porate personality, vicariously bears and lays before Yahweh all
the misfortune, suffering, and distress which have befallen the
people. They become his personal suffering and distress, making
him ill and weak. He can describe the afflictions of Jerusalem as
if they were his own private afflictions, and entreat Yahweh to
help and save him from distress.4
In order to grasp clearly the essential difference between the
royal ideology in Israel and that found elsewhere in the east, or,
in other words, how the religion of Israel transformed the ideas
which it acquired from its environment, we must consider an
essential difference between the Israelite conception of God and
that of other oriental religions. This raises the question mentioned
1 Ps. cxxxii, i-ro. On the throne within the temple see Isa. vi, iff.; Ezek. i; and cf.
Pedersen, Israel III-IV, pp. 246*!; H. Schmidt in £uchansteripn_I: pp. I2off.
2 It is, therefore, misleading when Canney (in j[.M'.]£.<0*&^ xvii, 1932, pp. 411!,), in
dealing with this ritual drama, speaks about a * magical ; activity.
3 Pss. cxxxii, uff.; Ixxii; cf. xx, 8f.; xxi, 10; Isa. Iv, 3.
^ 4 This may be inferred from Ps. cii. The T of this psalm (the worshipper), if not a
king (the psalm may be post-exilic), is at all events the cultic representative of the
congregation, its leading man, and as such has the same position as the king in former
times, and uses the vocabulary of the royal ideology. The worshipper represents Zion,
the congregation. The affliction and sufferings of Zion are also his suffering and
'sickness'. The climax of the psalm is the prayer about the restoration of Jerusalem
and Israel. Since it is emphasized that the time of favour has now come (v. 14), we
may hold that the psalm belonged to the cultic prayers at the harvest and New Year
festival, when men were on the threshold of the new era of grace and the year of favour
(Isa 3dix, 8; Ixi, 2). Observe also the emphasis on Yahweh's * sitting* on His throne,
on His 'arising' to save Zion (vv. I3f.), and His * appearing in glory3 (v. 17; the idea of
epiphany); and note the allusion to the creation in v. 26. A gloss or a textual variant
84
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
above (pp. 4i£), how the 'experiences' of the deity in the cult
were conceived. We saw that it was a common feature in oriental
religions and their cultic pattern that the god fought, suffered,
died, and rose again to new life, and that all this was visibly
expressed in the cultic drama.1 In the Pan-Babylonian school half
a century ago,2 and also quite recently, scholars have sought to
maintain that this took place in Israel too, and that Yahweh was
a dying and rising God,3 and consequently that the suffering,
death, and resurrection of the king formed part of the royal
ideology as we see it reflected in the cult.4
It is, however, quite out of the question that Yahweh was ever
regarded in Israelite religion as a dying and rising God. The
invaders from the desert always felt that there was an essential
difference between the gods of the Canaanites and ethe God of the
fathers', who revealed Himself to them on Mount Sinai, and whose
justice or 'manner' was the traditions and morals of the wilderness
period. The Old Testament explicitly states wherein this differ-
ence consists. The 'gods of the peoples5 may, as Ps. Ixxxii puts
it, 'die like men, and fall like one of the princes', and will do so
when Yahweh appears to judge the earth. For the Canaanites,
the expression 'the living god' meant 'the god who has come to
life again':5 for Israel it meant 'the God who always lives, and
creates life out of His own life'.6 Yahweh is 'the holy God who
1 Cf. the systematic (and therefore too theoretical) summary in Hooke, Myth and
fttiuah p. 8. *** — **"*"""
^""Ssee above, pp. 241". This view is frequently found in the works of Hugo Winckler,
e.g., his Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen.
3 See AHHTtloiiarRote VHT ~ —
4 This consequence of the supposed general oriental ritual pattern has been drawn
both by Engnell (&3&1& xxx^? X94^» PP* 3^0 anc* by- Widengren (£^£ x, 1945,
pp. 651!.). AlthougKjEngnell (Divine Kingship^ p. 210 n. 2) rightly rejecisTKeTidea that
the Israelites thought of YahwetTas a living and rising god, he nevertheless maintains
that their royal ritual was derived from a pattern which had this conception of the god.
But even this modified form of the hypothesis is untenable in the general way in which
Engnell expresses it. Uiesenfeld, too, maintains (The Resurrection in Ezekiel XXXVII
and the. I)]^~Europos Paintings) by a priori reasoning ttfat in Israel T^heJnng^HiecI (syno?"
bolically) and rose again in the New Year festival; and he quite arbitrarily reads this
idea into some passages where the text gives no indication of it. See further my
tngoffiw, pp. 569^
Saudissin, Adonis und Esmun^ pp. 466fF. 6 Op. cit., pp. 45off.
in v. 14 explains the time of favour (v. I4a) as the 'time of the festival' (v. I4b). In
I4b two textual variants have obviously been conflated: ki let bd* lehenenah and kt bd'
mti'ed lehenendh. The psalm seems to belong to the early post-exilic age: the greater
part of Jerusalem is still lying in ruins, the servants of Yahweh are represented as in
bonds and appointed to death (vv. 2 if.) *the nations' triumph over them and refer
in oaths and curses to the example of their misfortune (v. 9) : in brief, the Jews are
languishing under the oppressive and infamous domination of foreigners. But it is
also possible to date the psalm in the period 598-587 B.C.
85
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
does not die' (Hab. i, 12; see p. 78 n. i). It is characteristic that
whereas in the Babylonian cult we hear of the king and his men
going out to seek for the god who is imprisoned in the realm of the
dead,1 in the processional Ps. cxxxii it is the ever-powerful ark of
Yahweh, the symbol of His active presence, that c David' and his
men are thought to have been seeking and then to have found.
However much Israel may have adopted the cultic pattern and
myths of Canaan, she definitely rejected or radically transformed
all those conceptions and rites which presupposed or expressed
the death and resurrection of the deity.2 In keeping with this is
the fact that primitive ideas about the divinity of the dead (a
fundamental feature in all ancient Semitic religion3) were sup-
pressed in Israel to such an extent that a great gulf was fixed
between Yahweh and the dead. With the dead and the realm of
the dead, Yahweh and Yahwism have nothing to do.4 This
thought is emphasized so much that it almost conflicts with the
idea of the supreme power of Yahweh over the whole universe.
In Israel, as in Babylonia, the sources afford no evidence for
the idea (found in Egypt) that the king is one with the dead god,
and that he was represented in the cult as suffering, dying, and
rising again, or that in enacting this role he ever represented
Yahweh.5 There is not even any proof of the disintegration of
such a pattern in Israel: i.e.", of the theory that Israel adopted but
reinterpreted a cultic pattern which originally had this meaning.
This view has admittedly been recently maintained by some
scholars.6 Some of the psalms of lamentation are cited as evidence,
and are interpreted as referring to c cultic suffering', as lamenta-
tions uttered by the king, because as the substitute for the deity
1 See Frankfort, $wg$hfa P- 3*7; cf. p. 323.
2 This is very clearly' maintained by Pedcrsen, Israel. III-IV, pp. 440$*.; cf, pp.
Heidtntums*, pp. 383^; Pe35^,"^^lTPTv, pp. 4778".;
pp. i54,~i6o, 203fF. The same idea lies behind the conception ofthe tribal deity as the
original ancestor of the tribe; see Robertson Smith, op. cit., pp. 39ff. Among the
Bedouin the ancestor of the tribe is its god, and his grave its cult-place; see Musil,
Arabw, Petmealll, Index.
rj" '^'"jpssrvvSrxxx, 10; Ixxxviii, 11-13; cxv? 17> Cf. Pedersen, IsraelHI-IV, pp. 485^
5 This seems to be Widengren's opinion in Rdirionew vdrld^ pp. 31 if.; cf. 1st ed.,
pp. 223 n. 2, 225. In R.oJBAiy 1943, pp. 70, 72, VVioIengren says that Ps. Ixxxviii is
not actually a cultic text giving direct expression to this thought, but that the content
and the phraseology are determined by rituals of this type.
8 See, e.g., Johnson in TheJ^rMt^ p. 81; Widengren in SJE.A x, 1945, p. 66; cf.
also Engnell, Divine Kw^^jy. 170 n. 4, p. 210 n. 2, andl£T!ffi.g.Z. xxxi, 1948,
86
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
he has been overpowered and put to death in the cult by the
powers of chaos, to which life succumbs every year, but from
which it is again delivered through the cultic drama. But this
interpretation of the psalms is false. The worshipper, undoubtedly
often the king himself; does not here lament over suffering and
death which he undergoes symbolically in the cult, but over actual
present distress brought upon him by earthly enemies, foreign
nations and traitors within the state, or over ordinary illness and
the danger of death. When the worshipper at times describes
himself as already swallowed up by Sheol and in the realm of the
dead, his language is, from oar point of view, metaphorical; but
the figure is realistic in that it is based on the common Israelite
notion that a person who is sick or threatened by death has
already given lodgement to death, and is at the mercy of the
powers of death, unless at the last moment Yahweh snatches him
away. This is so, even although the actual poetical expression of
this idea probably goes back ultimately to the cultic representa-
tions of the descent of the vegetation deity to the underworld;1
but this does not alter the fact that these psalms speak of actual
sufferings and earthly dangers, not the feigned sufferings of the
cultic myths.
Thus there is no evidence that in Israel the king was regarded
as Yahweh, much less the dying Yahweh, or that there was any
representation in the festival ritual of the cult of the suffering and
death of the king.
On the whole we may regard it as symptomatic that the only
poem in honour of the king which the Psalter contains is the
marriage psalm (xlv), written in order to express 'good words',
the wish for blessing on the bridal couple. In Israel it was con-
sidered seemly to praise Tahweh in Zion (Ps. Ixv, 2) ; and he who
gloried (i.e., uttered the praises of that in which he found his
honour and pride) must glory in Yahweh (Jer. ix, ssf.), not in
any man or in any other god.2
We may therefore safely maintain that in the legitimate religion
of Israel, the real Yahwism, any kind of identification of the king
with Yahweh was repudiated. Undoubtedly the Israelite cult
1 On the * death* of the worshipper in the psalms of lamentation see Gunkel-
Begrich, finkitung, pp. iSyif.; Bentzen in the Eissfeldtfestschrift^ PP. 57^-; and further,
my (ffirsane oe ^g^fcr- ch« VII, 6, where the theory ofleigned suffering in the cult
is remteaT — — ™u— ~~ ~
2 Ratschow (g.A.W.Im, 1935, pp. 17 iff.) tries to interpret Ps. xlyii as belonging to
the cult of the King, But can do so only by means of radical and unjustified alteration
of the text.
87
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
had very many forms and expressions which originally implied a
far more intimate relation between the king and the deity than
Yahwism could admit. But the utmost caution should be observed
in arguing from a community of outward form to identity of
meaning and thought. We have a good instance of this in the
imperial etiquette of Christian Byzantium. The most important
of the outward forms of imperial state (attire, metaphor, the
throne and its surroundings, the 'appearance3 at the great festivals
and audiences, the decoration of the surroundings) were derived
from the divine kingship of the ancient east.1 But that the
Emperor was regarded either by himself or by the Church as
Christ incarnate or as a truly deified man is, of course, out of the
question. So it was in Israel: the king was ca god on earth', and
all the forms of the royal etiquette emphasized the fact; but in
every way he was subordinate to Yahweh, and in relation to the
only truly living One he was a mortal man.
At times this may not have held good in some syncretistic
circles, and perhaps even in the official cult of the Northern
Kingdom.2 It is also conceivable that in the time of David and
Solomon the cult at Jerusalem was considerably more Canaanite
than we can prove today. But at any rate we can see that the
representatives of Yahwism, who upheld the old cLevitical' tradi-
tions, reacted against this tendency at a very early period. The
first anti-Canaanite purification of the temple and the cult is
mentioned as early as the time of King Asa (i Kings xv, is£).
It is quite probable that the extant texts have been expurgated of
traces of earlier Canaanite tendencies. What is more important is
that the rites themselves were expurgated: that must have been
a natural consequence of the purification of the cult. As has
already been observed, when similarities occur between individual
expressions and metaphors in our texts and corresponding features
in Babylonian rituals, we must beware of concluding that we are
dealing with the same cultic pattern and the same religious ideas
and cultic practices. Details in texts and rituals must be seen and
interpreted in relation to the entire new structure of which they
form a part — in this instance, Israelite religion with its peculiar
character. As has been said above, it rejected every attempt to make
Yahweh a dying god and the king His 'identical9 representative.
1 Gf. L'Orange, Fra antikktil middelalder,ipp. 63-129; Afotheosjs_ in
pp ' "*
2 Gf. Hvia5er& graatf Oj^LalterTdei Gamle TestamMe^v. 8ifF.; Pe&israetitiske Religions
pp. yoff.j n i, w *— -r"-- *- n ~
88
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
We may in conclusion sum up in the following terms the
essential qualities which Israel required of a true king. The king
is the natural, official leader of the public cult of the nation, even
if on ordinary occasions the priest officiates in his stead. He is the
channel through which Yahweh's blessings flow to the people,
being conveyed primarily through his cultic functions. The pre-
supposition and condition of this is that he should be loyal to the
laws and justice of Yahweh. Although in virtue of his equipment
(anointing and Yahweh's spirit) he is 'divine' and more than an
ordinary human being, and although as leader in the cult he is
the representative of the Deity, yet in a still higher degree he is
the representative of the people in the presence of the Deity: he
prays, intercedes, offers up sacrifice, and receives power and
blessing. The covenant is concentrated in him; and through him
and his line the promises are mediated. Through him the con-
gregation stands before God and meets God.
If the king is what he ought to be, he is also the guarantee of
the people's future and good fortune, its 'righteousness' and
'peace'. He is the leader in war, and in the power of Yahweh
subdues all enemies. He is the supreme judge, the guardian of
justice and righteousness. He is the guarantee of fertility and
prosperity. All the victory and blessing which Yahweh creates for
His people by His advent at the festival are brought to realization
by the king, if he is a righteous king after Yahweh's heart. Then
the association works as it ought, and Yahweh bestows power and
good fortune for the maintenance of peace, justice, and prosperity.
Neither the king nor the cult creates these things; Yahweh Himself
creates and bestows them through the sacramental cultic acts and
through the king's right relation to Yahweh.
It is also characteristic of Israel that the religious and moral
conditions of all this are very strongly emphasized in the royal
psalms, the official ritual texts at the royal services. Almost every
aspect of the demands, promises, and requirements associated
with the king appears in Ps. Ixxii, a psalm of intercession and
blessing:
Inspire the king with thine own judgements, O God,
with Thine own righteousness the king's son,
that he may rule Thy people with righteousness,
and see that Thy poor has his right,
89
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
May he do justice to the poor of the people,
and succour those who are needy;
<may he smite the wicked with the rod of his mouth, >
and break in pieces the oppressor.
May he <prolong> (his days) while the sun endures,
as the moon, throughout all generations.
May he come down like rain upon the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth.
In his days <justice> will flourish,
and abundance of well-being without <bound>;
the mountains will bring forth well-being;
the hills <will yield> right order.
He will have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
The beasts of the wilderness will bow before him;
and his enemies will lick the dust. . . .
All kings will fall down before him;
all nations will serve him;
for he will deliver the needy when he cries,
the poor, and him that has no helper.
He will have pity on the needy and the poor;
and will save the lives of the poor:
from oppression and violence he will rescue them;
and precious will their blood be in his sight. . . .
May there be abundance of grain in the land;
may it wave on the tops of the hills;
may Its fruit <flourish> like Lebanon,
and its sheaves be as the grass of the earth.1
Instead of 'may he', we might translate che will', as is done
above in the latter part of the psalm. The thought oscillates
between the word of blessing and the word of prophecy, the
blessing being in itself a prophecy which creates the future.
1 Ps. Ixxii, 1-9^11, 14, 16. In v. 4b a hemistich seems to have been lost; in the
translation above it has been supplied from the parallel passage in Isa. xi, 4. V. 3
breaks the connexion between v. 2 and v. 4, and is logically connected withV *7; it is
transposed above: read ya**Mf1fi%. V. 5: see B.H*, n.a. V. 7; see &#.8. nn. a, c.
7. 12: seeff.g.3, n.a. V. 16; see ILRf, n.d-d. '
90
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
The king's promise in the presence of Yahweh on the day of
his enthronement (his 'charter') corresponds to these claims and
expectations:
I will sing of loyalty and just rule;
unto Thee, Yahweh, will I make music.
I will give heed to the way of integrity.
0 when wilt Thou come unto rne?
I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house;
and I will set no harmful thing
before my eyes.
I hate <him who> makes (his ways) crooked;
he shall not cleave to me (i.e., be my associate).
A perverse heart shall depart from me;
1 will know no evil man.
Him who secretly slanders his neighbour
I will destroy.
The man of haughty eye and proud heart,
with him I will not <share my meal>.
My eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me.
He who walks in the way of integrity
shall (be allowed to) be my servant.
But he shall not dwell within my house
who practises deceit;
and he who lies shall not be established
before my eyes.
Morning by morning will I destroy
all the wicked in the land,
cut off all who commit godless crime ('aweri)
from the city of Yahweh.1
* Even if every individual feature in this picture, taken separately,
represents ancient Israelite ideals, and also has parallels in the
demands made by other eastern nations on their kings, yet the
way in which precisely these demands are combined and empha-
1 Ps. ci. V. 3: see£.#.3, n.a. V. 5: seeBJ-f,8, n. b-b (G,S); M.T., 'I will not endure'
(the proud-hearted) clepends on the mistaken idea that Yahweh is the speaker in the
psalm.
91
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
sized, and the king regarded as protector and friend of the needy
and the humble reveals the influence of the prophetic movement
on the official religion. It is therefore also clear that the prophets
did not hesitate to direct their criticism even against sacral king-
ship,1 and to assess individual historical kings in terms of the
demands of Yahwism and its ideal of kingship, The king did not
receive his office in order to exalt himself, to act arrogantly, to
emulate the grandeur of great despots, or to oppress his fellow-
countrymen (his 'neighbours'), but in order to prove by his
actions that he eknew Yahweh'. This is clear, for instance, from
the words addressed by Jeremiah to King Jehoiakim:
Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
his chambers by injustice,
who forces other men to work for nothing,
holding back their wages,
who says, * I will build me a spacious palace,
with roomy chambers and with windows wide,
panelling it with cedar
and painting it with vermilion.3
Is it for you as king to vie
<with Solomon> in panelling with cedar?
Did not your father eat and drink (i.e., enjoy himself like a
normal man)
and he ruled justly and lawfully?
Did he not uphold the rights of the poor and needy?
Then it was well with him.
Is not that the true knowledge of Me?
says the inspired word of Yahweh.
But you have neither eyes nor heart
for aught but selfish gain,
and shedding innocent blood,
and doing oppression and violence.2
1 See, e.g., Pedersen, Israd_ III-IV, pp. I42ff.; Graham, Jfe Prophets q$
! xxii, 13-17. For the text, see G.TJMLM.M. Ill, p. 799. V. ISE must originally
have mentioned with whom JehoiaffiaTvies; anoT the line is metrically short: add
*et Flomoh. The meaning of v. i6b is not quite clear. Either he lived a decent life like
an ordinary man; or he enjoyed himself with all good things. In the old Aramaic
Hadad inscription, 1. 9, 'eat and drink' means to enjoy a quiet and happy life; see
Euler, g.A.W.lvit 1938, p. 299.
92
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
These verses summarize briefly the negative and positive aspects
of the authentic Israelite ideal of kingship, which culminates in
ethe knowledge of Yahweh'.
It would be a mistake to overlook the fact that these ethical
features (the emphasis on the king's duty to uphold justice and
righteousness and to protect the poor and needy) are also present,
and sometimes even prominent, in other eastern royal ideologies.
In Egypt, as we have seen, the king was the incarnation of the
divine cosmic law (ma? at] itself and of Ma' at the goddess of
justice. It was he who provided for order in the world and main-
tained law and 'justice'. The good fortune, peace, and welfare
of c the two lands ' were his concern. But this is much less promi-
nent than the king's glorious divine power. The impression is
given that the ethical side of the matter is subordinate. The king
provides for justice, not because it is a religious and moral duty
or charge, but because it belongs to his divine nature. As a god he
possesses all power and creates all good fortune and blessing; and
what he does is always in itself c just', because he, the incarnate god,
does it. c All that I commanded was as it should be,' says Amenem-
het.1 The king is himself ma? at, he w^the cosmic law,2 and there
appears to be no"moral law over him. If he maintains ma? at, the
consequence to which most importance is attached is that he
creates abundant crops in the land.3
The ethical aspect is considerably more prominent in the Assyro-
Baby Ionian royal inscriptions.4 The gods called Hammurabi to
be king, ein order that I should make justice shine in the land,
destroy those who do violence and commit crimes, prevent the
strong from harming the weak, rise like the sun-god over the
black-headed ones, diffuse light in the land, and promote the
welfare of the people' (Code of Hammurabi I, 32ff.). The king's
task is to be the 'shepherd' of his people, to care for it, and to
uphold justice against injustice, violence, and disorder.5 Never-
theless, a study of the Assyro-Babylonian royal inscriptions6
reveals a striking lack of emphasis on this idea.
The Babylonian kings lay the main stress on their cultic acts:
the building and restoring of temples, gifts for temple and cult,
1 Gf. Frankfort, op. cit, pp. 5if.,
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
offerings and prayers, and so on. The Assyrian kings emphasize
above all their warlike exploits and boast of having subjected
foreign nations and countries to the dominion of the god Ashur.
To this we may add that the very conception of the character of
'justice* and 'blessing' had a different basis in Babylonia and
Assyria from what it had, for instance, in Israel.1 We may put it
in this way: the gods stand above justice; 'justice5 or 'blessing9
is what the gods purpose; but that is often arbitrary and incom-
prehensible. It too often seems as if 'what seems to man to be
wise is contemptible in the eyes of the god, and what seems evil
in the judgement of man is good in the eyes of his god'.
In Israel, too, Yahweh is the source of justice and blessing, and
in the thought of the pious He is supreme over these qualities.
But the real belief of the , eading minds is that Yahweh is not
arbitrary. There is a norm in His relation to mankind. He may
be 'known5, even if He is 'the hidden god'. The standard is the
goodness and righteousness of His covenant,2 in spite of every-
thing. The tension remains; but faith in the morality of God's
justice is maintained: that is the 'solution5 in the poem about
Job.*
Thus the relation between religion and morality has a different
basis in Israel from what it has in Babylonia and Egypt; and this,
of course, affects the content of the religious ideal of kingship.
Two points express what is distinctive of the Israelite ideal: the
king is absolutely subordinate to Yahweh and in everything
dependent upon Him and His covenant blessing; and the king's
essential task is to be the instrument of Yahweh3 s justice and
covenant blessing among men. He is a true king in so far as he
'knows Yahweh' and the law of His moral being.4
It is, therefore, entirely in accord with the Israelite conception
that the king's humility is emphasized. Just as it is the king's duty
to sustain the humble and the oppressed, so he must himself be
humble and meek. His strength resides not in horses and chariots,
but in the name of Yahweh his God. Not splendour, but justice
to the lowly is the essence of kingship.5
And yet, when we consider the picture of the king which is
1 See Frankfort, Kingship^ pp. 27
2 See Mowmckd^JLhe^fcenntnis Gottes bei^den al^tamentlichen Propheten^ pp. 3 iff.
3 See Mowinckel, Ijffi:^ om Jjoo og^ns^e'^mn^ppriQ-42^1'
4 Cf. Mowinckel, iJie^Er^ntnts GottitterZ^ p . 8.
5 Cf. Zech. ix, gf.; Mic. v, 3, gi.; PssTxx,"^ xviii, 28; and see fectersen, Israel III-IV,
pp. giff. ""—
94
IDEAL OF KINGSHIP IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
given in the royal psalms, and see how, for example, Ps. ii, the
psalm of anointing, promises the king world dominion, and what
abundant blessings Ps. Ixxii expects from him, there can be no
doubt that even in ancient Israel he was regarded as more than
mere man. He was like can angel of Yahweh' (2 Sam. xiv, 20),
like a god on earth. He was the pledge of a happy future. Yahweh
has chosen this man as the instrument in the fulfilment of His
plans for the world. Here we are dealing not merely with the
language of the court (Hofstil}^ but with a genuine faith.2 The
poets do not say these things simply to flatter the king: they mean
them. They speak of the king as he ought to be, and of what
would follow if he were like that. Then he would be the willing
and fit instrument of Yahweh for the fulfilment of His gracious
plan of salvation for His people, which is based on His gracious
election and covenant. We may put it differently, and say that if
the king in all his conduct is ea king after Yahweh's own heart'
(and this condition is often emphasized), then he is not only a
frail man, but is in accord with the mind of Yahweh, with the
divine archetype of kingship.3 Then, so long as he abides by the
covenant, all the miraculous power of Yahweh is at his disposal.
The Israelite conception of and belief in kingship are the ex-
pression of the desire for some visible human evidence and
guarantee of Yahweh's covenant and of His active presence with
His people. Yahweh deals with the nation through one of its own
members. Israel's own interpretation of her ideal of kingship is
given by the author of the Deuteronomic history in his view of
history; if the king abides by Yahweh's law, the people will
prosper; if the king breaks the law and fails Yahweh, the ruin of
the people will follow. Thus Israel's conception of kingship really
points forward to Him who was its true fulfilment.
But this brings us to yet another important aspect of the con-
ception of kingship with which the next chapter will deal.
1 As Gressmann puts it, Ursprung^ pp. 25off.
2 See Mowinckel, Kon^alm^^^ . 1398".; von Rad in %.A.W. Ivii, 1939, p. 217.
3 See von Rad, op. at., p. 219.
95
CHAPTER IV
The Future Hope
i . B^aK^d and Qiredized Elemmtsj^tki Ideal of Kmgshi^
IT is important to recognize that from the very beginning the
ideal of kingship in ancient Israel had a certain relation to
the future; or, more precisely, it was never fully realized; but there
always remained something to be desired. It is of the nature of an
ideal that it can never become present reality, but always belongs
to the future. At the very moment when you believe that it is
already present, it ceases to be ideal; and the ideal itself escapes
into the future and so asserts its own nature. It may be associated
with something which is later seen not to correspond to it. Thus
it lives in the borderland between present and future.
Several of the royal oracles which have been handed down to us
assert that they will be realized only if the king cleaves to Yahweh
and walks according to His commandment and will.1 But the
curse may light upon the king himself and make him ill-fated;
he may fall into sin and become a wrongdoer (cf. Saul). Admit-
tedly the court poets could sing of more than one king, praising
them in effusive language as righteous and godfearing kings after
Yahweh's own heart. But experience often showed that the king's
good fortune did not always avail to protect the people from ene-
mies, misfortunes, civil dissension, and injustice. But there must
then be something wrong with the king himself and his righteous-
ness. Thus, quite naturally, the thought of the fulfilment of the
ideal came to be associated with the next king, the heir, the new-
born prince, the new king on the day when he was enthroned and
anointed. The descriptions of the kingly ideal which have been
handed down are for the most part either idealized descriptions
of the great kings of the past (which in effect means David), or
wishes and promises for the new king. At the enthronement of the
king, the temple prophets promise him all the royal fortune and
blessing, power and honour which are proper to a son of Yahweh
1 Pss. xviii, 21-7; Ixxxix, 31-5; cxxxii, 12.
96
THE FUTURE HOPE
(Pss. ii; ex).1 Year by year as the festival came round (coinciding
with the annual enthronement festival of Yahweh, the New Year
festival) these promises were repeated (Ps. cxxxii, iiff.). The
same thing took place on days of humiliation and prayer, before
war, and in need and danger (Ps. xx). The congregation uttered
on behalf of the new king its good wishes for blessing, describing
how both at home and abroad he would make the ideal come true
(Ps. Ixxii) ; and the king himself offered to Yahweh a kind of
charter, in which he promised to be a true king, to walk in Yah-
weh's way, and to make His justice a reality in the land (Ps. ci).
But as a rule these hopes and promises would not be fulfilled.
The author of the Book of Kings passes very unfavourable judge-
ments on most of the kings of both Israel and Judah. And the
real condition of both country and court is shown as clearly as
one could wish by the fiery denunciations of the prophets of doom,
even if they too have so great respect for the sacrosanct ideal of
kingship that they seldom attack the king himself explicitly and
by name.
We may therefore maintain that precisely because the ideal of
kingship was so lofty, and because the king was regarded as a
divine being, of whom, accordingly, divine virtues and divine
help were expected, the ideal of kingship became something which
haunted everyday reality as the object of dreams, wishes, and
longings, something for whose realization the people would hope
in every new king and prince, or at least something which would
at some time be fulfilled. For one day the true king must surely
come and put everything right, as according to saga and poetry
it had once been under the first king of Jerusalem, David, the
founder of the dynasty.
In this form (as a vague dream of the possible realization of an
ideal at some time in the future) the conception of a coming
'Anointed of Yahweh3 existed in Israel quite early in the monar-
chic period. Naturally it cannot be older than the monarchy
itself. It comes from a time when the common oriental ideal of
kingship had been naturalized in Israel, and when the tension
between ideal and reality was making itself felt, so as to prompt
the wish that in spite of the unpleasant facts the ideal of kingship
would be realized.
But we must mention here another factor which helped to give
1 This may also be deduced from Ps. Ixxxix, 2 iff, and 2 Sam. vii; see Mowinckel m
1947, pp. aaoff.
97
H
THE FUTURE HOPE
the kingly ideal its future reference, namely, its connexion with
the cult.1 The occasions in Israelite life at which the king was
presented to sight and thought as the realization of the ideal were
the great festivals, when, as mediator between Yahweh and the
people, and as representative of the latter, arrayed in holy attire,
he received Yahweh's renewed promise of divine equipment, of
the renewal of the covenant, and of every conceivable kind of good
fortune for himself and his people in coming days. In particular,
on two important cultic occasions the king thus represented the
future hopes and prospects of the dynasty and the people. These
were the festival of anointing and the great annual festival, the
harvest and New Year festival, the festival of Yahweh's epiphany.
At the anointing, on the coronation day, he received the promise
of a filial relationship to Yahweh, of victory over all his opponents,
of world dominion, of 'everlasting priesthood5, of the seat of
honour at Yahweh's right hand. Promises of this kind have been
preserved in the oracles of anointing, such as Psalms ii and ex. 2
At the great annual festival, the foundation of the dynasty and
the covenant with David (which also represented the covenant
with Che people) were experienced anew. Then the king received
again the promise of his dynasty's everlasting reign, of Yahweh's
favour, of victory, peace, and blessing for people and king, for
priesthood and laity, for field and flock. The future was created
and secured. Evidence of this is provided, for instance, by the
festival liturgy in Ps. cxxxii.3 But at the annual festival it was also
the future of the whole people which was created anew. Fate was
reversed; all things became new; a cyear of favour' was at hand.
The invisible pledge of all this was the chosen of Yahweh, the
king, c David3, with whom Yahweh would never break His
covenant.4
Thus the fact is that at certain culminating and turning points
in Israel's life the prevailing ideal of kingship crystallized into a
present expectation and a specific promise of a definite person,
who had already come or would come soon, and who was sup-
posed to be the full realization of the ideal. To this the terms
c Messianic hope' or 'Messianic faith* have been applied. But this
1 See Ps.St. II, pp.
2 See K3T III, pp. 78flf.
3 SeePslSt. Ill, pp. 3off. On the covenant with David as parallel to the covenant on
Sinai, see below, pp. 1651*.
4 Isa. Iv, 3. On the oracles at the annual festival, see Ps.St. Ill, pp. 30-64.
98
THE FUTURE HOPE
is misleading, because the word 'Messiah5 then loses its most
important element, the eschatological element (see above p. 3).
It is more accurate to see in this crystallization of the kingly ideal
a preliminary stage of the true Messianic faith. From the stand-
point of historical fact they belong to the more general stage of
development, that of the royal ideology, not to the more specific,
that of belief in a Messiah, which was produced by particular
historical conditions and experiences against the background of
the more general conception of the kingly ideal with its future
reference.
But in order to understand the origin of the Messianic faith, it
is important to see how the ancient Israelite ideal of kingship,
being imperfectly realized, might take precise form at certain
supreme moments and in times of emergency. It goes without
saying that these decisive turning points in Israel had a cultic
character.
In the faith of ancient Israel as we know it (which, in this
connexion, means the form given to this faith by the spiritual
leaders in Jerusalem under the monarchy), the realization of the
kingly ideal was associated with the house of David, to which
belonged the covenant and the promises, 1 since it was the chosen
and anointed 'family of oil3.2 The re-establishment of the nation's
prosperity and of its prospects at the great annual festivals was
also the re-establishment of the prosperity and prospects of David's
house, represented by the contemporary bearer of the royal dig-
nity. For the existence of the covenant people, the existence of
the royal house with its 'peace' and 'righteousness' was a vital
necessity. To the mind of the Israelite, the continuance and
' everlasting5 character of life was bound up with the family. The
content of the cultic and prophetic promises to the king and the
royal house is that the dynasty will endure "for ever5 and 'stand
before Yahweh', that there will always be sons sitting on the
throne of their ancestor.3
A man's aim (and not least the king's) was to secure the life of
his family. This was true of the Canaanites. To find a suitable
wife who 'will bear a son to Karit' is the main theme in the
Ugaritic epic of Karit. Here we see that the motif is found even
In the world of the gods, for, as we have said, Karit is at once the
1 Isa. Iv, 3. On the interpretation, see Mowinckel inG^MMM. Ill, and below,
pp. i6sf.
2 Gf. Zech. iv, 14; and see interpretation mG.T.M.M.^.j III.
8 2 Sam. vii, 12-16, 25-9; i Kings viii, 25; JSTKSxTSg^sS; cxxxii, nf., lyf.
99
THE FUTURE HOPE
deified ancestor and the god in the form of a hero. Both in Ugarit
and in Egypt the myth of the deity plays upon this motif: the son
is one with the father, and also the continuation of his life. It is
therefore natural that in the east the birth of a prince who is heir
to the throne is one of the great occasions in the life of the dynasty
and the nation. There are many echoes of this in oriental royal
inscriptions and in the Old Testament traditions. It is this motif
which creates the tension in the story about David and Bath-
sheba, about David's despair over the death of the first son, and
about the safe birth of the next, Jedidiah, 'the beloved of Yahweh*,
The same motif occurs elsewhere. That the story of the birth and
childhood of Samuel dealt originally with the birth of the later
King Saul, is still apparent from the explanation of the name in
i Sam. i, 20, ;he who has been asked of Yahweh'. There is no
doubt, as several scholars have recognized and maintained, that
this explanation of the name really arose in order to explain the
name Sfful^ Saul.1 The promise of sons who will be worthy suc-
cessors of their father is also a leading theme in the oracle for the
royal wedding in Ps. xlv:
Your sons will take the place of your fathers;
you will make them princes over all the earth (or, land).
We are explicitly told that the court and temple prophets hailed
the birth of the prince with promises of good fortune from Yahweh.
The birth of Jedidiah-Solomon was certainly not the only occasion
when this happened.2
From the brief account which the narrator gives of this, we may
conclude at least this much, that the content of these promises was
Yahweh's goodwill to the child and thus to the dynasty which he
was to continue. They confirmed and renewed such prophecies
as were usually heard in the cult, at the enthronement of the king,
and at the annual festival: prophecies of Yahweh's everlasting
favour, ol the everlasting dominion of the dynasty, and of the good
fortune and blessing to be brought on the land and the people by
the rule of the newborn child; cultic promises such as we find in
Pss. cxxxii and Ixxxix, of which Nathan's oracle in 2 Sam. vii is
a narrative echo.3
1 See Hylander, Der literarische Samuel-Saul-Kwrtt]^ (L^E^i^^, ^1&&W^^^:
lick unte^sucht^ pp. lal^McrwmcEel In^^^^^^^II, p, 151. """""''
'*"'""* Soam. xii, 24f.; the iaterest of the narrators in princes is also apparent in passages
like 2 Sam. iii, 2-5.
3 £j.5jL. Ill, pp. 35f.} 1 10. It is not the case, as earlier literary critics tended to hold,
thatlPsst Ixxxix, 2ofL; cxxxii, iiff., and other passages show literary dependence on
IOO
VI: Scripture and Covenant
HUMAN AND DIVINE IN SCRIPTURE
Each of the recent writers whom we have cited has been
concerned to warn us against any simple identification of
the Christian revelation with the contents of the Bible,
and each has been well aware that in this respect he was
breaking with a long-established tradition. Thus we found
Dr. Earth writing that "we do the Bible a misdirected
honour, and one unwelcome to itself, if we directly identify
it with this Other Thing, the revelation itself," and adding
that we so transgress as often as we set up a doctrine of the
general and uniform inspiration of Scripture, In the Bible,
he went on to say, we have in all cases to do with human
attempts to repeat and reproduce the Word of God (as
spoken directly by God Himself in Jesus Christ) in human
thoughts and words with reference to particular human
situations, such as those existing in the Corinthian church
between A.D. 50 and AJX 60. "In the one case De us dixit, but
in the other Paulus dixit; and these are two different
things." l We may here add the following from another
1 Reference supra, pp. 34*35*
THE FUTURE HOPE
that David should be celebrated in this way. Among these poetical
descriptions in the manner of prophetic promises we must include
the prophecy of the cstar5 or the 'comet', which was to crise out
of Israel', in the Balaam lays, and the fi ruler' from the tribe of
Judah in the Blessing of Jacob.1
Among the extant texts which have from ancient times been
regarded as Messianic there are some which must be regarded
not merely as descriptions of the future, but as contemporary
applications of the current ideal of kingship and the current
expectation attached to the royal house and its representative.
These came into existence in quite specific historical and cultic
situations. First and foremost there are those passages which are
associated with the birth of a prince.
The Bj^jy[the Child (Isa. EJ^JH?). In. form this passage is a
blend of a prophetic message and a hymn. The glorious nature of
the message makes the prophet cast it in the form of a song of
praise, a hymn of thanksgiving to Yahweh for the work of salva-
tion which He has already wrought through the birth of the child.
But, as in the psalms of thanksgiving, he is actually speaking to the
people.
The prophet begins2 by giving a picture of the national situation
as night and darkness; but at the same time he announces the
dawning of the light.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep gloom
upon them the light has shone.
The metaphor is taken from the conception of Sheol, the realm
of the dead. It is the 'land of shadow' or c gloom', the deep night
in which the people are now living. When salvation is described
as a sunrise, as a light shining in the night at the moment when the
deliverer is born, it is plain (as we see below) that this metaphor
has been derived from the myth of the sun god, the god of life,
and of his victorious invasion of the nether world, Sheol, to rouse
1 Num. xxiv, 7b, 17; Gen. xlix, 10; see above, pp. i2f.
2 On the text, see G.TM.M.M^ III, pp. 785, 832 ('Rettelser').
reference, as Staerk holds (Sot^JI, pp. 234*?.). The 'pattern5 is created by the nature
of the facts: the ideal must have a dark background, that it may shine all the more
brightly.
102
THE FUTURE HOPE
the dead. We find a variant of the same conception in Ps. cx5
where behind the description of the king there lies the picture of
the new god of fertility, cthe dew', Td9 born of the goddess of the
'glow of morning'. The Canaanite Baal, too, is both sun god and
fertility god. He was dead, and in the realm of the dead; but he
came to life,, rose again, and brought back light to the world.
Thus the background of the prophet's metaphor is ultimately
the pre-Israelite conception of the king as the representative of
the sun god and fertility god. In the comparison which follows,
between the jubilation over the birth of the child and the rejoicing
at the harvest festival, there is an echo of the conception of the
association of the divine king with fertility. The Israelite prophet
has forgotten the origin and the original meaning of these ideas;
they have become merely metaphorical, depicting misfortune and
the sudden, brilliant dawn of deliverance. The prophet does aot
need to mention the kind of misfortune he has in mind, for his
audience knows it as well as he does himself; but the allusions
which follow make it plain. It Is the oppression of foreign rule.
Beside the metaphors of the yoke on the neck of draught cattle and
the driver's stick, there is a quite plain reference to the noisy
military boots and the bloodstained garments of the army of
occupation.
All this misery, says the prophet, is now ended in an instant.
When the light is seen breaking into the darkness of Sheol,
rejoicing already rises to heaven. Here hymn is joined with
promise, as the prophet praises Yahweh for the salvation which He
has already wrought through the birth of the child.1
Thou hast multiplied the rejoicing,
and increased the gladness,
in Thy presence they rejoice as at harvest,
as men rejoice when they divide booty.2
The harvest and New Year festival when the crop has been
safely gathered in, and the dividing of bboty after a successful
military expedition were from ancient times for the Israelite life's
two supreme experiences, the former from the peasant's point of
view, the latter from that of the warrior and the Bedouin. So now,
rejoicing arises from the people who hitherto have been dwelling
1 von Rad thinks that the *Thous in m. 3^ is strange; T^^lxxii, 1947, col. 216.
But see above, p. 102, on the literary form of the oracle.
2 For the text of the first line see JjU^3 in loc. n.a-a.
103
THE FUTURE HOPE
in darkness. Presently we hear the reason. The coming of the
light means that foreign domination is broken.
For the yoke that weighed him down,
the bar that lay on his shoulder,
and his oppressor's rod Thou hast broken
as in the day of Midian.
This last expression probably refers to the old stories about Gideon
slaying the Midianites and delivering Israel from their domina-
tion and their forays (Judges vii f.). The prophet already sees the
enemy defeated and driven out of the country. All his unclean,
accursed equipment, which he has had to leave behind or throw
away in his flight, is collected and burnt up to deliver the land
from uncleanness and the curse:
For every tramping soldier's boot
<shall be destroyed with fire.>
And every garment stained with blood,
shall be fuel for the flames.1
But what is the reason for this sudden change of fortune?
What is the light which has dawned on the oppressed people?
We are now told:
For a child has been born to us,
a son has been given to us;
the token of royalty shall be on his shoulder,
and his name shall be called 'Wonderful Ruler',
fi Divine Hero5, 'Father for ever3,
and c Prince of peace and well-being5,
A son is born! By the birth of the child, light has dawned upon
them in the darkness. The certainty of deliverance and salvation
has been created within them, so that they already rejoice in
anticipation of the coming victory and prosperity. The association
of the myth about the birth of the sun god with the idea of the
birth of the royal child is not accidental. By the birth of the child,
salvation and a glorious future are guaranteed.
To this fact direct expression is given by the names which the
prophet already gives to the child, names which he will assuredly
win for himself when he sits on the throne of his fathers. In the
east, as is clear particularly from Egyptian sources, the ceremony
1 On the text, see &T.M.M.M. Ill, p. 785,
""£04
THE FUTURE HOPE
of enthronement included the bestowal by the deity of names
which expressed the king's nature, his relationship to the deity,
and his destiny; and clearly this custom also formed part of the
coronation ritual in Judah.1 That is what the prophet is referring
to here. Even now, by anticipation, he bestows upon the new-
born prince the royal names which Yahweh has destined for him
and which he will one day bear. They are 'Wonderful Ruler'
(literally, 'Counsellor'),2 'Divine Hero', 'Father for ever', 'Prince
of Peace and Good Fortune' (both ideas are included in the
Hebrew saldm, 'peace',3 which really means, wholeness, fullness,
perfect conditions). The first and last of these names are immedi-
ately intelligible to us: to rule over the land and the nation in war
and peace, to have the right counsel in every situation, and to
carry it into effect, to secure 'peace' and 'happiness' by victory
in war and by prudent and just government were always the tasks
of kings in ancient Israel. But even the first name, 'Wonderful
Ruler', seems to hint that here these qualities are present in a
wonderful, superhuman degree. The other two names show quite
plainly that divine equipment is meant. The second name, 9el
gibUr, may be translated as 'Heroic God' or as 'a God of a Hero ',
i.e., 'Divine Hero'; by analogy with 'Wonderful Ruler', the latter
interpretation is the more likely. But in either event, the heroic
power which the child will possess is characterized as divine. In
form the name offers a precise parallel to the epithet applied to
Aleyan-Baal in the Ugaritic texts: 'tiu gaziru, 'the victorious or
heroic god',4 the god who is victorious over his enemies and raises
life out of death again. The third name, 'Father of Eternity',
may according to normal Hebrew usage be interpreted 'Father for
ever', i.e., one who for all time acts as the father of his people or
his worshippers. But here, too, we have analogies which point in
a somewhat different direction. The Egyptian king-god also bears
the title 'Prince of Eternity' and 'lord of infinity'5 and in the
Ugaritic texts the supreme god, El, is also called 'Father of Years'
(9abu sanimi}. 'Eternity' in Hebrew does not denote the infinite,
empty, abstract, linear prolongation of time which we associate
with the word, but is equated with ' time ' in all its infinite com-
1 See von Rad in T.L.£t. Ixxii, 1947, cols. zi$f.
2 On 'counsel' =^ govern', 'lead', 'rule', see Pedersen, Zggg/, I~II, isSfF., c£
Index, s.w. * counsel', * counsellor5. *—*•—*
3 Pedersen, op. cit., pp. 2638".
4 See Engnell, Dimne Km^shij)^ p. no n. 3.
i " "" 105
THE FUTURE HOPE
prehensiveness. The word can therefore also mean ' the course of
the world9 (aeon) or simply cthe world5 itself as a totality of time
and space. To the Hebrew, ' time ' is not an empty formal notion,
a concept or category in the Kantian sense, but is inseparable from
its entire content. 'Time' is all that exists and happens in time.
It is the sum of the content of the years. e Father of Eternity5 and
'Father of Years' are therefore identical conceptions. They indi-
cate the one who produces, directs, and is lord of the ever-
changing years, who lets the years with all their content of events
follow each other in constant succession, who thus produces and
directs 'eternity', the entire fullness of events and reality. It is
evident that such a name really belongs to a god, and not just
any god, but the god, 'the high god', cthe supreme god', 'the
father of the gods3 (see below, pp. i8sf). That the Jews, too, knew
and used this title is apparent from a number of passages. l
Thus the newborn child is a ruler, a king, with divine attributes
and divine equipment. What kind of child is this, then; and what
are his task and his vocation?
To increase the dominion,
and <make> good fortune endless,
upon the throne of David,
and in his kingdom,
to establish it with justice and righteousness
from henceforth and for ever
the zeal of Yahweh of Hosts
will perform this.
The child will sit on the lofty throne of David's kingdom as a
scion of David. He is called to extend his dominion and to create
endless 'peace5 (well-being) for his dynasty, and for its realm and
empire, and thereby also for the people over whom the dynasty
rules, and to restore the kingdom of David, which for the present,
at least, is abased and subdued, to its ancient splendour. He will
perform this as ruler of the kingdom, by displaying precisely those
virtues which are required in a ruler: to execute c justice ', c righ-
teousness', and 'judgement', to provide 'justice' for his people,
and by 'judging5 them to deliver them from their adversaries, so to
rule that well-being ('ideal conditions') is restored and main-
tained. He will also, if need be, 'give judgement against', and so
1 Tobit. xiii, 6, 13; xiv, 7; Ecclus. xxxvi, 22 (17); see Charles AJP^O.T. I, ad locc.,
and cf. Bousset, Relig.2) p. 358 n. 2, •——**•«»—
106
THE FUTURE HOPE
destroy, not only foreign enemies, but any malefactors who exist
within the nation, and protect all his subjects against the violation
of their rights as members of the covenant people.1 The ideal
which is now to be realized through this child is the old ethical
ideal of a king or ruler in Israel: to establish and maintain con-
ditions of righteousness and bliss at home and abroad. ]
The first part of the prophecy would lead us to expect an explicit
statement that it is the newborn king who in his time will perform
all this; and this is in fact stated. The logical subject of the infini-
tives in v. 6 (cto increase the dominion5, and so on) is che5, the
child of the preceding verse. But finally it is explicitly emphasized
that this task is to be performed through the zeal of Yahweh of
Hosts: Yahweh Himself will intervene, and deliver, and establish
justice through the newborn child. Here the transforming power
of revealed religion is apparent. A newborn king, who is des-
cribed as a divine being with divine titles and faculties, who has
appropriated the characteristics, achievements and name (i.e., the
muthos] of the sun god and supreme god, is nevertheless only an
instrument in the hands of 'Yahweh, God Almighty', who is
the Author of all: he is a scion of David, a mere man. The
mythical conceptions and metaphors have been transferred
to the royal child of David's line; but in the last resort the
power and the glory belong to Yahweh, It is He who accom-
plishes all; and without Him even the divinely equipped prince
is nothing.
It is entirely in keeping with the transformation by the Yahweh
religion of the old king-god motif that the prophecy does not
include any description of the actions and achievement of the new
king when he has reached man's estate. The announcement of
his birth sums up all that there is to say. The very birth of the
child is the guarantee of the coming salvation. The underlying
conception has this element in common with the myth to which it
ultimately goes back. In the Ganaanite myths about the birth of
the divine child (as we can discern them, for instance, behind the
Karit Epic), all the emphasis is laid on the birth of the child. In
virtue of his birth, the new age, the new year, life and blessing have
arrived. This is clearly in accord with the cultic character of
these myths, when at the time of the cultic festival the 'new' god
of the new year is born and his birth is proclaimed as 'good
1 On the meaning of righteousness and justice as virtues and functions of a ruler, see
Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp. 3s6fF.
107
THE FUTURE HOPE
tidings n for the people, then the newjj present, then the dead
god, his father, is alive again, life t£ reborn, blessing is^ already
secured and will soon burgeon in the sight of all when the 'win-
dows' of heaven are opened2 and the life-giving and fertilizing
rain begins to pour down. This feature of the myth, that all the
emphasis is laid on the birth itself and on the salvation which it
promises and guarantees, was of value to the Israelite prophet
who adopted these ancient thought-forms to express his promises
about the birth of the royal child. It was in keeping with what
was for him the supreme fact, that it was the saving zeal of Yahweh
which had intervened through this event to deliver His people
from the night and death of misfortune.
Is the prophet speaking of what belongs entirely to the future;
or does he apply his prophecy to a child already born? It is
impossible to reach any certain conclusion on the evidence of the
Hebrew verbal forms. Hebrew 'tenses' do not, like ours, express
distinctions in time. Both the 'perfect5 and the 'imperfect3 in
Hebrew can indicate events in the past, present, or future, accord-
ing to context. In this passage the perfect and corresponding forms
occur. They are used to emphasize that the events are thought of
as real and must be described as such. Therefore the perfect, and
particularly the corresponding consecutive imperfect (which also
occurs here), are the usual means of describing what has happened
(historic tense), and tend to become a real 'tense' denoting the
past. 3 The style of this prophecy points in the same direction.
The wording ofv. 5, 'a child has been born', which expresses the
chief point in the prophecy, is precisely in the style of a message.
In everyday life it was in such terms that the news of the birth of
a child was given to the father (Jer. xx, 15; Job iii, 3) ; and we may
assume that in similar fashion kings informed each other of happy
family events, in order that they might receive congratulatory-
embassies from friendly princes.4 If we read the text of Isa. ix, 1-6
1 This is the expression which the Ugaritic texts themselves use: bSrt = be{ordh. See
Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xl, 1939, pp. 205!?.; Engnell, Divine J^^^ pp. n6 (the news
that the temple"*— cosmos is built), 126 (the birth of tETnewgoSTrae calf), 132 (the
birth of the saviour god), 133 (do.: fLo, the damsel beareth a son.').
2 These windows feature also in the Ugaritic texts. The restoration of the universe
is symbolized by the erection of the temple which Baal builds, according to the myth;
and it is an important point that the windows in the roof must be rightly placed. See
Hvidberg, Graad o^Latter^ pp. 3if., 39, 47; Engnell, op. cit, pp. 102, 106.
z Nybergl^bmsk §y^n^t p. 280) observes that the regular sequence of perfect
and consecutrv^lin^erTecTnTlsa. ix, 1-6 cannot possibly express a prophecy of the
future, but must refer to events which have either already taken place or are contem-
porary with the utterance.
4 Gf. such congratulatory embassies on the occasion of victory, the accession of a
1 08
THE FUTURE HOPE
as it stands, without thinking of the traditional Christian inter-
pretation, the immediate impression which we receive is undoub-
tedly that it describes something which has already happened. It
is the birth of a prince in Jerusalem which has occasioned this
promise. It expresses clearly and in classic form the ideas which
were associated in Israel with the bearer of kingship, and the
wishes and expectations which were quickened when a new heir
to the throne was born, not least in hard times, when the land was
threatened by the violence and injustice of the enemy, and all
thoughts were turned towards the future. Just as every year the
day of the New Year festival was expected to be cthe day of
Yahweh', which would bring the turn of their fortune,1 so the
birth of every new prince was a starting point for the realization
of men's faith in the king's divine equipment and his vocation to
bring 'salvation', eto establish justice3 in the land. Here clear
light is shed on that unrealized element in the ideal of kingship,
which in time produced the Messianic hope. We are dealing with
an ideal of kingship and a hope which in the last resort are supra-
mundane, and which, in accordance with the spirit of revealed
religion, came at last to express the recognition that no human
king can bring that ideal and hope to fulfilment, but that 'the
zeal of the Lord God Almighty' must perform it, as the prophet
here clearly sees. There was, therefore, every justification for the
later Jewish interpretation of this passage as referring to the future
Messiah, and for the Christians who from the beginning recognized
that it had found its real fulfilment in Christ.
Of course it is impossible to identify the prince whom the pro-
phet had in mind.2 The prophecy does not describe this c scion of
David' as he really was, but expresses the hope of what he might
become. Tradition has ascribed this saying to Isaiah. That is just
possible; but several factors tell against it; not only its context
and its secondary association with Isa. vi, i-viii, ig,3 but also
1 Amos v. i8fF. Sec further pp. 142, 145, below.
2 An interpretation of Isa. ix? iff. in terms of historical events is given by Dietze
in MWWSM^ but without any proof that the prophecy refers to the birth of King
Manasseh. The historico-ideological interpretation of the passage (and also of xi, iff.)
advanced above is shared in its essentials by Margaret B. Crook in JJ^jL^Jxvm* *949>
pp. 2138". She holds that these passages were connected with the enthronement of
King Joash of Judah, circa 837 B.C.; but the conventional and general features in the
description do not support so precise a dating.
8 See Mowinckel in gXM,^£.^. Ill, pp. 65, 104; cf. 'Komposisjonen av Jesaja-
bokcn Kap 1-39% JnJiC^^xliv, 1943, p. 163. _ _____
new king on the death of his predecessor, recovery from sickness, and the like; 2 Sam.
viii, gf.i x, if.; 2 Kings xx, I2f. Embassies announcing the birth of a child are men-
tioned in the Amarna Letters and elsewhere.
log
THE FUTURE HOPE
particularly the fact that the prophet does not here attach to the
promise any conditions of penitence and conversion., as Isaiah
elsewhere always does.1 But at least it comes from a prophet with-
in the circle of his disciples, and was connected at an early stage
with the tradition of Isaiah's sayings. It expresses the thoughts,
expectations, and convictions which arose in the prophetic move-
ment in the period after Isaiah.2 It expresses what God had given
to one of these later prophets to say, which in fact points be-
yond what he as yet could perceive. That God Himself must
perform the work, establish justice, bestow salvation, but that He
will do it through a divinely equipped man, a man who is really
more than man, ca greater than Solomon ', ca greater than Jonah'
— that is what this prophet recognized. But who the child should
be, was still hidden from him. It has been revealed to the Church;
and there is every justification for reading this promise to the
congregation as the first lesson at Morning Prayer on Christmas
Day.
The Immanuel Pw^hec^ (Isa,* vii). The Immanuel prophecy in
Isa. vii sheds clearer light on this wonderful royal child.3
The situation is the threatened assault on Judah by Ephraim
and Damascus. King Ahaz does not dare to trust in Yahweh's
help, but wants to appeal to the King of Assyria, which, to Isaiah,
is synonymous with arrogance, unbelief, and contempt for Yah weh,
setting the power of man above the power of God. But Isaiah
does not give up hope of turning Ahaz to the right way. Yahweh
Himself, in His longsuffering, will give him a sign, so that he does
not even have to choose one: does he dare to accept it and yield
himself to God? Then comes the sign: c Behold the young woman
has conceived, and she will bear a son (or, the young woman who
has conceived will bear a son), and she will call him Immanuel
1 See Mowinckel in G.T.M.JV£.j£. Ill, pp. 7o£, 105. von Rad,^TX.^. Ixxii, 1947,
col. 216, points out thatlfoelrymnic mode of address to Yahweh (see aBove, pp. losf.)
is not found elsewhere in Isaiah. In Deutero-Isaiah this blend of promise and hymn
is very common.
2 See Mowinckel, ^^admpkne^pp. 4.6 ff.; cf. io8ff.
3 References to soiSces^dlitefature relating to what follows are given in my article
on the Immanuel prophecy in N.T.T. xlii, 194,1, pp. ipgfF. R. KittePs monograph,
•2^ ^j^I^I^MS un%*^ -4ft* T^sU^mth of fundamental importance
f^^SsmtSpf^SoST'^^m^^^^^(l^^.)9 xxxii, 1944, pp. 97ff.) still maintains
the view which I formerly held (Kjjjetm ^BS^a^jpp. 26ff.), that the child was the pro-
phet's own. On the basis of the psalm superscription 'at taldmdtt Fahlgren (S.K^iv, pp.
i3flf.) interprets hd-'almdh as referring to some female temple-singer. Fahlgren makes
too much of the parallels in the Ugaritic texts. See also Hammershaimb in St. TL
III, ii, 1949/51, pp. i24ff., and the bibliography there (p. 142). HammershaTmFs
interpretation of the prophecy is rather similar to my own.
110
THE FUTURE HOPE
(With-us-is-God). Curds and honey he will eat till (he is old
enough) to have discretion to refuse what is bad and choose what
is good. For before he has discretion to refuse what is bad and
choose what is good, the land whose two kings you dread will be
desolate.5
There has been much discussion of the identity of the young
woman and the child. Is she the king's wife, or Isaiah's, or some
woman who happened to be present, or any woman who is going
to give birth to a boy in the near future? Instead of beginning with
this question we ought rather to consider what fdnd^ of woman and
^^H£ °f ctlild are here referred to. We then see that here, as
in Isa. ix, 1-6, all the emphasis is laid on the birth and the name of
the child, not on what will happen later. We are not told that he
will reign as king over Israel, or indeed that he will be of royal
rank, or that he will deliver the people from distress. On the con-
trary, it is stated that before the child is old enough to distinguish
between what is useful and what is harmful (i.e., in a few years) ,
the enemy will be destroyed by Yahweh. Since the sign is intended
to make Ahaz believe absolutely in Yahweh, surrender himself to
Him in complete trust and obedience, and in virtue of this choice
decide to adopt the right attitude in the contemporary situation,
it is clear that the sign must come to pass soon, and not, for
instance, after the event, simply to confirm the divine direction,
as in Exod. iii, I2.1 This also means that a direct Christological
interpretation is out of the question. Isaiah cannot here be refer-
ring to the birth of Jesus more than seven hundred years later. He
foretells that since King Ahaz has not had sufficient courage and
fear of God to make him ask for a sign from Yahweh, Yahweh
Himself will give him a sign without delay. 'The young woman',
already with child, will bear a son and give him a name expressing
absolute trust that Yahweh protects His people. cImmanueP,
'with us is God', was a familiar ejaculation in the liturgies of the
sanctuary. With this cry the woman would greet the birth of her
child, expressing her certainty of the truth which it conveyed: in
that age, the first exclamation after the birth of a child was
regarded as an omen of its destiny and its character.2 With this
ejaculation the congregation would greet the advent and presence
of the deity at the festival, particularly the harvest and enthrone-
ment festival, as may be inferred from the refrain of the Epiphany
1 The passage is so interpreted, e.g., by Duhm, Jg&usij, and formerly by the present
writer; see Pr^sten ^sa^pp, a6ff. 2 Cf. Gen. xxix, 3 iff.; xxxv, 16; i Sam. iv, igff.
III
THE FUTURE HOPE
and New Year psalm (Ps. xlvi). As has been said, we are not told
that the child will reign as king, or deliver the people from the
enemy. In this context, the value of the sign lies in the birth of the
child and the name conferred on him. His birth is the token that
henceforth God is with us.
What kind of child can this be? Some indication is given by
0. 15. We are told that he will eat 'curds' (boiled up butter to
which aromatic herbs have been added) x and honey. Some have
followed Usener in interpreting this as the food of the gods, and
accordingly have taken it for granted that the child is divine.
There is certainly some truth in this. The expression is conven-
tionally used to describe the fertility of the promised land.2 In'
Babylonian rituals, cream or butter and honey are used as cultic
ingredients;3 and in the Canaanite texts from Ugarit, similar
expressions are used to describe the fertility of the land, when Baal
comes back to life, and the rain pours down on the earth,4 the
expressions here being almost exactly the same as those in the
Bible. 'These two parallels indicate that the term has from ancient
times been used for a choice food, which could please "both gods
and men".'5 Greek myths, too, tell of the newborn divine child
who was nourished on milk and honey.6 In the later Jewish period,
milk and honey are mentioned as the food of the blessed in
paradise.7 But the expression is, in fact, ambiguous. In the myths
about the newborn divine child, it is because the child has been
abandoned in the wilderness that he has to be kept alive by such
food. In those times, as today, the Bedouin used to give milk with
honey in it to a nursling when the mother died or had no milk.8
Accordingly, what is said about the child's food suggests that there
is something unusual about him; he is not an ordinary human
child. But it also indicates that for some time the child is to be in
need and danger. Before the downfall of the enemy there will be
a time of distress In which the child will be as one motherless and
forsaken, and yet miraculously sustained by the powerful divine
food of the wilderness, which can keep even deserted children alive.
* See Dalman, Around Sitte inPd^M.Vl, pp. 307^; cf. Mowinckel, in JV.r.r.
xlii> I941* p. 135 n- !• ExodTiSTI-S,!?; xxxiii, 3; Dcut. vi, 3; xi, 9; xxvi, TsfetcT
3 See Zimmern, in 1C.A.T.3, p. 526.
4 See the text in AFffl^ff.; cf. Mowinckel in JV. r.£ xlii, 1941, p. 147; Hammer-
shaimb in SLU. Ill, H, 1949-51, pp. i36£ "^ * Hammershairnb, ibid.
6 See Gressmann, Qer Messias, p. 158, with references to the material in Usener.
7 Sib. V, a8if£; 2 En^vE^"?.
8 See Mowmckel in Jf.T.T. xlii, 1941, pp. 135^, with references to the literature
and the sources; Ja^sen3^^w^^^^^j^^^JW^ p. 17 n. i.
*"""""""" 112
THE FUTURE HOPE
Thus the statement about the food gives lib clear indication whether
the child is really a divine or a human child. But the allusive
brevity of the prophecy, in which important matters such as
tribulation and desertion are presupposed, shows clearly that
Isaiah is here referring to conceptions and narratives which were
familiar to his hearers. From the bare reference to the child's
food they realize the situation in which he is to be placed after his
birth, and we are aware of the wonderful deliverance which he
will live to see. They know something of what Hy^are not explicitly
told: why the child has been forsaken; who feeds him with milk
and honey, and so on.
The expression, 'the young woman5, ha-'almah, with the definite
article, is more explicit. The article may, admittedly, be used
generically: a woman, some woman, any woman, the particular
woman now referred to. But the most natural interpretation is
that the article refers to a definite figure known to the king: the
young woman you know, or have heard of, or of whom we all
know. But then the reference cannot be to a^ woman, nor,
according to the original sense, can it well be to any earthly woman.
That some ordinary woman who gives birth to a child in those
days should have the dauntless faith to call her son Immanuel,
in spite of the imminent danger, could hardly be regarded as more
likely to convince the king than the dauntless faith and certainty
of the prophet. If Ahaz was disposed to dismiss Isaiah's faith as
mere fanaticism, he would be still more inclined to dismiss the
faith of an ordinary woman, or of any other person.
The situation becomes clear if we assume that Isaiah is here
referring to a well-known popular belief of the time, about a
supernatural woman who would bear a son whose birth would be
an omen of a great and happy transformation. That there is
something wonderful about the woman and about the birth of
the child was suggested by the translators of the Greek Old
Testament when they went beyond the proper sense of 'almdk and
rendered it by 'virgin5: 'almdk means a woman of marriageable
age, whether married or single, whether virgin or not.
As has been said, there are several myths from antiquity which
tell of the wonderful birth and upbringing of the new god, of
how the divine child was deserted or carried off and kept alive on
cmilk and honey' by herdsmen or by other divine beings.1
1 The material has been collected by Usener in * Milch und Honig' in Rheims^s
Museum (N.F.) Ivii, pp. I77ff.; see also E. Norden, Die^Gebwrt d^ -—•——»
THE FUTURE HOPE
Of these myths, those which have in recent years been most
familiar in their original form are those from the immediate
neighbourhood of Israel, from Ugarit in Phoenicia; and doubtless
they were not confined to that country, but in many varying forms
gave expression to a fundamental feature of all Canaanite religion.
In them we are told of the wedding procession and nuptials of the
fertility god (the dying and rising god), and of the birth of a son,
who is the god himself in a new form, and whose birth guarantees
the renewal of life, the triumph of life and of the powers of good
over death. In the epic of Karit (which is, in a way, a variant of
the themes of this myth presented in the form of poetic legend)
the god has become a royal hero, and the event has acquired a
kind of historical framework. The young woman (galmatu — Heb.
falmdh} is the stock expression for the goddess who gives birth to
the child.1 The word also occurs in Ugaritic as the name of a
goddess, who is a variant of the typical Canaanite mother-goddess
and goddess of fertility, who also bears the name of e the virgin
Anath'. She is called c the virgin \ although in the myth she is the
beloved of the god and bears his son: indeed, she even appears as
the goddess of love. The reason is, of course, that in the myth, and
in the cult which the myth reflects, all these things take place
anew every year. At every New Year festival the cultic congrega-
tion meets her again as 'the virgin Anath'. That it is this goddess,
'the young woman', who bears the child and is the mother of the
new, resurrected god, is plainly stated in another text which
corresponds word for word with Isaiah's message in vii, 14:
'Behold, the young woman will bear a son5 (hi glmt tld bn) . 2 Thus
there is something in the old translation of cthe woman' as cthe
virgin':3 Greek-speaking Jews must have known that behind the
expression lay the idea of a woman who was a mother and yet
ever became virgin again.
We know that many of the ideas which were associated with
this cycle of myths were well known in Israel, and have left many
traces in Israelite fantasy, thought, and metaphor, and to some
1 See Mowinckel inN-TVI". xlii, 1941, pp. 144^, c£ also Coppens, JLa ProfiMie de^l&
'Almoh. *** **-"
: i, 7; see Engnell, Divine Itimdnfa p. 133. Cf. Dan'il's words in II D II, i iff:
yld bn ly, 'a son Is born to meTe'ft Isa. ix, i (so Hammershaimb in »2. 7T&. III, ii, I949/
51, p. 127).
3 On this * return to tradition * see also von Bulmerincq's survey of recent exegesis of
Isa. vii in Actaet^Comm. Univ. T^rtuensis, 1935. Although in the Karit Epic the context
shows thatTCant's future^nTe'wSsuTT a virgin, this does not of course prove that the
word galmatu as such means * virgin ', as E, J. Young seems to think (^^^t^r Theo-
? PP* I22~4)- —•*— — _*
114
THE FUTURE HOPE
extent in religious practice.1 Anath was also worshipped in Israel;
and among the Jews on the island of Elephantine in Upper Egypt,
as late as about 400 B.C.,, she was regarded as Yahweh's consort,
sharing His throne, and bearing the name Anathyahu. Mourning
rites for the dying god, Hadad-Ramman or whatever name he
may have borne, are mentioned in the Old Testament. 2 Accord-
ingly we may safely assume that such tales were known in Israel
also, telling of a mysterious, supernatural c young woman9, in
some unknown place, possibly on the 'mountain of the gods3
where paradise lay,3 a woman who would one day in a wonderful
way bear a child whose birth would be the herald of a new age
of bliss when all enemies would be overcome and God Himself
would dwell among His people. These would be conceptions
similar to those underlying St. John's symbols in Rev. xii con-
cerning the 'great sign in heaven3, a woman 'clothed with the
sun, and with a crown of twelve stars on her head', who gave
birth to a boy who was 'caught up to God and to His throne3,
while the woman fled to the wilderness to a place prepared for her
by God.4
It is conceptions of this kind that Isaiah adopts here. Yahweh is
about to perform a most wonderful sign. 'The woman', of whom
ancient tradition tells, is now to bear a son; and the birth of this
child will guarantee that 'God is with us'. Relying on this, cthe
woman5 (or whoever may be responsible for naming the child)
will give him this name, Immanuel. But the sign will only be
given on condition that even now it is accepted in faith, that the
king really dares to commit himself completely into the hands of
God, trusting in Him alone, at least to this extent, that he will
have no dealings with Assyria until the sign has taken place. The
sign is conditional upon this faith. It presupposes faith and is
intended to create faith, to create certainty and security about the
future. The implication of this is that, if the king will not receive
the offer with so much faith, then there will be no sign. This is
entirely in agreement with the fundamental law of religion, that
without faith no miracle takes place. Only faith, however weak,
is able to see the miracle and the sign. Unbelief and doubt see
only an ordinary, unimportant 'accidental circumstance3; or they
see nothing at all.
1 Cf. Hvidberg, Qraad o$ Latter i^t_G^m^Testm^^ and bibliographical references.
2 Zech. xii, n; reierences to literature iiS dSemusSuM16.
3 See Gunkel, Qggtf? OI3L uf.
4 Cf. Mosbech, J^tc^n^s 4s^^^^ PP*
"5
THE FUTURE HOPE
But the sign does not foretell a 'Messiah5 in the strict sense of
the word. None of the functions which characterize the Messiah
are ascribed to the boy. He becomes a sign simply by being born.
It is the wonderful circumstances and happenings ordained by
God in connexion with his birth which make him a miracle from
God. But did Isaiah really think of, and so believe in, the existence
of such a c young woman' and in the birth of such a wonder-child?
There is no reason to think otherwise, even if to modern ears it
seems fantastic. Isaiah believed in the existence of equally fan-
tastic, supernatural creatures: the six- winged seraphim in the
temple, the flying, fiery, poisonous serpents or basilisks of the
desert, and probably also the cherubim, those fabulous creatures
which combined features from lion, ox, eagle, and man.1
Nevertheless we may assume that Isaiah has here rationalized
the old mythical ideas, or, rather, that he has used them as a means
of expressing more natural things and circumstances. 2 The word
9dt9 which Isaiah applies to the sign, does not necessarily imply
that it is to be a miracle in the strict sense: it can be used of
natural, everyday things which become signs that Yahweh is about
to do something important.3 We have already seen that among
the Canaanites these ideas of the promise of deliverance through
the birth of a child were transferred to the founder of the dynasty
and to the earthly king, the cson3 of the deity and his super-
naturally equipped, 'divine' representative, Karit. It is certainly
an exaggeration to say that here and in the corresponding cultic
rites the king is identical with the god, and is himself a cult god:4
still less is this true of the Israelite view of the king.5 Nevertheless,
as we have seen, both in Canaan and in Israel the king was divine
in nature. It would be natural to speak of him in metaphors
and ideas drawn from the mythology of the gods. Important as
were the resurrection and rebirth of the god for the Ganaanites,
and the personal manifestation of Yahweh, cthe living God', to
recreate and to save, for the Israelites, of equal importance for
both was the conviction that the blessing and power of the deity
were visibly represented in the divinely equipped royal dynasty
1 Isa. vi, 2; xxx, 6; Ezek. i.
2 Here my interpretation of Isa. vii differs from the one which I advanced injy.T.T.
xlii, 1941.
3 i Sam. x, aff. See Keller, Das Wort OJ2L^ CL2ffi2te2£SS& Gottes", PP*
5iff. ~
4 Even Hammershaimb (op. cit, pp. ia6ff.) is guilty of this exaggeration of the con-
tent of the royal ideology; cf. above, pp. 378!
5 See above, pp. 76ff., 80, 848".
116
THE FUTURE HOPE
and in its contemporary representative, the reigning king. And
important as was the rebirth of the god in his son for Canaanite
faith and cults of equal importance for Canaanites and Israelites
was the continued existence of the royal dynasty in glorious sons.
Both in the Karit Epic and in the kindred Dan'il poem from
Ugarit, everything turns on the birth of a son to the king and
founder of the dynasty.1 In Israel, too, the prophetic poet pro-
mises the king at the wedding feast that glorious sons will in time
succeed their father (Ps. xlv, 17); and the birth of the king is
described in mythological terms; for the prophetic psalmist can
say that the king was begotten by Yahweh or born of the goddess
of the glow of dawn (Pss. ii, 7; ex, 3). The prophet associates
supernatural, divine conceptions with the new-born prince and
expects his birth to lead to wonderful things (Isa. ix, iff.; see
above, pp. io2ff.). In Israel it is above all the dynasty of David
which is the bearer of the divine promises and election, in which
the individual king shares solely because he belongs to the dynasty. 2
In the situation to which the promise in Isa. vii refers, the con-
tinued existence of the Davidic dynasty is at stake.3 The enemy's
plan was to depose Ahaz, and make another, the son of Tabeel
(possibly an Aramean), king in Jerusalem. But if this is so, then
the only probable, indeed, the inevitable conclusion is that in the
Immanuel prophecy Isaiah is not thinking of a purely mythical,
supernatural woman and a supernatural child, but of an actual,
earthly woman and a human child.4 Since these conceptions were
already associated with the dynasty long before his time, and since
they certainly existed in this form in the national consciousness,
it can hardly be doubted that the reference is to the wife of King
Ahaz, to the queen, and not simply to any of the ladies of the
harem. In the Karit Epic it is to the future queen, the ancestress
of the royal dynasty, the e noble virgin5, who cis to bear a son to
Karit', that the term galmatu (the young woman) is applied. The
myth emphasizes that the son is really the king himself (originally
the god himself) born anew. There is no need to assume that the
queen was present at the end of the conduit on the way to the
Fuller's Field, where the meeting between the prophet and the
1 Cf. Hammershaimb, St/Th. Ill, ii, 1949/51, pp.
2 Gf. 2 Sam. vii; Pss. iSox, 2off.; cxxxii, iofT. On 2 Sam. vii, cf. Mowinckel in
S^E.A. xii, 1947, pp. 22 off.
"^Tfiis is rightly emphasized by Hammershaimb, op. cit., p. 132.
4 Like * the Anointed* and 'the Servant of the Lord', * Immanuel* has been subjected
to the curious * collective* interpretation in terms of the people Israel; see Skemp in
E.T. xliv, 1932/33* pp. 94f.
117
THE FUTURE HOPE
king took place. Nor is it necessary to assume that either Isaiah
or anyone else knew that she was with child. Probably Ahaz had
just succeeded to the throne and was at the time very young,
possibly only sixteen.1 It is conceivable that a son had not yet
been born to him, and that he was expecting the queen to ensure
the continuance of the line. During the dramatic episode between
Isaiah and the king, when so much is at stake, Isaiah becomes
intuitively certain that the queen is with child, that she will bear
a son, and that Yahweh intends this as a token that the promise
stands secure, that the wicked designs of the enemy will come to
nothing, and that all the good fortune and salvation which, in
accordance with the covenant, are associated with the birth of a
prince will again be realized, ^f the king dares to commit himself
and the country to Yahweh's omnipotence, she will bear a boy
whose birth is the fulfilment of all the thoughts and wishes which
were associated with the king and the royal child. Then the
new-born child will be the ideal king whose very existence is a
guarantee that 'with us is God3.
The prophet does not here predict a Messiah, but a prince who
realizes the idea of the king as the connecting link between God
and the people, as a channel of blessing, and a palladium for his
people. To this extent there is a measure of truth in the old
Jewish interpretation of the Immanuel prophecy as a promise of
the birth of King Hezekiah. He is the prince for whose birth
everyone is waiting, and who, according to custom, will be greeted
with shouts of exultation as rapturous as those with which, in the
Ugaritic poem, King Dan'il receives the news of the birth of his
son;2 he will be hailed with the cultic shout, 'With us is God',
and receive the honourable name Immanuel. Through him,
through the very fact of his birth, victory and the future will be
assured. But, as in several of the old myths, a time of affliction
will come first. Perhaps mother and child will have to flee into
the wilderness, as in the apocalyptic symbol in Rev. xii; but in a
wonderful way the child will be kept alive on c curds and honey'.
The affliction will not last long. 'Before the child has discretion
to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two
kings you are in dread (i.e., the land of the two hostile kings) will
be deserted.' Then the .good fortune of the Davic^jd^gf^
1 According to 2 Kings xvi, 2 (M.T.) he became king at the age of twenty; but see
Mowinckel in £. T.M.M.M^ II, pp. 4io£; cf. Mowinckel, MtQ^*, 1932, pp. 2ayff.,
2 II D II, i iff.; I K I, I43ff.; see Hammershaimb, op, cit.s pp. 127, 130.
118
THE FUTURE HOPE
return; cjhen wiUJ^ahwelitoing upon
jmd^upon yourathes house^^
have not been since Eghraim broke away from Judah', i.e., since
tELgkinnus, ag^^
I£pn^ the Mng- dares to believe! Ahaz did not dare. Instead he
sent messengers to the king of Assyria with 'all the silver and gold
that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of
the palace, and sent it as a present to the king of Assyria ', and bade
the messengers say to him, CI am your servant and your son.
Come up and deliver me from the hand of the king of Aram and
from the hand of the king of Israel who are attacking me5 (2 Kings
xvi, yf.). Thus the condition attached to the sign was neglected;
the son who was born did not become such an ideal king; and the
experience that 'God was with them3 did not come to Judah.
Here again, the promise of such a child was truly fulfilled only in
Jesus. By that time the Immanuel prophecy had for long been
interpreted as a Messianic prophecy.
Tim The prophecies discussed above
both presuppose that the house of David was still in power as the
ruling dynasty in Jerusalem. They are not c Messianic ' in the strict
sense. But prophetic sayings have been handed down which had
their origin against the background of the new situation which
arose when the Davidic kingdom had collapsed, and which may
therefore be said to represent the transition to the true Messianic
prophecies, namely the promises made by the prophets Haggai
and Zechariah to the governor Zerubbabel, who was of David's
line. Yet they cannot be taken as an expression of the Messianic
hope, for they neither presuppose nor proclaim it; but they lay
the foundation for it and create it. The facts do not justify the
common interpretation2 that Haggai and Zechariah virtually lay
on ZerubbabePs shoulders the mantle prepared for the Messiah,
and announce, cNow Messiah has come5. The specific expecta-
tions of a coming, eschatological Messiah did not yet exist. What
these prophets do is to proclaim, cln this man the house of David
will be restored in its ancient glory. Once again we shall have a
king who will fulfil the ancient ideal of kingship.' In their predic-
tions the ideal again takes concrete form in a definite person in a
1 On this point, too, with regard to v, 1 7, my interpretation differs from that adopted
in JV1T.7". xlii, 1941, and G.T.M.M.M^ III. The verse is correctly interpreted by
HamnTenshaimb, op. tit., ppTT^jC" •—"""**
2 E.g., Gressmann, DerJ^ssias^vy. 256ff. (mistakenly regarding Zerubbabel as a
David redwivus), or S "
THE FUTURE HOPE
definite historical situation. To that extent they confirm the
interpretation offered above of Isa. ix, 1-6 and vii. The ideal of
kingship at one and the same time belonged to the present and
had a future reference, and might at any time be applied to a
historic person. The difference is that in Haggai and Zechariah
the Davidic kingdom has been destroyed; but they regard the new
historical situation as its restoration by Yahweh, and as already
in process of being realized. The new ideal king of the ancient
line is already present.
The Persian king, Darius, had sent Zerabbabel, David's descen-
dant, to Jerusalem as governor of Judea, probably to secure the
loyalty of the Jews during the great revolt after the death of
Cambyses. But in Jerusalem he encountered a wave of religious
nationalism. It was Yahweh Himself who had shaken the earth in
order to overthrow the kingdoms of the nations and to restore Israel
Poverty, bad harvests, and oppression would soon be at an end.
If only they would now set to and rebuild the temple, and so mani-
fest their zeal for God's cause and proclaim their independence of the
Persians, Yahweh Himself would come and dwell in the midst of
His people, and let the fullness of blessing pour down on the land.1
In the advent of the descendant of David these prophets see a
guarantee that the time of bliss has now begun. He is 'the Servant
of Yahweh' (Hag. ii, 23; Zech. iii, 8), carrying His counsels into
effect, 'the signet of Yahweh *, as it were giving validity to His
decisions, the 'chosen one3 (Hag. ii, 23). Referring to his name
Zerubbabel (the shoot from Babel), Zechariah announces that he
is semah> the Branch, the Rod,2 which has shot up again from the
stump of David's fallen family tree, showing that life and the
energies^of life have been renewed, just as in the cult the sprouting
branch indicated the resurrection of the vegetation god. Where
he treads there will be abundant growth (yismah, vi, 12); there will
again be fertility and abundance in the country (Zech. viii, ^
10-13). Zerubbabel will finish the temple (Zech. iv, yff.; vi/ia)!
Like the oil-pipe which conveys the oil to the lamp, he will
mediate Yahweh's blessing and His wonderful power to the
people (Zech. iv, i~6a, iob-i4). Zechariah already has in readi-
ness the crown with which Zerubbabel will be crowned;3 and his
1 Hag. ii, 6-8 i8£, «£; Zech. i, 15-17; ii, 3£, I3_17; vi, 8; viii, 3, 20-3.
Zech. vi, iaf.; m, 8. This play on words is doubtless Zechariah's ownj see below,
* Zech. vi, gff I find it impossible to regard RignelTs defence of M.T.
as satisfactory.
120
THE FUTURE HOPE
visions seem to contain reflections of the ritual of the enthrone-
ment of the king,1 as In the enthronement oracle, Ps. ex.2 Zerub-
babel will be king over the restored Jerusalem, and will gain
power and renown. From distant lands foreigners will come to
join in building the temple of Yahweh; the hostile world power
will be destroyed before him; for his sake Yahweh will again before
long, 'shake both heaven and earth and overthrow the throne of
kingdoms, and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations,
and overthrow the chariots and those that ride in them; and
horses and riders will fall, every one by the sword of his brother5 —
Israel will again subdue other nations.3 But these political ends
will be attained only through Yahweh's action, without the help
of man: 'not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says
Yahweh of hosts'. There appears to be nothing to support the
view that Zerubbabel attempted to stir up a revolt against the
Persians; possibly he was deterred by these very warnings of the
prophet.4
Here., too., we see the ancient, extravagant, religious ideology of
kingship applied to a historical person, whom the prophets saw
every day, and who played an insignificant enough part in the
actual politics of the Empire. It is the mantle, not of the Messiah5
but of the ancient Israelite kings (designed, in fact, for a king-god)
that they throw over the shoulders of Zerubbabel the governor,
because he belonged to the ancient, chosen 'family of oil*, which
Yahweh anointed and established among His people as bearers of
kingship. The message of Haggai and of Zechariah has nothing
to do with eschatology. What they are waiting for is a complete
historical revolution in the Near East, attributed, of course, to the
guidance of Yahweh and to the intervention of His miraculous
power, but developing within the course of empirical history and
working through normal human means. 'By His spirit' Yahweh
will guide events so that the world powers destroy each other in
the chaos which has arisen all over the east as a result of the death
of Cambyses; and Israel alone will remain unscathed and will
reap the benefit. This may be described as a fantastic and un-
realistic expectation, but that does not make it eschatology. The
religious interpretation of historical events always seems to the
1 See May in j^LL Ivii, 1938, pp. iftff.
2 See Widengren |j£fl/jn no och det sakrala kjm^^t^i Israel.
3 Zech. iv, 6 ap ~7fvi, 13, i^HagTuTTif. "~ *~" ****
4 So Bentzen in R.H.Ph.R. x, 1930, pp. 49331
5 The expressionTs^ecTFy Bentzen (ibid.) and others.
121
THE FUTURE HOPE
worldly-wise to have something of the fantastic about it; but a
religious interpretation of the world is not necessarily the same as
an eschatological one. What distinguishes the pictures in Zech-
ariah's night visions from those in the Revelation (which in large
measure have been derived from Zechariah) is precisely the fact
that in Zechariah the horses, riders, etc., are beings which really
exist, and are always at hand, working as Yahweh's instruments
like the angels, but as a rule, like Yahweh Himself, working behind
and through natural agencies, whereas in the Revelation they have
become apocalyptic entities, which do not come into existence, or,
at least, into action, until the last times, their object being to
precipitate the final catastrophe.
3* The Sovrce^o^tM M^S^£ QM^^M^
It is impossible to read the expressions applied in the Old
Testament to the king, Yahweh's Anointed, and to become
familiar with the picture sketched above, without being struck
by their close similarity to our usual ideas of c Messiah 5, and to
the general Messianic conceptions of the Church. The best proof
of this is the fact that all these sayings, and especially the royal
psalms, have been interpreted in traditional Christian theology
as prophecies of the Messiah, and are still popularly interpreted
in that way. The connexion between the royal ideology and the
conception of the Messiah is quite evident. The royal ideology is
the older, and the conception of the Messiah the more recent. It
is thus clear where the content of the Messianic idea originated.
Both the content and the form of the conception of the Messiah
are derived from the Israelite (and, ultimately, the oriental) con-
ception of kingship: of that there can be no doubt. The corres-
pondence between them is not confined to the prophecies which
have been discussed in the previous section, but extends to the
entire conception or 'ideology3 of kingship. We can see how easily
this ideology might become the expression of the hope and ex-
pectation of the people and the prophets, and how easily it could
acquire immediate relevance through contemporary events and
situations which turned men's thoughts to the future — and to the
immediate future. In all the instances mentioned above, the ideal
conception of kingship has been given immediate relevance by
the presence of affliction in greater or less degree, accompanied by
a measure of hope. It is affliction, the need for help, and the hope
of a change in the situation, which makes the royal ideology
122
THE FUTURE HOPE
relevant because of its reference to the future, and presents to the
imagination the picture of an ideal king either in the immediate
future or as already present.
It ought now to be possible to sum up the conclusions of all that
has been said in the foregoing chapters. First, we have seen that
we must distinguish between genuine Messianic prophecies and
those which speak of the idealized and empirical king in Israel or
Judah. The majority of the passages which popular theology
interprets as Messianic are in fact concerned with the king of
actual historical experience. Secondly, we have seen that those
ideas which were associated in Israel with the king share all their
essential elements with the concept of the Messiah. This will be
still more evident when we come to describe the Messiah concept
itself. The only essential difference is that the ideal of kingship
belongs to the present (though it clearly also looks towards the
future), whereas the Messiah is a purely future, eschatological
figure. Clearly there is a historical connexion between these two
complexes of ideas. Either the content of the kingly ideal was
derived from the concept of the Messiah, or, vice versa, the content
of the Messianic concept was derived from the kingly ideal. The
latter alternative is manifestly the right one. 'Messiah' is the
ideal king entirely transferred to the future, no longer identified
with the specific historical king, but with one who, one day, will
come.
Most of the earlier critics were convinced that the Messianic
concept was comparatively late; but, on the other hand, they did
not understand the royal ideology and the royal psalms. Other
scholars, and particularly the so-called religio-historical school,
maintained that the royal ideology was 'Messianic5, i.e., that the
kings were regarded as Messiahs and described in the metaphors
and forms of the Messianic ideology. They thought that in Israel
both eschatology and the Messianic concept were ancient, older
than Israel itself, common to the whole orient, and that the oriental
ideal of kingship reflected the Messianic conceptions. But this
view (which was shared by Gressmann, Gunkel, Sellin, Jeremias,
Staerk, and others) cannot be right.
In the first place, we have seen that there was no ancient oriental
eschatology. Apart from Israel, the first people to have an
eschatology were the Persians; and Persian influence on the reli-
gion and culture of the east does not begin until the sixth century.
But if there existed no eschatology which was common to the
123
THE FUTURE HOPE
ancient east, neither was there any eschatological king, or
'Messiah5.
Secondly, the oriental ideology of kingship is very ancient. It
is already fully developed in the Sumerian period. It is also
ancient in Israel We find it in the oldest sayings about the king,
in very old psalms, like Ps. ex; and it is natural to suppose that it
was taken over when kingship itself was adopted after the Canaan-
ite pattern.
In the third place, we have seen that (according to the most
probable critical dating of the sources) the genuine Messianic
sayings in the Old Testament belong to a relatively late period,
most of them (perhaps all) to the time after the fall of the monarchy.
The only justifiable conclusion, then, is that the substance of
the Messianic hope was taken from the royal ideology, and not
vice versa.
This brings us to the next question: how did the Messianic
hofee as such originate; why did any Messianic expectation arise
in Israel at all; what were the historical and intellectual conditions
which produced it (or, to put it in more theological terms, were
the occasion of its emergence as an essential part of revealed reli-
gion), and which caused the prophets to be led to such thoughts
and expectations? In order to answer this question clearly we
must examine the whole subject of the Jewish future hope, If the
Messiah is an eschatological figure, the problem of the origin of
the Messianic hope cannot be separated from the problem of the
content and origin of eschatology itself.
124
CHAPTER V
The Early Jewish Future Hope
AS we have seen, the Messianic faith was from the first associ-
lllated with the Jewish hope of a future restoration. That this
was really so will be still more evident when we come to describe
the content of the Messianic faith. At every point it is bound up
with the future hope and with eschatology. Therefore, as part of
the background, we must sketch the Jewish hope of restoration.
The expression 'future hope', rather than 'eschatology3, has
been deliberately used in the title of this chapter; for a distinction
must be made between the two. A future hope which is national,
as the Jewish hope undoubtedly was, need not be eschatological;
that is, it need not be regarded as something which belongs to
cthe last things', which coincides with the end of the present world
order, and introduces or fashions a new world of a different kind.
It is also clear that there is an essential difference between the
view of the future in the older parts of the Old Testament on the
one side, and on the other, that found in the later portions, such
as Daniel, and in later Judaism. The future hope had a history.
Any description of it must take account of the problem of its
origin and its content down through the ages. Since, however, our
present purpose is to indicate the background of the conception
of the Messiah, we must limit ourselves to a short outline.1
First, we must understand clearly the terms which we use.
Eschatology is a word which has occasioned much confusion; and
we must begin by defining it. Eschatology is a doctrine or a
complex of ideas about 'the last things', which is more or less
organically coherent and developed. Every eschatology includes
in some form or other a dualistic conception of the course of
history, and implies that the present state of things and the present
world order will suddenly come to an end and be superseded by
another of an essentially different kind. As a rule this new order
has the character of a fresh beginning, a restitutio in integrum> a
1 See Additional Note IX.
125
Epilogue: The Challenge of Revelation
It may be well if, before concluding, we should now en-
deavour to approach the whole question of revelation from
a less abstract and more personal point of view than that
which has necessarily engaged our attention in the preced-
ing chapters; and to consider in as realistic a way as possible
the challenge to each one of us individually that is con-
tained in the impingement of the divine upon our daily
life. 1 shall suggest that this challenge is perfectly summed
up in two words that constantly recur in the Bible, in the
closest association with one another— the words 'listen"
and "obey," The Authorized Version uses the word
"hearken" instead of "listen," and it says "hearken dili-
gently" where we should say "listen carefully/' but of
course the meaning is the same. To listen and obey— that,
according to the Bible, is what is required of us. Yes, but
what else? The answer is, nothing else. Nothing at all but
to listen 'carefully for the voice of God, and then to act in
accordance with what we hear. Speaking of faith as the
response to revelation, Dr. Brunner writes in one of his
books that "Faith is obedience; nothing else; literally noth-
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
In opposition to this view, Gressmann,1 and with him die
religwnsgeschichtliche Schule, held that even the prophets of doom
seemed to assume in their hearers some knowledge of a c popular
eschatology', which they took as their starting point, modified in
various ways, and applied to the contemporary situation. This
popular eschatology was thought to have been a more or less
rudimentary variation of a general oriental eschatology, ulti-
mately Babylonian in origin, and to have included from the outset
two elements: disaster (the destruction of the world) and salvation
(restoration), c the time of the curse' and c the time of the blessing'.2
These two parts of the future expectation were thought to have
been taken over in Israel separately and without any inner organic
connexion, and yet as elements with a traditional association with
each other in a pattern which was held to have belonged to
'prophecy' throughout the entire ancient east. This was the
explanation of the abrupt and disconnected juxtaposition of pro-
phecies of disaster and prophecies of salvation which the literary
critics found so awkward. Many important facts tell against this
theory, not least the fact that it has not been shown that there is
the slightest trace of this supposed common oriental eschatology,
either in Babylonia and Assyria or in Egypt.3
The rare incidental prophecies which naturally are also to be
found in these two cultures, and which some have wanted to take
as evidence of the existence of an eschatology, do not prove any-
thing of the kind. They can be explained much more naturally
in another way, partly as political prophecies with a contemporary
reference (and what ancient people does not have such pro-
phecies?), partly as literary imitations of such prophecies, as
vaticinia ex eventu, and as literature for entertainment.4
1 Gressmann, Ursprung. 2 So Jeremias, Handbuch, pp. 205!!, and Staerk, Soter I-IL
3 Against the theory of an Egyptian eschatology and an 'Egyptian Messiah' (Gress-
mann in Geisteskultur, xxxiii, 1924, pp. 97ff.), see von Gall's sober examination of the
sources on which, for instance, Jeremias (Handbuch, pp. 2i9ff.) relies, and his decisive
criticism of this hypothesis (Baszleia, pp. 48f.). The evidence for a Babylonian eschato-
logy is still feebler: it is presented, e.g., in Jeremias, Handbuch, pp. 2056% 225f.; cf.
Staerk, Soter II, pp. 1676°. No specific textual evidence is offered other than the sup-
posedly Messianic descriptions of the time of prosperity on the occasion of a new king's
accession. How these are to be interpreted has been shown above (pp. 45-7); cf.
von Gall, op. cit., pp. 43ff., and Durr, Ursprung undAusbau, pp. 41?., i6ff. There is no
ground for believing that eschatological ideas are applied to the present in these
passages. Nor is there any cosmic or eschatological character in the regular alterna-
tion of ages of good and bad fortune to which Widengren refers (Religionens varld*y
p. 358) ; it arises from an attempt to interpret historical events in the light of the cultic
conceptions of death and the new creation; see p. 128 n. i. Against the hypothesis of a
Babylonian eschatology and c Messianism', see also Zimmern in £.D.M.G. Ixxvi, 1922,
p. 44, and Labat, Royauti, p. 299.
4 Cf. Wiedemann, Die Unterhaltungsliteratiar der alien Aegypter, p. 28.
127
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
Equally decisive against Gressmann's theory is the fact that from
the beginning Israel's future hope had a dominant idea which
held misfortune and salvation together in organic unity. That
idea was the kingly rule of Yahweh (see below, pp. i43ff). The
supposed c prophetic pattern3 does not in fact originally belong to
prophecy, but is a typical eastern attitude to history,1 which arose
from the annual cultic experience of an ever-recurring time of
chaos and new creation. This would naturally also find expression
in literature which presented a survey of the events of the past in
the form of prophecy. As we shall see, the same experience cer-
tainly lies behind the idea of the kingly rule of Yahweh. But it
was only in the course of the history of Israelite prophecy that this
c pattern3 became one of its leading ideas, and that too in con-
nexion with the rise of a religious hope for the future and of
eschatology. That is why it provided the principle on which
tradition arranged the individual sayings of the prophets in larger
collections of prophetic books.2 The use of the pattern as a prin-
ciple of arrangement in the prophetic books does not justify us in
drawing any conclusions about the character of prophecy, the
origin of eschatology, or the supposed existence of an ancient
oriental eschatology.
The theories of Gressmann and Sellin rest on the assumption
that there are passages in the prophetic books, and occasionally
elsewhere in the Old Testament, which either are genuinely
eschatological utterances, or were so interpreted. The traditional
Christian view of the origin of the future hope is based on the
same assumption: the concept of the Messiah and the Messianic
hope came into existence because at an early period God pro-
claimed through the bearers of His revelation a series of Messianic
promises in which believers put their trust. Therefore even primitive
Christian theology (e.g., the Epistle to the Hebrews) believed that
the patriarchs lived in the hope of the Messiah, and that this hope
formed an essential part of their religion (Heb. xi; cf. John viii, 56).
1 See Giiterbock in %.A. (N.F.) viii, 1934, pp. 2fL; Stamm in T.£. ii, 1946, pp. i8£;
cf. p. 14. The thought of this kind of pattern of world history is maintained by Zim-
mernin K.A.T.Z> pp. 392^; Meyer, Die Mosesagen und die Lewiten, pp. 6$if.,Die Israelites,
und ihre Nachbarstamme, pp. 45 iff. From it exaggerated conclusions are drawn con-
cerning the interpretation of Israelite prophecy by Gressmann (Der Messias, pp. jzf.t
4171!) and others. Against such exaggeration, see von Gall, Basileia, pp. 43ff.,
Mowinckel, Prophecy and Tradition, pp. ygff.; Sjoberg in S.E.A. xiv, 1949, pp. 3off.
Frankfort, Kingship, p. 398 n. 43, doubts whether this general view of history existed
in Mesopotamia.
2 On the pattern of the collections in the prophetic books, see Mowinckel, Prophecy
and Tradition, pp. 795*.
128
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
It is, of course, an unassailable theological thesis that the con-
cept of the Messiah came into existence because God revealed such
thoughts and dreams to His saints. But a general statement of
this kind does not take us far towards a real historical under-
standing. What the theologian also wants to know is: How old is
this conception? Did it come into existence all at once, or has it
a history? What human and historical agencies did God use?
By what historical paths did He lead His prophets on to such a
conviction?
Our approach to the critical study of the Old Testament books
may be more or less conservative or radical. But any scholarly
treatment of them must reckon with the fact that practically every
prophetic book contains sayings, not only by the man whose name
it bears, but also by a whole circle, and from various times.
The work of tradition criticism and of literary criticism in dis-
tinguishing between earlier and later elements in the material
handed down to us, and in attempting to arrange the tradition
according to the changing periods in revelation history, and to
discover the line of development in that history, is an absolute
necessity if the historical study of theology is to be carried on.
It is a fact that there is constant change in the understanding of
historical connexions and lines of development. Even within
revelation history there are changes in the understanding of that
history itself; and Judaism had a different conception of the
development of its own revelation history from that contained in
the oldest historical traditions, e.g., that of the Yahwist. There is,
therefore, no ground for assuming that precisely that interpreta-
tion of the development which is advanced by the author of the
Deuteronomic history from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings1 is the only
right and definitive view. Even in the course of revelation history
there is a developing comprehension; and the older interpretation
is superseded by the new.2 This is referred to by Jesus Himself,
when He speaks of truths which His disciples were not yet ready
to understand, and of the Spirit of Truth who would afterwards
lead them into all the truth. It is, therefore, clear that critical
discussion of the eschatological passages in the prophetic books
has drawn attention to a real problem, and that a critical, exege-
tical discussion of the individual eschatological sayings (real or
On this view of the extent of the history, see Noth, Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien
som
129
!> PP-
2 Cf. Mowinckel, Dei Gamle Testament som Guds ord, pp.
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
supposed) is a necessary preparation for an understanding of the
origin and growth of eschatology and the concept of the Messiah.
The question whether eschatology is or is not to be found in the
prophets must not be confused with the problem whether the
prophecies of bliss in the older prophetic books are authentic
sayings of the prophets concerned (Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, etc.), or
arose within the circle of disciples in the process of tradition.1
As will be shown later, this much is certain, that at least some
of the prophets of doom expected a restoration of Israel some time
after the disaster. Nor is it improbable that they uttered glowing
prophecies about the king. But this has nothing to do with
eschatology or the Messianic faith. The question still remains,
whether all the promises which have been handed down come from
the prophet in question. No simple solution is possible, either on
the ground of an ancient eastern pattern of history with a constant
alternation between periods of good and bad fortune (see above,
pp. I27£), or because this pattern seems also to have been used to
present historical events in the form of prophecy, or may perhaps
also have been used as a pattern for predictions of the good fortune
which a new king's reign would bring. 2 The dating of the pro-
phecies of bliss in the prophetic books must be decided in each
individual instance.3 Whatever view we hold about the age of
any individual saying in the prophetic books, it is established as a
result of the historical and critical study of Old Testament tradi-
tion and literature during the past generation that there is no
eschatology in the strict sense in the early, pre-prophetic age,
IsraePs religion did not originally have an eschatology. It was
pre-eminently a religion for life in this world, realistic, sturdy, and
robust.
Nor did the earlier of those prophets whose sayings are extant
proclaim an eschatology, any more than they imply knowledge of
a popular eschatology, or a learned Babylonian eschatology.
1 On this traditiohlstorical approach, as opposed to one of purely literary criticism,
see Mowinckel, Prophecy and Tradition, ch. II, especially, pp. 66ff.
2 In support of this, reference is commonly made to the text K.A.R. 421, translated
In AO.T.2, pp. aSsf. Labat (RoyauU, p. 297 n. 101} holds that broadly speaking no
Babylonian or Assyrian prophecies have been handed down. But of course they did
exist, e.g., in connexion with a king's enthronement, and as cultic promises, partly for
the regular cultic festivals, partly on occasional cultic days, such as days of penitence
and prayer in distress and misfortune. Gf. Haldar Associations, pp. 1-73. But the Irra
texts to which Haldar refers (op. cit., pp. yoff., following Ebeling in B.B.K. II, i, 1925)
are not real prophecies either, but mythical poems related to the normal cultic pro-
mises following the habitual pattern: after the misfortunes of the age of chaos, good
fortune is now at hand.
8 G£ Sjoberg in S.E.A. xiv, 1949, p. 39.
130
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
Gressmann's attempt at reintroducing eschatology into the study
of the prophets is a failure. In this the position of the older genera-
tion of literary critics was undoubtedly sound, although their
'literary' approach was one-sided and in part mistaken.1 The
prophets of doom were always concerned with contemporary
events. Their starting point was always the given, concrete, his-
torical situation, and nearly always the political situation. They
were national prophets, not private fortune-tellers and medicine-
men concerned with the trivial affairs of private individuals.
They foretold the future; but it was the immediate future, which
arose out of existing, concrete reality. Yahweh had opened their
eyes and ears, so that they saw and heard Him in the events of the
history of that age. They saw events as the outworking of God's
government of the world; and they had been sent to proclaim what
God intended to do next, His purpose and plan in what had
already begun to happen. Their message to the people was:
'Take now, to-day, the right attitude to Yahweh, and so to what
is happening; for He has already risen to perform His work, and
you, His own people, are the object of His work/
In a message of this kind there is no room for eschatology, not
even in the sense that they proclaimed that in and through his-
torical and political events the last things were at hand, the end
of days, the destruction of the world, the restoration of heaven and
earth. In their time there was no conception or doctrine of any
end of the world or last things.2 If they had themselves announced
any such doctrine as something new, hitherto unknown, they
would have expressed the matter much more clearly than in fact
they did. They speak of the destruction of Israel at the hand of
Assyria or Babylon by the direction of Yahweh, not of the destruc-
tion of the world. They make it abundantly plain that this is not
the last word about history or the course of the world. The world
and history still run their course, and Assyria and Babylonia con-
tinue to exist, even after the destruction of Israel. Admittedly
Israel was to all intents and purposes their 'world3 and that of
their hearers; and a catastrophe which shattered that world was
for them a catastrophe of world- wide dimensions. It could there-
fore be described in the most impressive language, mustering all
those cosmic powers and terrors which can only be mobilized by
1 On this point, cf. Mowinckel, Prophecy and Tradition.
2 The expression beafrarit hay-yamim, 'at the end of the days', occurs only in late
passages, or late editorial links; see the references in Gesenius-Buhlie. The expression
is probably influenced by Persian usage; see von Gall, Basileia^ pp. 9 iff.
13*
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
Yahweh, but which He actually does mobilize whenever He is
accomplishing some end in history, even if the profane eye does
not perceive it.1 But in all this nothing implies the end of the
present world order. Amos, for instance, reckons with the possi-
bility that Yahweh may choose a new people when Israel has
been destroyed (Amos ix, 7). Isaiah speaks of the 'remnant'
which will live on in history,2 and Jeremiah gives advice about
the continued life of the people after the deportation in the every-
day world of history.
In the prophetic books, the eschatological sayings in the strict
sense all belong to the later strata, and come from the age of
post-exilic Judaism. This is evident from the fact that they treat
of the restoration of Israel after the catastrophe which had befallen
the people in 587, and that they do not foretell that catastrophe,
but presuppose that it already belongs to the past.
The fixed point for all who have maintained that an eschatology
existed before the appearance of the great prophets is the saying
of Amos in v, 18 about those who cwait for (desire) the day of
Yahweh3.3 But in fact there is here no reference to an eschato-
logical day of Yahweh at some indefinite point in the future. The
expression still has its contemporary connexion with the cult and
with cultic experience. 'The day of Yahweh' originally means the
day of Yahweh's manifestation in the festal cult at the New Year
festival; and this connexion with the festal cult is still quite clear
from the context in which the saying is found in Amos.4 Because
on every day of Yahweh in the festival the people experienced His
coming, which guaranteed victory over enemies, deliverance from
distress, and the realization of peace, good fortune, and favourable
conditions, therefore, whenever the people were in distress, they
would long for the coming days of Yahweh which would bring
the 'change of fortune5.5 And in so far as the term might denote
any appearance of Yahweh to save and bless, we may speak of
1 Judges v, 4f., 20; 2 Kings vi, i6f.; Isa. xxii, n.
2 Isa. vii, 3; x, 2if.; xxviii, i6fF; xxx, I5f.; i, 10-17, 18-20, 21-6, 27-31. Cf. Mow-
inckel, Profeten Jesaja, pp. 66fE
8 In Ps.St. II I myself still shared this erroneous interpretation of Amos v, 18, and
on that basis put forward a dating of * eschatology ' which was too early and untenable;
see op. cit, pp. 318 (foot), 319; cf. p. 272.
* Amos v, 18-27; vv. i8b, 19 are probably an explanatory addition; see Mowinckel
in G. T.M.M.M. Ill, pp. 638^ For our present purpose the point is immaterial. The
connexion between the day of Yahweh and the cult is sufficiently clearly indicated by
the sequel, vv. 2ofE, the denunciation of the festivals. This denunciation is the chief
point in the passage, and it is in this connexion that Amos speaks of the day of Yahweh.
6 Holscher (Die Ursprwgt derjudischen Eschatologie, pp. I2ff.) was the first to recognize
that in Amos v, 18 the day of Yahweh has its original cultic connexion.
132
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
the beginning of the separation of the idea from the cultic festival.
Whenever distress arose, the people would long and pray that
there might now come a day of Yahweh,1 when Yahweh would
show Himself as He really was, and make an end of His own enemies
and those of Israel. But in no circumstances can this be called a
developed future hope or an eschatology with a definite content. 2
2. The Origin of the Jewish Hope of Restoration
Before Judaism acquired a genuine eschatology it had a hope
for the future which was fundamentally religious. Certain features
in the content of this hope are also characteristic of eschatology;
yet in essential points they differ from each other. Out of the
future hope eschatology developed.
But the earlier Jewish future hope was a hope for something
which had not yet come. From the first it had the character of a
hope for the restoration of Israel from the grave misfortune which
had befallen her, a hope of the national and political deliverance
of the people from oppression and distress, and for a moral and
religious purification and consummation, a future with every con-
ceivable happiness, glory, and perfection. It is different from the
hope, or rather the belief, implied already in the election and
covenant faith, that the nation would always have a future — as
different as is the natural, buoyant optimism of a growing culture
from the e futurism5 of an already disintegrated culture, to use
Arnold Toynbee's expression.3 But it has an essential presupposi-
tion in common with the optimism of earlier times; for it is rooted
in the election and covenant faith and in Yahweh's covenant
promises as the soil from which it grows.4 The covenant and
election faith is in itself something distinct from the hope of the
future and of restoration which the Old Testament contains. The
latter, the genuine future hope, presupposes the destruction of the
nation. It is always a hope of restoration.
1 Gf. Isa. ii, 12. The indefinite expression 'a day of Yahweh ' (ytim le YHWH] shows
that here the expression has not yet become an eschatological term. Isaiah goes still
further in the same direction as Amos, reversing the customary meaning of the day:
since Yahweh is a holy God who upholds justice, His day means a retributive settlement
with Israel itself: Israel is * Yahweh's enemy'.
2 Pidoux (Le Dieu qui vient] has renewed the attempt to maintain a pre-prophetic
eschatology, but without adding anything to the old argument of Gressmann and
Sellin, He rejects the aid to understanding the idea of a *God who comes' which
results from the recognition that every year Yahweh 'came' in the festal cult.
3 See Toynbee, A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VT, pp. 43lff-> 515&
4 In this sense we can agree with Sellin that the future hope and eschatology are
ultimately based on Yahweh's revelation at Sinai, and on the promises therein implied,
and the faith in the people's future thereby created (see above, p. 126).
133
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
But in investigating its origin we must distinguish between the
hope of restoration itself and the specific conceptions of its content,
of what restoration would mean in detail, of the nature of the
future perfection. As we shall see, this specific content of the idea
was older than the faith in restoration which it embodied. In
other words, the restoration hope, which had as its background
the destruction of the nation, acquired a specific content through
the transference to a new c setting in life' of a group of concepts
which already existed in another context.
In the sequel we shall first consider the origin or, rather, the
historical background, of the restoration hope itself; and then
examine the content which it acquired, and which actually
helped to create it. The positive religious factor is combined with
the negative one of misfortune.
As has been said, the prophets of doom had no eschatological
message. They announced the destruction of Israel and Judah as
independent nations. The first of them, Amos, and probably also
Hosea, did so unconditionally and remorselessly. In Isaiah a new
note is heard: a remnant will be converted and be saved. The
first presupposition of this belief was the election and covenant
faith. Yahweh could not let His chosen people go. He had some-
thing great in store for them, an enduring and glorious future.
In the earliest period there had been something naively anthropo-
centric about this faith in the covenant and providence. Yahweh
was bound up with His people and could not, after all, let them
go. In the prophets of doom this faith acquired a deeper insight;
Yahweh could not abandon His own plan and His own goal.
cGod remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.' Yahweh is the
world's Ruler and God; and He has a purpose, a plan, an end in
view. If He is truly God, His will and His plan must prevail, with
or without His people. Amos hinted vaguely at the possibility
that Yahweh might choose another people. Isaiah knew that
Yahweh had the will and the power to order events so that the
election would hold good. He knew that there were some among
the people, himself and the children Yahweh had given him
(Isaiah viii, 18), who had said cYes? to the will and the call of
God, and were willing to submit to His plan for Israel, even
through affliction. Therefore they could wait for Yahweh and
hope in Him, even if He hid His face from the house of Jacob
(Isa. viii, 17). Time and again Isaiah tries to lead the people to
conversion, so that the remnant may be big enough. Even in dire
134
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
distress, after Hezekiah has capitulated and Sennacherib has had
to treat the city with unexpected leniency,1 he holds fast to the
fact that Yahweh has, of His undeserved grace, 'left us a remnant'
(Isa. i, 9). Yahweh has laid the corner stone of His house, the
building of God's people on Zion; and if the people will believe in
Him, yielding Him their trust, their will, and their obedience, and
relying on Him in every situation, that trust will never be put to
shame. Even if only a small remnant holds fast to such a faith,
from that remnant Yahweh will create a new Israel on the old
foundation, on which is written the very word faith (Isa. xxviii, 1 6) .
After Isaiah the prophets of doom never gave up this faith in
the future. We find it again in most of the disciples of Isaiah,2 even
in those who announced the unconditional destruction of the
people, amongst whom was Jeremiah. Immediately before the
Chaldeans captured Jerusalem, when he had become quite certain
about the outcome of the war, he received a 'word3, a communica-
tion, from Yahweh, telling him, 'houses, and fields, and vineyards
shall again be bought in this land' (Jer. xxxii, 15). He associated
this hope with those who were carried away to Babylonia. They
were 'the remnant' from which the new people would spring in
a wonderful way known only to God (Jer. xxiv; xxix). We see
how, even while the Chaldean supremacy lasted, the prophets
sought in contemporary history for signs that Yahweh had now
arisen to make an end of their oppressors and restore His people,
and how they proclaimed this faith in sublime language, not least
when the advance of the Medes and Persians began to threaten
Babylon.3
A message of this kind may be rooted in a genuine faith in God,
or in the national instinct of self-preservation, or in optimism, or
in wishful thinking. For Jeremiah, as for Isaiah, this faith was
assuredly no lightly won optimism. With the most intense mental
anguish, and through lifelong persecution he had to proclaim
remorseless doom on the nation, including their being carried off
to exile and the utter devastation of their native land. He had no
illusions about his nation's reserves of strength or innate possibili-
ties and did not allow for any inherent spiritual power of restora-
1 2 Kings xviii, 13-16. See Mowinckel, Profeten jfesqja, pp. 5fT.
2Mic. vii, 7; Zeph. in, 9-11 a; Nahum; Habakkuk; Isa. x, 5-19; x, 27b~34; xiv,
27-9; xvii, 12-14; xxix, 1-8; xxx, 27-33; xx™-> 5~9J Zeph. ii, 13-15; Mic. iv, 8-13;
iv, 14-% 5. See Mowinckel, Jesajadisiplene, pp. 35, 43fL, 56ff.a 6iff., 46ff.; G.T.M.M.M.
Ill, ad locc.
3 Isa. xxi, i-io; xiii f.; and possibly in some of the other passages which are mentioned
above in n. 2,
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
tion. His faith for the future was wholly and solely founded on
God, and His faithfulness and power, and His will to maintain
His own righteousness and His own purpose.
But there were also those within the prophetic movement who
took up this idea in a more facile way. It accorded so well with
the wishes and the self-esteem which they shared with the whole
nation. The representatives of nationalistic religion among the
disciples of Isaiah (Nahum, Habakkuk, and others) were confident
that the tribulations of the Assyrian and Chaldean period would
end with the victory of Yahweh, which was identical with the
triumph of Israel. During this period, faith in the future took root
in many circles in several forms, ranging from the most superficial
national optimism, the hope of an early return (Jer. xxix), to the
prophetic hope against all hope (Jer. xxxii).
To begin with, the catastrophe of 587 had a paralysing effect;
but not on those who had foreseen it. In the defeat itself Jeremiah
and his few friends saw the triumph of Yahweh. Gradually hope
revived, although the motives were not the same as before.1 From
that time onward, the hope of restoration became a constant
element in the prophetic message. The true prophecy of doom
had achieved its end, or, rather, God's object in it had been at-
tained. The task was now one of positive, constructive work. It
was a matter of using the experience to evoke a genuine national
repentance and of maintaining courage and hope, so that the people
might not lose itself in despair and be merged in heathenism. The
prophecy of restoration takes up both of these tasks. The first is
characteristic of Ezekiel, the Trito-Isaianic prophetic circle (Isa.
Ivi-lxvi), and Malachi, in whom there are often echoes of the old
prophecy of doom and punishment. The second task is taken up
by practically all restoration prophecy. Even while the Chaldean
Empire was still supreme, the prophets were eagerly looking for
signs in contemporary history which might indicate a change of
fortune.2 After the fall of Babylon in the autumn of 538, Deutero-
Isaiah (Isa. xl-lv) sings his song of triumph about the impending
restoration of Jerusalem and Israel to undreamed-of glory. Yah-
weh Himself will now come and work the great miracle which will
make all the nations of the earth pay homage to Him and His
elected people.
The restoration under Cyrus and Darius, and the establishment
1 See Mic. vii, 8-20; Lam. i, 31; iii, 22fF.; iv, 2 if.
2 Isa. xxi, i-io, i if.; xiii, 1-22.
136
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
of a Judean province, with a descendant of David as governor in
Jerusalem, was the first step towards the realization of the hope,
even if the realization fell far short of the Deutero-Isaiah's dazzling
promise. The restoration of David's kingdom in all its splendour
is the assured content of the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah;
and this hope survived later in spite of all disappointments,
although there might be controversy about it within the com-
munity, and although some had only contempt for the enthusiasts
who would not give up hope (Isa. Ixvi, 5).
The chief features in the hope are in the main constant. Yahweh
had for all time chosen Israel for Himself1 and guided her history2
towards a definite goal, the glorifying of Israel in the world for
the honour of Yahweh' s own name, so that all nations might own
Him as the only true God.3 Here the monotheism of the prophetic
movement gave to the future hope a goal, a telos. Although
Yahweh chastises His people. He does not lose sight of the goal.
Chastisement disciplines and purifies them so that they may be-
come worthy to be His people and to increase His honour.4 By
the rebuilding of the temple under Zerubbabel, Yahweh has given
His people a pledge, a guarantee that the full restoration, the
fufilment of the ancient promises, will one day be realized. The
kingdom of David will then be established in its ancient glory,
with its ancient boundaries, and will again subdue the neighbour-
ing peoples, and receive homage and tribute from distant nations.
The exiles will return, and Israel be reunited with Judah. Homage
will be paid to Yahweh as the only true God by all nations. From
all parts of the earth pilgrims will stream to Jerusalem. Merchan-
dise, gold, and produce from every land will be amassed there as
tribute to Yahweh, His temple, and His servants. All blessing, and
fertility, and well-being will prevail in the land. Disease and mis-
fortune will be banished. Everyone will enjoy the fruit of his work
in peace, sitting in safety under his vine and his fig-tree. All
sinners and offenders will be rooted out of Yahweh' s people.
None will do evil or act corruptly
in all my holy mountain;
For the land will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh
as the waters cover the ocean's bed. (Isa. xi, 9.)
1 Isa. xli, 8f.; xliii, i; xliv, if., 21; liv, 7-10.
2 Isa. xliii, 14; xliv, 28; xlv, 4; xlvi, 9-13; xlviii, 12—15.
3 Isa. xl, 2 1 iff; xli, 28f.; xlii, 5-9; xliii, 7, 1 0-12, 21; xliv, 6, 8; xlv, 5-7, i4f., 21-5;
xlvi, 9; xlviii, 12; xlix, 26; li, 5; bd, n.
4 Isa. xl, 27ff.; xlii, i, 24-7; xlviii, i-n; xlix, 14!?.; li, ijff; Hi, 1-6; Ivii, 16-19.
137
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
3. The Religious Basis and Transformation of the Future Hope. Its
Connexion with the Experiences and Ideas Associated with the Cult
A future hope such as this has two poles, politics and religion.
But we must not forget that to the ancients these were not two
separate departments of life, but two aspects of the same thing.
Even in politics man has to do with the will of God; and it is God
who is at work in historical and political events. Even so, there
is a difference of emphasis, or, if you like, of emotional attitude to
the subject, and of the motives for taking an interest in It. It may
be the outcome of experience of God and of devotion to Him; but
it may also arise chiefly from an interest in the temporal, in one's
own well-being and power, or those of one's nation.
The political aspect of the Jewish future hope is unmistakable. x
But as has already been observed, it also had a religious aspect
from the very beginning. Ultimately it is rooted in the experience
of God which came to an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, or a Deutero-Isaiah.
In the east many peoples had a national religion and a national
god whose favour or wrath occasioned the good or bad fortune of
the people. Many of them lost their freedom and their country;
and naturally all of them wanted to regain their freedom. But
none of them produced a future hope and an eschatology which
survived for thousands of years and became part of the world's
spiritual heritage. It was the religion of Israel, not its national
and political aspirations, which created the future hope.
Accordingly the religious basis of the hope is prominent from
the outset. It is proclaimed as a promise from Yahweh. It is
through His faithfulness and power that it will be realized. Pro-
phecy is the true bearer of the future hope; and together with the
law this hope becomes the leading element in Judaism. By it the
pious lived; and from it they drew strength when oppressed by
time and circumstance.
Moreover, the very content of the future hope was increasingly
characterized by purely religious motifs. Not that it ever lost its
political side: it retained that as long as Judaism survived, and
retains it even today. But together with it, and in part overshadow-
ing it, there are elements which may be called purely religious and
ethical.
This appears in full vigour as early as Deutero-Isaiah, who lifts
the whole conception of restoration up into a supra-terrestrial
1 On the political aspect of the idea of the remnant, see Miiller, Die Vorstellung vom
Rest im Alien Testament.
138
APPENDIX 155
dignity in discussion, and wisdom in all your deliberations.
May your zeal and your work abundantly fulfill these
expectations. Not only are the eyes of all mankind upon
you, but also all the world's hopes,
[The address closes with the prayer for divine
assistance.]
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
brooks and springs were empty; cattle began to suffer want on the
pastures. The original state of chaos, before cthe Lord Yahweh
sent rain upon the earth \ was about to return; the evil powers
with their 'curse3 (death) were prevailing over life. It was then
that Yahweh came and revealed Himself, giving Himself to His
own and making Himself known by His mighty acts. In and
through the effectual rites of the cult, in which God's coming and
conflict were displayed in dramatic symbolism, His appearance,
His combat, and His victory really took place. He engaged in
conflict with the powers of chaos, and defeated them as He did
at the beginning, crushing or chaining them. He recreated the
world; and behold, soon afterwards the autumn rains came, soak-
ing the earth, watering its furrows, making it fertile and produc-
tive. The God of life had triumphed over the hostile powers of
death and created the world anew.
Even in the ancient Canaanite period this triumph of the god of
fertility and life was regarded as the conflict of a king with his
enemies, and his restoration of his kingdom: the deity is king over
the kingdom which he himself has created. Israel transferred the
same thought to Yahweh. Yahweh comes to His people in the
festival. It is then that again and again He 'becomes King51 as
is proclaimed by the enthronement psalms which belonged to this
very festival. He comes and triumphs over all His enemies, over
the sea, the dragon, and death, as well as over historical enemies
(the nations) which are thought of as attacking His city, but as
destroyed by Him outside the walls of Jerusalem (the myth of the
conflict with the nations).2 After the victory He enters His palace,
takes His seat on His throne, and assumes the royal power, which
is His though Death has sought to usurp it. He sits in judgement
on His enemies, destroys them, and exercises His absolute kingly
sway for the blessing and well-being of all creatures. He has now
reversed the fall. Life can begin anew at the point where it began
at Creation, before the wickedness of evil powers and of men had
corrupted all and forfeited the blessing.
It is in these terms, as TahweKs cosmic conflict, victory, and enthrone-
ment, that Deutero-Isaiah describes what is about to happen.
Behind the world empire promised to Cyrus as a reward for his
victory over Babylon and his liberation of the Jews, the prophet
sees the combat in which Yahweh now engages after having * been
silent for long', His victory, and His entry into Zion at the head
1 See Additional Note X. 2 Pss. xlvi; xlviii; cf. ii, if.; see Ps.St, II, pp. syff.
140
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
of the exiles (Isa. xlii, ioff.). He sees the herald who announces
the King's entry:
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who bears good tidings,,
Who proclaims peace, who says to Zion,
'Your God has become King.' (Isa. Hi, y.)1
He regards the condition of Israel in exile as a result of the
renewed dominion of the powers of chaos in the world (xlii, 13-15).
It is as if the world were doomed to destruction (li, 6). But then,
as in the festal hymns, we hear that Yahweh is coming with bliss
and restoration for Israel, but ignominy and ruin for His own and
Israel's enemies. The enemies, in historical terms, are Babylon
and the Chaldeans, but they are also described as the primeval
deep and the dragon. Deutero-Isaiah often says that Yahweh
will now make springs in the wilderness for the returning exiles;
but he also speaks in terms of the myth of the primeval deep about
Yahweh combating rivers and pools and making the land dry
(xlii, 15). In the repeated debates between Yahweh and the false
gods, which Deutero-Isaiah depicts for his hearers, debates which
end with the ignominious defeat of the false gods who are without
reply,2 there is echoed from the enthronement psalms the idea
that Yahweh's coming means ignominious defeat and judgement
on the false gods (cf. Ps. Ixxxii).
It is not difficult to see that the ideas of the enthronement
festival must have been ready to hand for Deutero-Isaiah as the
specific content of his promises and his faith in restoration. From
early times the festival and the experiences which it imparted
were imbued with expectation about the future.3 Through Yah-
weh's coming in the festival, the community, so to speak, shared
by anticipation in the prosperity of the coming year. The experi-
ences of the festival looked forward to the coming year. The
rituals and liturgies of the festival were full of promises about the
glory brought by Yahweh, and thus assured for the future.4 This
conviction was based on the covenant between Yahweh and Israel,
which was the foundation of Israel's faith and of its very existence.
Accordingly, every year the community experienced in the festival
1 Text as G.T.M.MM. Ill, p. 792.
2 Cf. Kohler, Deuterojesaja stilkritisch untersucht.
3 This aspect of the festival's meaning is not emphasized with sufficient clarity in
Ps.St. II. I may be allowed to refer now to my Offersang og sangoffer, ch. V, n.
4 See Pss. bcxxi; Ixxxii; cxxxii; ii; ex; and cf. Ps.St. Ill, pp. ^off.
141
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
the assurance that Yah web could not fail His people; the nation
which had Yahweh as its God was sure always to have hope and
a future. The future hope was there, latent in the covenant, and
in the ever-renewed experiences of the festival. Thus we find that
as early as the time of Amos, when misfortune befell the people,
hope was linked with Yahweh' s new cday' in the festival;1 and
within Isaiah's circle of disciples the form and content of promises
made in difficult times were often drawn from the ideas connected
with the enthronement of Yahweh.2 Thus in misfortune, when
there was need of a spiritual foundation for life, it was from the
experience and the certainty afforded by Yahweh's enthronement
festival, against the background of the covenant faith, that hope for
the immediate future could grow and derive its content. There
the prophets found the content of the message of hope which they
had to deliver. Conversely (and quite naturally and logically),
when eschatology had emerged, it was the restoration of Israel
and the fulfilment of the eschatological hope to which the com-
munity looked forwai d and of which it was reminded at the autumn
festival.3
But faith and hope are always created in distress. There had
first to be a disaster so great, so crushing, and so lasting that again
and again it thrust into the distant future the fulfilment of the
promises which were inherent in the festal experiences; for hope
could no longer rest content with what was afforded by the days
of the festival and the year, with what lay within the scope of
contemporary reality. There had to be a disaster which would
force into existence the hope of, and faith in, an absolute, final,
and unsurpassable day of Yahweh, if not this year or next year,
yet assuredly some time, when punishment and chastisement had
attained their end, when Yahweh would again remember His
1 Amos v, 18. See Mowinckel in G.TMMM. Ill, pp. 638^
2 See Mowinckel, Jesajadisiplene, pp. Bgf£.
3 Pss. xiv, 7; liii, 7; xc, 16; cxxix, sff.; cxxx, 8. See further, Mowinckel, Offersang og
sangqffer, ch. V, 10-11. It is, therefore, with justice that scholars often draw attention
to this element of expectation in the experiences of the autumn festival; e.g., Bentzen
in S.E.A. xii, 1947, pp. 38^, Volz, Das Neujakrsfest Jahwes, p. 15. It is not, however,
justifiable to describe this as 'eschatology'. Only subsequently, in Judaism and in the
later psalms, did the festival acquire a genuinely eschatological note alongside the
others. It is also significant that in J&sus transfigurt Riesenfeld, who without more ado
repeats the assertions of earlier scholars, cannot adduce a single Old Testament passage
to support the contention that cult and eschatology were connected: he does not note
the psalms referred to above. All the passages lie cites represent later Judaism, and
accurately reflect its outlook; but they prove nothing about the character of the autumn
festival in the earlier period. It is a mistake completely to disregard historical per-
spective and to condemn it as 'historicism*, as if scientific biblical study could discard
the historical approach.
142
Books Contributory to the Discussion 151
Henry Wheeler Robinson, Inspiration and Revelation in the
Old Testament* London, 1946.
Alan Richardson* Christian Apologetics. London, 1947.
Heinz-Horst Schrey, Existenz und Offenbarung. Tubingen,
1947,
Austin Farrer, The Glass of Vision, Westminster [London],
Reinhold Niebuhr. Faith and History, London, 1949.
Lionel Spencer Thornton, Revelation and the Modern World.
London, 1950.
Alan Richardson and Wolfgang Schweitzer, eds. Biblical
Authority for Today. London, 1951.
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology. Chicago, 1951. Voi L
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
and manifest for the eye of faith (by the appearance to the outward
eye of His cultic symbol, the ark, the processional shrine) moving
forward amid shouts of homage, e Yahweh has become King ! ' The
prophet sees it in enlarged and glorified form: the whole world
sees and pays homage to the king, its creator and God. Nature,
too, trees, mountains, and water, which He has now re-created,
hail His procession.
As in the enthronement hymns, Yahweh's battle and victory
are regarded by Deutero-Isaiah as a righteous judgement, an act of
justice*, but for Israel, judgement and justice are synonymous with
salvation.
This is also regarded as a new creation. As in the enthronement
psalms, Yahweh has become king of the world, because He Him-
self has created this kingdom of His: as He was 'the first ^ who
created in the primordial age, so now He is cthe last', who now
creates anew. The new order is described more or less distinctly
as a paradisal order. The restoration is a return to the original
perfection, the last things become like the first. As a conscious
principle for the understanding of the last things, this sentence is
derived from the later theory of ages, and from dualism;1 but in
Deutero-Isaiah it already operates inevitably as an unconscious
formative principle,2 precisely because he takes as the framework
of his thought ideas from the enthronement festival, the festival
in which was celebrated Yahweh's recreation of the perfection
which existed at creation. The wonderful fruitfulness which is to be
(a leading thought in the autumn and New Year festival) applies
also to the nation.
This is all regarded as the making of a new covenant, a re-enactment
of the old covenant on Sinai, and of the covenant with David.
In the end Yahweh will receive homage from the whole world and
be recognized as the supreme, the secret, the saving God. The
honouring of Yahweh as king is the final goal of history (Isa.
xlviii, 9-11).
From that time onwards the thought of the kingly rule of
Yahweh, the Kingdom of God, was the central religious idea in the
Jewish future hope. As king, Yahweh will gather His people and
lead them home; as king, He will then be enthroned in their
midst; to pay homage to the king, Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, all
nations will stream to Jerusalem on the day of His festival.3 The
1 See below, pp. 182, 263^.; cf. p. 27off. 2 Cf. Isa. xli, 22; xlii, 9; xliii, 18.
3 See Mic. ii, 13; Zeph. iii, 15; Zech. xiv, i6f.
144
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
kingly rule of Yahweh is the central idea round which are grouped
all other ideas and conceptions, and by which they are explained.
The details in Jewish eschatology often seem to lack organic
coherence; but once this central idea is recognized, the whole
picture becomes clear.
The whole picture of the future can therefore also be summed up
in the expression, the day of Yahweh.'1 Its original meaning is really
the day of His manifestation or epiphany, the day of His festival,
and particularly that festal day which was also the day of His
enthronement, His royal day, the festival of Yahweh, the day
when as king He came and 'wrought salvation for His people5.
As the people hoped for the realization of the ideal of kingship,
particularly when reality fell furthest short of it, so, from a quite
early period, whenever they were in distress and oppressed by
misfortune, they hoped for and expected a glorious eday of
Yahweh' (cf. Amos v, i8ff.), when Yahweh must remember His
covenant, and appear as the mighty king and deliverer, bringing
a eday3 upon His own and His people's enemies (cf. Isa. ii, isff.),
condemning them to destruction, and e acquitting' and c executing
justice3 for His own people.2 In the future hope, and later in
eschatology, 'the day of Yahweh' (or simply 'that day') becomes
the term which sums up the great transformation, when He comes
and restores His people, and assumes kingly rule over the world.3
Arising out of the idea in the enthronement festival that all the
hostile powers will gather together in order to destroy Jerusalem,
but will be annihilated by Yahweh outside the city walls,4 eschato-
logy also says that in the last days the heathen will gather with
hostile arrogance for a similar final onslaught, or that their hearts
will be hardened by Yahweh, so that they conceive this presump-
tuous plan, in order that He may annihilate them all at one stroke
in the valley of Hinnom, the unclean site of the sacrifices to
Molech, or, as it is also called, the valley of Jehoshaphat, or the
valley of the threshing instrument,5 where apostate and ungodly
Jews will also receive their punishment.6 Thus does Yahweh
'judge' the nations.
The specific features in the description of the future are those
1 See above, pp. 140, 143; cf. p. 132.
2 Gf. Ps.St. II, pp. 65E, 165.
8 Gf. Ezek. xiii, 5; Joel i, 15; Zeph. i, yff.
4 Pss. xlvi; xlvii; cf. Ixxvi. See above, p. 140; cf. p. 147.
5 Joel iv; Zech. xii; xiv.
6 Isa. Ixvi, 23f. On the details in Deutero-Isaiah's predictions of the future, see
Ps.St. II (see above p. 143 n. i); cf. G.T.MMM. Ill, pp. i36ff.
145
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
which emerge when these ideas drawn from cultic experience are
applied to actual historical situations in which the Jews were
placed. The national and political restoration for which they
hopedj and in which they believed, is depicted in patterns drawn
from the ideology of the enthronement festival. The main features
are as follows: the political and national deliverance of Israel,1
the restoration of the dynasty and kingdom of David,2 the reunion
of the two kingdoms,3 the destruction of the heathen powers,4 the
return of the Diaspora,5 the religious and moral restoration of the
people, including judgement on sinners and traitors,6 marvellous,
even paradisal7 fertility of land, people, and cattle,8 peace among
the nations,9 the transformation of wild animals,10 the restoration
and glorification of Jerusalem as the religious and political centre
of the world:11 the 'city of paradise' set on the highest point of
earth,12 to which pilgrims come from all the nations of the earth
to pay homage to the God of Israel, 13 the king in Zion, 14 where they
1 Isa. ix, 3; x, 27; xiv, 25; Hi, 2; Jer. xxx, 8; Ezek. xxxiv, 27.
2 The kingdom: Isa. xi, 13^; Jer. Hi, 18; xxxi, 27; xxxiii, 7; Ezek. xxxvii, 15-22;
Hos. ii, 2f.; iii, 5; Obad. 18; Zech. yiii, 13; ix, 10-13; x, 5!*.; xi, 4-17; xiii, 7-9; cf.
Hos. ii, i, 16-25; xiv* 2^-? 95 Jer- xxxi, 5f.; Ezek. xx, 42; xxviii3 25; xxxvi, 28; xxxvii,
25; Isa. viii, 23; xlix, 8, 19; Ivi, 7; Ivii, 13; lx? 21; Ixv, gf; Obad. 19; Mic. vii, 14; Zech.
x, 10; Ezek. xlvii, 13-xlviii, 29; Amos ix, 8. The dynasty: see all the so-called Messianic
passages above, p. 16.
8 Isa. xi, I3f.; Jer. iii, 18; xxxi, 27; xxxiii, 7; Ezek. xxxvii, 15-22; Hos. ii, 2f.; iii, 5;
Obad. 18; Zech. viii, 13; ix, 10-13; XJ 5^5 Hos. ii, i, 16-25; xiv> 2?*> 9 3 Jer* xxxi, 5f.
4 Indicated by the assembling of groups of oracles on foreign powers: Isa. xiii-xxiii;
Jer. xlvi-li; Ezek. xxv-xxxii; Zeph. ii; Zech. ix; cf. Amos i f. See below, p. 154.
5 Isa. xliii, sf.; xlviii, 20; xlix, i7f., 22; Iii, 8, n£; Ivi, 7; Ivii, 13; Ix, 4, 8f.; Ixvi, 20;
xi, uf., i5f.; xiv, i; xxvii, I2f.; xxxv, 10; Jer. iii, 18; xxiii, 3; xxx, 3; xxxi, 7-12; xxxii,
37; xxxiii, 7, ii; Ezek. xi, 17; xx, 34, 41; xxviii, 25; xxxiv, i iff.; xxxvi, 24; xxxvii, 12;
Hos. xi9 i of.; Mic. ii, iaf.; iv, 6f.; Zeph. iii, igf.; Zech. viii, 7f.; ix, uf.; x, 8-10.
6 Isa. i, 18-31; ii, 20; iii, n, 18-23; iy> 3?>> xvii, 8; xxvii, 9; xxix, 20; xxx, 22; xxxi,
6f.; xxxiii, 14-16; Zeph. i, 6; iii, uf.; Ezek. xiv, i-n; xx, 36-8; xxii; xxxiv, 17-22;
xxxvi, 25; Jer. xxxiii, 8; Mic. v, 9-13; Zech. xiii, 2-6; Mai. ii, 10-13, 17-iii, 5; Isa.
Ivii, i, 3ff; Iviii, 1-7; lix, 2-8, 12-15; Ixiv, 4; Ixv, 2.
7 Amos ix, 13; Joel iv, 18; Isa. vii, 2if. See Gressmann, Der Messias, pp. 155!?.;
Mowinckel, Ps.St. II, pp. 284^".
8 Isa. xlix, 20; Ix, 22; Jer. iii, 16; xxxi, 27; Ezek. xxxvi, iff,, 33-8; Mic. iv, 7; Zech.
viii, 4f.; Joel iv, 20; Isa. iv, 2; xxx, 23-5; xxxii, 15, 20; xxxv, if., 6f.; Amos ix, 13;
Joel iv, 1 8; Zech. xiv, 10; Ezek. xlvii; also the reinterpretation of tradition in Isa. vii,
I5~22a.
9 Isa. ii, 4; Mic. v, gff.; Zech. ix, 10.
10 Isa. xi, 6-9; Hos. ii, 20; Ezek. xxxiv, 25ff.
11 Isa. xlix, 16-19; Ii, 3; liv, if.; Iviii, 12; Ix, 10; Ixi, 4; Ixii, 4, 6£; Ezek. xxxvi, 331! —
passages which are older than Nehemiahjs building of the wall. In addition, Zech.
xiv, iof.; Ezek. xxxviii, 12 (c£ Ps. xlvi, 5); Zech. xiv, 9; Isa. liv, 5; lix, 19; Mic. iv,
1-3; cf. Pss. xlvi, n; xlvii, 4, 6, 10; Ixvii, 5.
12 Isa. ii, 2ff.; Mic. iv, iff.; cf. Ps. xlvii, 2f.
13 Isa. xiv, 14, 23; Ivi, 7; Ix, 3; Ixvi, i8f., 23; ii, 2-4; Mic. iv, 1-4; Jer. iii, 17;
Zeph. iii, 10; Zech. viii, 20-3; xiv, 16-19.
14 Isa. xxiv, 23; Hi, 7; Jer. iii, 17; x, 7, 10; Obad. 21; Zech. ix, 4-7; Zeph. iii, 15;
Zech. xiv, 9, i6f.
146
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
will not hurt or destroy/ because they will all know Yahweh,2
and all be consecrated to Him.3 A new covenant is made,4 and
Israel is changed by the spirit of Yahweh.5 At times, following
Deutero-Isaiah, more emphasis is laid on the religious, super-
terrestrial elements; and then it is explicitly stated that this
decisive change of fortune6 is the day of Yahweh,7 ethat day'.8
This epiphany of Yahweh, which will eclipse all previous ones,
is depicted in the traditional colours of cosmological mythology.9
Sometimes the enemies are presented not so much as specific
historical nations, but rather as the world power which is at once
earthly and cosmic,10 which is commonly identified with a more or
less imaginary distant people about whom there are only rumours
and fables (King Gog and Magog).11
When the world power has been destroyed outside Jerusalem,12
eternal peace will prevail.13 Suffering and disease will be at an
end, and men will live to be more than a hundred years old;14
peace and joy,15 light,16 and life17 will prevail, when old things are
passed away and heaven and earth have been created anew,18 cin
those days',19 cat that time'.20
I Isa. xi, 9; Ixii, £25. 2 Isa. xi, 9; Jer. xxxi, 34.
3 Isa. iv, 3; vi, 13; Ixii, 12; Ixi, 6; Zech. xiv, 21.
4 Isa. Iv, 3f.; Jer. xxxi, 3 iff.; cf. Ps.St. II, pp. a88ff.
5 Ezek. xi, igf.; xxxvi, 26; xxxix, 29; Joel iii, iff.
6 Deut. xxx, 3; Jer. xxix, 14; xxx, 3, 18; xxxi, 23; xxxii, 44; xxxiii, 7, u, 26,- Ezek.
xvi, 53; xxix, 14; xxxix, 25; Hos. vi, n; Joel iv, i; Amos ix, 14; Zeph. ii, 7; iii, 20*
Cf. Pss. xiv, 7=liii, 7; Ixxxv, 2; cxxvi, i, 4,
7 Amos v, 18; Isa. ii, 12; Zeph. i, 8, 14$*.; ii, 2; Isa. xiii, 6fF.; Ezek xxx, 3; Joel i, 15;
ii, i; iii, 3f.; iv, 14; Obad. 15; Zech* xiv, i,
8 Isa. ii, 20; iii, 18; iv, 2; v, 30; vii, 18, 2of., 23; x, 20, 27; xi, iof.; xii, i, 4; xvii,
4, 7, 9; xxii, 20, 25; xxiii, 15; xxiv, 21; xxv, 9; xxvi, i; xxvii, i, 2, I2f.; xxviii, $t;
Jer. iv, 9; xxx, yf.; xlvi, 10; Amos ii, 16; viii, 9, 13; ix, ii; Obad. 8; Mic. ii, 4; v, 9;
Zeph. i, gf.; iii, ii, 16; Zech. ix, 16; xii, 3^, 6, 8f., 11; xiii, if., 4; xiv, 4, 6, 8, 13, 20.
In many of these passages the expression is intended simply as a connecting formula
for two contemporaneous events, a kind of temporal conjunction or adverb; but this
is by no means always so, as Munch holds (The Expression bajjom ha-hu'). In several
passages it is clearly an eschatological formula; and the later prophetic tradition tended
more and more to take it in the absolute and specific sense, as referring to dies ilia:
this is the New Testament use of the expression. See p. 268 n. 5.
9 E.g., Isa. xiii; Joel iii, 3f.; iv, 15; Amos viii, 9; Mic. i, 2-4; Nahum i, 2-10; Hab.
iii, 3fF.; Zech. xiv.
10 E.g., Isa. xiv, 26; xxvi, 21; xxxiii, 12; xxxiv, iff.; Ixiii, 1-6; Jer. xxv, 29-38; xlvi,
10-12; Obad, 15; Mic. v, 14; Isa. xxiv, 2 if. (cf. Ps. Ixxxii); xxvii, i; Zeph. ii, n.
II Ezek. xxxviiif. 12 See above, p. 145; cf. p. 140.
13 Isa. iv, 9; xi, 6-8; xxxii, I7f.; xxxiii, 6; Ix, 17; Ixv, 25; Jer. xxiii, 6; xxx, 10; Ezek.
xxxiv, 25-7; xxxvi, 8ff., 29f., 33; Mic. iv, 3f.; iv, 5; Zeph. iii, 13; Zech. iii, 10; ix9 10;
xiv, ii ; cf. Ps. xlvi, 10. . w Isa. Ixv, 20.
15 Isa. xii, 3-6; xxxv, 5f.; Ixv, i8£; Jer. xxxi, 10-14; xxxiii, 9; Isa. xxv, 6f.
16 Isa. ix, i; xxx, 26; Ix, igf.; Ixii, i. 17 Isa, Lev, 20, 22; xxv, 8.
18 Isa. Ixv, 17; Ixvi, 22.
19 Jer. iii, 16, 18; xxxi, 29; xxxiii, 15; Joel iv, i. See above, n. 8.
20 Jer, iii, 17; xxxi, i; Joel, iv, i.
147
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
It is not easy to decide how much is poetical description and how
much actual reality in this picture of the future. Naturally, no
line of distinction was consciously drawn. There is, for instance,
no point in asking what Deutero-Isaiah would have said if he had
used sober prose to express what he really expected to follow from
Cyrus's victory over Babylon and the world empire which he was
establishing. It is easy to point out the logical gap between the
promise about world dominion made to Cyrus by Deutero-Isaiah
in Yahweh's name, and Yahweh5 s world dominion through Israel,
of which he also speaks. His thought and style are those of
rhetoric and poetry, of myth and religion; and the same style is
used by the circle of his disciples. But whenever a specific state-
ment is made, the national and political considerations appear,
though they may take a fantastic form. If we were to translate
Deutero-Isaiah's message into sober prose, we might, for instance,
express it in this way. Yahweh has called Cyrus and raised him
up to fulfil His purpose in history. When Babylon has been
conquered, the oppressed and the captives will go free, and God
will then put it into the mind of Cyrus to allow the exiled Jews to
return home and to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple of Yahweh.
Then the ancient royal house will be restored, and Yahweh will
endow the ruler with righteousness, piety, and every virtue; and
then the happiness and greatness of ancient days will again prevail
in our land, and foreign nations will once more pay homage to
Him as their overlord.
This will all be realized within the present world order. Deutero-
Isaiah takes it for granted that even in the blissful future Israel
may have enemies who will attack her, but always without
success (liv, 14-17).
Even in Deutero-Isaiah, universalism is limited by Jewish
nationalism. Even in his religious message, it is emphasized that
the God of all the world is Israel's God. The narrow outlook which
this thought could assume in less profound (and less poetical)
minds may be seen in the message of Haggai and Zechariah about
restoration; in spite of the unfavourable situation in the Persian
Empire (and this is explicitly emphasized), the completion of the
temple will herald a world revolution, in which the Persian
Empire will be overthrown, Zerubbabel will be made king, and
Jerusalem become the religious and political centre of the world.
But this will come about through a direct and miraculous divine
intervention. This national and this-worldly element remains the
148
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
heart of the future hope throughout the entire Old Testament
period: God's kingly rule on earth through the world-hegemony
of Israel and her Davidic ruler.
But the religious point of view came more and more to pre-
dominate and to permeate the political without displacing it
entirely. The restoration of Israel and the realization of all the
people's ideals were taken to be the essential factors in the kingly
rule of Yahweh. It is to restore His people Israel and give it a
place in the sun that Yahweh comes as king and establishes His
kingdom. It is through the glorification of Israel that the glorifica-
tion of Yahweh is achieved. The sight of the great miracle, which
He works for His people in spite of all human probability, makes
the other nations submit to Him, and come as pilgrims to His
sanctuary to worship Him as the only true God, as alone worthy
of the name of God. This has already become a leading idea in
Deutero-Isaiah. The submission of the other nations to Yahweh
means, in concrete terms, that when He comes and frees His
people, the nations' power is crushed, and that the survivors
submit to Israel and become Jews. Thus the kingly glory of
Yahweh appears in visible and tangible form. It goes without
saying that this also means that the other nations share in Israel's
happiness and blessing (i.e., salvation). Deutero-Isaiah invites 'all
the ends of the earth' to come to Yahweh and £be saved' (xlv, 22).
Yahweh' s kingdom, is His dominion over the world, exercised on
this earth through Israel.
5. From the Hope of Restoration to Eschatology
But this hope of restoration is not yet eschatological. As a type
of historical outlook, it is exactly what Toynbee has called 'futur-
ism'. It is the daring escape into the future of the harrowed soul,
paralysed by catastrophe, and crushed in spirit (Isa. Ivii, 15),
when the present has become intolerable, yet the soul will not let
this world go.1 In spite of his mythological and symbolical
language and his cosmic perspective, Deutero-Isaiah is still limited
by his presuppositions. In spite of his universal outlook, he is a
Jew, affected by Jewish nationalism. The universal God is the
God of Israel; and in spite of everything His kingdom is still a
kingdom of this world.
But a change is beginning to take place. To borrow Toynbee's
language, Deutero-Isaiah has at least indicated the way which
1 Cf, Toynbee, A Study of History. Abridgement of Vols. I-VT, pp.
H9
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
leads from a purely this- worldly futurism on through 'self-
transcendence5 to 'transfiguration' or glorified transformation.1
The historical and religious presupposition of this is the exclu-
sive fanaticism of Yahwism and the prophets, which made the
tribal and national God, Yahweh, the only true God, or, in the
language of revealed religion., which taught them that it was the
one true God who had drawn near to them as Yahweh, the national
God. Everything centres in Him and in His rule of the world.
Everything happens for Israel's sake, not because Israel has any
merit, but because it has pleased Yahweh to choose this people,
and through it to reveal Himself and fulfil His purpose for the
world, e to glorify Himself.
Yahweh is king in the restored Israel, in the kingdom which,
from the religious point of view, is the fulfilment of Israel's future
hope. Even today the thought of Yahweh as king is at the centre
of the Jewish New Year festival, and is the main idea in the hope
of Judaism, Jesus preached the kingly rule of God as near at
hand. Thus the ideas of the day and the kingdom of Yahweh and
of the restoration of Israel assume an increasingly other-worldly
character, which is expressed by the mythological metaphors in
the description of Yahweh's conflict and victory and of the
paradisal conditions in the new Israel. It is on this earth and in
Israel's land that it will be realized. But it will be achieved by a
divine miracle (Zech. iv, 6). The conception of how the future
hope will be realized increasingly loses the connexion with concrete
historical reality which it still had in Deutero-Isaiah (the victory
of Cyrus over Babylon) and in Haggai and Zechariah (the dis-
turbances in the Persian Empire after the death of Gambyses),
It is true that hope was rekindled whenever great events were
taking place (the destruction of Edom by the Nabateans, Alexan-
der's campaign, the fall of the Persian Empire) ; but the thought
that help will come not from men but from Yahweh is increasingly
prominent.
Granted that the mass of the people would usually think of the
purely political and earthly side of the matter, would be con-
cerned about deliverance from the Chaldeans, the Persians, the
Seleucids, or the Romans, and would dream of vengeance on their
oppressors (even in prophecies from the later Old Testament
period there is this emphasis), nevertheless the chief tendency in
the expression of these ideas is religious and other-worldly, bringing
1 Op. cit., pp. 520, 526.
150
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
out the transcendent, miraculous aspect of restoration. The
Trito-Isaianic circle speaks of a new heaven and a new earth; and
even if this ought not to be taken entirely literally (for it is linked
with ideas from the New Year festival indicating a renewal of the
universe, which has become old, effete, and corrupt), yet it reveals
the other-worldly, cosmic character of the future hope. This is in
entire accord with its religious basis and the religious influence
(derived from the disciples of the prophets and those who trans-
mitted their teaching) with which it is permeated.
But again we must emphasize the deepest religious reason why
this unquenchable future hope could be born and survive in
Israel, in contrast with all the other nations who had likewise
been crushed in the international politics of the east and in the
clash of Empires. All these other nations also had cultic festivals
at which they celebrated the coming of the deity, and experienced
the certainty of the happiness and security which it guaranteed.
How did it come about that from these experiences no eschatology
developed, for instance, in Babylonian religion?1
The reason is to be found in Israelite religion, in its conception
of God, and the distinctive historical character of that conception.2
Through Moses and the historical events of the Exodus and the
settlement, Israel had experienced Yahweh as a God of action,
who of His own initiative came and revealed Himself, freely
choosing Israel as His own people, and manifesting this choice
through historical events.3 The message of the prophets deepened
and kept alive the faith that it was in the Held of actual history
that Yahweh would appear and act. He alone is active there.
Yahweh is e He5; He is unique. Together with the ideas of election
and covenant, this means that Yahweh has a purpose in world
history. All the ancient religions and civilizations, even those of
Greece, conceived of the course of history as a circle, corresponding
to the annual cycle of the life of nature. The Old Testament con-
ceives of history as a straight line pointing to a goal. Thus the
Israelites alone were able to devise a philosophy of history.
1 Cf. Pidoxix, Le Dieu qui vient, p. 50. This point is, however, invalid as an argument
against the connexion between the enthronement festival and eschatology. In Ps.St.
II, pp. 3i5fL, I had already indicated the distinctive factors in Israel's religion which
account for this development in Israel.
2 In the work just referred to this contention is soundly and beautifully advanced by
Pidoux. But it is not sufficient to explain that an eschatology was developed. Account
must also be taken both of Israel's distinctive historical experiences, and also of that
complex of ideas (the concept of the enthronement) which provided the specific con-
tent of the hope of restoration.
3 Cf. Galling, Die Erwahlungsfraditioiun Israels, pp. 5-37, 631!.
'51
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
Yahweh is directing history towards a goal, the salvation of Israel.
But in time this comes also to mean the salvation of the whole
world (Isa. xlv, saff.). No human power can thwart Yahweh's
will for the world. Even the prophets of doom did not give up this
faith. Even if Yahweh did destroy His people. He would not be
thwarted. In one way or another He would fulfil His covenant
and His promises. Yahweh was too great, too real, too much
master of the world, not to have the will and the ability to direct
history in conformity with the purpose He had devised in the act
of election.1 The world is in His hand; and He knows what He
wants to do with it. cHe did not create it to be a waste' (toM}9 a
desperate and intolerable chaos; 'He formed it to be inhabited',
to be a home for human beings (Isa. xlv, 18).
In this historical faith of the prophets, in their religious ideas,
a creative factor was provided by the experiences in the cult,
when Yahweh would come every year, revealing Himself and
creating salvation. Yahweh had come once decisively, and again
and again He had come. The promises of the festival had often
not been realized in history; and yet Yahweh had come again and
again. He came in every historical event; every mighty upheaval
in world history was His cday'. Yahweh lives, Yahweh can, and
Yahweh will: that was the unshakable conviction of the prophets.
They had known that experience in their own lives, which were
utterly taken up into His service. Yahweh was e righteous'
and 'true'; and He could not make Himself unrighteous and
false by breaking His word. cThe living God' must be a God
of action, bringing to life again what He had smitten (Hos.
vi, if.).
It was against the background of the destruction of the kingdom
and the nation that this faith became fully conscious of itself as a
stubborn faith, in spite of everything. Yahweh has forsaken His
people and His city; but He will return. The hope of future res-
toration (and with it eschatology) arises when this faith is con-
fronted with the brutal reality of history. The history of Israel is
a tragic drama in which reality seems to gainsay faith, a constantly
repeated disappointment. When faith rises up and overcomes the
disappointment, the future hope and eschatology begin to be.
The point is concisely and clearly put by Martin Buber: 'Die
eschatologische Hqffnung . . . ist zwar immer Geschichtshoffnung; sie
eschatologisiert sick erst durch die wachsende Geschichtsenttaiischung. In
1 Cf, Galling, op. tit., pp. gaff.
J52
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
diesm Vorgang bemdchtigt der Glaube sich der Zjakunft als der unbeding-
ten Geschichtswende, sodann als der unbedingten Geschichtsuberwindung*1
Being Geschichtsuberwindung, the future hope takes possession of
history. In all the great events of history the prophets sought to
discern the coming of Yahweh (see above, pp. 131, 140); and
what would then happen is described in pictures drawn from the
experiences and hopes of the enthronement festival. The coming
of Yahweh in the cult is related to the present, and provides the
content of the expectation of the great corning of Yahweh which
will put an end to Israel's distress. The essential content and
theme of the future hope and of eschatology is the faith which
grew out of history and was corroborated by history, faith in a
living God who has a purpose and a goal in all that happens.
To this extent we are justified in saying that Israel's unique
conception of God as the God of history is the root of eschatology.2
Faith's own understanding of events enables us to go further and
say that because the true God came and revealed Himself to
Israel at the beginning of her history and went on revealing
Himself to her and guiding her inner life and external history,
therefore in this nation, and here alone, there arose a hope for the
future, the heart of which is the conviction that this living God
has a positive goal for His creation, His election, and His covenant,
and that one day this goal will be reached.3 In this divinely guided
history of the origin of the future hope and of eschatology, the
experiences and conceptions associated with Israel's cult also played
an important part. They provided material for the conceptions
of what Yahweh's final coming would involve.
We may say that the basis of an eschatology had actually been
laid when the future hope was thus permeated and fashioned and
motivated by religious faith, and in Deutero-Isaiah had received
its mythical and other-worldly character. But this was only the
stage of possibilities, not of fulfilment. Any sober historical con-
sideration which avoids the confusion of different ideas will
recognize that Deutero-Isaiah himself does not yet present a true
eschatology. We miss the conception of a definite end to the
1 Buber, Konigtum Gottes> p. x.
2 Durr, Ursprung und Ausbau> p. 53; cf. Pidoux, Le Dieu qui vient, pp. 5 iff. There is
thus a core of truth in. Sellin's view that the experience of Yahweh's coming at Siixai
is the root of eschatology, Der alttestamentliche Prophetismus, p. 148. But of course
eschatology cannot be directly derived from it without reference to later history. A
definite future hope could arise only on the basis of the message of the prophets and
the later historical experiences; cf. above, p. 133 n. 4.
8 This is also the fundamental idea in Pidoux's monograph, and gives it its value in
spite of its somewhat defective appreciation, of the historical factors.
153
THE EARLY JEWISH FUTURE HOPE
present order, and of a new world of an essentially different
character from this one. The historical empires of Cyrus and of
others have their place in Deutero-Isaiah's picture of the future.1
What has been described in the preceding section is the vision of
the future as it appears to us when we consider Deutero-Isaiah's
message. It needed time to develop; and it could not do so fully
until something new had been added to the old hope of restoration.
It was not until the later period of Judaism that this took place;
and it was in the teaching of Jesus that the new factor became
dominant. Nevertheless what does begin to take place in Deutero-
Isaiah is the severance of the future hope from historical reality,
from the contingent, from any causal connexion with circum-
stances, so that it assumes an absolute character. It begins to be
lifted up into the transcendent realm, to become something which
is not a matter of 'rational3 probability or possibility. It is cer-
tainly true that for a long time afterwards it was still related to
the great historical and political events of the day. Whenever
anything decisive took place, such as the fall of the Persian Empire,
or an event which to the Jews, with their narrow political experi-
ence and outlook, might seem to indicate that something decisive
was about to happen, such as the various disturbances in the
Persian Empire, or the revolutions in the age of the Diadochi,
then the future hope would be revived, and would express itself
in prophetic poems, or new editions of old prophecies, foretelling
the great change of fortune and the restoration of Israel, such as
Isa. xxxiii; xvf.; xxxivf. In particular, we may recall the grouping
of earlier and later prophecies about the destruction of the most
varied foreign powers into larger collections of 'oracles about the
heathen3, in order to give a picture of the fall of the world power
or the heathen power in preparation for the restoration of Israel
and the kingly rule of Yahweh.2 But what was characteristic of
the future hope in the later Old Testament period was the aspect
which from the standpoint of human reason may seem unreal and
fantastic, the fact that it was the wistful longing of an oppressed,
suffering, longing people, yet a people deeply conscious of its
religious destiny. Nevertheless we must emphasize that through-
out the Old Testament period it continued in a large measure to
have a this-worldly, national, and political character with the
same features as in the earlier period of Judaism.
1 Sidney Smith (Isaiah Chapters XL-LV: Literary Criticism and History, pp. i8f.) al§Q
rightly protests against the view that Deutero-Isaiah's message is eschatological,
2 Isa. xiii-xxiiij xxlv-xxvii; Jer, xxv; xlvi-li; Ezek. xxv-xxxii; xxxvliif,
154
CHAPTER VI
The Place of the King in the Future
Hope: the Messiah
i. The Origin of the Messianic Faith
IT is against the background of the hope of national restoration
(which is essentially this-worldly and political) that we must
consider the Messianic expectation of early Judaism and the ideas
associated with it. This is the problem alluded to above (p. 124).
Granted that the Messiah is a political and eschatological
figure, and as such an object of hope for the future, there is
obviously a connexion between this figure and the future hope as
a whole. The Messiah is simply the king in this national and
religious future kingdom, which will one day be established by the
miraculous intervention of Yahweh. No objection of any weight
has ever been raised against this formal definition. It means that
the Messianic faith is by its very nature linked with Israel's hope
of restoration.
Now we have seen that the characteristic Jewish future hope
did not exist as a hope of restoration until there was a restoration
to be accomplished. It originated and was developed after the
fall of the state. Accordingly the Messianic hope in the strict sense
arose at the same time as the hope of restoration, and as an
integral part of it. This is entirely in keeping with the literary
dating of the genuine Messianic oracles (see above, ch. II, 2) .
We have also seen that several of the eschatological descriptions
culminate in the promise of the new scion of David who will be
the head of the restored kingdom.
The historical connexion stands out clearly when we recall what
was suggested above about the historical situations to which were
related die unrealized elements in the ideal of kingship. Passages
like Isa. ix, 1-6; xi, 1-9, or the words of Zechariah or Haggai
about Zerubbabel, come as near as possible to being € Messianic'
expectation, The situations are times of affliction and distress;
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
yet hope was sustained by a faith in Yahweh which looked for the
prince or governor whom Yahweh had appointed to realize the
ideal, to be the king after Yahweh's heart, and the bearer of the
promises to the dynasty and the nation.
We have also seen that practically all the passages in the Old
Testament which express the hope of a Messiah who has yet to
appear originated in that situation which for Israel was the worst
of all the afflictions and punishments which had befallen the
nation throughout its fateful history, namely the destruction of the
state, the degradation of the royal house, the dispersion of the
people and their subjection to foreign rulers: the exile and the
Diaspora, That the Messiah belongs to the future means that he
is part of the Israelite hope for the future. The Messianic faith is
also the faith in the restoration of the state, the nation, and the
monarchy; the two arose at the same time. This will become still
clearer in the section on the scion of David. The restoration of the
state means the restoration of the monarchy.
The hope attached to Zerubbabel came to nothing. The actual
conditions after the return were but a feeble realization of Deutero-
Isaiah's glorious promises. Thereafter the hope of restoration
deliberately looks forward to a future not yet at hand, and
gradually discards the connexion which the royal ideology pre-
viously had with empirical cultic experience. Not until much
later, in a turbulent age,, does it again become attached to a
specific historical person.
It is, therefore, a fundamental principle for understanding the
content of the Messianic conceptions, that whatever applies to
the Israelite ideal of kingship also applies to the Messiah, but in a
still greater measure. The Messiah is the future, eschatological realiza-
tion of the ideal of kingship.
The restored Davidic kingdom was an ideal conception based
on religion and permeated by religion; but in the thought of the
earlier period it was nevertheless *a kingdom of this world',
established, it is true, by a miraculous divine intervention, yet
through political means, through the historical and political cir-
cumstances of the age. It was to be realized entirely within the
'natural' course of world events, within 'natural' human history,
which continued its course in accordance with the same 'laws'
and 'forces' as before. It was idealized, embellished, enhanced-
(depicted as a Utopia, as secularized moderns would say), so
that the guiding divine will and power behind the 'natural3
156
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
events would stand out much more clearly than they did In the
gloomy present. But still it was ca kingdom of this world ', as had
been David's kingdom, and even the age of Moses and the
patriarchs, in spite of all the interventions of Yahweh.
For Haggai and Zechariah, the coming kingdom of Zerubbabel
is both at once. For Deutero-Isaiah, the restoration of Israel is the
fulfilment of the everlasting promises of faithfulness made to David.
From the religious point of view, Yahweh is king of the restored
kingdom; but from the standpoint of everyday reality in national
and political life, it is the ideal kings of David's line who will again
govern Yahweh' s people.
When we take all this into account, there can be no doubt that
the expectation of a Messiah came into existence as a part of
Israel's hope of restoration, and as a natural part of it. The
Messiah is the ideal king of David's line, who reigns in the restored
kingdom of his ancestor when the nation has been raised from her
degradation and freed from foreign domination, when justice has
been established and godliness and virtue again prevail in the
land. The Messianic faith developed, along with the faith in
restoration, out of the longing for a future realization of the ideal
of kingship.
We must again refer to the forward-looking aspect of the ideal
of kingship. That ideal was of such a kind that, when it was
separated from its primitive mythological background and asso-
ciated with a historical religion which laid supreme emphasis on
the action of Yahweh in history (as was the case in Israel), every-
day reality could not but give it something of the character of
unrealized longing. But, even in Israel, hope and faith were always
attached to the new bearer of the ideal, and to the new festival
of Yahweh5 s epiphany, which was expected to improve conditions.
Before the ideal of kingship could become the expectation of a
future Messiah, it had to be separated from those possibilities which
were associated with the next festival and the next king, yet never
realized. The gulf between ideal and reality had first to become
considerable and to be generally realized. Actual conditions had
to become such that there no longer seemed to be any possibility
of connecting the realization of the ideal with any reasonable
probability. As always, faith comes into existence only when all
human possibilities have been exhausted. The whole history of
the monarchy had first to be enacted. There had to be a general
awareness of the conflict between the culture of the monarchy on
157
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
the one hand, together with the new social conditions of which it
was at once a symptom and a contributory cause, and, on the
other hand, the ancient desert ideals, the ancient ancestral culture,
and the ancient ' justice of Yahweh' with its brotherhood and
fellowship. Then the longing for a specific future realization of
the ideals could arise and take shape. Then the gulf between the
power and honour which the king was supposed to possess and to
obtain for his people, and the modest position which he really
occupied in the international politics of the east became tragically
plain. Things had to come to such a pass that there appeared to
be no future for the representatives of David's line: those who really
wielded power, and those who could be expected as their succes-
sors, were such that hope could no longer be connected with the
normal succession. In other words, the Messianic faith as a faith
in a future descendant of David (a purely future figure), who
would restore the monarchy and blessing to the dynasty, implies
the fall of the state and the monarchy, and foreign rule as the
normal state of affairs.
The experience of the disruption after Solomon's death does not
adequately account for the Messianic expectation and faith. For
in spite of the disruption, the Davidic dynasty and its representa-
tives were still regarded by the leading circles in Judah as the
bearers of the covenant promises, as the true tokens of the covenant
between Yahweh and His people. That this was also the general
view is shown by the fact that after each of the few palace revolu-
tions which took place in Jerusalem the people put the legitimate
heir of David on the throne. It is these actual historical kings of
the period after the disruption who are described in the royal
psalms with all the superhuman features of the ideal of kingship.
The existing Davidic dynasty was considered the fixed point in
the nation's life, Yahweh's own guarantee for all time to come.1
This conception of the Davidic dynasty leaves no room for any
expectation of a specific, future, ideal king, for a Messiah in the
strict sense, but only in the sense implicit in the forward-looking
element in the kingly ideal itself. It was not until the fall of the
Davidic monarchy that this forward-looking element (which was
implicit in the ideal of kingship from the beginning) could develop
into a Messianic expectation, a faith in the restoration of the fallen
kingdom to its ancient splendour under a king who really fulfilled
the ancient ideal of kingship in all its fullness.
1 See Pedersen, Israel III-IV, pp. 86ff.
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THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
But alongside the fact of God's guidance of the nation through
its peculiar historical experiences,, another element must be em-
phasized, namely the distinctive character of Yahwism, its faith
in election and covenant. For there was implicit in it the germ of
the faith that God had a great future in store for His people, and
that those conditions and circumstances would be realized which
summed up the ideal, and which corresponded to the moral
standards and desires of righteous and pious men, and therefore
to Israel's ancient Yahwistic morality and justice^ in short, the
faith that God's promises are genuine, and that God's purpose
must be fulfilled. But as yet this faith is neither eschatology nor
the Messianic faith, and must not be confused with the latter.
But it is faith, faith in God's purpose, and will, and power to
attain His end, the faith out of which eschatology itself arises, and
which is the religious core of eschatology.
2. The Scion of David
It is in keeping with the character of the future restoration of the
Davidic kingdom that its king is not a divine being from above but
a mortal man of David's line. What has been said above concerning
the origin of the Israelite future hope makes it quite evident that
Staerk, for instance, is entirely wrong In maintaining that 'the
Old Testament belief in a coming saviour cannot be separated
from the eschatological aspect, the change and re-creation of the
course of the world'.1 In so far as old Testament eschatology has
as its background the destruction of the nation and is formed
around the hope of restoration as its nucleus, to that extent the
Messiah is a political figure of this world, and has nothing to do
with a change in the course of the world or an eschatological new
creation. In so far as the future hope and eschatology borrowed
material from the other-worldly hope of a new creation and a new
world and were gradually conformed to that hope, to that extent
does the kingly rule of Yahweh, not the Messiah, become the
central idea and the dominating conception. As scholars have
long maintained, this central conception really makes the figure
of the Messiah superfluous, so long as the subject is viewed from
the standpoint and experience of early Judaism. The thought of
1 See Staerk, Soter I, p. 40. What is said above indicates that I dissent from the
main thesis of this book, so far as it deals with the Old Testament, and also my reasons
for doing so. Gf. my critical notes in JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, p. 71 n. i, p. 238 n. 47,
p. 243 n. 164. The character of the present work forbids discussion of details or more
extended examination of Staerk's hypothesis; but occasional reference is made to it.
159
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
the need for a revelation of God through an atoning mediator still
lay beyond their experience of life and beyond the revelation of
God which they had been led to apprehend. The meaning of the
Messianic figure was from the beginning derived from the national
and political aspect of the future hope. It was only later in revela-
tion history (in consequence of new experiences of man and God
which came to God's people in the course of that history, and as
a result of the continued preparatory revelation which that history
itself was and mediated) that the Messiah was drawn into the
central position and became the other-worldly saviour and media-
tor of a new world order.
As many passages show,1 the ideal future king, the 'Messiah',
was always thought of in the Old Testament as a scion of David,
ca shoot from the stump of Jesse 5, descended from the ancient
Bethlehemite line. Sometimes, too, it appears that the expectation
was directly connected with a particular descendant of David who
was alive at the time. It is possible that Isa. ix refers to an actual
newborn prince of the ancient dynasty. It is at all events certain
that Zechariah and Haggai associate all the expectations of an
ideal future with a specific historical person, Zerubbabel, the
grandson of King Jehoiachin (i Chron. iii, i8£). Haggai promises
him that once again (i.e., in addition to the insurrections which
broke out after the death of Gambyses) Yahweh will shake heaven,
and earth, and all the nations, so that the riches of all the peoples
will be gathered in the temple of Jerusalem as tribute; then He
will overthrow kingdoms, and thrones, and those who have hither-
to held power, and in their stead make His chosen servant,
Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel, a signet on God's hand, one who will
execute and put into effect on earth the decrees of Yahweh
(Hag. ii, 6£, 2 iff.). For Zechariah, * Yahweh's servant, the Shoot'
(referring to the name Zerubbabel, ethe shoot from Babylon';
see below, p. 164) is *he that cometh', the Anointed, who will
always stand by the Lord of the whole earth (Zech. iii, 8; iv, 14).
The prophet even now has the crown ready with which the
c Shoot' is to be crowned; 'under him everything will shoot up',
and che will bear the mark of honour, and will sit and rule upon
his throne' (Zech. vi, 10-13). The wonder-working spirit of
Yahweh will level his path and break down all opposition; and as
a sign that all this is going to happen he will be able to complete
1 Isa. xi, i, 10; ix, 6; xvi, 5; Iv, sf.; Mic, v, i; Jer. xvii, 25; xxiii, 5; xxxiii, 17; xxx, 9;
Ezek. xxxiv, 23!*.; xxxvii, 24!*.; Amos ix, n.
1 60
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
the building of the temple and put the top stone in place (Zech.
iv, 6f.; vi, isf.). Then the heathen nations will submit to the scion
of David and to Israelite supremacy; £they will be spoil to their
servants5 (Zech, ii, 4, 13; vi, 8); cmany nations will be joined to
Yahweh in that day, and will become My people' (Zech. ii, 15).
It is possible that the promise in Isa. xi, iff. about cthe shoot
which will come out of the hewn stump of Jesse5 also belongs to
the same period and refers to the * Shoot \ Zerabbabel, or one of
his descendants. But of course it may be also a purely future
expectation.
When Zechariah uses the term c Shoot5 as a title of the ideal
king, he is also thinking of legitimate descent from David's line.
In Phoenician, semah sedek> cthe rightful shoot3, denotes the legiti-
mate heir to the throne, who is also chosen by the deity;1 and in
the Aramaic royal inscriptions from North Syria the sedek of the
king indicates his right of succession to the throne.2 That this
usage was also well known in Israel and in Judaism is shown by the
later prophecies in the book of Jeremiah (xxiii, 5f. = xxxiii,
14-16)5 which refer to Zechariah3 s semah prophecy and predict a
semah saddik, a legitimate Shoot for David; the adjective means
'rightful5 as well as 'righteous9, cjust\ The prophet emphasizes
both the moral qualities of the future king and also his legitimacy
as the rightful heir of David and inheritor of the promises made to
David.3 On the other hand, nowhere in the Old Testament is
there any suggestion that the Messiah was thought of as David in
1 See Lidzbarskij Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik I, p. 422, No. 2, u; Gress-
mann, Der Messias, pp. 253^ The same thought underlies the reference to Karit (the
Ugaritic demi-god and royal ancestor) sph Itpn, (Ltpnys (i.e., EPs) shoot* (II K I-II,
10; see Eissfeldt, El im ugaritischen Pantheon, p. 35).
2 See Euler in £.A.W. Ivi, 1938, pp. 277^.
3 Widengren (R.o.B* ii, 1943, p. 61) sees in these prophecies the influence of an an-
cient oriental myth identifying the king with the mythical tree of life, a e shoot1, etwig',
* branch3, of the divine tree of paradise. This theory about a mythical conception
appears to me to have no very secure foundation. It can hardly be safe philological
and historical method to combine all kinds of figures which describe a person as, or
liken him to, a 'twig', or a * shoot5, regardless whether the person is a god or a king,
or whether the twig is alive or cut off. Besides, the figure is in itself altogether too ready
to hand, and may well be supposed to have occurred independently in the most varied
contexts. If Widengren's method were to be followed to its logical conclusion, the
unfruitful branch of John xv, 6, which ' is cast out as a branch and withers * and finally
is thrown on the fire, might be taken as an offshoot of the ancient oriental Messianic
king; or the many '-grens' (branches) and '-kvists5 (twigs) (the reference is to Swedish
surnames ending in '-gren' and c-kvist') who rest in Swedish churchyards might be
regarded as evidence of the influence of the royal ideology of the ancient east on
Swedish Lutheranism and its hypothetical cult of the dead. There is no justification
for the assumption that Zechariah made a conscious allusion to any ancient oriental
myth about the king when he devised his conceit about the 'Shoot from Babylon* as
the royal Shoot tinder whom *all things will shoot up *. See also below, p. 164.
M l6l
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
person, returning in a wonderful way.1 It is not in accordance
with Old Testament thought that a man who has died a natural
death should return.2 The Messiah is a scion of David., not David
himself in person.
It needs to be emphasized that in the Old Testament, and par-
ticularly in its older parts, the Messiah is not a supernatural being
who comes from above. He is indeed depicted in mythical
colours; but we find not more, but rather less of the mythical style
than is usual in the ancient oriental conception of the king. As
we have seen, the literal sense which it may originally have con-
veyed was weakened in Israel; and the divinity of the king was not
conceived as anything more (nor yet as anything less) than a
divine adoption of an ordinary man and his endowment with
power. The natural aspect in the mythical form was in Israel
transferred to the personal and moral sphere. That the king, in
spite of his divine quality, was an ordinary man of this world was
not felt to be either a paradox or a problem. This is true no less
of the Messiah, the future king, the more so since it was not the
older, more mythical, Canaanite form of the conception of king-
ship which formed the background of the idea of the future king
when it emerged, but rather the conception held in the later
monarchy, or after the end of the monarchy, when the influence
of the prophets, the sole lordship of Yahweh, and the growing
sense of the distance between God and man had forced the
mythical element in the ideal of kingship on to the moral
plane.
It is therefore not true to say that the Messiah is thought of in the
Old Testament as a 'divine child3, as a epre-existent5 being from
remote antiquity.3 But as we shall see below, it is true that in so
far as the future hope becomes eschatology, and the king is lifted
up above the sphere of empirical reality, to that extent are mythical
features increasingly included in the conception of the king, so that
the Messiah again approximates to the ancient oriental king-god.
It is the longing for a superhuman helper and a growing under-
standing of the 'otherness5 of the future kingdom and of the
divinely miraculous character of its realization that lie behind this
cmythologizing' and emerge in the promises on which they have
left their stamp. We shall discuss this in greater detail below.
1 As is held by Schmidt, Der Myikus vom wiederkehrenden Kdnig im Alien Testament^ and
Gressrnann, Der Messias, pp. 2326*. See further below, pp. i6sf.
2 Gf. Job vii, yf., 21 ; x, 2 if.; xiv, 7, 12, 14.
s As Staerk does; see the summary of his views in Soter I, pp. 4of.
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THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
3. The Name and Titles of the Future King
The name and titles which are applied to the future king are in
accord with his descent from David. In the Old Testament his
name is not Messiah, but David., or the scion of David.
Sometimes this king of the age of restoration is simply called
David.1 It has been maintained (e.g., by Gressmann, Moore,
Staerk, and others) that the prophets are here thinking of a
resurrected or reincarnated David, a David redivivus in person.
That is improbable. The thought would be unparalleled in the
whole range of Old Testament thought,2 and so novel that it
must have been emphasized and commented on if that had been
what these prophets meant. This is evident from Isa. liii, where a
unique resurrection miracle of this kind is in fact announced, but
is also emphasized with all the writer's resources as something
unheard of and unprecedented. But it was an ancient Israelite
idea that the ancestor lived on in his descendants. It is David's
e blessing5, his inmost being, his loyal soul, his royal honour, his
royal good fortune, that are inherited by his sons, just as the dis-
ciples of the prophets inherit a greater or less portion of the
'spirit5 manifested in their master, as with Elisha and Elijah
(cf. 2 Kings ii, 9-15). As the people may be called "Jacob5 or
'Abraham5 (Mic. vii, 20) because the 'weight5, the csoul3, the
blessing, and the nature of Abraham and Jacob live on in them,
so too, he who in any age represents David's line and his status
may be called David. In Ps. cxxxii the reference is obviously to
the reigning descendant of David; for the psalm prays for the
favour of Yahweh on this anointed one cfor Thy servant David's
sake', so that 'the anointed one5 cannot here be identified with
'Thy servant David5. Yet later in the same psalm this anointed
king Is called 'David5. The two expressions are in synonymous
parallelism to each other; and when the promise is given that
Yahweh will clothe 'his5 (i.e., 'David's') enemies with shame, but
make 'his crown glitter5, the very background of the psalm (inter-
cession with promises) shows that in fact 'David5 is here the con-
temporary king of David's line, the one who, according to the same
psalm, plays the part of David in the religious drama of the
enthronement festival. In the titles of the psalms, the expression
1 Jer. xxx, 9; Ezek. xxxiv, 23!".; xxxvii, 24; Hos. iii, 5.
2 Moore (Judaism II, p. 326) refers to Malachi's promise that Elijah would come
before the last times. But there is a difference between Elijah and David. Elijah did
not die, but still lives in heaven. David both died and was buried, and *saw corrup-
tion', as Peter says in Acts ii, 29, 31; cf. above, p. 162, and n I.
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THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
'for David' (it should be so translated) is used meaning 'for the
use of the king9. This interpretation is further corroborated by
the fact that the term dawidum = dawidhas been found in Mesopo-
tamian texts from Mari on the Euphrates as a title of princes, a
title used as a proper name, and partly regarded as such, like
Augustus, or conversely Caesar (see above, pp. 74f). 'David5, as
the name of the Messiah, means nothing other than 'David's
scion'.
Sometimes, too, the cryptic yet suggestive title 'Shoot' (semah)
is used.1 The term is first used by the prophet Zechariah, and
later in one or two obviously secondary Messianic passages. Some
interpreters hold that this is in itself an ancient Messianic term;2
but this is out of the question during the period when no ancient
Messianic idea existed. Nor can this theory be supported by
reference to any ancient eastern ideology of kingship.3 For even
if the vegetation god who rises again, and possibly also the king as
his cultic representative, may be compared to a shoot or a tree
which shoots up again, it is a very different thing to use the 'Shoot5
as a term for the god or the king. In Zechariah, the real connexion
between the expression and the prophet's promises about Zerub-
babel ('the Shoot from Babylon') as king of Israel is so evident,
and the use of cryptic allusions, instead of a public announcement
about him by name, is so intimately associated with the political
situation, that there can hardly be any doubt that this play on
words was devised by Zechariah himself. This remains true even
if it was an ancient usage in the east to call the king a 'legitimate
shoot* of the old family tree (see above, pp. i6i£). Later the
prophetic disciples interpreted this play on words as an expression
for the future king of the restoration.
The expression indicates, as we have seen above (pp. i6if.),
the legitimacy of the king. But it also includes something more.
Zechariah himself says explicitly what he implied by it: 'under
him everything will shoot up5. That this name might suggest
associations with the thought of reawakening nature, as did the
name of the Canaanite god of vegetation, is just possible. But the
ethical element is also present. When we also find the variant
semah fdakdh, 'the shoot of justice or righteousness', it implies
above all what was always an important aspect of the Old Testa-
1 Zecli. iii, 8; vi, 12; Isa. iv, 2; cf. Jer. xxiii, 5; xxxiii, 15. See Buda in Biblica xx,
1939, pp. loff.
2 So, e.g., Horst in RobiBSon-Horst, Die zwolfkleinen Propheten, p. 223.
3 As Widengren would do; R*o.B* ii, 1943, P» 61.
164
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
ment conception of 'righteousness \ namely salvation, the felicity
which is brought, restored, and maintained by the 'righteous'
ruler, and also the ethical qualities which are the basis of his
power to confer good fortune.
Only once is the future king given a name which expresses the
character and source of his kingship: 'Yahweh is our righteous-
ness', i.e., our righteous champion and saviour (Jer. xxiii, 6). We
shall return to this below (pp.
4. The Scion of David as a Sign of the Restoration of David's Line
In the early Old Testament future hope, the king is in reality
not a specific individual person, the unique one who will have no
successor. What we find there is, in fact, not the coming of an
individual Messiah, but a restoration of the Davidic kingdom
under the sway of the house of David. This is clear from such
passages as Jer. xvii, 25; xxxiii, isff.; Isa. Iv, 3£; Arnos ix, n;
Mic. iv, 8. It is cthe fallen tabernacle of David' that is to be
raised again. In Jer. xvii, igff. an undoubtedly post-exilic prophet
speaks in the plural of c kings and princes sitting on the throne of
David'. In connexion with the 'righteous Shoot3 (the one who
£will execute judgement and righteousness in the land5), which
Yahweh will cause to grow when once the time of chastisement has
expired and He fulfils His promises to Israel and Judah, we hear
that c David will never lack a man to sit upon the throne of the
house of Israel'. Thus the dynasty will always exist, and always
bring such 'righteous Shoots' to rule over the restored people of
Yahweh. That this cannot be taken in any other sense becomes
quite clear when in the sequel a similar promise is made to the
priesthood, cthe Levites': cNor will the priests, the Levites, lack a
man before me to offer burnt offerings, to burn cereal offerings,
and to perform sacrifice continually5 (Jer. xxxiii, 14-18).
When the exiles have returned and the state of bliss is being
established, then, says Deutero-Isaiah, Yahweh will again make a
covenant with His people:
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
the sure promises of favour to David.1
Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander over the peoples. (Isa. Iv, 3£)
1 has'de ddwd han-iulemdmm. On the covenant with David, see Pedersen, Israel
III-IV, pp. 8gff., and Index, s.v. * Covenant'; Rost in T.L.%. Ixxii, 1947, cols. 129:81
165
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
The covenant with David is described here as Jfsadim ne'emanim
true deeds of favour (E.VV. csure mercies'), sure promises of
grace, indicating that he and his dynasty would rule over tribes
and nations. Now Yahweh re-establishes this covenant with Israel.
This of course does not imply the thought, which has sometimes
been read into the passage, that the nation will now take the
place of the dynasty and inherit the promises made to David, but
rather that these promises have again become valid and effective.
Now as always, David and his dynasty represent the people; and
in David the nation has the visible expression of its unity, its
embodiment, and its palladium. The promises made to David
are the essential content of the covenant with the people. In and
through the covenant with David the covenant with the people is
also confirmed. It is not expressly stated in the Old Testament
that the covenant with David is identical with the covenant on
Sinai, including and continuing it; but the idea itself is present,
and is clearly brought out in the statement that the promises of
the Davidic covenant are the essential content of the covenant
which Yahweh will now make cwith you3, i.e., with the Jews.
This is also true of Jer. xxx, 2i£, where the result of the coming of
the future king is described in the very words which are used
elsewhere to express the content of the covenant on Sinai: cand
you shall be my people, and I will be your God'.1 Thus when Isa.
Iv, 3f. promises the re-establishment of the Davidic covenant, the
meaning must be that the Davidic dynasty (to which the promises
applied just as much as to David personally) 2 as the true embodi-
ment of Israel will again become the royal house and gain domin-
ion over other nations as of old. It is cthe former dominion, the
kingdom over Jerusalem3, which will 'come to the daughter of
Zion', when Zion once again has a king in her midst, when a
ruler has arisen from the ancient dynasty of Bethlehem, says the
book of Micah (iv, 8; v, 1-3). The work of Yahweh presaged by
the birth of the royal child in Isa. ix, 1-6 is
To increase the dominion
and <make> good fortune endless,
upon the throne of David,
and in his kingdom.
The same prediction is made when it is emphasized that in the
1 Exod xix, 5f.; Lev. xxvi, 12; Jer. xxiv, 7; xxxi, 33; xxxii, 38; Zech. viii, 8; Ezek,
xi, 20; xxxvi, 28; Hos. ii, 25, etc.
2 See 2 Sam. vii; Pss. Ixxxix, 2off.; cxxxii, nfF.
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THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
restored kingdom (by contrast with the unhappy present) the
king 'will come forth from his (i.e., Jacob's) midst' (Jer. xxx, 21);
Israel will no longer have to obey foreign kings.
It is one of the distinctive features of prophetic vision and the
prophetic word that general truth is expressed in concrete form.
The vision of the prophet is fixed on the one figure in whom the
restored Davidic kingdom first takes visible, concrete shape before
his mind's eye. What interests him and his audience is the begin-
ning, the dawn of a new age; and therefore he describes this
brilliant forerunner, with whom everything begins, without
thought or mention of the obvious fact that for all time he will be
succeeded by equally brilliant descendants of David. But on
occasion it is stated that he is one of an endless succession. In
Jer. xxiii, 1-3 the prophet (here, too, undoubtedly post-exilic)
promises that Yahweh c will gather the remnant of My flock from
all the countries whither I have driven them'; and then continues,
in direct contrast with the bad c shepherds' whom the people have
previously had, and who 'have scattered My flock, and have driven
them away, and have not cared for them', CI will set shepherds
over them who will shepherd them', i.e., give them kings who will
rule over them. In the Old Testament, as in the east generally,
the figure of the shepherd undoubtedly represents the king.
Accordingly the restored kingdom will have new kings who will be
better than their predecessors. But then there rises before the
prophet's mind the first of this new line of kings, under whose rule
the age of bliss will be inaugurated:
Behold, the days are coming, says Yahweh,
when I shall raise up for David a righteous Shoot;
and he will reign as king and wisely attain his aim;
and he will execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In his day Judah will be saved,
and Israel will dwell in security.
And this is the name by which he will be called,
'Yahweh our Vindication'.
Obviously Zechariah did not think that Zerubbabel would be
immortal, even if he became the 'Messiah5 of the restored king-
dom. When a member of the Deutero-Isaianic circle describes the
bliss of the future kingdom, saying,
No longer will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
nor an old man who has not completed
the wonted span of life;
for the youngest will die a hundred years old,
else he will be deemed a sinner accursed (Isa. Ixv, 20),
he clearly does not assume that men will be immortal in this
kingdom of bliss; and it should be equally clear that he does not
except the king.
That this is so is confirmed by the idea which sometimes appears
in later Judaism in connexion with the thought of a Millennium,
namely that the Messiah will die when the Millennium ends.1 This
idea has been regarded as very remarkable, as indeed it is from
the standpoint of later Judaism, for which the Messiah had be-
come cthe Son of Man', a pre-existent, heavenly, eternal being.
But precisely because this idea is at variance with the general
outlook of later Judaism, it must be ancient, a relic of an earlier
conception. It is, in fact, quite natural and intelligible in the light
of the early Jewish future hope, in which the Messiah is simply the
first in the endless line of David's descendants, who will succeed
one another on the throne of the glorious restored kingdom.
The early Jewish ' Messiah5, then, is no specific individual. In
fact, like the king in the royal psalms, he is a type. Beyond him
we can discern the whole line of 'Messianic' successors who have
the same ideal character as the first 'righteous Shoot' from the
stump of Jesse.
Moreover, in the c Messianic' passages referred to above, where
the name c David' is applied to the Messiah, this means, as we
have seen, the scion of David, or, more precisely, all the 'Davids'
who are to be in the happy kingdom of the future.
All the Old Testament promises make it clear that the Messiah
is really a royal figure, a ruler. It is therefore a misuse of the word
'Messiah' and a misrepresentation of the Old Testament concep-
tion of the future to speak of a 'prophetic' or a 'priestly' Messiah
alongside the kingly one.2 The latter is a particularly misleading
and unhistorical use of the term. In the theocratic programme for
the future in Ezekiel, the 'prince' is a this- worldly figure, too
unimportant and insignificant to be of any interest in a historical
account of the Old Testament expectation of a Messiah. He is
rather an example of the undistinguished substitute conceived of
1 2 Esdras vii, 28ff.; cf. xii, 34; 2 Bar. xxx, compared with xxix, 3. See Bousset, Relig*,
p. 332.
2 As do Gressmann (Der Messias) and Staerk (Soter I).
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in those circles which were no longer interested in the Messiah
as an element in the future hope (because he would conflict too
much with their theocratic and priestly ideals and desire for
power)/ or perhaps, more accurately, as part of a religious and
political programme, which would have existed in the same form
whether or not there had been any Messianic hope at all. The
prince in the book of Ezekiel has no connexion with the idea of
the Messiah, and has no place in a survey of its history. There is
therefore every justification for the statement2 that Ezekiel xl-xlviii
deals not with the last age, but with a historical interregnum, and
with a prince as he actually was in the dreary interval between
the return and the establishment of the glorious kingdom.
5. The Kingly Rule of the Scion of David and the Kingly Rule of Tahweh
The Messiah of the Jewish future hope and of Jewish eschatology
is, as we have seen, a figure who belongs to the this-worldly,
political side of the hope of restoration and deliverance, but who
must, of course, be understood in the light of the general religious
outlook, like everything else of significance in Israelite life. Reli-
gion and politics were not two distinct spheres, but politics was
regarded as an outcome of man's place in the world as defined by
religion. Man was God's creation and servant, a member of that
order of creation which was wholly determined by God and direc-
ted by and to God.
As we have seen above (pp. 140-9), the fundamental thought
in the Jewish hope of future restoration (even in its national and
political form) is the idea of the kingly rule of Yahweh, 'the king-
dom of God'.3 All the other conceptions are grouped round this
central one; and in the light of it their organic connexion can be
understood. This has remained true in Judaism to this day. That
it was also true in the time of Jesus is shown quite simply by the
evangelists' summary of His message: 'the kingly rule of God is at
hand.'
This being so, it might be concluded that there was a conflict
between this central idea and the thought of the kingdom of the
Messiah; and there was in fact a tension between them. In later
Judaism this tension is reduced by the thought that the kingdom
of the Messiah is an interregnum before the coming of the kingdom
of God (see below, pp. 277, 321, 324, 326).
1 Staerk seems to agree on the latter point; see Soter /, p. 41.
2 See Procksch in %.A.W. Iviii, 1940-1, p. 99. 3 See PsSt. II, pp. saoff.
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But in the earlier period this tension is not so apparent, pre-
cisely because, considered from the religious point of view, the
future kingdom is essentially the kingly rule of Yahweh. When-
ever the conception is dominated by this religious point of view,
the practical, earthly form of the kingdom recedes into the back-
ground. For Deutero-Isaiah, the picture of Yahweh' s glorious,
royal 'appearance5 and salvation overshadows all the concrete
details of everyday experience. It is only incidentally that he
mentions that it also involves the re-establishment in Israel of the
kingly rule of the Davidic line : he takes it for granted. It is through
the gloriously endowed king, who will inherit the covenant pro-
mises made to David, that the kingly rule of Yahweh will be
exercised in the daily life of the future.1
In the description of Israel's future, the king is naturally the
supreme figure, symbolizing and expressing the restoration of the
kingdom in its ancient glory on the basis of the old covenant.
Yet the restored kingdom is much more glorious and secure,
because in the monarchy, in the constant presence through the
ages of c David3 on the throne in Jerusalem, renewed and concrete
visible expression is given to the election of and covenant with
Israel, and to all the promises and possibilities which these implied.
The future kingdom is founded on a renewal and fulfilment of
precisely this concrete expression of the covenant, cthe sure pro-
mises of favour to David5 (Isa. Iv, 3^).
The scion of David is so natural an element in the description
of the future, that he is often not mentioned but tacitly assumed.
This is so, for instance, in the passage in Deutero-Isaiah just
referred to about the restoration of the Davidic covenant.
Yet it is remarkable that there are relatively few references to
the 'Messiah5 in the Old Testament descriptions of salvation and
the state of bliss. In this, Deutero-Isaiah's attitude is really
characteristic. He even gives the ancient Israelite royal title,
'Yahweh's anointed*, to Cyrus: the new king in Jerusalem is only
indirectly referred to. Still more remarkable is the fact that the
future king is hardly ever described as re-establishing the kingdom.
Only one of the 'Messianic' passages (Isa. ix, 1-6) appears to
1 If this is the point of EngnelTs statement that * Yahweh and His anointed are one*,
and that this accounts for the two aspects of 'Messianism' (Gamla Ustammtet I, p. 146
n. i), then this statement is not without truth. But it is misleading, since it is calculated
to obscure the two aspects, which are at all events sufficiently distinct to be separate
from each other chronologically in later Judaism. The statement leads Riesenfeld to
fuse the two aspects ( JJsits transfigur^ pp. 56f.) .
170
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
imply that the king who is now born will be instrumental in
throwing off the yoke of the oppressors and destroying tyranny.
But it is significant that even here it is Yahweh ('Thou', v. 4)
who achieves this. The thought is proleptic: Thou hast done it;
that is, in principle, through the birth of the royal child. Yet the
thought may well be that it is the child who will actually carry it
out, so that light will dawn on those who dwell in a land of deep
gloom. All the other passages either state directly or imply, with-
out actually saying so, that Yahweh Himself is directly responsible
for the establishment of the future kingdom of bliss, the gathering
of the dispersed, and everything else that is associated with it.1
In all of them the king is mentioned only as the ruler of a kingdom
which has already been established. Even in Isa. ix, 1-6 the
last word is that it is ethe zeal of Yahweh' that will 'perform
this'.
This apparently remarkable fact is explained by the originally
political character of the future king. Since, in the thought of the
east, the existence of a realm implies a king (the wise man Agur
expresses his amazement that the locusts can march forth in
ordered array without having a king: Prov. xxx, 27), the future
king is mentioned (or tacitly taken for granted) as one of the
greatest and most conspicuous glories of the restored kingdom.
But in general the future kingdom is conceived of in the Old
Testament in religious rather than political terms. As we have
seen, the religious point of view predominates increasingly. This
involves an emphasis on the miraculous character of the king-
dom. The kingdom will be established by a miraculous divine
intervention: it will be God's own work, not the work of man.
This is particularly clear in Deutero-Isaiah, and still more in those
who came after him. So paradoxical is Yahweh's action that He
even uses the heathen Cyrus as His 'anointed9 instrument in
restoring Israel. Because the kingdom is restored by a miracle
wrought by Yahweh, there is hardly ever any question of the
king's establishing the kingdom. He is the future kingdom's
greatest visible good, the abiding pledge of Yahweh's faithfulness
and active presence; but he does not establish the kingdom.
Accordingly there is for the thought of Israel and the Old Testa-
ment no conflict between the kingly rule of Yahweh and that of
the Messiah, just as, ideally, there is no conflict between Yahweh's
1 Isa. xvi, 5; Iv, sf.; Jer. xxiii, 1-6; Ezek. xvii, 22-24; xxxiv, 23f.; xxxvii, 22-5;
Zech. ix, gf.
171
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
kingly rule and that of His son, the anointed, earthly king.1 If
the king is what he ought to be, he is the obedient, faithful,
c righteous \ and power-filled instrument for carrying out Yahweh's
wiU on earth and exercising the daily functions of His kingly rule.
This is also true of the future king. Nowhere are his status and
power so emphasized that they threaten the exclusive dominion
of Yahweh or the monotheism of the Old Testament.
Naturally, thought may dwell on the one or the other of these
two aspects, Yahweh's kingly rule, or His kingship as exercised
through the future king; but they are never felt to be two distinct
things. When the Messiah stands in the foreground, it is because
reference is made to the national and political side of the future
kingdom, or because emphasis is laid on the value of having a
fully qualified intermediary between Yahweh and His people,
like the priest-king of earlier times (Jer. xxx, 2 1 ; see below, pp. 2 38ff) .
But the greater the prominence given to the religious point of view,
the greater is the emphasis on the idea which became the focus
and centre of the future hope when Deutero-Isaiah adopted the
enthronement mythology: it is Yahweh who is king in the future
kingdom.2 It is He who is its founder, and who rules and governs
('judges') in it. This is the general view in Old Testament
descriptions of future conditions (the end time) and their realiza-
tion, even where Yahweh is not explicitly called king. It is
Yahweh who blinds, hardens, and destroys the hostile world-
power;3 it is He who will gather His people from all lands and
realms;4 it is He who will thenceforth dwell in the midst of His
people,5 and Himself keep watch on those who rule and judge;6
and He will be to His people sun, and light, and wall, and defence.7
In so far as the religious side of the future hope is emphasized,
the ideal, earthly king of David's line recedes into the background
behind Yahweh Himself. From the standpoint of the general
. liv, 1936., pp. 1 68fL, Wolff presents the problem, not in Old Testament
terms, but with an emphasis and sharpness which arise from a Christian interpretation
of the Messiah; and he discusses it In terms of dogmatic theology rather than historical
criticism. The main point in his conclusion is, of course, sound: that it is Yahweh's
work which is accomplished through the Messiah. On the other hand there is no
historical justification for his idea that the Messiah is a form of the manifestation
(Erscheinungsform) of Yahweh (op. cit., p. 191).
2 Isa.lii, 7(cf.xl,9-ii);xliii, I5;xli,2i;xliv, 6;xxxiii, 17, 22;xxiv, 23; Zeph.iii, 15;
Isa. Ixii, 3; Zech. xiv, 9, i6f.
3 Isa. xlix, 25f.; li, isff; Hi, 12; xli, 13; xlix, i6ff.; Ixiii, iff.; Ixvi, isf.; xxxi, 5-9.
4 Ezek. xxxiv, i2fT.; xxxvii, 21; Isa. xlix, ioff., 22, 25.
5 Ezek. xxxvii, 27; Isa. liv, 5; Ix, 14; Ixii, u; Zeph. iii, 15.
6 Ezek. xxx, 15*?.; Isa. xxxiii, 2 if.
7 Isa. xxx, igf.; Zech. ii, 8£
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THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
scheme of religious thought which provided the material for the
specific development of the future hope, one might be tempted to
say (as has in fact been said) that the Messiah is Yahweh's alter
ego or Dopfelganger. If this is intended to suggest that the Messiah
is an alien element in the picture, it is wrong. From the beginning*
the Messiah is associated with the hope of restoration. But it is
true that in so far as the purely religious aspect becomes dominant,
the Messiah recedes into the background and remains there as a
relic of the this-worldly, political aspect of restoration. That is
why we find the Messiah left out of many descriptions of the future
kingdom without any sense of loss.1 The figure of the Messiah in
the earlier period is therefore the best illustration of the two sources
of the Jewish future hope, on the one hand a natural, national,
political hope based on religion, and on the other the purely
religious experience of Yahweh's enthronement and kingly rule,
and the projection of that experience into the future as the reli-
gious development of the content and ground of the hope.2
In the earlier Jewish future hope, then, the Messiah does not
actually establish the future kingdom, but is the Davidic ruler in
the restored Israel, in so far as it is thought of as political and this-
worldly. Only rarely is he regarded as Yahweh's instrument in
crushing the enemy and establishing the state of bliss (Isa. ix, iff.;
see above, pp. loaff.)- This of course does not mean that it was
commonly thought that the Messiah would not take an active part
in establishing the kingdom, but only that the emphasis was not
laid on this aspect of the royal figure. In the restoration Yahweh
Himself dominated the scene and all attention was directed to
Him. Of course David's descendant may be regarded as the instru-
ment Yahweh will use, not only as governing and defending in
Yahweh's strength, but as the royal deliverer who will lead
Yahweh's campaign against His enemies. But, on the whole, the
passive part played by the king in the establishment of the future
kingdom is characteristic. Zechariah's word to Zerubbabel (iv, 6)
provides an apt comment: "'Not by might and not by power (i.e.,
by human power), but by My (wonder-working) spirit", says
Yahweh.' Generally speaking it is only after the restoration that
the future king comes into action.
1 This is discussed at greater length below, pp. 337f£; cf. above, p. 170,
2 This dual character is not presented with sufficient clarity in Ps.St. II, where only
the origin of the content of eschatology (Yahweh's kingly rule over a newly created
world) is examined. Insufficient attention is given there to the political aspect of the
future hope and the question of the political background against which it arose.
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
6. The Equipment, Call, and Work of the Future King
The future king is thought of as endowed with superhuman divine
powers and qualities in at least as great measure as the idealized
historical king. Everything which has been said above about the
ideal of kingship applies to him as well It is only by chance that
one or another feature in the picture is not mentioned in the
relatively few 'Messianic3 sayings in the Old Testament.
But there is all the more justification for completing the portrait
of the future king in accordance with the portrait of the king in
the psalms, for example, in that these psalms and similar poems
and prophetic utterances about the king came to be interpreted
in Judaism as promises of the future king or Messiah. There is
clear evidence of this from the circle of Isaiah's disciples, namely
in Isa. xxxii, 1-8. This passage is not really a prophecy, but a
wisdom poem describing the good fortune and blessing of a
country where there is the right kind of king, who 'reigns in
righteousness5; and the poem gives a concrete example of such
righteous rule by indicating the appropriate lot which will befall
'the fool' and 'the noble man5. The king is here thought of in
terms of the customary ideal of kingship, as he is described, in
greater detail, in the so-called clast words of David' (2 Sam.
xxiii, iff,), a passage which is also characterized by the style and
thought of wisdom poetry.1 In the circle of Isaiah's disciples the
poem Isa. xxxii, 1-8 was interpreted as a prophecy about the
ideal future king, and in the course of transmission it was put
together with earlier and later prophetic utterances by Isaiah and
his successors. The opening line, hen lesedek yimlok-melek, fwhen
the king reigns in righteousness', has been interpreted as a pro-
phecy: 'Behold, the king (or, a king) will reign in righteousness.'
In the course of transmission a poem like this could (or had to)
be taken in this way, because at that time the Jews no longer had
a king, much less a righteous king; and therefore descriptions of
the ideal king could only be interpreted either of one of the
idealized kings of the past (which practically meant David), or
of the scion of David, who "would come in the future when Israel
had again become a free, pious, and righteous nation.
Another instance of a 'Messianic5 interpretation of earlier
prophecies is perhaps to be found in a passage in the book of
Ezekiel (xxi, 32), a threatening word against the ruler of Judah,
whose turban will be torn off, his crown thrown down, and his
1 See Mowinckel in g.A.W. xlv, 1927, pp.
174
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
kingdom reduced to ruins ' until he comes whose right it is, and
to whom I shall give it'. This passage probably alludes to the
expected righteous scion of David (see above, pp. i6o£) as con-
trasted with the post-exilic governors and 'princes3,1 who ruled
by the favour of the kings of Persia but found no favour in the
eyes of the prophets of restoration. But it is also probable that
Ezekiel here had in mind older prophecies about David, such as
the familiar Shiloh passage (Gen. xlix, 10), and the prophecy
about the 'star out of Jacob9 in the lays of Balaam (see above,
pp. is£), and interpreted them as prophecies about the corning
scion of David in the age of restoration.2
In every point the descriptions of the future king correspond
with the ideal of the royal psalms. The future king is more than
an ordinary man. He has a divine nature. He can be called ' divine
hero', and his ability as 'counsellor' (i.e., governor and ruler) is
'wonderful' (Isa. ix, 5) . Just as the historical king can be regarded
as the incarnation of his entire dynasty, so that men wish him
everlasting life (see above, pp. 64, Sgf), so, too, the newborn future
king can have the promise of the honourable name, 'Father for
ever' (Isa. ix, 5), the one who will for all time govern his people
and his country as a father.
The source of this divine equipment is not a supernatural con-
ception or birth, but the fact that 'the spirit of Tahweh rests upon
z With it come all the royal virtues,
a spirit of wisdom and discernment,
a spirit of counsel and strength,
a spirit of knowledge and reverence for Yahweh (Isa. xi, 2).
This charismatic endowment (to use an expression from New
Testament theology) of the future king is the source of all his
powers. The gift of the spirit manifests itself in superhuman
powers which are physical, intellectual, and moral.4 To sum up,
it may be said that the future king ' rules in the strength of Yahweh,
1 See above, p. 18 n. I.
2 Gf. Genesis Rabbah 28, on Gen. xlbc, 10: * Shiloh is King Messiah/ See Weber,
Jud. Theol*, p. 356.
3 Gf. Koch in Biblica xxyii, 1946, pp. 24ifL
4 This is rightly emphasized by Staerk, Soter I, pp. $£. But neither this feature nor
the other which Staerk emphasizes in the same connexion (the intimate relation of
the future king to God) gives any ground for the conclusion that the king f therefore* ( I)
has the characteristics which the myth attributes to the Urmensch, and *is therefore, as
the one who brings in paradise, himself the Urmensch returned'. See above, pp. 55, 81.
175
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
in the majesty of the name of Yahweh his God' (Mic. v, 3). His
mere word and the breath of his lips suffice to slay the violent
and the wicked (Isa. xi, 4).
Having this endowment, he can display superhuman, heroic
strength as a warrior in the defence of land and people (Isa. ix, 5), for
early Judaism did not think of the blissful age of restoration as free
from the need of defence against foreign hostility and envy (Mic.
v, 3f.). The thought occasionally occurs that it is this c Messiah5
who will break the yoke of the oppressors and set Israel free; at
all events the promise of the birth of the royal child associates
deliverance with the appearance of the wonder child, though
even here it is Yahweh who has broken the yoke and the rod of
the oppressor. This has already been achieved by Yahweh ideally
in the birth of the child; and therefore the prophet already hears
in spirit the rejoicing at the celebrations for the royal child,
anticipating the celebration of victory on the day when the
prophecy implicit in his birth is fulfilled.
As divine hero and victor, the king secures peace for his people.
Alluding to the heavy boot of the Assyrian armies, the prophet
promises that all the military equipment of the oppressor, the
trampling boots of the soldiers and their bloodstained garments,
will become fuel for the fire (Isa. ix, 4; see above, p. 104). The
king cwill be peace' (Mic. v, 4). He is the c prince of peace'; and
one of the later prophets sees him ride into the city as a king of
peace, upon the foal of an ass. Thus he secures peace for the
future:
He will banish the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow will be banished;
and he will enjoin peace upon the nations
(Zech. ix, 10, reading the first word as wehikrit.}.
It is clear from the context, which says that the king will
abolish war and the instruments of war from Israel, destroying
war-lords by his power, that the ass on which he rides is not simply
an animal of peace in contrast to a war-horse. The ass or mule is
the royal mount of ancient times (see Judges v, 10; x, 4, etc.).
There reappears here an ancient feature of the royal ideology,
which was reflected in the cult in the early Canaanite period. In
the ritual texts from Ugarit, the 'saving' king-god Dan'il, who
brings the blessing of fertility and also justice for widows and
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
orphans, conies mounted on a saddled ass. I Thus there is conscious
archaism in the prophet's reference to the saviour king. The future
king becomes the king of peace because he has power to banish
war and war-lords.
But the 'peace' (M6m) of which the prophet speaks here, com-
prises more than the mere prevention of war and victory over
enemies. The word also includes all good fortune and well-being,
safety and security, good order and morality in the nation, fellow-
ship ('wholeness3) and brotherhood, in short whatever may be
described as material well-being and sound social and moral con-
ditions. Again and again this external and internal well-being is
described, when 'the Shoot of Yahweh will be beautiful and
glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of
the survivors in Israel5 (Isa. iv, s).2
And in his days Judah will be saved,
and Israel will dwell in security;
and this is the name by which he will be called,
'Yahweh our Vindication' (Jer. xxiii, 6).
c Salvation \ or rather 'width, spaciousness' (yesa6), here includes
not only deliverance, preservation, and victory in war, but also
every kind of well-being, good fortune, and ideal conditions. The
words c right' and 'righteousness3 (sedek, sedakdh) have the same
suggestion of well-being, and of favourable internal and external
conditions; and in the passage just quoted 'vindication' implies
the 'right and good fortune' which are so often associated with the
reign of the future king.3 In short he will be a 'light' to his people,
who have so long dwelt in deep gloom (Isa. ix, i). This material
blessing, which was conceived of in ancient Israel as the result of
the blessing which was inherent in the king's person, is described
in the book of Ezekiel (xxxiv3 236*.) : * I will set one shepherd over
them, my servant David, who shall feed them . . .; and I, Yahweh,
will be their God ... I will make a covenant of peace with them,
banishing wild beasts from the land, so that they may live securely
in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. And I will settle them
round my own hill, blessing them with showers of rain at the right
season. The trees of the field shall bear fruit; the earth shall bring
1 See Engnell, Divine Kingship^ p. 141, and references.
2 With the conception of the Hng as 'the Shoot of Yahweh', cf. King Karit as the
* Shoot' of the god El; see above, p. 161 n. i.
3 Gf. Isa. ix, 5 (Salftn); xvi, 5; xxxii, 2; Jer. xvii, 25ff.; xxiii, 4-6; xxxui, 15; Ezek,
xvii, 23; xxxiv, 25ff.; xxxvii, 251!.; Mic. v, 3f.; Zech, ix, 9.
N 177
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
forth its crops; and they shall be secure in their land. . . . And
they shall no longer be a prey to the nations, nor shall the wild
beasts of the land devour them; but they shall dwell securely, and
none shall make them afraid.'
It may also be noted that on occasion it is explicitly emphasized
that this good fortune will be the lot of the united Israel, the two
kingdoms which once were one under David's sceptre (Ezek.
xxxvii, 22; Jer. xxiii, 6).
The kingly rule of the future king, like David's, will extend over
other distant and alien nations. Sometimes, like the psalmist, the
prophet has a vision of a universal empire:
His dominion will be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.1
This is the ancient phraseology which is actually derived from the
Babylonian royal style: from the ocean in the east to the ocean
in the west, on earth's circumference, and from the River (i.e.,
Euphrates) at its centre to all its farthest borders, encircling the
world. From all nations they will come to do homage to the
king, and to the God who has given him his power. 2 He will be
the splendour and glory of his people, and an ensign for the
peoples to which the nations will resort (Isa. iv, 2; xi, 10).
This is brought about not least by the renown of his righteous
rule which brings good fortune. It is on this aspect of the work
of the Messiah that the main emphasis is laid. In a word, his
task in the future kingdom is to c judge' Yahweh's people. That
means defending them from any attack or encroachment, driving
the enemy back when he ventures forth, and ruling the land with
justice and righteousness for the good fortune and success of the
people. It is perhaps, after all, this ethical aspect which is the
most prominent feature in the picture of the future king. When it
is stated that he re-establishes and lays the foundation of the
Davidic kingdom 'with justice and righteousness' (Isa. ix, 6), the
context shows that the main emphasis still falls on the victorious
power (sedek, righteousness) by which he wins for his people
'justice3 and * salvation*. But the ethical and social side of
'righteousness3 is quite evident in the promise about the Shoot
which comes forth from the stump of Jesse:
1 Zech. ix, 10; cf. Ps. Ixxii, 8. See also Isa. Iv, 4; Ezek. xvii, 23; Amos ix, 12;
Mic. v, 3.
2 Isa. xi, 10; Ezek. xxxvii, 28; Mic. v, 3; cf. Isa. xlv, asff.; xlviii, 9, 1 1; ii, af.
178
THEJLING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
He will not judge by what his eyes see,
nor decide by what his ears hear,
but he will judge the needy with righteousness,
and decide with equity for the poor in the land.
He will smite the violent with the rod of his mouth;
and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be the girdle of his loins,
and faithfulness the girdle of his waist
(Isa. xi: 3-5, reading *arls for 9eres in v. 4).
This appears again and again.1 The righteousness of the future
kings as 'good shepherds' is contrasted with the injustice and
misrule of the historical kings (Jer. xxiii, 4). Tradition puts into
Jeremiah's mouth a saying which manifestly alludes to the pitiful
last king of Judah (Zedekiah, 'Yahweh is my vindication3), and
prophesies the name which the future king will win by his right-
eous and auspicious rule, Tahweh sidkenu, 'Yahweh our Vindica-
tion5 (Jer. xxiii, 4ff.).
Accordingly his rule will also result in a moral revival in the
land. The same passage in Jeremiah says that in virtue of his
divine endowment he will cdeal wisely and gain his end' (hiskil,
Jer. xxiii, 5): every man in his appropriate station will do his
duty and be a blessing to the whole community (Isa. xxxii, 3-8).
But this is only one aspect of the religious revival which will come
about when Yahweh again makes a 'covenant of peace', an
'everlasting covenant', with them, when He becomes their God,
and 'David' their king and the people walk in Yahweh's laws and
observe His statutes. 2 This religious aspect of conditions in the
future kingdom is emphasized in the Ezekiel passage from which
the above phraseology is taken, (Ezek. xxxvii, 24fF.): c. . . I will
set my sanctuary among them for evermore. My dwelling place
shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. And the nations shall know that I, Yahweh, sanctify
Israel.3
Then the godly and righteous king of Israel's own dynasty will
be the true and legitimate priest, the mediator between the
people and God; and the covenant made at Sinai will again
become a reality.3 In the promise to Jacob in Jer. xxx, 2 if., the
prophet (not Jeremiah, but a post-exilic prophet) says:
1 See Isa. ix, 6; xvi, 5; xxxii, i ; Jer. xxiii, 4f.; xxxiii, 15; Ezek. xxxiv, saf.; Zech. ix, 9.
2 Ezek. xxxvii, 24; cf. also Jer. xxiii, 6; xxx, 9, 2 if.; xxxiii, 16.
3 Jer. xxx, 2 if. See above, p. 165 and n. i.
179
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
Their prince shall be one of themselves;
their ruler shall come from among them.
I will grant him access, and he shall approach me , . .
And you shall be my people (as of old) ,
and I will (again) be your God.
Here we find a close connexion between the priestly function of
the king and the establishment of the new covenant. The words
about Israel being Yahweh' s people and Yahweh their God were
commonly used in the earlier parts of the Old Testament to
express what was implied in election and covenant. The point of
the passage is that when a covenant has again been made between
Yahweh and Israel in the age of restoration, it will function
normally, because the people will again have a legitimate king of
their own dynasty (in contrast with the foreign rulers of the
present) a king whom Yahweh will permit to approach Him in
order to perform the priestly service as mediator, as leader in the
cult, as intercessor, as one who transmits blessings, and, in all
probability, revelations. How important this thought was for
Judaism can be seen from an addition, made in the text as trans-
mitted, to the saying about the part played by the future king as
priestly mediator, emphasizing that no ordinary man could dare
to undertake it.1 When Israel once again has such a mediator to
offer expiation, then no more wrong or injustice will be com-
mitted, for ethe land will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh'
(Isa. xi, 9; see above, p. 137).
We find here an important feature in the equipment of the
future king, his knowledge of God, dcfat *elohim. This simply
means that he lives constantly in personal fellowship with God,
deriving all his power, his aims, and the very nature of his being
from this fellowship. 2 In the prophecy just quoted, this c knowledge
of God \ which is at once the sum and the source of all else, shows
that the picture of the future king was supremely influenced by the
spirit of the great prophets. The knowledge of God, immediate
union with Him, and acquaintance with His nature and will,
together with the willingness to conform to His will and to express
it in act, is the source of every virtue and blessing: it is the true
crown of the future king.
It is from prophecy that this feature in the picture of the
Messiah is derived, and not, as has been maintained, from any
1 Jer, xxx, 21 ; see Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M. Ill, p. 392.
2 See Mowinckel, Du Erhenntrds Gottes, pp. 6fF.
180
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE; MESSIAH
mythical conception of the Urmensch, or from ancient ideas about
sacral kingship.1 This is a fact, even if the prophetic emphasis on
the knowledge of God as a fundamental royal virtue may have had
links with earlier ideas about the king as the possessor of * sacral
knowledge of God ', i.e., as custodian of the sacral and ritual oracle.
The king is also required to know Yahweh; but in the oriental
conception of the king more emphasis is laid on the deity's know-
ledge (i.e., choice) of the king. In Israel the knowledge of Yahweh
was increasingly regarded as the special function of the priest and
the prophet, particularly the prophet.2 It was the prophets who
advanced the knowledge of God as the essential demand on the
king, the nation, and each individual in the nation;3 and from
the prophets it was taken over as a fundamental feature in the
picture of the future king.
7. Mythical Elements in the Conception of the King
What has just been said does not, of course, mean that there are
no mythical elements in early Judaism's conception of the future
king; nor does it imply any depreciatory estimate of the mythical,
as if Old Testament ideas had to be protected from mythical
elements. The thought and language of the Old Testament (and
of religion generally) are unthinkable apart from the thought and
language of myth. Throughout the ancient east the conception of
the king and the royal ideology were mythical. Mythical elements
in the conception of the future king are to be expected as the
natural way of expressing his divine equipment and power. What
is superhuman can usually only be spoken of in the metaphorical
picture-language of myth.
Accordingly, it goes without saying that all the mythical fea-
tures, which in earlier times belonged to the conception of the
king, were transferred to the Messiah (the future king), and in a
measure became even more prominent, coming to life again, as
it were, as the future king receded farther from prosaic everyday
reality. The superhuman, miraculous, divine aspect then became
more prominent than in the sacral, earthly ruler.
This is shown, for instance, by the fact that the prophet deliber-
ately uses material from the ancient myths in depicting the future
king. But as a rule this applies not to new features but to ancient
conceptions which were formerly associated with the conception
1 Against Staerk, Soter I, p. 3. 2 See Mowinckel, Die Erkenntnis Gottes, pp. gff.
* Op. cit., pp. 8, 35ff,
181
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
of the king. We merely refer here to a few prophetic sayings which
show the influence of the myth about paradise and the primordial
age, and the myth about the miraculous birth of the divine child.
The thought ofparadisal conditions and peace among animals occurs
in the passage in Isaiah which immediately precedes the passage
quoted above:
The wolf will dwell with the lamb;
and the leopard will He down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion will graze together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow and the bear will be friends;
their young will lie down together.
The sucking child will play happily
over the hole of the asp,
and on the viper's den
the weaned child will put his hand (Isa. xi, 6-8). x
The idea underlying this description appears to be that the ideal
king corresponds to the king of paradise in the old myths, even
though no such myth of the king of paradise occurs elsewhere in
the Old Testament. When the true king comes, paradise is
restored. Admittedly it is not stated in so many words that the
king is thought of as the Urmensch; but it is not unlikely that we
have evidence here that the royal ideology was sometimes in-
fluenced by the conception of the king of paradise or Urmensch. z
Naturally the fact of such influence does not in any way indicate
the origin of the ideal of kingship.
In such promises about the ideal king, we also find the thought
of the king's divine character, and ancient expressions for this idea.
Among the names which are applied to the royal child in Isa. ix
is >abi 'ad, usually rendered "Everlasting Father3.3 This naturally
recalls the ancient Canaanite title of the supreme god El, 'Father
of Years' (*ab snm}f and the Egyptian title of the creator god
Ptah, 'Lord of Years', 'Lord of Eternity'.5 The same idea un-
doubtedly lies behind all these expressions. The fact that *per-
1 Reading ytr't for fafri in o, 6, titrtfenah for tifmah in v. 7, and omitting w^aryeh
kabbdkaryo*kal teben as a gloss in v. 7.
2 See above> pp. 55, 81; cf. below, pp. 186, 383.
3 Literally, 'father of perpetuity3, commonly taken as an attributive genitive.
4 A I 8; B IV 24; see EL Bauer in %.A.W. li, 1933, p. 82 (cf. liii, 1935, PP< 54^)-
The translation * Father of Years' is not undisputed; see Eissfeldt, El im ugaritischen
Pantheon, p. 30 n. 4,
5 Sec Fraakfortj Kingship, p. 32.
182
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
petuity5 is here synonymous with 'years5 shows that what is meant
is not our abstract, timeless conception of 'eternity \ but that *ad9
like the usual word '61dm, here means 'time' with all its content,
everything that happens in it from the very beginning on into the
unfathomable future.1 The creator God is lord and author of all
that happens during this endless time. The prophet confers the
same title of honour on the royal child. As king he will prove to
be the beneficent lord and author of the age of bliss and its glorious
progress. It is a title which really belongs to the god who regains
and exercises dominion over the world. When applied to the
king, it is obviously used in a modified sense. The meaning of the
expression can perhaps best be rendered 'continual providence5;
and naturally it is only on behalf of Yahweh and by His power
that the king can be such a c providence' (c£ above, pp. io6£).
There are also other passages in which the thought of the
fertility of paradise and peace among the animals has influenced
descriptions of the future king's rule. 2
In the conception of the Messiah, other mythical elements
appear. When the saying in Isa. ix, 1-6 is interpreted of the
future king, the conception of the birth of the new sun god and life
god, and of his victorious invasion of Hades in order to raise the
dead to life, is made to reflect the contemporary situation as an
expression of the future king's saving work.
The Messianic interpretation of the Immanml prophecy also
brought a new influx of mythical features from the ancient royal
ideology. The disciples of Isaiah who collected and arranged the
tradition8 of Isaiah's sayings from the period of the Syro-Ephraimite
war4 had already taken the Immanuel prophecy to apply to the
wonderful king of the future. By placing the promise about the
royal child of David's line immediately after Isaiah's sayings in
this period,5 they intended to bring out a connexion between the
two prophecies: in the birth of the royal child they saw the fulfil-
ment of the Immanuel prophecy* Thus 'ImmanueP is no longer
merely a sign; and the emphasis is no longer on his birth, where
1 On the Hebrew conception of eternity and time see Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp.
4871!.; cf. above, pp. 105!
2 Ezek. xxxiv, 25!".; cf. Amos ix, 13, and below, pp. 270, 276; c£ 383.
3 On the collection and transmission of the prophetic sayings by the prophets'
disciples, see Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xliii, 1942; cf. %.A.W. xlix, 1931, pp, 244!".; Birie-
land, £im hebraischen Traditionswesen.
4 On Isaiah's 'testimony' in vi» i-ix, 6, seeftuddQ^esajasErlebeKEiwgeminwrstaw!-
liche Auslegung der Denksckrift des Propheten (Kap. 6", 1-9.6): Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M.
III, -pp. 64^
5 Isaiah's own conclusion to the collection is viii, 16-19, 2ob-~23a.
183
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
Isaiah had laid it. He becomes the future king, who one day will
come and reign in the restored kingdom, and may also be Yahweh's
instrument in delivering Israel from her enemies and establishing
the kingdom, as in the prophecy about the birth of the child in
Isa. ix, 1-6. ;The young woman ', too, returns to the super-
natural world of myth to which she originally belonged. The note
of mystery in the prophecy may have contributed to this inter-
pretation. It is therefore extremely likely that the later disciples
of Isaiah, who were responsible for the tradition, also thought of
the child's birth as more or less similar to the various mythical
accounts of wonderful divine princes, with which they were to
some extent familiar. The Old Testament itself knows of wonder-
ful births brought about by the miraculous power of Yahweh.
There are, for instance, several narratives about barren or aged
women having children through Yahweh's miraculous power,
contrary to all expectation or natural probability: Sarah, Hannah,
Manoah's wife, and Elisabeth*1 Manoah's wife's son, Samson, is
explicitly said to have been a holy person c consecrated to God', a
nazir from his mother's womb, from his very conception (Judges
xiii, 5); and when we are told that c Yahweh's spirit began to stir
him up' in his early youth (Judges xiii, 25), it may be that the
narrators thought that he was a holy man because of an endow-
ment with the spirit received when he was still in the womb. In
Jewish thought it was Yahweh's ruah, His spirit or breath, which
was the instrument in His creative work, by which the changing
generations on earth were brought forth and given life (c£ Ps.
civ, 30). The note of mystery in the Immanuel prophecy, and the
fact that it is the mother and not the father that is mentioned,
could, and almost certainly would, suggest the idea that this
scion of David came into existence as a result of a specially wonder-
ful exercise of Yahweh's own power, at least as wonderful as the
birth of Isaac, Samuel, or Samson.
The prophecy about the ruler from Bethlehem in Mic. v, 1-3
(in which there is also an allusion to the king's 'rising' like the
sun) also seems to suggest that the future king would come into
existence in a wonderful way. When it is emphasized that
his rising is from of old,
from ancient days <his going forth>,2
1 Gen. xviii; i Sam. I; Judges xiii, aff.; Luke L
2 Supplying, metricausa^ some expression parallel to mdsd'otaw; see G.T.M.M.M. Ill,
pp. 686? 821,
184
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
the meaning is probably that in him the ancestor is, as it were,
recreated in a wonderful way. He brings to fulfilment what the
dynasty was in its origin (in ancient eastern thought anything was
seen at its truest and best in its origin). The nation's misfortune,
it is said, will last only until this scion of David is born:
Therefore He will give them up till the time
when she who is in travail brings forth.
But then Yahweh brings the exile and dispersion to an end,
allows the king's dispersed brethren to return, and establishes the
glorious kingdom in which the one who is born will rule by the
power of Yahweh. Again it is the mother, 'she who is in travail*,
that is mentioned, and not the father; and again it is the child's
birth, and not any work of deliverance performed by him, that
is in itself the decisive turning point in the fortunes of the people.
There can hardly be any doubt that the prophet is here referring
to ideas similar to those which lie behind both the Immanuel
prophecy and, in a measure, Isa. ix, i~6. But here they have
clearly been transferred to the c Messiah' in order to bring out the
miraculous element in his person and the fact that a new era is
inaugurated by his very birth. It is not impossible, as has been
maintained, that in Mic. v, 1-3 the prophet bases his message
directly on a 'Messianic3 interpretation of Isa. vii.
The fact that the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria rendered
ha-'almdh) cthe young woman' in the Immanuel prophecy, by
rj Trapflei/os-, 'the virgin', shows that they, too, were aware of the
mythical ideas from which Isaiah had derived his sign, and that
they went further in emphasizing the miraculous character of the
birth of Immanuel, regarded as the future king. When Isaiah
spoke of c the woman' who would bear a son, he did not himself
consciously think of her as a virgin; but later on, when this idea
was read into his words, it was in accord with the original ideas
about cthe young woman's' son.1 The interpretation in the
Septuagint is ultimately derived from cthe virgin Anath'. This
means that the ideas here presented to us were probably known
outside the Hellenistic milieu. So far as we can see, the Palestinian
Jews were also familiar with them, even if rabbinical orthodoxy
later pushed them into the background.
1 This was maintained by Kittel in Die helUrdstuchen Mysterienreligian und das Alte
Testament, pp. 13$". While Kittel naturally thinks of a Hellenistic milieu for these
ideas, their pre-Israelite, Ganaanite origin has now been proved by the Ras Shamra
discoveries.
185
THE KING IN THE FUTURE HOPE: MESSIAH
It is impossible to tell how widespread was this form of the
idea of the wonderful nature and origin of the future king. But it
agrees substantially with the ancient Israelite conception of the
king as Yahweh's son. The 'Messiah* is no less wonderful or
divine than the king, the anointed son of Yahweh.
But on the other hand it is a mistake to exaggerate the mythical
elements in the figure of the Messiah in the Old Testament, as
the religio-historical school often did. Attention has been drawn
above to some results of this tendency;1 and there are probably
good grounds for emphasizing that within the Old Testament
there is nothing to indicate that the concept of the Messiah
originated in ideas about the mythical Urmensch and his return as
an eschatological saviour.2 Neither the charismatic wisdom of the
future king in Isa. xi, 1-9, nor his 'rising from of old3 in Mic. v, iff.
provides any support for such a theory. In the tradition of the
ancient east others besides the Urmensch are regarded as wise
(moreover, c wisdom5 is only one of the charismatic spiritual gifts
of the king in Isa. xi, iff.); and the passage in Micah does not
speak of the origin of the king as an individual, but of the origin
of the dynasty in remote antiquity, in the time of Jesse, and not
before creation, as it ought to have been if the reference had been
to the Urmensch.
The relationship of the myth of the Urmensch to the Messiah of
later Judaism is another question, to which we must return below
(ch. X, 19).
1 See above, pp. 8o} 8 if., 84^, 159, 162.
2 This is one of the main contentions in Staerk's Soter, and one of the presuppositions
of his further theories. See also p. 181, above. Bentzen also goes beyond what is
probable in the light of the sources when he assumes that originally the idea of the
Urmensch was associated with the Messiah and the royal ideology. See Det sakrale
konged0mme, pp. n6f.; S.E.A. xii, 1947, pp. 43ff.
186
CHAPTER VII
The Servant of the Lord
FROM the very beginning of the Christian era the prophecies
in Deutero-Isaiah about the special Servant of Yahweh ('ebed
YHWH] have been applied to Jesus Christ;1 and we must there-
fore define our attitude to them. From the historical point of
view the question is not, Do these prophecies refer to Jesus of
Nazareth? but rather. Are they intended to be Messianic in the
sense which the word has in the Old Testament and in Judaism?
Their relationship to Jesus is another question, which cannot be
considered until the first has been answered.
It may be said at once that these prophecies were not intended
to be Messianic, but that Jesus gave them decisive importance for
the concept of the Messiah. How this came about the present
chapter will show.2
i. The Servant Songs
These poems consist of four passages, which contemporary
opinion almost unanimously distinguishes from the rest of Deutero-
Isaiah, as follows: Isa. xlii, 1-4; xEx, 1-6; 1, 4-11; lii, 13-liii, i2.3
1 Direct quotations in the New Testament: Matt, viii, 17; Luke xxii, 37; Johnxil, 38;
Acts viii, 32f.; Rom. xv, 21; i Pet. ii, 22. Allusions and applications: Mark ix, 12;
Acts ii, 33; Rom. v, 19; Phil, ii, 7, 9; i Pet. ii, 24!*. For further detail, see H. S. Nyberg
in S.E.A. vii, 1942, pp. I2f.; and for interpretation in the early Church, see Wolff,
Jesaja 53 im Urchristenttun. Die Geschichte der Prophetie *Sieke es siegt mein Knecki^ bis zu
Justin.
2 Surveys of the various interpretations of the Servant through the ages are given,
e.g., by Cornill in T.R. iii, 1900, pp. 4091!.; Lindhagen in S.T.K. viii, 1932, pp. 35off.;
Mowinckel in Act.Or. xvi, 1938, pp. iff.; Eissfeldt in T.Z,.£. Ixviii, 1943, cols. 273!!".;
Volz, Jesaja II, p. 188 (where Dietze is not mentioned among the advocates of the
Uzziah theory) ; and now, above all, by G. R. North in The Suffering Servant and in his
supplementary survey in S.J.T. iii, 1950, pp. 3636^ Reference may also be made to
Goppens, Nieuw licht over de Ebed-Tahweh-Liedern, and Rowley in O.T.S* viii, 1950,
pp. 1 1 off. = The Servant of the Lord, pp. 59ff,
3 Other delimitations of the passages, and the interpretation of additional passages
as Servant Songs (see, e.g., Gressmann, Der Messias, pp. 2871!.; Fischer, Isaias 40-55
tmd die Penkopen vom Gottesknecht, p. 287; Rudolph in ^.A.W. xliH, 1925; p. 91; cf. also
Z.A. W. xlvi, 1928, pp. 1561!.) are the result of faulty exegesis and inadequate attention
to formal and stylistic factors; see Mowinckel in %A*W. xlix, 1931, pp. 93ff. and in
D.T.T. ix, 19465 pp. i5ofF.3 i6off. Against Bentzen's interpretation of Ii, 9-16 as a
187
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
It was Duhm in his commentary on Isaiah (c£ Die Theologie der
Propheten, pp. sSyff.) who first recognized that these passages
(and possibly some others) form a separate group within the
collection of Deutero-Isaiah's sayings which came into being in
the circle of his disciples;1 and this is now almost universally
accepted by Old Testament scholars. 2 However the Servant may
be interpreted, there is general agreement that the Songs speak of
a special Servant of Yahweh, or of the Servant Israel, regarded
from a definitely individual point of view and in the light of his
call, which in several ways distinguishes this picture of him from
the usual conception of the servant Israel in Deutero-Isaiah.
To discuss this at greater length would take us too far. I take it
for granted that these four poems form a special group, that they
treat of the same figure, the Servant, uniformly conceived, and
that they must be interpreted in their own light and in relation to
each other, without any preconceived theory of their relation to
the other sayings in the Deutero-Isaianic collection. Our present
concern is the content of the passages, not the literary problems
of authorship and date. Whether they corne from Deutero-Isaiah
himself or the circle of his disciples (to which the so-called Trito-
Isaianic sayings in Isa. Ivi-lxvi bear witness) is a matter of sub-
ordinate interest. The point is that they cannot simply be inter-
preted in terms of what cthe servant of Yahweh3 means elsewhere
in Deutero-Isaiah, but must be considered independently.
It is therefore a matter of no moment whether the Servant
Songs come from Deutero-Isaiah (i.e., the unknown prophet be-
1 See Mowinckel in Z.A.W. xlix, 1931, pp. Syff., 242ff.
2 Recent exceptions are Caspar!., Kissane, and Sidney Smith. Caspari (Lieder undGot-
tespruche der Ruckwanderer (Jesaja 40—55)) discards any sort of unity in the conception,
and holds that the Servant in Deutero-Isaiah denotes Israel in the most varied relations
to Yahweh; there exists no separate group of passages about the Servant of the Lord in
a special sense (cf. Mowinckel in Act. Or. xvi, 1938, pp. 3 if.). Kissane (The Book of
Isaiah I-II) links each individual Servant passage with its present immediate context,
and so arrives at varying interpretations of the Servant in the different Songs : Israel
in xlii and xlix; the prophet himself in 1, 4fF.; the Messiah in liii — the last of which at
least can claim no support from the context. S. Smith (Isaiah Chapters XL-LV: Literary
Criticism and History) holds that 'the Servant* probably refers to an individual, but that
it need not be the same person in every passage: in xlix, 1-6 and 1, 4ff. the prophet
speaks of himself; probably liii also refers to the prophet himself, but if so must come
Servant Song, see Mowinckel in %.A.W. xlix, 1931, pp. io8£, 255; D.T.T. ix, 1946,
pp. 164^; G.T.M.M.M. III, pp. 24if. Stevenson (in Exp., 8th Series, vi, 1913, pp.
aogfF.) would interpret H, 4-6 as a Servant Song; but -the speaker there is unques-
tionably Yahweh (*Afy righteousness*, tMy salvation'). Stevenson is right in rinding
close connexions with the Servant Songs in thought and expression; but what the
passage shows is that the Servant Songs are 'dependent3 on Deutero-Isaiah and
attribute to the Servant tasks which Deutero-Isaiah attributed to Yahweh Himself.
See further North's summing up in The Suffering Servant, pp. 1271!,
188
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
hind the sayings in Isa. xl-lv) or from another prophet, e.g., a
member of the circle of Deutero-Isaiah's disciples. For the intui-
tive vision which dawns on the prophet's inward eye conveys a
conception of this special Servant which is different from Israel
regarded as * Yahweh's servant' or 'the servant5, and from Cyrus
when the title is applied to him too.
First we summarize the content of the Servant Songs.
First Song
Behold, My Servant whom I uphold,
My chosen in whom I delight!
I have put My spirit upon him;
right religion will he bring forth to the nations.
He does not cry, or lift up his voice,
or make his voice heard in the street;
a bruised reed he does not break,
and the dimly burning wick he does not quench.
He brings forth right religion as truth requires,1
not burning dimly, or being bruised,
until he has established right religion in the earth; -
and for his instruction the far coasts wait (xlii, 1-4).*
1 Literally, 'in accordance with truth'; see Sidney Smith, op. cit., p. 164. Begrich's
interpretation (Studien zu Deuterojesaja, p, 163), ehe announces the (judicial) sentence
as truth', is impossible, since miSpat does not here mean 'sentence5 but 'right religion*;
cf. p. 219 n. 4 below.
2 Many include xlii, 5-7 in the first Servant Song; but both stylistic and exegetical
arguments tell against this; see North, The Suffering Servant, pp. 13 1 ff. The passage was
originally addressed to Cyrus; see Haller in Eucharisterion I, pp. 2621*.; Mowinckel in
G.T.M.M.M. Ill, ad loc. But it has an indirect relevance, since the figure of the
Servant is consciously drawn as a fulfilment of those expectations which Cyrus did not
satisfy; see Hempel in £.S.T. vii, 1929, pp. 63 iff.; cf. also Mowinckel in %.A.W. xlix,
I93I? P- 94 n- 4- Barnes also recognized that xlii, 5-7 was about Cyrus (J.T.S. xxxii,
1931, pp. 32ff.; cf. J.B.L. xlvii, 1929, pp. 133$".); but he held that xlii, 1-4 could also
be interpreted of Cyrus in the light of the 'context5; similarly Sidney Smith, op. cit.,
pp. 54ff. But there is no 'context9, in this sense, linking the individual sayings (see
Mowinckel in &A.W. xlix, 1931, pp. Syff.); and the contrast between the call of the
Servant in vv. 1—4 and what is said of Cyrus elsewhere is clear enough. The c definitely
liturgic-formal context' of which Engnell (B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, p. 14) finds that
xlii, iff. forms a part, and which, on his view, appears to consist of xl-xlvi, is merely
postulated, not proved. Engnell's argument is as superficial as the attempts of earlier
exegetes to find connexions within and between the chapters in the prophetic books,
from another hand; xlii, 1-4, like xliii, 5-9, relates to Cyrus. Casparfs view is the
result of reading far too much into varying shades of meaning, and of a logical, modem
approach which fails to appreciate the complex character of Hebrew concepts.
Kissane's method represents a neglect of the understanding which has been gained in
recent years of the detached character of the individual prophetic words, and of the
composition of the prophetic books, and is a return to out-of-date literary theories;
cf. Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xliii, 1942^ p. 65, and D.T.T. ix, 1946, pp. I42ff. Smith's
view is best described as a variation of the so-called autobiographical interpretation
first advanced by the present writer (cf. below, p. 248 and n, 3).
189
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
In this first poem Yahweh is the speaker. In form it is an oracle
in which a prophet receives his call, a direct word from Yahweh
in which the prophet is told of his call and of the character of his
special task. The style and structure of such an oracle are an
imitation of the royal initiation oracle by which a king is called,
as in Pss. ii and ex, and in the sequel to the present passage
(xlii, 5-9)3 the oracle in which Cyrus is called.1 Yahweh presents
the person concerned to the people, and speaks of his endowment
with the spirit, and his task to bring forth * right religion to the
nations'. Here mispdt is not something which is 'announced5 (so
North). The verbjwf indicates the establishing of something; and
mispdt here means c right religion3 (as is shown by the parallelism
with tordk, 'instruction5, i.e., in the right way, the laws of God),
the knowledge of what God requires, and so also the good fortune
and ideal conditions which will result when God's will is obeyed.
In this passage c truth' ^emet] is practically synonymous with c right
religion'. It is Yahweh's truth, which can be trusted, and which
is shown to be true when it is fulfilled.2 The task is universal.
The right religion is to be established in the earth among the
nations; and the whole world (cthe far coasts') is already actually
waiting for his preaching about God's way. The mention of his
task and equipment leads also to a fuller account of the way in
which he workss and so of his character. In contrast with the
ecstatic popular prophets, he does not appear in the streets and
the market place, crying and shouting; nor does he announce
1 See Mowinckel In Edda xxvi, 1926, p. 257; Ps.St. Ill, pp. ySff.; Bentzen, Jahves
TjeneT) pp. 1 1 , 2 if.; Jesajajortolket II, p. 32; King and Messiah, pp. 4gf. Naturally this
stylistic connexion between the royal initiation oracle and the oracle of the prophet's
call does not prove that the poet thought of the Servant as a king, as Engnell holds
(B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, pp. i4f.). The oracle in which Jeremiah is called also falls
into the same stylistic tradition; but that does not mean that he claims royal status.
On the Servant and the royal ideology, see below, pp. sigff.
2 Cf. Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp. 3376?. The word mi/pat is rightly explained by Hertz-
berg in Z.A.W. xl, 1922, pp. 25&ff.; xli, 1923, pp. i6ff.; see xli, p. 41 n. i. North
(The Suffering Servant, pp. I4of.) would probably have been less sceptical if he had
studied Pedersen more closely.
and does not come to grips with the real problems; nor does it go beyond pointing out
the association of certain catchwords and connexions in phraseology. There is equal
justification for demonstrating * connexions * between individual psalms in the Psalter.
Bentzen ($LTh. I, 1947, p. 184) has not fully understood Gyllenberg (see p. 143 n.
i), when he there interprets his statements, 'that the Deutero-Isaiah book is an imita-
tion of a liturgy for the New Year Festival '. Gyllenberg is speaking, not of the c book J,
but of the ideas contained in it. Engnell, too (B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, pp. 5f.), regards
the Servant of Yahweh texts as * a prophetic re-modelling of a liturgical composition be-
longing to the Annual Festival', dealing with the cultic suffering, death, and resurrec-
tion of Taoamuz.
IQO
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
doom and destruction, but glad tidings which make the bruised
reed rise again, and bring the dimly burning wick into flame.
Second Song
Hearken, ye far coasts, to me;
and give heed, ye peoples, from afar!
Yahweh has called me from the womb;
from my birth He has made mention of my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of His hand He hid me.
He made me a polished arrow;
in His quiver He concealed me.
And He said to me, 'You are My Servant,1
by whom I will get myself glory.'
And I was honoured in the eyes of Yahweh;
and my God Himself became my strength.2
But I said, c In vain have I laboured;
for nought and vanity have I spent my strength.
Yet surely my cause is with Yahweh;
my recompense is with my God.'
And now, thus says Yahweh,
who formed me from the womb to be His Servant,
to bring back Jacob unto Him,
and that Israel to Him should be gathered:
'Too light is it that you should be My Servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob;3
I will make you a light to the nations,
that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth'
(xlix, i~6.).4
1 See Additional Note XI.
2 V. 5b is here transferred to follow v. 3. In its traditional position 5b is in any case
parenthetical, and breaks the connexion between the introduction of Yahweh as the
speaker in sa, with the accompanying explanation of why He created the Servant,
and 6, which contains Yahweh's words extending the scope of the call. The statement
that the Servant was honoured by Yahweh and endowed with His power is in substance
connected with the reference to the call and to Yahweh's intention to get Himself
glory by the Servant. If 5b is transferred to follow 3, the whole passage falls into
regular and logical strophes of two full lines each.
3 V. 6a is too long for a normal full line, and as the text stands has three members;
whereas the other full lines have two members. We can either regard the words * that
you should be My Servant* as an explanatory addition, or take Gap, 'and to bring
back the preserved in Israel*, as a variant of the preceding member. 6a£ is omitted
above.
4 On the delimitation of the poem, see p. 187 n. 3; cf. Mowinckel in %.A.W+ xlix,
1931, p. 104 n. 2 (cf. also p. 246), refuting Gressmann, Fischer, and Rudolph, who
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Here the Servant Is the speaker; and he is addressing the whole
world. He tells of his election from birth and of his prophetic
equipment. He says that there was a time before he appeared as
a prophet, a time when he was only held in readiness by the Lord,
like a sword in the scabbard, or an arrow in the quiver, until
(probably through a special prophetic experience) he received
the explicit call to appear to Israel as 'the Servant3. Thus there
came to him the clear consciousness of the purpose of Ms whole
life. The call he received (as we are told below) was 'to bring
back Jacob unto Him (Yahweh), and that Israel to Him should
be gathered5 and eto raise up the tribes of Jacob5. If we consider
this in the light of what is said in the first poem about his equip-
ment and his manner of working, it is clear that there is no allusion
here to any political or military activity. The words do not refer
to any new Exodus; and the Servant is not thought of as a new
Moses.1 It is by his prophetic word that he will act; and the
bringing back of Jacob to Yahweh means primarily that the Jews
will be converted to Yahweh. But the words about gathering in
the dispersed suggest that this will lead in due course to the restora-
tion of the nation Israel, when it will be gathered together again
in the homeland. The text does not suggest that the Servant
himself is thought of as leading those who return. In speaking of
his call the Servant mentions the support and strength which the
Lord has given him in his work. But he also tells that at last the
work seemed to him to be in vain, so that he was near to despair,
and had to set all his hopes of success, of his 'cause5, on the Lord
alone. This has brought him to what is the main point in this
passage, the answer which the Lord has given to his complaint
and prayer. The Lord will entrust him with a still greater and
more glorious mission. It is too limited an aim merely to convert
Israel and bring her back to the Lord, thereby gathering together
the dispersed people and raising up the tribes of Jacob. The Lord
will make him a bearer of light, a preacher of true religion, and
so a mediator of salvation for all peoples, that the whole world
may share in the salvation.
1 As Sellin once held; see Mose undseing Bedeutungfur die israelitisch-judische Religions-
geschichte, pp. yyf. The Idea reappears in Bentzen (Jesaja fortolket II, pp. 8 if.) in
connexion with a different interpretation of the Servant.
include in, the passage m, 7-9 or 7-o.a. Staerk (£.A.W. xliv, 1926, pp. 245*!) is also
opposed to this delimitation, but for other reasons. Bentzen (Jesaja fortolket II, pp.
82-84) interprets xlix, 7-13 also as a Servant poem which is formally independent,
but is nevertheless connected with xlix5 1-6; against this, see Mowinckel in D.T.T. ix,
!946, pp. 154, i&>£
192
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Thus this Song looks back and reflects upon the Servant's first
call to be a prophet (which is more directly described in the first
poem) and upon his work, and goes on to record the actual words
of the new call. The fact that the prophet himself proclaims it in
words like 'thus said Yahweh to me' may be compared with the
account of the royal initiation oracle in Ps. ii and the account?
given by the prophets of the oracles by which they were called.
The announcement of a new oracle about the call and its aim, as
an answer to the prophet's complaint about difficulties in fulfilling
the call, has its nearest model in Jeremiah's complaints about
persecution and difficulties, and in the answers which Yahweh
gives him.
Just as these passages in Jeremiah have their formal models
in the psalms of lamentation with the answering oracles sung at
the sacrifice of purification for sick, persecuted, or other afflicted
persons, so this Servant Song is modelled on the psalms of thanks-
giving sung when the thank-offering was made by one saved from
distress and danger. The person who had been delivered would
tell of his afflictions, his lamentations, and his prayers to Yahweh
for help. The fact that the help is here referred to as a promise by
Yahweh, and not described in a narrative about His direct
intervention, accords with the style of the psalms of lamentation
rather than with that of the psalms of thanksgiving.
Third Song
My Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of a disciple,
that I should give strength to the weary;
My Lord Yahweh has opened my ear,
that I should know how to speak the (right) words;
He wakens my ear morning by morning,
to listen as disciples do.1
And I was not rebellious,
nor turned away backward.
1 The poem clearly has six strophes each consisting of three full lines. As the text
stands the first strophe is in disorder. * My Lord Yahweh has opened my ear ' (perfect),
referring to the original and decisive act, stands now as v. saa in contrast with the
imperfect (present) in 4He wakens my ear morning by morning5, etc. But this is an
unnatural and clumsy sequel to v. 4, and is not logically connected with what follows
in D. 5. The three infinitives Idda'at, Id'ut, and li$moal are clearly meant to be indepen-
dent, co-ordinated expressions of purpose each related to one of the three narrative
principal clauses in TO. 4, 5aoc, whereas in M.T. Idda'at stands as subordinate to Id'tit
and defining it more exactly, and ddbdr has to be translated irregularly as if it were
beddbdr, 'with a word*. Above, ddbdr has been transposed to follow Iddcfat as object,
v. 5aa is transposed to follow ddbdr. The superfluous yd'ir is omitted (following Volz),
0 193
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
I gave my back to the smiters,
and my cheeks to those that plucked out (the beard) ;
my face I did not hide
from insult and spitting.
For my Lord Yahweh Himself will help me;
therefore I shall not be put to shame;
therefore have I set my face like a flint,
and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
Near is my Vindicator;
who can gain a verdict against me?1
Who will take proceedings against me?
Let us stand up together (in court) !
Who would be my adversary?
Let him come near unto me!
Lo, they shall all wear out as a garment;
the moth shall consume them.
Whoever among you fears Yahweh,
let him listen (reading jrisma'} to His servant!
He that walks in darkness,
and has no ray of light,
let him trust in the name of Yahweh,
and lean upon his God.
Behold, all you who kindle fire,
who make burning shafts,
begone into the flame of your own fire
and among the shafts you have lit!
This shall be your fate at my hand:
You shall lie down in torment (1, 4-1 1).
This poem falls into two parts. In w. 4-9 the Servant himself
speaks about his mission, to strengthen by his word 'the weary9,
those who stand in need of salvation (that is all Israel), and especi-
ally feel their need of it and long for it. He also describes his
equipment as a preacher and teacher instructed or inspired by
Yahweh.2 As elsewhere in later Judaism, the conceptions of the
learned ('the wise3) and of the inspired, who are endowed with
1 F gap makes a natural sequel to z?. 8aa in antithetic parallelism. See also the
language of Rom. viii, 33f,; Barnabas vi, i; and in Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. IV, 55, 4.
F. 9aoc is simply a repetition of ». yaa and does not fit into the regular strophic structure.
2 Cf. Isa. viii, 16. To use the obscure passage 2 Sam. i, 18 to explain limmudim, as
Engnell does (B.J.R.L* xxxi, i, 1948, p. 20 n. 2), and to discard the traditional and
the most obvious interpretation, is unsound method; see Bentzen, King and Messiah^
194
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the spirit, are blended. But he speaks especially of the insults and
indignities to which he has been subjected in Ms work, and of his
bearing under persecution. Finally he expresses his confident
assurance that Yahweh will 'justify3 him., i.e., maintain his cause
by the outcome of events, directing them so that his prophecies
come to pass, and find a well-prepared flock of believing adherents,
whereas his adversaries are put to shame and brought to nought.
As often happens, this 'judgement '7 brought about by God's
guidance and by the issue of events, is described in terms of a case
at law.
The literary form of this section is in the main that of the indi-
vidual lament: the description of affliction, the affirmation that
the worshipper is in the right, and the certainty that his prayer
will be heard. But there is this difference, that the psalm of
lamentation is addressed to God, whereas this poem is addressed
to men, to the Servant's hearers. The literary form of the psalms
is combined with prophetic themes, the prophet's account of
himself and allusion to his call, as in the second poem. The entire
passage is a vehicle of prophetic preaching, with the intention of
addressing an appeal to men: make the right response to the
Servant and his message.
The second part, vv. io£, must on no account be regarded as a
new poem. In form and content it is linked with what precedes.
Several scholars have held that it is a later addition to the poem.
This is not unlikely. It strikes a much harder note than the rest
of the Servant poems, and the style is less assured; Yahweh is
sometimes referred to in the third person, and sometimes appears
abruptly speaking in the first person. It is possible that this
ending comes from the circle of traditionists who inserted the
Servant poems into the Deutero-Isaianic collection.1 If so, another
disciple of the prophet is speaking in this second section, partly in
the name of Yahweh, corroborating the faith and assurance of the
Servant. To this extent the structure of the whole poem in w+ 4-11
corresponds to the psalms of lamentation in which prayer and
1 See below, pp. 253! (cf. p. 251 and p. 245x1. 5). Fischer (Atttestamentliche Abhand-
lungen VI, pp. 8af.) and Rudolph (£.A. W. xliii, 1925) also hold that ». 10 is secondary.
Staerk (%.A.W. xliv, 1926, pp. 243f.) also regards m. i of. as a 'redactional'reinterpre-
tation of the preceding Servant poem to make it apply to Israel (cf. p. 245 n. 5).
North (The Suffering Servant, p. 135) also regards vv. lof. as secondary,
p. 53. The Servant is 'instructed* by Yahweh like the others who are 'instructed*, i.e.,
the prophets. It is quite clear that the 'instruction* is thought of as inspiration, am
'opening of the ear5; cf. Isa. xxii, 14. The expression has nothing to do with the royal
ideology (against EngneH, see Bentzea, loc. cit.).
195
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
assurance are confirmed by a direct oracular response, a literary
form which Jeremiah, more than any other prophet, imitated.1
But here the answer is not directed to the Servant himself, but to
his hearers; and it states explicitly the admonition to which the
first part only alluded indirectly. The godly who still live in
* darkness*, in affliction and distress, are exhorted to take to heart
the Servant's preaching, to believe in his message, and hope in
Yahweh as he himself has done. The persecutors and scoffers are
threatened with a destruction which will certainly be their lot —
if they are not converted.
It is the prophetic aspect of the Servant's mission which is
particularly prominent here, but from the standpoint of a more
comprehensive prophetic ideal than that of earlier times. Here
we meet the prophet as a preacher, and as something of a pastor,
devoting himself particularly to ethe weary'. It is the disciplined
listening to God early, 'morning by morning', and the whole-
hearted surrender, obedience, willingness, and absolute trust in
God's help even in distress which give the faith and power which
will not yield or succumb to adversity, and which can also help
with rightly guided words those who are weary and stumbling.
Finally the most distinctive poem:
The Fourth Song
Behold, My Servant will attain his aim,2
will be exalted, and lifted up, and be very high;
as many stood aghast at him,3
so will the nations be amazed at him.4
Before him even the great will be silent;
kings will shut their mouths at him;
1 Gf. Jer. xv, 10-21; xx, 7-13.
*ya$kttt literally edeal wisely (so as to attain Ms aim) % fulfil his task wisely. Natur-
ally such, an expression can often be used of the king; but that does not mean that in
itself it is a term proper to the royal ideology, as Engnell holds (B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948,
pp. 24-6), The fundamental meaning 'to display insight* (in the 'primitive' sense)
(internal causative) is indisputable, and it is this fundamental meaning which explains
the term maskil in the Psalms, not vice versa, as Engnell claims.
3 The *so * (ken) which corresponds to t as * (ka1 aSer) in v. i4aa is not the ken in v. I4a{3,
but that in v. 15. In its present position u. I4a£b is parenthetical, and ken must then
be given the sense *to that extent*. But since ken in the latter sense following kc?a$er
would be misleading, and a parenthesis of this sort would obscure the meaning, and,
further, since v. 142 pb makes the strophic structure at the beginning of the poem
uncertain, and a full line (two members) is required to give regular strophic structure
(see below, p. 198 n. 8) in iiii, if., everything supports Duhm's view that Hi, I4a{3b has
been displaced in transmission, and originally followed liii, 2, which also speaks of the
Servant's * appearance* (mar*e~ku).
4 see Engnell, B»J.RX» xxxi, i, 1948, pp. 2gf.
196
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
for what had not been told them they will have seen,
and what they had not heard they will discern.
Who could have believed what we heard?
Who could have seen here the arm of Yahweh?
For he grew up as a sapling in dry ground, 1
and as a root out of arid soil.
He had no form or stateliness that we should look at him,
nor yet appearance that we should desire him,
so inhumanly marred was his appearance,
he no longer resembled man.
He was despised and forsaken of men,
a man of pains and acquainted with sickness,
as one from whom men hide their faces,
he was despised, and we did not esteem him.
Yet ours were the sicknesses that he carried,
ours the pains that he bore;
while we accounted him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our rebellions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the chastisement that won our welfare was upon him,
and by his stripes there is healing for us.
All we like sheep have gone astray,
each to his own way we have turned;
But Yahweh caused to light on him,
brought upon him2 the iniquity of us all.
He was harshly treated, yet bore it humbly,
and opened not his mouth,
as a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
as a ewe that before her shearers is dumb,
1 Reading b*hdrdbdh. No matter how lepdndw in liii, 2 is changed or interpreted
(cf., e.g., Nyberg in S.E.A. vii, 1942, p. 49), the sense remains: a sapling which grows
up in the most unfavourable conditions, and therefore is stunted and wretched in
appearance. Cf. North, The Suffering Servant, p. 123.
2 In spite of Nyberg's rejection of the requirement of regularity in Hebrew verse
(op. cit., pp. 38fF.), the law of parallelism (thought rhyme) within the full line is a fact,
and it requires a new verb in v. 6b in place of the sign of the accusative; therefore read
he^tdM. V. yb is a dittograph. The defence of the line on metrical grounds advanced
by Kohler and others does violence to the law of parallelism.
197
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
From protection and right (s) he was taken away/
and who reflected (any longer) on his fate?2
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for our rebellions he was stricken to death.3
His grave was made with the wicked,
with evil-doers his sepulchre, 4
although he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him;
He has relented/ (and will acquit him):6
If he (lit., 'his soul3) pays the guilt-offering (as a pledge),
he will see his seed, he will prolong his days.7
When the purpose of Yahweh is fulfilled through him,
(He will deliver) his soul from distress;
he will see (light and live long),
and be satisfied with what he desires.8
1 EngnelFs interpretation ofme'oser umimmispdt in i\ 8 as a hendiadys = * a judge-
ment of violence3 is by no means obvious; and the rendering ofmin as *by reason of*
is improbable, as Is North's rendering, 'after5, 'oser in the sense * protection* (Yahuda)
can be supported by the meaning of the verb in i Sam. ixs 17, where it undoubtedly
means *to rule over' sensu bono = to be protector and lord of.
2 On the interpretation of dor, see Nyberg, op. cit., p. 53. The word occurs in the
Ugaritic texts with the undoubted sense of 'family5; see Eissfeldt, El im ugaritischen
Pantheon, pp. 15^ 63!!".
3 In spite of Nyberg's defence of the grammatical construction in v. 8b (op. cit.,
pp. 55f.)» the meaning which he finds here ('from those for whom my people's sin is
leprosy* !j does not make sense in this context, and is ruled out by the fact that through-
out the whole section vu. i-ioa a plural subject ('we') speaks, and not Yahweh or the
poet alone. The sense makes textual emendation necessary: read mippe$dt"enu for
mippesa' 'ammi, lammdwet for lamo (cf. G), and point nttgga':, see B.H.Z.
4 On v. ga(3 see Mowinckel in G*T.M,M,M. Ill, p. 793, and p. 201 n. 3. bemotdw
can hardly be pointed bdmdto (Ibn Ezra), since bdmdh does not mean * burial mound'
anywhere else in the Old Testament; it is an abbreviation of bet-motdw (or let-moid) ;
the original text had no vocalic consonants, but the plural may be of amplification.
5 On the interpretation o£kehelt see Nyberg, op. cit., p. 58.
6 The full line in v. loact is too short as it stands. The regular parallelism within
each full line in this poem justifies the view that v. ioaa also consisted of a full strophe.
The words in brackets in the translation simply indicate the interpretation of heh*lr}
see the preceding note.
7 Here I follow M,T. (contrast the translation in G. T.MM.M. Ill ; and see the list of
corrections there, p. 833). On the interpretation of ». 10 a& 9im tastm, etc., see Nyberg,
op. cit., pp. 58f.; the literal rendering is s if his soul will set a guilt-offering (as a pledge) ';
cf. p. 203 n. i.
8 Since, pace Nyberg (op. cit., pp. 38£f.), I regard the double full line as a prevalent
rule in Hebrew metre, and since Isa. liii provides a series of clear examples of this
simple, basic, strophic form (see w. i-2a, v. 3, ». 4, v. 5, z>. 6, v. 7, v. 8, vv. i ib~i2a; isb),
the structure of the poem indicates that vv. xo-naoc consist (or originally consisted)
of 4 full lines (2 strophes). The new full line must begin vnthyafdtb, since that half
line continues up to and including l&rabbim and cannot contain any more words; so
that b*dalt$ goes with what precedes. M.T. is clearly right in that 9im tdsim *a$dm nap£6
198
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
My Servant will stand forth as righteous before the many,
because he bore their iniquities;
therefore will I divide him a portion among the great.,
and he will divide the spoil with the mighty —
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered among the rebellious;
yet he bore the sin of the many,
and interposed for the rebellious (lii, I3~liii, 12).
The passage begins with a speech by Yahweh (Hi, 13-15),
which in the familiar style of oracles predicts great and incredible
events, which before long will befall the Servant, and will cause
wonder of a very different kind from that occasioned by his pre-
vious fate, not mingled terror and disgust but the deepest respect.
A more detailed account is given in liii, iff., where certain persons
(cwe5) bear witness to their past experience of the Servant and to
what they now expect to happen. The speakers cannot be the
nations which are mentioned in lii, i^f., as we should have to
suppose if the Servant were identified with Israel: that the Servant
should have suffered for the sake of the nations conflicts with the
view of Israel held by Deutero-Isaiah and by the prophets as a
whole (Isa. xl, 2; xliii, 24). The speakers have themselves seen the
Servant grow up in their midst; therefore they are Jews.1 They
have already c heard3 what the foreign nations and kings had not
1 North (The Suffering Servant, pp. isof.), while holding the individual interpretation
of the Servant, nevertheless identifies the speakers with the nations of lii, 13!! His
arguments are general observations lacking cogency, and appear in a very different
andjnr'tfA zero? yc?arik ydmim go together as protasis and apodosis. Thus these two half
lines (members) form a full line (period) ; but in that case some word must have been
omitted after the bald heheli (see above, n. 5) . Thus the following strophe (double
line) extends from vtfheges in v. lob up to and including bedc£t$ in o, n (see above).
V, lob is a prefixed circumstantial clause. *The righteous one5, faddtfc, is, of course,
the Servant himself. The subject in v. i ia[3 is *abdii 'My Servant will show himself to
be righteous (yasdik, internal causative) (and so stand) as righteous before the many*;
with this is connected the circumstantial clause in v. nb, 'although he bore* or 'be-
cause he bore'. Since according to the strophic structure in double lines v. nb from
yajdik onwards goes with v. I2a (see above), vv. lob and i la as far as bedafto (see above)
must have formed two full lines of which v. i ob is the first half line. It is clear that some
word is missing here: yir'eh has no object; to takeyisba1 as an object clause to yir'eh
(Nyberg, op. cit., p. 59) has no parallel in Biblical Hebrew. To take bedo£t6 as bir^utS
is not an emendation, since ddlet and re$ were identical in the early square script, and
vowel letters were not in use. Thus the second half line is yisba* bir*ut6. In the
two middle half lines there is no object foryir'ek, nor is there a predicate before metanud.
At all events it is clear that vv. iob-1 la deal with the same thought as v. loa. The
similarity between v. ica and vv. iob-1 1 a is so great that we may complete the lines in
v. na in accordance with z>. xoa and add, for example, ya^stl and 'or w?ya**rik yamtm,
or the like, even if Nyberg is right in holding that we can hardly appeal here to G as
attesting another supposedly original text.
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
yet heard (lii, 15). The speakers are the poet-prophet himself and
the circle of Jews who share his view of the Servant; and the speech
is addressed in the first instance to the other Jews.
What they have to relate is a 'report3, 'something heard*
(femii'dfi). The word may denote knowledge imparted by a God-
given audition, or a prophetic inspiration; but here it means rather
a report, a tradition which they have heard within their own
circle^1 and which,, through the prophetic author of this Song,
they are now spreading abroad. It is a message about the Servant,
a kerygma. But what is first related is not the unheard-of thing
alluded to in the opening lines, but the Servant's miserable life
on earth. This speech takes the form of a belated funeral dirge;
belated because the Servant is described as having been dead and
buried for a considerable time.2 In the first part of the poem (up
to and including liii, 9) the poet adopts the standpoint of one
narrating past events. For him the whole earthly story of the
Servant here belongs to the past, as is shown both by the retro-
spective character of the funeral dirge and also by the tenses
(perfect and consecutive imperfect).3 But this poem appears to
be exactly the reverse of the usual funeral dirge: the dead man's
beauty, courage, and manly virtues, which made men love him
and miss him, are not celebrated here as in other poems which thus
became bitter laments over loss. This Song tells how unimpressive,
hideous, and despised the Servant was; not a tree In blossom, but
a parched shoot; not a lion or an eagle (the figures used for
instance in the lament over Saul and Jonathan), but a gentle
lamb. He was neither high-born nor manly, and had no fascina-
ting influence upon man; on the contrary, he was unimpressive
and gentle. Moreover, he was stricken by a foul disease which
1 Isa. liii, i. On the interpretation of the word, see Nyberg, op, cit., pp. 48f.
2 See JahnoWj Das kebraiscke Leichenliedim Rahmen der Volkerdichtungy pp. 256ff. Begrich
(Studun zur Deuterajesaja, pp. 5off.) takes the psalms of thanksgiving to be the
model.
3 Bentzen is therefore wrong in stating (Jesaja II, pp. 100, 105) that the whole poem
is prophetic in character, and in supporting this contention by an appeal to the
Connexion* with what precedes. This * connexion' is purely imaginary. The death
of the Servant in o. 8 also belongs to the past, i.e., from the standpoint which the poet
imaginatively adopts; but this does not, of course, preclude the possibility that the
whole passage is an ideal description of what has yet to be fulfilled in the future.
light when account is taken of the formal characteristics of the poem: * a belated funeral
dirge* expressing a confession of faith and a kerygma (see below, pp. 203, soSff.).
To express the content and aim of the message proclaimed by the prophet and his
circle, there is no real point in dwelling upon the question how * nations and kings'
express their overwhelming astonishment at the destiny of the Servant.
20O
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
brought disgrace, possibly leprosy/ * smitten of God and afflicted',
as they believed. The text does not make it clear whether he died
of the disgraceful disease, or by violence., perhaps as a victim of
the clynch-law3 of his adversaries, or by normal condemnation
and execution, after being accused of some crime. If the last,
It is natural to suppose that the accusation was connected with his
preaching, which would then have given offence to prevailing
opinions. At all events, after sore afflictions he died the death of a
noted sinner,2 and was interred in the burial place of foul
criminals.3 He was forgotten by men, without family or renown.
All this he bore without a murmur, without replying to the scorn
and derision which were commonly inflicted (for apotropaic rea-
sons) on one 'smitten by God'. Unlike Job, he did not even try
to maintain his 'righteousness'.
But now the poet announces a great new truth which has been
discerned by himself and others (cwe3), an insight which they
share, and which they are now spreading abroad together with
the message about the Servant and his teaching, as a e tradition'
which they have themselves received (see above, p. 200 n. i and
p. 252) ; his suffering and death are not really the merciless end of
1 The identification of the disease -with leprosy and the corresponding interpretation
of ndguat in v, 4 (cf. nsgcf or nugga' in v. 8) as indicating leprosy were first advanced by
Duhm; and among tEose who have followed him is Nyberg (op. tit., pp. 52ff.). This
interpretation is not certain, and is challenged by Engnell, Bentzen, and North.
EngnelPs objections (B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, pp. 31?.) are based on the preconceived
theory that the fate of the Servant is described in terms of the pattern of the Tamrnuz
ritual, rather than on exegetical considerations. The question is of no great moment.
The main point is that the Servant's death was such that normal Jewish belief saw in
it a judgement of God.
2 With the aid of modern logical considerations and of modification of the text,
Marmorstein (£.A. W. xliv, 1926, pp. s6ofE) will have it that the text did not originally
relate the death of the Servant, but only physical sufferings. This is arbitrary. In v. 8
it is explicitly stated that he was c taken away', ecut off from the land of the living',
'stricken to death'.
3 Nyberg (op. cit, pp. 56ff.) defends M.T. ('with a rich man was he in death*;
Nyberg renders, 'they gave him a gjrave among the ungodly, and together with the
wealthy class when he died') by pointing out that in the thought of the prophets
'ungodly' and 'rich' are synonymous terms. It is of course true that the prophets
often inveigh against the rich (i.e., the powerful members of the community); but it
does not follow that the words * ungodly' (rasa') and 'rich* have become semantically
equivalent. There is no example of this, either in the Old Testament or the New.
Moreover, Nyberg's interpretation and translation presuppose that in early Judaism
the rich qua 'ungodly* had their own burial place, and that one who died like the
Servant in what appeared to be a state of ungodliness and impurity was interred in the
burial place of the rich. This is clearly out of the question. Since the rich exercised
power and authority in the community, they would obviously have prevented an
unclean leper or other ^sd'zm from being interred in their burial place. In the light
of the new MS. DSIa, it is obvious that 'syr = lsyr* = 'osera* (BM*). 'Ayin and the
other gutturals are here more frequently omitted at the end of a syllable, because they
were no longer pronounced. See Hempel in &D.M.G. ci, 19513 p. 140.
201
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
an earthly life which held everything that is of any value (that
would be the judgement of the ancient Israelite, and of the
funeral dirge) ; but death is his great work, the achievement be-
cause of which the others ('the many5, the whole community, the
people) x are now in his debt and have gained an entirely different
conception of the Servant. The suffering is a positive element in
the work to which he was called and is cthe purpose of Yahweh'
(liii, i of.). The new truth is this: the Servant did not suffer for
his own sins; che had done no violence? nor was any deceit in his
mouth'. For Jewish thought this does not mean that he was sinless
— no human being is;2 but that he had committed no such gross
sin as could justly be punished by so great sufferings. He had
been 'upright' like Job or Abraham, and, like Jeremiah confront-
ing God, might have maintained his 'righteousness' in relation to
his enemies and persecutors. Even the emphasis on the silence of
the Servant seems to suggest his 'righteousness' and innocence.
Usually, of course, a person who was stricken by misfortune would
defend himself by apotropaic curses directed against the person
responsible for his misfortune. There are many instances of this
in the psalms of lamentation.3 The misfortune was supposed to
be caused by wicked enemies and demons; and the curses were
held to be a legitimate means of breaking the power of the author
of the misfortune, so that the misfortune might release its hold
upon the victim and fall instead upon its own author.4 Even
where the disease was looked upon as a punishment from Yahweh,
passionate lamentations were the rule (cf. Job). But in the Psalms
the worshipper sometimes asserts that he has not opened his
mouth against his enemies, mentioning this as a c factor of right-
eousness3 in his favour.5 Originally this was a precautionary
measure. The author of the suffering might be Yahweh Himself;
and if so, the worshipper would be in danger of cursing God.
But the psalmists also plead their quiet waiting upon God in
affliction,6 taking the suffering as His admonition. In Israel silence
and stillness (as contrasted with the 'noise' of sinners and of the
1 'The many' (not 'many '; the article Is omitted in poetical style) is the community
as contrasted with the single individual, and so = *all*.
2 Cf. Job iv, i7ff.; xv, 14!*.; xxv, 4-6.
3 See Gunkel-Begrich, Eirdeitung in die Psalmen, pp. 226ff., especially p. 228; Mow-
inckel, Ofsrsang og sangoffer, pp. 250!!
4 Pss. vii, 15-17; ix, 16; Ivii, 7; cf. Prov. xxvi, 27; Ecclus. xxvii, 25!
5 Pss, xxxviii, i4f.; xxxix, 2, 4, 10; see Mowinckel, Offersang og sangoffer, pp. 207,
23iff., 259.
6 Pss. Ixiij 6; cxxxi; cxxiii; cf. Mowinckel, Der Knecht Jahwas, pp. 57f.; Offersang og
pp. 2l6f. Bentzen in. [D.JT1T, v, 1932, pp.
202
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
powers of chaos) became to some extent the typical religious
attitude, a mark of piety and uprightness, the attitude which was
characteristic of the ideal of humility.
If, then, the Servant was 'righteous5 and innocent, it was not
for his own sins that he suffered, but for those of others, of his
fellow-countrymen, 'the many'. The punishment, the sickness,
the suffering, and the scorn, which they really ought to have
borne, were borne by him (liii, 4, 83 12). Yahweh allowed all to
fall upon him that they might escape. He gave his life vicariously
as a guilt-offering ('asam] for the others (liii, 10), perhaps without
himself being aware of it, but, at all events, by Yahweh's decree.
The poet's words may also imply that he thereby gave Ms life
(his 'soul3, i.e., himself) as a pledge to Yahweh that the others
might escape,1 to win for them c peace3, the restoration of the
normal relationship with Yahweh, pardon, good fortune, well-
being, a full life (liii, 5). If so, this agrees in general conception
with the passage about the priestly service of the future king; to be
a mediator between God and man means eto give one's life as a
pledge3 (Jer. xxx, 2 if.; see above, pp. xygf, and below, pp. 238fF.).
In proclaiming this new truth the poet finds the funeral dirge
the most natural form to use in order to look back and pass a final
verdict on the Servant and his work. The lament in the funeral
dirge becomes an accusation, the self-accusation of the poet and
his hearers. Thus the Song becomes a vindication of the Servant's
honour; for everyone must now understand that the ignominy,
the wretchedness, the humility, the apparent lack of self-assertion
('righteousness') were really his titles of honour. This new insight
is the presupposition and the explanation of the certainty with
which the impending restoration is proclaimed later in the poem.
In this way the funeral dirge becomes at the same time a confession
of sins. The speakers now realize and confess that it is for their
sins that the Servant has suffered. Thus the Song includes here
elements from the psalms of penitence and lamentation, and also
an assertion of innocence as in the lamentations of the innocent,
but with this essential difference, that it is the innocence not of
the speakers but of the Servant that is attested; it is not for his own
misdeeds that he has suffered. The emphasis is not on the confes-
sion of the sin of the worshippers, but on the testimony to the
innocent suffering of the Servant on behalf of, and for the benefit
1 See Nyberg's interpretation of liii, 10 a£. Nyberg takes $im% * to set', as a verb used
absolutely, meaning 'to give a pledge ', and compares Job xvii, 3; op. cit.y pp. 58f.
203
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
of, others. In this way the Song becomes a profession of faith in
the Servant and his sufferings, and in their significance for the
speakers.
Accordingly, just as the penitential psalms usually ended in the
assurance of being heard (Gewissheit der Erhorung}^1 often followed
by a reassuring oracle from Yahweh, so here the poem ends with
the speaker's assurance that the Servant will receive the 'reward5
which, according to Jewish belief, must come to the pious and
the innocent, and still more to the person who, through his inno-
cence and righteousness, has made the others innocent and right-
eous by bearing their penalty. This assurance leads immediately
to a direct promise from Tahweh, who now gives an explicit under-
taking concerning the restoration of the Servant which was
alluded to in the opening words. With this part of the poem there
begins what for the poet still lay in the future; it is prophecy. This
is corroborated by the literary form (the assurance of the peniten-
tial psalms is applied to the future), and by the tenses; from v. 10
onward the imperfect (the normal tense for expressing the future)
is used.
First there is announced the divine purpose in the suffering and
death of the Servant. It was by the gracious purpose of Yahweh
that the Servant was bruised for the sins of the others. This was
necessary that they might recognize their sins, do penance, and be
converted to Him; and thus it has become possible for Yahweh to
show mercy to the others. That is why it is announced that
Yahweh will now justify the Servant, i.e., show the whole world
that he was a man who c acted wisely and attained his aim'
(hiskily translated above c attain his aim') through faith in God.
Just because he was willing to 'pay the guilt offering', Yahweh
will order events so that he will c stand forth as the righteous man
he really is' (yasdik, v. i ib). He will not be deprived of the reward
of the righteous.
For a great miracle will take place, whereby the others will
realize that the Servant was in the right, and that he suffered for
their sakes. Kings and nations will be amazed when they hear of
and see the miracle. Yahweh will raise the dead man from the
grave;2 his greatness and his honour will be restored; he will see
1 See Gunkel-Begrich, Einleitmg in dw Psalmen, pp. 132, 2431!, 35 iff.; Mowinckel,
Offersang og sangofer, pp. 2198"., 23 if., 257ff.
2 P. Volz (Buddefestschrift, pp. iSoff,) denies that Isa. liii speaks of the resurrection
of the Servant, holding that the reference is to a reward in the hereafter; but in his
commentary, Jesqja II, p. 179, he modifies his view to the extent of saying that it is
204
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
his seed (presumably this refers to his spiritual children) ,l prolong
his days, see his work crowned with success, and reap all the glory
that an eastern poet could possibly describe.2
What is described is a special miracle wrought by God for the
sake of the Servant, in order that his work may prosper. A general
resurrection is not presupposed. That is what makes the resuscita-
tion of the Servant so wonderful, and enables it to produce results
so convincing and so decisive. It was in accordance with the
general tendency of the Old Testament thought that piety and
undeserved sufferings like those of the Servant could not go un-
rewarded if God was righteous. What is new here is that the
poet makes this assertion concerning one who is already dead, and
who, therefore, according to common belief, wras irrevocably
branded by God as a sinner. Here the belief in a resurrection
emerges in the Old Testament for the first time,3 but only as an
unheard of exception on behalf of this one man.
The resurrection of the Servant is the crown of the divine
purpose* It is also the decisive miracle through which the Servant's
work attains its end, to be a blessing and a remedy for the others.
His resurrection will convince the whole world of his innocence,
and so make his fellow-countrymen admit that his suffering and
death must have been caused by the sins of others, by their sins.
His resurrection will call forth the recognition of sin, the penitence,
and the conversion which are expressed in the belated funeral
dirge. The great miracle will make men share the view of the
Servant which the poet and his circle now have. As formerly he
was despised, so now he will be highly esteemed; and a corres-
ponding earthly glory and good fortune will be his reward. In
spite of the spiritualizing of the reward which is expressed in the
second poem (where the reward consists of a yet greater and more
difficult mission, and of its result, the salvation of the whole world),
Jewish thought could not discard the ancient belief in a connexion
between piety and earthly good fortune. It is this reward of piety
1 Cf. Isa. viii, 16, 18; and Mowinckel, Profeten Jesaja, pp. igf.
2 Isa. lii, 13; liii, 10, 12. On the formula 'long life, progeny, success, and honour*
as the traditional expression of the Israelite desire for * life*, see Marmorstein in £.A.W.
xliv, 1926, pp. sSaff.
a Job explicitly rejects the thought that resurrection is possible (xiv, 10-12, 14).
Neither in Ps. Ixxiii nor in Ps. xvi is there any mention of resurrection after death.
The earliest passage is Isa. xxvi, 19 (cf. xxv, 8) presumably of Hellenistic date; also
Dan. xii, 2, 13. Cf. Birkeland in StTh. Ill, i, 194.9/50, p. 72.
doubtful if the text speaks of a resurrection. Rudolph rightly argues against this view
. xliii, 1925, pp. 93ff.).
205
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
(cf. v. 12) that the Servant will receive in return for his faithfulness
and his sufferings.
Thus the end of the poem is linked with its opening. Through
something they have 'heard3, the poet and his circle are convinced
that this miracle will take place. It is this assurance that the poet
expresses in the introductory strophe in the form of an oracle from
Yahweh Himself. The whole section (liii, 1-9) speaks of events
which (from the standpoint adopted by the poet in this poem) have
already happened, as is shown both by the use of the dirge and by
the tenses (consecutive imperfect and perfect). The Servant has
lived and suffered, and is dead and buried. From the standpoint
of the poet and the speakers, what is still a proclamation concern-
ing the future (the prophecy itself) does not begin until liii, 10
(as the tenses show: consecutive perfect and imperfect), having
been hinted at in the opening lines with their prediction of the
impending miraculous exaltation. For the poet, the resurrection
and the reward still belong to the future; and his supreme concern
is with the proclamation of this prophecy about the future.
The aim of this proclamation is manifest. The poet wants to
bring his hearers to the same view and the same faith that he and
his circle share. They must embrace the Servant's * instruction'
and message, believing that he is in the right and that he is really
the chosen Servant of Yahweh, whose claims and instruction are
the real condition of Israel's salvation.
Taken as a whole the Song is in form an 'inverted' funeral
dirge, with elements from the penitential psalms, set within a
framework of promise. In content it is a 'kerygma', a 'message*,
a grateful confession of faith in the Servant, and a proclamation
about him and his work by those who have been healed by his
sufferings and death; and it is set forth as a testimony to the other
Jews, but in reality, as the other poems show (xlii, 4; xlix, 6), to
the whole world.
2. The Work of the Servant
Let us now try to see as a whole the picture of the Servant which
these poems present. What is he? And what is his work?
He has received from Yahweh a quite special task. That is why
he is His Servant, not in the more passive sense which the word
has in Deutero-Isaiah when it is applied to Israel: the worshipper
of Yahweh, secure under His favour and protection, able to trust
in Yahweh, and because of her historical experiences a witness to
206
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the election, the favour, and the faithfulness of Yahweh, and to
His will and power to save Israel and to bring to fulfilment His
plan for the world; but in an active sense: he who has been chosen
and equipped for a special work in Yahweh's service.1 He is
Yahweh's ' deputy \ an effective instrument for the realization of
Yahweh's purpose, and thus for glorifying Him in the world
(xlix, 3).
Yahweh has chosen him for this service from his mother's womb
(xlii, i; xlix, i), endowed him with His spirit (xlii, i)5 trained his
tongue (1, 4; xlix, 2), and made him fit for his mission like a sharp
sword and a polished arrow (xlix, 2). For this service Yahweh
upholds him (xlii, i) and gives him strength (xlix, 4, ^b).
His service is a ministry of the word (xlix, 2; 1, 4, 10; cf. xlii, 2),
He has a message from Yahweh to proclaim; and he receives daily
revelations bearing on that message (1, 4, 5a).
In the first instance his ministry is addressed to the people and
community of Israel (xlix, 5; cf. I, 4) ; later it is extended to include
all the nations of the world (xlix, 6; xlii, 4). By his preaching
(1, 4; xlii, 4; xlix, 2) the Servant will * bring forth right religion'
(i.e., the true religion and the state of bliss which accompanies it)
on the earth (xlii, 3f.). In this way he will lead back to Yahweh
the preserved in Israel, i.e., lead them to true penitence and godli-
ness, and thereby make possible the complete restoration and in-
gathering of those who have been scattered abroad (xlix, 5f.),
More than this, his preaching will reach out to all the peoples of
the earth, who are longing for the true religion (xlii, 4), and be
the means of their salvation. He will be 'a light to the nations*
(xlix, 6). This clearly denotes some kind of active missionary
calling.
The content of the Servant's message is in harmony with this.
It is not harsh words of doom (xlii, 2f.), but promises of consola-
tion for the encouragement of the weary (1, 4). It is a message of
salvation like that of Deutero-Isaiah, but is, in fact, more definitely
universalistic in its scope. It includes all nations; but no longer
are there suggestions that the nations will become Israel's vassals.
Deliverance from error and from the consequences of sin, remission
of the punishment for sin, and the establishment throughout the
world of the propitious .rule of true religion and of a right rela-
tionship to God: that, in short, is the content of the message.
Thus the mission of the Servant has a bearing on Israel's hope
1 See Mowinckd in G.TMMM. Ill on Isa. xli, 8a,
207
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
of restoration. Its aim is the realization of what was for Deutero-
Isaiah the essence of the hope of restoration from both the national
and the religious standpoint: that all Jews should accept the
message in faith and rally to the God of their fathers; that the
nation should be restored, the exiles return home, the dispersed
be gathered together; that the heathen should accept the religion
of Yahweh in enthusiastic wonder over the great work of salva-
tion; that Yahweh should be honoured throughout the world, and
His name be hallowed, as the only true God in heaven and on
earth.
It is the task of the Servant by his message to co-operate in the
accomplishment of this wonderful work. It is with his message
that it begins. By it he will ' bring back Jacob unto Him (Yahweh),
and gather Israel to Him3 (xlix, 5). The fruit of his message (or
'teaching') will be the turning away of the people from despon-
dency, doubt, and unbelief, and perhaps even from actual apostasy
and other sins. But his message will also have meaning for the
heathen. When we read that efor his instruction the far coasts
wait', and, again, that Yahweh will also make him ca light to
the nations, that My salvation jnay^reach'to the end of the earth ',
it is clear that it is by his message that he will be a light to the
heathen and convey salvation to them.
But the Songs tell of more than the message of the Servant.
The poet knows, too, that the Servant meets the greatest difficul-
ties and sufferings in carrying out his mission. He has good
reason for becoming weary (xlii, 4). He has to endure opposition,
derision, blows, and ill-treatment, and has many enemies (1, 5ff.).
Sometimes he even thinks that all his endeavours are in vain
(xlix, 4). We hear that he is a man of humble station, without
earthly grandeur or reputation, outwardly unimpressive and
insignificant (liii, af.), even repulsive in appearance (Hi, 14!)).
For he has been stricken by disease, misery, and sore pains
(liii, 3!, 7), so that, in accordance with normal Israelite and
Jewish standards, his associates and countrymen regard him as
one whose sin has been brought to light, whom God has smitten
and branded (liii, 4). According to the accepted view, he is
'unclean', excluded from the community. In fact, csin5 has been
laid on him. (Jewish thought could not as yet distinguish between
uncleanness and sin; something of the ancient material and objec-
tive view of sin still survived.) At last the Servant dies from
his painful disease, and is buried in an ignominious fashion
208
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
in the burial place of unclean malefactors (liii, 7-9; cf. p. 201
n. 3).
But to all this he quietly submits, and does not weary in adver-
sity (xlii, 4). He receives power to stand his ground again after
his times of despondency (xlix, 4) . The poet makes him tell us
that it was at such a time that he received from Yahweh the
assurance of a still greater call than that of leading Israel back
to the right way, the call to be a light to the nations and a means
of making Yahweh's salvation universal (xlix, 5f.). He has will-
ingly accepted blows and derision, knowing all the time that in
the end, in one way or another, Yahweh would help him, vindicate
him, and put his adversaries to shame (1, 5ff.). It is explicitly
emphasized, and finally admitted by those who misjudged him,
that all this has befallen him in spite of the fact that he was no
c sinner' in the pregnant Israelite sense of the word (liii, 10), but
really a righteous man and 'honoured3 in Yahweh's eyes (xlix, 5).
He bears his sufferings, because they come as a necessary conse-
quence of the mission which must and shall be accomplished
(1, 5ff-).
In the fourth Song the poet announces that to him and his circle
there has been conveyed the recognition of the true character,
the value, and the work of the Servant. When others see the
restoration and glorification of the Servant, they, too, will all
understand. This involves the recognition that the Servant was
really guiltless, and therefore did not suffer for his own sins but
for those of others. Accordingly, his sufferings and death were
vicarious, made atonement for others, and brought them back
(or will bring them back) to 'peace5 and communion with
Yahweh.
How does the poet think that this will come about? Wherein,
precisely, does the atoning effect of the Servant's vicarious work
consist?
It is clear that the poet expresses his thoughts in sacrificial and
legal phrases and conceptions. The Servant has 'poured out his
souP (i.e., his life), and has pledged his life as a guilt-offering
(9asam)*1 He has become their surety. This presupposes the
ancient belief that an offence can be atoned for by vicarious pay-
ment of compensation ('&ftzm), or guilt-offering, or rite of purifica-
tion (sin-offering), such as Job used to perform for sins which his
children might have committed (Job i, 5). In this way the one who
1 Isa. liii, IQ; see above, p. 198, and n. 8.
P 2OQ
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
makes atonement becomes the 'redeemer5 (go9 el} of his kinsman.
According to the ancient mode of thought the family, the tribe,
or the people is a unity; and thus the decisive factor in atonement
for an offence is not that the culprit should himself pay the penalty
but that the community to which he belongs should do so.
Accordingly, one with whom he is in fellowship can intervene as
his redeemer. The more eminent the deliverer is, the more valuable
is his action on behalf of the other. The utter guiltlessness of the
Servant gives a special value to what he does. His guiltlessness is
his 'merit', his 'righteousness'. Indeed, he has increased it by his
patient silence in suffering (see above, p. 203). But he has done
even more. He has voluntarily accepted suffering, not only in the
certainty of ultimate triumph, as in the third Song, but because (so
the poet holds) he has known or surmised something of the purpose
of the suffering. He has come forward as 'deliverer' for the sake
of the others. Since such vicarious action is possible, it has been
decreed by the wonderful counsel of Yahweh that the Servant
should bear the diseases and afflictions, the punishment for guilt,
which the others ought to have borne for their sins. The poet and
his circle have now realized that if the community (cwe5) had
really been punished as it deserved, the individual members would
have had to endure many more and worse diseases and afflictions
than they have in fact done. But the Servant has borne them on
their behalf, and thereby has won for them 'peace', or, to put it
figuratively, 'healing'.
So in the poet's thought it is not the wrath of God which has
imposed the suffering on the Servant. But, according to the
thought of ancient Judaism, every sin bears within itself the seed
of misfortune, a 'fruit', or 'guilt3, which in time overtakes the
culprit and (or) his family. The sins of Israel are so many and so
great, that, if nothing were done to atone for them and to 'purify'
the people, she would succumb under the burden of her guilt.
Therefore it 'pleased' God in His clemency to establish a purpose
or plan, by which a redeemer should bear the burden of guilt
which would have been too heavy for the people.
What is here described is an act of free grace on God's part.
It is His plan that is realized; and it is for this that He has created
and equipped the Servant. In order to make this thought clear,
the poet naturally uses metaphors from current contemporary
ideas about atonement and the forgiveness of sins, i.e., sacrificial
language. But these expressions are not to be taken literally.
210
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
They are, at all events, in some degree symbolic and metaphorical.
As has been said (p. 205), the poet has in mind the psychological
effect of the Servant's work, which will produce a change of mind
in his fellow-countrymen, as it has already done in the poet and
his circle. The resurrection and glorification of the Servant will
convince them that he was guiltless, and so make them realize that
he has suffered as a deliverer on behalf of the others.1 The poet
realized that the sin of men was too great, and the holiness of
God too serious, for salvation to be man's own work. His point of
view here is that of Jeremiah and of the book of Ezekiel (see
below, pp. 238ff.). Therefore he announces that God Himself will
create an instrument, the Servant, who by his preaching, suffering,
and death will bring about the conversion which would otherwise
never have happened.
As we have seen, this takes place because they see him glorified;
and, as a result, they see the guilt of their own sin, and realize
how great it must be to have brought such sufferings upon the
righteous one. For suffering and sin are inseparable; and since the
righteous one has had to suffer, it must have been for our sins.
This is what they acknowledge in the belated funeral dirge. The
conviction of sin brings them to penitence and conversion, and
leads them back to Yahweh. Thus, what we have here is no
longer the primitive idea of the connexion between the community
and the individual, according to which one may take the place
of another j so long as atonement is made. The thought is rather
that of the psychological and moral effect of the Servant's work,
bringing about the conversion of the people, and so atoning for
their guilt.
Accordingly, there is no mention here of what is often present
in primitive, sacrificial religions, the thought of a change wrought
in God Himself, so that His attitude is modified as a result of the
death of the Servant, as medieval theologians held. The thoughts
and expressions derived from the language of sacrifice and from
its substitutionary theory are sublimated and lifted to a higher
plane.2 The atoning worth of the Servant's action depends on
whether his fellow-countrymen appropriate it, so as to see their
own guilt and thereby be moved to conversion and penitence.
From the first it is God Himself who purposes this and brings it
1 On the suffering of the pious as a vicarious atonement in Jewish theology, see
Moore, Judaism I, pp. 546ff.; Sjoberg, Gott und die Sunder, pp. iJ4f.; Marmorstein in
&A.W. xHv, 1926, p. 264.
2 Gf. Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice. A Study of the Passion Sayings in the Gospels, p. 42.
211
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
all to pass.1 It Is because the Servant's sufferings open the eyes
of the others and bring them to repentance, that the righteous
Servant justifies the many (assuming that the traditional transla-
tion of liii, ii is correct).2
This subjective, psychological interpretation of the atoning
effect of the Servant's sufferings and death is supported, for
example^ by the occurrence of similar ideas in Judaism. The
apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon speaks of the demeanour of the
righteous and the ungodly at the judgement after the resurrection.
The self-confident, clever men now see that the poor, despised,
righteous man,3 whom they oppressed during his earthly life, and
whose sufferings they derided, is now acquitted, whereas they
themselves are condemned. 'Troubled with terrible fear', and
* amazed at the marvel of his salvation, they shall say within
themselves repenting' . . .
This was he whom aforetime we had in derision,
And made a by-word of reproach:
We fools accounted his life madness,
And his end without honour:
How was he numbered among sons of God !
And how is his lot among saints !
Verily we went astray from the way of truth.
And the light of righteousness shined not for us ...
We took our fill of the paths of lawlessness and destruction,
And we journeyed through trackless deserts,
But the way of the Lord we knew not.4
Here, too, it is the sight of the exaltation of the despised and
suffering righteous ones, when c they receive a glorious kingdom and
a diadem of beauty from the Lord's hand', which makes the un-
godly and proud clever men realize that the despised men are
right and they themselves wrong. Admittedly the thought of
vicarious atonement is not present here; for that there is no place
at the last judgement. But the 'wise man' is here thinking, in the
same way as the poet-prophet of Isa. liii, of the effect which the
1 Cf. Lofthouse: *The one real actor in the drama is Jahveh himself (J.T.S. xlviii,
1947, P* 174)-
a The meaning is the same, even on the interpretation adopted above.
3 Wisd. of Sol. v, iff. refers to the suffering righteous in general, not to the *son of
God' regarded as the Servant of the Lord (as Huntress holds in J.B.L. liv, 1935, pp.
1 1 yff.) . To that extent, this righteous one is a Lazarus figure rather than a Servant
of the Lord.
4 Wisd. of SoL v, aff. Translation by Holmes in A.P.O.T. I.
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
exaltation of the blameless and despised sufferer will have in
making the ungodly recognize the truth, though here it is too
late.
It is also right to emphasize that here, as elsewhere, 'subjective'
and 'objective' are not contradictory but correlative ideas. They
express two aspects of the same thing. * Objectively', the Servant's
atoning work is wrought by God Himself. It is He who both plans
and prepares it, and knows what it will lead to. For those at whom
it is directed (Israel), the aim is realized when the impression
made by God's miracle, wrought through the Servant, produces
the desired end, that change of mind which is the condition of
forgiveness and restoration. God's work through the Servant
makes them seek reconciliation with God.
3. Prophet, not Messiah
This Servant, who has a task to perform with the rest of Israel,
whose mission it is to speak to those who fear God (i.e., the Jews),
and whom the other Jews have seen grow up, live, and die before
their eyes, who died of leprosy and was buried among malefactors,
is clearly no collective entity. He is not the nation, or the congre-
gation, or a particular class or group within the nation. There is
no need to enter here into this aspect of the discussion about the
Servant.1 Nor is he the 'ideal3 as distinguished from the empirical
Israel.2 Such a distinction is Platonic, not Hebraic. The Servant
is regarded and described as a specific individual This is clear,
not only from all the purely individual and personal traits in the
1 See Additional Note XII.
2 This is rightly maintained by Peake (The Servant of Tahweh and Other Lectures p. 67).
The conception of the Servant as a personification of the * ideal' or the 'spiritual*
Israel has often been adopted, even in earlier times; so, e.g., Colin, Thenius, Anger
Knobel, Vatke, Ewald, Kosters, Cheyne ('the genius of Israel"), and others. For
more recent attempts to unite the individual and the collective interpretations, see
p. 215 n. 2. These expressions, 'the ideal Israel', 'the spiritual Israel', etc.' are
generally used with the utmost vagueness. If they are used in a Platonic sense, of the
transcendental *ideas of Israel, by contrast with its empirical reality, then the thought
is entirely alien to ancient Israel. If what is meant is an 'idealized5 presentation of
Israel (in the popular sense of the term), then it is quite inconceivable that the
'idealized ^Israel should accomplish a task the object of which is 'the real Israel'.
If 'the spiritual Israel' means the believing kernel of the nation, by contrast with the
great mass of the unbelieving or the unresponsive, who are Israelites only * after the
flesh', the difficulty is that this kind of distinction does not appear elsewhere in the
Old Testament; for Deutero-Isaiah, all Israelites are real Israelites, even if they are
bad Israelites (see the references in p. 214 nn. 3, 4). The distinction between * Israel
after the spirit* and 'Israel after the flesh' presupposes in effect a spiritual dualism
which did not appear in Judaism until the Hellenistic period. All these attempts at
modernizing distinctions arise because it is felt that other passages in Deutero-Isaiah
make it necessary to begin with the identification of the Servant with Israel in some
sense (see Additional Note XII).
213
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
picture/ but also indirectly, since every collective interpretation
leads to absurdities.
In the first place, it is obvious that the Servant cannot be a
poetical "personification3 or a means of presenting the nation
Israel in terms of the ancient conception of the community.2
No Old Testament prophet, not even Deutero-Isaiah3a could
say that Israel suffered innocently, or that she bore her sufferings
silently and patiently, or, least of ail, that her sufferings were
incomprehensible. All the prophets saw clearly that Israel de-
served to suffer as the logical result of her sins; and this is explicitly
emphasized by Deutero-Isaiah.4 It is also evident that the Servant
has a vocation of which Israel is the object. He is to achieve
something for and with Israel; and Israel will be converted to
Yahweh as a result of the Servant's work.5 He is one on whom
those who fear God will set their hope (1, 10). Nor will it do to
say that the Servant is a personification of the prophetic order,
as several scholars have maintained.6 The poet, who himself
comes forward as a prophet, could not possibly say that the pro-
phetic order, or 'prophecy5, is dead, and will at some time arise
and be honoured again. The Servant is certainly a prophet, as
we shall see presently; but he is an individual prophet and not a
collective abstraction.
In recent times a clearer understanding of the ancient con-
1 These traits are still individual even if they apply in a general way to the pious,
and are to that extent 'typical', as Volz maintains (Jesaja II, p. 183). But Volz
exaggerates this * typical' element. The metaphors and phrases may, admittedly, be
used of other pious sufferers; but it is quite obvious that the story which the poet-
prophet tells of the Servant is about unique events which happened once for all.
2 Cf. Gressmann, per Messias, pp. 3i6f.
8 See Isa. xl, 2; xliv, 18, 22; xliii, 8, 22-5; xlv, gf.; xlviii, i, 4, 8-ro; liv, 8; Iv, 7.
4 Isa. xl, 2; xlii, 1 8, 24f.; xliii, 8, 22-8; xlv, gf.; xlviii, i-u; li, 17-20; liv, 9; Iv, 7;
cf. xlii, 19-23 (Trito-Isaianic).
5 See Isa, xlix, 5f., and above, pp. 192, 2o6ff. These verses have played an impor-
tant part in the discussion between the supporters of the individual and the collective
theories. Budde, in particular, has tried to show that they are compatible with the
collective interpretation (see his commentary on Deutero-Isaiah in H.S.A.T.* I,
p. 678; Die sogennanten Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder und die Bedeutung des Knechtes Jahwes in Jes.
40-55: Ein Minoritdtsvotumi and most recently his review of Eissfeldfs Der Gotteskwcht
bei Deuterojesaja (Jes. 40-55) im Lichte der israelitischen Anschauung von Gemeinschaft und
Individuwn, in T.L.%. Iviii, 1933, cols. 324^ Rejecting what is undoubtedly, for reasons
of grammar and sense, the most probable interpretation, Budde would take Yahweh
as the logical subject of the infinitives le$6beb in v. 5, Vhdkim and Vhatfb in v. 6. But if
that is the sense, we cannot understand why, in place of ' Israel* and * Jacob *a we do not
find simply *youj. There is no ground for denying that the language used distin-
guishes between the Servant (you) and 'Israel* or 'Jacob', or that it is much more
natural to take the le before the infinitives as expressing purpose and not of attendant
circumstance ('in that I bring back*, etc.), as Budde holds.
6 E.g., Gesenius, de Wette, Wiener, Umbreit, Schenkel, Farley.
214
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
ception of 'corporate personality'1 has led scholars, such as
Pedersen, Eissfeldt, and Wheeler Robinson, to try to combine the
individual and collective interpretations.2 The Servant is the
prophet, who will bring about the conversion of the other Israel-
ites, and 'he is Israel created to be the Servant5, says Wheeler
Robinson.3 Nyberg holds that cthe Servant is Israel in the sense
of the ancestor as well as the people; in him the experiences of a
whole people are concentrated3.4 Bentzen maintains that he cis
Deutero-Isaiah and Israel, the new Moses ('Messias' in radically
changed form) and the congregation, for whom he is ready to die,
in one single person, the Patriarch of the new race3.5 They appeal
to the well-known fact that, both in the Israelite patriarchal tradi-
tions and in similar traditions among other eastern peoples in both
ancient and modern times, the ancestor and founder of the nation
represents the entire community, so that the experiences of the
family, the tribe, and the nation throughout the ages can be pre-
sented as those of the c supreme ego3 (represented as an individual),
and can be transferred to the ancestor as a story about him per-
sonally.6 But then we must not forget that the story-teller con-
ceives of it all as a story about the individual ancestor; and at the
moment when he so conceives it, Jacob, for example, is not at the
same time ancestor and people, but an individual person, who
1 The classical work is Pedersen's Israel I-II; cf. also Wheeler Robinson in Werden
und Wesen des Alien Testaments, pp. 491!.; Johnson, The One and the Many in the Israelite
Conception of God, where, however, the identification of individual and community is
exaggerated (see Snaith's criticism in J. T.S. xliv, 1943, p. 82).
2 Pedersen, Israel III-IV, pp. 603$. Pedersen's view was anticipated by Eissfeldt in
Der Gottesknecht bei Dsuterojesaja. Against Eissfeldt, see Mowinckel's review of the book
in A.f.O. xi, 1936/7, pp. 8 if. See further, Wheeler Robinson in Werden und Wesen des
Alien Testaments, pp. 4gff.; Bentzen, King and Messiah^ pp. 48ff. The 'both-and* posi-
tion is also maintained by Nyberg in S.E.A. vii, 1942, pp. 5-82, where he greatly
over-emphasizes the kingly and ancestral features in the Servant. Pedersen's ap-
proach is followed by Wheeler Robinson (see Additional Note XII) and Engnell in
B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948. Strom in Vetekornet directly identifies the individual and the
community, in what is a pure caricature of Pedersen's fundamental view; see G.-M.
Edsman's well-founded criticism of Strom in his review of Vetekornet in Kyrkohistorisk
Arsskrift, 1944, pp. 3561E,, and in the article *Evangeliskt och katoliskt om Corpus
Christi, kyrkan och den enskilda' in S.T.K. xxi, 1945, pp. 272ff., where he points out
the many misleading generalizations and inconsistencies in Strom's definitions and
interpretations. Attempts to revive the collective interpretation of the Servant, but
more along the older lines, are made by Farley in E.T, xxxviii, 1926/7, pp. 52 iff.
(idealized prophecy), Peake in The Servant of Tahweh and Other Lectures, Waterman in
J.B.L. Ivi, 1937, pp. 27ff,, Snaith in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy Presented to TL H.
Robinson, pp. 187-500 (the Servant is *the righteous remnant', which in Deutero-
Isaiah is represented by Jehoiachin and his fellow-exiles of 597 B.C.).
Young's criticism of Eissfeldt in Westminster Theological Journal xi, 1948, pp. 135^.,
misses the point, because he is unfamiliar with the ancient mode of thought, and there-
fore his arguments are too modern and rationalistic, i.e., supposedly orthodox.
s Warden wtd Wesen des Alien Testaments, pp. 59ff. ^ 4 S.E.A. vii, 1942, p. 75.
5 King and Messiah, p. 67. 6 See Additional Note XII, and p. 2 13 n. 2»
215
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
experienced what the nation also experienced later, and carried out
various exploits such as his descendants also accomplished. To us,
looking at the characters in the light of the study of the history of
tradition, they are both. But for the narrators of the patriarchal
sagas, Abraham is the man Abraham, and Jacob is the individual
Jacob, in whom the hearers recognize themselves as they are in
their best moments, but who are nevertheless not 'identical' with
the nation, in any other way than we modern Norwegians or
Englishmen are, when we 'identify ourselves with3 (i.e., become
aware of our connexion with) our own nation in its past history,
and with the exploits then accomplished. It is also possible to ex-
aggerate the mythical and irrational character of ancient thought.
For instance, even if Bentzen were right in his view that the Ser-
vant is thought of as a new Moses, the Servant would not therefore,
in the poet's thought, actually be Moses himself, or the Israel of the
Mosaic period, still less a resuscitated Moses/ or Moses redivivus; he
is the Servant, who in the future will have as momentous a task to
perform with 'Israel' as Moses had in the past. If we start from
the ancient conception of the unity of the nation and the individual,
of 'Israel' as a type embodied in the ancestor, the nation, and its
individual members,2 the view that the Servant is 'Israel', and
has a mission to a quite different unbelieving 'Israel', is utterly
improbable, indeed impossible. The 'type' is present in the
1 Cf. King and Messiah, p. 66.
2 What Pedersen means by 'type* must be understood in the light of primitive
thought, and not of Platonism. It is, of course, true that the conception which really
primitive peoples have of the people or community has a certain similarity to the
Platonic teaching about ideas (cf. V. Gr0nbech, 'Primitiv Religion5 in Illustreret
Religionshistorie*y p. 23), a similarity which is perhaps particularly evident in the
Persian conception of the * bull's soul *, the primal, heavenly bull. In primitive thought
the reality which is given consists of wholes which are also entities. As in fairy stories,
it is not 'a bear*, but 'the bear', the * eternal' bear. Each entity has its own definite
character and type. 'The man* is different from ' the lion'; 'Israel' is a different type
from eMoab*. The type * Israel' is an eternal reality. It is manifested in the ancestor,
in the nation in its varying historical situations, and in individual Israelites, particu-
larly in representative men such as chiefs and kings. We may try to express this in
modern terms by saying that the ancestor lives on in the nation and in all its individual
members, and that the king, for example, embodies the entire nation. Israel is a
corporate personality (to use Wheeler Robinson's expression) ; and in certain situations
this corporate personality may be manifested in a representative person, such as the
ancestor or the king. This is what Pedersen means when he calls Israel an * ideal
quantity' (Israel I-II, p. 475). But this is rather different from Plato's distinction
between the 'idea' and the (inferior) empirical reality. Through sin, Israel may forfeit
her *type*; but then it ceases to exist. It is normally in concrete reality, in historical
exploits, etc., that the essence of 'life' of the type is manifested. It is the duty of the
individual to realize the type in his life, in unity with the whole community; and
between individual and community there is no contrast. Those who hold the collective
interpretation of the Servant fail to appreciate this correspondence between type and
reality,
2l6
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
ancestor, the nation, and the individual members; but it has no
existence outside any of them, as a sort of metaphysical being. It
cannot be imagined as a c person \ in contrast with the empirical
Israel, to which it has a mission to fulfil. The view of the Servant
held by Pedersen and the other neo-collectivists is therefore
untenable.
Nor is there anything in the texts themselves to compel us to
accept so unnatural an interpretation. That the Servant in xlix,
1-6, should be, as Wheeler Robinson holds, at one moment the
prophet, labouring to convert his fellow-countrymen, and then,
the instant he receives the new mission to be ' a light to the
nations', suddenly be changed into Israel, or come to think that
he is in fact Israel since he is the 'representative' through whom
she will realize her mission — that is not only a rather difficult
idea to conceive; it is also quite unnecessary, since the text itself
does not call for a mental leap of this kind in order to be under-
stood.
As depicted by the prophet in the four poems, the Servant is
neither the ancestor nor Israel (no matter how many features
he may have borrowed from the conception of the ancestor), but
a person who has, both now and in the future, a task to perform
towards Israel.
But there is some truth behind the idea that the Servant is
Israel, in that he has the standing and importance of one who
represents the entire nation, such as a king, or, in the cult, a priest
or a prophet. There is an intimate connexion between the Servant
and his people Israel. In this sense we may say that the Servant is
a "corporate personality ', since, as we have seen, he represents the
the whole nation. His work is of decisive importance for the fate
of the nation; and to that extent it may be said that the nation
acts through him. He suffers what the nation ought to have
suffered; what befalls him befalls the nation through him. His
sufferings and death are the sacrifice, the 'asam offered for the
sins of the nation; and his resurrection will result in new life for
Israel by leading to its conversion. But that does not prevent his
being considered an individual with a task to perform towards the
nation Israel. When the word * servant' is used of Israel in other
passages in Deutero-Isaiah, it does not have this individualistic
character. It leads only to confusion if we fuse the two * servants*
in Deutero-Isaiah, and feel bound to cover both by a single
explanation. The Servant is an individual; but one who represents
217
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the whole nation, whose fate is decisive for its fate, and through
whom its conversion and the renewal of its life will be realized.
What kind of person, then, is the Servant? He is regarded and
described as a prophet This is obvious from what has been said
above about his mission and work. He has the endowment which
is supremely characteristic of the prophets3 endowment with Yah-
weh's spirit (xlii, i). He delivers c direction \ tordh,1 and has the
tongue of a disciple (1, 4), Le., a disciple of some prophet (viii, 16),
or of someone taught by the spirit. Tongue and speech are his
instruments, made fit by Yahweh for His service (xlix, 2). Yahweh
has called him from his mother's womb, another prophetic feature
(Isa. xlix, 2; c£ Jer. 1, 5), Daily He opens his ear, so that he may
receive revelations (1, 4). The title 'Yahweh's servant3 is also
used elsewhere of the prophets.2
If we consider the content of his prophetic mission, we may
1 Isa. xlii, 4; cf» ij 10; xlii, 3; viii, 16; see Mowinckel in G.TM.ALM. Ill, n.a on
Isa. i, 10.
2 Isa. xliv, 26; xxs 3; 2 Kings ix, 7; Jer. vii, 25; xxv, 4; xxvi, 5; xxix, 19; xxxv, 15;
Amos iii, 7, etc.; see vonBaudissinin the Buddefestschrift, pp. 3!".; of Moses, Deut. xxxiv,
5; Joshua i, i; Num. xii, 7; Mai. £v, 22, etc.; see von Baudissin, op. cit., p. 3; of Joshua,
Joshua xxiv, 29; of the patriarchs, Exod. xxxii, 13; Deut. ix, 27. In all these instances
the underlying notion is that of a prophet. On 'servant5 as a designation of the king,
see above, p. 07 n. 3. On the prophetic features in the Servant, see also Bentzen, King
and Messiah^ pp. 48ff. It is remarkable that Nyberg in S.E.A. vii, 1942, pp. 63*!! does
not raise the question of the category to which the poet held the Servant to belong,
but is content to inquire into the * groups of motifs ', from which the conceptions
may have been borrowed. This confusion of exegesis with the history of motifs
must necessarily be misleading". The primary question must always be, 'What
does the writer himself mean? * not, *What is the source of the individual elements
in his conception? * How wrong Nyberg's approach to the question is can be seen
(inter alia] by what results from it, when he goes on to say that the title of * servant'
was taken over from a Ganaanite title which was specially applied to the founder
of the dynasty and of the cult (op. cit., p. 79). That is not in itself impossible; but
it is of no importance for the interpretation of the Servant j for it is out of the question
that Deutero-Isaiah^ or a member of his circle, should have thought of the Servant
as the founder of a new cult. The cult of Yahweh needed no new * founder*. Be-
sides, so many intermediate stages and changes of meaning intervene between the
original Ganaanite title of 'servant', and the Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, that the latter
cannot be interpreted in terms of the content of the former. What is sound in Nyberg's
view is that the use of the expression in the Ugaritic texts shows that the title always
indicates a close connexion with the deity, and a special task derived from him.
Engnell, too, who regards the Servant as a royal figure (B.J.R.L. xxxi, 1948), has to
admit that several traits in the Servant suggest a prophetic figure; but he holds that
they arise ultimately from the fact that the king (as he says) is a * primeval prophet'.
Engnell thinks that, in order to maintain that the Servant is conceived as a prophet,
it must first be shown that these royal and prophetic traits have passed through a
process of 'disintegration', and can also be used of persons who are not kings (op. cit.,
p. 15 n. i). To this a reply is offered by Bentzen in King and Messiah, p. 108 n. 77.
Since I hold that the Servant poems must be interpreted in their own light, without
reference to the contexts in which, as it happens, they now stand, I must reject the
argument (dissenting here from Bentzen, op. cit., p. 49) from meba$ser (xli, 27). This
word, which here refers to Deutero-Isaiah himself, is undoubtedly a designation for a
prophet, like mubassiru in Accadian (see Haldar, Associations^ p. 33).
2l8
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
justifiably speak of a new ideal of prophecy: not the diviner, but
the missionary preacher of true religion. The transition to this
prophetic ideal is seen in the circle of Deutero-Isaiah's disciples,1
the so-called 'Trito-Isaiah3, in which, in all probability, we must
look for the author of these Songs (see below, pp. 253!) .
He is also more than an ordinary prophet, since what matters
is not only his preaching and his message, but his person, and what
is achieved through his life. His suffering and death are also
essential to his work; they were necessary in order that Yahweh's
purpose of salvation might be fulfilled. But even this extension of
his work is in the prophetic line, as we shall see below.
Several scholars2 have tried to discover in the Servant features
from the figure of the king, or even maintained that he was thought
of as a king, or as a royal representative of his people.3 There are,
in fact, no unmistakable royal features to be found.4 The nearest
approach to such is the promise that he will cbe exalted, and lifted
up, and be very high5, that cthe nations will be amazed at him5,
and e before him even the great will be silent; kings will shut their
mouths at him' . . . £ therefore I shall divide him a portion among
1 Isa. ixi, iff.; cf. Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M. III, p. 17.
2 Above all Sellin, and, in a different way, Gressmann, Diirr, Rudolph, and, most
recently, Nyberg, Engnell, Coppens, and de Leeuw. In recent discussion the parallel
drawn by Diirr, between the Servant and the king as atoning in the cult by suffering,
has been of particular importance. See below, pp. 22 iff,
3 In particular Engnell, following Diirr, has tried to interpret a number of indivi-
dual features in the Servant passages in terms of the cultic side of the royal ideology
(see B.J.R.L. xxxi, 1948, pp. iff.). In King and Messiah, pp. 48ff. Bentzen refutes
EngnelFs one-sided views and assumptions; cf. also above, p. 190 n.i, p. 218 n. 2.
As a rule, the features in question can be interpreted much more naturally as refer-
ring to a prophetic figure. Engnell regards the idea of suffering as itself a sign of the
royal ideology; on this point, see above in the text. Another error in method, which
Engnell commits in his discussion of the subject, is that he does not distinguish between
the Servant poems and the other Deutero-Isaianic sayings, and will not recognize that
two different conceptions of the servant are involved; see Additional Note xn; xli, 27;
xliii, 4; xliv, iff.; and 3dix, yff. are irrelevant to the subject, quite apart from the ques-
tion whether Engnell is right in finding there allusions to the royal ideology. He is,
in fact, mistaken; cf. Bentzen, op. cit., pp. s8ff. North, The Suffering^ Servant,, pp. isgff.,
emphasizes rather more strongly than Bentzen the supposed political features in the
description of the Servant's work; but he makes too much depend upon the interpreta-
tion of the expression 'bring forth mispat9 xlii, i, 3, which, he holds, * seems to exceed
the functions of any king or prophet known to us' (op. cit., p. 141). He also believes
that the expression, * raise up the tribes of Jacob', must point to 'a political restora-
tion', since a tribe is a political entity (op. cit., p. 146). The latter conclusion is not
necessary. For instance, it is possible to work for the restoration of a people through
'moral rearmament*, which is not really a form of political activity. North does not
appear to arrive at any definite conclusion.
4 Begrich, Stitdwn zu Deuterojesaja^ pp. iGgf. interprets irtifpat yos? as 'announces the
sentence as just*, and as referring to Yahweh's sentence on the heathen; and he holds
that the metaphors of breaking the rod and extinguishing the lamp in Isa. xlii, 3, are
legal symbols for condemnation, a view which Bentzen also accepts (Jesaja II, p. 33) .
But not one of the passages to which Begrich refers (Isa. xiv, 5; Ecclus. xxxv, 18; Prov.
219
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the great, and he will divide the spoil with the mighty *, or, as
perhaps it should be rendered, 'Therefore I assign him the great
for his portion, and give him the strong as spoil5 (Hi, 13-15;
liii, n£).
But this is future, and speaks of what the Servant will be, not of
what he is or has at some time been. Nor does it exceed the honours
which might be accorded to any ordinary Israelite or oriental, if
he was ca man whom the king delighted to honour'. Then 'the
royal apparel is brought, which the king has worn, and a horse
which the king has ridden, and on whose head a royal ornament
is set. The apparel and the horse are given to one of the king's
most noble princes, that he may array in this apparel the man
whom the king delights to honour, and bring him on horseback
through the open square of the city, and proclaim before him,
"So is it done to the man whom the king delights to honour!53 \
Afterwards the king may even give this man the royal seal, and
so appoint him Grand Vizier over 'his whole house*, so that 'all
the princes of the provinces, and the satraps, and the governors,
and the royal officials3 do his will, because fear of him has fallen
upon them9; for such a man has become c great in the king's
house, and his fame spreads throughout all the provinces, for
he becomes more and more powerful5 (Esther vi, 7-10; viii, 2;
ix, 3f.). In this account from Esther of how the Persian king
Ahasuerus (Xerxes) exalted the Jew, Mordecai, we have a more
or less contemporary and authentic description of how the Jews
xiii, 9; xx, 20; xxiv, 20; Job xviii, 5f.; xxi, 17!*.) displays or even alludes to any con-
nexion with forensic conceptions or legal terminology. When the * staff3 or sceptre
of kings and tyrants is said to be broken, the metaphor obviously points to military
operations. The extinguishing of a man's lamp in his tent merely means that the
tent is deserted, and the man and his 'house' extirpated; but the metaphor affords
no clue to the way in which this has happened. The metaphor depicts the condition
of the lost man's tent, and not some symbolic act which brought about this condition
or ratified it. Similarly, Snaith (in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy Presented to T. H.
Robinson) thinks that the prophet speaks here about the execution of justice in the
sense of strict justice (hornet] , and that 'wait* means that the Gentiles are waiting with
dread for this execution of justice. It is clear that in xlii, 3, the metaphors do not point
to any action by the Servant as a judge, but to his preaching as a prophet, preaching
which is for edification, not condemnation. The 'judgement' and 'instruction', which
he * brings forth' and 'establishes', denote (as Bentzen, at least, realizes) the true
religion; cf. Volz's reference to the Arabic din, which also means both 'judgement' and
'religion*. Of any act of condemnation or sentence (Begrich) there is no mention.
Lindblom (The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah, pp. 15-17) also finds 'juridical terms' in
xlii, 3, and holds that xlii, iff., describes kingly activity, an idea which is influenced
by his view of xlii, 5-9 as the prophet's own interpretation of xlii, 1-4; see Addit-
ional Note XII. On the interpretationofxlix, 1-6 as presenting the Servant as leader of the
returning exiles, see above, p. 192. de Leeuw (De KoninkLijke Verklaring van de Ebed~
Jahweh-^angen) does not seem to have advanced any argument for the royal interpreta-
tion of the Servant other than those examined above and in the following pages.
220
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
of that period imagined that a man was honoured, before whom
even the great and the kings (the Jews regarded the great satraps
of the empire as kings, and more than kings) must be silent because
of his wonderful exaltation, and who (in the military metaphor)
would have the great as his portion, and give the strong as spoil,
i.e., would receive power and authority over high-born and power-
ful men. The author of the Songs about the Servant of the Lord
was a Jew, and thought in the conceptions and metaphors of the
day. When he wants to describe the unexpected and wonderful
exaltation of a man from the deepest contempt to the highest
honour and recognition, it is these conceptions and metaphors
from the royal court which are ready to hand. The fact that he
uses them does not mean that he thinks of the man in question as
a reigning king.
By way of analogy, we may refer to the way in which the writer
of Wisdom describes the exaltation of the righteous after the last
judgement:
Therefore they shall receive a glorious kingdom,
And a diadem of beauty from the Lord's hand
(Wisd. ofSol. v, 16).
The righteous will one day receive royal rank and adornment as
the reward of their righteous piety; but the writer does not, of
course, imply that they are actually kings. It would be quite mis-
leading here to say that the righteous as such are thought of and
described in terms of the oriental royal ideology.1
Attempts have also been made to find in the Servant's fate
another (and contrasted) feature from oriental kingship, a feature
which is supposed to explain the whole of the poet-prophet's
thought about the Servant: it is precisely as a sufferer that the
Servant is a king, the very suffering being a fundamental element
in the royal ideology. It was part of the Babylonian New Year
ritual that, on the sixth day of the festival, the king was led by the
chief priest into the temple, in front of the chapel of the god
Marduk. There he was stripped of his royal insignia, which the
priest laid down before the god. On behalf of the god, the priest
slapped the king on the cheek and treated him with dishonour;
and the king had to kneel, and make a confession of sin, and offer
a prayer of penitence. He then received absolution; and Ms king-
ship was restored to him, in return for a promise to care well for
1 Diirr, Ursprung wnd Ausbau; cf. Ms Psahn no im Lichte der nemrm dtorimtoKschen
Forsckungen.
221
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Babylon and the temple of Marduk. On that condition, Marduk
would overthrow all his enemies before him. He was then arrayed
again in his regalia.1 It has been maintained (the Catholic
scholar, Diirr, was the first to do so) that the thought of the
Servant's vicarious atonement through humiliation and degrada-
tion was influenced by these rituals from the Babylonian New Year
festival,2 and that this very feature provides the explanation of the
figure of the Servant: he is the king, who, on behalf of his people,
atones, suffers, and dies, but is restored to Hfe. Such phraseology
has been used, particularly by Engnell and Widengren, in main-
taining the idea of the Servant as king. Complex, ancient associa-
tions are supposed to be involved; and we must therefore examine
this hypothesis more closely.
Whereas Diirr contends merely that the Servant of the Lord is
depicted in the guise of the penitent king, who suffers and makes
atonement, Engnell regards the ritual itself as a cultic expression
of the death and resurrection of the king, and accordingly holds
that in this ritual he is identical with the god, as he supposes him
to be elsewhere in the cult. He believes that the cult had this
form and this significance, not only in Babylonia, but also in
Canaanite Ugarit, and in Israel3 The Servant is thus the king-
god in his atoning passion, death, and resurrection,4 which Engnell
regards as typical elements in the kingly character, and as part of
the religious, royal ideology as it is expressed in the cult. Widen-
gren seems to share this view.5
In my opinion, the evidence that in the cult the king was held
to be identical with the god in his suffering, death, and resurrec-
tion, is very slight.6 Even for Babylonia it merely suggests that,
as in the mystery religions, those who took part in the cult shared
in the experience of the god as they witnessed the enacting of his
1 Zimrnern, Zum babylonischen Neujahrsfest II; Pallis, The Babylonian Akitu Festival.
2 See Dtirr, Ursprung und Ausbau, pp. I25ff.; most recently Nyberg in S.E.A. vii,
1942, pp. 66f£; Widengren, in R.o.B. ii, 1943, p. 71; Engnell, Divine Kingship, pp. 152
n. i, 170 n. 4, 176 n. 4.
3 Divine Kingship, Index, s.w. * "Passion*', penitence, and "death" of the king'.
4 Op. cit., Index, s.v. £Ebed Yahweh'; see especially pp. 152 n.i, 170 n. 4, 176 n. 4;
cf., however, B.J.R L. xxxi, i, 1948, p. 6.
5 R.o.JB. ii, 1943, p. 71 ; cf. S.E.A. x, 1946, pp. 66£F.; see alo Religionens varld*, pp. 31 if.
The advocates of this supposed 'ideology of the cultic death of the king' find much of
their material in cultic texts concerning the dying Tammuz, which are to be found in
Witzel, Tammuz-Liturgien und Verwandtes. Rowley, too, finds in the Servant features
from the suffering king (The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays on the Old Testament,
pp. 6 1-88).
6 See my review of the books by Engnell and Widengren, in N.T.T. xlv, 1944,
pp. 7ofF.; see also above, pp. 41, 48flf., 84ff.
222
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
fortunes.1 The texts do not support the substantial identity which
Engnell assumes, and which would mean that in the cult there
was no consciousness of any distinction between the god and the
king. The king may, indeed, have played the part of the victorious
god. As the god's earthly vicegerent, he was also his champion,
and represented him in his conflict and victory; but the king's
death was not enacted. It is quite out of the question that in
Israel such a conception should have existed and found expression
in the rituals of the cult (see above, pp. 843*.). Both in Babylonia
and elsewhere, the rituals show quite clearly that the king's part
in the cult was primarily that of a man, interceding and sacrificing
as an intermediary on behalf of the people.
In the penitential ritual of the Babylonian New Year festival,
it is quite clear that the king appears as the representative of men
before the god, humiliating himself before him, and being restored
by him. The texts do not suggest that his atoning penitence and
self-humiliation on behalf of the people are regarded as a spiritual-
ized c death'. It could, of course, have been so regarded in the
thought and language of religion, as the New Testament some-
times regards conversion as a 'death'; but there is no necessary
identity between the two ideas. There is, therefore, no ground for
regarding the ritual of atonement at the New Year festival as an
expression of the resurrection of the king and the god of vegetation,2
or for maintaining that the suffering was an essential feature of
the royal ideology.
Nor is there any ground for regarding the Babylonian ritual,
with the king's atoning penitence and humiliation at the New Year
festival, and the mythical conceptions which may possibly lie
behind it, as the pattern of the description of the Servant of the
Lord. There is nothing to suggest that the Babylonian rite of
atonement was used in the temple at Jerusalem during the
monarchy, although, of course, on many occasions the king acted
1 Cf. also Bentzen, King and Messiah, pp. 26fF.
2 Nor may we draw this conclusion, as Durr (Ursprung undAusbau, p. 140) and Engnell
(Divine Kingship, Index, s.v. 'far puhV] appear to think, from the fact that in certain
circumstances it was customary, in order to avert dangers which threatened the king,
to choose a substitute king (&zr puhi}, who was arrayed in royal insignia, and was
perhaps sometimes killed as a sacrifice. See Labat, Royautt, pp. io3ff.; Frankfort,
Kingship, pp. sGaff.; and cf. above, pp. sSflf. The redemption of the life of the king
and the people by the sacrifice of a substitute has nothing to do with the death and
resurrection of the vegetation god, and does not prove that the king's atonement and
penitence were regarded as a cultic death. Gadd (Ideas of Divine Rule, pp. 48ff.) also
regards the repeated investiture as a ceremony by which power was renewed, not as
a resurrection.
223
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
as the cultic representative of the people on days of penitence and
at festivals of atonement.1 An instance of this has been mentioned
above,2 namely Ps. cii, which obviously reflects a penitential rite
in which the people is embodied in its leader to such a degree that
the oppression of Jerusalem may be presented as his own personal
suffering and illness. Certain features also suggest that this psalm
belonged to the penitential rites of the New Year festival. But
in the texts there is nothing to suggest that the king was dethroned
and reinstated; much less that he was supposed to die and rise
again. As the representative and embodiment of Jerusalem, he
bears her sufferings, and performs the atoning rites and prayers,
which will induce Yahweh to intervene and save. There is here
no mention of any vicarious suffering, still less of vicarious suffer-
ing, which, as in Isa. liii, is misunderstood and unappreciated.
The most that can safely be said about such cultic c patterns5
is that the work of the Servant must be considered against the
background of the general ideas of fellowship and mutual responsi-
bility between the community and its representative, ideas which
are expressed both in penitential ritual, such as lies behind Ps. cii,
and in the conception that the penitence and atonement of one
may avail for the others whom he represents. It is perhaps in-
correct to call this 'vicarious suffering5, at least in terms of a
strictly legal theology. The representative of the community can
do penance on its behalf precisely because he is its representative
and embodiment. But gradually such ideas are rationalized. The
vicarious element can survive, even after the ancient view of
'corporate personality3 has passed away. In the same way, animal
sacrifice can be interpreted as 'vicarious', which does not accord
with its original significance.
The conception of a vicarious office, as we find it in the religion
and cult of Israel, is, therefore, one of those general ideas which
underlie the Servant's vicarious atonement. Just because it formed
part of the general theory of the cult, it could easily be adopted as
an explanation of the guiltless suffering of the Servant. But this
provides no explanation of the origin of the idea of the Servant's
death and resurrection; and still less are we justified in concluding
that the king was the model for the portrait of the Servant. Even
before the time of Deutero-Isaiah, there had for long been in
1 Durr, Ursprung und Ausbau, pp. isgf.
2 See above, p. 84 ru 4. The annual Day of Atonement (yom kippurim], on the
tenth of Tishri, originally formed part of the New Year festival; see Ps.St. II, pp.
224
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Israel others besides the king who could make vicarious atone-
ment. The part played by the High-priest in the ritual of atone-
ment in Lev. xvi (P) certainly goes back, in its main features, to
a considerably earlier period.
In this context we may also point out that there is an essential
difference between the Babylonian king's ritual penitence and
humiliation and the suffering of the Servant. Before the king was
abased, he was king; and he became king again afterwards. It
was a drama in three acts: exaltation, abasement, and again
exaltation. In the Servant's life there are only two acts: a time of
ever-increasing abasement, followed by elevation to a height above
anything previously attained. Even if the Babylonian ideal of
kingship was one of the specific cultic data which provided the
general cultic background for the origin of the idea of the atoning
worth of the Servant's suffering, there is still nothing to show that
it was precisely this specific datum which, in the first instance,
determined the poet's conceptions; and there is nothing in his
description to show that he thought of the Servant as a penitent
and atoning king.
Even the title, 'Servant', has been taken as evidence that the
Servant is thought of in terms of the royal ideology. 1 It is, of
course, true that, both in the east generally and in Israel, the king
is the c servant' of the deity in a special sense.2 Not only is he a
worshipper; but he has a specially intimate relationship to Him,
and an honourable task to perform for Him.3 This is also the
content of the conception of the Servant of the Lord. As we shall
see later, there is probably some connexion between the Servant's
status and title, and the same title in Canaanite religion and
mythology. But there is nothing to suggest that the title of Servant
was meant to indicate royal status. As a title of honour, and as an
expression of an active mission, the c Servant of Yahweh' is
applied in the Old Testament, as we have seen, first and foremost
to the prophets.4
1 Engnell, Divine Kingship, p. 152 n. I.
2 See above, p. 67 n. 3. On the expression in Babylonia, see p. 38.
3 See Mowinckel in JV. T.T. xliii, 1942, p. 25. On the servant conception in the Old
Testament and in the Semitic east, see Lindhagen's exhaustive treatment in The
Servant Motif in the Old Testament: a Preliminary Study to the *Ebed Tahweh Problem9 in
Deutero-Isaiah. Lindhagen produces abundant evidence to show that, in the east,
'servant' denotes a vassal king, and thus designates the king as the vassal of the god.
Obviously; but it does not follow that every lebe& is a vassal king, and that every
'ebed of a deity is a king.
4 See above, p. 218 and n. 2. Widengren in R.o.B. ii, 1943, pp. yoff., also
maintains that the Servant is thought of first and foremost as a king who suffers, dies,
and rises again. He argues from the fact that the Servant is compared with the tree
225
a
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Some scholars have also maintained that the figure of the Ser-
vant as a withered shoot has been derived from the royal ideology.
Strictly speaking, this figure denotes the dying god of vegetation;
but it is argued that the god is represented in the cult by the king.
Therefore., this figure shows that the Servant is a royal personage.
But even if the conception of the tree of life, which dies and
blossoms again, and that of the king-god who dies and comes to
life again, are the ultimate background of the form in which the
thought of the Servant's death and resurrection is expressed, this
still does not prove that the Servant was thought of as a king.
For in both Babylonian and Israelite religion these figures under-
went a process of ' democratization'; i.e., in the rites and prayers of
the cult, they were used at first to describe the king's relationship to
the god, to support faith in his deliverance from affliction, and to
justify prayers for that deliverance; but later the rites and the
language came to be applied to ordinary men and their relation-
ship to the god.1
The same is true of the influence of the form of the psalms on the
thought of the Servant's death and resurrection, and on its develop-
ment (to this point we return below). It is true that, both in
Babylonia and Israel, the vivid language of the psalms about the
deliverance of the worshipper from the realm of the dead was
1 This is admitted by both Widengren and Engnell. It follows that the point ceases
to be relevant to the historical and exegetical interpretation of the Servant's identity,
and affects only the ultimate origin of this or that feature in the portrait.
(or * shoot*) which withers (and conies to life again; though this latter point is not
mentioned in the text); and rinding here (perhaps rightly) an echo of the ideology and
cultic symbolism of the vegetation god, he goes on to maintain (like Engnell) that,
in the cult, the tree represents the king. But the sources quoted by Widengren and
Engnell do not provide any support for this; see my review in N.T.T. xlv, 1944,
pp. 77f. Widengren makes further reference to a number of supposed royal traits in
the Servant. But his treatment is too superficial. In Isa. Ixi, iff., the speaker is not
the king, but the king's herald, i.e., the prophet. The royal functions cannot without
more ado be transferred to the herald or prophet. Accordingly, Isa. xi, 1-9 does not
prove anything about the Servant. When Widengren refers to slsa. xlii, 1-7 . . .,
xlv, 1-7 and xlix, 1-13 J, he is confusing two quite different matters. The first Servant
Song consists of xlii, 1-4 not xlii, 1-7. In vv. 5-7 there is a complete change of subject,
as is shown by the new introductory formula, and by a consideration of the stylistic
structure of the prophetic oracles. What we have here is an oracle to Cyrus; see
Haller in Eucharisterion I, pp. 2 Gaff.; Mowinckel in £.A.W. xlix, 1931, pp. 94ff.;
G.T.M.M.M. Ill, p. an. xlv, 1-7 is also an oracle about Cyrus, and proves nothing
about the conception of the Servant, although it is true that the author of the Servant
Songs transfers to the Servant-prophet tasks which Deutero-Isaiah has attributed to
the king (Cyrus); see below, pp. 224^ Nor can xlix, 1-13 be used as evidence. The
Servant Song consists only (pace Engnell, B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, p. 18) of vv. 1-7.
Once more, a new subject is introduced at v. 8, which was originally addressed to
Israel. It is unfortunate that Widengren and Engnell do not give more heed to
questions of style, and to the study of the history of literary genres, which help us
to define the limits of the individual prophetic sayings with greater certainty.
226
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
originally applied to the king. But in both religions the psalms
and the rites associated with them came to be used of ordinary
mortals. The c royal style' in the psalms, and the echo of it in the
description of the Servant's destiny, do not therefore in any way
prove that he was thought of as a king.
There is yet another way in which the sufferings of the Servant
have been taken to prove that he is depicted and conceived as a
king. In Babylonia these sufferings are characteristic of the god
Tammuz. But, it is argued, in the cult the king is identical with
Tammuz; therefore the Servant is the suffering king in the cult1
The syllogism lacks cogency, because, as we have seen (see above,
pp. 84ff.)5 there is no valid evidence either that the king in
Israel was Tammuz, or that his part in the cult involved suffering.
It is true that there are certain features in the description of the
Servant which go back ultimately to the conception of Tammuz
(to this we return below) ; but this has no bearing on the question
whether the Servant is depicted as a king.
There is, however, some truth in the contention that certain
royal traits have been transferred to the Servant. The point is not
only that he will one day be exalted to be the equal of kings, but
that, of his mission as Servant, it is said that he will be a light to
the nations, and bring forth right religion in the earth (xlii, 4;
xlix, 6). It is well known that, both in Israel2 and elsewhere in
the east, the king is regularly described as the sun rising on man-
kind, giving light and warmth, and creating life.3 In particular,
the Babylonian sun god Shamash is also connected with justice
and law.4 There is nothing surprising in the transference of these
ideas to the Servant, since the author of the Servant Songs expli-
citly transfers to the Servant those expectations and metaphors
which Deutero-Isaiah had applied to King Cyrus (see below, pp.
244f.)« The decisive fact is not the origin of these expressions in
the c royal style'. In the Servant Songs they have acquired a new
meaning, which is determined by the prophetic call. It is by his
proclamation of the true religion that the Servant becomes the
light of the nations, and the means of establishing right conditions
1 Engnell, B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, pp. 4ff.
2 2 Sam. xxiii, 3b, 4; Ps. Ixxii, 5, 17; cf. Ps. ci, 8; Mic. v, ib.
8 In Egypt, the king Is the son and incarnation of the sun god. Among the Hittites
his official title was *the Sun*. Hammurabi was installed as king *to rise like Shamash
(the sun god) over the black-headed people (mankind), and to light up the land'
(Code of Hammurabi I, 40); etc.
4 See Meissner, Babylorden und Assyrian II, p. 20; Schroeder in %.A.W. xxxiv, 1914,
p. 6gf.
227
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
in Israel and to the ends of the earth. The Servant is a prophet, who
will bring to Israel the salvation which was in ancient times
expected of the king, and more than that; but he will accomplish
it by methods quite different from those used by the king, or the
future king, for the deliverance of his people.
In the main, then, the Servant is depicted as a prophet, and not
as a king.1 If it can be shown that, in the east, prophetic powers
and titles were often associated with the king, that is here of no
importance. In Israel a clear distinction had come to be made
between king and prophet. The author of the Servant Songs
represents the outlook of the prophetic circles in an age when there
were no kings. For him the functions and powers which he attri-
butes to the Servant are clearly prophetic.
Admittedly, the Servant has this formal connexion with the
future king or 'Messiah', that he is associated with the realization
of the future hope. But in this he plays a part which far exceeds
what is usually ascribed to the future king, in that he is not merely
a leading figure in the restored nation, but himself directly instru-
mental in die restoration of Israel, and co-operates in the fulfil-
ment of the future hope. Again, the means employed by the Ser-
vant in the fulfilment of his task differ from those usually attributed
to the 'Messiah'. The Servant works by the prophetic message,
the divine word. It is said, of course, of the Messiah in Isa. ix,
1-6, that he uses his mouth as his instrument, but there the point
is that he kills his adversaries with 'the breath of his mouth'; he
is the warrior who fells them, not the missionary prophet who
convinces them.
Since there is also not the slightest indication that the Servant
was thought of as a scion of David,2 it follows that he is not thought
of as a 'Messiah' in the Old Testament sense. Rudolph, for
instance, is quite wide of the mark in holding that the Servant's
task in relation to Israel is that of a general, a statesman, and a
ruler, as well as a prophet and a teacher. There is not the slightest
suggestion that the Servant will use military and political means
in 'bringing back' Israel.
Similarly, Bentzen is wrong, when (partly following Nyberg)
he thinks of the Servant as a new Moses, who will lead back the
1 This is emphasized by Lagrange in Lejudalsme avant Jdsus-Christ, pp. 37gf.
2 I disregard Gressmann's fantastic notion that the background of the Servant
conception is King Josiah and an annual festival of lamentation for him (Der Messias,
pp. 324^). All that is needed to refute this view was said by Holscher in his review of
Gressmann's book in Deutsche Literaturzeitung 13, IX, 19303 cols. 1729*1 Gf. Bentzen,
King and Messiah, pp. 63f.
228
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
exiles to Jerusalem in person, and re-establish Yahweh worship
there.1 The Servant's task is not political, but purely spiritual.
He is the prophet who will bring about the conversion of Israel;
and then Yahweh will provide for the home-coming and restora-
tion of Israel.2 In the Servant we find no trace of the political
element., which was always present in the 'Messiah' of the Old
Testament, even when the religious element was predominant.
As we have said, we may at most speak of metaphors drawn from
the political sphere, from oriental court life, or from predatory
tribal expeditions. The Servant is neither 'an exilic Messiah \ as
^ and Messiah, pp. 651! To a certain extent Bentzen here takes up again
Sellln's idea of the Servant as a new Moses; but he discards Sellin*s fantasies about
the martyr death of the historical Moses, tie appeals to the well-known fact that,
on occasion, Deutero-Isaiah thinks of the home-coming of the exiles as a new Exodus
through the wilderness (cf. Ps.St. II, pp. 198, 335); and he maintains that in xlix,
5f. and 8-12 the Servant is described as the new Moses or Joshua, who leads the
people back and brings about a new apportioning of the land after the return. This
latter point is wrong: xlix, 8-13 deals, not with the Servant, but with Israel ; and the
passage is quite independent of xlix, 1-6 (see above, p. 1 9 1 n. 4) . The logical subject of
the infinitives in m. 8b and ga is Yahweh Himself. The clause, * I have formed you
and made you a covenant of the people' (v. Be), would not be sufficient to show that
the poem deals with the Servant, even if it were original, which it can hardly be.
The basic passage, xlii, 6, deals with Cyrus. The thought in xlix, 8ff. is that in the time
of His favour Yahweh has heard Israel's prayer and has begun to help them to restore
the land, to repopulate the desolate cities, and to bring the prisoners out of the prison.
In xlix 5, there is no mention of bringing the dispersed people back to Canaan, but
rather of bringing them back to Yahweh, i.e., converting them. V. 6 must be under-
stood in this light. The return of those who have been delivered is here a consequence
of conversion, and, in that sense, it is the Servant's work. But there is no suggestion in
the text that the Servant is literally thought of as leading the people through the desert.
It is quite another matter that certain traits from the figure of Moses may have been
present to the mind of the poet, when he painted his picture of the Servant. To this
we shall return later. When Bentzen uses the expression 'Moses redivivus*, he pre-
sumably does not mean literally a resurrected or reincarnated Moses, but simply what
he calls elsewhere *a new Moses*. How the ancients themselves would have thought
of the matter is shown by the words of the angel to Zacharias in Luke i, 17, concerning
the Baptist: cHe wiU go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah3, i.e., he will be
equipped with the same spirit and power as Elijah had. The same interpretation must
be put on the words of Jesus in Matt, xi, 14, 'he is the Elijah who is to come'. (In the
English edition of his book, Bentzen makes it clear that the above is the sense in which
he uses the term * Moses redivivus5; see King and Messiah, p. 66 [Translator].)
2 Cf. Rudolph in %.A.W. xliii, 1925, p. 98. In support of his view, Rudolph contents
himself with referring to Isa, xlii, 1-4, 6, ya; xlix, 6b; and liii, 10, I2a? and further
(op. cit., p. 102) to xlix, 8, ga. The interpretation of liii, 10-12 is discussed above
(pp. 22of.). xlii, 1—4 says nothing about political activity; see above, and pp. igof.;
also Mowinckel in %.A.W. xlix, 1931, p. 94 n. 4. xlii, 6f. is not part of the first Servant
Song, but deals with Cyrus ; see above, p. 189 n. 2. Of xlix, 6b, the same may be said as
of xlii, 1—4: it mentions the prophetic and religious activity of the Servant; see above,
pp. igsf. Staerk rightly makes the same point in %.A.W, xliv, 1926, pp. 245f- like
xlix, 7, xlix, 8, 93 has no connexion with xlix, 1-6, or with the Servant poems as a
whole, but belongs to an independent poem, xlix, 7-13; see Mowinckel in %~A.W.
xlix, 1931, p. 104 n. i. Accordingly, my own former statements about * Messianic
features' in the portrait of the Servant (Der Kmdit Jahwas, pp. 3 if.) are misleading,
I made them because I did not then realize that xlii, 5-7 does not belong to xlii, 1-4
(op, cit,, p. 2 n. 8; cf. pp. 7f.).
229
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Rudolph calls him,1 nor, in Gressmann's phrase, *a prophetic
Messiah ', unless we take the term 'Messiah' in a sense entirely
different from that which it has elsewhere in the Old Testament,
and throughout the whole of the Old Testament period, and read
into it a New Testament content. But such inaccurate use of
terms is misleading, and therefore objectionable by scholarly
standards.
In fact, the poet's conception of the Servant goes far beyond
anything that the other prophets of Judah ever thought or
imagined about their c Messiah'. It is not of a c Messiah' that the
poet speaks; but he has a vision of a prophetic figure who would
in time include within himself and supersede the Jewish Messiah.
But the picture of the Servant also includes features which go
beyond the usual picture of the Old Testament prophet. The
prophet is a man of words, a man with a message to proclaim.
But the Servant reached the climax of his vocation, when he no
longer proclaimed a message, no longer s opened his mouth', but
remained silent,
as a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
as a ewe that before her shearers is dumb (liii, 7).
The Servant's life is his real work.
But we may recognize in this a link with earlier ideas about a
prophet's person. Since his words possessed an active power, the
prophet did not only predict coming events; as God's agent, he
brought them to pass. Originally, the prophet had this signifi-
cance because of his c power-charged actions '. When he performed
symbolic acts (such as shooting 'an arrow of victory for Yahweh,
an arrow of victory against Aram'), according to ancient Israelite
thought, these acts brought to pass the events which they repre-
sented, and which the accompanying words described. The pro-
phet could himself be a powerful 'symbolic' agency of this kind.
For example, Yahweh made Isaiah walk c naked and barefoot
for three years \ in order to bring down the same ignominy on the
allies of sinful Israel, the Ethiopians and Egyptians (Isa. xx).
Jeremiah had to walk about with an iron yoke upon his neck, in
order to illustrate and bring to pass the fate which awaited Judah
and the other peoples of Western Asia, slavery under the yoke of
the king of Babylon (Jer. xxxvii f.) . But the prophet's whole person
1 Neither a 'Messiah.5 nor 'exilic'; see below, pp. 254!?.
230
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
and life may be a sign of this kind.1 He is no longer his own
master. Yahweh may even devastate his personal life in order to
use him in this way as a powerful 'portent' to attain His purpose.
So it is with Jeremiah. Yahweh forbids him to marry and have
children,, or to have any human or social intercourse with his
neighbours, to go to a house of mourning, or a party, or a wedding.
In short, he cuts himself off from his natural environment, from
all the sources of his life, and sacrifices his entire natural life, in
order to be a vehicle of the message of doom which he has to con-
vey to his people. That he felt it to be a grievous disaster and curse
is evident from his complaints about his mission, as he sits alone
because Yahweh's hand is upon him, and he is filled with Yahweh's
own indignation.2 In the same way, Ezekiel has to swallow a
scroll c with lamentations, and mourning, and woe written on the
front and on the back'. He has to let all the disaster which will
befall Jerusalem afflict his own person, lying bound three hun-
dred and ninety days for Israel, and forty days for Judah, and
cbear their punishment'. cAnd behold I shall put cords upon
you, and you will not turn from one side to the other, till you
have completed the days of your siege.' During this time he
will eat bread by short weight, and drink water by short measure,
and disregard the rules of cleanness, because this will also be
Jerusalem's lot during the siege. Yahweh will take away from
him the desire of his eyes, his wife; and he may not mourn for
her, or do honour to her memory in accordance with customary
decorum. In this way, Ezekiel will be a portent to the Jews,
indicating that the same fate will befall them all, the loss of wives,
sons, daughters, and kinsfolk without their being able to lift a
finger to help them.3
In this way, the prophets often had to share the burden of
punishment for the people's sin. The suffering and the martyrdom
to which the prophets (particularly Jeremiah, so far as we know)
were exposed in fulfilling their mission, were endured by them
because of the people's sin, certainly not willingly, and with a
strong sense of the injustice of it, but still as a consequence of their
efforts to bring the sinful people to conversion, penitence, and
salvation. They had to make their whole lives and their very
selves to be a powerful 'sign', which would bring about the
1 Isa. xx, 3; viii, 18; Ezek. xii, 6, u; xxiv, 24, 27; Zech. iii, 8; c£ Keller, Das Wort
OTH ds " Offenbarttngsteichen Gottes", pp. 4gff.
2 Jer. xvi, 1-13; xv. 17; xx, 7b.
3 Ezek. iii, 8-1 Oj iv; xxiv, i6ff.; cf.*also xii.
231
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
realization of Yahweh's punitive will for the people (see above,
pp. 23o£). It meant suffering and martyrdom for the sake of the
people, the suffering of the righteous on behalf of others. But
there is no question here of atoning suffering.1 Thus, what is said
of the Servant of the Lord goes far beyond the normal suffering of
the prophets. He becomes the necessary means of bringing about
others' confession of sin, conversion, and salvation, by voluntarily
(yet perhaps without himself knowing why) allowing his own life
to be destroyed, and suffering an undeserved and ignominious
death, deprived of descendants and renown, being * taken away
from protection and right5.
Yet this idea is based on the experience of the prophets and their
deepening insight. It has been mentioned above (p. 228f.) that
some scholars have seen in the Servant a new Moses. To later
ages, Moses was the prophet par excellence, the pattern for all
prophets.2 An important element in the tradition about Moses
is his constant intercession for the sinful people. He is even ready
to die, in order to appease the wrath of Yahweh against the people;
and the punishment for their sins falls on him as well.3 It is quite
possible that the memory of these ideas helped to form the portrait
of the Servant in the mind of the poet-prophet.
It has sometimes also been maintained that Jeremiah was the
pattern for the description of the Servant of the Lord.4 As a
major explanation it is incorrect. But the two are alike in bearing
unmerited suffering for the sake of the people, although they were
'righteous' and in their suffering were guiltless. What distin-
guishes the attitude taken to the sufferings of the Servant from that
of Jeremiah and the other earlier prophets to what they had to
endure, is that the author of the Songs has found the explanation
of the suffering. It has a positive purpose in God's plan for the
salvation of the people and of all peoples, whereas Jeremiah
could but moan in his pain. Only after the wildest attempts at
rebellion did he attain humble submission to the incomprehensible
God, and even then did not discern any purpose in his suffering.
1 Cf, L. B. Paton in J.BJL. xlv, 1926, pp. mff.
2 Deut. xxxiv, 10; c£ xviii, 15; Hos. xii, 14; Isa. Ixiii, nf.
3 Exod. xxxii, 3iff.; Dcut. ix, iTff., ssffl; i, 37; iii, 26; iv, 21. See Bentzen, King and
Messiah, p. 66.
4 Duhm in Das Buck Jesaia1; Volz, Jesaja II, p. 188; most recently by Nyberg in
S.E.A. vii, 1942, p. 80. The idea is advanced in a somewhat artificial way by Farley
in E.T. xxxviii, 1927/8, pp. 52 iff.
232
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
All that has been said above justifies the view that the figure of
the Servant in some sort sums up the entire prophetic movement
and its experiences down through the ages. This is the core of
truth in the wrongly expressed idea that the Servant is 'the
personification of the prophetic order or of the prophetic move-
ment'. The ideas revealed in the description of the Servant con-
stitute a climax in Old Testament prophecy. The whole line of
revelation history in prophecy and in Israel's spiritual history leads
up to the thought of the innocent, suffering Servant of God, who,
by his message, his suffering, and his death, reconciles men to God,
'intervenes '3 cpays the forfeit of his life*. What later ages expected
of the true prophet was that he should stand in the breach for the
people, and avert Yahweh's wrath.1 According to the later view,
this was what Moses tried to do, offering his own life to achieve it
(see above; Exod. xxxii, 1-14, 30-2). Time and again, several of
the prophets felt themselves impelled to the service of atoning
intercession, even after judgement of death had been passed on
the ungodly people.2 Thus, elements from the tradition about the
prophets and men of God in the past may well have been incor-
porated in the poet's description of the Servant.
It is by no means impossible, but rather probable, that some
influence was also exercised by the thought of other persons
'intervening5 with God on behalf of the community by means of
intercession and rites of atonement (features from the functions of
priest or king as cultic mediator). We shall return to this point
below (ch. VII, 4). But there is no evidence in the texts that such
influence came from the Babylonian ideas and rites mentioned
above.
The general background of the conception of the Servant has
been referred to above. It is the ancient Israelite conception of
the common life of society. All the members of the nation form a
unity, a totality, an organism. Therefore, one member can atone
for another, as long as they all willingly and consciously identify
themselves with him, his person, and his work. Accordingly, it
was natural for the poet-prophet both to describe the Servant in
prophetic terms, and also to express his interpretation of the Ser-
vant's work, the redemptive purpose of his death, in metaphors and
phrases drawn from the vocabulary of sacrifice, where we moderns
might have preferred to use psychological categories and terms.
1 Ezek. xiii, 5; xxii, 30; Ps. cvi, 23.
2 Amos vii, 2, 5; Jer. ill, 22-5; vii, 16; xi, 14; xiv, I3f.; cf. Isa. Ixiii, yff.
233
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
4. The Historical Background of the Thought of the Servant's Resurrec-
tion and the Atoning Significance of His Suffering
What has been said above about the Servant as cthe Ideal
prophet' still leaves unexplained how the unheard-of notion of
his resurrection from the dead could arise in the thought and faith
of the poet. But this idea, too3 has its precedents in earlier Old
Testament thought.
We must first consider ideas and expressions from the psalms
of lamentation and thanksgiving. In accordance with the ancient
Israelite thought of illness and misfortune as akin to death,1 those
who are suffering, or those who have been healed, speak of their
illness (or of other menacing, deadly dangers) as a descent into
Sheol, a sojourn in the grave, a real death.2 From this state of
death they pray to God to deliver them; or they thank Him
because He has done so. From our modem point of view, it might
be said that these are only figures of speech; and certainly there
was in ancient Israel no expectation of a general resurrection.
But it is equally certain that men were firmly convinced that God
could work such a miracle if He wanted to do so.a In the reality
of ordinary, everyday life, it did not happen. But it could happen;
and then the effect, and the consequences for the relationship of
men to such a God, would be even greater than what the psalmists
often described as the consequences of the healing and deliverance
for which they prayed. In this connexion, it is also worth noting
that the psalms often describe in vivid language how God's
miraculous deliverance of the sick or the afflicted will make kings
and nations be amazed and praise the God who performs such
1 Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp. I53f., 443^-; cf. also Index, s.v. * death5.
2 Cf. Gunkel-Begrich, Einleitung in die Psalmen, pp. 185!?., and references to sources.
3 See i Kings xvii, lyff.; 2 Kings iv, i8ff.; cf. xiii, soff. On the Old Testament belief
in resurrection, see Nikolainen's discerning, but somewhat rationalizing book, Der
Auferstehungsglauben in der Bibel und ihrer Umwelt I, pp. gGff., and Birkeland's valuable
review in 3.E.A. xiii, 1948, pp. 43ff. (see also St.Th. Ill, i, 1949/50, pp. 6off.). Birke-
land is entirely right in Ms contention that the preparation for such a faith is present
both in the Ganaanite conceptions of the death and resurrection of the god (see below,
pp. 2$sf.) and in the faith in Yahweh as 'the living God' or 'the God of life3, who con-
stantly renews 'life*, and raises it from death when He comes in the festal cult. But
what is involved is 'life' in general, the life of the cosmos, of nature, and of the people,
not the life of the individual. Riesenfeld ( The Resurrection in E&kiel XXXVII and in the
Dttm-Euwpos Paintings, pp. 3fT.) tries to establish a connexion between these two
thoughts, by supposing that the king, as the embodiment of the people, symbolically
died and rose again in the ritual of the New Year festival. Against this arbitrary
theory, see above, pp. 50, 848"., and Additional Note V. Riesenfeld antedates the
sources, and also obscures the issue by confusing individual resurrection and the
renewal of 'life* in the festal cult. On resurrection in the Psalms, see Ch. Barth, Die
Errettung vom Tode in den individmlhn Klage-itnd Dankliedern des Alien Testamentes, and my
Offersang og sangqff&r, pp. 24off.
234
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
mighty acts. Ps. xxii is an adequate illustration of this; cf. Ps.
cii, i6ff., where the worshipper is a representative of the people
(Zion), and describes in even stronger terms than Ps. xxii, the
impression which his deliverance will make among nations and
kings.
We are therefore justified in saying that, from, one point of view,
the Servant is described after the pattern of the innocent sufferers
in the psalms of lamentation. He is the ideal innocent sufferer. 1
But the psalms still regard this suffering from a negative point of
view. It is unreasonable and incomprehensible, something to be
avoided. Accordingly, this formal pattern provides no explanation
of the positive value of the Servant's suffering.
Yet there is a certain connexion. The innocent sufferer in the
psalms is very often the king, who represents the people,2 In the
crisis brought about, for example, by the attack of the enemy, he
is described as the person who is chiefly threatened or afflicted by
the disasters; in fact, he suffers on behalf of all. And in the ritual
of days of penitence and expiation, it is the king who, on behalf
of the whole people, humbles himself and does penance before
Yahweh. He brings before God the need of all. It is his wonderful
deliverance that makes all the godly rejoice, and makes kings and
nations praise Yahweh.
It is very probable that the conception, in the psalms, of de-
liverance as a resurrection from death, owes something to the
influence of general eastern ideas about the dying and rising god,
his descent into Hades, and his return to life to restore life. It is
probable, too, that there is here a conception which helped to
mould the thought of the death and resurrection of the Servant of
the Lord.3 We have seen (above, p. 82) that the worship of such
dying and rising fertility gods was also a fundamental feature in
Canaanite religion. From Ras Shamra-Ugarit we have different
versions of the myth about such gods. The religious idea is not
merely the belief in the resurrection of the god himself, but also
the meaning which it has for men. Through the resurrection of
1 See Mowinckel, Der Knecht Jahzvds, pp. 53!*. ; cf. Stamm, Das Leiden des Unschuttigen
in Babylon und in Israel, pp. 4ofF.
2 See provisionally Birkeland, Die Feinde des Individuums in der israeltiischen Psalmen-
literatur, pp. 1146°*., i28ff.; in greater detail, Mowinckel, Offersang og sangqffer, ch. VII.
3 This was first maintained by Gressmann (Ursprung, pp. 328ff.), and later by many
others, most recently by Nyberg, Engnell, and Widengren. See EngnelPs Divine
Kingship, where he sets out the sources, and his paper in B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948. The
idea is referred to with caution by Bohl, De "Knecht des Heeren" injesaja; cf. Gressmann
in Z.A.W. xlii, 1924, pp. 156^
235
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the god, or his coming to life again in his son, life itself is raised
from the dead, blessing is created anew, salvation is won for men.
They share in this salvation by taking part in the cultic representa-
tion of the death and resurrection of the god, in the rites of mourn-
ing and the festal joy, in 'weeping and laughter5;1 and they
experience the same fate, and are filled with divine power in the
rejoicing, the ecstasy, and the display of power in the festal drama
at the high places. In all parts of the east there were heard
laments and hymns of rejoicing in honour of deities of this kind,
who were everywhere alike in their character, whether called
Tammuz or Marduk as in Babylonia, Osiris as in Egypt, Adonis
as in Phoenicia, or Aleyan-Baal as at Ugarit. In a special way,
through the king as the representative of the community, and
through his central role in the cult, the people experienced and
shared in the god's resurrection power, were filled with life, and
rescued from the threat of death. Through him they all experi-
enced the fate of the god; and the god became the c archetype*
of the people.2 As in Israel (see above, pp. 234f.)5 so in Babylonia
this idea was used to describe the 'state of death5 experienced by
the sick and afflicted, from which they were raised up by the god
when cured or delivered from affliction.3
The description in Isa. liii of the humiliation, death, and resur-
rection of the Servant is also influenced to some extent by the
style of such psalms. From one point of view, that chapter is
written in the style of a c belated dirge3 in honour of the Servant —
belated, since the Servant is described as dead and buried long
before, and because the Song is a recognition of the glory and the
achievement of the dead man, which the speakers confess that they
ought to have made long ago. It has been maintained4 that the
noteworthy, and (in the Old Testament) very unusual idea of
one person dying and rising again for the salvation of his covenant
brothers arose under the influence of such mythical conceptions,
which thus acquired a new and deeper meaning. There is every
reason to believe that this is true. It is supported by the similarity
1 Gf. Hvidberg, Graadog Latter i det Gamle Testaments, and references to the literature.
Baumgartner surveys the Ras Shamra discoveries and the most important literature
in T.R. (N.F.) xli, 1940, pp. 163^.; xiii, 1941, pp. 851!, i57f.; T.£. iii, 1947, pp. 8iff.,
and my review of Hvidberg's book in JV.T".T. xl, 1939, pp. i6ff.
2 Gf. above, pp. 39, 43, and especially pp. 49f.
3 Gf. Bohl, op. cit.; Gressmann, in %A.W. xlii, 1924, pp. isGf.
4 E.g., by Gressmann, both in Urspnmg and in Der Messias; similarly Diirr, Ursprung
imd Ausbau; most recently Nyberg in S.E.A. vii, 1942, p. 64, and Engnell in B.J.R.L.
xxxi, I, 1948.
236
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
In both style and thought, a similarity which extends even to
details. As the Babylonian Tammuz is compared to a tamarisk
which had no water to drink in the garden, and whose crown sent
out no branches over the steppes, so it is said of the Servant that
He grew up as a sapling in dry ground,
and as a root out of arid soil (liii, 2).
The other expressions which describe the lowliness and wretched-
ness of the Servant in his sufferings can be paralleled in the
Sumerian and Accadian psalms to the dead Tammuz.1 But of
course these similarities do not prove that the Servant was thought
of as a dying king-god. They are conventional poetical terms which
are applied to the Servant as appropriate in descriptions of suffer-
ing. But the very existence of such conceptions, applied to the
dying and rising god, may have helped to give rise to the thought of
the Servant's resurrection, or rather may have provided expression
for the thought when it had arisen in the prophet's mind as an
inspired postulate of faith. What actually happened was that the
ancient myths, with their concepts and phraseology, were ancillary
influences, when the thought of the Servant's suffering, death, and
resurrection emerged. But this latter thought is on another and a
higher plane than the Babylonian and Canaanite myths, on the
personal, moral plane, not the amoral plane of nature.
Not only the main idea of death, resurrection, and the meaning
of salvation, but also the Servant's title is paralleled in the Canaan-
ite myths. In the epic poem about the legendary or mythical
King Karit, who was probably originally a form of the dying and
rising god Aleyan-Baal, or Tammuz Adonis, and bears his name
Nacman or Nucman, the Lovely One,2 this divine king constantly
bears the title, 'bd 9tt, cThe servant of El (the supreme god)'.
Here, e servant' does not mean merely the worshipper of the god,
but also his favourite and representative, who is under his special
protection. We may also note that the Babylonian king, who
represents the people in penitential atonement, is also called the
c servant' of the god.3 Probably the fact that in the old myths and
legends the conception of a saving death and resurrection was
connected with one called cthe servant of the god', helped the
1 See the collection of such, phrases made by Engnell in B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948,
pp. 26-9.
2 See Albright in B.A.S.O.R. 63, Oct. 1936, p. 28 n, 22, Ginsberg adopts a different
view (The Legend of King Keret, pp. 35f.)»
3 See Diiny Ursprwg und Ausbau, pp. 137, 149 n. 59a.
237
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
prophet of Isa. liii and his circle to grasp the Idea that a similar
destiny awaited the special 'Servant of Yahweh5, whom they
knew, or for whom they were hoping.1 This assumes that the
Servant was already known as Yahweh's servant; and being a
prophet, he would be so known, as we have seen above (p. 214
and p. 218 n. 2).
In the light of these ideas in the prophets and the psalms, to
which we have referred, the question might well arise concerning
the meaning of those sufferings which befell the pious. The
psalms do raise this question, but usually offer no answer, Yah-
weh's ways are past finding out. In the wisdom poetry the ques-
tion is taken up. Job's three friends advance the usual answer:
the sufferings of the righteous are disciplinary trials, chastisements,
and warnings.2 But here the whole question is the meaning of the
suffering for the person concerned. Job denies that the usual
answer can have universal validity. It was only in later Judaism
that it became customary to speak of the suffering of the righteous
as atoning for others.3
The question naturally arises whether, in the earlier Messianic
conceptions of the coming deliverance, there were any tendencies
which might have led to so novel a reorientation in the future
hope as the thought of the Servant of the Lord and the value of
his suffering for others, even if this reorientation is away from the
Messianic hope. The answer is that there is such a point of con-
nexion; and here elements from the conception of kingship enter
into the portrait of the Servant*
Among the sayings about the future king, there is the passage
in Jer. xxx, 2 if. (see above, p. 172), in which his priestly office as
intercessor between Yahweh and the re-established Jacob is em-
phasized in a way rather different from that of Ps. ex. In the
psalm, the priesthood of the king is considered rather from the
king's own point of view, as the source and ratification of his
position of exalted power. But the passage in Jeremiah reflects a
very different underlying religious attitude. The ancient sense of
the need of a sacral mediator between the people and the deity
was not the expression of a feeling of essential unworthiness in the
community, so that it needed a mediator of an essentially different
character from itself. When, at Mount Sinai, Moses is asked to
1 See MowincM in JV.T.T. xliv, 1943, pp. z^ff.
2 See Mowinckel, Diktet om Ijob og hans ire venner, pp. igff.
3 See Sjoberg, Gott und die Sunder, pp. 174!!
238
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
speak with Yahweh on behalf of the people3 the reason Is that the
tokens of the theophany which they have already experienced
have overwhelmed them and filled them with holy awe. Moses
Is able to go, because he has already spoken with Yahweh, and
therefore knows by experience that he does not run the same risk
as the people, of being killed by the dangerous divine revelation
(Exod, xx, 18-20). In ancient times, the chief or the king, being
the leader of the cult, was also the natural individual embodiment
of the collective supreme ego of the people, just as the fellowship
of the covenant is objectively represented in the person of the
natural leader of the people. When, by a cultic act, Yahweh has
made a covenant with Moses and the elders of Israel, He has
thereby also made a covenant with Israel (Exod. xxiv, i, 9-11).
The covenant with David is identical with the covenant with
Israel. But, of the two, the covenant with Israel is fundamental,
whereas the covenant with David is a later specific instance of it,
which, as Deutero-Isaiah promises, will be re-established by
Yahweh's act in once again treating Israel as His chosen one,
bound to Him by covenant. It was not necessary that the king
should act as cultic leader. In place of him, any really representa-
tive person might act as the embodiment of the community, and
as the connecting link with the deity: the priest, the tribal sheikh,
the chief of the family, the head of the house- The cult and its
duties were felt to belong to more normal conditions. But in the
passage from Jeremiah, the meaning is that, because of the sins of
the people, the covenant has been suspended, and with it the
direct relationship with Yahweh broken, until the king returns.
In the present evil age, before the new covenant is established,
the people cannot have immediate access to Yahweh and His
blessings. The passage clearly reflects the ever-deepening con-
sciousness of sin in post-exilic times. The passage is therefore
rightly interpreted in the gloss which has been added; 'for who
would (dare to) engage his heart to approach me, says Yahweh*
(Jer. xxx, 2 1 b) . As long as the community is under the judgement
and wrath of Yahweh, none of its members dare risk his life by
appearing before Him. Therefore Yahweh must Himself appoint
and authorize a man for this task, a king of David's line; and
through his constant intercession in the cult, the new covenant
will be upheld for ever.
The explicit formulation of the covenant, which will be re-
newed when * Messiah' comes, puts this passage in line with others
239
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
from about the same time, partly in the short collection of promises
in Jen xxxf, partly in the book of Ezekiel, which speak of the new
covenant which Yahweh will make with the people at the restora-
tion,1 save that these sayings have advanced a stage further in
the recognition of what was lacking and what was needed before
restoration could take place. Here we meet a tendency among the
disciples of the prophets, who recognize that it is not enough that
the people should be freed, and a king of David's line be restored:
if salvation is to come, the people must become a new people
from within. Yahweh must take from the breast of each one of
them the stubborn, selfish, unbelieving, and disobedient heart of
stone, and give them a heart of living flesh instead. To discard
the metaphor, they need a new spirit, and only God can give it.
It is not enough that God's commandments are written on tables
of stone, and are laboriously inculcated, discussed, and inter-
preted. Under the new covenant, God will put His law in their
inward parts, and write it on their hearts, so that they need no
longer teach each other, saying 'know the Lord*, for they will all
know Him. God's commandments must invade men's lives
through the emotions and the heart, so that obeying them becomes
natural and a matter of course. When this happens, CI will be
their God, and they shall be my people'. Of special importance is
the explanation Yahweh gives, why and how this can take place:
cfor I will forgive their iniquity, and will remember their sin no
more' (Jer. xxxi, 34). The factor in the people's life which hinders
the renewal of the covenant and the realization of Israel's hope
is their unforgiven sin. Here, again, we meet the growing conscious-
ness of sin and the longing for atonement which marked the post-
exilic age, which also finds expression in the development in the
Priestly Code of the sacrificial system into an ordinance of atone-
ment.
The passage about the priestly office of the future king must be
understood in the light of these sayings, as is shown by the
emphasis which they all lay (partly in identical terms) on the
thought of the renewal and content of the covenant (see Jer.
xxx, 22 and xxxi, 33). In the period from which these passages
come, the priest's most important function is to * approach'
Yahweh in order to make atonement for sin. Sin makes it a fatal
act to approach Yahweh, even in the cult, which from ancient
times was held to be the safe and obvious way of approach without
1 Jer. xxxi, 31-4; Ezek. xxxvi, 256!; xi, 19; xviii, 31.
240
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
forfeiting one's life, provided the prescribed rules were observed
(c£ Exod. xxviii, 35). Now, it was the priest's task to attend to all
the necessary offices of atonement. The laws lay such emphasis
on the importance and value of their atoning offerings and
ceremonies, and these cultic acts form so important a part of the
daily and festival services, that one might well imagine that the
community must have a sense of security and forgiveness, as being
freed from sin* Yet time and again we meet the signs of conviction
of sin, as an almost dominant feeling in the life of the post-exilic
community. Men did not feel quite safe, in spite of all the daily
endeavours of the priests after atonement. This attitude is the
background to the longing which underlies a promise like that in
Jer. xxx, 2 if. In certain prophetic circles, particularly those which
preserved the idea of the future king as the central blessing in the
restored commonwealth, the thought would sometimes arise (as
an extension of the ancient ideas associated with kingship) that
this king would be a better king, and a more acceptable mediator
between the community and God, one who could approach
Yahweh, bringing atonement for sins, so that the new covenant
could function normally.
It is in this setting that we must view the origin of the Songs
about the Servant of the Lord. Behind them we discern the
longing, the hope, and the certainty felt in some prophetic circles
concerning one who will effect a new and better atonement for
the sin of the community, a person who is not a 'Messiah5, but
who advances from another sphere within the future hope, and
displaces the ideal king. For, as we have seen, a feature which is
central in the conception of the Servant is the thought of the
conversion of Israel, and of the need to do something to achieve
it, the thought of the need of reconciliation between Israel and
God., and the thought of a mediator who could effect this atone-
ment, and thereby, also, the conversion of Israel and its religious
and moral renewal.
5. The Historical and Religious Background of the Conception of the
Servant
Throughout the above description of the person, mission, and
work of the Servant, and of the conceptions associated with them,
the question of the authorship of the poems has not been raised.
All that has been said remains valid, whether the Songs come from
Deutero-Isaiah or from another prophetic author, possibly one of
241
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Ms disciples. The interpretation of the content and message of the
poems is in itself independent of the question of authorship. This
point ought to be taken for granted, once it is realized that the
individual prophetic sayings are independent units, which, as a
rule, both can and must be understood each in its own light, * and
were not originally presented as parts of a connected 'book' or
extended 'speech*.2
In the following discussion of the historical basis and the specific
historical background of the poems, the argument will be based
on a conception of their age and authorship, which will be dealt
with in a later section. Strictly speaking, this support is unneces-
sary. Our view of the authorship is, in fact, the result of a purely
exegetical examination of the thought of the poems, in relation to
the sayings and thought of Deutero-Isaiah. But to keep these two
questions entirely separate would lead in part to repetition, and
in part to a confusing presentation of the argument. Accordingly,
in the discussion which follows, reference will sometimes be made
to points which arise from the inquiry to be made below, namely,
that the Servant poems are rather later than Deutero-Isaiah, and
are best understood as a later development, and, in part, modifica-
tion of his thought and message.
There was as yet no organic connexion between all the prevail-
ing Jewish ideas about suffering, atonement, and restoration des-
cribed above. A £ catalyst' was needed. Here it is obvious that an
important part was played by general historical and religious
conditions and experiences within the Jewish community.
We shall understand more clearly the longing for a saviour and
mediator, if we try to see the Servant against the background of
Deutero-Isaiah's glorious promises, irrespective of whether they
come from a later period in his own life, or from one of his
disciples (see above, p. 241).
1 See Mowinckel, Propheg? and Tradition pp. 36ff.
2 Accordingly, Sidney Smith (Isaiah Chapters XL-LV, p. 54 n.) is wrong in. maintain-
ing that a correct interpretation of the poems must of necessity be based on the
assumption, that they belonged to the Deutero-Isaianic collection from the outset.
This does not agree with his admission, cthat each complete utterance is logically
independent and must be judged by itself, without preconception, is one of the great
advances due to recent work* (op. cit., p. 22), a statement which is also not in accord
with his rejection of Gattwigsforsckung (op. cit., p. 1 1). It is, therefore, by a misunder-
standing (caused in part by the mode of expression in my article in £.A.W. xlix, 1931)
that Sidney Smith holds that I reached the conclusion that the Servant poems are not
by Deutero-Isaiah, on the basis of my theory of the arrangement of Deutero-Isaiah's
sayings according to catch-words. I had reached that conclusion long before, as a
result of a comparative, historical examination of the ideas which they contain.
242
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
With exuberant enthusiasm, Deutero-Isaiah had announced
that Yahweh would soon fulfil, through Cyrus, Israel's hope for
the future, in a manner far exceeding all her expectations and all
practical probability. Deliverance is already at hand. Yahweh
is on His way; He has already given the world into the hands of
Cyrus; Cyrus will soon send the exiles home, restore Yahweh's
temple, and build His city. Then Yahweh Himself will come as
king, and enter into His house. From the ends of the earth, gifts
will flow thither, and homage be rendered. Israel has already
done 'double5 penance for her sins (xl, 2). She has already been
converted, and is a people cwho understand what is right, and
have My law in their hearts', and on whom Yahweh, after a
moment of wrath, has had compassion with everlasting love
(li, 7; liv, yf.). The glory will now exceed all imagined bounds.
The temple was really rebuilt. A company of Jews returned.
A scion of David was for a time governor in the province of Judea.
And that was all ! None of the wonderful things happened which
had been prophesied by Deutero-Isaiah, Haggai, and Zechariah.
Conditions were cramping and oppressive; the times were drab
and cheerless. Before long, the pious felt that they were in a
minority. Their brethren ' hated them for My name's sake', and
derided them for the hope of restoration by which they lived. In
the community, all the old heathen practices and ungodliness were
rampant.1 Neither the fall of Babylon nor the victory of Cyras,
neither the return nor self-government, neither the restoration
nor the scion of David had achieved anything. What then?
It is to this situation that the Songs about the Servant of the
Lord apply. Some one is needed who can 'bring Israel back to
Yahweh', one who, in the power of Yahweh's spirit, and with the
right words, can give strength to the weary, one who does not
'break a bruised reed' or 'quench the dimly burning wick*, one,
who can 'bring forth right religion5, the true, upright piety, faith
and righteousness, both in and beyond her borders. Some one is
needed to 'step into the breach' for the sinful people, one through
whom the miracle may take place to make them confess their sin
and be recalled from the paths in which they have strayed, one
who can intervene on behalf of sinners. Before the restoration can
take place, there must be conversion, and atonement for their
hostility to God. But how? Who is to accomplish it?
The Songs about the Servant of the Lord presuppose that the
1 Isa. Ixvi 5; Ivi, gff; Ivii, iff.; Iviii, iff.; lix? iff; Ixiil, icff., 17; bcv, iff., nf.; Ixvi, 3.
243
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
prophetic circle, or Deutero-Isaiah himself, 1 was perplexed botk
about the 'Messianic work' of Cyrus, of which Deutero-Isaiah
had spoken, and about the political 'Messiah5 generally. What
was needed was another mediator of salvation than the people
had hoped and waited for. 'The arm of Yahweh3 must appear,
and 'arm itself with power3 in a different way and by different
means than those of which Deutero-Isaiah had thought, if his
words had hitherto been rightly interpreted.2 Before * righteous-
ness3 or 'judgement', in the sense of 'salvation* or 'restoration5,
can come, 'judgement', in the sense of right religion and godli-
ness, must be restored and propagated.3
It is at this point that we may speak of the importance of these
Songs for the Messianic expectation. They are not Messianic, in
either the earlier or the later Jewish sense of the term. But they
look for and predict a figure who actually replaces the Messiah,
or rather, who will be what the Messiah in the earlier period was
never thought of as being3 namely, a true mediator of salvation,
one who brings salvation to the people, who mediates that religious
and moral conversion and transformation, without which there
can be no salvation, and in which salvation supremely consists.
Deutero-Isaiah had intended that Cyrus should lead back the
exiles, and gather together the dispersed. In these Songs, it is the
Servant who is to do this.4 For Deutero-Isaiah, it is Cyrus whom
Yahweh has 'called by name3, and who will 'fulfil Yahweh's
will'. In the Songs, it is the Servant who has been called by
Yahweh and entrusted with this mission.5 Deutero-Isaiah had
thought that Cyrus would 'bring forth right order5 by his sword,6
or that Yahweh would do so by His miraculous power,7 and even
then he was probably thinking, as elsewhere, of Cyrus as Yahweh's
instrument in history. In the Songs, it is the Servant who will
'bring forth right religion (judgement, right order) cby his quiet
and patient preaching (xlii, i ff.) . Deutero-Isaiah says that Yahweh
Himself proclaims judgement (mispaf) and instruction (tdrdh) to
the far coasts; and it is for His 'arm5, and the 'judgement5 which
it brings, that the coasts are waiting. It is Yahweh's 'judgement5,
His establishing of right order by His miraculous word (mifpdt
1 This Is HempePs view in Z-S.T. vii, 1929, pp. 63 iff.
2 Isa. li, 9; lii, 10 (lix, 16; lxm, 5), taken along with Hii, i.
3 Isa. xli, 2 (with note in G. T.M.M.M. III) and xlii, 2, 4.
4 See Isa. xlii, 7; xlv, 13; together with xlix, 5!?.
5 See Isa. xlv, $f.; xliv, 28, contrasted with xlix, i; liii, 10.
6 Isa. xli, 2f.; xlii, 6; liv, 13.
7 Isa. xlvi, 13; li, 14!; cf. xlii, iff*.
244
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
parallel to tor ah], which Is 'the light of the nations'. The poet
of the Songs knows that it is the Servant who will establish right
order, and for his ' instruction' (tordh] that the far coasts are wait-
ing.1 In Deuterolsaiah, it is before Israel that kings and nations
will arise and prostrate themselves, marvelling at Yahweh's mighty
work. In the Songs, it is before the Servant,, when he is wonder-
fully exalted, that this will happen. ~ In short, what Deutero-Isaiah
regarded and expected as a work of 'Yahweh's Anointed, Cyrus',
or as a direct result of the revelation of Yahweh's mighty power^
to be seen in the fall of the Chaldean empire and the victories of
Cyrus, all this the author of the Servant Songs expected to come
from the Servant's prophetic preaching, his patient, vicarious,
atoning suffering, and death, and the resurrection which Yahweh
would grant to His 'righteous' Servant, in vindicating him before
the eyes of all the world. Sometimes word for word, the poems
echo thoughts and expressions from Deutero-Isaiah's preaching
about Cyrus, and apply them to the Servant. 'My righteous,
saving act (sede%) is near,3 says Yahweh in Deutero-Isaiah; 'near
is my Vindicator' (masdiki), says the Servant about Yahweh.5
Israel's enemies will be eaten up by the moth and the worm, says
Deutero-Isaiah; the Servant uses the same metaphor about the
destruction of his enemies.4 The compilers and editors of the
prophetic words preserved by the circle of disciples have gone
further in this direction, and interpreted Deutero-Isaiah's words
about Cyrus and Israel as sayings about Yahweh's servant, I.e.,
about the special Servant of the Lord who is the subject of the
Songs.5 The Servant has been set up as a contrast to Cyrus, and,
* Isa. li, 4ff., contrasted with xlii, 4. 2 See Isa. xlix. 7, contrasted with. liii i*
s Isa. ii? 5 and I, 8. 4 Isa. H, 8 and 1, 9. ' ^"
f The juxtaposition of the Servant Song, xlii, 1-4, and the Cyrus oracle, xlii, 5-7, is
evidence of this. In xiviil, i6b we probably have an original Gyms text, which has
been altered and reinterpreted as a word about the prophetic equipment and mission
of the Servant. The interpolation of li, i$L also introduces the Servant as the agent
in the new * creation* of the world and of Israel, It is clear that these verses are an
editorial link, because v. 15 is a verbatim quotation from Jer. xxxi, 35, which is later
than Deutero-Isaiah (see Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M. Ill, pp. 29 iff., 389, 397^),
and because v. 1 6a = Jer. i, ojb (cf. also Isa. vi, 7) . Moreover v. 1 6 has echoes of Deutero-
Isaiah Js words in H, 13, which must therefore have been interpreted of the Servant by
the compilers or editors. Similarly, the gloss in xlix, 8b is intended to make xlix, 7-1 1
a Servant oracle. In xlii, !<)£., on the other hand, the people Israel is the * servant*,
to whom there are applied individual features from the special Servant; and we thus
have a 'collective' re-interpretation of the Servant, like the gloss * Israel* in xlix, 3
andxlii, i (G). See further, G.TM.MM. Ill ad loc. Another re-interpretatiou of
the Servant is presented by G and the theological tradition behind it: the Servant is
identified (in the light of L, 48"., and k, iff.) with the prophet himself, i.e., for the
translators, Isaiah, who in this way becomes an important esciiatological figure; see
Buler, Dig Verkundigtmg der leidmde Gotiesknecht aits Jes+ 53 in far grmhuchen BibeL
245
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
in general, as a contrast to the way in which the mode of restora-
tion Is presented in Deutero-Isaiah. 1
This contrast with earlier expectations is worked out in detail;
and it may well be that there is influence both from ancient ideas
about the fading and withering of the vegetation god, and from
the impression made by the historical person who perhaps lies
behind the Servant (see next section). The Servant is the opposite
of all that is humanly great and exalted, of all that is lordly, and
mighty, and masterful. He is not impressive or attractive; he has
no outward glory or majesty, but is unclean, despised, and for-
saken of men. The dirge does not describe him, as is usual, as a
flowering tree, but as a root in arid soil; not as a lion or an eagle
(cf. 2 Sam. i, 23), but as a ewe, dumb before her shearers (see
above, p. 200). But when he has been 'vindicated' (justified), he
will be the spiritual deliverer of Israel, and a light for the nations,
who will be won for the true religion by the miracle wrought on
him by Yahweh.
6. Is the Servant a Historical Person?
Clearly it will never be possible fully to explain the origin of an
idea like that of the Servant of the Lord in terms of historical
preparation or contributory conceptions and modes of thought.
It will always be a mystery how there arises in the mind of a
prophet a creative idea which profoundly influences the future.
What can be said about "historical preparation' is only a partial
help towards understanding the thoughts, experiences, and needs,
which had to be present in the environment, and in the minds of
men, before such an idea could be received and become influential
in revelation history.
Imperfect as our historical explanations may be, however, it is
natural to inquire whether the emergence of such an idea would
not require more specific and definite causes than the rather
general historical development and the merely formal similarities
in other ideas, to which reference has been made. In other words,
did the prophet relate his prophecies to any specific person, who
by his life and death may have been the 'catalyst', which caused
the figure of the Servant to be presented to the mind of the prophet,
who thereby realized what the Servant would mean for his nation
and for mankind? The question may also be put in this way: is
1 Hempel deals with this point in £.S.T. vii, 1929, pp. 63 iff.; but he holds that it
is Deutero-Isaiah himself who, in the Servant Songs, corrects his earlier view.
246
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the Servant a historical person who in the prophet's time had
already lived his life, or does he belong wholly to the future?
We have already seen what the Servant is, we now inquire whom
the prophet conceived him to be.
As in Isa, vii, we must again maintain that the prophet neither
saw nor sought to describe the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The
Servant is not crucified,, but dies of a disgraceful disease. After
his resurrection, the prophet expects him to receive earthly glory
and reputation, to enjoy long life as a human being, to have off-
spring, to be honoured by kings and princes, and so on. Thus, the
prophecy about the Servant is not directly GhristologicaL We
may say that this, like the other Old Testament prophecies, is
only indirectly GhristologicaL In Jesus Christ they are fulfilled
in a way beyond anything the prophet ever imagined. It is a new
fulfilment that comes to pass. God creates something new, a new
reality, which fulfils the prophecy in a higher sense than that of
which the prophets and their contemporaries were aware. God,
who inspired their thought and its expression, saw farther than
they did; but this can be realized only when the higher fulfilment
has come. In its light we can then see that God's thoughts were
higher than those of the prophets.
Nor is the Servant a Messiah in the Old Testament sense of the
word, as we have already seen. He is neither a king nor a scion
of David; and he has nothing of that political element which is
essential to the Messiah throughout the Old Testament period.
Scholars have tried in the most diverse ways to find a concrete
historical person whom the prophet may have had in mind in
describing the Servant, or who at least was the original of the figure
or of some of its essential traits: Moses, the leprous King Uzziah,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, the captive King Jehoiachin, Cyrus, Zerubbabel,
an unknown teacher of the law in the earlier age of Judaism^ some
unknown prophetic figure during the Exile, the prophet Deutero-
Isaiah himself.1 It is quite possible that certain earlier prophets,
such as Moses, and especially Jeremiah, served to some degree as
models for the portrait of the Servant (see above, p. 231). As we
have seen above, there is also some ground for the view that the
entire prophetic movement left in men's minds the picture of the
ideal prophet which was the final outcome of its historical achieve-
ment and experience, and that this helped to fashion the figure of
1 See the surveys referred to above, p. 187 n, 2. Coppeas revives SelHn's idea that
King Jehoiachin was the prototype of the Servant, but limits this to the first three
Songs. For the Fourth Song, the model is King Zedddah.
247
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
the Servant. Recently, Nyberg and Bentzen have emphasized
the element of contemporary history which lies behind the figure.
In a measure, he reflects the experiences of the prophetic circle
in the age of the poet-prophet himself, when the monarchy had
gone and the priesthood was diminished, so that prophetic circles
to a considerable extent exercised the spiritual leadership of the
people.1 But it Is quite improbable that the prophets thought of
a definite person in the more remote past, considering the note of
contemporaneity, and the direct relevance to the present and the
immediate future, which were characteristic of true prophecy, and
also the fact that the prophet here makes Ms contemporaries say
that they have themselves seen the Servant growing up and living
his life In their midst.2 The identification with the prophet him-
self3 Is very natural, because in two of the poems (xlix, iff. and
1, 4ff.) the Servant speaks in the first person. But it is refuted by
the fact that In ch. liii the death of the Servant (assuming that he
is a historical person) is described as having already taken place.
On a historical interpretation of this kind, what belongs to the
future is the real miracle, the resurrection and exaltation of the
Servant. The use of the first person in the two poems can also
be explained in another way, as we shall see below (pp. 25 if.).
The strongest Indications that a historical person was the
original of the Servant are the following: i. the concrete character
of the description, and the vivid Impression of something actually
experienced and witnessed; 2. the literary types used: the oracle
in which the prophet is called, and the prophet's message about
further oracles of this kind; his lament because of opposition,
together with his assertion of innocence and assurance that he is
heard and Yahweh's promise of help; his fellow-countrymen's
belated dirge, with their penitential confession and believing testi-
mony to the saving significance of the Servant; 3. the grammar of
1 Gf. Nyberg in S.E.A. vii, 1942, pp. 796".; Bentzen, King and Messiah, pp. 68ff.
2 The view that a prophetic personality from contemporary history lies behind the
picture of the Servant has been maintained in recent times, e.g., by Kittel, Gestalten
tmd Gedanken in Israel, p. 414; Rudolph in &A. W. xliii, 19225, and xlvi, 19128; and Nyberg
(see last note).
3 This identification was first made, with supporting arguments, by the present
writer in Der Knecht Jahmas, anji has been accepted by Gunkel (Ein Vorlaufer Jesu),
Balla (in Emharistenm I, pp. 2455*.), Haller (ibid., pp. 261 &), Sellin (in JV.Jf.£. xli,
1930, pp. 195$% in a somewhat modified form: the first three Songs being by Deutero-
Isaiah himself, the fourth about him by Tritp-Isaiah), Begrich (Studien z.u DeuUrqjesaja)>
Wolff, Jesaja 53 im Urdiristmtwn}^ Bentzen (mjesqja II; cf. King and Messiah, pp. 64ff.
and others. Sidney Smith also interprets the Second and Third Songs as sayings of
Deutero-Isaiah about himself, and the Fourth Song as written about him by one of
his disciples after his death (so Elliger and Sellin), but takes the First Song as about
Cyrus (see above, p. i$3 n. 27 p. 189 n. 2).
248
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
ch. liii, in which the earthly life of the Servant is described in those
verbal forms which are used of events which have actually hap-
pened (the perfect and the consecutive Imperfect), whereas from
v. 10 onwards the description of his resurrection and exaltation
passes over to the imperfect and consecutive perfect, which are
used particularly of future events. It seems that, for the prophet,
the earthly life and work of the Servant, his death and ill fame,
belong to the past and the present, whereas to the future belong
his resurrection and exaltation, and the effects of this miracle —
the confession of his adversaries (1, gff.; Hi, 15), the conversion and
restoration of Israel (xlix, 6; liii, ioff.), and the fulfilment of the
greater task given him by Yahweh: 'that My salvation may reach
to the end of the earth' (xlii, 3f.; xlix, 6). All this points to a real
historical person, who lived, worked, suffered, and died, who is
dead and buried, but who, according to the prophet's message in
these poems, will one day rise again and be highly exalted.
We must admit, however, that it is conceivable that the Servant
is a purely future figure, seen by the inspired imagination of the
prophet. The Hebrew verbal forms do not necessarily indicate any
definite time, but may all be used of past, present, or future,
according to the point of view adopted by the speaker. It fre-
quently happens that a prophet, in describing future events,
imagines them so vividly, and presents them with such lively
poetic force, that they appear already to have taken place (perfect
tense). This happens especially when the prophet adopts the role
of a poet, and puts his prophecy, for example, in the form of a
thanksgiving by the congregation for deliverance, as if the deliver-
ance had already been experienced, or puts into the mouth of the
people the prayer of penitence which he longs to hear them utter.
So it may be that the author of the Servant Songs takes the
spiritual experiences of the prophetic movement down through the
ages, together with the ancient ideas of supernatural saviours who
suffer, die, and rise again, and in his inspired imagination crystal-
lizes them all in the thought of, and the longing for, one who in
his own person will gather up all the sufferings of the godly, all
their faith, and confidence, and obedience, all they had endured
for the sake of the community, all their yearning for atonement
and forgiveness, and all their hope — will gather up all this in one
great, personal, vicarious act of self-commitment, which God will
reward by wonderfully restoring him, and by which the eyes of
the whole people will be opened^ Israel led to conversion and
249
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
restoration, and true religion spread to all the nations of the earth.
But there is no denying that the emergence in the Old Testa-
ment of so unusual a conception can best be understood if we
assume that it was linked with a definite person known to the
prophet, one who had in some measure fulfilled the idea of the
Servant which was present to the prophet's mind. Here, too, cthe
myth became flesh' (to quote Nyberg's characterization of Israel's
spiritual history) 1 before it was again spiritualized in the inspired
imagination of the prophet
This much, then, might be said of this historical servant of
Yahweh. He was a prophet from the same circle as the author of
the Songs, which in all probability was the Isaianic and Deutero-
Isaianic circle, which was responsible for the tradition about
Isaiah, and the collection and formation of the book of Isaiah.
Probably this prophet lived some time after Deutero-Isaiah (see
below) ; where, we cannot say; presumably in Palestine. He held
it to be his mission as a prophet to win his countrymen to true
conversion to Yafawefa, and a trusting and obedient observance of
Yahweh's commands, which would lead to the spread of this true
religion to other nations. It may be that in his environment active
missionary work was being carried on. Like every prophet, he
found the work heavy and seemingly hopeless; and sometimes he
despaired of everything. But God sustained him, deepened his
sense of vocation, and gave him a yet greater goal and wider
vision. God did this, too, in the sufferings, the disease, and the
ignominy which were his lot. He was enabled to maintain his
faith, and at least discerned that there was a positive divine pur-
pose in his sufferings. They, too, being vicarious and redemptive,
would serve to bring Israel back. After his death, his disciples (at
first, perhaps, only one of them) recognized the divine purpose.
He who had been misunderstood and rejected was in a special
sense Yahweh's Servant, the mediator of salvation and restoration
to Yahweh's people; indeed^ to all mankind. It was for the guilt
of others that he had suffered; and, as in the myths of ancient
times, God would perform a great miracle, raising him from the
dead; and by his very exaltation he would draw others to himself.
The poet has, of course, idealized the portrait. Every prophetic
interpretation and transformation of historical reality is an ideali-
zation. To contemplate an event in the light of inspiration, and
to interpret it prophetically, is to lift it to a higher plane than that
L vii, 1942, pp. 8 if,
250
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
of empirical reality. Therefore we shall never be able to dis-
tinguish with certainty between what the historical Servant him-
self thought and perceived of the meaning of his life, and what
deeper purpose the poet-prophet, or the believing circle before
him, found in the actual events of history. The entire spiritual
experience of the circle, the prophetic movement, and of Israel
throughout revelation history, left its impress on the portrait, even
if a historical person was its original. The portrait of the Servant
is the supreme spiritual legacy of the prophetic movement, its
ideal goal.
It is this circle's tradition and message about the Servant and
his soteriological significance that the author of the four Songs
proclaims, or, at times, makes the Servant himself proclaim by
putting the words into his mouth. It is significant that it is pre-
cisely the supremely personal experiences in this prophetic record
that he makes the Servant himself describe: anxiety, doubt, help
to stand fast amid suffering, derision, and persecution, confidence
in the help of God and the triumph of his cause, the revelation of
the wider mission (xlix, 1-6; 1, 4-11); whereas he makes the circle,
and all those in Israel who have come to a recognition of the truth,
express the interpretation of the Servant's work and his self-com-
mitment, its atoning and saving power (liii), the profession of
faith in the Servant, the proclamation of his work as the way to
salvation for others, which they must accept in faith, in order that
in his chastisement they may find their true welfare, and healing
by his stripes.
May we, perhaps, suppose that in the two poems in the first
person we have the Servant's own sayings, describing the personal
revelation of his call from Yahweh, whereas in the other two
poems it is the poet (and through him the circle, 'we') who
speaks? Or should find in all four the tradition, interpretation,
and faith of the circle? The existence of such an Isaianic circle
(appearing here as a Deutero-Isaianic circle) is a fact demon-
strated by direct and indirect evidence,1 Such a circle must be
postulated as the religious and sociological background of the
poems. In the ancient east, a circle of this kind is not simply a
1 Isa. viii, i6ff. The indirect evidence is Isa. lvi~lxvi, the so-called Trito-Isaianic
passages, which on the one hand present great similarities in thought and poetical
form to Deutero-Isaiah, but on the other hand differ from it considerably in historical
background, and in poetic and prophetic power. They give the strong impression that
they come from a generation later than Deutero-Isaiah, and are therefore best ex-
plained as prophecies from a circle of Deutero-Isaiah's disciples at a somewhat later
period.
251
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
fortuitous and indefinable group of people with the same outlook,
but a quite definite body, with a more or less fixed organization,
a 'family5 or 'house5, as it would be called in ancient Israel, a
'sect', in the oriental sense of the word, without the suggestion of
schism and heresy which is associated with the Christian use of
the term. Such a circle recognizes a definite authority (in this
instance the Isaianic tradition, the sayings, both of the master
himself and of later disciples, contained in the book of Isaiah),
and forms a religious fellowship, being, in other words, a cultic
association. Similarly, the ecstatic exercises of the old prophetic
guilds were not only a technique belonging to the prophetic office,
but were regarded as a form of religious service, a worshipping of
Yahweh and an experience of His presence.
In this circle (perhaps a smaller circle within the Isaianic circle)
the Servant became a central figure. It may be that he had already
become such during his lifetime, before disease and impurity made
even his own followers regard him as one 'stricken, smitten of
God, and afflicted9. Only after his death did he become of
supreme significance, when it was revealed to the circle what the
sufferings of the Servant really meant, and what kind of future
lay before the one who had been despised and rejected. Perhaps
this recognition divided the older Isaianic circle, producing from
it a smaller 'Servant circle*.
This recognition came to be the central idea in the 'theology',
the expectation, the very religion of the circle; but, in accordance
with the outlook of ancient Judaism, its cultic life as a religious
community would also be affected. When the circle met, the life,
death, and saving significance of the Servant would be preached:
this is implied in the word 'tradition' (semu*dh}> which comes at
the beginning of the Fourth Song. His mission and work were
made real for their thought and meditation, not only by the
penitential psalm about his death, with the assurance of his
resurrection, but also by the prophetic oracles of vocation, which
expressed his divine task and the promise attached to it, his
exemplary faithfulness in suffering and humiliation, and his stead-
fast belief and confidence in God. Here it would be natural to put
into the mouth of the Servant words about the promises associated
with his call, and about his steadfastness and unshaken faith in
God, and, as it were, to allow him to appear himself in the pro-
phetic circle and proclaim the conviction which God had given
him and was now giving them, that his cause would triumph, and
252
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
would lead to Israel's conversion. Ingathering, and restoration
and to the spread of true religion among all people. This cultic
interpretation enables us to understand the use of the first person
in the Second and Third Songs.
There are other examples in the history of religion of a central
figure of this type being introduced as speaking in the first person
in a cultic circle, even if he is no longer visibly present on earth.1
In this way, his spiritual presence is vividly brought home to the
minds of the members of the circle.
7. The Poet-Prophet and His Circle
In what has been said above, we have given some indication of
the author of the Servant Songs. A prophet who saw so clearly
something entirely surpassing and even contradicting important
features in Deutero-Isaiah's message can hardly be Deutero-Isaiah
himself.2
The literary forms used in the Servant Songs are also different
from those commonly used by Deutero-Isaiah. We do not find in
them the hymns which are so frequent in the latter; but, on the
other hand, no such combination of literary forms as occurs in
Isa. liii is to be found in Deutero-Isaiah.
The poet must be one of the prophets from Deutero-Isalah's
circle, one of the first or second generation of his disciples. For
the poet does not merely present a contrast to Deutero-Isaiah; on
the contrary, he not only follows Deutero-Isaiah, but goes beyond
him in his central ideas: the restoration of Israel, Yahweh5s won-
derful purpose of salvation, universalism in both Ms doctrine of
God and his conception of salvation. He also has the same poetic
and pictorial gift as Deutero-Isaiah. We notice that he adopts
figures and phrases from Deutero-Isaiah, and that not only in
1 One example is the song of the pearl In the Acts of Thomas (see Hennecke, Jfeutesta-
mentliche Apokryphen, pp. 52 iff.; James, Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 411-15) la wMch
Christ appears speaking in the first person, in what is manifestly a cultic song. In the
Gnostic Odes of Solomon this conception is also present; see Odes ix; x; xviii; xxii; xxviii;
xxxi; xxxiii; xli; xlii, in which Christ (the Anointed One) is introduced as speaking
sometimes throughout the poem, sometimes in part of it. Note also the literary rela-
tionship between Ode xxxi and Isa. 1, 4fT.
2 Lofthouse (in J.T.S. xlviii, 1947, pp. iSgff.) gives good grounds for the view that
the author of the Servant Songs cannot be Deutero-Isaiah. But he can hardly be right
in dating the Songs in the darkest period of the Exile (i.e., before Deutero-Isaiah), be-
cause the dependence of the Songs on Deutero-Isaiah is as clear as the features which
distinguish them. Rudolph (in %.A.W. xliii, 1925, pp. mff.) recognizes that the
Songs must be later than Deutero-Isaiah's (other) utterances; but since he holds that
the poet is Deutero-Isaiah himself, he takes the view that the poet modified and sup-
plemented his earlier sayings by adding the Songs to them. So also Hempel In Z^JS. T.
vii, 4, 1929, pp. 63 iff. But the view maintained above seems more natural.
253
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
order to impart to them a fresh nuance: cf. the simile of the
garment eaten up by moths, describing the disintegration of the
enemy; the thought that he cwill not be put to shame \ will not
let himself be overwhelmed by a feeling of shame; the interrogative
pronoun cwho', in the sense e if anyone'; the use of c fire' as a
metaphor for punishment; cthe far coasts \ in the sense cthe whole
earth*; 'chosen' (favourite) , as a parallel term for 'servant'; ethe
arm of Yahweh', as an expression of His omnipotence; etc.1
It appears, then, that in this circle of disciples, the Songs were
associated with the tradition about the words of Deutero-Isaiah3
and that the attempt was made to combine the two by the inser-
tion of small editorial links.2
Thus the Servant Songs come from a prophet in that circle of
Deutero-Isaiah's disciples, to which the Tritolsaianic prophecies
in Ivi-lxvi belong. This is corroborated by a distinct and striking
linguistic similarity between these prophecies and, in particular,
ch. liii.3 It is also corroborated by the marked spiritual affinity
between the Servant Songs and the prophet's description of him-
self, and testimony to his call, in the familiar passage Isa. Ixi, iff.
The spirit of my Lord Yahweh is upon me;
because Yahweh has anointed me,
1 Isa. 1, 9 and li, 8 (cf. ii, 6); 1, 7 and iiv, 4; I, 8 and xliv, 10; 1, n and xlvii, 14;
xlii, 4 and xl, 15; xlii, I and xliii, 20 (of Israel); liii, i and xl, lo; li, 5; Hi, 10. The
phrase about Yahweh Js word being put in the Servant's mouth, li, 16, alludes also to
the emphasis on His word in the Songs (I, 4; xlix, 2) .
2 See above, pp. 244! and p. 245 n, 5. The method by which the Songs have been
interpolated into the collection by means of catchwords (Sellin in %.A.Wf Iv, 1934,
pp. i8of.}, but not by the system of catchwords used in the Deutero-Isaianic collection
(see Mowinckel in £.A. W. xlix, pp. 2456".), might suggest that the insertion took place
after the latter had been committed to writing. But it is not strictly necessary to draw
this conclusion. Rudolph (in %.A.W. xliii, 1925, pp. nsff.) also notes the inconsistency
between the content of the Servant Songs and their present contexts, and also the
editorial additions which the interpolation has made necessary, both in the Songs and
in the Deutero-Isaianic passages. Cf. also Staerk (in %.A.W. xliv, 1926, p. 243), whose
arguments, however, are based on an untenable view of the composition of the book
(against which cf. Gressmann in g.A.W. xxxiv, 1914, pp. 2541!".). The view that
Deutero-Isaiah's sayings were arranged on the catchword principle is opposed by
Elliger in Deuterojesaja in seinem Verhaltms zu Tritojesaja, pp. 219-72. It Is obvious that
there are many instances in which the validity of individual catchwords may be dis-
puted; but this is less important than the fact that Elliger himself is obliged to admit
that the catchword principle affected the collection and arrangement of the material.
Similarly, Sidney Smith*s illustration of catchwords in xl, 9-1 1 (Isaiah Chapters XL-LV,
p. in) fails to dispose of the theory as a whole.
3 See Elliger, op. cit; Sellin in N.K.%. xli, 1930, pp. I45ff. The fact that most of the
examples occur in the Fourth Song is a natural consequence of the fact that it is the
longest. North (The Suffering Servant^ p. 173) rightly holds that Elliger*s linguistic
statistics do not prove that ch. Hii is the work of the same 'man* as Ivi-lxvi, or of
another than the author of the first three Songs. But if Trito-Isaiah is regarded not as
an individual but as a circle, to which the author of the Servant Songs also belonged,
the linguistic evidence supports the connexion.
254
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
has sent me with good news for the afflicted,,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to those who are bound,
to proclaim a year of grace from Yahweh,
a day of vengeance from our God.
If the explanation of the use of the first person in two of the
Servant Songs is that they were composed by the Servant himself,
it may well be that this prophetic saying also comes from the
Servant, and sheds light on his sense of call.1 At least, the passage
reveals something of the thoughts about the prophetic call, which
were current in the circle to which the author of the Songs belonged.
In deliberately referring to the words of Deutero-Isaiah, yet
reinterpreting and going beyond them, the prophet intended the
Songs to convey the new revelation which amplified what the
master had said by means of the portrait of the mediator of
salvation, the Servant, who would accomplish what was not
achieved by Cyrus, or by the restoration of the temple, or by the
governor of David's line — that conversion to Yahweh, without
which the glad tidings of the full salvation and restoration of
Israel could not be realized.
8. Relationship of the Songs to the Messianic Idea
Thus the message about the Servant far surpasses everything
in the Old Testament message about the Messiah (the future king),
his person, and his work. The Servant's task is to do the very
thing which was not expected of the future king, and which
experience had shown that none of the historical persons such as
Zerubbabel, with whom the future hope was associated, could
perform: to bring Israel back to Yahweh. The Servant will do
this, not as a victorious king, but by his suffering and death.
From the Jewish point of view, a suffering Messiah is a contradic-
tion in terms, and therefore ' a stumblingblock to the Jews'. That
is why Judaism never interpreted the Servant of the Lord as the
Messiah without drastic modification of the text and the portrait,
a point to which we must return later.
1 The similarity to the Servant Songs has often been felt; and the present writer
admitted (in Der Kwcht Jahwas, pp. i6fF.) the possibility of attributing Isa. Ixi, iff.
to Deutero-Isaiah and associating it with the Servant Songs. Gannon (in %.A.W.
xlvii, 1929, pp. 284^) seeks to show that Isa. bd, 1-3 really is a Servant passage.
Against this, however > there is the thought of * a day of vengeance from our God%
which is not entirely in accord with the Servant's message.
255
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
It is going too far to say that the Servant makes the Messiah
superfluous in the conception of the future. In the Old Testament
period, no one expected the Messiah to be instrumental in
establishing the kingdom of God. What the Messiah cannot do,
the Servant of the Lord will do. Therefore the thought of the
Servant is in itself compatible with the idea of a future king as
the supreme figure in the restored kingdom. The poet-prophet
would hardly think of the two conceptions as overlapping. Prob-
ably he never consciously thought of the relationship between
them. At least, there is no evidence to suggest that he did. But
we may certainly hold that a man, who looked forward to a
mediator of salvation like the Servant, would have little interest in
a Messiah in the Jewish sense of the word. He had seen something
at once more exalted and more profound than the Old Testament
Messiah. Accordingly, the thought of the suffering Servant of the
Lord had, broadly speaking, no influence on Messianic concep-
tions in the Old Testament and Judaism. That influence is first
seen in Jesus.
The influence of the Servant on the conception of the future
leads to a very important result. The Servant displaces the king,
and himself becomes king. The poet-prophet does not say so
explicitly; but something of the kind must have begun to dawn
more or less clearly upon his mind. He knows that kings and
princes will be silent, shutting their mouths in amazement, when
they see the glory and honour which are bestowed upon the one
who was despised and rejected. He announces that the Servant
will have 'the great for his portion, and the strong as spoil5 (or
perhaps we should translate [Yahweh] will * divide him a portion
among the great, and he wiU divide the spoil with the mighty *)
(Kii, 12). The Servant will receive princely rank and dignity, and
be not only the equal, but the overlord of kings, one before whom
they spring to their feet and shut their mouths in reverence.
What no Messiah, as conceived by the Jewish national religion,
could perform, the Servant performs. He is victorious, not only
over his opponents, but over the souls of men. He wins the hearts
of his own people and of his enemies, as he has already won the
hearts of the poet-prophet and the prophetic circle. They tacitly
discard the Messiah, and quietly replace him by the Servant, as
the overlord of kings and die plenipotentiary of God.
As we have seen, it is nevertheless possible that the conception
of the Servant was in many indirect ways influenced by the ancient
256
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
oriental ideal of the sacral king and by the thought of the king's
suffering and exaltation. Far more important is the fact that the
Servant is the legitimate child of the prophetic movement, and
its supreme realization.
It is, therefore, with justice that the Church has from the very
beginning seen in Jesus Christ the true fulfilment of these pro-
phecies. In this she has folio wed Jesus Himself. Just because Jesus
was something much more than the Jewish Messiah, and some-
thing essentially different, He found in the prophecies about the
Servant of the Lord a prediction of His own mission and work.
It was not until then that the figure of the Servant influenced the
thought of the Messiah, by giving expression to an essentially new
conception of the Messiah.
257
PART II
The Messiah in Later Judaism
CHAPTER VIIT
The Eschatology of Later Judaism
S in the earlier period, we must give, as a background to the
figure of the Messiah, a sketch of the eschatological concep-
tions to which he belongs.
i. The Future Hope and Eschatology
In earlier Judaism we may speak of a future hope and a hope of
restoration, essentially thig-MQlIdlyy B^tional, and political ijijJife
ractgr, but with important religious elements and a tendency to
give a mythical other-worldly colouring both to details, and to
the divine miracle which will bring it to pass. But we may
justifiably speak of an eschatology in later Judaism. We have
already seen that the change took place In principle when Deutero-
Isaiah set the future hope in a new light by the religious character
which he gave to it. He based the hope of national restoration
entirely on religion, and regarded it as tEe^uU^3Ta5(ro^cfive'
side of rSi^uousl-eality, namely Yahweh's epiphany, His coming
enemies and establish His kingly rule
»--.._* -««.„.._.
or kingdom.
From the religious point of view, the
thing would be 'the day of Yahweh', His enthronement and kingly
rule. The restoration of the nation and of the kingdom of David
would be the visible outcome, the objective fulfilment, of the day
of Yahweh. In fact, of course, the religious aspect might be de-
graded into a mere form, an e ideology' for the national and
political element; and no doubt it was merely that for many Jews
down through the ages. But, to the religious mind, Deutero-
Isaiah's conception means (though he himself may not have been
conscious of the fact) that the object of the future hope becomes
something absolute and definitive, which, being absolute, be-
comes cthe wholly Other', different from everything hitherto
experienced on earth, ^^othi^jca^
of God with its realization of God's purpose and wiU1 of the meianing
261
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
2f^S5^5^a^histcry,>and thus^ of eyery^ material and spintua
wish^and IdeaL The Imagination and the intellect do not seek to
see anything beyond this. It is definitive and final. It comes
ultimately to be consciously thought of as ethe eschaton9, what will
come to pass cin the latter days9,1 when all things return to their
original state. To that age there is consciously applied in escfaato-
logy that fundamental principle which was inherent in the con-
nexion with the New Year festival, and which is expressed with
essential simplicity in the Epistle of Barnabas (vi, 13); 'Behold, 1
make the last things like the first.3
This absolutej final, unsurpassed, wholly other, character in the
realization of the future hope can be expressed only in mythical
terais^ metaphorsa and colours. To see and express the wholly
other, intellect and imagination must lay hold of the thought and
form of myth. In this way the future state, in spite of its earthly
setting^ is lifted up into an other, transcendent, mythical sphere.
We may say that this means that the powers, laws, and conditions
of myth (i.e., of the religious and poetical conception of reality)
are brought to fulfilment in the world of reality, that the world of
the gods, the divine world, is brought down to earth. The myth
is religion's authentic mode of speech, to express the truth about
the invisible realities by visible media* True religion can never be
entmythologuierL
If, in spite of the scope of Deutero-Isaiah's conceptions, it seems
inaccurate to describe his message about the future as eschato-
logical, the reason is that he himself was unaware of its ultimate
and supra-historical character, and expected it (as he himself
says) to be realized as a result of the victory of Cyrus over Babylon
Nor does Deutero-Isaiah announce the fulfilment of an already
existing eschatology as a result of the appearance of Cyrus,
as has been maintained, particularly by Gressmann. Prophets
have, indeed, often identified the fulfilment of an already existing
eschatology with the contemporary historical situation, saying,
* Ui^Ja§t age has j^qme^ ajodjfl that we know about it Jj^jpowbe
Mfilkdl. But then they presuppose the existence of an eschatolo-
gical doctrine, which they reproduce. That is not true of Deutero-
Isaiah. He neither presupposes an eschatology nor consciously
creates one, saying, 'Now I announce to you what will happen at
1 Gen. xlk, i ; Num. xxiv, 14; Doit, iv* 30; xxxi, 29; Isa. H, 2; Jer. xxiii, 20; xxx, 24;
xlviii, 47; adix, 39; Ezek, xxxviii, 16; Hos. ill, 5; Mic. iv, i; Dan. x, 14; cf. Ezek.
.
262
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
the end '. He announces the national, religious, and moral restora-
tion of Judah and Israel by the power of God in terms and
conceptions which ultimately divorce that restoration from earthly
reality and lift it up among the miracles of the divine world.
Thus it finally becomes purely eschatological; but it is not yet so
in Deutero-Isaiah. In him all the presuppositions are present.
He can speak about the old or 'former' things and the 'new3
things, the creative, saving acts of the past and those which are
now to take place. These 'new' things are, admittedly, a repeti-
tion of the 'former3 things, but in a much more glorious way, and
on a worldwide scale, so that they appear to him as hitherto
unheard of, as das nie da Gewesene.1
2. Dualism
The Jewish future hope became eschatological in the strict sense
when it was linked to a dualistic view of the world. Dualism was
unfamiliar to the ancient Israelite, though of course he was aware
of the existence of evil powers, and knew that life was a constant
struggle to maintain blessing against the curse.2 Characteristic
of the dujalism ofjater Judaj.^]^
a.eons^ Jll^ (ha~*6lam haz-zeh and
ha-6olam hab-bd\ o alwv ovro$ and o alwv /^'AAc^), which were separ-
ated by a sharp transition, and which had each its own definite
time and character.3 This aeon was under the dominion of evil
powers hostile to God. Earlier Judaism held the evil world power
to be embodied in the successive great heathen powers which
ruled over the Jews. In later Judaism they were not distinguished,
but regarded as the effect of a cosmic, transcendent principle of
evil, Satan, the Devil, Beliar, Mastema, or whatever he might be
called.4 In this aeon the c kingdom of Satan' prevailed. Paul can
even call Satan cthe god of this aeon5.5 In this aeon there prevailed
misfortunes and evils of every kind; and it would reach its climax
in the throes of the Messianic age,6 a final intensification of the
dominion of all evil powers hostile to God, and of all sin and
wickedness. The coming aeon is the very reverse of this, the wholly
1 Cf. Bentzen in St.Th. I, 1947, pp. iSsff.
2 Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp. 44if.3 4538"., 4708*.
3 Bousset, Relig.\ pp. 277!^; Volz, Eschatologie*, pp. 64!!*.; Moore, Jndmsm II, p. 378,
and Index I, s.v. 'World to Come3.
4 Bousset, Relig.*, pp. 38 iff.; Volz, Eschatologie*, pp. 86ft% and Index, s.v. * Satan*;
Moore, Juddsm, Index I, s*v. * Satan*.
5 2 Cor. iv, 4; John xii, 31; cf. xiv, 30; xvi, n.
6 Weber, Jud. TheoL*, pp. 350!*.; Bousset, Relig,*, pp. 286T.; Volz,
pp. i47ff., and Index, s.v, * Wehe*; Moore, Judaism II, pp. 36if.
263
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
Other. In It, God would overthrow Satan's dominion, 1 fetter or
destroy all his angels or demons., extirpate all sinners, end all sin,
misfortune, and suffering, and establish His kingdom, assuming
His kingly rule. Israel, or the pious, would receive as their
reward all happiness and bliss2 OB a re-created earth or in a realm
beyond, in paradise, or in heaven.3 The Devil, his angels, and
the ungodly would be thrown into Gehenna, and suffer eternal
punishment.4
Thus we have here a dualism^ which is temporal*, spatial*. and
ethicair~iiTthe present, there was a conflict between God and
Satan, God had, as it were, withdrawn and left this world to
Satan and his power for a pre-determined period*5 The heathen
world-powers were representatives of the transcendent power which
was hostile to God.6 Originally God had appointed the angelic
powers to govern the nations as His deputies; but they had lapsed
into pride and sin, governing unjustly/ and becoming servants of
evil.8 B^when tie period had elagsed, cin the fullness of time',
God Himself would .assume the kingdom^ and then therrpre^ent
evil age .wpuld-.be,at-iW. ,cnd.
This dualistic view of life and of the world was worked out in
the course of the earlier Hellenistic period, no doubt under the
influence of Persian religion, s which was consistently dualistic
from the beginning. But the influence was that of Persian ideas,
not in their pure and unalloyed form, but in the form which they
acquired under the impact of the culture, philosophy, and world-
view of Babylonia, that is to say, from 'Chaldean510 syncretistic
religion, cosmology, and speculation. Here dualism has been com-
bined with a doctrine of ages concerning the destruction of the
world and its renewal after so many millennia, after which things
return to their original state, and the 'lastjthings become like the
first'.11 As a conscious principle, this sentence is the result of
influence from dualism and the doctrine of ages.
1 Bousset, A?%.2, p. 288; Volz, Eschatologie*, pp. 88, 3096"., 318,
2 Volz, op. cit.9 pp. 359-406.
* Bousset, J&%2, pp. 32421; Volz, Eschatokgie*, pp. 4o8ff.
4 Bousset, Rslig\ pp. 321, 328!*.; Volz, Esehatolo&e*, pp. saoffl
5 Bousset, jFfe%.2, pp. 279, a88ff.; Volz, Esckatologu*, pp. 1358!
6 Bousset, Relig.\ pp. 2506".; Volz, Esthatobgie*, pp. 83$. 7 Cf. Ps. Ixxxii.
8 Cf. Bottsset, jReKg.*, pp. S74&; Volz, E$ckatologie*f p. 170 and Index, s.v. *Engd,
die gefallenen '.
9 Bousset, Jfe%.*, pp. 57 iff.; BoMen, Die Vmwmdtschqft der judisch-christlidun mt der
parsischm Eschatofogie.
10 On tEe meaning of this term, see Jansen, Die Hemdigestalt^ pp. isff.; cf. Schnabel,
B&rossQS, Botisset, JRflig.\ pp. 548, 588; Reitzenstein-Scliaeder, Stotlien, p. 127.
n Cf. Barnabas vi, 13; see above^ pp. 142!
264
THE ESGHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
If more closely examined, however, this dualistic world- view in
later Judaism is seen to be the result of tendencies in the earlier
Jewish future hope, which was already dominated by the thought
of a time when Yahweh's kingly rule would put an end to all the
jnjustice3i sin3 and oppression which were prevalent since those
jwho had power in the world had abused the retributive and puni-
tive authority which Yahweh had given them, and were keeping
His people enslaved and dispersed. The mythologically conceived
picture of the change of fortune (sub ftbut) presented by Deutero-
Isaiah and the latest prophets was interpreted by later Judaism
(or, rather, by certain circles therein) in the light of dualism.
Thus the whole picture of the future was lifted up into the
transcendent, other-worldly realm, as a description of a world
order and an age entirely different from the present one.1
In its religious structure, the eschatology of later Judaism
actually reveals a more extreme form of dualism than that of
Persia, a dualism which extends further into the nature of man and
of creation, as a result of the clearer and more penetrating insight
into the nature of sin which is characteristic of revealed religion.
Persian eschatology presents us with a conflict between good and
evil, in which man can freely take sides, and contribute to the
result, God's victory over the evil power which, for some inexplic-
able reason, has existed from the beginning. In the eschatology
of the Bible and of later Judaism, we find an entire re-creation of
mankind and nature which, as the result of a fall and of the sin
which has become their nature, have come under the power of
evil, and would be destroyed if God did not intervene with His
miracle of restoration, carrying through His original design in
creation from the time when He saw that all things were 'very
good9.2 It must be noted, however, that the dualism which
develops from the Old Testament approach is one-sided in rela-
tion to the full biblical view of the world as God's creation and as
the place where His will will be done and His kingdom be mani-
fested. .In Jater. Judaigffi, there was amtendency tot treat jcreationj
the natural world as suck, as evil. This tendency comes from the
syncretistic, ascetic, gnostic milieu from which dualism itself was
1 Messel (Die Einheitlichkeit der jiidischen Eschatologie) has sought to deny this two-
sided character in later Jewish theology, and regards all the other-worldly, mythical
elements as * exaggerations', which really describe a state of bliss which belongs only
to this world. But there is no evidence to support this. MesseTs approach to apocalyp-
tic is too intellectualistic. He has not entered into the life and atmosphere of this
spiritual movement; cf. GunkeFs review in JV.T.71 xvii, 1916, pp.
2 Cf. Staerk, Sottr II, p. 148 n. i.
265
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
derived; and its Influence is particularly evident in the Jewish
sects, such as Essenes, Mandeans? and other ebaptizers\
3. The Influence of Theology
The addition of Persian dualism to the Old Testament hope of
future restoration transformed the latter into an eschatologyv a
faith and doctrine about £the last things5,, with the minimum of
emphasis on 'doctrine*. But the development of eschatology was
affected by one important factor which must be mentioned,,
namely(iitheological? exegetical3 and speculative learning, based. OH
the old prophetic sayings and books. It was within the circles of
prophetic disciples, amongst whom the prophetic traditions were
preserved, that the future hope was cherished. The latest phase of
prophecy was, in large measure, an inspired revision, amplifica-
tion., and interpretation of the earlier prophecy. It was spiritual
learning, or * wisdom5.1
Out of this wisdom (combined with elements of all lands of
ancient oriental learning on cosmography, astrology, angelology,
and medical magic) there finally arose apocalyptic,2 which may
be described as inspired learning or revealed theology, with
eschatology as its centre. This prophetic tradition with its eschato-
logical outlook would read the ancient prophets in the light of the
future hope, interpreting, for example, the predictions about As-
syria in the book of Isaiah as referring to the last age before the
restoration. Under the influence of the conception in the enthrone-
ment mythology of the climax of affliction before the coming of
Yahweh,3 there arose the dogma about a final attack on Jerusalem
by all the heathen nations, whom Yahweh would destroy outside
the city walls. This mythological dogma is already represented in
the OH Testament in the prophecies about Gog and Magog, and
in Deutero-Zechariahu4 Under the influence of Persian dualistic
conceptions, this developed into the idea of the last great univer-
sal tribulation, when all Satan's powers, all the spiritual forces of
evil under heaven, would assemble to destroy God's people.
Another characteristic result of this theological interpretation of
the prophetic words is the expression cin that day',5 so often used
1 See Mowinckel in JV.T.T. adiii, 1942, pp. 97!!; G.TM.M.M. Ill, pp. syfF., 31.
* Cfl Holscher, GeschuhU der isrmlitisckm wd judischm RsKgian, pp. 186-03:
G. TM.MM. Ill, pp. szgff.
3 See above, pp. I4of.
4 I.e., Zeck ix-xiv; see G.T.MJMM. Ill, pp. 755^.
5 See below, pp. s68E and p. 268 n. 5.
266
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
In editorial links or interpolated into earlier sayings to make them
refer to the last, great, eschatological day.
Precisely because later Judaism treated the entire Old Testa-
ment revelation as a unity1 with a consistent teaching, and used
the prophecies as predictions of eschatological happenings, it is
legitimate to use earlier passages as evidence in an account of the
eschatology of later Judaism.
4. The Last Things: A. The Earlier Tendency
The influence of dualism meant a considerable strengthening
of the transcendental, other-worldly element in eschatology. In
a far greater measure than before, salvation became a miraculous
divine intervention outside history, distinct from the creaP human
powers, something utterly different in character from all that is
experienced here. It is the fulfilment of all ideals and longings,
yet far more than even the most exalted idealization of all earthly
values. It is cjwhatj^ nor je^heard, JOLOX the heart
of jnan conceived3.
But it was never forgotten that the starting point for the future
hope was faith in the restoration of Israel as a free people among
the other nations, on this earth, in the land of Canaan. Thus
there persisted in eschatology an unresolved tension, a gulf be-
tween those elements which were political, national, and this-
worldly, and those transcendental and universal elements which
belonged to the world beyond. Here we have two profoundly
different conceptions of the future, one of which is older and more
truly 'Jewish than the other. It is, therefore, a practical necessity
in any historical account to describe them separately, as Bousset
has rightly maintained in his Die Religion des Judentums im neutes-
tamentlichen ^eitalter. These ideas were never systematically ar-
ranged; and any attempt so to present them would only result in
an artificial picture.2
1 Gf. Moore, Judaism I, pp. 2351!.; II, p. 327.
2 In Schurer's classical work (Geschiehte des judischen Volkss im ZeitalUr Jesu Christi*
I-III, which will always retain its value as a critical collection of die source material)
this point is not yet clearly recognized. The first to do so, and to draw the conse-
quences for a scholarly presentation, was Bousset (Relig.1 1903). Most recent scholars
have followed Bousset more or less faithfully; c£ Volz, Eschatologu*; Hollman's popular
sketch, Welcke Religion hatten die Juden als Jesus auftrat?\ Gressmann in the third edition
of Bousset's book. Bonsirven's unified presentation of the two tendencies is, therefore,
a retrograde step in historical scholarship (Le Judaisms palestimen au temps de J&sus-Ckrist
I— II). The opposition which is less systematically offered by Kuppers and Riesenfeld
(cf. Additional Note XIII) does not provide cogent evidence, and is inadequate to
disprove the point. Lagrange, on the other hand (Le messiamsme chez Us juifs, and
still more clearly in Le Judaisms avant J&sus-Ckrist), reaches the same conclusion as
267
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
To quote G. F. Moore, 'For orderliness we may distinguish
between the national form of the expectation, a coming^ golden^
3 and what for want of a better word may
be called the esclatological form, thejinal catastrq,ghe,Qf 'the wpricL
as it is and the coming in its place of a new world, which in so far
as it lies beyond human experience of nature we may call super-
natural. But it must be understood that in all the earlier part of
our period the two are not sharply distinguished, but run into
each other and blend like the overlapping edges of two
clouds/1
In all the confusing lack of system, with Ideas of different kinds
overlapping, and amid all the fantastic descriptions, there is,
nevertheless, one common factor which is the essential point in
the entire eschatology and in all eschatology, namely the belief
that worid history in the widest sense is the expression of a divine
purpose^jiat God has a _ purpose^ and that He will inteivenejn
order to achieve that purpose. All else, all the varying, fantastic
details, may be regarded as things which 'helped men to give
reality to their faith through an imaginative presentation',2 though
these pictures were not deliberately and consciously invented for
this purpose, but received as a tradition, and interpreted in the
light of contemporary events.
The influence of the other-worldly dualism is least effective in
the early period, during which the general assumption is that
salvation, the restoration of Israel, wiH take place as a historical
event belonging to this world, though miraculous in character.3
Although 'Yahweh's day',4 'that day5,5 is described in terms
1 Moore, Judaism II, p. 323. 2 Moore, Ibid.
3 With, what follows, cf. the concise and lucid survey in Holscher, Gesckichte der
israelitischen undjudischen Religion, p. 154.
4 Isa. xlil, 6ff.; Ezek xxx, 3; Joel i, 15; iI3 i; ill, 3!*.; Iv, 14; Obad. 15; Zech. xiv, i.
5 Isa. II, 20; Hi, 18; iv, 2; v, 30; vii, iS3 aof., 23; x, 20, 27; xl, iof.; xii, i, 4; xvii,
4, 7, 9; xxii, 20, 25; xxiii, 15; aodv, 21; xxv, 9; xxvi, i; xxvii, i, 2, I2f.; xxviii, 5; Jer.
iv, 9; xxx, 7f.; xlvi, 10; Amos viii, 9, 13; ix, 1 1; Obad. 8; Mic. ii, 4; v, 9; Zeph. i, gf.;
iii, ix, 16; Zech. ix, 16; xli, 3, 6, 8f., n; xiil, if., 4; xiv, 4, 6, 83 13, 20. In many of
Bousset, but makes too mechanical a distinction between the groups of source material,
and is too prone to regard the two types of eschatology as belonging to two successive
periods. Tills is in line with his defective appreciation of the religio-historical problem
which underlies apocalyptic; and (in spite of his excellent account of its character as
distinct from prophecy In Le Judaisms mant Jlsus-Ghrist, pp. yaff.) he tends too much to
regard apocalyptic as a purely Jewish development of prophecy under the sway of the
law, and as typical of Judaism during the last century B.C. Similarly, he is too prone
to regard Pharisaism as a 'renaissance* of the earHer *MessIanism', arising from
(inter did) a reaction against apocalyptic; and lie does not show sufficiently clearly that
Pharisaism Is the logical continuation of a type of religion and a 'Messianism* which
had existed throughout the history of Judaism, both before apocalyptic and alongside it.
268
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
drawn from the nature mythology of the divine epiphany, * the
political and this-worldly element is very prominent. It is true
that the enemies are often regarded as a unity, the heathen world
power., 2 but, in accordance with the political situation, it is also a
specific historical and political entity, including all the individual
heathen nations of which the great power actually consisted.
When Yahweh destroys them,3 He will also judge the idolaters
and the ungodly within the Jewish community.4 Here the thought
is in some measure coloured by the dualistic doctrine of catastrophe,
which was combined with the earlier ideas of a final reckoning
with the world power outside Jerusalem (the myth about the
conflict with the nations).5 The reckoning with the heathen be-
comes a sweeping world catastrophe, in which only Zion remains
unshaken. All who worship Yahweh?6 cthe remnant of Israel5,7
the righteous,8 will find refuge and deliverance there. Then Zion
and the temple will become Yahweh's throne; and He wiH rule
there as a king,9 on the mountain of the Lord,10 where only
the holy, elect ones may live.11 The dispersed ones will
1 Descriptions of a theophany: Gen. xv, 17; Judges vi, 21; xiii, 20; Exod. HI, 2ff.;
xiii, 2 iff.; xix, i8ff.; xxiv, 10; xxxiii, 18-23; * Kings xix, nff. In battle: Judges v, 4,
2of.; Exod, xiv, 24; Joshua x, i of.; Judges iv, 141*.; vii, 22; i Sam. vii, 10; xiv, 15, 20, 23;
2 Sam. v, 20, 24. In the prophets: Isa. xiii; Joel iii, 3f.; iv, 15; Amos viii, 9; Mic. i, 2-4;
Nahum i, 2-10; Hab. iii, 3ff.; Zech. xiv.
2 Isa. xiv, 26; xxvi, 21; xxxiii, 12; xxxivf.,lxiii, iff.; Jer. xxv» 29!?.; xlvi, 10—12;
Obad. 15; Mic. v, 14; Isa. xxvii, i; xxiv, 2 if.; Dan. ii; vii; viii; ixff.; Ps. Sol. xvii, 24;
Jub. xxiii, 23f.; xxiv, 28; 2 Esdras iv, 23; 2 Bar. Ixxxii, 3ff.; Wisd. of Sol. xvi, 19.
8 Isa. Ixiii, 1-3; i En, xciiff.; xc, 18; T. Dan v; T. Asher viii. See Bousset, R&lig.*,
pp. 25ff.
4 Isa. xxviii-xxxi; iii, 1 1; iv, 4; xxix, 20; xxxiii, 14; Amos ix, 10; Zeph. i, 6; iii, 1 1;
Ezek. xiv, i-n; xx, 36-8; xiv, 17-22; Isa. ii, 20; xvii, 8; xxvii, 9; xxx, 22; xxxi, 6£;
Ivii, 3fE, 13; Ixy, 1-4, i iff.; Ixvi, 3, 17; Ezek. xxxvi, 25; v, 9-13; Zech. xiii, 2-6;
Isa. iii, i8ff,; xxix, 20; xxxiii, 10-14; Zeph. iii, nf.; Ezek. xxu.
5 See above, pp. 140, 145.
6 Isa. xiv, 32; Joel iii, 5; iv, 16; Obad. 17; Ps. SoL xvii; Ass. Mos. x. For rabbinic
evidence, see Volz, Eschatologie^> pp. 342$! Further, 2 Bar. 2; xxi, i; xxix, 2; xxxvi-xl;
i Esdras xii ff.
7 Isa. iv, 3; x, 20-2; xi, n, 16; xxviii3 5; xxxvii, 3if.; Jer. xxiii, 3; xxxi, 7; Joel iii, 5;
Mic. ii5 12; v, 6f.; vii, 18; Zeph. ii, 7, 9; iii, I2f.; Zech. viii, 6, nf.; 2 Esdras vi, 25;
vii, 28; ix, 8; xii, 34; xiii, 24, 26, 48f.; 2 Bar. xxix, 4; xl, 2; Sib. IV, 384,
8 Bab. Yebamot 47a; 2 Bar. xiv, 13, 19; xv, 7; xlviii, 50; II, 3, 8; Ixvi, 7; 2 Esdras
vii, 17; viii, 52; 2 En. Ixv, 8.
9 Isa. xxiv, 23; Iii, 7; Jer. iii, 17; x, 7-10; Obad. 21; Mic. iv, 7; Zeph. iii, 15; Zech.
xiv, 9, i6f.; 2 Bar. xxi, 23, 25; Tobit xiii, 7; Ps. SoL xi, 8; xvii, 30; 2 Esdras vii, 42, 87;
viii, 30; i En. xxv, 3, 7; xxvii, 3; xlvii, 3; 1, 4. Gf. Voli, Eschatofogie*, pp. i67f.
10 Mic. iv, if.; Zech. xiv, 10; Ezek. xxxviii, 12; cf. Ps. xlviii, 3.
11 Isa. iv, 3; xxix, 23f.; Joel iv, 17; Zech. xiv, 2of.; cf. n. (8). See further, i En. i, i;
v, T£; xxv, 5; Wisd. of SoL iii, 9; 2 Bar. xxx, 2; Ixxv, 5.
these passages, the formula is a secondary result of the editorial and theological re-
interpretation of the prophetic words in eschatological terms. See above, pp. 267^
and p. 147 n. 8.
269
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
return;1 Israel and Judah will be reunited; and the kingdom
of David will be restored and will have dominion over the neigh-
bouring peoples.2
The myths about primeval time also mate their contribution,
as is natural, considering the connexion between eschatology and
the enthronement mythology.3 In Palestine, on Zion, paradise
is recreated with the river of life.4 There is the centre of the world,
from which God will exercise His dominion over the world.5 All
nations will make pilgrimage thither, to worship the only true
God.6 Eternal peace will prevail there,7 under the sway of the
prince of peace.8 Nature will be blessed with teeming fertility.9
All sorrow and pain will be ended. Gladness,10 light,11 and life12
will prevail, when heaven and earth are restored to their original
state.13
5. The Last Things: B. The Dualistic^ Apocalyptic Tendency
In the Hellenistic and later Jewish period, the newer elements
gradually asserted themselves. This is connected with the develop-
ment towards individualism and universalism which took place
in the religion of this period. Ever since the age of the prophets,
there had been a tension between the nationalistic conception of
religion and salvation, and the universalistic conception of God.
But now Judaism was as much a religious community as a nation.
1 Bousset, Rdig.*9 pp. syof. Shemoneh Esreh 10; Targ. Jon., Jer. xxxiii, 13; Targ.
Ps.-Jon, Bxod, xl, 10; Num. xxiv, 7; Deut. xxx, 4.
2 Bab. Pesahim i i8b; Abodah Zarah $b.
3 See above, p. 162.
4 Ezek. xlvii, iff.; Joel iy, 18; Zech. xiv, 8; cf. Ps, xlvi, 5; further, Rev. xxi, 2, xo;
iii, 12; Gal. iv, 26; Heb. xii, 22; Rev. xxii, if.
5 Zech. xiv, 9; Isa. lix, 19; Mic. iv, 3; cf. Pss. xlvi, 1 1 ; xlvii; Ixvii, 5. See also p. 269
31.9.
e Isa. xiv, 14, 23; Ivi, 7; Ix, 3; Ixvi, i8£, 23; Jer. iii, 17; Mic. iv, 2; Zeph. iii, 10;
Zech. viii, 20-3; xiv, 16-19; ^sa- xxvi> 6; cf. Ps. xlvii, 2,
7 Zech. ixj 10; xiv, 1 1; i En. xc, 34; Luke ii, 14; Targ. Jon.s Isa. xi, 6.
8 i En. xc, 37; Targ. Jon., Isa. xi, 6.
s Isa. iVj 2; xxx, 23-5; xxxii, 15, 20; xxxv, if., 6f.; Amos ix, 13; Joel iv, 18; Ezek.
xlvii; Rev. xxii, 2; i En. x, xxvii, i; 2 Bar. xxix; T. Judah xxv; Sib. Ill, 581; V, 281;
Sifre Lev. xxvi, 4f. (xxoa); Sifre Deut. xi, 14 (goa); xxxii, 12 (i35a); Elijah Apocalypse
vi, i if.; Bab. Shabbat sob; Ketubot lib; Sib. Ill, 62of£, 659f., 744ff.
10 Isa, xii, 4-6; XXXV, 5f.; Ixv, 18; Jer. xxxi, 10-14; xxxiii, 9; Isa, xxv, 8.
11 Isa. ix, i; xxx, 26; Mi, i; Ix, igf.; xxvi, 19; Zech. xiv, 7; Dan. ii, 22; 2 Bar.
Hv, 13; i En. xiv; Iviii, 5!".; Jxxi; xci, 16; 2 En. xx; xxxi, 2; T. Leva, xviii; Sib. II, 35!;
Bab. Hagigah I2a; Tobit xiii, ii. For 'light* as a metaphor for salvation, see Volz,
Eschatalogw*, p. 365; of moral enHghteoment, op. cit, p. 366.
12 Isa. Ixv, 20, 22; xxvi, 19; xxv, 8; Dan. xii, 2; 2 En, xlii, 6; T. Asher vi; x En.
xxxvii, 4; xlii, 2, 5, 10; Iviii, 3; 4 Mac. xv, 3; T. Asher v; Ps. Sol. iii, 12; 2 Bar.
Ivii, 2; ixxxv, 10; 2 Esdras vii, 48; Bab. Berakot 6ib; Bab. Yom Tob. I5b.
13 Isa. Ixv, 17; Ixvi, 22; Barnabas w9 13; see also Volz, Eschatofogie*, pp. 359ff., and
Index, s.v. 'Urzeit und Endzeit*.
270
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
As a result of the dispersion and missionary activity, it had con-
gregations in every land; and when the emphasis came to be laid
on the observance of the Law., so that a distinction was made even
among those who were Jews by birth, the universalistic elements
in the doctrine of God became more prominent and coloured the
conceptions of restoration and salvation. Devotion to the Law,
the existence of the Diaspora, and new social conditions were
accompanied by_a stronger tendency to Individualism. It was
personal decision and the conduct of life which determined whether
a man was a true Jew5 or a renegade and no better than a Gentile.
An individualistic piety could no longer be content with the kind
of salvation which was involved in the restoration of the people at
some time in the future. It required salvation for the individual
soul^corresponding to the decision of the individual1
These new needs were met by those influences from Persian
eschatology, which are represented in the apocalyptic literature.
A new eschatology came into existence, dualistic, cosmic, univer-
salistic, transcendental, and individualistic.
Rut the old view and the new appear nowhere in the literature
as two distinct systems; and they certainly never actually existed
as such in the minds of individuals. They are always intermingled
in a quite unsystematic combination, so that the main emphasis
is put sometimes on the one aspect, sometimes on the other.2
Sometimes we also find conceptions which are Intended to modify
the contradictions and produce some kind of unity.3 The funda-
mental idea is that of the two aeons or world-orders.4 The present
one Is evil, transient, destined to end5 at a time which the ewise*
can compute.* The coming aeon Is eternal,7 transcendental in
character, bringing life, light, blessedness, joy, and peace.8 Thus
a solution Is found for the problem of suffering, which had raised
such difficulties for the earlier Jewish conception of a just appor-
tioning of reward and punishment In this life. The present aeon
1 SeeBousset,&$£.2,pp. 333!!. 2 Cf. Moore, Judaism II, p. 323; and above, p.aBy.
8 See below on the Millennium, p. 277.
4Bpusset, JRtlig*, pp. Q77f.; Voiz, E$chatologie\ pp. 64^; Bonsirven, Le Judaism
palestinien au temps de Jesus-Christ I, pp. 31 off. See also 2 Esdras vii, 50; iv, 2, 27; vi, 9;
,nvi23 47, naf.; viii, if., 52; 2 Bar. Ixxxiii, 8; Eph. i, 21.
5 2 En. Ixvi, 6; Rom. xii, 2; i Cor. i, 20; ii, 6, 8; iii, 18; 2 Cor. iv, 4; 2 Esdras iv,
, 5, it 26f., s6£; v, soff.; vi, 20; vii, I2£, 31; xi, 44; 2 Bar. xliv, 9, 12; liv, 21; Ass.
iMos. , 1 8; xii, 4.
6 Dan* ii; vii, iff.; ix, 22ff.; i En, x, 12; Ixxxix; xc, 17; xci, 15; xciii, 3; 2 Esdras iv, 5;
xiv, 1 1 ; 2 Bar. xxvii; liii ff. See Bousset, Relig.*, pp. 283^.; Vol^ Eschat&logie^ pp. I4iff,
7 2 En. Iviii, 5; Ixi, 2; Ixv, 7-10; Ixyi, 6£; li,, 8; 2 Cor. iv, 18; 2 Bar. xliv, ix.
8 See the references to the late Jewish sources in p. 270 nn. 10, 1 1 and 12; also Volz,
271
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
itself lies in evil; the eternal aeon will redress the balance.1 The
enemies and oppressors of the Jews (the political world power) are
often looked upon as the manifestation of a mythical, cosmic
power, at enmity with God. Whatever Gog and Magog may have
meant in Ezekiel, this distant people now comes to denote the
hostile, cosmic, world power as such.2
Towards the end of the present aeon, sin, wickedness, and mis-
fortune will reach a climax. The powers of nature will fail. There
will be bad seasons and poor crops. Ominous happenings of every
kind ('signs in the sun and in the moon3) will take place.3 There
will be rebellion and war, all men at strife with each other.4 These
are the throes of the Messianic age,5 foreboding the last desperate
resistance to God6 by Satan,7 his army,8 and the evil world powers,9
when God comes to put an end to him and the evil world order.10
The old idea, derived from cultic experience, of the return of the
powers of chaos, and their rage over the new creation, when
Yahweh manifests Himself at the New Year, has been brought to
the point at which it becomes absolute, extending to the very
ground of all existence. In the last, times., this evil aeon will show
its true satanic nature in a life-and-death straggle Against God and
the godly.
There was also a widespread belief that in the last days the
satanic power would appear in human form as an 'Ant^hris^11
1 See Volz, Eschatologu2, pp. 12J&, and references.
2 See Volz, Eschatohgie*, p. 150.
s 2 Esdras v, 4-6, 85 50-5; vi, 16, 2 if., 24; 2 Bar. xxvii; xxxii, i; i En. viii, 2; xcix,
5; c, u; Jub. xxiii, 18, 25; Sib. II, 154^, 1646; III, 538!., 633, 796-806; Josephus,
B.J. VI, 2851! ; Apoc. Abr, xxixf.; Rev. vi, isft; xi 6; 2 Mac. v, sf. Gf. Bousset,
Rdig.\ p. 287; Volz, Eschatol0gw\ pp. I55f.
4 i En. xcbc, 4, 8; ex, 2; 2 Esdras v, 1-5, 9; vis 24; ix, 3; 2 Bar. xxv, 3; xlviii, 326,
35; Ixx, 2f., 56; Jub. xxiii, 19; Sib. Ill, 633^; Dan. xii, i; Mark xiii, 8. See Volz,
Eschatologu2, pp. 153*1.
6 Matt, xxiv, 8. See Weber, Jud. Theol.\ pp. 35of.; Bousset, Relig*, pp. 286f.; Volz,
Eschatokgie*, p. 147; Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 950; IV, pp. 9746!; Moore, Judaism II,
p. 361. The rabbis use the singular form: 'the travail of the Messiah*; see Moore,
ibid., n. 2.
6 Dan. xii, i; i En.xc, 16-18; 2 Esdras xiii; T.Jos, xbc; Sib. Ill, 663!?.; Rev. xii, 7-9;
xiii, 17; xix, 19. See the connected account in Volz, Eschatologie*, pp. 147-63.
7 See Bousset, Relig.\ pp. aSgff.; Volz, Eschatologie*, p. 86.
8 The fallen angels and their descendants; i En. x, 9, I2f.; xiv, 6; xv, 8; xvi, 1-4;
xxi, 10; xii, 9; liv, 5!; bdv; Ixviii; Ixxxviii; xc> 21—4; identical with the astral powers:
i En. xxi, 1-6; Isa. xxiv, 21-3. Gf. Bousset, A?%.2, pp. 288f.; Volz, Eschatologie*,
Index, s.v. *Engel, die gefallenen*.
9 Dan. vii, 25; viii, i^f.; ix, 26; xi,4iff.; Ps. Sol. xvii, I5ff.; Ass. Mos. viiif.; i En.
Ivi, 5; xc, 17; Ezek. xxxviii £; i En. Ivi; xc, 16; 2 Esdras xiii; T. Jos. xix; Sib. Ill, 6636*.
On King Gog and Magog, see Volz, Esdwtol&gu*, p. 150.
10 i En. Ivi, 7; xc, i8£, 94ff.; Sib. Ill, 670!?.; Elijah Apocalypse vii, iff.; T, Asher
vii; T. Dan v; A^. Mos. x; Bab. Sanhedrin 95b. See Volz, Eschatologw*, pp. 15 1£, 94.
11 2 Thess. £i, 3; Justin, Dialogue wtffi Trypho, ex, 32; Sib. Ill, 631!. See Bousset, Der
Antichrist'; Relig.2, pp. 29iff., 589f.
272
THE ESGHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
Originally he was conceived as a man, as God's last, mighty
opponent on earth, a godless, tyrannical ruler, or a false prophet
leading men astray by his miracles. But gradually he came to be
thought of as a supernatural being, a manifestation of Satan
himself. * Antichrist might also be identified with some historical
person, as was also the Messiah (see below). The early Christians
regarded Nero and Domitian as the Antichrist; and it seems likely
that the great antagonist of the Damascus sect, the 'man of
untruth ', the 'man of scorn \ though himself a historical person,
Is described in terms of the Antichrist.
Morejind^more^the end was thought of as a 'judgement3, not
In the ancient Jewish sense of an act of power, victory over God's
enemies, and their destruction,2 but in the forensic sense of a
judicial process,3 m^which God Himself, 'the Ancient of Days',
will .sit^jn judgement on men3 angels,, and demons, and finally
will pass sentence on Satan himself.4 Judgement will be passed
according to men's deeds which are recorded in the heavenly records.
Both the living and the dead have to appear for judgement.
The dead will rise in order to be judged. This thought, which just
begins to appear in the latest parts of the Old Testament/ is
characteristic of later Judaism;6 but the fact that the Sadducees
rejected it shows how new it really was, and how alien to earlier
Judaism. The original Jewish idea of resurrection, as we meet it
in Daniel, was that 'many', namely the most righteous and the
worst sinners, should arise to everlasting life and to everlasting
contempt, respectively. Here we see the religious root of the con-
ception, to which the foreign, Persian influence served as a catalyst.
1 See Bousset, Der Antichrist; Relig.*> pp. 29 iff.; Preisker, art. * Antichrist5
*> PP- 375^-; Volz, Esckatologie2, p. 282.
2 See p. 272 n, 10; cf. Volz, Eschatologie\ p. 94.
3 i En. x, 6-12; xxii, 4, 1 1; xxv, 4; liv, 6; Ix, 6; Ixxxiv, 4; xci, 7, 15; xcviii, 10; xcix,
I5l CJ 4» Jub. v? 10; Ixxxiii, n; xxxvi, 10; T. Levi iii; iv; Ass. Mos. I, 18; 2 En. vii, i;
xl, 12; xliv, 5; xlviii, 9; I, 4; Iviii, 6; Ixv, 6; Ixvi, 7; 2 Esdras vii, 70, 73, 87; 2 Bar. v,
2; xx, 4; Ivii, 2; lix, 8; Ixxxiii, 7; Ixxxv, igff.; life of Adam x; xii; xxvi; xxxvii; xciii;
Sib. Ill, 55; Wisd. of Sol. iii, 13, 17; iv, 6; vi, 5! Bousset, j&%,23 pp. 294!?.," Volz,
Eschatologiezy pp. 272-309.
4 Dan. vii, 9-12; i En. i, 3-9; xc, 20-9; xci, I5f.; Jub. v, 13; 2 Esdras vii, 33!;
2 Bar. xxx; xlix-li; T. Levi iv; Ps. Sol. xv; Ass, Mos. x; xii, 13; Sib. Ill, 73, 689-92;
IV, 4offl, i83f.; 2 En. xxxix, 8; xlvi, 3; Ixv; Rev. xx, 11-15.
5 Isa. xxv, 8; xxvi, 19-21; Dan. xii, 2, 13.
e I En. xcii, 3; c, 5; H, 1-3; xxxviii, I3 6; xlv, 1-3; bci, 5; 2 Esdras v, 42; vii, 32f.,
78-101; 2 Bar. 1, a; li, iff.; Iii, 3; Ixxxv, i2ffl; Sib. IV, i8of.; T. Sim. vi; T. Levi
, 14, 36;
.; Moore,
attempt to derive
belief in resurrection from the supposed cultic conceptions of the * resurrection* of the
god and the king is unsuccessful; see Birkeiand in iSf.Tfc. Ill, i, 1949/50, pp. 6off.
273
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
The prevailing thought in earlier Judaism is the resurrection of
the righteous to take part in the bliss of the end time. But in
the time of Jesus, belief in a general resurrection was prevalent,
and was taken as the distinguishing mark between believers and
unbelievers. It is God who raises the dead. The idea of resurrec-
tion brings out clearly the universalistic and ethical tendencies in
the eschatology of later Judaism.
After, insurrection and judgement, the pious enter upon eternal
life.1 In describing it, use is made, for the most part, of terms and
metaphors drawn from an idealized earthly life. But the expres-
sions used reveal the fumbling attempt to put into words some-
thing * wholly other5, something essentially different from the life
of this aeon.2 It is simply £Life3;3 and sometimes this fact is
explicitly emphasized. c Light' and 'Life' become parallels aad
^ynonyms.4 We meet with the etMco-religious idea of living to-
gether with God for ever in His kingdom, where all sin and injus-
tice have been destroyed.5 The evil are sentenced to eternal and
irrevocable perdition.6 The place of punishment, Gehenna
(Gehinnom), originally the name of a valley outside Jerusalem,7
becomes a cosmic place of torture.8
After resurrection and judgement, the new world appears.
This means not only the new cage' (aeon), but a real creation of
a new heaven and a new earth.9 That later Judaism understood
this quite literally, can be seen from the references to a destruction
of the world by fire, preceding the new creation or 'rebirth' (of
1 Dan. xii, 2; Ps. Sol. ill, 12; ix, 5; xiii, u; xiv, 10; xv, 13; I En. xxxvii, 4; xl, 9;
Iviii, 3; 2 En. Ixv, 10; 2 Mac. vii, 9, 14, 36; cf. 2 En. I, 2; Ixvi, 6; 2 Esdras xiv, 36;
2 Bar. xiv, 13; ii, 3; Wisd. of Sol. v, 15, etc. See Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp. isGff.;
Bousset, Relig.\ pp. 3168*.; Volz, Eschatologu2, pp. 362^., 407.
2 Cf . Gunkel's review of MessePs Du Einheitlichkeit derjtidischen Eschatologie in JV. T. T.
xvii, 1916, pp. ig6fF.
I En. xcviii, 10, 14;^. Sol. ix, 5; xiv, 3, 10; xv, 13; 2 Esdras vii, 21, 67, 129, I37f.;
2 Bar. Ii, iff. See Vo\Eschatokgu\ pp. 365^; Aalen, Die Begriffe 'Lichfund 'Pins-
terms' im Alien Testament^ im Spatjudemium md im RabbirdsmuS} pp. i8is 254. 276, 3 1 1, 313.
5 See below, p. 276.
^ 6 Dan. xii, 2; i En. xci, 15; ciii, 8; x, 6, i2f.; xc, 24f.; 2 En. k £; 2 Bar. iv, 12;
Ii, 5; Ixxviii, 6; Ixxxiii, 8, io-2i;lxxxv, 13; 2 Esdras ^,36,75, 84^111,59. SeeBousset,
Relig.*, pp. 319^; Volz, Eschaiologu\ p. 325.
7 2 Kings xxiii, 10; Jer. vii, 31!; xix, 2, 6; xxxii, 35 (MolecK sacrifice); cf. Joel iv.
i, 12, 14 (see Mowinckel in G.TMMM. Ill, ad loc.), and Isa. Ixvi, 25f.
8 i En. xxvii, 2f.; liii f; Ivi, 3. See below, p. 277.
§ Isa. kv, 17; bcvi, 22; i En. xci, i6£; Ixxii, i; Jub. i, 29; 1, 5; 2 En. Ixv, 7; 2 Esdras
vii> 755 2 Bar. xxxi, 5; xxxii, 6; xliv, 12; Ivii, 2. See Bousset, Relig.*> pp. q2iflf.:
Volz, Eschatdagw*, pp. 338^
274
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
the world).1 Side by side with this idea (probably Persian in
origin) of a world conflagration,2 we also meet the idea of a new
deluge,3 from which only the righteous will be saved. It is not
apparent how these ideas are to be logically combined with the
thought of judgement and a place of punishment But It was
generally believed that the eternal life of the righteous would be
lived out on the new earth, under the new heaven.
*£ On the other hand, the boundaries between earth and heaven
seem to disappear. From the way in which the new life of the new
aeon is conceived, we see how two tendencies meet and contend,
even in the new eschatology with its transcendental character.
The new life is not, as it would have been in Greek or Gnostic
thought, a purely spiritual one in contrast to the physical life in
the body. It is rather a perfecting of physical, bodily existence on
this earth, a restoration of the perfection which existed at creation,
a transfiguration of bodily life, not the abolition of It. Jewish
dualism, like that of the Greeks, is moral, spiritual, and intellec-
tual, and not, like that of the Gnostics a dualism of matter on the
one hand, and, on the other, a spirit which is pure and abstract,
i.e., empty, and therefore meaningless. Thus the new aeon means
jexistence in a re-created world, in which everything evil and
,imperfect has been destroyed, and which has become, spiritually
and morally, what it was immediately after creation, when God
saw that everything was c very good ', before sin invaded and spoiled
God's creation.4 This conception brings out the ancient Israelite
realism, with its healthy opposition to the purely spiritual. The
transcendental and superterrestrial never becomes the merely
spiritual, abstract, invisible, intangible, and empty. The 'wholly
other5 in biblical religion never becomes that which can be
expressed only by negations. Where, as in 2 Enoch, we find a
tendency towards the incorporeal, Greek and Gnostic influences
are present.
It is this conception of a perfection of creation through a
1 Matt, xix, 28. This conception belongs originally to cosmic eschatology, before
being applied to individual eschatology and to ethico-religious conversion. See
Preuschen-Bauer, W.B.N.T*, s.v., with references to the literature.
a Sib. IV, 172; V, i55ff., 2o6ff., 247*:, 344^, 44#» Siafil; Ass. Mos. x, 6; Rev.
xxi, i. See Bousset, Relig.z, p. 321; Volz, Eschatdogie*, p. 335.
3 Cf. Bousset, Relig.*, pp. 32 if.; Volz, Eschatologu2, p. 336, and Index, s.v, *SintflutJ.
The thought of Enoch as deliverer from the new deluge seems to underlie the descrip-
tion in i Enoch of Enoch as having foreseen the first deluge ; see Jansen, Die Henoch-
gestalt.
4 Both Otto (The Kingdom of God and the Sm of Man, pp. igyff.) and Staerk (SoUr II,
pp. 458, 46 if.) have rightly drawn attention to and emphasized this feature in the
eschatology of later Judaism.
275
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
restoration of the original state of things that finds expression in
the thought of paradise as the abode of the pious.1 The ancient
Israelite notions of a primeval, divine garden., high up on the
divine mountain, were revived under the influence of new con-
ceptions of Babylonian and Persian origin. Paradise is situated at
heaven's uttermost bound, in the north. But sometimes it is
thought of as situated in heaven itself, a conception which obliter-
ates the boundary between the new heaven and the new earth.
The idea of paradise also influenced the national Jewish eschato-
logy. At the end of the ages the conditions of paradise return:
Zion, or the entire Holy Land, is transformed into a paradise.
The new Jerusalem is a heavenly city, which comes down to
earth radiant with fabulous splendour.
Alongside and blended with these ideas of a transfiguration of
the created, physical world (a 'corporeal eschatology3), we also
find conceptions of a purely heavenly paradise, and a state of bliss
for the souls of the dead, which begins immediately after death,
cin the abodes of the righteous, the holy, the elect5 in heaven, as
described in the Apocalypse of Enoch. These abodes already
exist. This purely 'heavenly eschatology' (Otto) or 'animatistic
eschatology5 (Staerk) occurs occasionally in the~ Apocalypse of
Enoch and in other writings; but it is not dominant.2 It is un-
doubtedly the result of Persian influence.3
We have seen that in the realistic, earthly, ethico-religious idea
of salvation there is a process of spiritualization. It is in keeping
with this that blessedness, the true state of salvation, comes to be
understood as fellowship with God, when God e dwells among His
people3, the congregation of the saved. These ideas are expressed
in sensuous terms, when it is said that the blessed will be fias angels
in heaven', will be clothed with the nature of light, will be like
the stars, and so on.4
There were different views about the fate and location of the
damned.5 Sometimes we hear of eternal destruction,6 sometimes
1 i En. bd, 12; Ixx, 3f.; 2 Esdras vi, 26; vii, 28, 36ff.; xiii, 52, xiv, 9, 49; 2 En. viii f.,
etc. See Volz, Eschatdogw*, pp. 413!!*.; Bousset, Relig,z} pp. 324ff.
2 Gf. Staerk, Soter II, pp. 4feff.
s Op. cit., p. 464. Following Otto, Staerk observes that both tendencies (the
* corporeal* and 'animalistic* eschatology) are also found in Persian teaching, side by
side and blended with each other. This shows that these conceptions come from two
different sources.
4 See further, Volz, Eschatotogie^, pp. 394-401, with references to the sources; Bousset,
Rtlig.*, p. 321. 5 Bousset, Rslig*, pp. 309-21.
* I En. xciv, i, 6f., 10; xcv, 6; xcvi, 6, 8; xcvii, i; xcviii, 10, 14; xcix i, n; Ps. Sol.
iii, 1 1 ; xiii, 1 1 ; xiv, 9; xvs lofF.; 2 Esdras viii, 38; vii, 48, 61 ; 2 Bar. xxx, 5; 2 Mac. vii,
14* l6-
276
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
of eternal torture In Hades, the realm of the dead, in the outer
darkness where there Is weeping and gnashing of teeth because of
the eternal cold.1 We also hear of Gehenna,2 the eternal fire?3
which is fairly clearly distinguished from Hades, and located in
the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where children had been
sacrificed.4 But Gehenna can also be conceived in cosmic terms,
as belonging purely to the world beyond, and as always having
been in existence. Here Persian ideas have been fused with
Jewish teaching about the Valley of Hinnom or of Jehoshaphat,
where the heathen powers will be destroyed,5 and apostates
punished with endless torture.
Finally,, it must be noted that we often find an attempt to
reconcile the nationalistic, this-worldly eschatology with the uni-
versalistic, individualistic, other-worldly eschatology, by means
of the idea of the Millennium.6 After a preliminary judgement, a
Jewish Messianic kingdom will be set up on earth; and it will last
for a thousand years under the rule of the Messianic king. Other
periods, such as four hundred years, also occur. Then follows the
general judgement, the destruction of the world, in which even
the Messiah will die;7 and everything returns to the primeval
'silence5, i.e., to chaos. Then comes the new creation, the new
heaven and the new earth, the resurrection, and the new state of
bliss. This is the conception found in the Ezra Apocalypse.
Such attempts to reconcile the conflicting elements in eschato-
logy are also characteristic of rabbinic orthodoxy in the early
Christian period.8 This orthodoxy, too, is based on dualism,
though in a much milder form than that of apocalyptic; and Its
eschatology, though quite unsystematic, and varying considerably
in details, is built around the thought of this aeon and the coming
aeon.9 The prevalent view, then, distinguishes between ethe days
of the Messiah3 and 'the coming aeon', putting the former be-
tween the two aeons.10 Most of the traditional, this-worldly,
1 i En. xlvi, 5; bdii, 6; cviii, 14; ciii, 8; xcii, 5; Jub. vii, 29; Ps. Sol. xiv, 9; xv, 10;
Matt, viii, 12; xiii, 42; xxiv, 51.
2 Isa. Ixvi, 24; I En. xxvii; xc, a6£; s Esdras vii, 36. See Bousset, Relig.*, p. 329;
Vohy Eschatologie^j pp. 328!"., 332, 413.
3 i En. x, 6, J2f.; xc, 24-6, c, 9; cviii, 4-6; 2 Esdras vii, 36!*.; 2 Bar. xliv, 15;
xlviii, 43; lix, 2; Iviii, 13, etc.; Matt, v, 22; Mark ix, 43, 45, 47!*.; Matt, xviii, 28;
xxv, 41 ; Jude 7; Rev. xix, 20; xx, 10, I4f.; xxi, 8, etc.
4 See above, p. 274 and the references in n. 8. 5 See above, p. 147.
6 Bousset, Relig.\ pp. 33of£; Volz, Eschatologie1, pp. 7 iff., 227, 273.
7 See above, pp. 1671!,, and below, pp. 285!
8 For what follows} see Moore, Judaism II, pp. 323-95.
9 Moore, Judaism II, p. 378; see also Index I, s.v. 'World to Gome*.
10 Moore, Judaism II, p. 378; cf. p. 323.
277
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
national and political eschatology is included in 'the Messianic
age'.1 In speaking of this, the rabbis are rather reserved. The
great catastrophe which ended in A.D. 70 with the destructionjDf
Jerusalem and of the temple, and which resulted in the dispersion
of IDDTJe^" damped their enthusiasm, and taught them that the
period of waiting might well be greatly prolonged. The attempts
of the apocalyptists to calculate the time fell into disrepute.2
Penitence, conversion, and strict obedience to the Law were now
the supreme requirements*3 The Messiah would come at the time
appointed by God; and God would then bring to an end the
dominion of the heathen. Descriptions of the glory of the age of
restoration are infrequent, and for the most part restrained. They
appear mostly in the exegesis of individual passages of Scripture,
arbitrary, forced, unhistorical, hair-splitting, like all rabbinic
exegesis, but sometimes containing legendary descriptions and
amplifications of the text (midrash), and characterized by a blend
of arid rationalism with mythical conceptions which were often
far from poetical.
After the travail of the Messianic age, and before the nation is
restored, God will extirpate all sinners from Israel.4 This may be
regarded as a judgement, in which both the Messiah and His
forerunner Elijah5 sometimes have a part to play.6 In the restored
Israel, glory, joy, and temporal blessings of every kind will
abound.7 The rabbis also write imaginatively of the great feast
which God will make for His pious ones from the flesh of the two
primeval monsters, Leviathan and Behemoth.8 The dispersed
Jews will return from every land;9 but on the fate of the ten tribes
there are varying views.10 The day of freedom will have come.
Israel will have independence under a wise and good king of the
ancient royal Hue, and will enjoy all the divine blessings. The
heathen nations wiH be subdued or converted to Judaism, and
will never again be a menace to the people of God.11
But together with this, the religious aspect also appears. All
peoples will then worship the true God.12 The kingdom of heaven
(i.e., of God), malkut samayim^ will have come; and His name will
1 Moore, Judaism IIt pp. 345f.
2 Moore, Judaism II, pp. 352!"- The interest wMch later rabbis had in these calcula-
tions shows that they were not finally discredited. See Silver, A History of Messianic
Speculations in Israel from the First to the Seventeenth Centuries.
3 Moore, Judaism II, pp. 35off. 4 Op. cit, p. 362.
sSee below pp. 298f., and op. cit., pp. 357ff. 6 Op. cit., p. 363.
7 Op. cit., pp. s6sf. 8 Op. cit., pp. 363^ * Op. cit., pp. 366ff.
10 Op. cit., pp. 368f. u Op. cit., p. 371. 12 Op. cit., ibid.
278
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF LATER JUDAISM
be hallowed all over the earth. Moore describes It in modem
terms as ethe universality of the true religion, not alone professed
by all men, but realized in their lives in all their relations to God
and to their fellow-men'.1
Thus, in the fullness of time, the new aeon will come.2 In the
way in which it is conceived, tihLeJndiyidualism of later Judaism
emerges clearly. It is the individual that is involved. He will be
acquitted or condemned according to what he has done as an
individual.3 The dead will be raised for judgement4 The heathen5
and sinners will be condemned; but some held that in the end all
Israelites would be saved.6 Other scholars distinguished between
an intermediate stage and the last judgement. Immediately after
death, the pious go into the "treasury3, being * bound up into the
bundle of life'7 in heaven,8 or into the garden of Eden.9 The
wicked go into Gehenna, an evil and unhappy place.10 At last
comes the resurrection, when body and soul are re-united;11 and
then the final distinction is made between the righteous and the
unrighteous. The damned will be eternally tortured in the fire of
Gehenna, or destroyed after a shorter period of punishment there.
The pious will enter into the heavenly glory, which is sometimes
also called the garden of Eden (paradise) . There is little descrip-
tion of the world beyond. Of the lot of the blessed it is said, cThe
World to Gome is not like this world. In the World to Come there
is no eating and drinking, no begetting of children, no bargaining^
no jealousy and hatred, and no strife; but the righteous sit with
their crowns on their heads enjoying the effulgence of the Presence
(Shekinah).512
1 Moore, Judaism II, p. 372. 2 Op. cit., p. 378.
3 Op. cit., p. 377; cf. Sjoberg, Goti und die Sunder, pp. iO5fF.
4 Moore, Judaism II, pp. 378ff.
5 Not all the rabbis thought that the heathen would rise from the dead. Op. cit.,
pp. 3851!.
6 Op. at., pp. 387^
7 Borrowing an expression from i Sam. xxv, 29 (see Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M. II,
ad loc.); see Moore, Judaism II, p. 390; and further, Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testa-
ment II, pp. 5031?.
8 Moore, Judaism II, p. 390.
9 Op. cit., pp. 39of. 10 Op. cit, p. 391. 1X Op. cit, ibid.
12 Bab. Berakot I7a; see Moore, Judaism II, p. 392. Cf. Mark xii, 25; Matt. X3ci£, 30;
Luke xx, 34-6.
279
CHAPTER IX
The National Messiah
i. Two Conceptions of the Messiah — The National Messiah
&S in the Old Testament period, so in that of later Judaism,
jT\the figure of the Messiah is not an indispensable part of the
future hope or of eschatology. In a whole series of religious writ-
ings which speak of the future hope, the Messiah does not appear;
e.g., Daniel, i and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, the Wisdom of Solomon,
Judith, Sirach, Jubilees, the Assumption of Moses, i Baruch,
2 Enoch or the Slavonic Enoch, and also considerable portions of
i Enoch or the Ethiopic Enoch (i-xxxvi; xci-xciii the Apocalypse
of Weeks; and the hortatory sections in xc-civ). This is also true
of the writings of Philo.1 In other writings the Messiah appears
only occasionally, as a traditional element in the belief about the
future, but without playing an important part.
This may seem remarkable, since eager Messianic expectation
forms the background for the appearance of Jesus and the Gospel
narrative generally. Yet it is not difficult to understand. In pro-
portion as the main emphasis came to be laid on the religious
aspect of the future hope, on the kingly rule of Yahweh, there
would be little or no room for the Messianic king, in whom, after
all, at least in the traditional belief, earthly and human features
predominated. The earthly scion of David was not fitted to satisfy
the deepest religious longings and needs. It was for the presence of
God Himself in the midst of His people that men longed. TMs
would be still more true when the national and political future
was overshadowed by an eschatology which was transcendental,
universalistic, and individualistic. It was not easy to disregard
the fact that the Messiah was in origin a political figure belonging
to this world, who could not easily be accommodated to the trans-
cendental, other-worldly thoughts and longings of the new eschato-
logy. Had it not been that in certain circles in the later period
the conception of the Messiah was powerfully and decisively
1 Gf, W. Manson, The Eptstle to the Hebrews, p. 95.
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
Influenced by other religious and eschatological ideas, it might
well have passed out of eschatology altogether.
We shall return below to these entirely new aspects of the figure
of the Messiah^ aspects which.. are. particularly closely associated
with the term 'Son of Man'. It appears that, as in the general
future hope of later Judaism there were two tendencies, originally
quite distinct, but now fused with each other, so the conception
of the Messiah in later Judaism manifests the same double charac-
ter.1 The one side is national, political^ this-worldly3 with particu-
laristic tendencies, though universalistic when at its best. The
other is super-terrestrial, other-worldly, rich in reEgious content
and mythological concepts, universalistic, numinous, at home in
the sphere of the £ Holy' and the 'wholly Other'. These two types
of Messiah seldom appear in a pure form. In the circles and at the
period from which our sources come, men were unaware that
they were, in origin, separate types, von Gall's attempts to prove
that this was not so,2 as if the fusion of the two were due only to
occasional, secondary additions, or attempts at theological har-
monization, seem artificial and unconvincing. The thought of
later Judaism is concerned with one and the same royal figure,
who belongs to the end time, and appears under different names,
and in whom this-worldly and other-worldly traits are blended.
But it is quite obvious (and can be definitely proved) that two
figures which were originally quite distinct have been fused. The
fusion is never complete. In the various writings and the circles
from which they are derived, one aspect or the other was dominant
and overshadowed the other; andjasj^rule we are presented with
one of the two Messianic figures, influenced by the other in greater
iK.less degree.
It is therefore justifiable to consider these figures separately as
two Messianic types, each belonging to its own circles in later
Judaism, but to some extent allied with each other. To attempt
to systematize the features Iu the two different conceptions and
produce from them a, uniform conception of the Messiah would
give a wholly distorted impression of the facts. In the first place,
it would not in fact be uniform or coherent, but full of conflicting
elements at every important point; and secondly, it would provide
us with a conception of the Messiah which never existed in that
form in the thought of later Judaism, being simply a chimera pro-
duced by modern theological learning.
1 See Additional Note XIII. 2 von Gall, BasiUia, chs, 9 and 10.
28l
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
orldly., universalistic eschatology described In the
preceding chapter Is found particularly in the apocalyptic litera-
ture. We may say with certainty of this literature that it was
neither a popular literature nor a reflection of the religion of the
es_qf the^ people.1 This entire literature is derived from the
_ ^
learned wisdom schookj which were occupied with the wisdom of
the time, chiefly Chaldean In origin,2 with non-Jewish religious
traditions, and with mystical and spiritual experiences.8 From
this we may conclude that the Ideas which they express, including
that of the transcendental Messiah, were current in certain literary
circles, among the learned (the s wise5., or the scribes), and in those
circles In the upper classes and the religious sects which were in-
fluenced by them. Amgqgjhe^ older,
this-worldly, national future hope prevailed. It appealed directly
to popular sentiment and aspirations, particularly in evil times,
when feeling ran high because of the pressure of alien rule, social
and economic difficulties, and the reaction against the breach of
ancient custom by the * Hellenists3 and foreigners, and their
outrage of religious feeling. It was also among the masses of the
people that the older, thls-worldly national conception of the
Messiah lived on.
But of course It also survived elsewhere; otherwise we should
have known no more about it than might be concluded from the
Messianic revolts (see below) and from the Gospels. In literary
circles It survived and affected thought and aspiration. The
Psalms of Solomon, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the
Targums, the ancient synagogue prayers, and, in a measure, the
way in which the Greek translation of the Bible renders .certain
Q1?L J"£?l5.nl£?t Pa?sa§es> aU bear witness to national Messianic
ideas among the upper classes of the people. The same is true of
the rabbinic Jiterature, in which apocalyptic elements have been
suppressed by normative Judaism with its more nationalistic and
this-worldly spirit.
In particular, the Targums (the somewhat free Aramaic rend-
derings of the Old Testament for use la the synagogues) provide
evidence of the important place given to the Messianic idea in
leading religious circles. Of course they apply to the Messiah both
the royal psalms and the passages in which the future king is men-
tioned. They also treat in the same way passages which are not
1 Gf. Bousset, Relig*, p. 256. 2 See above, p. 264 n. 10.
3 See Holscher, GeschickU der israelituchen undjildischen Religion, pp. i86ff,
282
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
Intended to be either eschatological or Messianic, such as the
Balaam poems1 and the Shiloh prophecy in Gen. xlix. Some other
examples of Messianic interpretation may be noted. In Isa. x;
27, MT speaks of fatness breaking the yoke from the people's neck.
This was interpreted of the Messiah breaking the power of the
heathen. In Isa. xiv, 29, * Messiah of the sons of Jesse5 was read
into the threatening words against the Philistines. In Mic, iv, 83
*the former dominion3 was promised not to Jerusalem (as in MT)
but to the future Messiah, who was still hidden because of Israel's
sins. The interpretation of the seed of the woman. In Gen. ill, 15,
as the Messiah is derived from the Targums and Jewish theology.
The bridegroom In the Song of Songs was interpreted in the Tar-
gums as the Messiah. Still more important Is the fact that the Ser-
vant of the Lord In Deutero Isaiah was identified with the Messiah;
but, as we shall see below, this identification was then combined
with a complete reinterpretation of the Servant.
The Targumic interpretation is here characteristic of all Jewish
theology and religious exegesis. As G. F. Moore has pointed out,
the rabbis assume that the entire divine revelation In Scripture
forms an organic unity,2 Wherever it was in any way possible,
thejabbis^ read into the texts references to the Messiah., the son of
David. Learned exegesis of this kind has contributed much to the
picture of the Messiah in Ps. Sol. xvii £ But no attempt was ever
made to co-ordinate and harmonize the ideas and conceptions
at which they thus arrived by their exegesis, which would,
indeed, have been an impossible task. There is, therefore, ng^
reason why^tlie.MslQriaii^of religion or of theology should try
to^ construct a ^detailed and systematic rabbinic doctrine of the
Messiah.
This interest in the Messiah was shared by practically all
Judaism at that period. As we have seen, the Greek translation
of the Old Testament shows signs of an interest which, finds the
Messiah even in passages where the original text has a quite
1 See the references to the sources in Aalen, Die Eegriffe 'Lichfimd'Finsternis* im Alien
Testament, im Spdtjudentwn und im Rabbinismus, p. 232 n. 2. The Messianic interpretation
of the royal psalms is not the only one. Thus the Targum interprets Ps. ex of David
himself. * The Lord has said in His word that He will make me Lord of all Israel. But
then He said to me, "Wait for Saul, who belongs to the tribe of Benjamin, until he
shall die"*. Or, according to another tradition, *The Lord has said in His word that
He will give me the kingdom'. So also R. Judah ben Shallum; see Strack-Billerbeck
IV, pp. 452ff. There is no question here of an alteration of the text, as Danell seems to
think (St,Th. IV9 i, 1950/1, p. 94 n. i), but of a free, paraphrastic rendering* There is
no reason to think, like Danell, that this rendering is post- and anti-Christian.
2 See Moore, Judaism II, p. 327; cf. also Staerk, Soter I, pp. 4gf.
283
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
different meaning, or which interprets the language in a more
other-worldly sense.1
2. 1 The Messiah a Historical Person\
%* •'
The best proof of the diffusion of the Messianic expectation and
of the political, this- worldly character of the conception is "the
fact that precisely in the later period of Judaism, when the trans-
cendental features were present, time after time some historical
person was regarded as the Messiah and aroused great Messianic
excitement among the people.
The first evidence of this is the proclamation by Haggai and
Zechariah of Zerubbabel as king of the restoration. That even
in later times this kind of idea was quite acceptable is shown by the
Talmudic interpretation of Isa. ix, 5 (the child who is born to us)
as an allusion to King Hezekiah, who, according to the purpose of
the Lord, should really have been the Messiah, with Sennacherib
as King Gog, but was found to be unworthy.2 The fact that the
Hasmonean rule was widely held to be the fulfilment of the pro-
phecies about the restoration of Israel, and that Simon was re-
garded as the Messiah and the first of a new Messianic line, is
shown by the description of Simon's rule in i Mac. xiv, 4:8*., which
reads like a paraphrase of the Messianic prophecies in the Old
Testament. The dignity of Messiah was on one occasion even
attributed by one of the Pharisees to Phreoras, brother of Herod.8
We may also recall the series of c false Messiahs'4 whom Josephus
and the Roman authorities characterized as brigands, rioters, and
saboteurs: Hezekiah, the * robber-chief, as Josephus calls him,
from whom Herod, when governor of Galilee, delivered the
country,5 but who was recognized as Messiah by Hillel;6 further
his son, Judas the Galilean from Gamala, and his brother, Mena-
hem ben Hezekiah; the prophet Theudas in the time of the pro-
curator Cuspius Fadus; the Egyptian Jew who led his followers to
1See Bousset, Relig.*, pp. 3<>3f.; cf. also Euler, Die Verkundigung vom leidenden
Gottesknecht aus Jes. 5^ in der griechischen JBibeL
2 Bab. Sanhedrin, 943. 8 Josephus, Antt. XVII, tfL
4 Cf . E. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfdnge des Christentums II, pp. 402!!.; Gillet, Com-
munion in the Messiah, pp. 102, 225!?,; R. Meyer, Der Prophet aus Galilaa, pp. 7off,; cf.
below, p. 285 n. 3.
5 Josephus, Antt. XIV, 160.
6 Bab. Sanhedrin, g8b, gga. Moore (Judaism II, p. 347 n. 2) thinks that this Hillel
is another person than the famous Rabbi Hillel who was contemporary with Jesus.
The Talmudists think that the Hezekiah to whom Hillel here refers is Hezekiah, king
of Judah; but Gressmann is probably right in supposing that it is really Hezekiah the
Galilean who is meant (See Der Messias, pp. 4496".).
284
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
the mount of Olives, so that they might see the walls of Jerusalem
fall down, but was put to the sword with his followers by the pro-
curator Felix; another unnamed Jew, who appeared in the time of
Festus and led his followers out into the wilderness, where they
were cut down by the Roman soldiers;1 and finally Simon bar
Cochba, cSon of a Star', who came forward claiming to be the
fulfilment of the prophecy of Balaam about the cstar out of Jacob J3
and who was hailed as Messiah by no less a man than Rabbi
Akiba.2 Such Messiahs also appeared among the Samaritans.3
This all shows that the Messiah was generally regarded as an
earthly man like other men. This is also the universal view of the
rabbis^ ia, spite of, the impressive epithets which they apply tq
him.4
It has often been maintained that even the learned rabbis
taught the Messiah's pre-existence; but this is incorrect.6 In the
rabbinic literature of the earlier Christian period we do occasion-
ally find the thought of the e ideal5 pre-existence of the Messiah,
i.e., his existence in the mind of God as part of His unchanging and
eternal plan for the world; but there is no question of a literal and
actual pre-existence (see further below, p. 334). The actual pre-
existence of the Messiah was taught only in those circles in Judaism
in which the Messiah was identified with the Son of Man. We
shall return to this in the next chapter.
The fact that the Messiah was from the first regarded as an
earthly being is shown clearly by the fact that ia later Judaism he
was often held to be mortal, as in the earlier form of the Jewish
future hope (see above, pp. 1656*., 277). This conception appears
in the attempts made to harmonize the older, this-worldly,
national, future hope and the later, other-worldly, universalistic
forms by means of the idea of the earthly Millennium (see above,
p. 277). The Messiah was associated with this earthly kingdom
of the end time. This was quite logical, for he had belonged from
the beginning to the restored kingdom on this earth. Accordingly
it is also stated that when this interim kingdom comes to an end,
even the Messiah will die (2 Esdras vii, 28f.). Both the 'Messiah
1 Josephus, Antt. XVII, 271; J3.J. II, 118, 433^; Antt. XX, 97^; Acts v, 36; xxi, 38;
Josephus, Antt. XX, iGgff.j J5.J. II, a66ff.; Antt. XX, 188.
2 See Buhl, Det israelitiske Folks Historic,* pp. 437f.
3 Josephus, Antt. XVIII, 85!*.; Origen, Contra Celsum I, 57. See E. Meyer, Ursprung
und Anfdnge des Christentums II, pp. 4ogfF. On Jewish Messiahs in the Diaspora and in
the Middle Ages, see Simchowitsch in J.L. IV, cols. 132?.
4 See Moore, Judaism II, p. 349.
5 Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 3346"., where the rabbinic passages are quoted.
285
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
from Joseph* and the Samaritan Taheb are said to be mortal (see
below, pp. sgof.).
Even at this period, of course, the Messiah is described as
having all those superhuman features, which from ancient times
formed part of the ancient oriental idea of kingship. An impression
of this ideal is given by Ps. Sol. xvii, to which we shall often refer
below. But these miraculous features are always thought of as
extensions or idealizations of natural human ideals realized within
human nature, although they result from the divine equipment
which the Messiah will receive for his task. As the scion of David
(see below), and as one who could be identified with an actual
historical person, the Messiah is an altogether natural human
being. When Justin, in his dialogue with the Jew Trypho, makes
the latter say, e^mong^us^eyery,pne holds, that Messiah will come
as a.maa from men', he is expressing the prevalent Jewish view.
3. The Messiah's Descent. The Scion of David. Other Conceptions
Thus the Messiah was to be a human being. Nor was there any
doubt, as a rule, that he would be, of David's line. He was 'the
son of David5. This is, .shown both by Jewish literature1 and the
popular conceptions which we find in the Gospels.2 Mic. v, i
gave rise to the belief that he would be born in Bethlehem.3 In
the rabbinical literature we occasionally find the idea (based on
a literal interpretation of passages like Hos. iii, 5; Jer. xxx, 9) that
David would return in person as the Messiah. This view can
hardly have been popular, and it was rejected by other scribes.4
In addition to David, some other of his pious descendants (long
since dead) are mentioned as returning as the Messiah, namely
Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah.5 But here, too, we have to do with
the private opinions of individual scribes.
For a short period it seemed that the thought of the son of David
would become less prominent. This was when the Maccabean
rule was at its height and had not yet lost that ideal quality and
religious lustre which Judas and Simon had shed on it. As we
have seen, there were many in that age who thought that the
1 Ps. Sol. xvii, 4£, 21, 23; T. Judah xxii-xxiv; Shemoneh Esreh xiv, the Habinen&
prayer; for rabbinical evidence seeBousset, Relig.z3 p. 260; 2 Esdras xii, 32; Targum of
Jonathan on Isa. xi, i; Jer. xxiii, 5; xxxiii, 15; Hos. iii, 5. Cf. von Gall, Basileia, p» 397,
2 Mark x, 45; xi, 10 (with parallels); xii, 35 (with parallels); Matt, xii, 23; xv, 22;
xxi, isf.; Rom. i, 3; 2 Tim. ii, 8; Rev. v, 5; xxii, 16. Cf. Didache, ix, 2.
3 Targum on Mic. v, i; Matt, ii, 5; John vii, 4 if. See Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 335ff.
4 Jer. Berakot 5a; Lamentations Rabbah on i, 16. See Moore, Jtidaism II, p. 326.
5 Strack-Billerbeck II, p. 337 n.a.
286
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
glorious Messianic age was being realized. But the Hasmoneans
were a priestly house, of the tribe of Levi, not Judah. The book
of Jubilees knows nothing of a future monarchy of the house of
Judah, but only of the house of Levi; and in the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs the new idea of a Levitical Messiah is found
side by side with the traditional Messiah from Judah.1 As Jacob,
before he died, laid his right hand on Joseph's younger son, and
thus gave him the birthright and the greater blessing (Gen. xlviii,
I3ff.), so the book of Jubilees tells us that the dying Isaac blessed
Levi and Judah, but gave the birthright to Levi: 'May the God
of all, the very Lord of all the ages, bless thee and thy children
throughout all the ages. And may the Lord give to thee and to
thy seed greatness and glory. . . . And they shall be judges and
princes, and chiefs of all the seed of the sons of Jacob;
They shall speak the word of the Lord in righteousness.
And they shall judge all His judgements in righteousness.'
(Jub. xxxi, 13, 143., isa)
In the Testament of Levi it is put still more clearly:2
Then shall the Lord raise up a new priest . . .
And he shall execute a righteous judgement upon the
earth for a multitude of days.
And his star shall arise in heaven as of a king,
Lighting up the light of knowledge as the sun the day,
And he shall be magnified in the world.
He shall shine forth as the sun on the earth,
And shall remove all darkness from under heaven,
And there shaU be peace in all the earth . . .
1 Jub* xxxij isff.; T, Reub. vi, 10-12; T. Levi xviii; see R. Meyer, Der Prophet aus
Galilda, pp. Gsff.; Eppel, Le pieiisme juif dans les testaments des douge patriarches, pp. 98ff.;
Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror, pp. gff. Bickennann (J.B.L. Ix, 1941) denies that any
such doctrine is to be found in the Testaments, and refers to T. Judah xxii, sf. and
T. Sim. vii (the latter generally regarded as not genuine). Black (E.T. Ix, 1948/9, pp.
32 if.) regards the whole chapter, T. Levi xviii, as a Christian interpolation. Charles
(A.P.O.T. II; cf. art. 'Testaments of the XII Patriarchs1 in H.B.D. IV, pp. 72 iff.)
finds allusions to the Maccabean priestly kingdom also in T. Levi viii, i iff. As the
text of the Testaments stands, the two Messiahs are to be found side by side. Charles
has tried to show that the Messiah from Judah is due to secondary Jewish interpolations
(apart from the still later Christian interpolations); and most scholars have agreed with
him. But, as Beasley-Murray says (J.T.S. xlviii, 1947, pp. iff.), £ the juxtaposition of
the Messiah from Judah and the Messiah from Levi is too deeply rooted in the fabric
of the book for either to be discarded'. Cf. T. W. Manson, ibid., pp. 59ff.
2 Text in Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. On the
text-critical problems, see Bousset in £JV. T.W. i, 1900, pp. i4iff. Commentary in
Charles, A.P.O.T. II; cf. Charles in H.DJ&* IV, pp. 72 iff.
287
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
And the knowledge of the Lord shall be poured forth
upon the earth, as the water of the seas . . .
For he shall give his majesty to his sons in truth for
evermore;1
And there shall none succeed them for all generations for
ever.2
And in his priesthood the Gentiles shall be multiplied in
knowledge upon the earth.
And enlightened through the grace of the Lord.
(T. Levi xviii, 2-5, 8-ga)
The 'new priest', whom the Lord will raise up, and who will
receive royal power and bequeath his majesty to his sons, is
evidently meant to be the founder of the Hasmonean priestly
monarchy of the house of Levi; and the status, and power, and
glory which are ascribed to him and his house are the same as are
elsewhere ascribed to the Messiah of the house of David.
It is characteristic of the nature of these ideas about a Messiah
of the house of Levi that they are concerned not with a single,
specific, ultimate individual, but with the founder of a dynasty and
his sons after him. It is the dynasty, not the first individual, which
wiU never be succeeded by any other ruler, i.e., by any other dy-
nasty. It is in this sense that the Testament of Dan speaks of
the 'salvation5 (i.e., the saviour) from the tribe of Levi,3 who
'shall give you peace', and 'shall make war against Beliar, and
execute an everlasting vengeance on our enemies' (v, g£).
This thought also underlies the description in the Testament of
how in heavenly visions the ancestor Levi is installed as priest-king
over Yahweh's people. Levi is brought before the Most High and
installed as His son, His servant, and His priest. He is arrayed in
the holy garb of a priest-king and the insignia of royalty, the
sceptre, crown, and purple girdle, and equipped with righteous-
1 The Greek text has *the majesty of the Lord'; but this would mean 'the royal
majesty (dignity) that he has received from the Lord'. The original text probably
had *his majesty (dignity) '. Hence the departure in this line from the rendering in
A.P.O.T. II.
2 Note again departure from the rendering in A.P.O.T. II ('them' for 'him'). The
mention of *he * sons' (plural) to whom the priest-king gives his majesty, i.e., kingship
(see above n. i), shows that von Gall (BasHeta, p. 392) is right in taking avr& as a mis-
understanding of a Hebrew lam$ as singular (=16) instead of plural (Idhem).
3 If Charles and others are right in taking this to refer to the Messianic king, the
words *of Judah and' must be an interpolation. But T. W. Manson (see above, p.
287 n ,i) takes zw. 4-10 as a Christian interpolation referring to the Holy Communion,
and explains w. 1 1-14 in terms of the establishment of the Zadokite priesthood under
Solomon.
288
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
ness and wisdom, so that he may kindle the light of knowledge in
Jacob, and be as the sun to the seed of Israel.1 It is clear that the
ancient enthronement ritual reappears here, and that certain
features indicate a connexion with the royal ideology.2
But the Messianic kingdom of the Hasmoneans was a short-
lived dream. Even before Pompey made an end of it, many had
come to look upon the dynasty as a usurping one, secularized and
hellenized as it had become. In the Psalms of Solomon it was
regarded after its fall as a dynasty of ungodly tyrants, justly over-
taken by the Lord's punishment.3 Post-Hasmonean Judaism dis-
carded the idea of a Levitical Messiah. Some scholars have held
that the expression * Messiah of (or from) Aaron and Israel ' in the
Damascus Fragments indicates that 'the congregation of the new
covenant' in Damascus4 knew of two Messiahs, one of the seed of
Aaron, the other of the seed of David.5 But this is incorrect. The
expression means simply that the Messiah will come from the
midst of the community itself ('those of Aaron and of Israel*), i.e.,
the community which consists of segregated priests and laymen.0
Besides the Messiah of the house of Levi, we sometimes hear of
1 T. Levi iv, 2f.; v, 1—3, viii.
2 See Widengren in Horae Soederblomianae I, pp. iff., where he shows that similar
conceptions of enthronement have been transferred to Enoch at his enthronement and
installation as heavenly scribe and Metatron (2 En. xxi, 3; xxii, 4-6, 8-10; xxiv,
1-3; xxxvi, 2; see op. cit., pp. yff.). Traces of this enthronement ritual are also
to be found in i Enoch (li, 3; Ix, 2; ch. Ixxi does not belong in this connexion); see
Widengren, op. cit., pp. 8fF.
3 See Messel in JV. T.T. viii, 1907, pp. 325^; Mowinckel, Den senj®diske salmediktrdng,
pp. 2 if., 24, 271!.; Lindblom, Senjudisktfromhetslifenligt Salomes psaltan. The Jewish
discussions about the Hasmonean priest-kings are sometimes echoed in the rabbinic
and apocryphal sayings about the Messiah, but by no means as often as Aptowitzer
thinks (Parteipolitik der Hdsmonaerzeit).
4 See Hvidberg's excellent study, Memgheden af den nye Pagt, with references to
editions and literature. The origin of the sect was dated by some scholars in the
Maccabean or pre-Maccabean age, by others as late as the Middle Ages; see Hvidberg,
op. cit., pp. sSafT.; Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic, pp. 7 iff. The latter opinion
was held by Hdlscher (%.N.W. xxviii, 1929, pp. 2ifE) among others; the former, in
itself the more likely to be correct, was advocated by E. Meyer (Ursprung und Anfange
des Christentums II, pp. 47fF.) and others, and has now been corroborated by the latest
finds of documents in Palestine, the Dead Sea Scrolls; some of which clearly come from
the same circles as the Damascus fragments. On this question, see Ginsberg in
B.A.S.O.R. 112, Dec. 1948, pp. igff.; Brownlee, ibid., 112, Dec. 1948, pp. 8f£; 114,
April, 1949, pp. gff.; 116, Dec. 1949, pp. i4fF.; 121, Feb. 1951, pp. 8f£; Burrows in
O.T.S. VIII, pp. isGff. On the date of the Scrolls (between ca. 175 and ca. 30 B.C.) see
Trever in B.A.S.O.R. 113, Feb. 1949, pp. 6fF.; Birnbaum3 ibid., pp. 33ff.; 115, Oct.
r949> PP- soff.; J.B.L. Ixx, 1951, pp. 227fF.; Albright in JB.A.S.O.R. 1 15, Oct. 1949, pp.
i off.; cf. Burrows, ibid., 122, April, 1951, pp. 46°. On the present state of the whole com-
plex of problems, see Baumgartner in TJ2. (N.F.) xvii, 1948/49, pp. 329!?.; xix, 1951,
pp. 97-154; H. H. Rowley, The ZadokiU Fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls (with extensive
bibliography).
5 So especially Ginzberg, Eine imbekannte judische Sekte I, pp, 29gff.
8 See Hvidberg, op. cit., pp. 273!?.
289
u
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
^^^A^OT ben Ephraim, who, according to the
Jerusalem Targum of ExocL xl, 1 2, will defeat Gog In the last times.
He Is also mentioned elsewhere.1 For instance, we hear that he
will fall in the conflict with Gog. In reference to Deut xxxiii, 17
(where Joseph is described as being like a vigorous firstborn
bullock and his horns like those of a wild ox) this Messiah is also
called 'the Horned' or c Two-Horned One5.
How the thought of the Messiah ben Joseph arose is not clear.
It might well be thought jhaHt arose among the Samaritans _as
a counterpart of the Jewish Messiah of the house of David,2 but
that it was occasionally accepted in Jewish circles, partly because
it could claim support from the interpretation of certain passages
of scripture, partly because the Jews could regard the Messiah ben
Joseph as one of the forerunners of the Messiah, like 'Taxo3 of the
house of Levi, whose task It then was to lead home the dispersed
members of the ten tribes. Billerbeck holds that the conception
originated among the scribes, simply as a result of an interpretation
of passages like Deut. xxxiii^ ,17.* Torrey thinks that it arose from
the Messianic interpretation of Isa. liii: a dying Messiah could not
be the true Messiah ben David, but must be an antecedent
Messiah, coming from Joseph, as the tribe which ranked next after
Judah.4 But, as we shall see, the rabbis did not interpret Isa. liii
of the death of the M essiah; and accordingly, the idea of a dying
Messiah from Ephraim can hardly have originated there. It
would be more natural to suppose, like Moore, that the concept
arose from what is said in Obad. 18 about the house of Joseph,
which will become a flame and consume Edom.5
Perhaps the idea of the Messiah ben Joseph has a more concrete
origin. As we have seen, it is sometimes said that he will fall in the
battle against Gog. Besides Gog, we hear also of Arniilus =
Romulus = Rome.6 It is also stated (referring to Zech. xii, 10)
1 Targum of Song of Sol. Iv» 5; vii, 4; and in Talmudic sources; see Weber, Jiid.
Thiol2} pp. 362fE; Klausner, Die msssiamschm Vorstillungen desjudischsn Volkes im ^eitalter
dsr Teumaiten, pp. 86ff.; Bousset, Relig*, pp. 264^ The locus classicus for this idea is Deut.
xxxiii, 17; see Dalman, Dtf kidende und sterbende Messias der Synagoge im ersten naehchrist-
lichen Jahrhimdert9 p. 19*
2 So von Gall, BasiUui, p. 388; also Bertholdt (as early as 1811) in Christologia
Judaetmm Jesu apastolorurnqm wtate*
3 Strack-BiUerbeck II, pp. sgoff. 4 See Torrey, in J.B.L. Ixvi, 1947, p, 256.
5 Moore, Judaism II, p. 371. Dix*s attempt to find the idea of the Messiah ben
Ephraim in Gen. adix, lob, 2^b (J~T.S. xxvii, 1926, pp. isoff.; cf. xxviii, 1927, pp.
223iE) fails, inter alia, because it is based upon unjustifiable modifications of the text.
Accordingly, H. Smith's attempt to find the idea in Matt, ii, 28 must also be rejected
(J.T.S. xrwii, 1027, P- 60) •
6 See Hvidberg, Mmigheden as dm iye Pagt9 p. 277.
290
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
that this Messiah will suffer death. This idea can hardly have
arisen simply by exegesis of the Scripture passages referred to.
There was no particular reason for interpreting the one 'whom
they have pierced5 in Zech. xii, 10 as a national, warlike Messiah,
if the idea of his death was not already taken for granted on other
grounds. Gressmann1 held that it was the c dynasty5 of Galilean
Messiahs mentioned above (p. 284), and especially Menahem ben
Hezekiah, that gave rise to the thought of the dying Messiah ben
Joseph, ben Ephraim, or ben Manasseh, as he is variously called;
for they all fell in the conflict with the ungodly Rome, and Rome
was at that time regarded as the fulfilment of the prophecy about
Gog and Magog, or as Edom. Death in the struggle for liberty
against the enemy would then be associated from the outset with
this Messianic figure. The explanation is very attractive; the
more so since it is explicitly stated that the Messiah ben Joseph
will appear in Upper Galilee. At all events, the Messiah ben
Joseph is not a prominent feature in the Jewish Messianic hope.
Judging from the rabbinic sources, the idea of such a Messiah
would seem to belong to a late period, perhaps in the Christian
era.2
The Messiah ben Joseph would meet the need felt in some
quarters for a Messiah even more warlike than the son of David
was held to be (see below). Sometimes the rabbis called the
Messiah ben Joseph the c War-Messiah' (m*siah milhdmdh), by
contrast with the descendants of David.3 Butj^_di^ Messiah is
and remains the Son of David.
4. The Names and Titles of the Messiah.
It was not until the later period of Judaism that the king of the
end time came to be called 'Messiah5 (ham-masiah; Aramaic
m'fihd'), 'the Anointed'. We frequently find the fuller form, 'the
Lord's Anointed5 (m*$ih$ dadonqy), or, with a backward reference,
*His Anointed'.4 The common occurrence (e.g., in the Targums)
of the expression malkff mesthdy shows that the term is about to
1 In the essay *Der unerkannte Messias* in Der Messias, pp. 449!?.
2 See Gressmann, Der Messias, p. 457; cf. Weber, Jud. Theol.*, p. 363. Torrey*s
attempt to find the Messiah ben Ephraim in 2 Esdras vii, 28-31 ; 2 Bar. xxix; xxx; ad;
1 En. xc, 38; Dan. ix, 24-27; Zech. xii, 9-1 1, and in a supposed original text of Zech. iv,
and so to trace this idea back to the early post-exilic period (see above, p. 290 n. 4) isnot
convincing.
3 Pesikta 51 a; Pesikta Rabbati xv, 75a; Canticles Rabbah on ii, 13.
4 Ps. Sol. xvii, 32, 36; xviii, <>£, yf.; i En. xlviii, 10; 1,4; 2 Esdras vii, 48^.; xii, 32;
2 Bar. xxix, 3; xxx, i ; xxxix, 7; x!3 1 ; Ixx, 9; Ixxii, 2. See Bousset, R#lig.*y p. 26 1 ; von Gall,
Banlaa, pp. 381, 384f.
291
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
become a personal name,/ King Messiah V like 'King David* and
similar expressions. But even as late as St. Paul's time, the con-
ception oscillates between jMe_and proper name: o %PUJTO$ and
XpioroS' Other terms in the Targums are s Messiah . bar David'
.(son of David), 'the Messiah (or Anointed One) of Israel5, 'the
Anointed One of righteousness \ i.e., the righteous Anointed Onex
nfflhff d€sid^d\* This title also includes the idea that he "will
establish c righteousness \ i.e., salvation and right order in religion
and morals, and that he himself is therefore righteous (see below).
It is natural and understandable that the Messiah is also called
ethe Son of JDavid'.3 This name often occurs in the Gospels.
*The Son of David3 designates him as both the fulfilment of the
ancient promises and the expression of the national hope of res-
toration.4 The expression e Messiah ben David'5 is used, for
example, to distinguish him from the Messiah ben Joseph (see
above). But as in earlier times, the Messiah is also sometimes
called * David*: it is a new David who arises.6 On the expression
in the Damascus Document, * Messiah from Aaron and Israel5,
see above.
Occasionally the Messiah is also called ^the King' or 'the
Great_ King'.7 A name which was sometimes used was ethe
Deliverer* (the Redeemer; Hebrew go*t[)* based on a Messianic
interpretation of Old Testament passages, especially in Deutero-
Isaiah, where Yahweh is called 'the Redeemer of Israel5. Pro-
bably the name c Comforter' (nfnakem)* has the same origin. The
book of Enoch is also following Scripture when it calls the Messiah
'the Chosen One of God5.10 In the Old Testament, both David
1 DaLnan's objection to this explanation of the phrase (Words of Jesus ', pp. 293f,) is
not decisive; cf. ha- el befel = *tfae god Bethel*; see Gressmann in £.A.W. xliii, 1925,
p. 281.
2 See Dalman, op. cit., pp. 2373*.
3 See von Gall, Bastteia, pp. 387, 397, with references to the Targums on I Kings v,
13; Isa. xi, i; xiv} 29; Jen xxiii, 5; xxx, 9; xxxiii, 15; Hos. Hi, 5; Song of Sol. iv, 5.
Cf. Luke ij 32; John vii, 42; Rom. i, 3; 2 Tim. ii, 8.
4 Mark x, 47; xi, 10; Matt, xii, 23; aw, 22; xxi, isf.
5 E.g., Targum on Song of Sol. iv, 5; vii, 4,
6 Strack-Billerbeck II, p. 337 n. p.
7 Sib. Ill, 611; Ps. Sol. xvii, 47.
8 See Bousset, Rslig*, p. 262; von Gall, Basikia, p. 386; Weber, Jud. Theol\ pp.
359f,, with references to the sources.
9 See Bousset, Rilig.zf p. 261; von Gall, Ba$ihia> p. 386. Gressmann, Der Messias,
p. 460, thinks that this Messianic title goes back to the name of Menahem ben
Hezekiah; and following A. Geiger, he sees in this title the origin of the conception of
the Paraclete, explained as (the Comforter*. This latter opinion, at least, is wrong:
irapaK A^ros does not mean 'comforter1 but 'spokesman*, 'advocate*, in the wider
sense of 'helper', corresponding to Hebrew melt?; see the present writer in %.N.W.
I933> PP* 37ff* 10 I En. xxxvii-lxxi.
292
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
and the Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaiah bear this title,
which the Targums interpret as referring to the Messiah (see
below) . But the title really belongs to the Son of Man, to whom
it is also applied in the book of Enoch.
The description of the Messiah as the Servant of God or of the
Lord is also the result of interpretation of Old Testament passages.
The Targums understood the expression thus in several passages
in Deutero-Isaiah/ both those which refer to the special Servant
of the Lord and those which speak of Israel.2 The title does not
imply that leading ideas connected with the Servant of the Lord
were transferred to the Messiah, as we shall see below in consider-
ing the Messiah of the Targums. It means neither more nor less
than when it is applied in the Old Testament to David or to
any anointed king (see p. 67 n. 3). It indicates one who has
been chosen by Yahweh for an honourable task in His service, and
to fulfil His will and counsel among men; and it follows naturally
that it is specially used of the anointed king. As we have seen,
the term can be applied in the same sense to heathen kings, such
as Nebuchadrezzar and Cyrus, whom Yahweh uses as His instru-
ments in furthering His purpose. The Targums and the rabbinic
exegesis of later Judaism in general took no account of context or
of historical background, but interpreted each individual passage
in isolation and in the light of particular phrases. It is therefore
not surprising that passages which contained what were clearly
royal titles, such as cthe Chosen One5, eYahweh's Servant ', 'the
called of Yahweh', and the like, were taken to refer to the
Messiah. But we may not infer from this that the entire concep-
JicuijoCforjexau^ Lord^was transferred to
the., figure of the Messiah.
If the Samaritan Taheb is really a Messianic figure and not one
of the forerunners of the Messiah (see below, ch. IX, 6), this name,
'the Restorer5, is also easy to understand as a name for the
national Messiah: he who c restores the kingdom to Israel*.3
It is,Jiowever3 mpst^ improbable that the Jews ever called the
Mes^ahjthe 'son of God \ although a Messianic interpretation of
Ps. ii, might have suggested such a title.4 In the rabbinic litera-
1 Isa. xlii, i; xliii, 10; Hi, 13; liii, 10, See also 2 Bar. Ixx, 9, 'My servant Messiah'.
2 On other occasional names for the Messiah, sometimes enigmatic or half-humorous,
such as Shiloh (Gen. xHx, 10), Yinnon (Ps. Ixxii, 17), Haninah (Jer. xvi, 13), see
Moore, Judaism II, pp. 348f.; Strack-Billerbeck I , pp. 64!!.
3 Acts i, 6; cf. iii, 21; Mark ix, 12.
4 Dalman, Words of Jesus > pp. a68fF. For further literature see Bieneck, Sohn Gottes
als Christusbezeichnung bei den Synoptikem.
293
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
ture the term 'son of God3 is used of the Messiah only in citations
of Ps. ii and other similar passages which are interpreted Messiani-
cally. It is never used as a personal name for the Messiah.1
A Messianic title of this kind might be suggested by some pas-
sages in the Latin translation of the Apocalypse of Ezra, which
speak ofjilius meus (Christus)3z cMy son (Messiah) '. But since this
expression stands quite alone, it is most probable that the Christian
translator used it to render the Greek word ?rafe, which may mean
both child and servant, the latter sense being the more frequent in
later use. It would then correspond here to the Hebrew 'abdi, cMy
Servant9, in the original.3
Besides these passages in 2 Esdras^ there is only one other to be
considered, i En. cv, where the Lord (=God) is represented as
saying *I and My Son3. But the whole of cv, if. is manifestly an
addition to the real conclusion of the apocalypse in civ, 11-13; and
it can hardly be doubted that this addition is of Christian origin,
since it clearly presupposes the missionary command of Jesus in
Matt, xxviii, igf., and therefore tells us nothing about Jewish
thought or linguistic usage.4
But even if these passages in 2 Esdras and i Enoch had originally
expressed the idea of the Messiah as the Son of God, we must note
that we should not then have to do with a normal Jewish title for
the Messiah, but with an idea which was originally associated with
the Son of Man (see below, pp. 368:61), and which has left only
occasional traces in Jewish Messianic theology. That being so, the
Jews would understand the term in accordance with Old Testa-
ment ideas of the king as the adopted son of Yahweh, as in Ps. ii, i.e.,
as indicating not a metaphysical sonship from all eternity, but
rather a divine election for a specially close and intimate relation-
ship to God? and a call from Him to be fulfilled in His power.
1 Strack-BzHerbeck II, pp. igff. Huntress, too (inJ.B.L. Hv, 19355 pp. njS.}, admits
that the expression *son of God1 was not a common Messianic tide in later Judaism.
He is hardly correct in explaining this as the result of a reaction against Hasmonean
pretensions.
2 2 Esdbras vii, 28; xiii, 32j 37, 52; xiv, 9.
3 See Drummond, The Jewish Affssiah, pp. 285!!".; Violet, Die Ezra-apokafypse, pp.
74f. The word *son* does not appear in the Arabic* Ethiopia, and Armenian versions.
It may be assumed that it is a Christian interpolation in some manuscripts of the
Greek version, and that the original text had only *My Anointed1.
4 Dalmaiij Words of Jesus ^ pp. 26gf., takes v. 2 as a Christian interpolation. But the
whole chapter is secondary. This is also proved by the newly discovered parts of the
Greek text (of which the Ethioplc is a translation), where both cv and cviii are missing.
See Bonner, The Last Chapters &f Emch m Greek.
294
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
Will the Messiah Come? j
To put the question another way: When will the signs be so sure
and the end so near, that the Messiah's coming can be expected?
'The wise5, who were familiar with the 'secret3 (apocryphal)
traditions and with the 'sealed books of revelation ' could say much
on that subject. They were the men who understood the chrono-
logical scheme of the two aeons, the secrets of the 'years' and
'weeks of years ', the signs which foretold the end of this cage3, and
had the key by which the signs could be interpreted. They could
therefore calculate the times and discover the point which had
now been reached. All of this was an essential part of the apocalyp-
tic c wisdom J and tradition, which belonged to the new, super-terres-
trial, universalistic eschatology; and considerable portions of the
apocalyptic literature are concerned with it. But for this very
reason, these matters were unfamiliar to, and too profound for,
the mass of the people, to whom the older, national, this-worldly
Messianic hope was more congenial. Among them the chrono-
logical scheme of the book of Daniel does not seem to have been
widely accepted. ^ They would probably have agreed with the
view expressed in the Targum on Eccles. vii, 24, that of the day
and the hour no man knows, but only God Himself. He will raise
up the son of David at the time known to Himself (or, according
to another reading, which He has determined), on the day of
grace, when His Anointed comes.1
But the wise man (the apocalyptist or scribe) can discern when
the day is approaching, because it is preceded by a series of obvious
omens.? It is this culmination of sin and wickedness which brings
this world to an end, the last tribulation, so familiar to both the
apocalyptists and the rabbis, and called by the latter ' the travail of
the Messiah (or Messianic age) * (see above, p. 272) : tumult and war,
pestilence and famine, bad seasons and dearth, apostasy from God
and His Law, the disruption of all moral order3 and disorder even
in the laws of nature.3 Blessed is he who does not live to see them !4
Many attempts were made, both by the apocalyptists after
Daniel and by the rabbinic scribes, to calculate when the Messianic
age would dawn. Daniel had interpreted the seventy years in
1 Ps. Sol. xvii, 21 ; xviii, 5. See Messel's remarks in JV.T.T. viii, 1907, p. 319.
2 Strack-Billerbeck IV, pp. 977^
3 i En. xcix, 4ff.; Jub. xxiii, 22ff.; 2 Esdras iv, 5i-v, 13; vi, i8ff.; viii, 63-Ix, 6; 2 Bar.
xxv-xxbt; xlviii, 30-37; Ixx, iff.; Bab. Sanhedrin gSb, 37; 97a, 5.16.36.39. 41; 983,
4.12.21.36; gSb, 2; and many other passages; see Strack-Billerbeck IV, pp. 9816*.
4 2 Bar. xxviii, 3; 2 Esdras xiii, i6fL; Strack-Billerbeck IV, p. 986.
295
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
Jeremiah as seventy c weeks of years'; and it Is quite pathetic to
see the courageous faith with which one addition to the text after
another is made in the attempt to postpone from month to month
the time calculated by Daniel1 We have the Apocalypse of Enoch
with its division of the present aeon into ten periods, the Apoca-
lypse of Ezra with its twelve world-periods, the cloud- vision of the
Apocalypse of Baruch with its twelve periods, new interpretations
of Daniel's seventy weeks of years, and so on.2 The learned
systems of calculation were numerous,3 as were the miscalculations
and disappointments.4 Accordingly, men came to doubt whether
such calculations were justified. The rabbis give warnings against
them as impious and forbidden:5 the wise men of the past deliber-
ately concealed the date ;, the end will come when wickedness, has
readied its climax, or when all Israelites have become pious and
righteous, or at the time when God so decides, when 'the time is
fulfilled3, in 'the fulness of time',6 i.e., when the time has elapsed,
which God has appointed for this aeon.
'The day5 may be at hand; but it may also be distant. When
times were hard and evil, pious men often thought that the day
was too far off. Then they anxiously awaited its approach; and
from their hearts and lips there arose again the old question from
the psalms of lamentation: "How long, O Lord?3 and 'Wherefore,
OLord?'
Then was born the prayer that the Messiah might come. Israel
could but humble herself before God and ask for His grace, 'hope
in God, our deliverer5, and ask Him to 'cleanse Israel against the
day of mercy and blessing5:
Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king,
the son of David,
at the time in which Thou seest, O God, that he
may reign over Israel Thy Servant . . .
May the Lord hasten His mercy upon Israel !
May He deliver us from the uncleanness of unholy
enemies!7
1 See Baumgartner in Die ekristliche Welt Nos. 31/32-37/39, 1925, col. 26.
a Dan. tx; i En. xcill, i-io; xci, 12-17; 2 Esdras xiv, nf.; 2 Bar. liii-kxii; Sib. IV,
47ff., etc. See Stracfc-Bzflerbeck IV, pp. g86ffl; Volz, Esdufologp*, p. 145.
s Strack-Bilierbeck IV, pp. 9996*.; Volz, Eschatologie\ pp. 1435".
4 See Volz, Eschatologie\ p. 145.
5 See Strack-BiUerbeck IV, pp. toisffl; Volz, BschatohguP, p. 145; Moore, Judaism
H, pp. 352ff.
« Gal, iv, 4. See Strack-Bilierbeck III, pp. 570, 580; Moore, Judaism II, pp.
7 Ps. Sol. xvii, 21, 51; cf. P. 3 and xviii, 5.
296
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
In the Jewish Eighteen Prayers \ which in its main features
goes back to the time of Jesus, we also find the prayer that God will
restore Jerusalem and establish the throne of David: cthe Shoot
of David do Thou cause to shoot forth speedily3.1
The presupposition of these prayers is the conviction that Israel
needs to be purified. Already in Ps. Sol. xvii the poet lays the main
responsibility for the disaster, which is the background of the
psalm, on the house of 'sinners', who had claid waste the throne
of David in tumultuous arrogance5, yet completely identifies him-
self with his people in their responsibility before God, and con-
fesses frankly that 'for our sins, sinners rose up against us'.2 Con-
viction and confession of sin on behalf of the entire community are
leading themes in these psalms. The author certainly means to
say that it is because of her sins that Israel has still to wait for the
day of grace when the true Anointed One can come. Therefore
the hour may be hastened by penitence and the fulfilling of the
Law, by study of the Scriptures and good works; but it may also
be delayed by sin and impenitence.3
The same thought occurs elsewhere. The Targums on Mic. iv,
8 know that it is because of Israel's sins that the appearance of the
Messiah is delayed. One of the strict scribes says that if Israel
would rightly repent for but one day, or keep a single Sabbath as
the Law requires, then the Messiah would come.4
But besides the idea of more or less perfect penitence as a con-
dition, we sometimes find the very natural thought that the
Messiah will come when wickedness has reached its climax. We
may compare the mediating view of Rabbi Johanan: 'Messiah,
the son of David, will come only when, the age has become wholly
worthy (virtuous), or when it has become wholly guilty.'5 That
salvation will come when distress is at its worst, when the Messianic
travail has reached its climax, accords with the view of the earlier
prophets of restoration and of the prophetic disciples who collected
the prophetic books. It is reflected in the arrangement of the
books, where the threats of doom are followed immediately by
1 Cf, Authorised Daily Prayer Book, p. 49; German translation in Else Schubert-Ghnst-
aUer, Der Gottesdienst der Synagoge, pp. iqff.
2 Ps. Sol. xvii, 5, 8. On the poet's association of himself with the sins of the people,
see my Senj&disk salmediktning, pp. 22, 28fL, 32!.
3 Strack-Billerbeck I, pp. 599, 600,
4 Pesikta 1630; Shabbat, u8b; Sanhedrin, 97b; etc. See Weber, Jud. Theol.*, pp.
5 Sanhedrin, o,8a; Jer. Taanit, 64a, with reference to Exod. xvi, 25 combined with
Isa, xxx, 15. See Moore, Judaism II, pp. 35of.
297
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
prophecies of salvation; and thus It appears to be supported by
these books. Ultimately the thought goes back to the conception
in the enthronement festival of God's Intervention and new crea-
tion when distress is at its worst.1
But in the last resort the hour must be left to God. Israel must
not try to hasten the Messiah's coming by her own strength or by
outward force3 say the rabbis,2 This is an echo of bitter experi-
ence in the many abortive Messianic revolts.
6. The Forerunners of the Messiah
Since the coming of the Messiah depends on whether Israel
repents and Is converted, it is necessary that there should first
come men who can bring about conversion and restore everything
to right order. The recognition of this, and the longing for those
who will thus prepare the way, are the religious background of the
rise of the wide-spread belief in the forerunners of the Messiah.3
But the content of the idea, and the influence behind its origin and
its development, lay in the many parallel Messianic conceptions,
which needed to be harmonized with each other, and also in the
exegetical treatment of earlier Old Testament expressions of a
corresponding expectation of men who could prepare for
Yahweh's coming to His people.4 *H~'l~~
This expectation Is expressed in MaL Hi, 23^ as the ending of
the collection of prophetic books, as prophecy's last word to Israel,
so to speak: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the great and terrible day of Yahweh. And he shall
turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of
the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with
a curse.5 This addition to the book Is itself a re-interpretation of
MaiacM's own prediction (iii, iff.), that Yahweh will send His
angel ('the angel of the covenant \ as a gloss puts it) in advance,
1 See Pss. xlvi and xlviii; and cf. Ps.St II, pp. 575*., ia6ff., 254!?.; Offersang og sang-
offer, pp. X4gff,
2 Strack-BIHcrbeck I, pp. 5g8f.
2 Strack-Biilerbcck I, p. 756; IV, pp. 781^ 784^ 7#6; cf. Volz, Eschatologie*, pp.
xgsff-
4 von Gall's attempt to trace the idea of forerunners back to tlxe Persian idea of a
number of * Saviours5 (Saoshyants) (Bastieia, p. 377) is both unnecessary and improb-
able. Bousset is right in finding the origin of the idea itself in Malachi (ReKg. 2, p. 266) ;
but he, too, introduces unnecessary complications into the prophecy of Malachi by
obscure parallels from comparative religion. Malachi's longing for a new and greater
prophet than himself, who will understand better than he does how to prepare the
way for God, and put Israel in a fit state to receive her God when He comes, is readily
understood in the light of the prophet's own sense of inadequacy and the unworthi-
ness of the community. Nevertheless there is an element of truth in the views of
Bousset and von Gall; see below, p. 302.
298
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
to prepare the way for Him (alluding to the familiar prophetic cry
of Deutero-Isaiah). We are not told in detail what will be the
angel's task. No doubt it is in the first instance, to foretell the Lord's
coming, and to remind men of the covenant and the Law. Then
the Lord Himself will appear in His temple and give judgement,
refining and purifying. An age which had no prophets felt the
need of men of God, filled with the spirit, who could preach peni-
tence and conversion with greater power and effect than the
epigoni of the prophets (the learned custodians of tradition and
the £wise5) felt that they could. Therefore they interpreted
Malachi's words as a promise of a prophet of the old kind, one of
the old prophets themselves; and whom was it more natural to
expect than Elijah, who had not died, but had been taken up into
heaven alive?
In later Judaism, then, Elijah has become the forerunner of the
Messiah. Probably this idea is expressed already in Eccles. xlviii,
10; and at all events, we find Elijah mentioned by the Jew Trypho
in Justin's dialogue as one who should come arid anoint the Messiah
for his work. In one version of the rabbinic legend about the birth
of the Messiah, to which we shall return below, it is Elijah who
detects who the newborn child is (see below, pp. 30411), But
Sirach already knows that Elijah will return; and it is probable
that the Apocalypse of Enoch contains the same teaching.1 The
thought of Elijah as the forerunner of the Messiah secerns to have
been widespread in Judaism; and it is presupposed in the Gospels
as a common Jewish belief.2 Of his role as cthe restorer' the
rabbis have much to say.3 For instance, he will decide questions
about clean and unclean, and separate foreign elements from the
Jewish nation.4
As a rule, other forerunners are mentioned together with Elijah.
Most frequently Moses appjears beside him.5 From Deut. xviii, 15,
in which Israel is promised that she can always rely on God to send
'a prophet like Moses' to show her the right way, it was easy for
Jewish exegesis to discover that Moses would come again. The
1 "The young ram' in i En. xc, 31 (cf. Ixxxix, 52; xc, 9); see Pedersen in Islamica,
u, pp. 422iT.
2 Ecclus. xlviii, iof.; Markix, nf.; Matt. xi? i3f.;xvii, i off.; John i, 21, 25; c£ Lukei,
17; Jerusalem Targum on Exod. ad, 10; Targum of Jonathan on Deut. xxxv, 4. See J.
Jeremias in T.W.B.N.T. III, pp. 93off.; Bousset, Relig*, pp, 266f,
8 Strack-Billerbeck IV, pp. 78 iff.; Klausner, Dumssiamschen Vorstellungen desjwtischen
Volkes im geitalter der Tannaiten, pp. gSff.; von Gall, Bastteidy p. 379.
4 See Moore, Judaism II, pp, 3578".; and p. 278 above.
5 Strack-Billerbeck IV, p. 787; cf. Volz, Eschatologie*, pp. 194^; J. Jeremias in
T.W.B.N.T. IV, s.v. Ma>vajj$.
299
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
expectation of Moses and Elijah as forerunners of the Messiah sheds
light on the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain,
and also on the reference in the Apocalypse to the two witnesses.1
The rabbis, too, (e.g., Johanan ben Zakkai) speak of Moses and
Elijah.2 Sometimes Moses is mentioned as the only forerunner.3
It is natural that Enoch should be mentioned together with
Elijah. Of both it was told that they were taken up into heaven
alive; and therefore they can return from heaven.4 The expecta-
tion of such a return before the coming of the Messiah is extended
in the Ezra Apocalypse to all men who have been taken up
(recepti], who from their birth have not tasted death.5 The
Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah speaks of sixty forerunners of the
Messiah.6
It is also possible that the Samaritans* Taheb (see p. 290 above),
she who brings back', or 'the Restorer \ was not originally a
Messianic figure, but really belonged to those forerunners who
would restore the life of the community, like Elijah.
Among the forerunners we may also include the_ mysterious
^e Orderer 5, who appears In the Assumption of Moses37
1Rev. xi, 3!*.; Mosbech, Johannes* $ Aabenbaring, pp. igzff. Further references to the
literature in Munck, Pdrus und Paulus in der jfokanmsapakalypse. Munck tries to prove
that the two witnesses are Peter and Paul.
2 See von Gall, Basileia, p. 378; Munck, op, cat., p. 10.
3 See von Gall, op. tit., p. 380, with references to the Samaritan tradition and to
Sib. V, 2561!.; Volz, Esckatologw2, p. 191.
4 I En. xc, 31; cf. Bousset, Der Anikhrut, p. 134; Rdig.*> p. 267; Volz, Eschatologie*,
pp. iQTf.
5 2 Esdras vi, 26; see Volz, Eschatologu*, p. 193; Stade-Bertholet, DleBiblische Theolo-
gw dss Alien Testaments II, p. 443.
0A Baraita quoted by Klausner (op. cit., p. 71; c£ Volz, Eschatologie2, p. 218)
speaks of nine righteous men in the past, who have been taken up into paradise alive.
7 On Taxo in Ass. Mos. ix, iff., see Bousset, Itelig.2, p. 266; Clemen in A.P.A.T. II,
p. 326; BurHtt in H.D.&. III, pp. 448!!; von Gall, BasiUia, p. 381 ; Rowley, The Rele-
vance of Apocafyptic^y pp. 1346"., with further references. Lattey (Catholic Biblical
Quarterly, January 1042, pp. lyf.; sees in Taxo a cipher for 'Shiloh* (Gen. xi, 10), taken
as a name for a suffering Messiah. But the way in which Taxo is referred to in the
Assumption of Moses seems to indicate that he was a historical person, and that the
author had knowledge of his work and his death. From these he expected a miraculous
result in the last days. Burkitt, Charles, and others see in Taxo a reflection of some
historical person, such as Eleazar in 4 Mac. i, 8. Against this specific identification, see
Rowley, op. cit., loc. cit. Torrey (JJ&JL.9 Ixii, 1943, pp. iff.) finds in the word a cipher,
415, in a supposed Aramaic original, corresponding to a Mmny\ 'the HasmoneanJ=
Mattathias the Maccabee. Against this, see Rowley in J.B.L. Ixiv, 1945, pp. i4iff.;
and cf. Torrey's reply, ibid., pp. 547!?. The interpretation of 'Taxo* in the Latin
text as corresponding to a TQ.%MV ('the Orderer'} in the Greek 'original', from which
the Latin text was undoubtedly translated (see Charles in AJP.O.T. II, pp. 409!!),
is suggested by Clemen and Bousset. It might seem doubtful so long as no Hebrew
word could be indicated, of which this rdftav could be the translation; but see the
following note, and Mowinckel in Supplements to F. T. I, pp. 88-96. That the original of
the Assumption of Moses was in Hebrew, seems to be beyond doubt: see Charles
.II.
300
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
although no Messiah is mentioned in this apocalypse. Taxp(n)
is^a righteous man, who> in the last times, together with his seven
sons, through prayer and self-sacrifice, will move the Lord to put
an end to the tribulation and bestow salvation. The name cannot
be explained from any Semitic language, and must therefore be a
Greek translation of a Hebrew original. In all probability it
represents the Hebrew mehdk,ek of Gen. xlix, lo.1 In the Damascus
Document (viii, 8) , this word is used with the meaning * Lawgiver9,
or 'Orderer*, one who maintains and expounds the Law through
his m'huklfkot) and thus establishes right order, and sees that the
congregation obeys the hu^im and hukkot.2 He is identical with
c the student of the Law3 (dores hat-tor dh}y ' the Teacher of righteous-
ness' (i.e., the right, or righteous, Teacher: ySreh sedek], who had
played a great part in the reorganization of the sect in Damascus.
The sect appears to have expected that this 'Orderer5 and law-
giver' would return at the end of time, once again to play the part
of a taxon. Forty years would pass between his death and the com-
ing of the Messiah.3
According to the Fourth Gospel (i, 21; cf. vi, 14; vii, 40) the
Jews of the time of Jesus also believed in 'the Prophet' (the true
Prophet), who was to appear before the Messiah, but who was
explicitly distinguished from Elijah.4 This expectation could be
1 In Greek renderings of Hebrew or Aramaic writings, rants' and raareur nave a
special relation to hufckdh or hol$, and tor ah (Aramaic dat), and are used in parallelism
with VOJJLOS (e.g., i En. Ixxii, i, 35; Ixxix, i; cf. ii, i; v, 4). See Aalen, Die Begnffe
'Licht* und 'Finsternis3 im Alten Testament, im Spatjudentim wad im Rabbinismus, pp. i$gf.
In the Septuagint, r<x|ts = torch in Prov. xxxi, 26 (24), racraetv renders fiwwfih in
2 Sam, vii, 1 1 ; i Chron. xvii, 10; Isa. xxxviii, r. Gf. Ecclus. xvi, 26, where Aalen rightly
suggests a hukkim or kukkot behind the pcpLSas = the cosmic orders or laws.
2 The m'hokek is identical with the 'Student of the Law' (viii, 8; ix, 8; see Hvidberg,
Menigheden of den nye Pagt, pp. 26of.5 2921!.), who is also the 'righteous Teacher* (viii,
10; see Hvidberg, op. cit., pp. 2706*.) or * Teacher of the congregation* (ywrh hyhyd),
This last expression has been interpreted as *the Teacher of the Unique One' (i.e.,
God; so Gressmann), and more often as £the unique Teacher*; but in the Dead Sea
Scrolls, which come from the same stcttyjid is a term applied to the congregation, *the
many* (plenum) (see Burrows in O.T.S, VIII, pp. lyaft.), andj^fin the Damascus
Document must have the same meaning. The spelling with a second y is either due
to a later misinterpretation, or indicates a pronunciation like yoked.
If this explanation of Taxo(n) is right, we may perhaps conclude that the Assump-
tion of Moses originated in the same circles as the Damascus sect. Note that Taxo(n)
and his seven sons hide themselves in a cave in order to pray for the people, but also to
be able to live in accordance with their strict interpretation of the Law. The cave at
*Ain Feshkha was certainly not only a depository for the manuscripts, but also a hiding
place for the leaders of the sect in times of persecution. The cave of Taxo(n) may wefl
have been the cave at *Ain Feshkha.
3 Damascus Document ix, 39; see Hvidberg, op. cit., pp. 26 iff.; Rowley, The Rele-
vance of Apocalyptic2, pp. y6£; The ^adokite Documents and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 40.
See also the Habakkuk Commentary on Hab. i, 5 (translation by Brownlee in BJL.S.O.R*
112, Dec. 1948, pp. 8ff.).
4 Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 363, 479f.; cf. Volz, Eschatologie*, pp.
301
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
based on Dent, xviii, 15, where, as we have seen, reference Is made
to a future prophet like Moses. It is possible that there are other
references to this Prophet, for Instance In the people's decision^ that
Simon the Maccabee should be leader and High Priest until a
trustworthy prophet should arise, who could settle the question of
the Messianic status of the Maccabees.1
Sometimes this prophet seems to have been identified with the
Messiah himself. This was probably the case when the Jews
wanted to make Jesus king, because they saw In Him e the prophet
who should come Into the world5 (John vi, 14).
But the idea of a forerunner contains one feature which can
hardly be explained solely on the basis of Old Testament pre-
suppositions, namely the not uncommon conception, referred to
above, of several forerunners, sometimes two, often three: Moses,
Elijah, and the Prophet. The thought of one forerunner could
easily have arisen from conceptions peculiar to Judaism; but the
Old Testament presuppositions do not explain why three such
forerunners are spoken of as following each other. This seems to
be connected originally with an Idea which occurs In Persian
religion and In several doctrinal systems In Jewish Gnosticism,
the notion of several 'saviours* (Messiahs); and this, in turn, is
associated with the doctrine of world-periods, which is also of
Iranian and Chaldean origin. In Persian eschatology, four world-
periods are mentioned, each of which has its saviour (Saoshyant),
the last of whom Is the true saviour, the three others being fore-
runners. The Jewish thought of three forerunners was determined
by these conceptions.2
7. \Th Day of the Messiah and His Appearing*}
'The day of grace3 (Ps. Sol xviii, 10 (9) ), when the Messiah
will come, isalso called * the day of the Messiah* (e.g., 2 Esdras, xiii,
52), This term reappears In the New Testament
Jesus Christ5.3 The expression Is formed by analogy with the
earlier £day of Yafaweh*, which, in turn, is analogous to cthe day
of the king'. It means the day when Yahweh3 or the Messiah,
will appear as klng? assume the royal title, and be acclaimed as
king. When the royal day of Yahweh is mentioned, the thought
Is that He becomes king and Is acknowledged as such, because he
* i Mac. xiv, 41; see von Gall, BasMa, p. 381; Volz, Eschatologie2, p. 191; cf. R.
Meyer, Der Prophet ma Gaffiaa, pp. iSfll
2 See the present writer in N.T.T. xiv, 1944, pp. 23 if.
3 i Cor. v» 5; Phil. I, 6, 10; ii, 16; 2 Thess. ii, 2.
302
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
has again accomplished His work as king. By a great act of
salvation He has established and created His kingdom. This was
the fundamental thought in the old harvest and epiphany festival,
from which it was transferred to the future hope and to eschato-
logy. c The day of the Messiah ' is evidently meant to be taken in
the same sense. It means the day on which he has accomplished
his Messianic work, crushed the enemy, saved his people, 'restored
the kingdom to Israel' (about which the disciples, with their Jewish
outlook, could still ask even after the Resurrection; Acts i, 6), and
thus shown himself to be the Messiah.
It is to this revelation as Messiah that the Targums refer when
they repeatedly say of his appearing that he c reveals himself5
^itgalli}.1 This expression is also used elsewhere, and it indicates
that the Messiah's appearing has a special character. 2 This, too,
is reminiscent of the ideas associated in the Old Testament with
Yahweh's epiphany, in that He 'makes Himself known' (noda*}*
revealing His character through His glorious appearing and His
mighty, kingly acts. The day when the Messiah appears and
accomplishes his Messianic work of salvation is the day when he
cis revealed3 as what he is destined to be, as the Messiah. These
expressions imply that it is this Messianic work which makes him
the Messiah. He cannot be known and acknowledged as such
until these actions have revealed his identity. By performing
Messianic works he c reveals his glory3 (his dignity as Messiah), as
the Fourth Gospel puts it (John ii, 1 7) . The brothers of Jesus say to
Him, 'Reveal yourself to the world5* by which they mean., come
^forward, and perform^ openly the Messianic works and miracles
(John vii, 3ff.; cf. xiv, 22). According to Jewish thought, it is only
then that He will become Messiah in the full sense of the term.4
Before that time we may say that He is but Messias designatus, a
claimant to Messianic status.
Besides this idea of manifestation through Messianic acts, we
also find in later rabbinic literature the conception of a still
more dramatic and striking manifestation. In one passage we
read, c At the time when King Messiah reveals himself he will
come and stand on the roof of the temple'; from there he will
announce to Israel the message of redemption.5 The Temptation
1 On the use of tMs word, see von Gall, Basileia, p. 400.
2 2 Bar. xxix, 3; xxx, i; 2 Esdras vii, 28; Sib. Ill, 652.
3 Ps. xlviii, 4; Ixxvi, 2; see Ps.St. II, p. 458.
4 This is rightly emphasized by Messel in N.T.T. xxi, 1920, pp.
6 Strack-Billerbeck III, p. 9.
303
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
narrative shows that similar ideas were known even in earlier
times.
At this point we need only add that it is not improbable that in
the expression and the idea of c the revelation of the Messiah3 (his
epiphany or parousia] there are more profound, metaphysical
elements, influenced by ideas about a heavenly being, c the Son of
Man' 3 who will appear at an appointed time, revealing himself
as he really is (see further, pp. 388f3 below).
The pregnant expression, 'the day of the Messiah' (referring to
the appointed day and hour when he will appear and reveal who
he is), must not be confused with the more general and compre-
hensive plural, 'the days of the Messiah5. In comparison with
*fhe day5 this expression is secondary and weaker. In rabbinic
usage it actually includes his entire reign as king; but here, too,
special emphasis is laid on the day when he appears, and the great
revolution takes place, when the kingdom is founded, set up, and
consolidated: to this extent the original sense is still evident. We
shall return below to the expression, c the days of the Messiah \
8. i The Hidden Messiah"}
Jf it is the Messiah's work that makes him the Messiah .and.
reveals him as such, then it is obvious that as a human being he
may live part of his life without coming/orward and being acknow-
ledged as the Messiah, and possibly without himself realizing that
he is the Messiah, without any ( Messianic consciousness ', to use
the technical, theological expression. The people cannot know in
advance who is the Messiah. The Messiah is, as we have said (p.
303), the one whom God calls, raises up, and equips, bestowing
upon him grace to perform the Messianic work. But like one of
the old prophets, or like the Servant of the Lord, he himself may
well have received the call and known in experience that the Lord
has made him like a sharp sword and a pointed arrow, though
hitherto He has hid Mm in His sheath, until he comes forward and
carries out the Messianic work, or until by another designatory
miracle God reveals him to all the world as the Messiah, and makes
men acknowledge him as such.
That these ideas (which are of importance for an understanding
of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus) were really current in
Jewish circles may be seen from the references to the unknown
Messiah which sometimes occur. In his Dialogue with Trypho,
Justin Martyr (ca. A.D. 150) makes the representative of Judaism
304
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
say, 'Even if the Messiah should have been bom and be living
somewhere (this is meant to be a hypothetical concession to the
Christian assertion that Jesus was the Messiah), yet he is un-
known;1 indeed, he does not even know himself; nor has he any
power, until Elijah comes, anoints him, and reveals him to all*
(viii). In ex Trypho says, 'Even if men say that he has come, he
will not be known for what he is until he becomes famous and
renowned'. Here we have the two possibilities mentioned above.
The Messiah is an ordinary human being (of David's line, we
must assume), until a day when Elijah returns and anoints him
king, as the prophets did in ancient times, and so makes him known
as the Messiah; but afterwards he gives abundant evidence of his
Messianic dignity by making himself renowned, i.e., by performing
the work of the Messiah, and compelling all the world to acknow-
ledge him.2
The same conception appears in the Ezra Apocalypse (see 2
Esdras xiii). The feature, which is certainly traditional,3 that the
Messiah (here called the Son of Man) will come up from the sea, is
thus interpreted to the apocalyptist: 'Just as one can neither seek
out nor know what is in the deep of the sea, even so can no one up-
on earth see my Son [or those that are with hirri] but in the time of his
day* (xiii, 52). For this apocalyptist, the Messiah is undoubtedly
the pre-existent being, the Son of Man, who will be revealed by a
miracle. But the expressions he uses here in xiii, and the thought
which he here associates with the revelation of the Son of Man, are
taken from the conception of the unknown earthly Messiah. As
Justin says, it may well be that men will see the Messiah before he
is acknowledged; but they will not see him as he really is, until he
is revealed. This is also the original sense of the words used in the
Ezra Apocalypse, even if the author understood them to mean
that it is only when the Messiah is revealed from the world beyond
that he can be seen at all by those who dwell on earth. There is
also an allusion (though perhaps not rightly understood) in the
Fourth Gospel to the Messiah's incognito (vii, 27).4
This thought of the unknown or hidden Messiah also occurs in
the rabbinic literature. The commentary on the Psalms, Midrash
Tehillim, Interprets Isa. xi, 10 of the Messiah: *It is Messiah, the
s: The word probably also includes the nuance * unknowable*.
2 On this interpretation of the evidence from Justin, see Messel in JV.T.T. xxi, 1920.
3 As Gunfcel rightly emphasizes, in opposition to Messel's rationalization (ibid.,
pp. 75ff.) ; cf. his review of MesseFs, Die Einkeitlichkeit derjildischen JEschatologie, in JV". T. T.
xvii, 1916, pp. igGff. 4 See Messel, ibid.
305
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
Son of David, who keeps himself hidden until the appointed time
has come.'1 After his birth he lives unknown,2 no man knows
where; some say in Rome, the very stronghold of the ancient
enemy; others speak of a place in the far north; and others, again,
speak of paradise, or some other place in heaven.3 From this
hidden, unknown, lowly, often degraded existence in suffering and
want (see below) the Messiah wiH come forth and reveal himself
on his day.
But these somewhat theoretical and hypothetical ideas about
the hidden Messiah also took another, more specific, more
legendary and fantastic form. The Messiah has already really
come, though he is still unknown as he moves about among men.
This appears already in the Targum on Mic. iv, 8, where the
reason for his still being hidden is Israel's sins. The Targum on
Exod. xii, 42 knows that the Messiah will come from Rome, a con-
ception also found among the rabbis.4 We hear, too, that the
Messiah is thought to be sitting as a leper among the plague-
stricken, outside the wralls of Rome,5 or wandering through the
world as a beggar, until the time when he will become known and
come forth as the Messiah/ But the same idea, in the age after
Christ, resulted in a legend about the birth of the Messiah which
exists in different versions. According to this, the Messiah is born
on the same day as the destruction of the temple; only one person
(in some accounts, an anonymous Arab; in another, Elijah)
realizes who he is; but soon afterwards the child is taken away
until the day when he will come forth as Messiah; and no one
knows where he is now.7 This narrative was also applied to the
political Messiah, Menahem ben Hezekiah.
The source of this idea, that the Messiah is already wandering
about unknown, is probably the longing for his day. But the epic
formulation of it makes use of traditional motifs. The longing has
laid hold upon the familiar oriental theme of the unknown saint,
who lives despised among men, who do not suspect what kind of
1 Strack-BiHerbeck III, p. 315.
2 Op. at. II, p. 339; IV, p. 766.
s Op. cit. II, p. 340; I, pp. i6of., 481, 960, 1018; IV, p, 488.
4 Op. cit, II, p. 340; Dalman, Der leidmde imd sUrbsnde Messias, p. 41; von Gall,
BasUeia, p. 400.
5 Bab. Sanhedrin », g8a, etc. Scliocps has shown (in Biblica xxix, 1948) that
Symmachus's rendering of Isa. liii, 5, alludes to the idea of a leprous Messiah.
8 See Gressmann, Der Af&snast p. 451 n. 3, pp. 452, 458.
7 This nativity legend is analysed by Gressmann in his essay *Der unerkannte
Messias', in Der Messias, pp. 449!?,, with translations of the texts and references to the
sources.
306
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
person he really Is. l In the nativity legends, motifs concerning the
unknown child of the king or the god have provided material for
the development of the idea. A similar motif also played a part in
the development of the tradition about the birth of Jesus.2 But
probably some part is also played by a mythological motif of the
same kind as underlies Rev. xii. We may conclude this from the
fact that the legend does not explain why the child is taken away;
that must have been explained by the narrative from which it is
derived. Rev. xii tells of a woman in heaven, who gives birth to a
child, who is caught up to God's throne and thus delivered from
the dragon who wants to devour him. This tale about the divine
child, who brings redemption and the new world, is very wide-
spread. In the form which underlies the symbolism of the Revela-
tion, we probably have to do with the new sun god, who signifies
the end of the dominion of the dragon (the state of chaos, winter,
flood or drought, and death).3 It is also probable that the
oriental myths about the resurrected or reborn god of fertility and
life are included in the material which has contributed to this
story, the kind of myth which underlies the symbolism of the
Immanuel sign in Isa. viL The same mythical motif appears in
the statements that the Messiah has been born, but is hidden|for
the time being in heaven or in paradise (see above, p. 306), which
does not really fit the earthly son of David. In the development
of the legend of the Messiah's birth, with which we are concerned,
this myth served only as a single contributory motif. From it is
derived the feature for which the Messianic legends provide no
reasonable explanation: that the child disappeared soon after his
birth, having been taken away. In the myths this is explained by
the fact that he had to be saved from the dragon.
But even those who handed down this nativity legend some-
times asked themselves why the child was taken away again, and
the people's hope, which seemed to be assured at the very moment
when they experienced their deepest humiliation by the destruc-
tion of the temple, was postponed to the unknown future. One of
the variants offers an answer, which, however, is not an organic
part of the motif itself, but is the result of theological reflection,
1 See Bousset in A*R. W. xxi, 1922, pp. iff.; further literature in Gyllenberg, Hsrrms
tjanare, pp. 25f.
2 See Gressmann, Das Wetfirutchtsevangeliwn; and cf. the survey in Klostermann-
Gressmann, Das Lukasevangelium, on Luke ii» 1-20.
3 See the survey of the various parallels and attempted explanations in Mosbech,
Johannes's Aabenbaring} p. 229.
307
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
namely that the child will remain hidden until the time appointed
by God has elapsed, and the end is at hand. 1 This is probably how
most Jews would have answered the question. Sufficient penance
has not yet been done for the sins of Israel; and until there is
genuine conversion and obedience to the Law7 the Messiah cannot
cbe revealed9. That is precisely the reason why first of all there
must come men who can evoke penitence and conversion, and put
all things in order, namely those forerunners of the Messiah to
whom we have referred.
9. The Equipment of the Messiah for His Mission.*
It is possible for the Messiah to be the Messiah, and to save his
people, only because, through his close relationship to God, he has
acquired special equipment for his mission. In Ps. Sol xvii, 42
(37) we read:
For God will make him mighty by means of (His) holy
spirit^
And wise by means of the spirit of understanding, with
strength and righteousness.
The Messiah will receive the holy spirit of God with all the gifts
bestowed thereby. This is the source of his equipment for his
mission.
Of course the Messiah is righteous.2 From remote antiquity
that formed part of the oriental ideal of kingship. He is called
€the Messiah of righteousness' (i.e., the righteous Messiah, me£thff
desidkd\ Sometimes his righteousness also implies his just govern-
ment and judgement of his people:3 every man will get his due;
peace and order will be maintained; the wicked will be punished;
the good will live in peace, and will 'secure their livelihood, and
keep their possessions '. Here the term e righteousness ' corresponds
to what we modems understand by it, with special reference to its
application to legal and administrative activity. But, as a rule,
something different is meant when the Messiah's righteousness is
mentioned. From the beginning the term is closely associated
with salvation, with establishing and maintaining for the people
good conditions at home and abroad. ITbe^Messiah will .obtain
1 See Gressmann, Der Messws, p, 452.
s Ps. Sol. xvii, 25 (23), a8f. (a6f.), 31 (29), 35 (32), 4* (37), 4® (43); *viii, 8 (7);
Targum on Jer. aadii, 6; xxx, 15; Agadat SMr hash-sMrim IV, 1 1 ; Seder Rab Amram
i, ga (cf. lob, I2a); Pesikta Rabbati i6ib» i62ab, i63ab, 1643. See Dalman, Der
leidende imd sterbende Messias^ p. 241.
8 Ps. Sol. xvii, a8f. (a6f.), 35 (32), 48 (43).
308
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
his people's c right' against heathen oppressors,, and any traitors,
bandits, and sinners, who may exist in their own midst. He will
save them from slavery and misfortune, and maintain this salva-
tion and liberty in the face of all menacing perils; for it is Israel's
* right' to be free, rich, and prosperous, and the first among the
nations. The righteousness of the Messiah consists in his saving
his people: righteousness and salvation are identical.1
Not only his righteousness, but his wisdom is constantly em-
phasized.2 The rabbis hold that the Messiah knows what is in
men, and what is going to happen.8 Wisdom and counsel imply
the ability both to see what is right and to bring it about.
But the true essence and source of wisdom is the fear of God.
This, too, is a gift of God's grace, a religious and moral quality.
Therefore, whenever it appears in its fullness, it is accompanied
by freedom from sin, a characteristic of the Messiah which the
Psalms of Solomon emphasize:
And he himself (will be) pure from sin, so that he may
rule a great people.
He will rebuke rulers, and remove sinners by the might
of his word. (Ps. Sol. xvii, 41 (36) )
In accordance with normal Jewish thought, what is chiefly meant
here is that freedom from sinful acts, which is possible to those who,
in the fear of God, and enlightened by His holy spirit, conform to
God's Law: in other words, 'righteousness' in the Jewish sense.4
It is his endowment with God's holy and purifying spirit that keeps
the Messiah righteous and free from sin. That the spirit of God
will descend on him in all its glory, and give him his equipment
and his powers, is also emphasized in T. Levi xviii, 7:
And the glory of the Most High shall be uttered over
him,
And the spirit of understanding and sanctification shall
rest upon him.
Because he has God's holy spirit, he is also himself holy, and his
own spirit is a sanctified spirit. This indicates, first of all, the
divine, superhuman, miraculous character of his equipment; but
1 T. Judah xxiv, with reference to Mai, iii, 20.
2 Ps. Sol. xvii, 42 (37); I En. xlix, 2f.; li, 3; T. Levi xviii; see Volz, Eschatokgic*,
p. 221.
3 Strack-Billerbeck II, p. 439.
4 Gf. Ps. Sol. i, 2f»3 'full of righteousness*; and see Messel in N.T.T. x, 1909, p. 127.
3°9
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
it also refers to a moral quality.1 This is evident from the close
association here with 'the spirit of understanding*. In Jewish
thought, understanding and wisdom denote moral and religious
insight and power: the knowledge of God means religious and
moral character and action.2
In the main, it is the religious and moral ideal that the Messiah
fulfils. His piety is shown in what was the heart of Jewish religion
from the time of Isaiah onwards: that in the fear of God3 and
trusting in Him, he never falls into the sin of pride, which is
characteristic of heathen powers, who trust in human might and
understanding. But
He shall not put his trust in horse and rider and
bow . * .
Nor shall he gather confidence from (?) a multitude (?)
for the day of battle . . .
His hope (-will be) in the Lord: who then can prevail
against Mm?
(He will be) mighty in his works, and strong in the fear
of God,
(He will be) shepherding the flock of the Lord faithfully
and righteously.
(Ps. Sol xvii, 37 (33), ^L (39) f.)
Because he himself possesses wisdom and the fear of God, he can
also be both leader and example to his people when they live
Under the rod of chastening of the Lord's Anointed in
the fear of his God,
In the spirit of wisdom and righteousness and
strength;
That he may direct (every) man in the works of
righteousness by the fear of God,
That he may establish them all before the Lord,
A good generation (living) in the fear of God in the
days of mercy,
(Ps. Sol. xviii, 8-10 (7-9) )
Because he himself is holy, he can make his people holy also,
cleansing them from sin, impurity, and heathenism, so that they
may live a life dedicated to God, and also giving them the moral
and religious quality which is implicit in holiness.8
1 Cf. Stade-Bertfaolet, Die Biblische Theokgu des Alien Testaments II, pp. 76, 409!".;
Fridrichsen, Hagios-QjBdo$3 pp. 58ff. * Cf. Mowinckd, Die Erkenntms Gottes, pp. sff.
* Ps. Sol. xvii 28 (26), 32 (30), 35f. (32), quoted Wow, pp. 315-317.
310
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
John iv, 25 also mentions that Jews and Samaritans believe that
the Messiah will teach his people a right understanding of the Law,
a right insight into the fear of God, and piety, as he himself takes
upon himself the whole Law and fulfils it. In learned circles, among
the rabbis, it was probably this aspect of the Messiah which was
most emphasized.1 The Apocalypse of Enoch also knows that the
Messiah has, as a gift of the spirit, the charisma of teaching.2
Here the prophetic inheritance of the Messianic conception is
evident (see below, pp. 32 if.). It is possible that the Damascus
sect held it to be an important task for the Messiah to preach, and
to maintain sound doctrine and obedience to the Law. At all
events we find that the rabbis sometimes think of him as a scribe
and a teacher of the Law.8
The Messiah's equipment may be described in terms of ancient
Israelite thought and vocabulary in a single word: there has been
bestowed on him a special blessing:41
And the blessing of the Lord (will be) with him: he will
be strong and stumble not.
(Ps. Sol. xvii, 43 (38) )
Therefore he will c bless the people of the Lord with wisdom and
gladness' (Ps. Sol. xvii, 40 (35) ),
10 {The Work of the Messiah and His Kingdom)
The Messiah is the blessed king of David's line, equipped with
the spirit and with the divine powers and qualities; and as such he
exists for the sake of Israel. When he reveals himself it is with the
glad tidings of Israel's redemption and her coming glory, of peace
and salvation.5 JHejias beensent to the house of Israel; his mission
is the salvation of Israel.
This means, in the^Kf^^^* to restore Israel as a people to her
former .glory; more, to gain for her the leading position among all
the nations of the world. His first task, therefore, is to free Jbis
P^^^-feQI^-.ter^ngiiieSj6 crushing the heathen world power
which holds her in bondage. Clearly the Messiah of later Judaism
1 Strack-Billerbeck III, pp. 57o£, 577; IV, pp. if.; cf. pp. 796, 878, 885, 907, 918.
2 i En. xlix, 3. See also Hvidberg, Menigheden afden nye Pagt, p. 262. with references.
3 See Hvidberg, op. cit., pp. 262f., with references.
4 On this fundamental idea in Israel's conception of life, see Pedersen, Israel I-II,
pp. iSsff.; Mowinckel, Diktet am Ijob og harts tore venner, pp. 5ff.
5 Strack-Billerbeck III, pp. 8ff.; I, p. 607.
6 Sib. Ill, 653; i En. xlvi; H-liii; 2 Esdras xi, 46; xii, 34; xiii, 5, 37f., 49; 2 Bar.
xxxv ff.; Ixx, 9; T. Jos. xbq cf, Volz, Eschatologie*, pp, 223f.; Strack-Billerbeck HI,
pp. 576, 873.
311
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
plays a much more active part In the deliverance than the king of
the earlier future hope. This is very clearly expressed in the Psalms
of Solomon,1 which come from the time after Pompey had ended
the rule of the Hasmoneans in 63 B.C., thus removing from the
earth this house of sinners, who had laid waste the throne of David
in their arrogance, as the writer says of this once celebrated
dynasty. The passage in Ps. Sol. xvii quoted above (p. 296)
continues thus;
Gird him with strength, that he may shatter unrighteous
rulers3
And that he may purge Jerusalem from nations that
trample (her) down to destruction
Wisely, righteously he shall thrust out sinners from (the)
inheritance,
He shall destroy the pride of the sinner as a potter's
vessel.
With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their sub-
stance,
He shaE destroy the godless nations with the word
of his mouth.
At his rebuke nations shall flee before him,,
And he shall reprove sinners for the thoughts of their
heart.
(vv. 24-27 (22-25) )
TMs victory over the heathen is thought of as an act of war. As
a rule, the Messiah is not regarded as judge of the world in a legal
and forensic sense. When the statement is made (alluding to Isa.
xi, 4) that he will destroy the heathen with the word of his mouth,
the thought is not of a judicial act, but that when the heathen hear
his threatening war-cry, they will be reduced to impotence and will
flee.s It often sounds as if the victories were won by the Messiah
single-handed. But this would be too rash a conclusion. The ex-
pressions reflect the traditional court-style3 as we meet it in the
I-style of the old royal inscriptions.4 The same conception of the
Messiah's work is found in Jubilees, the Targums, and the Jewish
Sibylline Oracles.5
1 See Gray in A.P.O.T, II, pp9 $2>j& * <x Botisset, Relig.\ p. 263.
3 So, rightly, Leivestad, Christ As Conqueror, pp. 8£
4 Cf. Mowrncke! in Ewhmist&rwn I, pp. 2970*.
s E.g., Jub. xxxi, 17 (the Messiah from Levi); Jerusalem Targum I, II on Gen. xlix,
10; Jerusalem Targum I on Deut. xxv, 19; Lam. ii, 22; Isa, Hi. 12; KiL i, a, 7, nf -
Sib, V, xoSfcj III, aSSffi, 632^ >>»>*/> .
312
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
The Messiah's first task, then, is the destruction of the world
powers. Here the Messianic conception of later Judaism differs
from the earlier one. This is obvious in the Ezra Apocalypse and
the Baruch Apocalypse, where it is the Messiah himself who, in a
miraculous way, destroys the world power, Rome.1 By contrast
with the earlier conception, the view of later Judaism is that the
Messiah will come, not after God has established the kingdom, but
after the events which prepare for the great day, after the signs
have shown that the day is at hand, after the climax of wickedness
and sin and the appearance of the forerunners.2 There is reason
to think that the warlike spirit of the Maccabean line has in-
fluenced this new conception. Only occasionally, as, for instance,
in the original kernel of i Enoch, do we find the view that the
Messiah will not appear until after the great judgement. But, as
we have seen, this does not mean that the Messiah is thought of as
a judge. The ancient Jewish conception is that God himself, e the
Ancient of Days ', is the judge of the world. The Messiah of later
Judaism is God's victorious instrument in the establishment of the
kingdom.
But the reckoning with the world power is also regarded as an
act of judgement in which the Messiah takes part. This is so, for
Instance, when Rabbi Akiba holds that one of the judgement seats
in Dan. vii> is for e David \ i.e., the Messiah.3 The Apocalypse of
Ezra, too, sometimes has this conception alongside the idea of
annihilation: cFor at the first he shall set them alive for judgement;
and when he hath rebuked them (i.e., convicted them) he shall
destroy them. >4 There is here a blend of lingering influences from
the older conception of the judgement (see above, p. 273; c£
pp. lyGff.), and of elements from the conception of the Son of
Man (see below, pp. 393ff.)-
The world power which is to be destroyed is often called Gog
and Magog,5 with reference to Ezekiel. In nationalistic circles it
was, of course, Rome that was meant; and it was also called
Babylon or Edoin, and identified with the last of the four world
empires mentioned in Dan* vii (2 Esdras xii, 1 1). As the leader of
this power, which is hostile to God, a specific person appears, an
* Antichrist ' (see above, pp. syaf.), often called Armilus, which is no
doubt a distortion of Romulus, the name of the first king of Rome.
1 2 Esdras xi, iff.; xiii, iff.; 2 Bar. xxxvi, iff.; xxxix, i-xl, 4.
2 See Schurer, Gesdtichte9' II, pp. 6i2f., with references to the sources.
8 See below, p, 352 n. 3. 4 2 Esdras xii, 33.
5 Jerusalem Targum II on Num xi, 26; Jerusalem Targum I on Bxod. xx, xx.
313
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
But thought is centred primarily on Israel's own land and
people.1 There is no great concern about the fate of the heathen.
Only very occasionally is it stated that the survivors of heathen
nations will be converted;2 if anything is said about their destiny,
it is usually to emphasize their destruction. But those who sur-
vive will be compelled to acknowledge the true religion and submit
to Israel. Sib. Ill, 654. tells us that he will slay some and 'conse-
crate faithful vows to others *, that is, compel them to submit and
assure them of security and Hfe under his dominion.
He shall have the heathen nations to serve him under
his yoke;
And he shall glorify the Lord in a place to be seen
of (?) all the earth. (Ps. Sol xvii, 32 (30) )
The heathen will become tributary vassals under the Jews'
Messiah. They may no longer live in Israel's land, being them-
selves unclean, and by their very presence making the land un-
clean. Fear will make them acknowledge and pay homage to the
God of Israel; but the national Messianic hope had no great
missionary interest.
This strong emphasis on the Messiah as a warrior (c£ the ex-
pression 'War-Messiah9 used of the Messiah ben Joseph, p, 291,
above), and the development of a more active conception by
contrast with the earlier period (see above, pp. iGgff.) are no
doubt indirectly connected with the new, transcendental concep-
tion of the Messiah which finds expression in the Son of Man. The
fact that this universalistic and transcendental conception of the
Messiah came to prevail in many circles (as we shall see later)
made conservative circles, for their part, lay still greater emphasis
on the national and political aspect of the future king, thus making
him more of a military figure. A similar influence was exercised
by the growing intolerance of everything foreign, which was a
result of the Maccabean revolt and the Roman rule, and which
made foreign dominion over the Jews seem increasingly obnoxious.
In such circles the future hope would concentrate more and more
on deliverance from alien rule. The Messiah would be primarily
a royal deliverer, the enemy of Rome, a Zealot.
Referring to Num. xxiv, 17, the Damascus Document says that
the Messiah will crush aH the children of Sheth (i.e., the heathen),
1 See Bousset, Relig.\ p, 268.
* References to the sources in Bousset, J^%.8, p. 269 n.i»
314
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
and that the rest of the sinners in Israel, who have survived the
final catastrophe, will be put to the sword when the Messiah of
Israel and Aaron comes.1 This latter expression seems to indicate
that it is God Himself who annihilates the heathen and sinners, or
perhaps that the Messiah does it by his miraculous power, without
direct military action.2
In later rabbinic theology the military features again become
less prominent. Leadership in_ war is left to the c War- Messiah 'of
the house of Joseph; or God Himself will overthrow the heathen
by His miraculous power, whereas the Messiah will assume
power3 in the restored kingdom, and thereafter maintain peace.
Victory over the heathen means not only the liberation of Israel,
but also the universal dominion of the Messiah. * He shall have
the heathen nations to serve him under his yoke', says Ps. Sol.
xvii, 32 (30). The rabbinic literature, too, emphasizes his uni-
versal dominion, alluding to a number of biblical passages.4
Jerusalem will then be the centre of the world; and all nations will
come and do obeisance before the God of Israel, who will have
become king of all the world. The passage from the Psalms of
Solomon just quoted continues,
And he shall purge Jerusalem, making it holy as of
old:
So that nations shall come from the ends of the earth
to see his glory,
Bringing as gifts her sons who had fainted,
And to see the glory of the Lord, wherewith God hath
glorified her.5
The rabbis frequently describe the stern rule which the Messiah
will exercise over the heathen. He is lenient towards Israel, but
stern towards the heathen.6 He will hold all nations under his
yoke,7 and quell every revolt with the breath of his mouth.8 But
1 Damascus Document ix, ioff.; cf. Hvidberg, Menigheden of den nys Pagt, pp. 263,
267, 269.
2 As in 2 Esdras xiii, 28; cf. Hvidberg, op. tit., p. 269.
8 This is rightly emphasized by Hvidberg in discussing Ginzberg's view of the
Messianic teaching of the Damascus Sect; see op. cit., pp. 274, 276f., with references.
4 Numbers Rabbah 13 (i7ob); Genesis Rabbah i (i$6a); Pirke de-R. Eliezer n
(6c); see Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. I47f.; and further IV, pp. 88, 895 n.d., 896 nn. fa,
i, 899 n.m.
5 Ps. Sol. xvii, 33f. feof.). See further Strack-Billerbeck III, p. 148 nX; IV, pp. 881,
895 n.£, 897 n.k., 889 n.1. Messel (in JV.T. J". x, 1909, pp. xosff.) underestimates the
universalistic tendency hi Ps. Sol. xvii.
6 Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 64; III, p. 144; IV, p. 882.
7 Op. cit. Ill, pp. 144, 148; IV, p. 882.
8 Op. cit. Ill, pp. 144, 148, 641; IV, p. 882.
3*5
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
it is also said that he will be the light of the nations. l The peoples
seek after him; and he will teach them to observe the most impor-
tant of God's commands.2
The prevailing^ view is that the heathen will yield „ to him
voluntarily; for the Messiah is the prince of peace; and \vhen_th_e_
heathen have been overcome, he has put an end to war.3 His
kingdom is a kingdom of peace and prosperity for both Israel and
the other peoples.4 He will be the good shepherd to his people.5
He will restrain them,6 and preserve them from all evil:
(He will be) mighty in Ms works, and strong in the fear of
God,
(He will be) shepherding the flock of the Lord faithfully and
righteously,
And will suffer none among them to stumble in their
pasture. (Ps. Sol xvii, 44£ (40) )
But occasionally it may be presupposed that even after his en-
thronement the Messiah may be obliged to restrain the princes,
and to meet the enemy on a cday of conflict'. But none shall
prevail against him, because he puts his trust in the Lord (Ps.
Sol. xvii, 37 (33), 41 (36), 44 (39) ).
Therefore we also read:
Blessed be they that shall be in those days,
In that they shall see the good fortune of Israel which
God shall bring to pass in the gathering together of
the tribes. (Ps. Sol. xvii, 50)
In that they shall see the goodness of the Lord which He
shall perform for the generation that is to come,
(Ps. Sol. xviii, 7 (6) )
When the world power has been crushed, the dispersed can
return;7 and this, too, is now a result of the Messiah's work. The
heathen themselves have to bring them back;
1 Op. cit. II, p. 726. 2 Op. cit II, p. 438.
3 Sib. V, 429f£; cf. III, 7068!; Jub. xxxi, 20.
4 2 Bar. hodii, i; T. Judah xxiv; and further, Strack-Billerbeck III, pp. 9 nn.c.-o*
148 n.£u; IV, p. 910 n.ce.
s Ps. Sol. xviij 44-46 (4of.); Exodus Rabbah ii, (68b) and other rabbinic passages;
Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 536£
s See the passages about the Messiah's painful work for his people, cited in Strack-
Billerbeck II, pp. 287 nn.g., h.Lk., 289 nn,£g.; Bousset, Relig.\ p. 271.
7 Of. above, p. 269; and Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 591 ; IV, pp. 882, 907 n.f.g.; Bousset,
p. 271.
316
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
And he shall gather together a holy people, whom he shall
lead In righteousness.
And he shall judge the tribes of the people that has been
sanctified by the Lord his God.
And he shall not suffer unrighteousness to lodge any more in
their midst,
Nor shall there dwell with them any man that knoweth
wickedness.
For he shall know them, that they are all sons of their God.
And he shall divide them according to their tribes upon the
land,
And neither sojourner nor alien shall sojourn with them
any more.
He shall judge peoples and nations in the wisdom of his
righteousness . . .
And he (shall be) a righteous king, taught of God, over them,
And there shall be no unrighteousness in his days in their
midst,
For all shall be holy and their king the anointed of the
(Ps. Sol. xvil, 28-31 (26-29), 35f. (32) )
After the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 we also find that the
rabbinic literature attributes to the Messiah the restoration of
Jerusalem and the temple in their former glory. l In the Eighteen
Benedictions, prayer is made that the Lord in His great mercy
will have compassion on His people Israel, on Jerusalem the abode
of His glory, on the temple and on the kingdom of the righteous
Messiah, the scion of David.
The Messiah will be a righteous ruler over the returned and
restored people. He will judge his people with righteousness. He
is mesihff desidkd\ the Messiah of righteousness, or the righteous
Messiah (see above, pp. 3o8f.). When he is also called 'The
Messiah of Thy (i.e., the Lord's) righteousness5,2 it is the thought
of the Lord's saving righteousness that is present (see above, p.
309). But again and again It is also stated that as a king who rules
and judges, the Messiah himself will bring forth justice and right-
eousness, and by his righteousness (in the sense of an ethical
quality) will fulfil God's righteousness (in. the sense of His salva-
1 Strack-BiUerbeck I, pp. ioo$f.
2 See Bousset, Relig.*9 p. 258 n., according to the Jerusalem recension of Shemoneh.
Esreh v. 14.
317
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
tlon).1 Sinners will be rooted out, together with the heathen.
The land and the people will no longer be Infected and desecrated
by the presence of foreigners and Immigrants. The people will
become a holy people. In the sense not only of being separated and
dedicated to the Lord, but of having moral qualities (see above,
p. 309):
In the assemblies he will judge the peoples, the tribes of
the sanctified.
His words (shall be) like the words of the holy ones in the
midst of sanctified peoples. m Q , *• or / \ \
r r (Ps. Sol. xvu, 48£ (43) )
Injustice will no longer dwell among the people; they will all be
the sons of their God.
(He will be) shepherding the flock of the Lord faithfully and
righteously,
And will suffer none among them to stumble in their
^ * (Ps. Sol. xvii, 45 (40) )
He will lead them all in righteousness:
And there will be no pride among them that any among
them should be oppressed, /-not -• r / \ \
rr (Ps. Sol. xvii, 46 (41) )
Because he Is filled with the blessing of the Lord (see above,
p. 311)5 he himself is a blessing to his people, and will bless the
Lord's people with wisdom in gladness. All the virtues, peace,
righteousness, faithfulness, will flourish among the people (p. 310),
because Gpd has set him over jthe. house. ofJsrael to guide them in
the right way. All this he creates and upholds by his chastisement.
Like the king in ancient times, the Messiah is the Intermediary
between God and the people, in that he intercedes for them and
gains the divine forgiveness.2 The Messiah of the tribe of Levi
combines the call and inspiration of king, priest, and prophet;3
a typical Jewish development of the idea. In the Targum's
interpretation of Isa. iiii (see below, pp. 33off.), it is said that he
gains the divine forgiveness of sins both by interceding on behalf
of his people, and by causing them to observe the Law and do
right. Butj^er^i^n^suggestion.inXew^ literature
1 Ps. Sol. xvui, 8 (7); i En. xlvi, 3; xlix, 2; bcii, 2; Ixxi, 143*.; see above, pp.
2 Targum on Isa. Hii, 4.
* T, Levi xviii; Jub. sod; cf. Joseplius, Antt. XII, 299; B.J* I, 68 1.
318
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
authority to forgive sin.1 According to Jewish though t, to
forgive sins is God's prerogative, and His alone. This is evident
from the offence which was caused when Jesus appeared with full
authority to say j Your sins^are forgiven'.2
Nor is the thought of the resurrection of the dead connected
with the national conception of the Messiah. It is God who raises
the dead. This is quite natural, since in Judaism belief in the
resurrection is later in origin than the Messianic hope. Where we
find indications of a connexion between the Messiah and the
resurrection, it is the result of influence from the idea of the Son
of Man.3
Nor is the national Messiah thought of as judge of the world;
for judgement, too, belongs to God Himself (see above, p. 313). It
is, therefore, very significant that the thought of the Messiah as
judge of the world does not occur in the rabbinic literature, but
only in the Apocalypse of Enoch, where the reference is really to
the Son of Man, and not to the national Messiah.4
In a certain sense it may be said that all the blessings of the
Messianic age are bound up with the Messiah; and from that
point of view a comprehensive and detailed picture could be given
of all the glory and happiness which later Judaism and the
learned rabbis thought would come with the days of the Messiah.5
But our present concern is to bring out those features in the con-
ception of the future which are explicitly connected with the
Messiah, and regarded as brought about by him; and there are
a few special features, in addition to those mentioned above, which
the rabbis attribute to the Messiah. As the Messiah was present
from the first in the thought of God, and in His eternal purpose
for the world, he is also, as the central figure in the last things,
thought of at times as the first-born of creation (as in St. Paul)/
as the end and goal of creation and of created things,7 and as
1 Some scholars think that the Damascus Document xviii, 8 expresses the idea that
the Messiah will forgive the sins of the congregation (see Hvidberg, Menigkeden of dm
nye Pagt, p. 268), It is more probable that the text (which is fragmentary at this point)
refers to God Himself. The verb used is kipper, which with a human subject does not
mean 'forgive*, but 'make atonement1 (see Stamm, Erlosen tmd Vergeben im Alien
Testament, pp. 59ff.). If the Messiah is the subject in xviii, 8, then the reference wiH
be to his intercessory prayer.
2 Mark ii, 5ff. and parallels; cf. Strack-Billerbeck I, pp. 495^
3 Only once, and in a late document, is the Messiah spoken of as raising the dead;
see Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 524; and below, pp. 337, 4Oof.
4 Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 978; IV, p. iioo.
5 Op. cit. IV, pp. 875-968.
• Op. cit. I, p. 65; III, p. 626; cf. pp. 258, 677.
7 Op. cit. Ill, p. 626; IV, p. 994.
319
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
greater than the angels.1 Therefore he Is also sometimes regarded
as the restorer (cf. the Taheb of the Samaritans) of those good things
which existed at the beginning, but were lost through the fall of
Adam:2 the splendour of man's countenance which was a reflec-
tion of the glory of God, eternal life; the original proportions of
the human body, the paradisal fertility of earth and of the trees, and
the original power of the light of the heavenly bodies. In other
passages these things form part of what God will Himself renew
in the last times.3 The Messiah will also cause to fall from heaven
the manna, the miraculous food of the desert wanderings.4
Thus the Messiah is the supernaturally equipped instrument in
the establishment of the kingdom of the end time, the restoration
of the kingdom of Israel (Acts i, 6), the kingdom of God on earth.
In that kingdom he is the perfect ruler. In the days of the Messiah5
there wiU be all imaginable happiness; and righteousness, peace,
and piety will prevail among men, both in Israel, and among the
other nations, who submit to Israel's God and ally themselves with
His people.
But there _ was an increasing tendency in Judaism to distinguish
between the kingly rule of Yahweh (the kingdom of God) and the
kingdom of the Messiah. This is connected both with a conserva-
tive influence and also with the projection of the kingly rule of God
into the next world^ which was strongly fostered by the new, other-
worldly eschatology with its cosmic dualism (see above, pp. ayoff.).
The more conservative tendency in the future hope in later Judaism
(particularly among the rabbis), which represents a traditionalist,
conservative reaction against many features in apocalyptic, main-
tained firmly that in the last things the real agent was God Himself.
The day is £the day of the Lord*; and the kingdom is the kingly
rule of God or of heaven.6 God is judge of the world. The resur-
rection is the work of God, God is creator of the new heaven and
the new earth. It is God who brings back paradise, and who Him-
self then dwells in the midst of His people.
On the other hand, men could not disregard the fact that the
kingdom of the Davidic Messiah was an earthly kingdom, though
a glorified and idealized one. And they were aware of a profound
difference between that kingdom and God's eternal, transcen-
dental, other-worldly kingdom in a wholly new and different state
1 Op. cit. II, p. 673. 2 Op. cat. I, p. 19; IV, pp. 88yf£
» Op. cit. IV, p. 891. * Op. cit. I, p. 87; II, p. 481; IV, pp. 890, 954.
* bee above, p. 304, and the references below, p. 326 with n.3.
f Strack-BIUerbeck IV, pp. Syfi. nnJc.L
320
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
of existence. This gave rise to the theological compromise men-
tioned above (p. 277). The Messianic kingdom becomes an interim
kingdom before the real kingdom of glory under the kingly rule of
God; and its duration is limited. It will be the conclusion of the
present aeon. Sometimes it was supposed that the catastrophic
transition to the new aeon would end the Messianic kingdom:
when the days of the Messiah had elapsed, the Messiah and all
other living men would die; then would come the resurrection, the
establishment of the new aeon, and the eternal kingdom of God
(see below, pp. 325f.). In spite of all attempts at idealization and
all the fresh influences from the new eschatology, the Messiah and
his kingdom were and remained this- worldly in character.
ii. The Influence of Prophet and Scribe on the Idea of the Messiah
Thus the Messiah is a king, and his mission is that of a king. But
in the later Jewish idea of the Messiah there are present certain in-
fluences from men's conception of the prophets. This is evident,
for instance, from the fact that c the Prophet who is to come into
the world' sometimes seems to have taken the place of the Messiah
(p. 302).
The thought of the Messiah as an intermediary between God
and the people (pp. 238£, 318) is another mark of prophetic in-
fluence. In itself this status of intermediary is also a royal feature:
the king is the leader of the cult, and represents his people before
God. But prophetic ideas also play their part here. In Judaism
the prophet became more and more the true intercessor and inter-
mediary, at least in popular thought and in legend.
In the extensive Messianic interpretation of Old Testament
passages of every kind, it was taken for granted that the national
and political Messiah had prophetic characteristics. These charac-
teristics are admittedly also associated with the conception of the
king in the east and in Israel; but nevertheless the prophetic con-
tribution is noteworthy, This is so when the Messiah's wisdom
is emphasized.1 He has all wisdom, and understands all mysteries
(p. 309). He is superior to the angels.2 He understands men's
hearts.3 c Gome and see a man who has told me all that I ever
did. Can this be the Messiah? ' asks the Samaritan woman (John
iv, 29). And this wisdom is something which the Messiah has
learned from God, not from men.4 This wisdom has a markedly
1 Op. cit., II, pp. 4s8f.
2 Op. cit. Ill, p. 673. 3 Op. cit. II, pp. 412, 438.
4 Op. cit. II, p. 152; III, p. 36. Cfl Staerk, Soter I, pp. 6gf.
321
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
didactic character, which means, in later Jewish thought, that it is
prophetic. * When the Messiah comes, he will teach us all things 5,
says the Samaritan woman (John iv, 25). This includes both how
God ought to be worshipped,, and how the Law is to be interpreted
and observed.
When the people came to the conclusion that Jesus was truly
'ifefl .Prophet that should come into the world \ the natural con-
sequence was that they should proclaim Him king (John vi, I4f.).
Thus, the Messiah is cthe prophet5 /car* cgoxyv* This passage seems
to imply that cthe Prophet*, simpliciter, was a title of the Messiah.
This is in harmony with the fact that Old Testament passages which
spoke, or seemed to speak of a special prophet in the future (like
Malachi's prediction of the return of Elijah, or the reference in
Deuteronomy to the coming of a prophet like Moses), were by
some interpreted Messianically,1 whereas other scholars took them
to refer to a prophetic forerunner of the Messiah (see above, pp.
2g8ff.).
Nevertheless it ought to be noted that whereas, in the earlier
period, and particularly in the circle of the Servant of the Lord,
more was said about the knowledge of God, that intimate relation-
ship with God which brought an immediate understanding of,
and unity with, the will and Law of God,, in later Judaism more
is said about the Messiah as a teacher, and of the spirit of teaching.
Here, as generally in later Judaism, the prophetic element is
formalized by tradition and the influence of learning.
When the equipment and mission of the Messiah are sometimes
expressed in terms of the triple function^of king, High-priest, and
prophet,2 this is a somewhat formal description; and its implications
are not worked out in any detail. The bearing of the idea is
indicated by the fact that the reference is to the Messiah of the
tribe of Levi It undoubtedly originated in Hasmonean court
circles, and probably never enjoyed general currency.
In general, it should be noted that the influence of the interpreta-
tion of Scripture on the conception of the Messiah was always
limited to occasional details. Admittedly the Jewish scholars
themselves regarded their Messianic teaching as based on the
revelation in Scripture; but in fact the Messianic hope and its
essential content are a religious tradition, which is older than the
1 See Staerk, Sotar I, pp. 6sff. Staerk exaggerates the point, and, by generalizing
and overlooking distinctions, draws hasty and sweeping conclusions from the evidence.
2 T. Levi xviii; cf. Josephus, AntL XIII, 299; JB.J. i, 681, See Murmelstein in
. xxxv, 1928, pp. 27$f.; cf, xxxvi, 1929, pp. siff.; see above, p. 318.
322
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
sacred canon of Scripture, What the scholars did was to find In
Scripture individual passages, which supported or amplified the
conception of the Messiah which they had inherited. Their
interpretation of Scripture was always more or less atomistic: an
exposition of, or a deduction from, individual verses or sentences,
without any appreciable reference to the context. They would
interpret this or that psalm messianically; but this seldom meant
that they had attempted to grasp the content of the passage in its
entirety. This also applies to their treatment of the Servant of the
Lord in Deutero-Isaiah. They had no difficulty in applying one
verse to the Messiah, and the next, perhaps, to the people of
Israel.1 This explains why Isa. liii has, in the main, left little mark
on the conception of the Messiah, in spite of the fact that the
Servant was not infrequently identified with the Messiah. What
men found in the Scripture texts was, broadly speaking, the
Messianic concept which they already held (see below, pp. 330:?.).
12. {Was the Messiah an Eternal Individual?
v 9
Is_theJ\^jessiah of later Judaism really a specific individual who
will have no successors ; or is he, like the king of the restoration in the
earlier period (see above, pp. 1 6$ff. ) , a representative of the restored
dynasty, and the first of an unending succession of similar rulers?
At least the Messiah of the tribe of Levi in the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs and the Book of Jubilees is regarded as the
representative of his line. Here the eternal character of the
Messiah denotes the eternal rule of the line. This is clear, for
instance, from the fact that (according to i Mac. xiv, 41) the
people proclaimed Simon prince and High-priest c for ever5; that
is, made the office hereditary in his line for the future.2
In spite of everything, the national Messiah was a man: and,
according to Jewish belief, a man cannot live for ever; the few
individuals (like Elijah3 and Enoch) who were caught up into
heaven are exceptions. Even in Ps. Sol. xvii, which attributes to
the Messiah so many superhuman qualities,, he is thought of as
inaugurating the newly restored, eternal dynasty of David.4
1 North's survey of the many rabbinic interpretations of the Servant (The Suffering
Servant, pp. gff.) gives a clear impression of their inconsistencies and their unsystematic
character. 2 See Schiirer, Geschichte* II, p. 616 n. 18.
3 Ecclus. xhriii, 9-11. Staerk (Soter I, p. 69) thinks that Sirach here means that the
Immortal Elijah is the Messiah, or, at least, that this idea underlies his words. But
Staerk offers no proof of this; for no proof exists.
4 This follows from the implication that his span of life is limited; cf. v. 42 (37),
* throughout his days he will not stumble*, i.e., throughout his whole life. Cf. Messel
in JV.T.T. x, 1909, pp. losff*
323
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
But there were several factors which led to the conception of the
Messiah as a specific individual First, there was the strong appeal
and interest which the thought of the great transformation, the
dawn of the Messianic age, had for religious thought and reflec-
tion. It was so great and decisive an event, that at first men had
no inclination to go further and inquire what would follow after-
wards, and whether this age of bliss would ever end. This question
is first raised because of the need, in the interests of a theological
system, to relieve the tension, for instance3 between the this-
worldly and the other-worldly forms of the Messianic hope. It
was only natural that in the specific, individual prediction or des-
cription of the Messianic kingdom, the kingly rule of the Messiah
came as a glorious climax, beyond which neither thought nor
imagination sought to reach. In the moment of apprehending the
idea, the Messiah was presented to the mind as unique and ulti-
mate.
But, in addition, there was the influence of the new, other-
worldly eschatology, with its belief in the resurrection, and its
conception of the Son of Man, who is a specific individual, trans-
cendental and eternal. This could, and did, cause the Messianic
idea to develop in two directions. The attempt to reconcile the
two views of the future by the idea of an interim kingdom, an
earthly state of glory, as the end of the present aeon, could, of
course, lead to the thought that the Messiah, who represented the
this-worldly future hope, would be king in this interim kingdom.
There was ascribed to him a precisely limited period of activity:
a thousand years or five hundred years, in accordance with the
varying chronological systems in learned circles; and thereby he
necessarily became a specific individual, but one subject to tem-
poral limitations. As we shall see below (p. 325£), this idea occurs
in several passages.
But, apart from the idea of an interim kingdom, the idea of the
two aeons helped to make the Messiah not only a specific indivi-
dual, but an eternal being. In that he was associated with the
coining aeon and the resurrection faith, he became an eternal
being, one who would rule in an eternal Messianic kingdom. By
contrast with the present aeon, the coming aeon is eternal and un-
changing; and, as a result of the resurrection faith, it was held that
men would enjoy eternal life in this new aeon; and it was taken
for granted that this was true of the Messiah, irrespective of
whether or not the resurrection faith was applied to him (see
324
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
below, pp. 326£). He was an exceptional man, like Enoch, Elijah
and others, who had been caught up to heaven, and shared in the
life of paradise or heaven. Sometimes, too, the rabbis imagined
that after his birth the Messiah was hidden in paradise, or with
Elijah in heaven,1 or that he was one of the righteous persons of
the past who would return (see above, p. 281 ; c£ p. 302). In either
event he had already had experience of life. He had become the
sole Messiah, who needed no successor. This was a still more
natural consequence when the Messiah was equated with the
eternal Son of Man, for, as we shall see, the latter was an eternal
being.
Throughout the rabbinic literature, therefore, it is taken for
granted that the Messiah is unique and that he is eternal. If this
is but seldom explicitly stated (for the most part by contrast with
the Messiah ben Joseph, who falls in the conflict with Rome, and
in order to emphasize the difference between these two figures),2
the reason is that what is taken for granted does not need to be
expressed. We can readily understand, therefore, why the rabbis
sometimes attribute to the Messiah an ideal pre-existence (see
below, pp. 334*1) •
13.* The Suffering and Death of the Messiah
In apocalyptic and elsewhere, ideas sometimes occur which are
more closely connected with the older conception of the Messiah
as mortal. This conception had a lasting influence. We have seen
(above, pp. 277, 285, 321) that it was a logical consequence of the
original, national, this-worldly conception of the Messiah, that
when the tension between the two eschatologies was relieved by
the idea of an interim kingdom, this was regarded as the conclusion
of the present, transitory aeon, and the Messiah was king of the
interim kingdom. The idea, which sometimes occurs in precisely
those circles where the new, other-worldly eschatology had taken
root, of the death of the Messiah at the end of the interim kingdom,
is entirely in accord with the original view of the Messiah.
The thought is most clearly expressed in the Ezra Apocalypse.
There the Messianic age is described in these terms: c My Servant3
the Messiah shall be revealed, together with those who are with
him, and shall rejoice the survivors four hundred years. And it
shall be, after these years, that my servant the Messiah shall die,
1 Strack-Billerbeck II, p. 340.
2 Bab. Sukkah 52a; see Weber, Jud. Theol\ p. 366.
3 Filius meus=labdt; see above, p. 294. A.P.O.T. II renders 'my Son*.
325
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
and all in whom there Is human breath. Then shall the world be
turned into the primeval silence seven days, like as at the first
beginnings'; and then follow the new aeon and the new life (2
Esfjpras vii, s8ff.).
From the standpoint of earlier Judaism, this thought is anything
but surprising. It isjthe logical method of reconciling the old idea
of the Messiah with the doctrine of the two aeons and with belief
in the resurrection. The assumption here is, of course, that at the
end of the seven days' silence (a repetition of the original state of
chaos), the Messiah will rise with the rest of the dead, and will live
and reign as God's vicegerent for ever.
The old idea that the Messiah is mortal recurs in the conception
of the Messiah ben Joseph, who falls in conflict with Gog or
Armilus. It was of this Messiah that the rabbis interpreted the
saying in Zech. xii, 10 about chim who they have pierced'.1
It is also said of the Taheb (or * Restorer') of the Samaritans
that he will rule over Israel until the dawn of the new aeon, and
then will die in peace.2
The old ideas recur in the rabbinic literature in association with
the expression cthe days of the Messiah'.3 This is a general ex-
pression for the Messianic age, the age in which the Messiah is
king. Originally it was identical with the end-time, the age of
bliss, or, in terms of the later Jewish eschatology, the coming aeon.
Nevertheless, the rabbis did not lose the conviction that the days
of the Messiah, though a glorified and idealized age, belonged
essentially to this world. Accordingly, the idea recurs, and with
increasing emphasis, that the days of the Messiah really belong to
the present aeon, and are its glorious conclusion. This is, in fact,
the idea of the interim kingdom, or Millennium, in another form.
This thought is very common in rabbinic theology.4 Where the
Messianic kingdom has become an interim kingdom, the resurrec-
tion of the dead (which is associated in apocalyptic with the
appearance and rule of the Messiah)5 is explicitly postponed to
the period after the days of the Messiah,6 very much as in the
Ezra Apocalypse,
1 See above, p. 321, and the references in Bousset, Relig.2, pp. 264^
2 See Merx, D&r Messias oder Ta^eb der Scmaritawr, p. 41.
3 See above, pp. 304, 320; and Strack-BHlerbeck I, p. 602; IV, pp. 815, 8301!, 8576%
and Index, s.v. *Tage des Messias*.
4 2 Esdras vii, aSfT,; Rev. xx, 4!!; Sanhedrin gga, where the different rabbinic
opinions are quoted. iSee also Moore, Judaism II, pp. 375f., with references.
5 Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 827ff.; IV, pp. 971, 1166.
6 Op. cit, III, p. 827; IV, pp. g7iff., 1166.
326
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
That the rule of the Messiah will one day come to an end, and
be replaced by something still more glorious, is thus a familiar
thought in Judaism, and the result of the conflict between the
older, this-worldly eschatology and the later, other-worldly type.
Clearly it was also influenced by the old, fundamental conviction
that the eschatological kingdom is really Gofs kingly rule. In the
light of later Jewish thought there is no difficulty in understanding
Paul's words: c Then comes the end, when He (Christ, the Messiah)
delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after He has destroyed
every rule, and authority, and power5 (i Cor. xv, 24).
But the thought of the Messiah as an eternal being in an eternal
kingdom was still prevalent. Certainly it was the dominant con-
ception in the time of Jesus. This was the result of the influence
which the idea of the Son of Man exercised on that of the Messiah,
The surprising thing is that the thought of the Messiah as a mortal
man held its ground so well. This is a clear testimony to the
original, political, this-worldly character of the Messiah.
. In „ Christian, thought the death of the Messiah is inseparably
associated with his suffering; and both have^the character of vicar-
jous atonement. This was not so in Judaism. There the death of
the Messiah was not held to have any organic connexion with his
sufferings; nor was there any question of an atoning death. In
spite of statements to the contrary,1 Judaism knows nothing of a
suffering, dying, and rising Messiah.2
1 See J. Jeremias in Deutsche Theologie ii, 1929, pp. io6ff.; Staerk, Soter I, p. 77; II,
pp. 4o6ff.; Johansson, Parakletoi, pp. 1131!, soif.; Riesenfeld, Jtsus transfigurf, pp. Sift,
and 314*!., where a survey is given of recent discussion of the problem. Nearly all of
those who maintain that the Jews were familiar with the idea of a suffering and dying
Messiah make the mistake of confusing these two conceptions, failing to realize that the
mortality of the Messiah and his sufferings are two distinct factors. Nor do they dis-
tinguish between the different conceptions of the Messiah. If the problem is to be
solved, the national Messiah, the Messiah from Ephraim, and the Son of Man must
not be confused; and the question of the unknown Messiah must also be considered
separately. The problem has been discussed from the standpoint of Christian doctrine,
rather than from that of the historical background of Jewish thought.
Jeremias and Staerk try to prove the existence of a Jewish doctrine of a suffering and
dying Messiah, on the ground of the rabbis' Messianic interpretation of the Servant of
the Lord, and of Isa. liii. But the rabbinic sayings on the subject do not go beyond
what Dalman and Billerbeck have stated, as mentioned above. What the rabbis (like
the Targum) found in Isa. liii was the pain and toil of the Messiah in his conflict, as a
background to his glorification; but the emphasis was on the glorification; and there
was no thought of the Messiah's atoning death. See below, pp. 3291!". Johansson and
Riesenfeld do not adduce new material beyond what Dalman and Billerbeck have dis-
cussed; nor do they succeed in advancing new arguments for their interpretation.
Riesenfeld admits that he can find only * slight traces' of the supposed doctrine. But
he boldly turns a somersault, and writes as if these * traces' indicate that this doctrine
of a suffering Messiah had 'not yet entirely disappeared from Palestinian Judaism'
(op. cit., p. 84) . He ought first to have proved that it ever existed there. What in fact
he presents is only an assumption, based on an untenable interpretation of the Servant
327
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
It is true that the idea of the suffering of the Messiah does occur
in Judaism; but the meaning is not the same as in Christianity, In
its rendering of Isa. liii, 12 the Targum speaks of the Messiah's
heavy and exacting task, in pursuance of which he hazards his life.
But the thought is not of such sufferings as we have in mind when
we raise the question of the Messiah's sufferings, but rather of the
danger and the exertions which are the lot of the Messiah in the war
with the heathen. In order to shatter the dominion of the world
powers and crush the enemies of Israel, he hazards his life; but, in
the end, he gains a triumphant victory. This was a natural
thought for Jewish scribes, who interpreted a number of discon-
nected biblical passages of the Messiah. Both Isa. liii and the
other passages about the Servant of the Lord spoke of travail and
affliction. The Jew Tiypho, in Justin's dialogue, admits that it
accords with Scripture that the Messiah must suffer,1
It is essential_to distinguish. here between the Church's view of
the Messiah's sufferings and that of the Synagogue. The Church
has always proclaimed a Christ f who suffers, and ' dies ^ and rises
again. The view taken by the Synagogue is clearly (but perhaps
too sharply) formulated by Strack-Billerbeck: eWhen reference -is.
made (i.e., in Judaism) to a suffering and dying Messiah, it is not,
as might be thought, one and the same person that is meant, but,
on the contrary, two different persons. The synagogue of ancient,
times knows of a Messiah who suffers but does not die; and it
knows of a Messiah who dies, but of whom it is not said that he
must suffer, that is, the Messiah ben Joseph. >2 This is true, but
1 See Staerk, Soter I, p. 8 1 . But Staerk is mistaken in saying that Trypho accepts the
idea of the death, of the Messiah. He only admits that he has to suffer greatly in accom-
plishing his task. It must also be noted that Trypho's replies are not fully reliable
evidence for Jewish belief. For apologetic purposes, Justin is concerned to let the
spokesman for Judaism come as near as possible to the Christian interpretation of
Scripture, and to show how the Jew is finally convinced by the Christian interpretation
as an example to other Jews.
2 Strack-Billerbeck II, p. 273£; cf. Bonsirven, Le Judaism Palestinian an temps d&J6sus-
Christ I, pp. 38 iff. On the Messiah ben Joseph see above, pp. sgof.
of the Lord as the Messiah, and of his sufferings as an echo (* disintegrated pattern*)
of the * Messianic ' sufferings of the king in the cult. The theories of Engnell and Widen-
gren are here uncritically accepted as scientific dogmas. When the whole of the theory
about the 'disintegrated. Messianic, cultic pattern' collapses, what Riesenfeld here
alleges about the rabbinic view of Isaac as a meritorious atoning act on Abraham's
part, ceases to have any significance for the question now under discussion.
Against this theory of a suffering Jewish Messiah, see also Sjoberg in S.E.A. v, 1940,
pp. i63fE; ibid, vii, 1942, pp. I4iff.; Der Menschensohn, pp. n6ff. Cf. also above,
pp. 32iff.
2 Dalman, Der Mdmde md stsrlends Messias, p. 360; Weber, jftid. TheoL*, p. 360;
Schurer, GescMchU des jwMschm Vo&es im ^dtalter Jew Ghristi* II, pp. 648ff., with
references; and especially Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 273*!., where the sources are given
in Ml. Cf. also H&ing in R.H.PLR. xviii, 1938, pp. 4i§ff.
328
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
with this qualification, that in the earlier period the Messiah ben
David was also regarded as a mortal man. But the suffering and
the death are not organically connected with each other; and the
suffering of the Jewish Messiah is not associated with a vicarious
and atoning death.
In the time of Jesus, at all events, the thought of a suffering and
dying Messiah was quite alien to the normal Jewish view. For
many it was not merely incomprehensible, but offensive. * Some-
what later we find it in the sayings of individual rabbis, but in
a different sense, and never as a doctrine which is universally
accepted.2 The starting point is the customary Jewish estimate of
the suffering of the pious. All suffering has a certain atoning
effect;3 and the suffering of the righteous, like his pious acts,
benefits his people as merit and as atonement. There is also the
rabbis' conviction that all righteous men must suffer in order to
be worthy of blessedness in the next world. As the one who is
righteous above all others, and who is called to the greatest future
glory, the Messiah must be prepared for afflictions and sufferings.4
The Messiah suffers qua righteous man, but not qua Messiah.5
On the whole, for the rabbis the Messiah is still the victorious
hero who inaugurates the glorious era. When the thought of the
Messiah's sufferings appears (arising in part from the general con-
siderations mentioned, and in part from passages like Isa. liii and
Zech. xii, 10; xiv, iff.), these sufferings are associated, sometimes
with his struggles in the conflict with the heathen, and with the
throes of the Messianic age, the last great affliction which will
befall all the pious (see above, pp. 272£), and sometimes with the
period during which the Messiah is still hidden, unknown, mis-
understood, exposed to the derision of the heathen, poor, leprous,
etc. (see above, pp. 3o6£; but, as we have seen, this last thought is
late and not prominent). By all these sufferings the Messiah, in
company with other pious men who suffer, atones for part of the
guilt of his people Israel. The thought of atonement as the peculiar
work of the Messiah, or of an atonement for the sins of the world,
never occurs.
The fact that the document which has most to say about the
sufferings of the Messiah is the medieval Pesikta Rabbati (tenth
1 Matt, xvi, 2 iff.; Mark viii, 31; ix, 3 if.; Luke xxiv, 2of.; Acts xvii, 3; I Cor. i, 23;
Gal. v, 1 1 ; etc.
2 See the references in p. 327 n. 2. 3 See Sjoberg, Gott ttnd die Sunder, pp.
4 Cf. Otto, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, p. 244.
5 See Weber, jfild. Theol.*> pp. 326fE, with references.
329
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
century) I Indicates that Christian teaching and Christian theology
have In some degree contributed to the spread of this idea among
the rabbis of the Christian era. And when in Pesikta Rabbati we
find a pre-existent Messiah, whom Satan attempts to overthrow
during his pre-existence In heaven, and who declares himself to be
ready to go down and take upon himself every suffering, in order
to save all Israel,2 It is natural to assume influence from the saviour
myths which appear In the Gnostic systems, and which also He
behind the conception of the Son of Man, to which we shall return.
These later rabbis extracted from Scripture their ideas about
the Messiah's sufferings, precisely in order to provide a biblical
counterblast to the Christian faith In the Jesus (who had died) as
the Messiah. The Scripture does present the Messiah as suffering
to atone for Israel; but he does not die upon a cross. The same
Idea and Intention appear In Trypho's arguments in Justin's
dialogue (see above, p. 328). This Is a secondary tendency, in
reaction against Christianity, not a genuinely Jewish feature, and
certainly not a pre-Christian one.
But we have seen above that the Targums identify the Servant
of the Lord in Isaiah with the Messiah, and that they use this ex-
pression as a Messianic title. Is this not evidence of the conception
of the person and wrork of the Messiah, and does it not show that
Judaism, too, had the belief in a Messiah who suffers, dies, and
rises again? The answer (cf. above, p. 328) may be most simply
found in the Targum's rendering of Isa. liii, the chapter which is
most characteristic:3
e Behold my Servant Messiah shall prosper; he shall be high, and
Increase, and be exceeding strong: as the house of Israel looked to
him during many days, because their countenance was darkened
among the peoples, and their complexion beyond the sons of men,
so will he scatter many peoples: at him kings shall be silent, and
put their hands upon their mouth, because that which was not
told them have they seen, and that which they have not heard
they have observed.
'Who hath believed this our glad tidings? and the strength of
1 Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 347^
2 Op. cit., loc. cit.
s The rendering here followed is that of Driver and Neubauer in The Fifty-third
Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters II, pp. 5f.; cf. W. Manson, Jesus tht
Messiah, pp. i68f£, where the translations of M.T. and of the Targum are set out in
parallel columns. Cf. also Nyberg's translation of the Targum in S.E.A. vii, 19423 pp.
34f.; and see Seidelin in ^JV.PT. xxxv, 1936, pp. i94ff.; Staerk, ibid., p. 308.
33°
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
the mighty arm of the Lord, upon whom as thus hath it been re-
vealed? The righteous will grow up before him, yea, like blooming
shoots, and like a tree which sends forth its roots to streams of
water will they increase — a holy generation in the land that was
in need of him: his countenance no profane countenance, and the
terror at him not the terror at an ordinary man; his complexion
shall be a holy complexion, and all who see him will look wistfully
upon him. Then he will become despised, and will cut off the
glory of all the kingdoms; they will be prostrate and mourning,
like a man of pains and like one destined for sicknesses; and as
though the presence of the Shekhinah had been withdrawn from
us, they will be despised, and esteemed not. Then for our sins he
will pray, and our iniquities will for his sake be forgiven, although
we were accounted stricken, smitten from before the Lord, and
afflicted. But he will build up the Holy Place, which has been
polluted for our sins, and delivered to the enemy for our iniquities;
and by his instruction peace shall be increased upon us, and by
devotion to his words, our sins will be forgiven us. All we like
sheep had been scattered, we had each wandered off on his own
way; but it was the Lord's good pleasure to forgive the sins of all
of us for his sake. He prayed, and he was answered, and ere even
he had opened his mouth he was accepted: the mighty of the
peoples he will deliver up like a sheep to the slaughter and like a
lamb dumb before her shearers; there shall be none before him
opening his mouth or saying a word. Out of chastisements and
punishment he will bring our captives near; the wondrous things
done to us in his days who shall be able to tell? for he will cause the
dominion of the Gentiles to pass away from the land of Israel, and
transfer to them the sins which my people have committed. He
will deliver the wicked into Gehinnom, and those that are rich in
possessions into the death of utter destruction, in order that those
who commit sin may not be established, nor speak deceits with
their mouth. But it is the Lord's good pleasure, to try and to purify
the remnant of his people, so as to cleanse their souls from sin:
these shall look on the kingdom of their Messiah, their sons and
their daughters shall be multiplied, they shall prolong their days,
and those who perform the Law of the Lord shall prosper in his
good pleasure. From the subjection of the nations he ^dll deliver
their souls, they shall look upon the punishment of those that hate
them, and be satisfied with the spoil of their kings: by his wisdom
he will hold the guiltless free from guilt, in order to bring many
331
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
into subjection to the Law; and for their sins he will intercede.
Then will I divide for him the spoil of many peoples, and the
possessions of strong cities shall he divide as prey, because he
delivered up his soul to death, and made the rebellious subject to
the Law: he shall intercede for many sins, and the rebellious for
his sake shall be forgiven'.
Nyberg rightly comments (S.E.A. vii, 1942, pp. 35f.): 'The
suffering Servant of the Lord is completely eliminated, and re-
placed by the victorious and triumphant Messiah, who, in the
future, will come and restore Israel. The Targum knows only the
exaltation, not the humiliation. ... In this version, the sufferings,
the sickness, the disfigurement, the violent and ignominious death,
fall upon the heathen, the adversaries of Israel, and are brought
about by the victory of the Messiah ! The sheep which have gone
astray in liii, 6 are the dispersed Israelites; and the lamb which is
led to the slaughter and the ewe which is silent before her shearers
are illustrations of how Israel's enemies submit to the Messiah.
The power of the nations will depart from the land of Israel; the
sins which Israel has committed will light upon her enemies; and
the ungodly will be consigned to Gehenna. The remnant of the
people will be purified and cleansed from sin; and the Messiah
will be the people's intermediary and intercessor before the Lord,
so that He may forgive them their sins. Israel is restored; the
Messianic age dawns; the Israelites increase in numbers and in
length of life; and the Messiah gains universal obedience to the
Law among the recalcitrant. The heathen and their strong cities
are overthrown; and the Lord allots their spoil to the Messiah, as
a reward for risking his life in the fierce wars ! *
Here in the Targum we have a complete rewriting of the text,
bringing it at every point into agreement with the national,
political conception of the Messiah. The only feature in the con-
ception of the Messiah which may be derived from Is. liii is his
intercession, which induces the Lord to forgive His people's sins.
But this feature, as we have seen (pp. 84, 180, 24o£), does not go
beyond what was ascribed to the king in ancient times. In the
royal psalms we repeatedly find the king represented as inter-
ceding for the people, a role in which the ancient sagas depict
David? Solomon, and Hezekiah.
It is also characteristic, first, that the Messianic interpretation
of the Servant of the Lord is only one among several rabbinic
332
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
interpretations;1 second, that it is never taken far enough to pro-
duce a unified conception (see above, pp. 322f.) ; and third, that this
interpretation was very often applied to the Messiah from Ephrairn
and his sufferings and death in conflict with the heathen.2 The
central idea in Is. liii was never clearly grasped, and did not have
any decisive influence on the conception of the Messiah.
14. i The Varying Forms of the Conception of the Messiah
Finally, it may again be emphasized that the difference between
this national conception of the Messiah in later Judaism and that
held earlier arises not merely from new elements, but just as much
from a change of emphasis. The heightened opposition to every-
thing foreign, and particularly to Rome, which had so abruptly
ended the Maccabean dream of freedom, and the steadily increas-
ing dominance exercised by the scribes and the rabbis in matters
religious and spiritual, caused other elements in the conception of
the Messiah (such as the martial or the transcendental) to receive
more prominence. But it must be remembered that all the other
features in the older conception of the Messiah are also present,
even if they are more in the background. They formed part of
the revelation in Scripture; and, as we have seen (pp. 266f., 283),
the scribes found the Messiah in a number of passages, which
originally did not refer to him, but to the king, or to other figures.
The new element in the conception consists first and foremost
of those figures which are derived from th£^on of Man, and which
have been attributed to the Messiah^ without any thought of
system' orlogical consistency, in spite of the fact that in a number
of important points they not only differ from the traditional con-
ception of the Messiah, but are often even in fundamental dis-
harmony with it.
As has been said, it is an advantage to present the two concep-
tions separately, in order to gain a clear and comprehensive view
of them. But lest the distinction should be exaggerated and they
should appear to be two independent figures, it is appropriate to
mention at this point the most important features which were
commonly attributed to the Messiah, but had in fact been bor-
rowed from the Son of Man.
\ First, then, it was the ^association with the Son of Man which
was primarily responsible for the idea of the Messiah as an eternal
being (see above, pp. 3233!).
1 See North, The Suffering Servant, pp. 9-22. 2 See North, op. cit., pp. 158.
333
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
As the Messiah became a unique and eternal individual, and
came to have decisive significance for salvation, and not merely
for the exercise of government in the kingdom of the redeemed, it
was natural that Jewish theological speculation should also think
of him as pre-existent.1 It is easy, in the light of Old Testa-
ment presuppositions, to account for this idea. That any expres-
sion or vehicle of God's will for the world, His saving counsel and
purpose, was present in His mind, or His 'Word', from the begin-
ning, is a natural way of saying that it is not fortuitous, but the
due unfolding and expression of God's own being.2 This attribu-
tion of pre-existence indicates religious importance of the highest
order. Rabbinic theology speaks of the Law, of God's throne of
glory, of Israel, and of other important objects of faith, as things
which had been created by God, and were already present with
Him, before the creation of the world.3 The same is also true of
the Messiah. It is said that his name was present with God in
heaven beforehand, that it was created before the world, and that
it is eternal.4
But the reference here is not to genuine pre-existence in the
strict and literal sense. This is clear from the fact that Israel is
included among these pre-existent entities. This does not mean
that either the nation Israel or its ancestor existed long ago in heav-
en, but that the community Israel, the people of God, had been
from all eternity in the mind of God, as a factor in His purpose, as
an 'idea' in the platonic sense. It is an ideal pre-existence that is
meant. This is also true of references to the pre-existence of the
Messiah. It is his 'name5, not the Messiah himself, that is said to
have been present with God before creation. In Pesikta Rabbati
I52b it is said that cfrom the beginning of the creation of the world
the King Messiah was born, for he came up in the thought (of
God) before the world was created9. This means that from all
eternity it was the will of God that the Messiah should come into
existence, and should do his work in the world to fulfil God's eternal
1 See Weber, Jud. Theolf, p. 353; Schfirer, GeschichU* II, pp. 6i6£
2 Gf. Exod. xxv, gff.; xxvi, 30; xxvii, 8; Num. via, 4; the tent of revelation is made in
accordance with a pre-existing pattern in heaven; see Schurer, GeschichU^ II, p. 618
n. 22.
3 See Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 334ff., where the rabbinic sources are quoted; cf.
Weber, Jud. Thed.\ p. 198.
4 Genesis Rabbah, i, 4; ii, 4; Leviticus Rabbah, xiv, 1; Targum ofjonathan on Zech.
iv, 7; Midrash Mishle 6yc. See Weber, op. cit., p. 355; Dalman, Der Uidende undster-
bende Messias, p. 247; Kiausner, Die messianischen Vorstellungen des judischen Volkes im
%eitalter der Taiwaifen, p. 66; Schurer, Geschickte* II, pp. 6ijL; Bowman in E.T. lix
1947/8, p. 288.
334
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
saving purpose. Orthodox Judaism's thought about the pre-exis-
tence of the Messiah remained at this stage.1
In the Christian period we also find in Judaism the thought that
every human soul, including the Messiah^ existed beforehand in
heaven.2 It is a real pre-existence that is meant; but it is not some-
thing which distinguishes the Messiah from all other men.
But in accordance with a tendency of thought and speech in
that age (and, in a measure, in all religion), the abstract con-
ception of an ideal pre-existence, comes to be understood con-
cretely. Popular thought does not distinguish between idea and
reality, between ideal and real pre-existence. 3 The thought
appears in mythical form, and depicts in concrete terms the
manner of the Messiah's pre-existence in heaven. In the late
writing Abodat hak-kodesh, the seer beholds the Messiah and
Elijah in heaven, and hears them speaking of the time when the
Messiah's appearance will be at hand.4 And we have referred
above (p. 330) to the conception in Pesikta Rabbati. It is the in-
fluence of the Son of Man which lies behind this, as we shall see
below.
It is undoubtedly the influence of the Son of Man which leads
to the interpretation in a Messianic sense of c one like a son of man'
in Dan. vii, 13, and of the expression ben 'addm elsewhere in the Old
Testament.5 This also led, in the rabbinic literature, to the in-
clusion in the conception of the Messiah of certain other alien
elements; but this was sporadic and had no organic connexion
with the rabbinic view as a whole. First and foremost, there is the
view occasionally expressed by the rabbis^ that the Messiah will
be revealed in the clouds of heaven.6 The name Anani, which
occurs in the fifth and last generation after Zerubbabel in the
Davidic genealogy (i Chron. iii, 24), is interpreted as c Cloud man*
(*anan = cloud) and taken to refer to the Messiah.7 But this does
1 See Dalraan, op. cit., pp. 245!!. It is hardly possible to read anything more into
Resh Lakish's explanation of Gen. i, 2; '"the spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters *' is the spirit of the King Messiah1. Schiirer, op. cit., p. 6 18, is probably wrong
in thinking that this more abstract, idealistic idea (as contrasted with an older, more
realistic idea in apocalyptic) is the result of a reaction against Christianity. There
was always a difference between apocalyptic and rabbinic thought.
2 Strack-Billerbeck II, pp. 34off.
8 Moore's view is almost the same (Judaism II, p. 344). For Jewish thought, real,
personal pre-existence is not a problem, but a quite natural idea.
4 See Weber, Jud. TheoL*, pp. 355^
6 See Moore, Judaism II, pp. 334f.; Bowman in E.T. lix, 1947/8, pp. 284^,; and cf.,
e.g., the Targum on Ps. Ixxx, 15.
6 Sanhedrin g8a; Jer. Taanit B^d; cf. Sib. V, 414. See Moore, loc. cit.
7 Sanhedrin g6b; Tanhuma Toledot 20. See Moore, op. cit., II, p. 336.
335
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
not mean that the rabbis regarded the Messiah as a heavenly
king; he was, and continued to be3 a natural descendant jDH^vidL1
The reference is to a wonderful manifestation to the people, by
means of a miracle wrought by God, like the revelation of the
Messiah on the roof of the temple (see above, p. 303). This is
indicated by the words of the Targum, 'This means King Messiah,
who will be revealed3, and by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi's combina-
tion of Zech. ix, 9 ('Behold, your king comes to you; . . . humble
('dnf) and riding on an ass') with Dan, vii, 13 ('Behold, with the
clouds of heaven there came one like a man5) in the following
way; c If they (Israel) are worthy, (he will come) with the clouds
of heaven; if they are not worthy, (he will come) poor (insignifi-
cant), and riding on an ass'. For a people who are worthy, the
Lord will perform the miracle of causing the Messiah „ to be re-
vealed in radiant majesty; but to an unworthy people, the Messiah
will come in humble fashion;2 and, we may add, by such a people
he will not be recognized until he has begun to perform the
Messianic works (p. 303), which will free them from affliction,
and make them worthy by rigorous purification.
The idea of the Son of Man and the Messianic interpretation
of Dan. vii are also the source of the statement that the Messiah
shares in the judgement of the world. Judgement, of course, is in
God's own hands, and belongs to the coming aeon, which, accord-
ing to rabbinic thought, follows the Messianic age.3 This notion
appears in rabbinic speculation about the plural 'thrones' in
Dan. vii: the one is for the descendant of David, the Messiah (see
above, p. 313). „ But as a rule the rabbis reject the thought that
the Messiah (or the Son of Man) shares in the judgement.4 It
comes out more clearly in apocalyptic, where the Son of Man is
sometimes called the Messiah, and judges the nations (see pp.
3i2f.; and c£ below, pp. SQSff.). The Messiah's action in des-
troying the heathen is probably also the result of influence from
the idea of the Son of Man (see above, p. 313).
As the national, Davidic Messiah is not thought of as coming
from heaven, so it is not normal Jewish doctrine that he will
return thither. This accords with the fact that where the national
aspect of eschatology is prominent, the kingdom of the Messiah
1 Moore, op. cit, IT, pp. 347ff.
2 Gf. Lagrange, Le Messiamsme d&z lesjuifs, pp. 227f.
a See Moore, Judaism II, p. 339; and above, p. 277.
4 Bab. Sanhedrin 380, g8a; Jer. Taanit 65b; Midrash Tehillim, Ps. xxi, 7. See
Lagrange, op. cit., pp. 224fF.
336
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
is always a kingdom which will be established here on earth. It is
here that the Messialxwill reign.
Here too, however, ideas of another type leave their mark. We
occasionally find it said that the Messiah will restore paradise,
which was lost by Adam's falL
And he shall open the gates of paradise.
And shall remove the threatening sword against Adam.
And he shall give to the saints to eat from the tree of life,
And the spirit of holiness shall be on them.1
Here it is the thought of the Son of Man in his role as king of
paradise which has influenced the idea of the Messiah. It may
also be detected in 2 Esdras xiii, 12, 3gff., where the Messiah
brings home the ten tribes (see below, p. 38 if.).
This idea about the Messiah and paradise has a certain con-
nexion with the view, which occurs once in the rabbinic literature,
that at the resurrection the Messiah will awake Adam first,2 or with
the statement made in a medieval Jewish document that it is the
Messiah who will awake the dead.3 This is certainly the result of
influence from the idea of the Son of Man (see below, pp. 3§gff.)«
Elsewhere the rabbis say that in the days of the Messiah God will
abolish death,4 or that the resurrection will take place then.5
15. \The Place of the Messiah in Later Judaism"
We have already noted (pp. lyoff.) that the Messiah is often
zeiegated.to the background in Old Testament descriptions of the
future, and that he does not appear in a considerable number of
late Jewish writings (p. 280). This raises the question of the place
occupied by the Messiah in Judaism's future hope, and, in general,
in its religious thought and piety.
The Qosgel? j^gul^ead jis , to ^believe that the idea was a domi-
nant one, familiar to all, and the substance of a general hope
throughout Judaism. But we must not forget that the Gospels
reflect a particular milieu within Jewish religion and life. There-
fore we ought not to be too prone to draw from the Gospels con-
clusions about thought in literary circles, or among the Pharisees
or Sadducees. To a certain extent, the milieu of the Gospels
1 T. Levi xviii, lof. See Murmelstein in W.£JT.Af., xxxv, 1928, p. 254.
2 Strack-Billerbeck III, p. 10.
3 Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 524; see above, p. 319 and n. 3.
4 Exodus Rabbah, xxx, 3; see Munnelstein, ibid.
5 See Moore, Judaism II, p. 379,
337
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
coincides with that represented by the apocalyptic literature and
by certain more limited circles. This is evident from the part
played, both in apocalyptic and in the Gospels, by the idea of the
Son of Man. But we cannot simply assume that these circles were
typical of Judaism as a whole. In 'normative Judaism5,1 at all
events, apocalyptic fell into some degree of disfavour after A.D.
70 (see above, pp. sgsf.).
Again, the fact that in the whole of the Wisdom literature the
thought of the Messiah scarcely ever appears (see above, p. 280)
gives food for thought. What brought it about that in certain
circles the Messianic faith came to count for so little?
We have noted above that, even in the Old Testament, the
future hope appears under two aspects. There is the ^purely
religious aspect,; which is focused on the thought of the kingly
rule of God; and there is the more 'politic at aspect, in which the
Messiah is more prominent. These are, in fact, two aspects of
the same thing, two emphases within the same future hope; and
they are not opposed to each other. As, in the religion of Israel,
the central article of faith was the sovereign lordship of Yahweh,
whereas in experience that lordship was exercised by His king,
aided by His priests and prophets? so the heart of the future hope
is that Yahweh wiU again decisively become king, and exercise
His unchallenged kingship in the wrorld, whereas the thought of
the Messiah expresses the manner in which that lordship will be
exercised in actual experience.
This implies, however, that the thought of Yahweh' s kingly
rule is, for thought and feeling, the more explicitly religious form
of the future hope, whereas the thought of the Messiah comes to
mind when men ask just how that prosperous future will take
shape,, and when the political and national side of the hope be-
comes prominent. The one form is decidedly theocentric; the
other more anthropocentric.
This is undoubtedly the reason why, when the rule of the
Messiah is taken for granted^ only touched upon,, or not em-
phasized, the thought of Yahweh's kingly rule is presented so
clearly and boldly by the prophets, those heralds of God, who had
stood face to face with God, and knew that their whole lives had
been determined by Him.2 Before the message of the advent and
1 The expression is Moore's, and well represents his view in Judaism. Davies (in
E:T, lix, 1947/8, pp. 233fT.) has clearly shown that we ought not to exaggerate the
difference between apocalyptic and rabbinism.
2 Of, Isa. ad, 3, 5, 9; Hi, 7; Ixi, if.
338
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
kingly rule of Yahweh, everything else, even all the practical
concerns of the kingdom, recedes into the background.
Deutero-Isaiah sees the whole drama of the future as the decisive
day of Yahweh's enthronement, which is cosmic in its significance.
From this all else is derived. The heart of his message is, cHe is
coming. Your God has become king5; and that message is echoed
by the circle of his disciples (in Isa. Ivi-lxvi). Yahweh's coming as
king and His triumphal entry by the new via sacra is also the
central theme in the message of Isa. xxxiv f., which comes from the
disciples of Deutero-Isaiah.1 For the prophet of Isa. xxxiii, also,
the supreme expression of the bliss of the future kingdom is that
the redeemed may csee the king in His beauty'. There can be no
doubt who the king is:
For Yahweh is our judge, Yahweh is our ruler,
Yahweh is our king, who will save us.2
It is Yahweh's^ kingly rule over the world from His temple on
Zion that is proclaimed in Isa. ii, 2-4 = Mic. iv, 1-4. The
message of the book of Zephaniah reaches its climax in the
announcement, c Yahweh has become king in the midst of you
(Jerusalem) ' (iii, 15). In Zech. xii-xiv, the conclusion of the great
drama of the end time is that all peoples will make pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, do homage to the king, the Lord of Hosts, and take
part in the celebration of His royal festival (xiv, i6f.). None of
these passages mentions the future king, the Messiah.
We are, therefore, justified in saying that when the purely
religious aspect of the future hope is prominent, the Messiah is,
to a certain extent, neglected.
But, it might be objected, in all these passages the Messiah is
taken for granted, as in Isa. Iv, 3ff. In His development of his-
torical events, Yahweh needs a king on the earth. That is true.
But between what is taken for granted and what is emphasized
there is a distinction which is important for thought, and feeling,
and judgement. What is taken for granted is often only taken for
granted.
This is in accord with the impression we derive from the litera-
ture of later Judaism. It is significant that it is chiefly the sober
and matter-of-fact wisdom poetry and the historical literature
which do not give expression to the thought of the, Messiah.
1 See Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M. III, pp. i73ff.
2 Isa. xxxiii, 17, 22. See Ps.St. II, pp. 235^; G.T.M.M.M. Ill, pp.
339
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
This undoubtedly means that the Messiah did not occupy an
important place in normal, everyday, religious thought and feeling
in these circles.
But what was said above (p. 284) about the many political
Messiahs shows that in time of gloom and unrest the thought of
the Messiah emerged again in the depths of the national conscious-
ness, setting men's thoughts in a ferment, in virtue of its national
and political character. This is understandable. The pressure of
evil times gave life to the longing for one who would deliver and
restore. An expectation which belonged to the presuppositions
of the corpus of inherited, traditional, religious conceptions, was
again given contemporary relevance, but in a form corresponding
to what every nationally minded Jew might wish, irrespective
almost of the measure of his religious enthusiasm. In the same
way, during war and occupation, Christian conceptions and
ideas have taken on a new meaning, and have to some extent
become vital again, even in circles where their conscious influence
had previously been small.
There can be no doubt that the thought of the Messiah is not
prominent in rabbinic literature. If we attempt (as we must do,
if we would gain an orderly survey of the subject) to reduce the
religious conceptions of the rabbis to some sort of theological
system, it becomes clear that its centre is not the Messiah, but the
Law. The rabbis' basic religious principle is the majesty of God,
and His actual lordship over the world, and man's submission to
it in the form of obedience to God's Law. Besides this, they live
in hope of an age when this will be finally realized, when Israel
will be restored, and the covenant promises will be fulfilled. The
Messianic idea is an expression of this hope. But the dominant
theme here is the theocentric thought of the complete and visible
realization in actual experience of God's lordship over the world.
It is this that will come to pass in the coming aeon.
It is here that we meet the idea that the Messianic kingdom is
a more earthly? interim kingdom,1 which forms a transition be-
tween the two aeons, more glorious than the present aeon, but far
short of the glory of the coming aeon. This, in fact, became the
prevalent, normative view in rabbinic Judaism.2 The influence
of the new, dualistic, transcendental eschatology is certainly at
work here.8 But it is not the sole factor. What in fact has hap-
* See above, pp. 277, 285, 321, 326. * See Moore, Judaism II, pp. 375^
3 See Moore, loa dt»
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
pened is that the two aspects of the older future hope, the kingship
of Yahweh and the kingship of the Messiah, which originally
formed a real unity, and expressed the ancient unity of religion
and politics, have now been separated. A long process of religious
development leads up to this. One factor in that development
was the constant deferment of the restoration, the repeated ex-
perience of hope ending only in disappointment. A still stronger
influence was the deepening understanding of the absolute nature
of Yahweh, and the supremacy of the Law in the thought, feeling,
and practice of Judaism. Together with this went the tendency
to elevate the benefits of salvation to the sphere of the transcenden-
tal, which was a consequence of the dualistic view of the world.
We must also note the tendency to rationalization in thought,
which led to distinctions between the different areas of life: re-
ligion and politics no longer formed an inevitable unity. Men
began to discuss seriously whether paying tribute to Caesar was
compatible with the recognition of the lordship of God and the
authority of the Law.1
It is obvious that, if account is taken of all this, we cannot lay
down the general thesis that 'the person of the Messiah takes
pride of place in Jewish eschatology'.2 A careful distinction must
be made between different circles and different periods.
An attempt has also been made recently to maintain that the
idea of the Messiah played an important part in the cult of
Judaism.3 No cogent evidence can be adduced in support of this
view.4 The Messiah plays no part in the Jewish cult, except as a
subject of prayer. The temple cult was, without qualification,
ihe service of Yahweh and of Hmialone. Prayer for the coming
of the Messiah may, of course, have been fairly generally assumed
to be included in the prayers in the Psalms for the restoration of
Israel. In the synagogue the coming of the Messiah was included
among all the other benefits of salvation for which prayer was
offered. And of course no one will deny that the hope of, and be-
lief in, the Messiah formed a generally accepted element in the
Jewish faith.5 The question is, how essential and central this
1 Mark xii, 14, with parallels; cf. Moore, op. cit. II, p. 375.
2 Riesenfeld, Jtsus transjigurS, p. 54. 3 Riesenfeld, op. cit,, pp, *8ff
* See Additional Note XIV. ' P ' PP 5
5 Rabbi HOlel's words, 'Israel lias no Messiah (to come); they enjoyed him in the
days of Hezekiah* (Sanhedrin g8b, gga) are, as Moore says (Judaism II, p. 347 n, 2)
'solitary*, and were refuted by other rabbis. Hillel did believe in a Messiah even if
he had already come. But this saying suggests that, for Hillel and his circle, the Messiah
was not one of the central elements of the faith.
341
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
belief was. To which the answer may be given that it was not
fundamental and did not receive equal emphasis in every circle.
There was one milieu in which it was central and fundamental:
certain apocalyptic circles. In the Apocalypse of Enoch and the
circles which it represents, the figure of the Messiah is so promi-
nent, that at times he seems to be put on equality with God Him-
self. Here we may justifiably say that we can hear 'the heartbeat
of apocalyptic5 in the sayings about the Messiah.1 But, in the
first place, apocalyptic ideas and the apocalyptic type of piety
should not be treated as fully representative of Judaism. In the
second place, wre are here dealing, not with the traditional,
national, political, this- worldly concept of the Messiah, but with
the new, transcendental conception of the Son of Man, which had
a quite different religious quality. It is for a Messiah of a new kind
that the apocalyptist's heart beats. We must also note that in 2
Enoch the Messiah could be replaced by the advocate wrhich the
community has in the exalted Enoch himself, a conception of
which there are also traces in i Enoch.
But both apocalyptic and its conception of the Messiah were
suppressed in normative Judaism (see below, pp. 41 8£), partly
as a result of the reaction against Christianity. The only traces of
the apocalyptic picture of the Messiah which have been left in
the conceptions of the rabbis and of the more orthodox literature
are certain individual features, and occasionally an increased
emphasis on the superhuman, miraculous traits in the Messiah
(see above, pp. 333ff-)-
But these are the views of individual rabbis, rather than gener-
ally accepted doctrine. This is clear, for instance, from the form
which the Messianic idea has assumed in modern Judaism.2 The
transcendental element is less prominent; and the national element
is emphasized, together with the importance of the Messiah for the
coming, universal recognition of Israel's God, the one true God;
the lord and creator of the world. The^unifyiag^ all-dominant
idea in xeligipn is the Law of God, and observance of all its com-
mand? to Jthe glory of God. Together with this goes the believer's
acceptance of what the Law and the Prophets teach about God
1 Kiippers in Intern* KirchL ^sitsckfift xxiii, 1933, p. 251. His supposed proofs of the
central importance for Jewish piety and theology of the belief in the Messiah (ibid.,
pp. 234$*.) are in fact valid only for apocalyptic, and for the conception of the Son of
Man.
z On the following passage, see Stern, Die Vorschriften der Thora welche Israel in der
%erstrewng zu beobashten hat. But cf. also Statiffer in £.TJf. (N.F.), xii, 1931, pp.
with Ml references to literature.
342
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
and His relationship to mankind, the world, and Israel Included
among these truths of faith is the idea of the Messiah. We read in
the twelfth of the thirteen fundamental principles ('ikkarim} which
Maimonides laid down: * I believe with perfect faith in the coming
of the Messiah; and, though he tarry, I will wait daily for his
coming.'1 Of this Messiah it is said in an official Jewish religious
text-book:2 'The restoration of Israel as a state will take place,
according to the revelation by the prophets, through a descendant
of David, who received the promise that his successors should rule
for ever in Israel ... In his time Jerusalem and the temple will be
raised again in unprecedented glory; and the Torah will have
unlimited authority as the law and constitution of Israel. For on
him the divine spirit of wisdom will rest; and by it he will elucidate
all obscurities in the Torah, and turn all hearts to it. By the wis-
dom of the Messiah and the revival of prophetic judgement, not
only will Israel be recalled to the Torah, but all mankind will be
brought to acknowledge and honour the only God, who has been
revealed in Israel, and to live in accordance with the spirit of the
Torah, so that only wisdom, justice, and love will rule on earth. *3
It is expressly stated that this is c God's Kingdom on earth'.
Here all the transcendent, other-worldly elements in the con-
ception of the Messiah and in eschatology have disappeared. It
is not even clear whether the Messiah is an eternal individual, or
the first of several descendants of David. Nor is it clear whether
the resurrection and the coming of the Messiah will coincide in
time, or new generations arise in the earthly kingdom of God.
There seems also to be an irreconcilable opposition between belief
in the Messiah as the restorer of Israel as a state, and the view that
the restoration which has already taken place (the establishment
of the new state of Israel) is the beginning of the fulfilment of the
Old Testament prophecies.
In reading orthodox modern Jewish text-books of religion, one
gets a strong impression that this thought of the Messiah is by no
means central in that unified spiritual structure which the Law
has become. Zionism is, therefore, a characteristic phenomenon:
a kind of politico-religious 'Messianism3 without a Messiah,
thought out in terms of immanent political forces, but coloured
1 Cf. Stern, op. cit., pp. 38!".
2 See Stern, op. cit., part I 'Ueber die Anerkennung Gottes und seiner Thora',
ch. I 'In unseren Vorstellungen und Gedanken', in the paragraph on 'die Zukunft
Israels und der Menschheit',
3 Stern, op. cit., p. 34.
343
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
by a romantic, religous nationalism.1 Modern, liberal, philoso-
phical Judaism is a still more striking example. There the personal
Messiah has usually become the idea of an immanent power, a
symbol of the everlasting progress of the human spirit, or of a
future perfection which is the goal of evolution.2
Thus the idea of the Messiah has varied in importance within
Jewish piety. It began as a particular feature of the notion of the
kingdom of God, but gradually came to be separated from it in a
way which led to the thought of the interim kingdom. It has
always preserved its this-worldly, national, and political character,
even when associated with a universalistic conception of the king-
dom of God on earth, as in modern, orthodox Judaism. It has
never been the natural expression of the essentially religious side
of the kingdom of God. For this reason, the relation of the two
ideas varied at different times. Belief in the Messiah has been
strongest in times of national, political, and religious oppression
and distress. It is significant that in modern times the Messianic
faith has flared up most violently in the mystical Ghasidism of
Poland, which arose in times of political, social, and economic
distress for the Jews. It is also significant that Messianism acquires
a strongly political stamp in that context: the Messiah we find
there is the national and political deliverer.3 In settled times the
Messianic faith could easily decline to a place among those articles
of belief which are taken for granted, and which have no special
and immediate relevance for the believer. It has always been
subordinate to the thought of the kingly rule of God.4
1 References to important boots on Zionism are given by Gillet, Communion in the
Messiah, p. 161 n. i.
2 Gf. StaufFer, ibid., pp. i66ff. See further, Wiener in J.L. IV, cols. i38f. Wiener
emphasizes that these modern conceptions are at variance with the genuine spirit of
Judaism, in which he thinks that belief in the Messiah has always been fundamentaL
3 See Ysander, Studien zum be^tschen Hasidismus> pp. 381?.
4 Gillet (op. at., pp. looff.) exaggerates the place of the Messiah in Judaism. A
structural study of Jewish belief shows that the idea is not nearly so central as might
appear from a collection of separate Jewish sayings about the Messiah drawn from
different ages. The evidence presented by Gillet also shows that the thought of the
Messiah has been relegated to the background in modern Judaism. What has survived
is the hope of a future 4 Messianic3 age without a real, personal Messiah; and even this
expectation is often expressed in terms of immanent evolution. Stauffer, too, seems to
me to exaggerate the place of the Messiah in orthodox modern Judaism. Most of the
evidence he adduces (ibid., pp. 1741!) is derived from ancient (in part, pre-Christian)
times, and is not necessarily valid for today. Note that Stern's Vorschriften der Thora
is an authorized, orthodox text-book. Friediger (Laenbog i den jidiske Religion, pp.
gaff.) makes as little of the Messiah as Stern, perhaps even less: here, as always, the
Messiah is an earthly figure, *who will restore Israel to her former splendour and
glory'. With this is associated the modern dream, that he * will bring the peace which
will unite mankind in one brotherly love*. We are not told how.
344
THE NATIONAL MESSIAH
It was only in certain apocalyptic circles in later Judaism that
the idea became central to the structure of belief and vitally rele-
vant. But this was because it had been transmuted into an essen-
tially different s Messianic idea5, that of the Son of Man, which we
must now examine.
345
CHAPTER X
The Son of Man
I. The Meaning of the Phrase
THE phrase which Jesus uses most frequently to express His
mission and sense of vocation is cthe Son of Man3.1 It is
obvious that the Greek expression is an Aramaism, a literal ren-
dering of bar *enas or bar nas, or, in the definite form, bar 'endsd\
bar nasd\2 The corresponding Hebrew expression is ben 'adarn
(in the definite form ben hffddam}. This means literally a eson of
man* 3 a "child of man'; and it is not a special but a normal ex-
pression in Aramaic and Hebrew, which in itself means no more
than an individual of the human species, a human being.3 In
these languages, an individual member of a species is commonly
denoted by prefixing eson (of) 3 to the name of the species. *Adam
alone indicates 'man' in the collective sense, the species mankind.
To express the idea of an individual man, we must say ben 'adam,
or in Aramaic bar nas. The Aramaic expression should, therefore
(on this there is now complete agreement), really be translated
simply c a man ', c a child of man ', or, in the definite form, c the man ' ;
and it can be applied to any single individual of the species man.4
It has been maintained that Jesus did not apply the term to
Himself, because it was (so it is assumed) no more than a common
expression for any individual man.5 But even if the expression
1 Sjoberg (Der Menschensohn, pp. 4off.) gives a survey of recent discussions of the
term and the concept with, refereaces to the literature; cf. Riesenfeld, Jtsus transfigurt,
pp. goyff.
2 Badham's tables, in his article in T.T. xlv, 1911, pp. 4oofF.j do not provide any
evidence that the Greek expression in the Gospels represents an Aramaic bar 'adorn =»
son of Adam. Cf, below, p. 348 n. 3.
3 It does not mean *many in the general sense (= mankind), as in expressions like
*man must suffer % as Schmidt maintains in art. *Son of Man' in E.B,
4 Wellhausen, Skizzen wd Vorarbeiten VI, pp. 5ff.} iSyfE; Einleitung in die drei ersien
Evangelien?, pp. 1238".; Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp. 234-41; and see now especially the
thorough investigation of all the evidence, including the evidence from inscriptions,
by Sjoberg in Act.Or., xxi, 1950, pp. 57^., 9 iff. See also Bowman in E. T. lix, 1947/8,'
pp. 283!?.
5 E.g., by Wellhausen in Einleitung in die drei ersten Euangelierp, p. 307 n. i, and Lietz-
inann in Der Menschensohn* Ein Beitrag zwr neutestamntlichen Theologie. For the discus-
sion of the subject, see Brun, Jesu evangdzim*, p. 550; E. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfange
des Christentums II, p. 335.
346
THE SON OF MAN
was familiar in Galilean Aramaic in the time of Christ, it seems,
nevertheless, not to have been the common, everyday expression
for ea man'. It seems always to have been used with a certain
emphasis.1 The result of the discussion is that there is no valid
linguistic ground for denying either that the expression was
a definite Messianic designation in certain circles,2 or that Jesus
could have used it of Himself.3 Thus the problem concerns the
history of ideas, and is not merely a linguistic one.
It is clear that when Jesus calls Himself c the Man9, simpliciter,
He gives to this expression, or there is already implicit in it, a
specific meaning. 'The Man3 (with a capital *MJ) is not the
same as any man. This is indicated in English by the retention of
the traditional but incorrect translation, 'the Son of Man5.
By this term Jesus means to express something essential to His
mission as God's representative and the mediator of the kingdom
of God; He uses it to interpret His Messianic mission.4 Thus, in
1 Dalman (Words of Jesus, pp. 234!!*., cf. 241 ff., 25601) has argued (on the assump-
tion that Targum Onkelos represents early Palestinian Aramaic) that bar **m£f { did
not properly belong to the common language of the Palestinian Jews as a term for
"man"; it was characteristic rather of the elevated diction of poetry and prophecy'
(op. cit., p. 256) . To this Bowman objects (E. T. lix, 1947/83 p. 286, referring to Kahle,
The Cairo Geniza, pp. 22gff.) that 'Onkelos is neither Palestinian nor early, but repre-
sents an artificial Babylonian dialect. That Bar-Nosh could be used for "anyone"
or "a man" in early Palestinian Aramaic is shown clearly in the early Geniza frag-
ments of the Palestinian Pentateuch Targum, for in Gen. iv, 14, Bar-Nosh is used for
"anyone", while in Gen. ix, 5-6. Bar-Nasha (thrice) and Bar-Nosh (twice) alike trans-
late Ha-Adam man'.
Sjoberg (ibid.), too, has corrected Dalman on this point, but maintains that, even
so, the expression seems to have been used with a certain emphasis.
2 So Dalman (see previous note) ; Bousset, Relig.2, p. 305 (3, p. 266) n. i. The evidence
for this is the use of the expression, in the Apocalypse of Enoch and in Dan. vii, as
we shall see below.
3 Bousset, Relig.* , p. 307 n. 2; Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp. 25off.; Hering, Le
royaume de Dieu et so venue, pp. 88fF.; Brun, Jesu evangelium?, pp. 545rL; W. Manson,
Jesus the Messiah, pp. U3fF. Campbell (in J.T.S. xlviii, 1947, pp. i45fT.) holds that
Jesus could not have applied the term to Himself as a Messianic designation, because
He could not have taken the phrase or the conception from so * stupid' a book as the
Enoch Apocalypse, and because Jesus was not interested in apocalyptic. But the
entire eschatological outlook of Jesus, and not least the conception of the two aeons
and of Satan's dominion in the present aeon, show that He and His environment were
both influenced by the view which apocalyptic represents. To become familiar with
these conceptions, Jesus need not, of course, have read any book. The ideas were
common property within certain milieux, which were the background of the con-
ceptions which Jesus held. It is a question, not of literary influences, but of traditions
and ideas which were in circulation, Campbell, on the other hand, holds that Jesus
used the expression of Himself in the sense 'this man5 (I), by analogy with the peri-
phrasis *Thy servant* (as in Ps. xix, 12, and elsewhere) for the first person. The pre-
supposition underlying this view is that in the time of Jesus 'the Man' was not a
generally understood eschatological designation of the Messiah, But Campbell has
not succeeded in disposing of the testimony of the Enoch Apocalypse and other sources
that this was so. Of. below, p. 356 and n. 6. Parker (J.B.L. Ix, 1941, pp* 15 iff.)
maintains that * the Son of Man* is a prophetic title.
4 Cf. Dalman, Words of Jesus, asGfF.j see below, pp. 4456*.
347
THE SON OF MAN
order to understand the teaching of Jesus, it Is important to de-
termine what He means by cthe Son of Man'3 the more so since
the expression was not a customary Messianic designation in
general use.1
It is clear that Jesus was not the originator of this expression,
which He uses to express His part in the establishment of the
kingdom of God.2 Before His time it was used, in certain circles,
in Jewish religious phraseology, to denote a person who in many
ways corresponds to the Messiah. It may even be said to have been
used, in some of these circles, as a designation of the Messiah. By
Jesus' time it had already acquired a certain content; and when
He used it, it suggested to His hearers a number of definite
conceptions of the mission and message of the Man who applied
it to Himself.3
It is not, however, probable that Jesus simply took the expres-
sion in the same sense as it had before Him; since Jesus and His
message represent an advance on all who had previously pro-
claimed the kingdom of God. But even before Him the phrase
must already have included essential elements of what Jesus
wanted to say about Himself; otherwise He would not have
adopted it, and allowed it almost completely to supersede the
title of Messiah and other titles He might have applied to Him-
self. If, therefore, we would understand fully what Jesus means
by calling Himself cthe Son of Man5, we must first discover what
the phrase stood for in the religious terminology of later Judaism.
2. The Son of Man in Daniel mi and the Older Sources of Daniel
Earlier generations of scholars, who were not fully aware of the
late Jewish background of the Gospels., held for the most part that
Jesus had taken the expression 'Son of Man5 directly from the Old
Testament, and, in particular, from Dan. vii, and that there it is
already used as a Messianic designation. When it became known
that conceptions of the Son of Man were also to be found in late
Jewish writings, which were earlier than the time of Jesus, it was
1 Dalman, op. cit., pp. 24iff.; see below, pp. 364^".
2 Volter (Die MenscJunsohnfrage] has maintained that Jesus Himself coined this
Messianic title, taking up the phrase 'son of man* (ben *a£dm) applied to Ezekiel.
Holzinger (in the Buddefestschrift, pp. lasfE) has decisively refuted this hypothesis.
3 Badham (in T.T. 3dv9 1911) appears to hold that before Jesus the expression had
no special meaning whatsoever, and that it was He who gave it one. This view, of
course, is possible only if all the Son of Man passages in i Enoch are deleted as Christian
interpolations, as is done by Messel in Der Mmschensohn in den Bilderreden des Uenoch;
see Badham, ibid., pp. 443-7. Campbell argues, too (see above, p. 347 n. 3; cf. p. 356
n. 6), that these passages are Christian interpolations in i Enoch. See below, p. 354.
348
THE SON OF MAN
contended that the idea was of purely scribal origin, and based
solely on the exegesis of Old Testament passages. 1 Apart from the
vocative c O son of man ' (child of man, man) , addressed to Ezekiel, it
was chiefly the vision of the beasts in Dan. vii that was thought of.
But it is in itself highly improbable that what was extracted
from a passage of scripture by theological and exegetical treatment
could have been the sole ground of a conception so important, so
manifold in its development, and so widely circulated as the Son
of Man.2 An analysis of the contents of Dan. vii provides a clear
refutation of the view.
In its present form the vision of the beasts in Dan. vii comes from
the time just before 165 B.C. The seer beholds four fabulous
monsters coming up out of the sea. They ravage the earth, and
exercise a reign of terror. The fourth is the worst of them. It
has ten horns, in addition to which there grows up an eleventh,
which plucks up three of the others, and which has ceyes like a
man's eyes, and a mouth which speaks great things*. Clearly the
meaning is that the four beasts succeed and supplant each other,
and that the fourth unites in itself all the power and cruelty of its
predecessors. Then the seer beholds that 'thrones were placed,
and an Ancient of Days took His seat; His raiment was white as
snow, and the hair of His head was like wool; His throne was
flames of fire, and its wheels were ablaze. A stream of fire flowed
forth and went out from them; a thousand thousands served Him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court
took its seat, and the books were opened. ' Judgement was passed,
and the beast (i.e., the fourth beast, which united in itself all the
power of its predecessors) was killed and burned. eAnd behold,
with the clouds of heaven there came one like a man (literally,
"a son of man"); and he came to the Ancient of Days, and he was
presented to Him. And to him was given dominion, and glory,
and kingdom — that all peoples, nations, and tongues should serve
him; his dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, which shall
not pass away, and his kingdom a kingdom which shall not be
destroyed. ' In what follows, the seer beholds the interpretation
of this vision. The four beasts signify four kings, or, rather, four
empires,3 which will arise (and supplant each other) on the earth.
1 Schiirer, Geschichte* II, p. 614; E. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfdnge des Ckristentums II,
p. 545. Strom, Vetekornet, p. 136, seems to hold tihds out-of-date and untenable view.
2 The idea is decisively refuted by Bousset, Relig.2, pp. 304-ff., 33 pp. 2658!
3 See Rowley, Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel, pp,
iSiff.
349
THE SON OF MAN
The fourth, is the worst and the most ungodly of these kingdoms.
4 It shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and crush
it. The ten horns mean that out of this kingdom ten kings shall
arise; and after them another shall arise, who shall be different
from the former ones; and he shall put down three kings. He shall
speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints
(plural, i.e., Israel) of the Most High5. It is clear that this refers
to the kings of the Macedonian kingdom in Syria, and especially
to the persecutor and blasphemer, Antiochus IV. l But when his
time is ended (ca time, two times, and a half a time3), cthe court
shall take its seat, and his dominion shall be taken away from
him . . . ; and the sovereignty, and the dominion, and the great-
ness of the kingdoms under heaven shall be given to the people of
the saints of the Most High (i.e., the people which consists of those
who are consecrated to the Most High); . . . and all (other)
dominions shall serve and obey them'.
The interpretation which Daniel receives in the vision clearly
means that, as the four beasts are pictorial symbols for the four
world kingdoms, which will supplant each other (the neo-Baby-
lonian, the Median, the Persian and the Syro-Macedonian,2) so
the Son of Man figure is a symbol for 'the people of the saints of
the Most High3, namely God's people in Israel. It is explicitly
emphasized that it is this people which will finally receive the
dominion. The vision indicates that during the period of Israel's
affliction., from the exile until the restoration, four tyrannous
kingdoms will supplant each other in holding dominion over the
earth. The last will be the worst; and its last king will distinguish
himself by blasphemous speech against the true God, and by
bloody oppression of His people (the religious persecution under
Antiochus). But when the time decreed by God is at an end, the
world empire of the people of God will be established, and
dominion will be given to Israel.
Thus in the present form of Daniel's visions of the beasts, the
Son of Man is a pictorial symbol of the people of Israel, not an in-
dividual figure, and not a personal Messiah of any kind.3
1 See Baumgartnerv Das Buck Daniel, cols. iaf.
2 See Bentzen, Darnel*, pp., 25, 39, 6of.s 65*!".; Rowley Darius the Mede and the Four
World Empires in the Book of Daniel^ pp. 67-160.
3 Strom, Vttwkornet, pp. 136$"., would deny this plain fact, and asserts that the Son
of Man is an individual figure, who is 'identical with.' the people of Isra . He argues
on the assumption of an ancient 'collectivistic' idea, which has been deservedly
criticised by Edsman (S.T.K. xxi, 1945, pp. 272*!; cf. Kyrkohistorisk drsskrift, xliv,
*944» 356ff.)- DaH also Mds this unreasonable view (Das Volk Gottes, p. 90), and
350
THE SON OF MAN
But it is also clear, as scholars have for long pointed out,1 that
these symbols (the monsters who come up from the sea in the last
times, and the man who comes with the clouds of heaven) were
not invented by the seer to represent his thoughts, and did not arise
spontaneously in his imagination during his visionary experience.
As so often, the seer is using traditional material. Conceptions
which were already present in his mind come forward in the vision,
and are used as pictures, and symbolically re-interpreted in terms
of what he wants to say, or what has been given him to say. If the
pictures had arisen instantaneously as the allegorical expression
of the seer's thought, one would expect them not to include any
features other than those which have a counterpart in the inter-
pretation. But the descriptions of the animals and of the figure like
a son of man include several features which are not included in the
interpretation. Why do the beasts come up from the sea? Why
are we told about the four winds which made the sea bring forth?
We can understand why the people of God are represented by a
human form, in contrast with the heathen powers; but why is it
said that the Man comes with the clouds of heaven, without any
interpretation of this point? Israel was a people of this world like
other peoples. Other points might be added. We must therefore
conclude that the seer of Daniel vii (or the tradition which he
represents)2 was already familiar with the conceptions of a eMan'
such as this, who would one day come with the clouds of heaven,
and that it was natural for the seer to use him as a symbol for
1 See Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos, pp. 323ff.; Volz, E$ckatologiez, p. 280; Gressmann,
Der Messias, pp. 343ff., 365^*., etc.
2 Several attempts have been made to distinguish those details for which the seer
is responsible from those which he took over from tradition. See the references to the
literature in Bentzen, Daniel. Holscher (in T.S.K., 1919, pp. 1331!.), Bentzen, and
others have held that it is possible to trace an earlier, pre-Maccabean vision, which
Daniel revised in the Maccabean period. The theme of the four empires is, of course,
itself older than Daniel. This is clear from Dan. ii, which forms, with the rest of i-vi,
a literary stratum which is older than Daniel. But vii is, in all essentials, a single,
literary composition, which plainly alludes to Antiochus IV (see Ginsberg, Studies in
Daniel}. But, of course, no verdict on the age of the content and the themes is thereby
implied.
speaks of an 'individual-collective duality', a * primitive* conception which is quite
inconceivable at a period like that of rabbinic Judaism when thought was, in fact, so
rational. This method of removing contradictions between varying conceptions in the
sources is an exaggeration of the modern insight into the ancient view of the relation-
ship between the individual and the community, which has been expounded in rela-
tion to Israel by Pedersen (Israel I-II) . In ancient times men were aware of the differ-
ence between the community and the individual person who represented it, and, in
certain situations, was its symbolic embodiment, conveying power by sharing the life
of its soul. Gf. above, pp. 50, %£ Lagrange (Le judaisme avant Jtsus-Christ, p. 66) also
retains the individual interpretation of the * one like a son of man*, and describes as
'rationalistic exegesis' the interpretation which is, in fact, the apocalyptist's own.
351
THE SON OF MAN
Israel1 It is difficult to say with certainty whether this figure lay
before him as an element in a longer, connected narrative (a
c myth5) 3 in which the monsters from the sea also played a part,
or whether the picture in Dan. vii was composed by the seer or by
his apocalyptic tradition from symbols and other individual
features, partly borrowed and partly newly devised.
Thus we can conclude from Dan. vii that about 200 B.C. or
earlier there was in Judaism a conception of a heavenly being in
human form (cone like a man'),2 who, at the turn of the age, the
dawn of the eschatological era, would appear, and would receive
from God delegated power and authority over all kingdoms and
peoples. He seems also to play a part in the judgement of the world,
which precedes the transfer of power to him, and which is plainly
involved in his enthronement as lord of the world. It is stated in
the vision that 'thrones (plural) were placed5; but afterwards only
one (the Ancient of Days) is mentioned as taking his seat. Why,
then, is there more than one throne?3 Since the seer has rein-
terpreted the figure as a symbol of Israel in conflict with the beasts,
he naturally cannot use what is presumably a traditional feature
in the narrative, that the one in human form sits on one of the
thrones to give judgement. In the vision it is God who assigns
dominion to him; and, therefore, he must be presented before the
Ancient of Days. But the retention of the plural, 'thrones', shows
that, in the original conception, the one in human form took part
in the judgement of the world. He was thought of as sharing God's
throne, a divine being in human form.
It is clear that there is a connexion between the Son of Man and
this figure which lies behind Dan. vii. The connexion appears in
the clear allusion made by Jesus to Dan. vii, when He predicted,
in the presence of His judges, that the Son of Man would come
with the clouds of heaven.4 In fact, the conception of the Son of
Man was the traditional material, which was available to the seer
1 See the clear demonstration, surveying the underlying, mythological material, in
Baumgartner, Das Buck Daniel, cols, i ^f.
2 This expression implies not merely that he had a certain likeness to a man, but that
he was wholly in human form, by contrast with other supernatural beings, who might
be wholly or partly in animal form, such as the cherubs in Ezek. i, or the four living
creatures (literally 'animals') in Rev. iv, yff. The Hebrew and Armaic £*, like the
Accadian ktma, expresses not only similarity, but also full identity; see Cook, The Old
Testament: a Reinterpretation, p. 105; Engnell, Divine Kingship y p. 29 n. 2.
3 Rabbi AHba was aware of this problem, and suggested 'One for Him (i.e., God)
and one for David (i.e., the Messiah) \ See Moore, Judaism II, p. 337; Lagrange, Le
messianisme chez lesjuifs, pp. 224f.
4 Mark xiii, 126; xiv, 62, and parallels.
352
THE SON OF MAN
of Dan. vii, and which he reinterpreted as a symbol of the people
of Israel. It is because of the reinterpretation and the juxta-
position with the beasts that Daniel does not use the name eSon
of Man3 of him, but speaks of c one like a man5.
Thus we can add still another feature to the conception of the
heavenly being on which Dan. vii is based, namely that he was
called simply 'the Man'. He must have had a special character-
istic, which distinguished him from all the other heavenly beings
(angels and spirits) who surround God in heaven. He must have
been such that there were reasonable grounds for calling him c the
Man \ although he was divine and heavenly.
If, then, Daniel himself knew, and gave a symbolic interpreta-
tion of, an older conception of a heavenly Man, the conceptions
of the Son of Man in Jewish apocalyptic and in the teaching of
Jesus Himself do not go back only to a Messianic interpretation
of Dan. vii. In Daniel the conception is used as a symbol; and only
those features in the figure are included which are appropriate to
the allegorical interpretation in terms of Israel's divine kingdom
and world dominion.
The figure of the Son of Man reappears in other pre-Christian,
Jewish sources. There it has a number of specific, organically
connected features, which do not appear in Daniel, and which
cannot have been derived from the picture there, even by the
methods of rabbinic exegesis. The same is true of the sayings of
Jesus about the Son of Man. We return to these features later.
Thus the conception of the Son of Man existed in Judaism in-
dependently of Dan. vii.1 All the variant forms of it which occur,
including Dan. vii, must be dependent on earlier conceptions,
which were in circulation in some circles in later Judaism, and
which Enoch presents directly, whereas Daniel gives a symbolic
reinterpretation. 2
3. The Sources
Apart from Dan. vii, the chief source for the Son of Man con-
ception is the Similitudes in the Ethiopic Book of Enoch ( i En.
xxxvii-lxxi).3 Whatever view one may take of the literary origin
1 Cf, Reitzenstein, Das iranische Erldsungsmysterium, pp. isof.
2 It would be remarkable if an interpretation of the 'one like a man' in Dan. vii,
which, in relation to Daniel's own interpretation, would be wrong (taking the figure
to be the Messiah, instead of the people of Israel), should indicate correctly the mean-
ing which the conception had before Daniel interpreted it as a symbol for the people.
3 It is probable that this complex includes sections which are secondary. It is
generally agreed that these include the Noachic sections (vi-ix; xxxix, 1-2 a; liv,
353
2A
THE SON OF MAN
and composition of Enoch, It Is generally accepted that the
Similitudes form an independent complex of tradition, which had
a separate, literary existence before being incorporated in i Enoch
as we now have It.1 Whether they are themselves a literary unit,
or are composed of several sources,2 Is of no particular interest
for our present subject. The teaching contained in them forms a
unity, dominated by the same basic thought: the fate of the
righteous and the ungodly, and the eschatological role of the
Son of Man as judge of the world and ruler of the righteous.
It Is now generally agreed that the Apocalypse of Enoch Is a
Jewish book.3 Nor is there any real division of opinion on the
Jewish origin of the Similitudes.4 On the other hand, attempts
have often been made, and are still made, to maintain that the
passages which speak of the Son of Man are later Christian
insertions in the text, or adaptations of it.5 Lagrange accepts the
hypothesis of two literary sources In the Similitudes, of which one
speaks of 'the Elect One5, and the other of the Son of Man; and
he holds that the latter Is of Christian origin.6 Messel has main-
tained that the term c the Son of Man 5 Is usually a later insertion, or
replaces another expression, and also that the expression 'the
Elect One3 was inserted later in several passages.7 In the few
1 See Sjoberg, op. cit, pp. iff.
2 On theories of sources, see Beer, ibid.; Charles., The Book of Enoch translated?, pp. 64f.;
Sjoberg, op. cit., p. 24. Sjoberg gives a convincing refutation of them, op. cit., pp. 25ff.
3 On the attempts of von Hoffmann, Weisse, and Philippi to treat the book as
Christian, see Sjoberg, op. cit., pp. 3ff., where the decisive arguments against the
theory are repeated with added force.
4 Hilgenfeld's attempt to show that they are Christian (Die judische Apokalyptik in
threr geschichflichen Entwickelung, pp. I5off.; and in /^.W.T. xxxv, 1892, pp. 445^) is
for the most part abandoned, and has been decisively refuted, e.g., by Sjoberg, op. cit.,
pp. 6ff.
& This was first suggested by B. Bauer, and was fully and more precisely presented,
with supporting arguments, by Dnunmond (The Jewish Messiah^ pp. lyff.), and later
by Pfleiderer (X)as Urchristmtum, pp. 3isff.), Bousset (Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz turn
Judentum, pp. 1056*.), Messel (see below), Badham, Campbell, and others. Bousset
later gave up the theory (Relig.2, pp. 13, 30 iff.).
6 Le Judaisms avant Jisus-Christ, pp. 2248". Lagrange is decisively refuted by Sjoberg, op.
cit., pp. i7ff.
7 Der Menschensohn in den Bildeneden des Henoch. Messel holds that the expression * the
Elect One* is original only from xlvi onwards, and that all the Son of Man passages
after xlviii, a are secondary. On the basis of exegetical arguments which he feels must
be advanced against most of the passages (but which, in fact, represent an unduly
logical, modern approach), Messel assumes that xlvi, 3 and xlviii, 3 must be textually
unsound, because these passages cannot be accommodated to his collective interpreta-
tion.
y-lv, 2; Ix; Ixv-lxix, 25), which form a separate complex of tradition from the same
Enochian circles, but were interpolated into the SimiHtiides at a later stage, xlii is
probably also later. See the survey and discussion by Beer (AJP.A.T. II, pp. 224ff.),
Charles (AJP.O.T. II, pp. iSaff.), and Sjoberg (Der Menschensohn, pp. ssffl).
354
THE SON OF MAN
passages which survive,1 he holds that 'the Elect One* has the
same meaning as 'the elect (ones)', and denotes the people of
Israel. He also thinks that 'the Son of Man' is a personification
of Israel, as in Daniel vii.2 But none of these theories can be held
save on arbitrary grounds; and Sjoberg has decisively refuted all
the objections to the authenticity of the passages and the integrity
of the text.3 Once it is clear that the conception of the Son of
Man in Dan. vii had an earlier history on Jewish soil, there is no
valid reason for suspecting the conceptions of the heavenly Son
of Man in Enoch. To interpret this figure in Enoch as a symbol
for the community of the chosen then becomes impossible.4
Different views have also been held about the date of the Simili-
tudes.5 The question is bound up with the interpretation of the
kings and mighty ones of the earth, who oppress the righteous.
Several hold that the reference is to Jewish rulers, and put the Simi-
litudes in the later Maccabean period.6 But the reference is really
to heathen empires and kings;7 and it is, therefore, most probable
that the Similitudes originated in the Roman period;8 but the
latest part of the Maccabean period is not impossible.9 There is
no ground for coming down into the Christian period. The pro-
blem of more precise dating is, however, not so important for the
history of the idea of the Son of Man; for, as has been said, it is
certain that the author has put into writing older traditions from
apocalyptic circles.10
The Apocalypse of Enoch is extant only in an Ethiopic text,
which is a translation of a Greek version. In recent times some
1 Messel admits that he can advance no objection to the substance or form of xlv, 30.
What then becomes of his whole hypothesis?
2 T. W. Manson (The Teaching of Jesus2, p. 228; cf. 'The Son of Man in Daniel,
Enoch and the Gospels', B.J.R.L. xxxii, 2, 1950), also holds the collective interpreta-
tion of l the Elect One'. Messel is obliged to admit that xlix, 3 also does not suit this
interpietation (see above, n. i), but consoles himself with the fact that it is a quota-
tion from Isa. xi, 2. But when Enoch quotes Isa. xi, 2, it is because he believes that the
thought accords with his own.
3 Op, cit., pp. 14-24.
4 Against the collective interpretation, see p. 354 n. 7, and nn. I, 2 above cf. Sjoberg,
op. cit., pp. I4ff.; Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice, pp. 24ff.
5 See the introductions and references to the literature in Beer (A.P.A. T. II, pp.
23 if.) and Charles (A.P.O.T. II, pp. iSsff.); cf. also Messel, Der Menschensohn in dm
Bilderreden des Henoch, pp. y8f.; Schurer, Geschichte^ II, pp. sygf.j Sjoberg, op. cit.,
pp. 35ff.
6 E.g. Dillmann, Charles, Beer, and Bertholet.
7 See Messel, op. cit., pp. ygff.; Sjoberg, op. cit., pp. 36ff.
8 So Schurer, Messel, and Sjoberg.
9 In Ivi, 5, the enemy is the Parthians. This fits best the time shortly before 63 E.G.
10 This is shown, for example, by the inconsistency between bcx and Ixxi; see below,
pp. 284ff.
355
THE SON OF MAN
portions of the Greek text have been found.1 This Greek text is
itself undoubtedly a translation of a Semitic original; but it is
still disputed whether this was in Hebrew or Aramaic. Most
probably it was in Hebrew.2
In addition to the Ethiopic Enoch, there is also a Slavonic
Enoch, which presumably is earlier than the fall of Jerusalem in
A.D. yo.3
Another important book is the Ezra Apocalypse (2 Esdras),
written in Hebrew in the time of Dornitian, but now known only
in Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Armenian versions, which
all go back to a lost Greek version. But the Ezra Apocalypse is
only a new, slightly revised edition of an earlier Shealtiel Apoca-
lypse, which was probably written shortly after the death of Nero,
and before the destruction of Jerusalem.4
There is also the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch),
which was also originally written in Hebrew, and is usually con-
sidered to be a little later than the Apocalypse of Ezra, but should
rather be placed just after the Shealtiel Apocalypse, which it used
as a source.5
These books, then, are the sources for our knowledge of Jewish
conceptions of the Son of Man.6 But it must be noted that in the
1 The first part (i-xxxii, 6) was found in a parchment manuscript in the excavations
at Achmim in Egypt in 1886-7. A number of fragments are known from the Byzantine
writer Syncellus (ca. A.D. 800; and from a Vatican manuscript. These passages are
printed in Swete's edition of the Septuagint. More recently, the ending of the Greek
text has been found, and was published by Bonner (The Last Chapters of Enoch in Greek).
2 See the survey of the evidence given by Beer (AJP.A.T. II, pp. aiyff.) and Charles
in A.P.O.T. II, pp. lyiff. Charles maintains that it was originally in both languages:
i-v; xxxvii-cvi in Hebrew; vi-xxxvi in Aramaic. The problem appears to be nearer
a solution as a result of the discovery of the 'Ain Feshkha manuscripts. Among the
scrolls there is one which contains in Aramaic the Lamech or Noah Apocalypse, which
is mentioned in a Greek Christian list of apocryphal books (see Schurer, Geschichte^
III, pp. 358f.) and which clearly has been worked into the Enoch Apocalypse (see
above, p. 353 n. 3, on the Noachic sections). See Trever in B.A.S. O.R., 115, Oct.
1949, pp. 8ff. This might suggest that the Enoch Apocalypse, too, was originally ia
Aramaic, at least in part. Nothing further can be said, of course, until the new text
is fully deciphered and examined in detail.
3 See Bonwetsch, Die Bilcher dsr Geheimrdsse des Henoch. Das sogenannte slavische Henoch-
buch, p. xviii.
4 See Torrey in Munsra studiosa. Studies Presented to W.L.P. Hatch, pp. 23fF.
5 See the above-mentioned essay by Torrey. It is usually thought that it was the
Apocalypse of Ezra that Baruch used; but Torrey's arguments that it was Shealtiel
seem decisive.
6 Campbell (in J.T.S., xlviii, 1947, pp. 1458*.) tries to discount the value of i Enoch
as evidence for Jewish ideas about the Son of Man, by pointing out that it is extant only
in a late translation, which is full of errors, and in late manuscripts, which have a
long and confused history behind them. These difficulties do exist; but careful and
methodical criticism can discern the leading ideas in the milieu from which the Enoch
translations corne. Nor should the literary composition of the book (which seems to
the modern mind so confused) be used as an argument against its value as evidence
of the thought of the apocalyptists.
356
THE SON OF MAN
apocalypses of Shealtiel, Ezra, and Baruch we do not find the
conception of the Son of Man in a pure and unalloyed form.
What we do find is, in the main, the figure of the national Messiah,
with the title of Messiah, but amplified by a number of super-
natural features derived from the Son of Man. This may be seen
in the Apocalypse of Ezra, for instance, where the Messiah is a
mortal man of David's line, and his kingdom an interim kingdom
before the new aeon,1 but where, nevertheless, he is revealed in a
supernatural manner, and displays features which belong to the
conception of the king of paradise.
To these more important sources we may add the Targums.
They interpret the expression 'son of man' in Ps. viii, 5 and cxliv,
3 (where it really means any human being) and in Ps. Ixxx, 18
(where it means cthe man', indicating the people of Israel) of the
Messiah.2 There are also echoes of the idea of the Son of Man in
the Jewish Sibylline Oracles.3
The rabbis, too, knew of the identification which we find in the
Targums, as is shown, for instance, when they interpret the 'one
like a man5 in Dan. vii, 13 of the Messiah, or take Anani, the
last descendant of David, in i Ch. iii, 24, as the ' Cloud Man',
the one who comes with the clouds of heaven, the Messiah-Son-
of-Man.* But neither in the Targums nor in the rabbis is there
any question of more than a transference of individual features
from the Son of Man to the national Messiah. The conception is
not borrowed in its entirety.5
The Revelation of St. John is in accord with the late Jewish
apocalypses on the question of the Son of Man. In recent times
it has been clearly recognized that the materials which the seer
uses as symbols for his thoughts (what he did not himself devise,
and what was not unknown to him when it came to him in revela-
tions concerning the imminent coming of Christ and the final
distress and judgement), the symbolic pictures, were in the main
derived from the apocalyptic tradition in later Judaism, upon
which Daniel, Enoch, Shealtiel, Ezra, and Baruch also drew.6
In all its essential features, John's portrayal of the eschatological
1 Gf. W. Mundle in g.A.W., xlvii, 1929, pp. 226f.
2 For traces of the Messianic interpretation of Ps. viii, 5f.} see Strack-Billerbeck III,
p. 682.
3 Sib. V, 414; cf. Ill, 46-50, 652. Cf. Moore, Judaism II, pp. 335.
4 Sources in Strack-Billerbeck I, pp. 67, 486, 856^; c£ Moore, op. cit. II, pp. 335ff.
6 See above, pp. 322, 332^, cf. 266f., 283.
6 See Mosbech, Johannes's Aabenbaring, pp. viiff.; Fortolkningen of Johannes's Aab en-
baring i Fortid og Nutid, pp. 771!.
357
THE SON OF MAN
world drama is in agreement with that of the Jewish apocalyptists,
except that he gives it a Christian interpretation in the light of the
revelation in Christ and faith in Him. The correspondence with
the framework and the fundamental ideas of late Jewish apocalyp-
tic is particularly striking in the great picture of the last judgement
in Rev. xix, i x-xxi, 8.1 With the exception of those features which
arise from experience of Christ's victorious suffering, death, and
resurrection, the part played by Christ corresponds exactly to that
of the Son of Man in apocalyptic. It is true that John does not
use the expression cSon of Man5. But the connexion with the
older tradition is plain enough, when he describes Christ as 'one
like a son of man9 (i, 13). The Revelation of St. John may, there-
fore, be safely used as a source for the late Jewish conception of
the Son of Man, provided it is used with sufficient caution.
The Gospels must also be considered. From what Jesus (or, at
times, the Evangelists) says about the Son of Man, conclusions
can sometimes be drawn about the Jewish conceptions which
form the background of their words. This is particularly true of
the eschatological discourse in Mark xiii, where most scholars think
that Mark is directly or indirectly dependent on a Jewish, or
Jewish Christian, apocalypse, which in some measure expresses
Jewish conceptions.
4. The Eschatological Character of the Son of Man.
The first thing to be said of the Son of Man is that he is an
eschatological figure.2 He has not yet appeared; but in the last
times he will be revealed (see belov/, pp. 388ff.). The presup-
position of the allegorical use which Daniel made of the figure is
that the coming of the Son of Man means the end of the heathen
human empires of this aeon, and the dawn of the kingdom of God.
In the Similitudes of Enoch, the eschatological transformation is
the sole theme, which is presented in constantly changing figures.
With this transformation the Son of Man is associated.3 Enoch
speaks of the elect righteous ones, to whom the Son of Man will
one day appear, who form the congregation which will then
appear, when the sinners have been punished and extirpated from
the earth.4 These elect ones are those "whose elect works hang
1 See Moore, Judaism II, pp. 339!?.
2 Cf. Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 6iff.; cf. also ids contribution to s8:e Svenska
Laroverksl&raremotst i Stockholm, 1946, pp, 2548!
3 Sjoberg, Der Menschensokn, p. 61.
4 i En. xxxviii, iff., etc.
358
THE SON OF MAN
upon the Lord of Spirits'. The reference is clearly to the eschato-
logical Israel, which will appear purified and glorified in the new
aeon (see below, pp. 379!). To them the Righteous One will
appear.
This eschatological activity is his true task. Before the world
was created, the Lord of Spirits also created, chose, and preserved
him in order that by him all who dwell on earth should one day
fall down before God, and worship, praise, and extol the Lord of
Spirits (i En. xlviii, 5). God will be acknowledged as God; His
name will be hallowed throughout the world; to this end the Son
of Man is who he is.
He fulfils this purpose in two ways: by saving the righteous, and
by condemning and destroying the wicked, who oppose God's
purpose and oppress the righteous.1
i Enoch often refers to the righteousness of the Son of Man (see
below, pp. 366, 377f,)« In a number of passages it is clear that
this means that he wins for the righteous their right, and this is
synonymous with his saving them: his righteousness is his saving
work (pp. 378£). The important point in this connexion, how-
ever, is that the reference is to the eschatological judgement and
salvation. His real work belongs to the last times. The most high
has kept him cunto the end of the days5.
The Most High regarded his (the fourth beast's) times —
And lo! they were ended;
And his ages —
(and) they were fulfilled.
When the times are ended, the Son of Man's activity begins; he
inaugurates 'the Age which is not yet awake', at the time which is
the consummation of that which is corruptible,
And the beginning of that which is not corruptible,
at cthe consummation of the times'.2 This is also implied by the
conception that the Son of Man, is still hidden and preserved,3
namely, to be used when his time comes. All Enoch's visions
about the Son of Man are concerned with this change from one
age to another. As we shall see, the Son of Man was present at
the beginning; and he will also play a leading part at the end.
1 i En. xlviii, 2-10; xli, 9; similarly 2 Esdras xii, 32fF.
2 2 Esdras xii, 32; xi 36-45; xiv, 9; vii, 26E, 31; 2 Bar. Ixxiv, 2; Ixxvi, 2.
3 See below, pp. 386f.; and further, i En. xl, 5; xlviii, 3, 6; Ixii, 7; 2 Esdras xii, 32,
xiii, 26.
359
THE SON OF MAN
5, The Son of Man Regarded as the Messiah
The fact that the Son of Man is an eschatological figure means,
for Jewish thought, that he comes to be regarded as one with the
Messiah, although originally they were quite distinct from each
other. In two passages in the Apocalypse of Enoch1 the title cthe
Messiah', or 'the Anointed \ is applied to the Son of Man. The
same identification is found in the Apocalypse of Ezra (2 Esdras
xiii, 3). Here, too, it is cthe man3, cone like a man3, who is the
deliverer in the end time., and who will overthrow the heathen
world power, and carry out the judgement. Of him it is explicitly
said that he 'shall spring from the seed of David3 (xii, 32; cf. vii,
29; xiii, 25ff.). The Latin text reads 'Unctus (i.e., Messiah), . . .
who shall spring from the seed of David'. Although there is noth-
ing in the Arabic and Ethiopic translations to correspond with
this word Unctus, and it is, presumably, a Christian interpolation,
it is nevertheless clear that in the Apocalypse of Ezra the Son of
Man is the Messiah of David's line, for whom the Jews were
waiting.
2 Esdras xiii speaks of the deliverer of the world, the Son of Man.,
but gives him the Jewish Messianic title cMy (i.e., the Lord's)
servant1,2 and represents him as the one who will be revealed on
Zion, and will deliver first the Jews, and then the dispersed ten
tribes. In other words, he is the Jewish Messiah*
The same is true of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch. The
eschatological deliverer, who is described there, has the cosmic,
supernatural features of the Son of Man; but he is called cMy
Messiah \ c My servant, Messiah5,3
Philo of Alexandria, too, seems to have knowledge of a con-
ception of the Messiah which has been in a measure influenced
by the idea of the Son of Man. This is the most natural explana-
tion of the passage in which he refers to the Messiah as 'a man9
(av8paj7ro?}> who will triumph over the heathen.4 If Philo had
had only the traditional figure of the Messiah in mind, there would
1 1 En. xlviil, 10; lii, 4. Dalman (Die Worte Jesu*, p. 221), takes 'Messiah* here to
be a secondary addition; similarly Messel (Der Menschensohn in den Rildernden des
Henock, pp. 3 iff.). Tlie reasons given are not convincing; see Sjoberg, Der Menscken-
sohn, pp. i4off. But the question is of subordinate interest; if there were any glosses,
they would show that the tradition within the Enoch circles took the Son. of Man to
be the Messiah..
2 FUius meus = o irafc /AOU = *abdi; see above, p. 294.
3 2 Bar. xxix, 3; xxx, i; xxxix, 7; ad, ij Ixx3 9; bexii, 2*
4 On Philo's eschatology,, see Elmgren, Philon av Alexandria med sdrskild hansyn till
hans eskatologiska fdrestallningar; cf. also Bonsirven, Le jvdmsmt palestinien au temps de
Jtsus-Ckrist I, pp. 3431!
360
THE SON OF MAN
have been no reason for asserting that he was ca man', since this
could be taken for granted of the Messiah of David's line (see
above, pp. 165!?., 323^).
The fact that Dan. vii, with its reference to one like a man, and
other passages in the Old Testament which speak of a 'son of
man', were interpreted Messianically in rabbinic circles (see
above, pp. 335f.) is further evidence that the Son of Man was
regarded as the Messiah.
We see, then, that in certain circles, which are represented in
particular by these apocalypses and other writings which are
spiritually akin to them, the national, this-worldly Messiah was
entirely transformed into the figure of the Son of Man, but retained
the Jewish Messiah's name, and a measure of the distinctively
Jewish, this-worldly character, which had belonged to him from
the beginning. In other circles on the other hand, represented, for
instance, by the Psalms of Solomon, the Messiah largely retained
his Old Testament character. But nowhere did the Messiah en-
tirely escape the influence of the new conceptions associated with
the Son of Man (see above, pp. 324, 333ff.)-
It may also be said that because certain Jewish circles regarded
the Son of Man as identical with the Messiah, their conception of
Mm acquired certain national, this-worldly features, derived from
the traditional figure of the Messiah, which have only a very loose
connexion with the transcendental conception of the Son of Man.
This is true, in a measure, even of the Apocalypse of Enoch and
the circles which it represents.1 Although the coming of the Son
of Man is described in the Similitudes as an encounter with the
cosmic powers, and although the judgement on the heathen and
the oppressors is conceived of as a complete extirpation, there are
sections where the encounter is described as a military victory-
over heathen nations and kings (the Parthians and the Medes),
and where it is hinted that the survivors of the defeated heathen
may be converted and attach themselves to the kingdom of God's
people in a subordinate position, while the dispersed Jews return
home.2 Here the transcendental eschatology, represented by the
Son of Man, is in a sense fused with the older, national, political,
eschatology, represented by the Messiah.3 Similar borrowings
1 See Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. I4iff. 2 I En. 1; Ivi, 5-8; Ivii, 1-3.
3 Several scholars have regarded these passages (referred to in previous note) as
later insertions, but on inadequate grounds. See the discussion in Sjoberg, Der
Menschensohn, pp. 1426°. But, even if they were later, they would still show that the
fusion of the Son of Man and the Messiah took place in Enochian circles; so Sjoberg,
op. cit., p. 144 n, 13. See above, p. 360 n. i.
361
THE SON OF MAN
from the older eschatology are foiind elsewhere in the Apocalypse
of Enoch (xc, 30, 33, 37; xci, 14).
6. The Name and Titles of the Son of Man
The expression cthe Man9, or cthe Son of Man' (taking the
Aramaic expression literally), as a designation of an eschatological
deliverer, first occurs (apart from Dan. vii) in the Apocalypse of
Enoch. 1 Besides the phrase * Son of Man *, and with the same sense,
we find the expressions eSon of a man'2 and cSon of the offspring
of the mother of the living'.3 In the Ethiopic New Testament,
the last of these is the regular rendering of the term c the Son of
Man* as applied to Jesus. All three expressions4 render 6 vlo$ rov
av6pa>7Tov, which is used by the Greek translator (of Enoch) to
represent the phrase in the Semitic original, whether it was the
Hebrew ben 'adam or the Aramaic bar *ena$d\ As we have seen
(p. 355), there is no reason to suppose that the expression was
later interpolated into the Ethiopic version or into the Greek text
from which it was translated. Nor is it an important point that
the translator used three different expressions to render the same
original.5 In general, the translator does not follow a strict rule
of uniformity in his rendering of particular words and phrases.6
That he should also occasionally use the expression which he knew
from his Ethiopic New Testament is so natural, that the reverse
would be astonishing.7
1 i En. xlvi, 1-6; xlviii, 2-7; bdi, 5-9, 14; Ixiii, n; box, 26-9; Ixx, i; Ixxi, 17 (?).
In Ixxi, 14 the expression is not Messianic (see below, pp. 441 fif.). The Ethiopic
expression is walda sale*. Sabe* has the same generic or collective sense as the Hebrew
9adam> and perhaps corresponds etymologically to the Hebrew faj?d' — army (company
of men); see Messel, Der Menschmsohn in den Bilderredsn des Henoch, p. 6 n.
2 Ethiopic walda be'est (bdi, 5; box sga, b; Ixxi, 14); be'esiis the normal word for an
individual man.
3 Ethiopic walda *egudla *em(m)akeyaw (IxE, 7, 9, 14; Ixiii, n; Ixix, 26£; Ixx, i;
Ixxi, 17).
4 A few late manuscripts have, in addition, a fourth expression, walda be'estt, * the
son of woman5; but Sjoberg has shown clearly that this is simply a textual error.
5 Messel (op. cit, pp. 5ft) tries to show that elsewhere in i Enoch the Ethiopic
translator always uses sabe* of * man* in the generic sense, and be'esi of an individual
man; and, since av&pfuiros in the Greek text has the generic sense, all the passages
which now have walda be'est must have been interpolated or 'corrected5 later. But
first, since Messel has to admit that there is at least one passage, and possibly two,
where this rule does not apply (xciii, 1 1 and Ixxxix, i), the point is not proved. And
second, we simply cannot assume that the translator realized that avSpamos in the
(to him) unfamiliar phrase was really (i.e., in the Semitic original) intended generi-
cally. Probably the Greek translator, too, was not clear on this point. It is, therefore,
not surprising that the Ethiopic translator now and then varies his rendering with
be'est instead of the customary sabe\
6 See Charles, The Book of Enoch, translated, p. 158; 2, p. kv; Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn,
pp. 42ff.
7 On the same grounds as thosejuentioned in n. 5 above, Messel, followed by Camp-
362
THE SON OF MAN
The question then arises, whether the expression 'the Son of
Man' = 'the Man', in the Apocalypse of Enoch, is a definite and
fixed term for the eschatological figure to whom it is applied.1
Several scholars have held that this cannot be so. They maintain
that the expression does not occur as a fixed term, which conveys
its own meaning irrespective of its content. As a rule, it is pre-
ceded by a demonstrative adjective cthis' or cthat3, thus referring
back to the first occasion in the book where this * human figure5
was introduced; and thus it has its eschatological and Messianic
sense only in the context of this vision, and means here, cthe afore-
mentioned Son of Man'.2 They hold that here, as elsewhere, this
phrase was, in itself, simply a customary expression for eman'3
and thus means in i Enoch simply, 'the man who was named in
the first vision5. This last point, at all events, is incorrect.3 cThe
son of man' was not at that time an everyday expression in
Aramaic, but an infrequent and dignified one, which indicated
something specific in the person of whom it was used.
Concerning the use of the demonstrative adjective, it has been
objected against the view just mentioned, that it is only the attempt
of the Ethiopic translator to render the definite article in the
Greek phrase which he is translating.4 Ethiopic has no definite
article; and elsewhere the translator often gives a slavishly literal
rendering. He had no great skill as a Grecian; 'he has translated
wrongly or inaccurately about a fifth of his Greek text'.5 Sjoberg
has carried out a very thorough investigation of this subject, and
1 This is how the question must be formulated, and not whether the expression is a
fixed 'Messianic' term, and also elsewhere an established name for the Messiah.
Fundamentally, we are not here dealing with the Messiah in the old sense, and, there-
fore, not with a normal Messianic name.
2 This is maintained, in particular, by Lietzmann (Der Menschensokn. Ein Bdtrag
zur mutestamentlichen Theologie, pp. 42ff.), before him by Eerdmans (in T.T., xxviii,
1894, p. 153) and later by Wellhausen (Skizzen und Vorarbeiten VI, pp. iSyff.).
3 See Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp. 234!!.; cf. also Fiebig, Der Menschensohn, Jew
Selbstbezeichwng) mit besonderer Berucksichtigung des aramaischen Sprachgebrauchsfur * Mensch*.
See the discussion in Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn^ pp. 41 IF.
4 First conjectured by N. Schmidt in J.B.L., xv, 1896, pp. 36ff.; and later main-
tained by Charles (The Book of Enoch, translated, pp. 86f.) and by Staerk, Soter II, p. 73.
A number of scholars have accepted the explanation without much further investiga-
tion.
5 Beer in A.P.A.T. II, p. 220.
bell (J.T.iS1., xlviii, 1947, p. 148), would regard all the passages which contain walda
*egudla 'em(m)aheyaw as having been subsequently interpolated, or modified (from an
original 'the Elect One', or the like). But here, too, the point is not proved. Even if
Messel were right in thinking that the translator always had definite linguistic reasons
for distinguishing between the use ofsabe* and that of be'esi, there remains a third pos-
sibility: a Christian alteration of walda sabe* in accordance with the customary usage
in the Ethiopic New Testament.
THE SON OF MAN
has reached the conclusion that it may be true that the trans-
lator's 'this* sometimes represents the Greek definite article; but
that there are also several instances where it is certain or highly
probable that the Greek text itself had a 'this' before the ex-
pression, and thus referred back to the first mention of the said
*Son of Man', This makes it probable that the Semitic original
also had a corresponding demonstrative.1 But Sjoberg also shows
that this is not decisive. The question, cls the Son of Man a
Messianic title? 3 is wrongly put. In apocalyptic the Son of Man
is something different from the Messiah. The question is what
the expression 'the Son of Man* means in i Enoch and within
the apocalyptic circles which it represents. And here the fact is
that although the expression is used in the majority of places where
it occurs in i Enoch as a description, and not as a name or a title,
and the accompanying 'this* refers back to Enoch's first vision of
a 'being whose countenance had the appearance of a man5, con-
cerning whom he asks the angel who he is (xlvi, iff.), yet the
reference is to a heavenly being who actually exists. This heavenly
being is described as 'that Son of Man (whom, thou knowest)',
and sometimes simply as e the Son of Man'. In an eschatological,
apocalyptic context, this description was entirely explicit and
comprehensible to Enoch's hearers and readers. 'That Son of
Man5 (the Son of Man whom you know) refers not only to an
earlier mention of him in a writing or in a message, but to a
heavenly Son of Man, who actually exists, and of whom the
hearers know. 'The heavenly Man belonged to this (i.e., the
apocalyptic) world of ideas; in the first place, the existence of such
a heavenly "Man" was established. But he could also be referred
to by the term "the Man"; and, in association with the apocalyp-
tic world of ideas, the meaning of this term was immediately plain '.2
Within the circles where these apocalyptic ideas were alive, if
anyone mentioned 'the Son of Man', everyone knew to what and
to whom he was referring.
This means that the expression 'the Son of Man5 was a current
1 Sjoberg, op. ciL} pp. 45fF. If the original language of i Enoch was not Hebrew
but Aramaic, it could perhaps also be maintained that even if the demonstrative had
always been present in the original text, we should not be committed to the view of
Lietzmann and those who agree with him. In biblical Aramaic, the demonstratives
dek and dak, d^nah and da* are in process of becoming definite articles (see, e.g., Ezra
iVj 21; v, 8; and cf, Brockelmannj Grtmdriss der wrgleichenden Grammatik der semitischen
Sprachen II, p. 79 (§ 39 c). A reflection of this weakened use of the demonstrative
may be seen in the New Testament, e.g., Mark xii, 7; Matt, xviii, 26-8, where
sim ply has the character of a definite article.
2 Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p, 59.
364
THE SON OF MAN
and comprehensible designation of the eschatological, heavenly
deliverer, in whom they belie ved, and for whom they waited;
and this designation conveyed also certain essential things con-
cerning his nature and being. It is characteristic of him that his
appearance is human, and that he has certain human traits,
although he belongs to another sphere, that of heaven. This is
implied by the tradition underlying Daniel: 'one (in appearance)
like a man' (see above, pp. 3485*.). The same expression, with
the same implication, is also used in the Apocalypse of Ezra: cas
it were the form of a man' (xiii, 3) . The lion, which in the allegori-
cal picture-language of the apocalyptist means the Messiah, sets
upon the eagle (i.e., the heathen world power, Rome) with the
voice of a man (xi, 37), precisely because he is cthe Man'.
Equally common in the Apocalypse of Enoch is the name 'the
Elect One5, or 'My Elect One'.1 By contrast with 'the Son of
Man' (which raises a problem, and cannot be explained in terms
of Old Testament teaching) the term cthe Elect One' is derived
from Old Testament usage. e Elect' or 'chosen' in the Old Testa-
ment indicates that the person in question stands in a specially close
relationship to Yahweh, partly as the object of His particular
care, love, guidance, and protection, partly as His chosen instru-
ment to fulfil some task and to carry out His will. The application
of this expression to the Son of Man depends, of course, upon the
Messianic interpretation of a number of passages in the Old
Testament, including some in Deutero-Isaiah. Like Deutero-
Isaiah,2 Enoch also calls Israel, or those in Israel who are
appointed for salvation, cthe elect ones';3 and the king in the king-
dom of the saved ones is cthe Elect One' par excellence. The
word ' elect ' is used specially of the king as Yahweh's favourite
and instrument. In the Old Testament, David is called the
'elect' (or 'chosen') of Yahweh. Deutero-Isaiah says of Yahweh's
instrument, His anointed, Cyrus, His friend and His beloved, that
he has been 'called',, that is, chosen as an instrument of Yahweh's
purpose of salvation. It is also explicitly said of the Servant of the
Lord that he has been chosen by Yahweh.4 But what is true of
kings and other elect instruments and representatives of the Lord
is, of course, also true of the Messiah. It is, therefore, understand-
1 1 En. xxxix, 6; ad, 5; xlv, sf. (xlvi, 3; xlviii, 6); xlix, 2, 4; li, 3, 5; Hi, 6, 9; liii, 6;
Iv, 4; Ixi, (4), 5, 8, 10. On the text in bd, 4, see below, p. 406 n, i.
2 Isa. xliii, 20; xlv, 4; xlviii, 12, 15; cf. Ixv, g, 15, 22.
8 i En, liii, 6; Ixii, 7, 8, 15, and many other passages.
4 Isa. xlv, 1-4; xliv, 285 xlviii, 14; of Cyrus, xlii, 6j of the Servant, xlii, r.
365
THE SON OF MAN
able that the Targurn interprets Messianically both the passages
•which refer to the chosen Servant and other passages which speak
of Yahweh's chosen.1 Thus it is overwhelmingly probable that
the title c the Elect One ' was transferred from the Messiah to the
Son of Man, who was himself regarded as the Messiah. On the
other hand, there is no reason to suppose that it was particularly
from the Servant of the Lord that this title was taken, although
individual ideas and phrases from the Servant Songs have been
transferred to the Son of Man.2 And although the Messianic
interpretation of certain passages in Deutero-Isaiah helped to
give rise to the title 'the Elect One', that does not in any way
show that the ideas which were associated with the Servant of
the Lord were also applied to the Son of Man or the Messiah,3
This is clear from the Targum's complete reinterpretation of Isa.
liii in a nationalistic sense (see above, pp. 330:8*.).
When the Son of Man is called sthe Elect One' it is, in the first
instance, the normal Messianic sense that the expression conveys.
He is the leader of all the other elect ones, those who will share in
the Messianic salvation. He has a specially close relationship to
the Lord of Spirits, is the object of His favour, is appointed by Him
to a glorious heritage, and will carry out His eschatological pur-
pose and work.
Besides 'the Elect One', 'the Righteous One' sometimes also
occurs as a name for the Son of Man.4 In one passage he is called
f the Elect One of righteousness and of faith', that is, 'the righteous
1 E.g., Isa. xiii, i; xli, 8f.; xiiii, 10, See above, pp. 283, 3s8f.
2 The only certain evidence of this is in I En. xlviii, 4, where the Son of Man. is
called *the light of the Gentiles* (following Isa. xlii, 6, which actually refers to Cyrus,
and Isa. xlix, 6). See Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. isaf. Sjoberg can hardly be right
in his contention that this one passage proves that there is also a special connexion
between * chosen', or * elect *, as applied to the Servant, and 'the Elect One', as used
of the Soa of Man (op. cit, pp. 122!, xayfl). Even taken together with the expressions,
'the Elect One1, 'the Righteous One', and 'the servant of God J, these echoes (they
are hardly more) of terms used by the prophet are not sufficient to show that the
author of the Similitudes in Enoch identified the Servant in Deutero-Isaiah with the
Son of Man, as North holds (The Suffering Servant, pp. y£).
3 This in opposition to the altogether too hasty conclusion drawn by Staerk (Soter II,
pp. 75, 7yrE) and by J. Jeremias from verbal similarities to similarities in thought. See
further below, pp. 41 off., and above, pp. 3251!*. Wherever there are echoes of Old
Testament passages in references to the Son of Man, it is a question of the interpreta-
tion simply of individual passages as alluding to the Son of Man, and not of the entire
figure of the Servant as alluding to the Son of Man, and of an application to him of
the portrait of the Servant. For later Judaism and the rabbis, biblical interpretation
is always the interpretation of individual passages, not of entire systems of ideas. This
has been pointed out by Moore (Judaism I, p. 229), and rightly advanced by Sjoberg
against the attempts of Jeremias and Staerk to discover a real influence from the
Servant of the Lord on die Son of Man (Der Menschensohn, pp. iiSff.).
4 I En. xxxviii, 2; c£ xxxix, 6; liii, 6.
366
THE SON OF MAN
and faithful Elect One5. The title alludes to the Son of Man's
most conspicuous characteristic and task, as we shall see later.
The description of the Son of Man as 'God's' or 'My Servant'
is also the result of fusion with the earlier Jewish picture of the
Messiah.1 This is true of the Apocalypse of Baruch, where he is
once called cMy Servant Messiah5.2 As has been observed above
(pp. 294, 325), it was in all probability this expression which was
in the original Hebrew text of the Apocalypse of Ezra, where the
Latin translation has cMy Son the Messiah5. It is clear that this
is derived from Old Testament usage. The king in general, and
the Messiah in particular, is the Servant of Yahweh (see above,
pp. 225, 293). It is probable that passages in Deutero-Isaiah
about Yahweh's servant (both those referring to Israel and those
referring to the Servant in the special sense), which made the
expression something other than a Messianic title, are also reflected
in its application to the Son of Man. But here again there is no
real transfer to the Son of Man of the ideas embodied in the figure
of the Servant of the Lord. The nature and the functions of the
two figures are quite different (see below, pp. 41 off.).
We have also seen above that the Targums take the expression
in a quite different sense from that of the author of the Servant
Songs. They take it as a royal title, as, for example, when David,
or even Nebuchadrezzar, is called Yahweh's servant: one who, at
Yahweh's command, and equipped by Him, carries out His pur-
pose and His work. In Isa. liii and other passages, the Targum
thinks of the victory and triumph of the Messiah over heathen
peoples and kings. The Ezra and Baruch Apocalypses use the
expression in the same way. It indicates, above all, one who
stands in a particularly close relationship to God, who is chosen
by Him and enjoys His confidence, whom no earthly wisdom
can acknowledge or discover until he is revealed, God's repre-
sentative, who in his own time reveals himself, in glory, in conflict
and victory, in judgement and punishment on the heathen and
sinners, on the kings and mighty ones of the earth, and who thereby
brings salvation and happiness to the elect believers. In one pas-
sage (2 Esdras vii, 29) the word c servant ' is used in connexion with a
reference to the death of the Messiah at the end of the Millennium
(see pp. 325^ ; but it is a purely formal repetition from the previous
1 See pp. 263^, 327, and p. 67 n.
2
tion.
See pp. 263^, 327, and p. 67 n. 3.
2 2 Bar. Ixx, 9. Charles in A.P.O.T. II suggests that the verse may be an interpola-
367
THE SON OF MAN
verse, which speaks of the Servant revealing himself in triumph;
and, moreover, it must be noted that in so far as the author asso-
ciates any particular thought with the word, the emphasis in the
context is on the fact that, at the end of the Millennium, when all
life ceases on the earth for a period of seven days, there is a com-
plete reversion to the state of chaos (the c silence *), as before crea-
tion: all created things must die, even so exalted a being as God's
chosen, equipped, and favoured servant, the Messiah. The thought
which is actually associated with this word in the Servant Songs is
not linked with it in the late Jewish use of it as a Messianic title.
As has been said (pp. sgsf.), it is sometimes maintained that
the expression 'Son of God3 was used in later Judaism as a
designation of the Messiah. It occurs in rabbinic and orthodox
Jewish literature only in quotations of Old Testament passages
which were interpreted Messianically. Although it was, in Israel,
as elsewhere, an ancient term for the king, orthodox Judaism did
not readily use it of the Messiah, clearly because it was felt that it
was too much in conflict with the strong emphasis on the distance
between God and man; and Judaism's Messiah was a man. It
might therefore be supposed that the expression was used in less
orthodox circles; and it has been held that the Son of Man, in
particular, was also called the Son of God. This claim is based on
the passages in the Apocalypse of Ezra where the Latin text has
the words filius meus. But this interpretation, as we have seen
(p. 294), is untenable.
It is astonishing that the title cSon of God' is not applied to the
heavenly Son of Man. For, if the view which we shall later ex-
amine is true, that the conception of the Son of Man originated in
common oriental ideas about a heavenly. Primordial Man, the use
of such a title would be only natural. The Persian Primordial Man
is explicitly called the Son of God (cAhura Mazda's Son'); and in
other instances of this idea a corresponding title recurs.1 When
demoniacs address Jesus as cSon of the Most High God',2 it is
most natural to assume that they are using a designation of the
Son of Man which was known and current in some circles, at least.
It is improbable that the unhappy demoniacs should have known
a secret about Jesus, which He Himself had not., as yet, revealed to
anyone. Nor is it probable^ as some have maintained, that it was
1 See below, p. 427, and Mowinckel in JV.T.T"., xlv, 1944, pp. an, 215, 225, with
references to literature.
2 Mark v, 7; Luke viii3 28; Matt, viii, 29.
THE SON OF MAN
the tradition within the Christian community which put into the
mouths of the demoniacs this specifically Christian term for the
Messiah, in place of some less definite expression which they
actually used. The term 'the Most High God' is not specifically
Christian; and although it was used in the Old Testament and in
Judaism, we know that it was not originally Jewish, but was also
applied to a particular divinity in Canaan, in Syria, and in Meso-
potamia. We notice, too, that in Matthew the Christian expres-
sion 'Son of God' replaces 'Son of the Most High God' in Mark
and Luke. The fact that the expression is first applied to Jesus by
a man from the half-heathen territory east of Jordan, together with
the fact that the entire conception of the Son of Man originated in
non-Jewish circles (see below, section 19), supports the authenticity
of the tradition that the demoniac from the Gergesene district
called Jesus cSon of the Most High God', and suggests that he was
using one of the titles appropriate to the Son of Man.
The question and answer at the trial of Jesus show that the ex-
pression was not a customary, orthodox, Messianic title.1 The
High-priest asks, 'Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?'
(Mark), or, 'the Messiah, the Son of God?' (Matthew); and Jesus
answers, ' I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right
hand of power'. In Luke, the connexion is even clearer. The
members of the council first ask, 'Are you the Messiah?'; and
Jesus answers with the word about the Son of Man: ' then they
all said, c'Are you the Son of God?'".
Thus there are several indications that the Son of Man was also
called the Son of God.2
What was the content of this expression? Since it refers to a
heavenly being, there is no need to take it in an adoptionist sense,
of a subsequent act of adoption by God. It expresses a closer
relationship with God than can be claimed for any mere man,
even the scion of David. This is confirmed by the fact that, as we
have seen, the expression was clearly not looked upon with favour
in orthodox Jewish circles. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt
the accuracy of the tradition that Jesus was condemned for blas-
phemy. To claim to be the Messiah was, for Jewish thought, no
blasphemy (as those who have doubted the tradition rightly say) ;
1 Mark xiv, 62; Matt, xxvi, 63f.; Luke xxii, 67-70.
2 This connexion is reflected in the last line of the Lukan genealogy of Jesus (where
Adam is called cthe Son of God* (Luke iii, 38), by contrast with CA, the son of B' etc.
Adam, not having been begotten by man, but created by a direct, divine act, is * son
of God*, by contrast with all other men, who are 'sons of men*.
369
2B
THE SON OF MAN
but It was another thing for a man to claim to be that Son of Man,
who was also cthe Son of the Most High God3, or of c the Blessed3.
As Son of God3 the Son of Man possesses the power of God's
authority. It is at the right hand of c Power ' that his opponents will
meet the Son of Man. In the Son of God the demoniacs see the
formidable vanquisher of the demons and Satan and the evil
powers: e the Holy One of God ', before whom the demons tremble,
has 'Come to destroy us'.1 In the light of what i Enoch tells us
about the Son of Man, we recognize that it is his divine nature3 his
glory, and his power, that are expressed in the title 'Son of God5.
If we consider that title in the light of what the comparative study
of religion can teach us about the origin of the Son of Man con-
ception, we see that it also suggests that he came into being before
all time. He is different from the rest of creation. The conception
need not be thought of in mythological or physical terms: the
expression does not presuppose procreation, or a mother. It im-
plies that, before time and before creation, the Son of Man came
into existence from the Most High God, proceeding from Him in
some way, as a fulfilment in the world of phenomena of His thought,
will, and purpose for the world which He was to create. "For this
reason hath he been chosen and hidden before Him, before the
creation of the world \ that an innumerable host of perfect, holy,
and righteous persons should praise the name of the Lord of
Spirits (i En. xlviii,
7. The Pre-existence of the Son of Man
By contrast with the earlier, earthly Messiah of David's line, the
Son of Man is a pre-existent, heavenly being. It is as such that he
first appears in the Apocalypse of Enoch.2 Enoch is carried away
1 Mark i, 24; cf. Matt iv, 3, 6 = Luke Iv, 3, 9; Matt, xxvii, 40-2, 54; Mark xv, 39.
3 Strack-Billerbeck (II, p. 334) maintain that i Enoch speaks only of an ideal pre-
existence, or that the Messiah is one of the righteous dead from ancient times. But
there is not a single word in the text to suggest that i Enoch xl, 5; bdi, 7; xxxix, 6f.;
Ixx, i mean that a dead person of an earlier age will return as the Son of Man.
Lagrange and Messel, among others, have denied the real pre-existence of the Son of
Man, on the ground that the passages which require, or seem to require, this inter-
pretation are Christian interpolations, or refer to the nation Israel (so Messel, in part).
We have seen above (pp. 354f.) that these hypotheses are untenable. Moore, too,
maintains that only an ideal pre-existence is involved here, since the passages about
the Son of Man deal with future events, which are not yet real (Judaism II, pp. 343f.).
This is also incorrect. Many of the sayings about the Son of Man are dogmatic pro-
nouncements about his nature, and presuppose that he already exists. See the discus-
sion, and the decisive arguments in support of real pre-existence, in Sjoberg, Der
Menschensokn9 pp. B^ff* Black (E.T., Ix, 1948/9, p. 14) is inclined to deny that the Son
of Man was a pre-existent being before he was identified with Enoch-Metatron (Black
interprets i En. Ixxi thus). But i En. xlviii, sf. is not the only evidence of the thought
of pre-existence, as Black seems to suppose.
370
THE SON OF MAN
from the earth by a whirlwind, and set down at the end of the
heavens; and there, in a vision, he sees the other world. He sees
first the dwellings of the holy and the resting places of the
righteous, with the angels and the holy ones in heaven. The
passage continues.
In that place mine eyes saw the Elect One of righteousness
and of faith,
And I saw his dwelling-place under the wings of the Lord of
Spirits.
('The Lord of Spirits5 is the usual term for God in i Enoch.)
. . . And all the righteous and the elect before him shall be
f strong fas fiery lights,
And their mouth shall be full of blessing,
And their lips extol the name of the Lord of Spirits.
(i En. xxxix, 3-7)
Yea, before the sun and the signs were created,
Before the stars of the heaven were made
His name was named before the Lord of Spirits, (xlviii, 3)
The statement that his name was named and existed with God
before the creation refers here not merely to an ideal pre-existence
in the mind of God, but to a real pre-existence. A little further on
in the same vision we read,
And for this reason (that all should do homage to the
Lord of Spirits) hath he been chosen and hidden before
Him,
Before the creation of the world and for evermore.
(xlviii, 6)
And again,
Because the Elect One standeth before the Lord of Spirits,
And his glory is for ever and ever,
And his might unto all generations. (xlix, 2)
The person whom Enoch sees in his vision, and about whom he is
told by the angel who guides him, is a heavenly being who really
exists, and not merely a visionary figure of the fiiture who does not
yet exist.1 Enoch is carried up to heaven, to the Son of Man, who
already exists there (lxx,i). Thus, as early as the time of Enoch
(long before Abraham, as Jesus said), the Son of Man was^ and it
1 So Sjoberg, Der Menschensokn, pp. sof., 53, rightly.
371
THE SON OF MAN
was to him that Enoch was transported, when he left the earth.1
It is said that the Most High has hidden him from the beginning
(xlviii, 6; bdi, 7); and therefore he must have existed from the
beginning.
But this does not mean that the Son of Man has existed from all
eternity in the same way as the Lord of Spirits Himself. That his
name was named by God before the creation of the world means
that he really was created by God before the world's foundation
was laid. He is the first stage in the fulfilment of that purpose of
God for the world, which was framed at creation, and was given
its direction when the fall of the angels brought sin and evil among
men, when Beliar gained dominion over them. The Son of Man
is the first of God's creatures, before the sun, and the stars, and
the sure ordinances of the cosmos. His origin is linked with the
creation of the world itself,2 a thought which was at one time more
prominent than it is in the Apocalypse of Enoch (see below, pp.
42off., 427, 434ff.). But that it received more emphasis in other
circles in later Judaism than it does in i Enoch, may be deduced
from the implications of Paul's words about Christ, cHe is the
firstborn before (any) other creature; for in Him all things were
created in heaven and on earth, the visible, and the invisible,
angel-thrones, rulers, powers, or authorities (in the spirit world),
all were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things,
and in Him all things subsist3 (Col. i, isf.); 'through Him are all
things' ( i Cor. viii, 6). It is very probably that Paul is here apply-
ing to Christ ideas from the theology of the Son of Man and the
Primordial Man, when we recall that he also regards Christ as the
last Adam (i Cor. xv, 45), a typical conception of the Son of Man
as the Primordial Man and the eschatological Man.3
1 i En. Ixx, i ; cf. 2 Esdras xiv, 9. The pre-existence of the Son of Man. also appears
in i En. xxxix, 6ff.; xl, 5; xlvi, if.; xlviii, sf., 6; Ixii, 7. On the other hand, xlix, af.
speaks of his future status as an eschatological being, and as inaugurating the ne\v
order of the world; see Sjoberg, op. cit., p. 93.
2 This does not mean that he was thought of as co-operating in creation, but that
in the explicit emphasis on his existence before the creation (i En. xlviii, 3, 5!*.) there
is an unconscious echo of an older idea, that his genesis had something to do with the
genesis of the world itself. This is explained by the connexion between the idea of the
Son of Man and that of the Primordial Man. The thought is also echoed in the
Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Bar. xxix, 3f.; see von Gall, Basileia, pp. 425^), where the two
monsters of the fifth day of creation (Behemoth and Leviathan) seem to have been
regarded as the opponents of the Son of Man at the last reckoning. The equation of
the creation and the conflict with the dragon is eschatologically re-interpreted and
applied to the Son of Man.
3 Cf. Bpusset, Relig.*, pp. 30 iff., 4O§ff.; Reitzenstein, Poimandres, pp. 8 iff.; Lietz-
mann, Die Brief e des Apostels Panlus I, pp. 154^ In i Cor. xv, 45 Paul seems to be
actually quoting some apocryphal writing. It seems hardly likely that * as it is written*
372
THE SON OF MAN
It is also as pre-existent that the Son of Man is called 'the
Elect One' (pp. 365f.). He is the one whom God has already
prepared to carry out His purpose of eschatological judgement
and salvation (cf. i En. xlvi, 3; xlviii, 6). It is as the Elect One
that Enoch first sees him in heaven, in his dwelling-place under
the wings of the Lord of Spirits (xxxix, 6f.), under His protection
and care. He is also already the Righteous One in his heavenly
pre-existence; and it is by that name that Enoch introduces him
in the opening words of the first Similitude (xxxviii, 2). From the
time of his creation he is as he ought to be (that is the fundamental
meaning of the Hebrew word for 'righteous'); and he is the one
who will one day cause all things in the new aeon to become what
they ought to be (see below, pp. 377f., 393ff.)- He is endowed in
advance with all the qualities which are necessary for this purpose,
and therefore in his pre-existent state he already belongs to the
righteous ones above (see below, pp. 388!!.).
8. The Divine Equipment of the Son of Man
The paradox of cthe Man' is that, in spite of his name, he is
not only a pre-existent, heavenly being, but also a divine being.
'His face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels/
says Enoch.
'And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all
the hidden things, concerning that Son of Man, who he was, and
whence he was (and), why he went with the Head of Days? And
he answered and said unto me:
This is the Son of Man who hath righteousness.
With whom dwelleth righteousness,
And who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden,
Because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him,
And whose lot hath the pre-eminence before the Lord of
Spirits in uprightness for ever.5 (i En. xlvi, 1-3)
The Son of Man, as it were, accompanies God. The Son of Man
and the Lord of Spirits are mentioned in association with each
other, even in that order (Ixx, i). The Son of Man will, in his
time, sit on a throne of glory like God's own (Iv, 4). But God has
from the beginning granted him this and glorified him, bestowing
upon him the divine glory, God's kabod (Ixi, 8; Mi, 2; li, 3).
refers to Gen. ii, 7, and that the latter part of v. 45 is Paul's own exegetical conclusion
from the passage in Genesis,
373
THE SON OF MAN
But he Is also subordinate to God. He was created; Ms name was
named, that is, he came into existence in God's presence, if but for
a time, before creation (p. 372). cThe Man5 is a man of a quite
special kind. From one point of view he is a man, created and sub-
ordinate to God, but a unique man, divinely endowed. It is in
this sense that the Targum interprets the passage in Ps. viii, 5f.
about the son of man, whom God has made but a little lower than
God. Judaism was always concerned to avoid the usurpation of
God's place by anyone; and this fundamental principle also under-
lies all the greatest sayings about the Son of Man. It is as the
servant and representative of God, as the Elect One, who stands
before the Lord of Spirits, that he possesses glory and might (i En.
xlix, s).1 It is God who names the name of the Son of Man, who sets
him on His throne, who causes him to dwell among the righteous
(i En. xlv, 4; xlviii, 2; Ixi, 8; Ixii, 2), and who decides the day
and the hour for judgement. He knows the secrets of wisdom,
because God has given them to him (11, 3). He judges in the name
of the Lord of Spirits (Iv, 4; Ixi, 9). The song of praise at his
appearing is, in reality, addressed to God (xlviii, 5; bd, gff.).
But the Son of Man is exalted as near to God as was possible in
Judaism, and too near to accord with the outlook of earlier, ortho-
dox Judaism.
First and foremost, he has the divine glory. This thought was
not alien to early Israel. The author of Ps. viii is transported by
the thought of God's unspeakable goodness In making earthborn,
mortal man (the human race as a whole) ' almost a divine being'
and crowning Mm with glory and honour (kabod and haddr}. But
he who is c the Man' par excellence, the Son of Man, has this glory
in a special degree, which the Old Testament could not think of
attributing to any earthly man, save in poetic style, as in Ps. ex.
At one time, as we have seen, it is even granted to the Son of Man
to sit on the throne of God's glory.
The word c glory' also alludes to the visible radiance which sur-
rounds and shines forth from the appearance of the Son of Man.
In the Old Testament and in later Judaism, the conception of
brilliant light surrounding God, hiding him from human eyes,
and, in a sense, representing Him,2 is very common.3 But the
1 On the interpretation, see Sjoberg, Der Mmschensohn, pp. 8of.
2 Cf. Ezek. i, 4ff.; iii, 23; viii, 4 (cf, 2); xliii, 1-5.
3 Exoxl. xvi, 10; xxiv, i6f. ; xxxiii, i8£f.; xI5 34!; Lev. ix, 23; Num. xiv. 10, 22 ; xvi, 19;
i Kings viii, 1 1; Ezek. i, 28; in, 12; x, 4, 18; xi, 22; Ps. Ixxxv, 10; 2 Chron. vii, i; and
the previous note. References to literature in Gesenius-Buhl16, s.v. kab$d. Cf. Mowinckel
in G.T.M.M.M. I, on Exod. xvi, ya.
374
THE SON OF MAN
divine glory is also, in general, the celestial nature, such as divine
beings (b*nt '*Mte) share. It includes the celestial, ethereal
'substance', which is the bodily clothing of those who are of
divine origin, and also the aura, the angelic, awe-inspiring beauty
and radiance, which in the literal sense shines out from them and
surrounds them,1 and the miraculous power with which they are
filled, and which issues in glorious deeds which are worthy of
praise. This is the glory which the Son of Man has.
What Enoch means by it is indicated in the words quoted above:
'and his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels'
(xlvi, i). But the word also sums up all the inward and outward
divine qualities with which the Son of Man is endowed. The idea
recurs in Paul, when he speaks of Christ sharing the form of God
(Phil, ii, 6; Col. i, 15). He is thinking, not so much of bodily form,
as of the radiant glory and the qualities which it represents. The
Son of Man is more than an angel; he is exalted high above them.2
When he is revealed as judge of the world, the angels, too, must
come before his throne (see below, p. 394). At his enthronement
he is hailed with songs of praise by all the other heavenly beings
(i En. ki, iff.).
But apart from this purely c numinous'3 endowment, the Son
of Man is also furnished with a number of qualities and character-
istics which belong to the sphere of personal life, namely moral
qualities; and, as was customary in certain circles in Judaism,
these are traced back to endowment with God's spirit.4
Ideas about the fruits of this endowment with the spirit are,
naturally, strongly influenced by older biblical conceptions of the
gifts of the spirit in the Messiah. We read,
And in him dwells the spirit of wisdom,
And the spirit which gives insight,
And the spirit of understanding and of might,
And the spirit of those who have fallen asleep in righte ousness.
(i En. xlix, 3)
1 This side of the idea of k&6di& represented in the later strata of the Old Testament,
especially in the Priestly code, but was influenced by ancient oriental and Persian
thought on the idea of the royal glory (hwarena) . On this, see A. Christensen, Die
Iranier (Kulturgeschichte des alien Orients III, i, 2), pp. 229, 257, referring to Hertel,
Die arische Feuerlohel; Soderblom, Guctstrons uppkomst, pp. 256—84, passim; Widengren,
Hochgottglaube im alien Iran, pp. 15 iff., lyGff., $72ff.
2 Werner (Die Entstehung des ckristlicheri Dogmas, probkmgsschichtlich dargestdlt, pp.
SOjjff.) has maintained that the Son of Man is only one of the angels. Against this, see
Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 94f.
3 To borrow the expression used by Otto in The Idea of the Holy.
4 i En. xlix, 3; IxHj 2, For a heathen analogy, see von Gall, Basileia, p. 418 n. 4.
375
THE SON OF MAN
It is in accord with the whole Old Testament view of the work-
ing of the spirit that this endowment is thought of as a spirit of
miraculous power. This power is thought of as directed chiefly
against the enemies of the Son of Man (following Isa. xi, iff.).
When he comes, everything which he sees trembles, and wherever
his voice proceeds out of his mouth, those who hear his voice melt,
as wax melts when it feels the fire. He destroys them without effort,
by his bare word of command, which is likened to flames of fire.1
Particular emphasis is laid on the wisdom of the Son of Man (i
En. xivi, 3; xlix, iff.; li, 3). It accords with a major interest of the
apocalyptists, and also with the eschatological character of the
Son of Man (pp. 358:8*.), that special importance is attached to his
insight into all the hidden mysteries of the ordering of the world,
of the creation, and of the end time. He will reveal all the
treasures of hidden things; all the secrets of wisdom will come
forth from the thoughts of his mouth, for this has been given him
by the Lord of Spirits. In i En. lii we read that all the hidden
things of heaven, the ordering of the cosmos, the mountains and
the metals, will serve the dominion of God's Anointed (the Son of
Man), so that he may be strong and mighty on the earth. Admit-
tedly, the metals and the mountains are interpreted allegorically,
as in Dan. ii, of the kingdoms which will be superseded by the
kingdom of the Son of Man. But this interpretation of the metal
mountains £in heaven3 is somewhat forced and secondary; and
it seems clear that the apocalyptist is reinterpreting an earlier,
cosmic conception. The Son of Man has insight into the secrets
of the cosmos and into the structure of the universe: doubtless that
is the original sense. There are other indications that the Elect
One has authority over the ordering of the cosmos, the secrets of
the lightning and the thunder, of the winds, of the clouds and the
dew, of the sun and the moon (as it is put In i En. xli, 3ff.). These
occupy a central place among the heavenly secrets over which the
Son of Man is Lord. Here, too, we can discern an original con-
nexion between the Son of Man and the ordering of creation.
But of course wisdom is also taken to mean religious and moral
insight. The Son of Man has the spirit of instruction, as ethe
Messiah will teach us everything when he comes' (John iv, 25; see
above, pp. 31 1, 321). He has the power to read all hearts, and to
know everything; therefore he will judge hidden things, and no
one will be able to lie to him (i En. xlix, 4).
1 2 Esdras adii, 3, 38; cf. i En. Ixii, 2; and see Staerk, Soter II, p. 76.
THE SON OF MAN
Summing up, we may say that it is the spirit of righteousness
which dwells in him. That is clearly the meaning of the remark-
able saying quoted above, that cin him dwells ... the spirit of
those who have fallen asleep in righteousness5 (i En. xlix3 3).
Sometimes this has been taken to mean that the individual spirits
of the departed 'enter into him to be preserved until the end*.1
But, as the context shows, the reference here is not to the indi-
vidual, human spirits (in the plural) of the pious, thought of in
psychological terms, but of the divine spirit (in the singular). The
meaning can only be that the Son of Man is inspired by the same
divine spirit of righteousness and piety which was active in the
pious heroes, patriarchs, prophets, and sages of former times; and
it may be that it is also suggested that it was from him, from his
spirit, that these wise and righteous men derived their spiritual
equipment.
But it cannot be denied that the expression is a striking one.
It suggests that we have to do with a reinterpretation of an earlier
conception, which the apocalyptist no longer understood, there
is reason to suppose that it comes from that earlier conception of
cthe Man', which gave rise to, and provided material for, the
Son of Man idea in later Judaism, namely the conception of the
Primordial Man (see below, section 19). In several parts of the east,
including some Jewish centres, the Primordial Man was regarded
as the Primordial Soul (or simply, 'the Soul', anima generalis)> in
whom all other souls have pre-existence, and to whom they return
at death.2 The expression in i En. xlix, 3 is a survival from this
earlier phase of the idea of the Son of Man, which the apocalyptist
reinterpreted as a means of expressing his endowment with the
spirit of piety and righteousness.3
Righteousness is the supreme element in the equipment of the
Son of Man, and the one to which the sources most frequently
refer.4 He is cthe Elect Righteous One3, cthe One who has
righteousness'. As In the Old Testament, the word embraces the
1 See Murmelstein in W.Z.K.M., xxxv, 1928, p. 266; Otto, The Kingdom of God and
the Son of Man, p. 189. It is by no means clear to me what Beer actually means by Ms
explanation (A.P.A.T. II p. 264 n.v.), *The Messiah fulfils the eschatological hope
of the pious who have fallen asleep*. Messel, (Der Menschensohn in dm JBilderreden des
Henoch, p. 39 n.) tries to dispose of the problem by a textual alteration. He can claim
support for his suggestion from the parallel with Isa. xi, 2, which clearly inspired the
passage. 2 See Murmelstein, ibid., pp. 26 iff.
3 Sjoberg's attempt (Der Menschensohn, pp. g8ff.) to explain the remarkable way in
which the thought is formulated in i En. xlix, 3 in terms of Isa. xi, 2 is too literary, and
takes insufficient account of the traditio-historical factor.
4 i En. xxxviii, 2; xxxix, sf.; xlvi, 3; xlix, 2; liii, 7; Ixii, 2f., etc.
377
THE SON OF MAN
sum of religious and moral virtues and states, and could be ren-
dered by c perfection \ considered as a virtue or a state* The Son
of Man is the Righteous One because he is 'right3, as he ought
to be in order to carry out the tasks for which he was chosen
(p. 373). But, from one point of view, he is also the Righteous One,
because he is the first of the righteous ones (see below, pp. 38off.),
the representative, as it were, of the community of the pious and
the saved. He is the perfect One, who expresses, and himself lives
in and mediates to others, the state of perfection. He mediates it:
in i Enoch c righteousness' has the same double significance as in
the Old Testment,1 The word indicates not only a religious and
moral quality, a virtue, but also those right conditions which exist
where the righteous man rules;2 and therefore it often denotes the
ability to create right moral and religious conditions. When the
thought of the opposite kind of conditions is present, the word
'righteousness' often simply means salvation. This is also true in
i Enoch. The Son of Man is 'righteous', because he makes his
people, the elect ones, righteous, that is to say, he saves them.3
The righteousness of the Son of Man has a clear relationship to his
eschatological task* In several passages, 'righteousness' simply
means 'justification', or 'salvation5. The Son of Man is the medi-
ator of that state which exists where righteousness prevails, the
state of bliss and salvation* He is 'the Elect One of righteousness
and of faith3 (i En. xxxix, 6), that is^ the chosen one who faith-
fully fulfils the promises and the hope of salvation for the godly.
In the words that follow,
And righteousness shall prevail in his days.
And the righteous and elect shall be without number before
Him for ever and ever,
the thought is of the bliss of the redeemed. ' The secrets of right-
eousness * (i En. xlix, i; cf. xxxviii, 3) means the things which
belong to the eschatological salvation.4 They are 'the secrets of
heaven5, which have to do with the establishment of the kingdom,
with judgement, and with salvation (i En. xli, if.). 'The fountain
of righteousness' is the fountain of life, from which the righteous
drink in the other life (i En. xlviii, i). The 'number5 or 'time of
1 Cf. Leivestad, Guds strafende rettferdighet, pp. 8f£, i6fF.
2 Cf. Isa. xxxii, iff.; and see Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp. ssGfE, ssSff.; Leivestad,
op. cit., pp. i6ff.
3 i En. xxxviii, 3; xlvil, 4; xlviii, i; xlix, 2; Mi, 5; Ixii, 12; Ixxi, 16; cf. T. Levi viii;
a Tim. iv» 8.
4 See Messel, Der Menschensohn in den BlUerredm 4&f fftnochj p. 48,
378
THE SON OF MAN
righteousness5 is the time when salvation will break forth (i En.
xlvii, 4). That the spirit of righteousness was poured upon him
is shown first by the fact that
The word of his mouth slays all the sinners,
And all the unrighteous are destroyed from before his face.
(i En. Ixii, 2)
He is the Righteous One, because it is he who will gain for the
oppressed righteous ones their right (i En. liii, 7).
Thus, from his origin, the Son of Man is God's guarantee that
'righteousness' will one day be realized in the world.1 It is said
that he preserves the lot of the righteous (i En. xlviii, 7). 'This he
does by his very existence. Before the creation of the world, God
prepared the coming deliverer. Therefore the coming deliverance
is sure. The righteous will not lose their lot. '2 But they still must
wait. The Son of Man is still hidden (see below, pp. 385^). But
one day he will be revealed (pp. 388ff.). From the time of his
origin he has all the equipment he needs to accomplish his task.
9. The Heavenly Community: the King of Paradise
The divine equipment of the Son of Man corresponds to his task.
We often hear that he is still hidden and kept beside the Lord of
Spirits till a fixed time comes. Then he will go into action. But
the remarkable thing is that he is, in fact, already in action. He
is the leader of a company of elect ones in heaven. He is associated
with a heavenly community: the righteous, the elect, the holy.3
In i Enoch all these expressions denote the same person, and are
used in more or less the same sense. In the oldest parts of the book,
the visions of the ten weeks,4 the meaning is, as often in the Old
Testament, the whole of Israel as the chosen people.5 The ex-
pressions are used more or less as a formula, as when we speak of
'the faithful'. Elsewhere in the book they are often applied to the
community which exists here on earth.6 But in the Similitudes
it is used of those who, in virtue of a personal decision, have come
into a right relationship with God, who are 'right' (righteous) in
His eyes, and therefore c chosen' from the mass of mankind to be
1 See Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. g6f. 2 Sjoberg, loc. cit
3 i En. xxxix, 4fE; xl, 5; xli, 2; xlv, 3!*.; xlvii, iff.; liii, 6; Ixi, 12; Ixx. See Staerk,
Soter II, pp. 44off.
4 i En. xcii; xciii; xci, 12-1 7? see Beer in A.P.A.T. II, p. 230.
6 See Schrenk, art. eVAe/cros in T.WJSJf.T. IV, pp. i88f.
6 i En. x, 17; xci, 3; xciii, 2, 5, 10; cvii, i; cf. Isa. Ixi, 3; Jub. i, 16; vii, 34; xvi, 26;
xxi, 24; xxii, n; xxv, 3.
379
THE SON OF MAN
holy, that is, belong to God. Thus the expressions are in contrast
to sinners and wrongdoers.1 The righteous are those who worship
the one true God, who observe the Law and who keep themselves
clear of the impurity of the heathen and sinners. But the words
also imply that they live in faith and in the hope of the restora-
tion of Israel, of the coming of the kingdom of God, of the new
aeon, the last judgement, and the eschatological salvation in which
the righteous will share. Thus all the expressions denote the com-
munity of the godly, which has always existed on earth since the
days of the patriarchs,2 and which exists within Israel, but is not
absolutely identical with the nation Israel. In i Enoch these ex-
pressions also imply that the righteous are chosen and sanctified
precisely that they may share in the eschatological salvation. Al-
though the term 'the righteous5 emphasizes their religious and
moral tightness3, ethe elect5 and cthe holy ones' suggest that they
are separated and sanctified for the coming salvation, and belong
to the world to come. They are at once an empirical and an
eschatological community. This usage corresponds with what we
find in the New Testament.3
But it is noteworthy that the eschatological community already
exists in heaven. In the passage where Enoch sees the dwelling of
the Elect One under the wings of the Lord of Spirits, he also sees
the dwellings of the righteous, and the resting places of the holy
ones (xxxix, iff.). There the righteous and the elect praise the
name of the Lord of Spirits without ceasing. This is meant as a
vision not of the future, but of something which already is. We
also hear of whom this community consists. They are the patri-
archs and the righteous, who from ancient times dwell in that
place, all the godly from the past.4 They are those who have
fallen asleep in righteousness, who have been of the same spirit as
the Son of Man (i En. xlix, 3; see above, p. 377). Because their
souls (cf. 2 Bar. xxx, sff.) now belong to the heavenly community,
they, too, are called cthe holy ones5,5 a name which is used in the
Old Testament only of supernatural divine beings.6 In i Enoch,
as we have seen, it has acquired a special, eschatological content.
1 1 En. v, 7; xli, 2; 1, if. 2 Cf. Staert, Soter II, p. 441, top.
3 There, too, the term *the elect' is predominantly eschatological; see Schrenk, op.
cit., pp. 19 iff. The same is true of 'the saints' in the New Testament; see As ting, Die
Heiligkeit im Urchristentum, pp. yof., isyff., i53fF.
4 Cf. Staerk, Spier II, p. 442 n. 2.
5 i En. xxxviii, 4; xxxix, 4; xlvii, 2, 4; xlviii, i, etc.
6 In the Old Testament "the holy ones' always means simply 'divine beings', even
in Ps. xvi, 3; see Deut. xxxiii, 3; Zech. xiv, 5; Pss. Ixxxix, 63 8; Job v, i; xv, 15;
380
THE SON OF MAN
It is to this community in heaven that favoured individuals are
carried away, while still alive, to be with the Son of Man, in the
place of the elect and the righteous. So it befell Enoch, Ezra, and
Baruch.1 There they will remain till the times are fulfilled, pre-
served till the end of the times, when the Son of Man will appear.
The Son of Man is clearly regarded as king of this heavenly
people.2 This shows us a side of his character and status which
the Enoch Apocalypse does not, as a rule, bring out so clearly.
In the Apocalypse of Ezra (2 Esdras xiii, 12, 3gff.) this conception
of the Son of Man and his people appears in a form which indicates
more clearly its original implication.3 After the destruction of the
hostile powers, of which we shall hear more below, the Son of Man
gathers to himself a peaceable army, an innumerable host of those
who have hitherto lived in a distant land, where no man has
previously lived, and which can be reached only in a wonderful
way, by travelling underground for the space of a year and a half.
The apocalyptist's thought is that this tunnel is to be found in the
Tigris-tunnel at Bylkalein, where the river goes underground for
some distance,4 at the narrow passages of the Euphrates, where,
1 i En. Ixx; 2 Esdras, xiv, 9; 2 Bar. Ixxvi, 2.
2 That the Son of Man represents the community, and draws it into his own destiny,
his appearing, and his glorification, is not the same as the view that the Son of Man and
the community are mystically identical, and that the Son of Man is at once individual
arid collective, as Dahi holds. Dahl's view is dependent on his interpretation of i En.
xlix, 3 in terms of what he takes to be the ancient Israelite corporate view of the
representative person. He does not allow for the fact that the factor under discussion
must be understood in the light of the earlier stage of the Son of Man as Primordial
Man and anima generalis (see above, p. 377). In fact, Dahl treats somewhat mechani-
cally, and thus caricatures, the ancient view, which Pedersen has expounded in Israel.
Representative unity and a corporate conception of the leader as the bearer of the
whole, and of the individual as a type of the race, is not the same as literal and actual
identity. The fact that in the cult a person represents the whole, or, in a symbolic
sense, is the whole, means that there is an intimate community of destiny between
them, that in the realm of the soul power may pass from one to the other, as, for in-
stance, the king's blessing flows into the community. But many passages in the Old
Testament show that the king and the people are distinguished from each other. Nor
is there, in i Enoch, reference to anything more than * close association5, to use Dahl's
own expression (Dos Volk Gottes, p. 90). Even if primitive thought had at one time re-
garded the community and its representative as identical to the degree which Dahl
holds, later Judaism had advanced far beyond that stage, and its thought was different
and quite ratiocinative, as is clearly shown by the logical arguments of the rabbis.
Dahl's view reappears, in extreme caricature, in Strom's Vetekornet, where it is the
dominant point of view.
3 Cf. Bousset, Relig*, p. 558, 3a p. 490. 4 See Gressmann, Der Messias, p. 382.
viii, 13; cf. i En. 1x5, 8. It is, of course, to them that Ps. Ixxxii refers. Staerk's objection
(Soter II, p. 439 n, i) arises from the equation of * holy' and 'morally worthy'; but
see Ps. xvi, 3. The word 'holy' practically never has any ethical reference ia the Old
Testament. On the other hand, Staerk is entirely right in his contention that a
heavenly community of righteous men cannot be derived solely from Old Testament
ideas.
THE SON OF MAN
as was thought in antiquity, both Euphrates and Tigris emerged.
He interprets the innumerable multitude as the vanished ten
tribes, who had dwelt there from the time of their deportation
until the last times. But originally this land had nothing to do
with geography. When the innumerable multitude is said to be
those who have been restored by the hand of God (i.e., the eschato-
logical remnant), and to have dwelt hitherto in His holy territory,
it is clear that the land was originally paradise, where the 6 blessed '
dwell, and that the apocalyptist has reinterpreted it here allegori-
cally. It was through such a subterranean passage, which it took
twelve double hours to traverse, that the ancient Babylonian hero
Gilgamesh came to the garden of the gods in the other world. It
is significant that in the Ezra Apocalypse the distant land is called
'the other land3.1 It is also explicitly stated in i Enoch that it is
all those who dwell in the garden of life who praise the Son of Man
(Ixi, 12) and thus that it is there that his throne is set up. Enoch is
carried away to the heavenly paradise, where the patriarchs and
the righteous have dwelt from time immemorial (Ixx, 4). It is in
the garden of righteousness that the tree of wisdom and all the
other fragrant trees of paradise grow (xxxii, 3) . Underlying this
there is doubtless a mythical conception of the Son of Man as
king of paradise, king from primordial times in the land of the
gods, which is no longer here on earth. This explains why his
people are those who have been translated, pious and righteous
men, who, by a special divine favour, were transported to the
other land, to paradise.
This underlying thought in the Ezra Apocalypse justifies us in
interpreting a passage in the Testament of Levi xviii as originally
alluding not to the earthly, political Messiah, but to the Son of
Man. Of the Messiah from Levi it is said.
In his priesthood shall sin come to an end,
And the lawless shall cease to do evil . . .
And he shall open the gates of paradise,
And shall remove the threatening sword against Adam.
And he shall give to the saints to eat from the tree of life,
And the spirit of holiness shall be on them.
And Beliar shall be bound by him,
1 *tres ^akeret; see Gunkel in A.P.A.T. II, p. 397, with references to the literature.
The Latin text has ar&ret; but, according to Schiller-Szinessy (Journal of Philology,
1870, pp. i i3f.)} this = 'ere? "aheret (Deut. xxix, 27) = Una alia (2 Esdras xiii, 40). Gf.
Schiirer, Geschichte* II, p. 627 im. 43 and 44.
382
THE SON OF MAN
And he shall give power to his children to tread upon the
evil spirits. ,
(vv. 9-12)
The king who can destroy Beliar and the demonic powers and
restore paradise is himself the king of paradise. The king of
primordial time has also become the king of the end time. Here
we get a glimpse of the fact that at one time the role of king of
paradise belonged to the Son of Man. The land beyond, which he
represents, is the paradise that is now lost, to which no earthly
man can come. In that paradise the Son of Man was thought of
(at least at one period and in certain circles) as ruling. It is a
common feature in late Jewish eschatology that in the end time
paradise, which has now been carried away to an unknown place
in the other world, will return to men.1 The Son of Man, who was
at one time thought of as the king of primordial time, will also be
the king of the end time in paradise; and traces of this thought
recur in apocalyptic (see p. 382).
Thus there is a difference here from the earlier Messianic saying
in Isa. xi, iff. In Isaiah, paradise in the literal sense and the
future king are not linked together as two necessarily related
factors; but features from the paradise myth are transferred to the
state of bliss which the future king will bring, or, in other words,
this bliss is described in pictures from the paradise myth, on the
general assumption found in conceptions of the restoration, that
it will be as it was in the beginning.2 In the Isaiah passage it is
the figure of the future king which has been, as it were, amplified
by features from the paradise myth; but it is a constitutive element
in the very idea of the Son of Man that he is king of paradise.
As we shall see below (pp. 422ff.), this feature has striking parallels
in the Iranian and Indian mythology of the primordial time
and the end time.
10. The Typical, Ideal Man
It is a striking fact that the Son of Man is a pre-existent,
heavenly being, but yet is called 6the Man'. But there are also
certain features in his nature which are appropriate to his human-
ity. As we have seen, he is called c the Righteous One '. In the Old
Testament, righteousness is also a divine quality. But the word
denotes first and foremost the most essential quality of man, when
1 See above, p. 276, and Volz, Eschatologie*, pp.
2 See above, pp. I42f., i43ff.» passim, 182, 270, 275.
383
THE SON OF MAN
he is what he ought to be; the 'right3 man, the ideally pious and
moral person.1 The Son of Man is also called 'the Elect One';
but this is used only of men who have been selected for some pur-
pose by the deity. There is something distinctive about an 'elect'
man; but he has been selected because he has all the ideal human
qualities, which lead to his being chosen as representative of the
others. The moral equipment of the Son of Man includes those
qualities which constitute the 'right' man: wisdom, uprightness,
piety, and the like (see above, pp. 375ff.)j aml ^e *s closely con-
nected with cthe elect ones5, 'the upright ones', a community
which consists of 'elect' men. He is the representative of this
people, consisting of such men (pp. 3798*.).
This also sheds light on his name 'the Man', and on its content.
The heavenly community is the elect kernel of the righteous and
the elect in general, that is, of Israel, the people of God, the men
who are what men ought to be. They form the heavenly earnest
(already in existence) of the new, elect mankind, as it will one day
exist in the state of perfection. At their head stands the Elect One,
the Righteous One, as the representative and pattern of the
righteous ones.
This shows that 'the Man3 is also in a measure regarded as the
typical or ideal man.2 At first sight it seems to be a modern,
European idea. Indeed, in an earlier generation, modern in-
terpreters of the Gospels often put this modernizing construction
on the term 'Son of Man' as used there. But, when rightly under-
stood, it is seen to be connected with the thought of the ancient
east. It must be taken in the light of what the ancient, eastern
myths say about a divine Primordial Man, who was also the typi-
cal man, the ideal man, and the pattern for mankind. This con-
nexion with the whole race of mankind, as its type and ideal rep-
resentative, is also reflected in the Ethiopic rendering of the
expression ' Son of Man' in the Gospels: walda *egudla 9em(m)aheyaw,
'the son of the offspring of the mother of the living' (see above,
p. 362).
It is a natural consequence of the Jewish outlook that in apoca-
lyptic the content of this ideal is conceived and presented in
1 Of. Pedersen, Israel I-II, pp. 3361!.
2 This aspect of the Son of Man has been particularly emphasized by Brede
Kristensen in T.T., xlv, 1911, pp. iff. In modern times much has often been made
of it, but without adequate knowledge of the religious background which gives the
thought its true content and perspective. It is, therefore, with some justification dis-
missed by experts in the history of religion (see e.g., Bertholet in R.G.G.1 IV, col. 297).
384
THE SON OF MAN
religious terms. The whole Jewish approach to life was religious.
Therefore the Son of Man appears in the descriptions as the
typical and ideal pious man, the typical sage, the typical righteous
man, the one who in himself fulfils, and enables men to fulfil, the
goal for which God created them, to be to the honour and praise
of the Almighty (see pp. 372, 409^. In Judaism generally, and in
apocalyptic, the ideal is the righteous sage, the pious man. The
Son of Man is the primordial sage, the primordial righteous man;
that is, he is the ideal man, the pre-existent, heavenly ideal and
pattern; and one day the pious will be exalted to be with him.
But this thought is not greatly emphasized. If we had not known
from other sources that, at an earlier stage in the history of the
idea, the Son of Man was held to be the pattern man, the prototype
of humanity,1 it would have been difficult to discern traces of the
idea in later Jewish apocalyptic. It was not consciously present
there, except as the conception of his perfect righteousness and
wisdom, and his status as the first of the righteous.2 Nothing ex-
plicit is said about the Son of Man as an ethical pattern, or of
imitating and following the Son of Man. That is because this
apocalyptic Son of Man has no earthly or human existence. He
is a purely heavenly being, who has nothing to do with mankind
before his parousia, when the end comes; and then it is as judge,
and as conqueror of Satan and of the host of wickedness and of the
kings and rulers of the world, that he appears. He does not humble
himself and become like us, so that we may have the desire and
the courage to be like him. He is not the Son of Man 'come in
the flesh'. It remained for the future to show that realization of
the ideal man.
1 1 . The Hidden Secret
Before the creation of the world, the name of the Son of Man
was named by the Lord of Spirits. This means that he was created,
and since then has existed in heaven. At the end of time his name
will again be named before the Lord of Spirits. That one of the
ministering spirits in heaven, whose task is to remind the Lord of
what must take place,3 will mention his name before Him, and he
will then be enthroned and appear in glory (see below, pp. 388ff.).
1 See Mowinckel in N.T.T., xlv, 1944, pp. 225!, cf. ibid., p. 195.
2 Sjoberg (Der Menschensohn, pp. 195*".) goes too far when he denies that there are
any traces of the idea in the Enochian Son of Man.
3 On the high court official, whose task it is to remind the ruler of all important
matters on the agenda of government, see Begrich in %.A,W., Iviii, 1940-41, pp. iff.
385
THE SON OF MAN
In the meantime he Is hidden and kept beside the Lord of Spirits,
in his dwelling-place under the wings of the Lord of Spirits (i En.
xxxix, 7)5 from the beginning. We read that the Most High has
preserved him ein readiness for His power*,1 and revealed him to
the elect.2 God has appointed him for a special task (xli, 9) in
His own time.
The whole question of the Son of Man, his nature., his pre-exis-
tence, and his coming, is a divine secret, which will be revealed
only in its own time, cjust as one can neither seek out nor know
what is in the deep of the sea, even so can no one upon earth see my
servant [rendered "Son53 in AP.O.Tl II; cf, above, p. 360 n. 2.] ...
but in the time of his day' (2 Esdras xiii, 52).
The thought of the divine secrets is central in apocalyptic.3
This was what gave the apocalypses their value in the eyes of the
pious, that they were revelations of the divine secrets, which God,
had permitted elect individuals, like Enoch, Shealtiel, Ezra,
Baruch, and other sages, to see. These men had had a glimpse of
heaven itself, had seen the secrets and had them explained, and
then had written them down in their 'hidden' (apocryphal) books,
as necessary instruction for the other righteous and elect persons.
The secrets include more than the last things and the signs of them,
although the contemporary religious interest in them was chiefly
directed to eschatology. The content of this word 'secrets' may be
expressed in modern terms as embracing the whole of God's pur-
pose for the world from creation to the end, including the structure
and laws of the universe, which both bear witness to God's wisdom,
might, and majesty (which certainly can and will fulfil His appoint-
ed end) , and which also are the means He will use to attain His end,
the new world. Insight into all these things strengthens faith, and
is useful for those who want to be prepared when the signs begin
to take place. Therefore the Most High has revealed them to His
elect upon earth: he who reads must see to it that he discerns them.
The Son of Man is initiated into all these secrets. He is lord
over all that is hidden (i En. Ixii, 6; see n., ad. loc., in A.P.O.T.
1 The text has 'before His power', which is usually taken to mean *in His presence',
'before His face*. But this periphrasis for * Himself seems very unusual; and it is,
therefore, reasonable to interpret 'before' as *in readiness for', 'for the use of*. Otto's
interpretation of the expression as 'before his (i.e., the Son of Man's) power', before
the power was bestowed on him at the end of days ( The Kingdom of God and the Son of
Man, pp. 161, 192, 917), can hardly be right. See also Sjoberg, Der Menschensohrij
p. go n. 26.
2 i En. xlvi, 7; cf. 2 Esdras xii, 32; xiii, 25!; I En. xl, 5; xlviii, 6.
3 See Sjoberg, op. cit., pp. io4ff.
386
THE SON OF MAN
II). When, he sits upon his throne, all the secrets of wisdom will
issue from his mouth (i En. li, 3). He will reveal all the treasures
of what is hidden (i En. xlvi, 3). He also knows the secret ways
of the angels (i En. hd, 9). There can be no doubt that Paul is
using familiar ideas when he says of Christ, that in Him 'are all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden5 (Col. ii, 3). But
the Son of Man is himself the greatest and most important of all
these secrets. He is himself still hidden; but one day he will be
revealed.
The central theme in the Similitudes of Enoch is that this secret,
too, has now already been revealed to the elect.1
And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits hath revealed him to
the holy and righteous;
For he hath preserved the lot of the righteous,
Because they have hated and despised this world of un-
righteousness;
And have hated all its works and ways in the name of the
Lord of Spirits. (i En. xlviii, 7)
They will know that in him they have the guarantee that their
hope will be fulfilled, and that they will not be deprived of their
portion (see below, pp. 401!!.). Enoch's view of the secret of the
hidden Messiah is similar to the teaching of the Fourth Gospel,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and primitive Christian theology in
general, that it was by hope in Christ, who should one day come,
that the godly ones of the old covenant lived their religious life
and endured affliction.2
But it is only the righteous elect, the godly and disparaged com-
munity on earth (those for whom the apocalyptists wrote their
books), that can fully discern this secret and use it aright. For
there is also an illegitimate or distorted revelation of the heavenly
secrets, which comes from the fallen angels, and has been misused
by men for sin and idolatry.3 The full secret and its meaning are
hidden from sinners and unknown to them. 'The great privilege
of the righteous is that they have learned to know these diviae
secrets, and thus to know the Son of Man also. 54
But when he is revealed to the sight of the whole world on the
day of the Son of Man, then woe betide the sinners !
1 1 En. Ixii, 7; xl, 5; Ixix, 26; cf. 2 Esdras xii, 32; xiii, 2$f.
2 John viii, 56; Heb. xi; xiii, 26. Gf. Wernle, Lie Anftnge unserer Religion*, pp. 3o6f.
8 See Sjoberg, Der Mensckensohn, pp. 1 1 iff.
4 Op. cit., p. 115.
387
THE SON OF MAN
12. The Epiphany of the Son of Man
The most important point about the Son of Man is that he will
come forth from the place where he is safely kept beside the Lord
of Spirits, and appear in the sight of men. It is the epiphany or
revelation of the Son of Man which absorbs the interest of the
apocalyptists, which they behold in vision after vision, for which
they long and pray. The message that it is at hand is what they
proclaim to the righteous and elect ones who long for it.1 When
the time is at hand, 'the Righteous One shall appear before the
eyes of the righteous3.2 The change of the times is inaugurated
when 'that Son of Man has appeared'. 'My servant the Messiah
shall be revealed3; cwhen all is accomplished that was to come to
pass in those parts', 'after the signs have come, of which thou
wast told before5, 'the Messiah shall then begin to be revealed ',
cthe principate of My Messiah will be revealed'.
This certainly does not merely mean, as when reference is made
to the appearance of the national Messiah, that he will come forth
from earthly obscurity and show himself to be the Messiah by
beginning to perform the Messianic works. The thought is of
something more, of what is conveyed by the word epiphany: from
his hidden state of pre-existence he will suddenly appear, and
reveal himself to the longing righteous ones in his celestial splen-
dour and glory, his So£a, to which explicit reference is made in
2 Bar. xxx, i.
As long as the Son of Man is hidden from men, he has the sub-
ordinate position of one who serves, c standing before5 the Lord of
Spirits, as Enoch says (xlix, 2), like the others in the hosts of
heaven. But his revelation in his full glory begins when he is in-
vested with full, divine authority. The epiphany is thought of as
an enthronement. His name is named before the Lord of Spirits
(i En. xlviii, 2} ; that is, in the heavenly council, he and the pur-
pose for which he was appointed are remembered, as it was said of
the kings of old that their name was named for lordship by the
gods.s Then follows the real manifestation, when he is set on the
throne.
For that Son of Man has appeared,
And has seated himself on the throne of his glory.
(i En. Ixix, 29)
1 See von Gall, Basileia, p. 423. This important point is not brought out by Staerk
(Soter I, pp. 72ff.; II, pp. 43851).
2 i En. xxxviii, 2; for the phrases which follow, see box, 29; 2 Esdras vii, 28; 2 Bar.
xxix, 3; xxx, i; Ixxii, 2; xxxix, 7. 3 See Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 62f.
388
THE SON OF MAN
In reality it is God Himself who sets Mm on the throne of glory,1
installing him as ruler. In two passages it seems that it is on God's
own throne of glory (the glorious throne2 which also bears witness
to the glory of its occupant) that he is set.3 This is not in itself
inconceivable. Even in the Old Testament the king is thought of
as sitting on Yahweh's throne.4 But as a rule the reference is to
the throne of the Son of Man, the thought being the same as that
in the conception of the Son of Man underlying Dan. vii, where we
hear of 'thrones', namely for ethe Ancient of Days' and for 'the
Man5.5 When he is enthroned, they kneel and pay him homage
(i En. xlviii, 5) ; and he is hailed with praise not only by eall who
dwell above in heaven5 (Ixi, 6ff), but also by all the living; cand
the kings and the mighty and all who possess the earth shall bless
and glorify and extol him (i.e., the Son of Man) who rules over all,
who was hidden'.8
This means that his enthronement is not only something which
is visible in heaven. It is the great change of the ages, inaugurating
the judgement and the new aeon. Therefore it is also a revelation
to the whole world, a manifestation to all the kings, the mighty
men, and the nations of the earth, a cosmic event. It is, in fact,
the same thought that occurs in the Gospels: 'as the lightning
comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the
coming of the Son of Man ' (Matt, xxiv, 27; Luke xvii, 24) . It is the
thought of an epiphany and a parousia similar to that described In
Dan. vii, or rather, in the myth of the Son of Man which Daniel
used and applied to Israel. In the Gospels both Jesus and His
opponents assume it as an article of current belief that the Son of
Man ewill come with (or "on") the clouds of heaven5.7 This was
1i En. Ixi, 8; Ixii, 2. In Ixii, 3-5 also the context shows that God is thought of as the
real agent. Other passages are indefinite, and say only that he sits on his throne of
glory; r En. xlv, 3; li, 3; Iv, 4; cf. Matt, xix, 28; xxv, 31.
2Adjectival genitive, Hebrew, kisse* kdbod, or kisse' hak-kdbod, or kisse* k*bodo.
Sjoberg's discussion (op. cit., pp. 63ff.)j whether the expression { throne of glory' in
i Enoch, as later in the rabbinic writings, is a fixed term for God's throne, seems a
little too subtle. Passages like Jer. xiv, 21; xvii, 12 suggest that in earlier Judaism the
expression brought to mind the throne of God: the presence or absence of the definite
article in prophetic style ought not to be pressed., especially since, even in the Old
Testament, the king's throne is thought of as ideally identical with that of Yahweh
(see Ps. ex, i; i Ghron. xxviii, 5; xxix, 23; 2 Chron. ix, 8).
3 i En. li, 3; Iv, 4. The text of the latter passage is uncertain; the best MSS. read
*on the throne of glory'. See Sjoberg, op. cit, p. 65.
4 See n. 2, above.
5 See above, p. 352. Sjoberg (op, cit., p. 66 n. 24) refers to the parallel in 3 En.
x, i ; xlviii, C 5, where Metatron (which is really a variant form of the idea of the Son
of Man; see below, p. 439) does not sit on the throne of glory itself, but receives a
throne which corresponds to it. 6 i En. Ixii, 6f.; see also Ixi, 7, and cf. bcix, 26.
7 Matt, xxiv, 30; xxvi, 64; Rev.xiv, 14; cf. Markxiii, 26; xiv, 62; Luke xxi, 27; xxii, 69.
389
THE SON OF MAN
also known to the Jewish apocalyptists. As the Apocalypse of
Ezra puts it, 'this Man flew with the clouds of heaven' (xiii, 3).
The rabbis., too, following Dan. vii, think of the Messiah as revealing
himself on the clouds of heaven. They include among the names
of the Messiah 'Anani', which they interpret as "Cloudman5; and
the Targum adopts the same interpretation of the masculine
personal name in i Chron. iii, 24.*
Alongside this conception we also meet another striking thought,
namely that the Son of Man will come from the sea. In the
Apocalypse of Ezra it is combined with the thought of his coming
with the clouds of heaven. CI dreamed a dream by night: <and
I beheld,> and lo ! there arose a violent wind from the sea, and
stirred all its waves. And I beheld, and lo ! <the wind caused to
come up out of the heart of the seas as it were the form of a man.
And I beheld, and lo !> this man flew with the clouds of heaven. '
Then follows a description of how everything at which this man
looks trembles, and everything towards which he utters his voice
melts like wax before the fire (2 Esdras xiii, iff.).
In the sequel the apocalyptist himself interprets this feature of
the coming of the Son of Man from the sea: cand I said, O Lord
my Lord, show me this: wherefore I have seen the Man coming
up from the heart of the sea. And he said unto me: Just as one
can neither seek out nor know what is in the deep of the sea, even
so can no one upon earth see my servant [or those that are with hiiri],
but in the time of his day' (2 Esdras xiii, 5 if.; cmy servant' is here
substituted for 'my Son', the rendering in A.P.O.T. II). Ezra
does not mean that the Son of Man will really come from the sea.
He takes it as a symbol, existing only in the vision, and present
there only because it conveys a definite idea, which must be in-
terpreted and applied. But the interpretation is forced; and it is
certain that the apocalyptist did not himself invent this feature
of the coming of the Son of Man from the sea: he took it from the
apocalyptic tradition.
In the Apocalypse of Baruch we find an allegorical modification
of the same conception. Baruch sees a cloud rise from the sea, full
of white water and black water, which stream down upon the
earth, alternating with each other twelve times. But from the
summit of the cloud there came 'as it were the likeness of great
lightning'. He is then given the interpretation that the alternating
streams of white and black water denote the alternating periods
1 Strack-Billerbeck I, pp. 67, 486, 956f. See above, p, 357.
390
THE SON OF MAN
in Israel's history: piety and prosperity, impiety and affliction.
The great lightning is interpreted as the Messiah, who comes at
last, and saves his people, and destroys their enemies (2 Bar. liii;
Ixxii f.). Here, too, the coming of the Son of Man with the cloud
is combined with his coming from the sea: the cloud rises from the
sea. Baruch is undoubtedly borrowing from the Apocalypse of
Ezra and refashioning its symbolism.
That the idea of the coming of the Son of Man from the sea
belongs to an earlier tradition is evident from the attempts made
by the apocalyptists to interpret the idea. If Ezra had wanted to
express only the fact that the Messiah was as unfathomable as the
depths of the sea,1 he could easily have found an image which
would have expressed the thought better; or it could have been
more easily derived from the coming of the Son of Man from
heaven: for those who dwell on earth, the inside of heaven and its
'secrets3 (see p. 386) are even more unfathomable than the sea.
The forced interpretation shows that inherited, traditional con-
ceptions are present.2
The teaching about the coming of the Son of Man from the sea
did not preclude (for Ezra, or Baruch, or those circles which were
familiar with it) belief in him as a heavenly being. They clearly
take it for granted. They connect his coming from the sea with
his being hidden until his epiphany, when he appears in an un-
expected and surprising way; and they understand it as an allegori-
cal symbol. It is not easy to say what the coming of the Son of
Man from the sea originally meant. That a pre-existent eschato-
logical being should descend from heaven presents no problem;
but why should he come up from the sea? In the Old Testament,
and, to some extent, in later Jewish tradition, the sea represents
the chaotic, demonic principle in the universe, which is hostile to
God. It is in accord with this that in Daniel the four monsters,
which represent the world powers, come up from the sea. This
purely traditional feature in the Son of Man, which the apocalyp-
tists no longer understood, is probably derived from an earlier
phase of the conception, from some variant of the idea of the
Primordial Man, as is the feature that in him is the spirit of the
righteous departed (see above, p. 377). Even in that earlier phase
it may have been connected with the fact that he was hidden and
inaccessible. Of Adam or Mana, one of the many Mandean
1 So, e.g., Messel, Der Mensckensokn in den Bilderreden des Hewch, pp. 73f., 77-
2 §o Gunkelj rightly, in A.P.A.T. II, p. 397, followed by most scholars since.
391
THE SON OF MAN
variants of the Primordial Man, it is said that lie dwells cin the
sea5 and comes up from it for his work of deliverance. l And of the
Persian * saviour3 Saoshyant, to whom several features from the
myth of the Primordial Man have been attached, it is said, in
varying versions, that he came into existence from the seed of the
prophet Zarathushtra, which was hidden in a holy lake, and that
he was eborn from the waters of the lake of Kansaoya'.2
Eschatology, in both its national and its universalistic, other-
worldly forms, spoke of omens which would precede the end; and
here, too, there is mention of signs and wonders which precede
the epiphany.8 The Apocalypse of Baruch says, 'After the signs
have come, of which thou wast told before, when . . . the time of
My Messiah is come . . .' (2 Bar. bcxii, 2). The Apocalypse of
Ezra describes these omens: * ... And there shall come astonishment
of mind upon the dwellers on earth: and they shall plan to war one against
another, city against city, place against place, people against people, and
kingdom against kingdom. And it shall be when these things shall
come to pass, and the signs shall happen which I showed thee
before, then shall my servant be revealed whom thou didst see as
a Man ascending3 (i.e., from the sea) (2 Esdras xiii, 3 of.; cmy ser-
vant ' is here substituted for c my Son ', the rendering in A.P. 0. T. II) .
It is ethe day of the Elect One', 'the day of the Son of Man',
which then comes.4 Like the day of Yahweh, or like the day of a
deity or a king (in the sense in which these phrases were used in
ancient times), this expression denotes the day of his appearing
and enthronement, the day when he is manifested in all his glory.
It is in keeping with the eschatological character of the Son of
Man that a day of this kind should await him, It is unlikely,
therefore, that the idea is borrowed from the day of Yahweh; it
belongs to the Son of Man conception. He was thought of as king
of paradise (see pp. 38sf.); and in his eschatological role he exer-
cised kingly functions. Paul is certainly borrowing an element
from the Son of Man theology, when he uses the expression c the
day of Jesus Christ5 as a regular term for the eschatological day.5
But the words are also used with an extended meaning, de-
noting * the days of the Son of Man ', referring to the time which
1 Reitzenstein, Das iranische Erlosungsmysterium^ pp. 50, 51, 12 if.
2 See further, Mowinckel in JV". T*. T., xlv, I944> PP- 228ff.
3 See von Gall, Basileia., p. 423.
4 i En. Ixi, 5; 2 Esdras xiii, 52; 2 Bar. bdi, 2; Luke xvii, 22, 26, 30; Matt, xxiv 3yfF.
5 i Cor. i? 8?- v, 5; 2 Cor. i, 14; Phil, i, 6, 10; ii, 16; i Thess. v, 2f,; 2 Thess. i, 10; ii, i.
THE SON OF MAN
will follow, the blessed new aeon, when the Son of Man will rule
as king.
The Son of Man does not come alone. He 'shall be revealed,
together with those who are with him' (2 Esdras vii, 28; xiii, 52).
These are not necessarily identical with the heavenly community.
i Enoch distinguishes clearly between a circle of angelic heavenly
beings, and a host of elect, righteous ones, who are now in heaven,
where they have their blessed abodes near those of the angels, and
are with the Elect One.x It may well be that some of the blessed
ones from the earth can appear together with the Son of Man,
as when Moses and Elijah appeared together with Jesus on the
mount of the Transfiguration. But when the Son of Man comes
in his glory, he reveals himself together with the divine, heavenly
beings.2 This conclusion certainly follows from similar statements in
the New Testament (which sound like echoes of traditional teach-
ing), that he will come 'with all His saints', 'with the angels of
His power'.3
13. The Judge of the World
When the Son of Man comes, he comes as judge, to effect the
ultimate, eschatological judgement of the world. 'He shall sit on.
the throne of his glory. ' Thereby he acquires a status similar to
that of God Himself; and sometimes it is said that he will sit on
God's (or 'My') throne of glory (see above, pp. 388f.). The thought
was that he should be associated with God in judgement, a thought
which lies behind the expressions in Dan. vii (see above, p. 352).
There are other passages in apocalyptic, where God Himself is
judge of the world.4
For i Enoch and the circles which it represents, the judgement
is ultimately God's judgement.5 It is said that God appears as
judge; or He is described as a judge; but it is also said that the
Son of Man comes with Him then (i En. xlvi, i; xlvii, 3; xlviii, 2).
Although it is explicitly stated that the Son of Man is installed as
judge, God Himself is sometimes described as the real agent, and
He more or less displaces the Son of Man (i En. Ixii, ioff.; Ixiii).
But the prevailing conception is that God hands over His authority
1 i En, xxxix, 4-7; see above, pp. 379ff.; and cf. Staerk, Soter II, pp. 441,
2 But contrast Staerk, Soter II, p. 516.
3 i Thess. iii, 13; 2 Thess. i, 7; Matt, xxv, 31.
4 Dan. vii; 2 Esdras vii, 26fF.; i En. xxxviii, 4; xlvi, i; xlvii, 3; xlviii, 3, 7; 1, iff.; liv,
5f.; Iviii, 6fT.; Ix, 2; xc, 20; cf. xxv, 3.
6 Cf. Sjdberg, Der Menschensohny pp. 8off.
393
THE SON OF MAN
as judge to the Son of Man, even if the latter is always thought of
as acting by God's warrant and as His instrument.
The judgement of the Son of Man is universal and cosmic, a
judgement on heaven and earth.1 When the Messiah-Son-of-Man
reveals himself, 'whatever will then befall (will befall) the whole
earth' (2 Bar. xxk, i). He will summon all the nations (2 Bar.
Ixxii, 2). Everything in the world will be brought low (2 Bar.
Ixxiii, i). CA11 who dwell on earth shall fall down and worship be-
fore him' (i En. xlviii, 5).
And the Lord of Spirits placed the Elect One on the throne
of glory.
And he shall judge all the works of the holy above in the
heaven.
And in the balance shall their deeds be weighed.
(i En. Ixviii, 8)
He is also appointed as judge over all the angels (i En. xii, 9). He
will judge all the sinners and unrighteous, all kings, great men,
and mighty ones, and all who dwell on earth (i En. Ixii, sff.). All
judgement is given to the Son of Man (i En. Ixix, 27). When the
mighty ones of the whole earth are presented before his judgement
seat,
he shall reprove them for their ungodliness,
rebuke them for their unrighteousness,
reproach them to their faces with their treacheries.
(2 Esdras xii, 32)
A great host of people is brought before him, some of whom are
glad, some sorrowful, some in bonds, some bringing others as an
offering (2 Esdras xiii, 13, alluding to Isa. kvi, 20); Jews and
heathen, godly and ungodly will then be brought to judgement,
including the Jews of the Dispersion, whom the heathen will bring
as an offering to the true God.
As already mentioned, the angelic powers will also be brought
to judgement.2 Later Judaism was familiar with the notion that
there existed wicked, fallen angels, the protector deities of the
heathen empires, and those who lured men into sin. It is a leading
1 2 Bar. xxviii-xxx; Ixix-lxxiv; i En. xlv-1; Ixi-lxiv; box, s6ff.; 2 Esdras xii f.; John v,
22-27.
2 i En. xii, 9; Iv, 4; Ixi, 8; cf. 3 En. xvi, i; xlviii, G 8 (here transferred to Metatron).
See Sjobcrg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 6yf. 4The holy above' (i En Ixi, 8) also denotes
the angelsj see above, p. 380 n. 6.
394
THE SON OF MAN
idea in the Apocalypse of Enoch, where it is explicitly stated that
the kings and mighty ones 'shall have to behold Mine Elect One,
how he sits on the throne of glory and judges Azazel (i.e., Satan),
and all his associates, and all his hosts in the name of the Lord of
Spirits5.1 This feature, the destruction of Beliar and of the
demonic powers, also appears in the Messiah ben Levi, where it
is undoubtedly a borrowing from the Son of Man (cf. pp. s&tf.).
But also the good angels, 'the holy', must have their actions
tested by the judgement of the Son of Man.2
Both in i Enoch and elsewhere it is the condemnation of the
heathen, the mighty and godless ones of this world, which is in the
foreground and is the object of most interest. The oppression of
the godly by the ungodly is the background of the thought of
judgement. Hope looks forward to the destruction of the present,
evil, world rulers, to the liberation of the godly, to the redemption
of Israel, and the coming of the new aeon. The judgement is
regarded in a one-sided way, as a judgement of condemnation.
Only occasionally does it appear that the godly will come for
judgement, will be acquitted, and will obtain their right. That is
why some come rejoicing before the throne of the Son of Man
(2 Esdras xiii, 13), whose souls will be strengthened and who will go
gladly to their innumerable dwellings (i En. xlv, 3). But as a
rule the justification or acquittal of the godly is taken for granted.
For them, judgement is actually identical with the condemnation
of the ungodly and the destruction of all evil powers. Therefore,
they flock joyfully to the Son of Man to receive their reward (2
Esdras xiii, 13; see below, pp. 4.0 iff.).
Where the idea of judgement occurs at all (see below, p. 396),
it is thought of in forensic terms, as a real act of judgement, with
accusation, conviction, and condemnation,3 or acquittal.
And he shall judge the secret things,
And none shall be able to utter a lying word before him.
And righteousness is judged before him,
And no lying word is spoken before him.
He will convict the nations of their evil devices; for when the
assize begins, the books are opened and judgement is passed
1 1 En. Iv, 4. On the destruction of Satan, see below, pp. 397f.
8 i En. Ixi, 8f. See Sjoberg, op. cit., pp. Gyf.
8 1 En, xlix, 4; Ixii, 3; 2 Esdras xii, 32; xiii, 13, 37; Dan. vii, gfF.j i En. bd, 8. Sec
above, p. 394 n. i.
395
THE SON OF MAN
according to what is written in them. In another figure, which is
used in Egyptian and Persian religion., the Elect One will weigh
men's actions in the balance.1
The execution of judgement on the wicked also occupies a
relatively large place in the description. The Son of Man shall first
cset them alive for judgement; and when he hath rebuked them
he shall destroy them' (2 Esdras xii, 33).
And all the kings and the mighty and the exalted ones
and those who rule the earth
Shall fall down before him on their faces,
And worship and set their hope upon that Son of Man,
And petition him and supplicate for mercy at his hands . . .
And the angels of punishment shall take them in charge,
To execute vengeance on them because they have oppressed
His (God's) children and His elect,
(i En. Ixii, 9-11; see AP.O.T., ad loc., for text of v. n.)
And he caused the sinners to pass away and be destroyed
from off the face of the earth,
And those who have led the world astray.
With chains shall they be bound,
And in their assemblage-place of destruction shall they be
imprisoned,
And all their works vanish from the face of the earth.
(i En. Ixix, ayf.)
The description of the destruction is particularly prominent in the
many passages where the conception of a judicial process is not
maintained.
In addition to this, we also find another and more mythological
conception of the judgement as a victorious conflict and the des-
truction of the wicked. As we have seen above (pp. 378$ 384^),
judgement is really only another expression for the destruction of
the enemy and the salvation of the godly, very much as it was in
the earlier Jewish hope of restoration and eschatology (see above,
pp. I76ff., 3 1 iff.). In the prophets and the earlier future hope, the
forensic conception of judgement as a judicial process in the proper
sense occurs relatively infrequently and is intended metaphori-
1 i En. xli, i; Ixi, 8; c£ Job xxxi, 6; Prov. xvi, 2; xxi, 2; xxiv, 12; Ps. Ixii, 10; Dan. v,
27; Ps. Sol. v, 6. ^Cf. Brandt in Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie, 1892, p. 431;
Stade-Bertholet, Biblische Theologie des Alien Testaments II, p. 454, with references to the
sources and to literature,
396
THE SON OF MAN
cally.1 It is more characteristic of later Jewish eschatology (see
above, p. 273). When the Son of Man appeared on the clouds of
heaven, Ezra saw that 'there was gathered together from the four
winds of heaven an innumerable multitude of men to make war
against the Man that came up out of the sea' (2 Esdras xiii, 5f.).
This is applied by the apocalyptist to the heathen nations who
assemble to fight against Israel's Messiah. Elsewhere, too, it is said
that no instruments of war will avail in the conflict with the Elect
One (i En. lii, 6fE). The similarity to the older myth of the
conflict of the nations (p. 140) is obvious.
But there is reason to believe that the original tradition spoke
of an army of all the demons that heaven holds, ' the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places'. This is, at all events,
in agreement with what the Testament of Levi expects of the
Messiah, the cnew priest':
And Beliar shall be bound by him,
And he shall give power to His children to tread upon
the evil spirits, (xviii, 12; cf. T. Dan v, 10)
It is by his miraculous power that the Son of Man destroys his
adversaries:
And the word of his mouth slays all the sinners,
And all the unrighteous are destroyed from before his face,
(i En. bdi, 2; cf. 2 Esdras xii, 33; xiii, 38)
Here, too, belong all the many passages in the apocalypses,
which speak of the assault made by Satan or Beliar against God,
His kingdom, and His saints, and of the destruction of Satan and
his angels,2 a destruction which is sometimes also connected with
with the judgement.3 The fact that the archangels Gabriel and
Michael frequently appear as leaders in the conflict with Satan4
is probably a modification in terms of Jewish nationalism of an
earlier universalistic conception of the Son of Man as the leader
of God's army in the conflict with Satan, such as we find in Rev.
xix, 1 1, where the rider on the white horse, who overcomes Satan,
is the same as the one whom the seer beheld appearing in the like-
1 Gf. W. Cossmann, Die Entwickelung des Gerichtsgedankens bei den alttestamentlichen
Prophetm, a work which, however, does not give adequate treatment of the point
mentioned above.
2 i En. xvi, iff.; x, 16; liv, 4ff.; Iv, 4; Ixviii, 5; xc, aiff.; T. Judah xxv, 3; cf. T. Dan
v, 10. See von Gall, Basileia, pp. 294, 297, 299.
8 i En, xvi, iff.; cf. 2 En. vii, iff.
4 Dan. x, 13, 21; xii, i; Rev. xii, yff.; Ass. Mos. x, if.
397
THE SON OF MAN
ness of a son of man,1 the herald of the final judgement on the
enemies of God.
Thus the judgement of the Son of Man is a judgement of cosmic
dimensions. Alongside it, however, we find the conception (some-
what more limited by Jewish nationalism) of a judgement on
Israel's earthly enemies and a reckoning with them. This is only
to be expected, since the Son of Man was equated with the Jewish
Messiah. Even the Apocalypse of Enoch, which includes the whole
world and the cosmos in its purview, loves to assert that judgement
will fall upon the kings and mighty ones of the earth, who have not
acknowledged Israel's God (xlvi, 6), but have oppressed the right-
eous, and maltreated the children and the elect of the Lord of
Spirits.
And they shall be a spectacle for the righteous and for His
elect:
They shall rejoice over them,
Because the wrath of the Lord of Spirits resteth upon them,
And His sword is drunk with their blood. / « t .. N
(i En. Ixu, 12)
Behind the Apocalypse of Ezra there is actual experience of the
destruction of Jerusalem; and in it this nationalistic attitude is
still more evident, though there, too, the universalistic background
is clear enough.2 2 Bar. Ixxii, 4-6 says quite explicitly, * Every
nation, which knows not Israel and has not trodden down the
seed of Jacob, shall indeed be spared . . . But all those who have
ruled over you, or have known you, shall be given up to the sword. '
Thus the Apocalypse of Baruch makes a distinction among the
heathen. Those who have had no hand in the oppression of Israel
shall survive. Elsewhere, the prevailing thought is that the world
powers and the heathen will be utterly destroyed: they are all sin-
ful, and instruments of the wicked demonic powers and of Satan's
enmity against the Lord of Spirits. But occasionally we find
traces of an earlier, more sober, national eschatology. In the
Apocalypse of Enoch there is a short section3 which tells how,
when a change comes for the holy and elect, when, on the day of
affliction, evil has been treasured up for sinners, when the right-
eous have been victorious over them in the name of the Lord of
1 Rev. i, 13; xiv, 14; cf. the woman in heaven who gives birth to a male child
(xii, 13).
2 2 Esdras xi, 32-45; xii, 32-4, xiii, raff., 3sfF.; xi, 46.
8 i En. 1. On the authenticity of the chapter, see Sjoberg, Der Menschensohnt pp.
398
THE SON OF MAN
Spirits, then cthe others5 will repent, and abstain from the works
of their hands, because, though He is righteous in His judgement,
He will have compassion on them, because His compassion is
great. They will be saved by His name; but they will receive no
honour from the Lord of Spirits. The reference here is clearly
to the survivors of the defeated and destroyed heathen nations, and
to their association with Israel as obedient vassals, a thought which
is common in the earlier nationalistic eschatology (see p. 314).
But this is not an essential feature in the thought of the Son of Man
and his judgement.1
14. The Son of Man and the Resurrection
The prevailing thought in the eschatology of later Judaism is
that the resurrection of the dead precedes the judgement.2 This
is so in i Enoch, where the resurrection follows the appearance
and enthronement of the Son of Man.
And he shall chose the righteous and holy from among them:
For the day has drawn nigh that they should be saved.
And the Elect One shall in those days sit on My throne . . .
(i En. li, 2f.)
This passage does not directly indicate who shall raise the dead.
Within normative Judaism it is taken for granted that the resur-
rection is God's own work.3 God is cHe who quickens the dead3,
as the Shemoneh Esreh puts it, although sometimes it is one of the
archangels who gives the signal by a blast on the trumpet.4 The
Messiah of the earlier period has nothing to do with the resurrec-
tion.6
But there are occasional indications that the resurrection was
connected with the Son of Man: it is he who is the intermediary at
the resurrection, or who calls forth the dead.6 2 Bar. xxx, iff. runs:
'And it shall come to pass after these things, when the time of the
advent of the Messiah is fulfilled, that He shall return in glory5
(i.e., from heaven to earth). cThen all who have fallen asleep in
1 Gf. Sjoberg, op. cit, p. 143.
2 See above, p. 273. In 2 Esdras vii, 32 the resurrection follows the Messianic king-
dom. This is a logical consequence of the fact that there the kingdom has become a
temporary kingdom, before the dawn of the new aeon. The Apocalypse of Baruch is
less consistent, and, therefore, not clear (see xxixf.).
3 See Bousset, Relig.2, pp, 3o8ff., especially p. 315.
4 2 Esdras vi, 23; i Cor. xv, 52; i Thess. iv, 16.
5 Bousset, op. cit., ibid.; cf. above, p. 397, on the archangels.
6 See von Gall, Basileia, pp. 426f. The relevant passages are: 2 Bar. xxx; Ixxii
2 Esdras xii, 33; i En. li, iff.; Ixi, 4!.
399
THE SON OF MAN
hope of Him shall rise again. * (This must refer to the hope that he
would raise them up.) Then the souls of the righteous shall rejoice,
while the souls of the wicked shall 'waste away the more* For they
shall know that their torment has come and their perdition has
arrived.5 The same thought occurs (but with a more collective
emphasis) in connexion with the reference to the fate of the differ-
ent nations at the judgement, when it is said that he will call forth
all the nations for judgement, and will spare some but slay others.
Similarly we find the explicit statement in 2 Esdras xiii, 33: c At the
first he shall set them alive for judgement; and when he hath re-
buked them he shall destroy them. 9 If the reference were to those
who were still alive on earth, it would be quite unnecessary to say
that they would be set alive for judgement, i Enoch, too, says, as
we have seen, that at the resurrection the Elect One will choose
out the holy and elect among them, because the day of their re-
demption will then be at hand. This suggests that Enoch is echo-
ing a tradition which originally said that the Son of Man summons
forth the dead. So, too, when we read,
And these measures shall reveal all the secrets of the
depths of the earth,
And those who have been destroyed by the desert,
And those who have been devoured by the beasts,
And those who have been devoured by the fish of the sea,
That they may return and stay themselves
On the day of the Elect One. (i En. Ixi, 5)
Elsewhere, too, there are traces of this belief that the Son of Man
has a connexion with the resurrection. The statement in a late
Jewish writing1 that the Messiah raises the dead is not derived
from Old Testament ideas, or from the conception of the national
Messiah. The same is true of the saying, which occurs once in the
rabbinic literature, that at the resurrection the Messiah will raise
Adam first.2 Ideas from the conception of the Son of Man have
survived in certain strata of the tradition, and have ultimately
been connected with the Messiah. The same conception underlies
the saying of Jesus that c the hour is coming, and now is, when all
who are in the graves will hear his voice' (i.e., the voice of the Son
of Man; John v, 27-29).
But the thought that the Son of Man will raise the dead is over-
1 See Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 524, and above, p. 319 and n. 3.
2 See Strack-Billerbeck III, p. 10 and p. 337 above.
400
THE SON OF MAN
shadowed by the more theocentric view, that God himself will
work the miracle; and we never find a clear and emphatic state-
ment that the Son of Man will raise the dead. This is no doubt
because we are here dealing with a thought associated with an
earlier, pre-Jewish phase of the idea of the Son of Man (see below,
pp, 42off,), which was pushed into the background because in
Jewish eyes it was too violent an invasion of God's own preroga-
tives.
15. The Deliverance of the Godly
For the godly (the elect, the holy, the righteous) the coming and
judgement of the Son of Man mean salvation and deliverance.1
He shall be a staff to the righteous whereon to stay them-
selves and not fall,
And he shall be the light of the Gentiles,
And the hope of those who are troubled of heart . . .
He hath preserved the lot of the righteous,
Because they have hated and despised this world of unrighteous-
ness,
And have hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of
Spirits:
For in his name they are saved,
And according to his good pleasure hath it been in regard to
their life.
And the righteous and elect shall be saved on that day.
And they shall never thenceforward see the face of the sinners
and unrighteous.
And he shall choose the righteous and holy from among them
(those who have been raised) :
For the day has drawn nigh that they should be saved.
In i Enoch the deliverance of the pious is not described in very
precise terms. That deliverance is primarily from the oppression
and tyranny of the ungodly, heathen, world powers. Therefore
the main emphasis is laid on the description of the judgement of
these powers, and of the final destruction of them and of all the
wicked cosmic powers (cf. above, p. 397). But deliverance also
means that the godly, the elect, and the righteous, share in the
blessedness which God has appointed for them. Therefore they
1 i En. xlviii, 4*!; Ixii, 13; li, 2; bd, 4f.; 2 Esdras xii, 34; xiii, 26, 29.
401
22D
THE SON OF MAN
greet with joy the enthronement of the Son of Man and his
appearance to judge sinners.
Then will I cause Mine Elect One to dwell among them (the
elect) . . .
For I have provided and satisfied with peace My righteous
ones
And have caused them to dwell before me:
But for the sinners there is judgement impending with Me,
So that I shall destroy them from the face of the earth.
The righteous will rise up to eternal life, and light, and blessed-
ness. They will share in the divine wisdom, righteousness, and
compassion. 1
This is God's work; but it may also be regarded as the work of
the Son of Man, not only because it accompanies his appearing
and judgement, but because it is said that at the resurrection he
will choose the righteous as his own (i En. li, 2), and that they
will stand before him (i En. Hi, 8).
On the other hand, nothing is said about the Son of Man de-
livering his own from sin. The deliverance is from the oppression
of the ungodly. The godly have sinned, of course (all men fall into
unwitting sin or sins of weakness), and need forgiveness.2 But the
Christian recognition of the complete bondage to sin, from which
all men need to be delivered, and of 'justification' as a justifica-
tion of sinners, is not the prevailing attitude in apocalyptic, al-
though the general sinfulness of man is strongly emphasized.3 In
apocalyptic the Son of Man is the righteous judge of sinners, not
their deliverer.
The deliverance of the righteous can, however, be regarded
from a more nationalistic standpoint, or from one that is more in-
dividualistic and universalistic. Within the framework of a more
nationalistic eschatology, it means that the Son of Man, like the
Messiah of the earlier period, delivers Israel, and saves God's
people who survive, who have been saved thoughout His borders,
as the Most High says in 2 Esdras xii, 34. This salvation also
means that the Son of Man gathers to himself all the dispersed,
including the lost ten tribes, and leads them back to Israel's land
(2 Esdras xiii, I2f., sgff.). The aim of salvation may be regarded
* i En, Ixix, 26£; xlv, 4-6; xlviii, 2-4; li, if.; Iviii, 3-6: Ixi, 5; xxxix, 5; xlviii, i;
Iviii, 4fl; cf. Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 7gf.
2 i En. v, 6ff.j on the above, see Sjoberg, op. cit, pp. 7g£
3 2 Esdras iii, 4ff. ; vii3 ii6ff.; viii, 34!".
4O2
THE SON OF MAN
as the restoration and glorification of Israel (2 Esdras x, 35fF.,
5off.), when the Son of Man appears and ends the world power
and its ungodly kings (2 Esdras xi £). The Apocalypse of Enoch
also says that on that day the Israelites who have been carried
away will come from the ends of the earth, and fall down and
worship the Lord of Spirits.1
But it is characteristic of apocalyptic eschatology that this idea
appears only once in i Enoch, and has no organic connexion with
the thought of the book as a whole; and in the Apocalypse of Ezra
the national kingdom of the Son of Man is regarded as an interim
kingdom before the real restoration and the coming of the new
aeon.2
The fundamental idea in apocalyptic is a different one. There
the good and the wicked are not necessarily identical with Israel
and the heathen. There are many sinners in Israel, too, who
come mournfully before the Son of Man and are condemned.
Ezra laments that the majority must be lost.3 The Apocalypse
of Enoch, too, recognizes that there are many sinners in Israel; it
depends upon the decision and choice of the individual whether
he belongs to the righteous or to the sinners. The ideas about
deliverance are not framed in accordance with the narrow outlook
of Jewish particularism; and the ideas about the saving work of
the Son of Man are in accord with the universalistic, cosmic view
of the nature and mission of the Son of Man, Salvation itself is
thought of in cosmic terms. Accordingly we read of the Man who
rose up from the depths of the sea, "This is he whom the Most
High is keeping many ages [(and) through whom he will deliver his
creation]* (2 Esdras xiii, 26), * The day shall come when the Most
High is about to deliver those that are upon earth* (2 Esdras xiii, 29).
1 6. The Kingdom of the Son of Man
Because the deliverance is connected with the appearing and
judgement of the Son of Man, it can also be regarded as a partici-
pation in the kingdom of the Son of Man. His appearing was both
his enthronement and the inauguration of his dominion (see above,
PP- 388f ).
In the first place, his kingdom is a world dominion.4 He comes
1 i En. Ivii. On the authenticity of the chapter, see Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn,
p. 144.
2 See above, pp. 277, 321, 324, and below, p. 404.
8 a Esdras iii, 4ff., and frequently. See Gunkel in A.P.A.T. II, pp. 337fF.
4 i En. xlvi, 4-6; Hi, 3f.; liii, i; Ixii, 2, sfF.j Ixi, 6ff.j a Bar. xxxix, jL
403
THE SON OF MAN
and takes his seat on his (or3 sometimes, God's) throne of glory
(see above, p. 389) . He requires all the kings of the earth to praise
and exalt him. All might must bow down before him, that he
may be mighty and strong on the earth. 'All who dwell on the
earth and sea and islands shall bring to him gifts and presents and
tokens of homage.' 'And all who dwell above in the heaven re-
ceived a command and power and one voice and one light like
unto fire.
And that One (with) their first words they blessed,
And extolled and lauded with wisdom. '
His kingdom is also an everlasting kingdom.1 He, who was
created and chosen before the creation of the world, will also re-
main for ever before the Lord of Spirits.
The Elect One standeth before the Lord of Spirits,
And his glory is for ever and ever,
And his might unto all generations.
As early as Daniel (which means the tradition before him) we hear
that to the Son of Man, who came on the clouds of heaven, there
was given 'dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples,
nations, and tongues should serve him. His dominion is an ever-
lasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom a
kingdom that shall not be destroyed' (Dan. vii, 14).
Where the fusion of the Son of Man and the Messiah has led to
the thought of the interim kingdom, we find also that the domin-
ion of the Son of Man is limited in time. This is so in 2 Esdras vii,
2gff.; xii, 34; and in 2 Bar. xxxix £ But there the Son of Man
appears in the guise of the national, this-worldly Messiah. And
when we read, 'And his principate will stand for ever, until the
world of corruption is at an end, and until the times aforesaid are
fulfilled* (2 Bar. xl, 3), the original thought of the everlasting
dominion of the Son of Man is still perceptible in the blend of the
two theological ideas.
The Son of Man has become a king, and sits upon his throne;
and it was as king that the evangelists thought of Jesus, the Son
of Man.2
On the location of the kingdom of the Son of Man, testimony
varies, and there is an elusive vagueness. When it is stated that
he will come with the clouds of heaven or from the sea, and that
1 i En. xlviii, 6; xlix, 2; 2 Bar. xl, 3; Ixxiii, i; cf. T. Levi, xyiii.
2 Matt, xxv, 34; xvi, 28; xx, 21; Luke xxii, 2gf.; cf. Matt, xix, 28f.
404
THE SON OF MAN
he will return,1 it is assumed that it is to earth that he will come.
Both the Ezra Apocalypse and the Baruch Apocalypse regard the
interim kingdom (as they hold the Messianic kingdom to be) as a
kingdom on this earth. But it is an * earth J which is superterrestrial
and ideally transfigured in a far greater measure than in the older,
this-worldly eschatology. The blessed will enjoy an everlasting
banquet on the flesh of the two great sea-monsters. Behemoth and
Leviathan, which were created on the fifth day of creation, and
preserved until that time to serve as food for those who survive
(i.e., the remnant which is saved). 'The earth also shall yield its
fruit ten thousandfold and on each (?) vine there shall be a thou-
sand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters,
and each cluster produce a thousand grapes, and each grape
produce a cor of wine. And those who have hungered shall rejoice :
moreover, also, they shall behold marvels every day. For winds
shall go forth from before Me to bring every morning the fragrance
of aromatic fruits, and at the close of the day clouds distilling the
dew of health. And it shall come to pass at that self-same time
that the treasury of manna shall again descend from on high, and
they will eat of it in those years, because these are they who have
come to the consummation of time' (2 Bar. xxix, 5 8).
i Enoch, too, speaks of e the dominion of His anointed' (on the
earth), where the righteous shall dwell and the elect walk. But it
is a transfigured earth, together with a transformed heaven:
And I will transform the heaven and make it an eternal bless-
ing and light:
And I will transform the earth and make it a blessing:
And I will cause Mine elect ones to dwell upon it:
But the sinners and evil-doers shall not set foot thereon.2
It is a world which has been created anew, an earth where stands
the throne of God and of the Son of Man, and where the elect will
live in blessedness. Immediately before the saying about the
transformed heaven and earth, we read,
Then will I cause Mine Elect One to dwell among them;
but it is also said that the Elect One will stand before the Lord of
Spirits, endowed with glory to all eternity. And conversely, it is
also said that
1 2 Bar, xxx, i. See von Gall, Basileia, p. 427. Kautzsch (in A.P.A.T. II, p. 423)
supplies 'to heaven9; but this does not agree with what the context says about the
interim kingdom, 2 i En. xlv, 4f.; cf. Hi, 4; li, 3-5; xlix, 2.
4°5
THE SON OF MAN
The elect shall begin to dwell with the Elect One1 . . .
On the day of the Elect One.
But the dwelling of the Elect One is in heaven, with the Lord of
Spirits.
Some light may be shed on this dual character of the kingdom
of the Son of Man by another seemingly obscure passage: 'And
after this the Righteous and Elect One shall cause the house of his
congregation to appear; henceforth they shall no more be hindered
in the name of the Lord of Spirits' (i En. liii, 6). The reference is
clearly to the heavenly community, which is with the Son of Man
even now, before his parousia.2 In the last times it will be revealed.
The eschatological community of holy and righteous elect ones,
which from one point of view is the remnant, those who have
passed through the final afflictions, and have been saved from evil
at the coming of the Son of Man, is also, from another point of
view, identical with, and the 'earthly' realization and mani-
festation of, the heavenly community around the Son of Man.
It is the eschatological communio sanctorum, the society of the holy,
the new, distinctive, eschatological, people of God, consisting of
both the elect in heaven and the elect on earth. The hindrances
which have befallen the earthly community, have also befallen
the heavenly community which is manifested: the two are one.
Similar conceptions also appear in 2 Esdras vii, 28; xiii, 52; xiv, 9.
The obscurity in Enoch's view of the kingdom is inherent in the
nature of the subject, in the superterrestrial logic of the kingdom.
It follows from the fact that the writer is dealing with realities of
faith, which do not belong to the empirical world: the absolute
eschaton (to use Otto's expression), matters which cannot be
expressed by earthly conceptions and thought-forms, that which
is and yet is not, that which is at the same time present and remote,
at once heavenly and earthly.3
Thus it is a new world of another kind which is made real when
the kingdom of the Son of Man is revealed. 2 Esdras vii, 26 says
1 i En. Ixi, 4. The text has * the elect shall begin to dwell with the elect' (see A.P. 0. T.
II, ad loc.), which does not make sense. The line must originally have ended with a
singular. Elsewhere in the Ethiopic text there is confusion of the singular and plural
forms of this expression.
2 See above, p. 3796". *The synagogues which the Messiah restores' (so Beer,
A.P.A.T. II, p. 266) cannot be the sense here. The reference is to eschatological
realities, which, like the Son of Man himself, will one day appear. In xlvi, 8 ' the houses
of His (i.e., the Lord of Spirits) congregations* clearly refers to the dwellings of the pre-
existent heavenly community 'the faithful who hang upon the name of the Lord of
Spirits1. 3 With the above, cf. Dahl, Das Volk Gottes, pp. 851!.
406
THE SON OF MAN
that the city that is now invisible shall appear, and the land which
is now concealed shall be seen. God transforms heaven and earth
(i En. xlv, 4f.; cf. 1, 4). Men, too, are transformed, and become
as the angels in heaven (i En. li, 4).
Behind all this lies the conception of paradise, which, according
to later Jewish belief, would remain hidden with God until the
end. As we read in i En. xlviii, i,
And in that place (i.e., where the throne of the Lord of
Spirits stands) I saw the fountain of righteousness
Which was inexhaustible:
And around it were many fountains of wisdom:
And all the thirsty drank of them,
And were filled with wisdom,
And their dwellings were with the righteous and holy and
elect.
The reference here is to the fountain of paradise with the water of
life. The invisible city and the hidden land are the heavenly
Jerusalem and paradise, which are elsewhere mentioned together.1
2 Bar. xxix, 5ff. describes the fruitfulness of paradise. Alluding
quite overtly to the paradise narrative and to the features from
the paradise myth in Isa. ix, iff., the writer describes conditions
in the new world, where
asps and dragons shall come forth from their holes to submit
themselves to a little child.
And women shall no longer have pain when they bear.
(2 Bar. Ixxiii, 6f.)
In T. Levi xviii, the connexion of the Messiah with paradise is
clear:
And he shall open the gates of paradise,
And shall remove the threatening sword against Adam.
And he shall give to the saints to eat from the tree of life.
(vv. i of.)
As we have already seen (pp. sSaf.), the Messiah is also associ-
ated in another way with the conception of paradise.
The kingdom of the Son. of Man is also a kingdom of peace
And it shall come to pass, when he has
brought low everything that is in the world,
1 a Bar. iv; Rev. xxii, 2; see Gunkel in A.P.A.T. II, p. 370.
407
THE SON OF MAN
And has sat down in peace for the age on the throne of
his kingdom,
That joy shall then be revealed ... (2 Bar. Ixxiii, i)
All the world's martial power and skill in arms are destroyed be-
fore him .
And there shall be no iron for war,
Nor shall one clothe oneself with a breastplate.
Bronze shall be of no service.
And tin [shall be of no service and] shall not be esteemed.
And lead shall not be desired.
And all these things shall be [denied and] destroyed from
the surface of the earth,
When the Elect One shall appear before the Lord of Spirits.
(i En. lii, 8f.)
Where the elect have drunk of the fountain of righteousness and
wisdom, and have themselves become righteous and holy, like the
angels in heaven, they have become perfect, in accordance with
the will of the Most High, i En. xxxix, 5f. says that righteousness
will prevail in his days, and that it flows before them as water for
ever and ever. The righteous stay themselves upon him, and do
not fall (i En. xlviii, 4).
Wisdom is poured out like water,
And glory faileth not before him for evermore . . .
And unrighteousness shall disappear as a shadow,
And have no continuance, (i En. xlix, if.)
Sinners and transgressors are no more. Tyrants are overthrown;
And on the day of their affliction there shall be rest on
the earth, (i En. xlviii, 10)
And from henceforth there shall be nothing corruptible.
(i En. Ixix, 29)
For the Son of Man, who rules over them, is himself full of wisdom
and righteousness, of the spirit of might and understanding (i En.
xlix, 3).
Salvation is then realized, and blessedness attained. But, as
i Enoch sees it, the essence of the blessedness of the elect is the
personal fellowship they will have with the Son of Man in his
kingdom before God's face.
408
THE SON OF MAN
And the Lord of Spirits will abide over them,
And with that Son of Man shall they eat
And lie down and rise up for ever and ever, (i En. bdi, 14)
Like him, they will be arrayed in the heavenly glory.
And the righteous and the elect shall have risen from
the earth,
And ceased to be of downcast countenance.
And they shall have been clothed with garments of glory,
And these shall be the garments of life from the Lord
of Spirits:
And your garments shall not grow old,
Nor your glory pass away before the Lord of Spirits.
(i En. bdi,
Arrayed in the heavenly festal attire, to share in an everlasting,
joyous banquet with the Son of Man: this is the simple picture by
means of which the apocalyptist tries to express the inexpressible.
But the ungodly, the mighty ones and the tyrants, may not set
foot on this transformed earth (i En. xlv, 5). In their affliction
they cry for mercy, but are denied it.
* And we pass away from before His face on account of
our works,
And all our sins are reckoned up in righteousness . . .
Our souls are full of unrighteous gain, but it does not prevent us
from descending from the midst thereof into the fburdenj* of
Sheol.'
And after that their faces shall be filled with darkness
And shame before that Son of Man,
And they shall be driven from his presence,
And the sword shall abide before his face in their midst.
(i En. bail, 911)
But the last aim which the Lord of Spirits appointed for the work
of the Son of Man, when He called him by name, before the
creation of the sun and the zodiac, and chose him, and hid him
beside Himself, is that all who dwell on earth should fall down and
worship and praise and extol and celebrate with song the name
of the Lord of Spirits, When the Son of Man has taken his seat
for judgement on his throne of glorya he will summon the whole
409
THE SON OF MAN
host of heaven, all the holy ones in the height, God's host, cheru-
bim, seraphim, and ophannim,1 all the angels of power, all the
angels of dominion, the elect ones, and all the other powers, those
on earth, and those over the water (i.e., the water above the vault
of heaven) and on that day they will unite with one voice to praise
and glorify, to extol and celebrate with song in the spirit of faith,
wisdom, patience, mercy, peace, and goodness, and all will say
with one voice 'Blessed is He, and may the name of the Lord of
Spirits be blessed for ever and ever5 (i En. xlviii, 5f.; Ixi, gff.).
That God alone should have the glory for ever is the sum of the
mission of the Son of Man.
17. Atoning Suffering and Death
Finally, the question arises, did later Judaism have any doctrine
of the vicarious suffering and death of the Messiah; or, more cor-
rectly, was it also part of the character and work of the Son of
Man in pre-Christian Judaism to suffer and die for the salvation
of men? We have seen above (pp. 325ff.) that no such idea was
connected with the conception of the national Messiah. If it did
exist in the theology of later Judaism, it must have been in associa-
tion with the idea of the Son of Man. What, then, is the position?
As Dalman and Klausner have maintained,2 the answer must be
that in the entire apocalyptic literature there is not a single passage
which suggests that it is part of the vocation of the Son of Man that
he must suffer and die to atone for the sins of men, Only in the
Apocalypse of Ezra is there mention of the death of the Messiah;
and that, as we have seen (p. 285; cf. p. 277), is merely a relic of the
old conception of a wholly this-worldly, mortal Messiah, which is
occasionally adopted in later Jewish theology in order to bridge
the gulf between the this-worldly and the other-worldly eschato-
logy by means of the idea of the Millennium. At the end of the
interim kingdom, the Messiah must die like all other men. There
is no mention of suffering or atonement. After seven days' silence,
such as there was before the creation, the Messiah and the rest of
the dead rise up again to everlasting glory.
Nevertheless J. Jeremias has revived the view that in later
Judaism there actually was a belief in the suffering and death of
1 'ofanmm, literally * wheels', denotes a class of angels. The expression is derived
from Ezekiel's vision (i, 15). See Odeberg, 5 Enoch, pp. 1471!,, and Index, s.v.
"Ophannim '.
2 See Dalman, Der leidende und sterbende Messiasi Klausner, Die messianiscfan Vor-
stellungen desjudischen Volkes im %eitalter der Tannaiten.
410
THE SON OF MAN
the Son of Man.1 The main argument for the hypothesis is that,
in the Apocalypse of Enoch, the Son of Man is conceived and des-
cribed after the pattern of the suffering Servant of the Lord in
Deutero-Isaiah, and must therefore be thought in terms of the
Servant in his exaltation, after enduring his atoning suffering and
death.
The hypothesis has recently been exhaustively examined by
Sjoberg, who has worked through all the arguments in support of
it, point by point, and has shown that it is untenable.* Dalman
and Klausner were right.
First, we must note that neither Jeremias nor the others who have
adopted his views have seriously attempted to show that the
thought that the Son of Man has actually suffered and died occurs
in i Enoch, or that his heavenly glory is presented there as a re-
ward for any atoning suffering.3 The only passage to which they
have been able to appeal is i En. xlvii, 4, where it is said the blood
of the righteous has been required before the Lord of Spirits. But
the context makes it certain that the singular, cthe righteous', is
here, as in some other passages in i Enoch (xci, 10; xcii, 3£), used
generically or collectively for "the righteous ones*.* The only
positive argument advanced by Jeremias is that in i Enoch there
are indications in the Son of Man of influence from the descrip-
tion of the Suffering Servant; but he is unable to show that the
idea of suffering has left any trace whatsoever.
It is true that individual ideas and phrases in the Servant Songs
can be shown to have influenced the sayings about the Son of Man.
But, as both Moore and Sjoberg have pointed out,5 the fact that
the rabbis or the apocalyptists interpreted detached passages of
Scripture as Messianic is no proof that they also understood the
whole to which these passages belong as referring to the Messiah
or the Son of Man, or that they actually applied the entire des-
1J, Jeremias in Deutsche Theologie, ii, 1929, pp. io6flf.; see above, p. 327 n. i.
Schniewind (Das EvangeUum nach Markus, pp. iiof.) and Johansson (Parakletoi, pp.
H3fF.) both support Jcremias. Sjoberg (Der Menschensohn^ p. 116 n. 4) points out that
Jeremias's main contention and all his arguments were presented by Billerbeck in
Nathawel, 1905, pp. Sgff.; cf. Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 481; II p. 282 n. i.
2 See the article in S.E.A. v, 1940, pp. iSsff., and Der Menschensohn, pp. n6ff.
8 Neither the fact that the Son of Man is for the time being hidden (that is, with the
Lord of Spirits in heaven; see above, pp. 3851!.), nor the possibility that he is thought
of as Identical "with the exalted Enoch (see below, pp. 437ff.) has any bearing on his
supposed suffering and death. See Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn^ pp. 1306". The question
of the death of the Messiah-Son-of-Marx in the Apocalypse of Ezra has already been
considered above; cf. Sjoberg, op. tit., pp. I34ff.
4 See Charles, The Book of Enoch translated*, p. 90; Sjoberg, op. cit., pp.
6 See Moore, Judaism I, p. 229 \ Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 119.
411
THE SON OF MAN
cription to either of them. The way in which the Targum inter-
prets Isa. liii of the Messiah is a valid proof of this point. The
actual description of the Servant in the Songs, his story, and the
thoughts about him are simply not applied to the Messiah in the
Targum. Even if it could be shown that Enoch's description of
the Son of Man contained, in thought and in phraseology, many
individual reminiscences of the sayings about the Servant of the
Lord, this would not prove that the Son of Man was regarded as
the exalted Servant of the Lord, or was, in general, conceived in
terms of that specific figure.1
In fact, the reminiscences of the Servant Songs and of Deutero
Isaiah in the descriptions of the Son of Man are not nearly so
numerous or so obvious as Jeremias, Staerk, and others hold.2
Neither 'the Righteous One' nor ethe Elect One' is so distinctive
a designation of the Servant of the Lord that it must have been
derived from that source for the Son of Man in i Enoch.3 Nor is
the title e Servant of God5, as applied to the Son of Man (see
above, pp. 367^), sufficiently distinctive of the Servant of the Lord
to justify the view that it was derived from the latter. As we have
seen (p. 225), it is so familiar in the thought and phraseology of
the Old Testament, that it readily presents itself as a designation
of the Messiah or of one who had a task like that of the Son of Man.
But there is a characteristic difference between the two kinds of
service. The supreme elements in the Servant's service are his
message, his vicarious suffering and death, and the bringing back
1 So, also, G. Kittel in R.G.G.2 Ill, col. 2120; and Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp.
I33ff. The rabbinic passages about the Servant's anguish and suffering, which are
discussed above, pp. 294^, have no bearing on the Son of Man, or on any atoning
suffering or death, but arise from the application of normal Jewish doctrines and
exegesis to the national Messiah.
2 The passages on which Jeremias builds his case are dealt with, one by one, by
Sjoberg (op. cit., pp. 12 iff.). Staerk mentions, as evidence of influence from the
Servant of the Fourth Song, the following passages: i En. xlv, 3fT.; xlvi, 4, 6; xlviii, 4;
xlix, 2, 4; liii, 4ff.; Ixii, i, 3rt., gf.; Ixiii, 1 1 (Soter I, pp. 8sf.). What has been said above
in reply to Jeremias is sufficient comment on these arguments.
3 See above, pp. 365^ The fact that the Servant is once called 'the Righteous One,
My Servant* (Isa. liii, 1 1 ; but contrast the rendering above, p. 199), and that the Son
of Man is occasionally called 'the Righteous One* (see above, p. 366) is really of no
importance. 'Righteousness' is too common a characteristic among the godly to be
used as evidence of literary or theological dependence. Moreover, there are two differ-
ent shades of meaning. In the Servant, righteousness is primarily his innocence; in
the Son of Man, it refers primarily to his activity as judge and saviour (see above, pp.
378f.,* and cf. Sjoberg, op. cit., p. 121). Nor does the designation 'the Elect One*
prove direct dependence on the Servant Songs and Deutero-Isaiah. The expression
is too commonly applied to those agents whom Yahweh has called (see above, pp.
365f.,- and cf. Sjoberg, op. cit., pp. I22f.). In the Servant Songs, the Servant is the
only one who is 'chosen' or 'elected' to lead Israel back to Yahweh; in i Enoch, the
Son of Man is 'the Elect One' because he represents *the elect* as a people,
412
THE SON OF MAN
of Israel to God, which he will thus bring to pass. The supreme
elements in the Son of Man's service are not humiliation and
suffering, nor any message, but the judgement of the world, and
the destruction of the enemies of God, the righteous, and the
elect1
The statement that the Son of Man will be ' the light of the
Gentiles' is really a quotation from the Servant Songs. But this
does not involve any profound influence from the figure of the
Servant and the ideas associated with it. At most it is a minor
theme, subordinate to the leading idea. In the Similitudes and
elsewhere in i Enoch, the thought of the possible conversion of
other nations to the religion of Yahweh is quite overshadowed by
the idea of judgement and of the destruction of unbelievers (see
above, pp. 394ff.).
On the other hand, it is obvious that certain expressions and
phrases from Deutero-Isaiah, and especially from the Servant
Songs, recur in the descriptions of the glory of the Son of Man;
and through this point of connexion some influence is actually
present, i Enoch says of the Son of Man,
And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen
Shall fraise upf the kings and the mighty from their seats,
[And the strong from their thrones]
And shall loosen the girdles of the strong,2
And break the teeth of the sinners.
[And he shall put down the kings from their thrones and
kingdoms]
Because they do not extol and praise Him,
Nor humbly acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed
upon them.
And he shall put down the countenance of the strong,
And shall fill them with shame.
(i En. xlvi, 4-9)
1 Cf. Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 134.
2 The text has * reins ' ; so A.P. 0. T. II. Beer and Sjoberg render Ziigel. The line refers
to the throwing off of the yoke of the strong from the godly. But the parallel line which
follows suggests that there is a direct reference to the destruction of the power of the
strong and of sinners. It may be that the Greek translator misunderstood a word in the
original text, namely, mfodr (Job xii, 18) or mtiser (ibid., Targum and V) or moserdL
In Job xii, 1 8 it is parallel to 'ezSr, and undoubtedly denotes the girdle of kings, as a
symbol of rank and strength; cf. the phrase 'to gird with strength' (i Sam. ii, 4, etc.)
and the idea of the * girdle of strength'. 'To loosen the girdle of kings' then means to
deprive them of the symbol of their rank and strength, and so of their power, to de-
throne them. See Mowinckel, Die SUrnnamen im Alton Testament, p. 41.
THE SON OF MAN
He shall be a staff to the righteous whereon to stay
themselves and not fall,
And he shall be the light of the Gentiles,
And the hope of those who are troubled of heart.
(i En. xlviii, 4)
Unquestionably there is here influence from the passages about
the Servant of the Lord and about Cyrus.1 But the question is,
which * servant of the Lord3 underlies the picture of the Son of Man
in i Enoch? Is it the true Servant, who voluntarily sacrifices his
honour and his life for 'the many5, or the transformed one,
nationalistic, victorious, and triumphant, as found in the in-
terpretations of the Targum and of later Judaism in general?
The answer clearly is the latter. It is the triumphant, Jewish
Messiah, who has here lent to the portrait of the Son of Man cer-
tain decorative details, which he himself borrowed unjustifiably
from the Servant of the Lord. There is not the slightest trace here
of the essential character of the Servant of the Lord. Nor is there
any trace of support for the assertion that 'the conception of the
suffering Messiah can be demonstrated in pre-Christian Jewish
theology' (Staerk). Staerk admits that if we ask more particularly
to what extent Jewish theology regarded the supposed sufferings
of the Messiah and the Son of Man as atoning and redemptive,
the only evidence is indirect, namely the occasional interpretation
of Isa. liii of the Messiah. But, as has just been pointed out, that
fact does not prove anything, directly or indirectly.
It is from this that the application of the title, 'the Servant of
the Lord9 to the Son of Man derives its meaning. In all the pas-
sages where we can give some account of the sense in which the
writer used it, it is used with the same meaning as in the Targum's
interpretation of Isa. liii: the supernatural hero, called, equipped,
and helped by God, who victoriously carries through God's plan,
judging and crushing the heathen, and triumphing over all the
kings and mighty men of the earth.2
1 With the passages cited from i Enoch, cf. Isa. Hi, 15; xlii, 6; xlix, 6. See Sjoberg,
op. cit., pp. 1241!
2 See above, p. 367. On this whole question, see Sjoberg's thorough investigation,
and his decisive criticism of the contention that the Servant of the Lord and the Son
of Man were identified in Judaism, and, in general, of the hypothesis of a suffering Son
of Man or Messiah in Judaism. Sjoberg's criticism is also a decisive refutation of
Johansson's revival of the hypothesis of Jeremias; see Der Menschensohn, pp. n6ff.
Engnell's assertion (in S.E.A.t xii, 1947, p. 132 n. 47), * Johansson is right on every
point, in spite of the polemic of E. Sjoberg', is a bare assertion, and is incapable of
disposing of Sjoberg's actual exegesis of the sources.
414
THE SON OF MAN
How alien the thought of a suffering and dying Son of Man
was to Judaism, and even to those circles where the influence of
apocalyptic was effective, is clear from the violent reaction of
Peter and the other disciples to Jesus when He (the first to do so)
announced this new message of the way of the cross (Matt, xvi,
2iff.).
1 8. The Spread of the Idea of the Son of Man in Judaism
How widespread were these ideas about the Son of Man in later
Judaism? To a certain extent they stamped the Jewish Messianic
conception as a whole, in so far as the supernatural, miraculous
traits in the Messiah are much more prominent in later Judaism
than in the earlier period, a fact which is connected with the idea
of the Son of Man. When, for example, the more official, ortho-
dox, rabbinic theology thinks of the Messiah as pre-existent, that
is, in itself, inexplicable in terms of Jewish presuppositions (see p.
334); but it may fairly be assumed that the pronounced ideas
about the pre-existence of the Son of Man also exercised an in-
fluence. We have also seen how these ideas left their mark on the
national, this-worldly Messiah (pp. 334ff.).
Both the Ezra and Baruch Apocalypses think of the Messiah as
an earthly being, and apply to him the Jewish national titles, cthe
Servant of God5 and 'the Anointed'. But, equally, they include
the idea of his pre-existence in heaven, and of his coming with the
clouds of heaven or from the sea.
Both the Ezra Apocalypse and the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs regard the Messiah as mortal. In T. Levi xviii it is
quite clear that the Messiah is the founder of a Messianic dynasty,
the first of a line of Messiahs, who replace each other in the natural
succession of generations. But we also hear that he will open the
doors of paradise, remove the cherub's sword which threatened
Adam, give the holy ones to eat of the tree of life, bind Beliar, and
give his children power to trample on the evil spirits. The in-
dividual expressions may be connected with figures and phrases
in the Old Testament; but the whole description goes far beyond
the ancient conception of the Messiah. The Messiah of earlier
Judaism was never the king of paradise.1
1 In accordance with the description of the Jewish Messiah given above, this point
must be made in opposition to Gressmann (Der Messias, pp. s86ff.), Staerk, and other
more recent students of the history of religions, who have followed Gressmann's attempt
to make the earlier Jewish Messiah purely mythological. The oriental conception of
the sacral king (and hence of the Messiah) is not derived from the Primordial Man
and the king of paradise (see above, pp. 55, 8if.).
415
THE SON OF MAN
We have seen above (pp. 36off.) that it was as Messiah, as the
fulfilment of the promises of the ancient prophets to the fathers,
that the Son of Man was conceived in later Judaism. Nevertheless,
it must be said that the two types of Messianic expectation existed
side by side. In some circles, men spoke of the Messiah, and, in
the main, thought of him in terms of the earlier, national, political,
this-worldly figure. In other circles, they spoke of the Son of Man,
sometimes giving him the ancient Messianic titles, and attributing
to him features from the ancient national idea of the Messiah, but
otherwise putting the emphasis on his superterrestrial, universal-
istic, cosmic aspect, and on his connexion with the dawn of the
new aeon, the judgement of the world, the establishment of the
kingdom of the transcendent Son of Man, the salvation of the
simple, and the return of paradise.
Thus it is clear that the Son of Man, as an eschatological figure,
is linked with the new eschatology of later Judaism, with the teach-
ing about the two aeons, the resurrection, the other-worldly king-
dom of God, paradise, universalism, and individualism.
But the spread of ideas about the Son of Man does not neces-
sarily coincide with the spread of the new eschatology. As a sys-
tem, the latter had greater influence in Jewish religion than the
teaching about the Son of Man. Dualism, the teaching about this
aeon and the coming aeon, the other-worldly element in salvation,
belief in the resurrection, and the thought of the transcendental
paradise, left their impress on the national, this-worldly, politically
orientated future hope. In the time of Jesus, no circles in Judaism
were wholly uninfluenced by the new ideas. By comparison with
this relatively extensive borrowing of dualism and other-worldly
eschatology, the idea of the Son of Man counted for much less,
although it belonged to the same system of ideas. The circles which
spoke of the Son of Man instead of the Messiah, or thought of the
Messiah more or less in the guise of the Son of Man, were few by
comparison with the others, or, at least, counted for much less in
the official outlook of Judaism.
The Son of Man does not appear in literature except in i Enoch,
the Ezra Apocalypse (to a less extent), the Baruch Apocalypse, the
Gospels, and other parts of the New Testament. Thus the idea
was known in some (not all) apocalyptic circles, which cannot
easily be more precisely defined, geographically, socially, or in
relation to the official Jewish Church,1 and in those circles from
1 On the difficulty of precisely defining late Jewish literature, especially apocalyptic,
416
THE SON OF MAN
which Jesus and the original apostles came, that is, a Galilean
milieu, which, because of its strongly eschatological and apocalyp-
tic tendencies, had a certain connexion with other apocalyptic
circles. It would undoubtedly be a mistake to assume that these
circles formed a popular, or specially clay' milieu. It is certain
that apocalyptic has one of its roots in the preoccupation of
scholars with the prophetic tradition and the prophetic books,
and in the professional c wisdom5 of the time. This is plain, not
least, from the mass of learned material which is collected in
i Enoch, astronomical, astrological, cosmological, meteorological,
theological, etc.1 Apocalyptic has another root in the pessimistic
religiosity, with tendencies towards mysticism, existing in certain
particularly learned circles, a religiosity which, with its spiritual
experiences and its consciousness of inspiration, continues some-
thing of the old prophetic movement in new forms. But this mystical
piety itself seems to have its home in intellectual scribal circles.
Another testimony to the connexion between literary circles and
the other-worldly, Messianic ideas appears in the Greek transla-
tion of the Old Testament, which in several passages seems to
introduce into the text conceptions of the pre- existent, heavenly
Messiah, and which also found him in the eone like a man' in
Daniel.2
On the other hand, the milieu of Jesus and the apostles un-
doubtedly had a more popular character. But it is significant that
very few direct quotations from the apocryphal, apocalyptic
literature occur in the New Testament. Nevertheless, in certain
ideas a close kinship is apparent, particularly the dualistic, other-
worldly eschatology and the conception of the Son of Man, which
are prominent in the apocalyptic of a slightly earlier period, namely
in i Enoch. But, at all events, the ideas in question were connected
with each other, and were cin the air5 in that milieu as a result of
the influence of living traditions. They belonged to the realm of its
inherited religious ideas, and existed there in many varying forms
1 See Holscher, Geschichte der israelitischen und jiidiscfien Religion, pp. iByfF.; Jansen,
Die Henochgestalt, pp. gff., I3ff. Davies (in E.T. lix, 1947/48, pp. 235ff.) gives very-
good reasons against the common view that apocalyptic represents a * popular ' milieu,
by contrast with the learned one of rabbinism.
2 See Bousset, Relig.*, pp. 304^ Cf. G of Job, which introduces belief in the resur-
rection into its rendering of Job xiv, 14; Gerleman, Studies in the Septuagint /, The Book
of Job, pp. 6of.
see Skat Hoffmeyer, Den apokryfiske og pseudepigmfiske Literaturs Stilling til Partidannelserne
i den palaestinensiske Senjededom. The recent discoveries of manuscripts seem to shed
clearer light on the subject:; see above, p. 356 n. 2, and p. 289 n. 4.
417
2E
THE SON OF MAN
and in no ordered system, as religious ideas usually do exist in the
mind of the public. The ordinary man neither knows nor inquires
whence he derived them. In the time of Jesus, the theologians and
those who had theological interests would try (as theologians
always do) to find them in Scriptures; and if the question were
put to them, they would answer that that was their source. The
question, which is often raised, whether Jesus took the expression
and the idea of the Son of Man from Dan. vii or from i Enoch is a
fundamentally mistaken one.1 He drew them from the milieu in
which He grew up, and from which His earliest religious ideas
were derived.
Another observation reveals something of the spread of these
ideas in Judaism. Paul, the learned theologian, does not use the
expression, 'the Son of Man'; but, on the other hand, it is quite
clear that his own view of Christ corresponds in large measure
with the picture of the Son of Man in i Enoch.2
From the above we may conclude that even before the time of
the Maccabees (as Dan. vii shows), ideas about the Son of Man
had found their way, together with the new other-worldly eschato-
logy, into certain circles of learned and pious interpreters of the
prophets and apocalyptists, and were so widely known that the
author of the Similitudes in i Enoch (perhaps shortly before
63 B.C.3) could assume that the teaching about the Son of Man
would be known and accepted among his readers. During that
and the following period it was in still wider circulation, and
formed part of the eschatological presuppositions in the circles
from which Jesus came, and also in others, in Galilee and east
of Jordan, which lay behind the origin of the Mandean sect,4
for there, too, 'the Man5 has an important part to play as a
1 It is raised again, for example, in Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice.
2 See Bousset, Kyrios Christos, pp. 158!?.; J. Weiss, The History of Primitive Christianity
II, pp. 478ff.; cf. 603!!*.; Staerk, Soter II, pp. 1548".; Mowinckel in N.T.T. xlv, 1944,
p. 205.
8 See above, p. 355. It cannot be inferred from the idea of the Son of Man that the
author is later than Daniel; for his use of it is independent of Daniel (pace Messel, Der
Menschensohn in den Bildeneden des Henoch, pp. y8f.).
4 On the Jewish and Transjordanian origin of the Mandeans, see Schou-Pedersen,
Bidrag til en analyse afde mandaeiske skrifter} pp. 21 iff. Cf. also Asting in JV.T'.T. xxxii,
I93I> PP- aogff. On Mandaism in general, see Bauer, art. 'Mandaer' in R.G.G.2 IV;
Brandt, Die manddische Religion, ihre Entwickelung und geschichtliche Bedeutung, and Die
Mandaer ihre Religion und ihre Geschichte; Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandder I-II,
and Mandaische Liturgien. Cf. also the bibliography given by Schou-Pedersen, and the
articles by Schlier in T.R* (N.F.) v, 1933, pp. iff., 6gff., and by Baumgartner in 7".£.
vi, 1950, pp. 40 iff., and in the H.U.C.A. Jubilee Volume, Part I. (xxiii, 1950-51), pp.
41 ff. Cf. also Rosenthal, Die aramaistische Forschung seit Theodor Mldeke's Verdffentlich-
ungen, pp. 238ff.
418
THE SON OF MAN
divine saviour,1 Something of the same ^kind is also found in
Manicheism.2
But it appears that this figure again became less prominent in
what may be called the more orthodox and official Jewish theology.
Compared with the Enoch Apocalypse, both the Ezra Apocalypse
and the Baruch Apocalypse represent a more conservative attitude
to the teaching about the national Messiah, and, as it seems, a
reaction against the more sectarian outlook, as they held it to be,
which was expressed in the Enoch Apocalypse. They, too, are
based on the other-worldly eschatology; but they make every
effort to combine with it the national inheritance of Judaism and
the ancient future hope. The result is the compromise provided
by chiliasm, the teaching about the Millennium. The Messiah has
acquired a number of the characteristics of the Son of Man, but
he has been reduced to the status of a temporary ruler, a transi-
tional figure between the two aeons, before the real, new world,
the resurrection, the last judgement, and the transformation of
heaven and earth. Thus in spite of everything the earthly Messiah
has triumphed over the Son of Man.
There are probably several reasons why the idea of the Son of
Man had greater difficulty in gaining ground than the other-
worldly eschatology, with which it was in fact connected. One
very important reason probably was that the Son of Man con-
flicted in one essential point with a leading idea in Jewish eschato-
logy, namely the thought of God himself as judge of the world,
and, in general, the idea of the kingly rule of Yahweh. Yahweh
Himself is the judge; and it is He himself, not the Messiah, who is
the actual king of the end time. Jewish teaching deals with the
kingly rule of Yahweh (the kingdom of God) not that of the Messiah
or the Son of Man. We note that even where the idea of the Son
of Man has gained ground, it is sometimes God Himself who is the
judge (p. 393, pp. iSgff.). According to the Ezra Apocalypse, it
is only when the kingdom of the Messiah is at an end, and the world
has returned to chaos, that the resurrection comes. Then the Most
High reveals Himself on the throne of judgement; and then
comes the end (2 Esdras vii, 33). This is the usual conception in
apocalyptic.
In the Christian era, official Jewish scribal learning once again
1 See JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. aosff.
2 See JV. T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. aogff., with references to the literature; cf. below, p. 425
n. 3.
THE SON OF MAN
repudiated the thought of the Son of Man.1 That is understand-
able. It thereby also repudiated Christianity, which proclaimed
that the Son of Man had already been on the earth as Jesus of
Nazareth, and that this Jesus would soon return on the clouds of
heaven as the glorified Son of Man. We therefore find very few
traces of the Son of Man in the theology of the synagogue. Dan.
vii, and other passages, such as Ps, Ixxx, 18, continued to be in-
terpreted Messianically.2 But that does not indicate how much
or how little of the ideas about the Son of Man were present in
the interpretation. Rabbinic theology, like the latest apocryphal
writings,3 has much to say about the godlike Primordial Man,
the first Adam, the likeness of God.4 But the rabbis were unaware
that (as there is every reason to believe, and as we shall see below,
pp. 422ff,) the Primordial Man had any connexion with the ideas
about the Son of Man. Nor is there anything to suggest that they
attributed to Adam, the Primordial Man, any eschatological role;
and that is the essential feature of the Son of Man.
The last word of official, orthodox Judaism on the Son of Man
is a complete rejection of the Christian belief in Jesus as the Son
of Man. * If a man says, ec I am God", he is lying. If he says, " I
shall go to heaven", he may say it, but he will not be able to do
it/5
19. The Origin of the Conception of the Son of Man
It ought to be obvious that the heavenly, pre-existent being,
'the Man', of divine, angelic character, preserved and hidden
with God until the time of his epiphany, surrounded by a heavenly
community of elect, righteous ones, the souls of the great departed,
did not originally have any connexion with the Old Testament
Messiah,6 and cannot be explained either by Old Testament
presuppositions7 or by the royal ideology of the ancient east (see
1 With what follows, cf. von Gall, Basileia, pp. 41 off.
2 See the passages in Strack-Billerbeck I, p. 486
3 2 En. xxx, i off.; xxxi, i-xxxii, i; life of Adam xiiff; Asc. Isa. xi.
4 See Staerk, SoUr II, pp. yff., and below, p. 426.
5 Jer. Taanit E, i, 65b, 59.
6 Cf. Staerk, Soter II, p. 471: 'the special character of the figure of the heavenly
Man can . . , not be explained in terms of the Christology (sic) of the Old Testament'.
7 Procksch (in Christentum und Wissenschaft, iii, 1927, pp. 425fF.) would derive the
expression and the idea from the phrase addressed to Ezekiel, 'Thou Son of Man'.
But there is no possible transition and no real connexion between this purely human,"
though rather dignified (see above, pp. 346£), expression and the 'theological hypo-
statization of the image of God' which is expressed, as Procksch holds, by *the Son
of Man'. See above, p. 348 n. 2. Kiippers, too, (in Intern. Kirchl. Zeitschrift xxiii.
i933» PP- 234ff.) claims to have shown that the figure of the transcendent Messiah-
420
THE SON OF MAN
above, pp. 32, 55). In fact, the difference is even greater than
Staerk, for example, recognizes. For the Old Testament Messiah
is never divine in the absolute, metaphysical sense like cthe Man',
nor has he originally anything to do with paradise. He is not the
king of paradise, as Gressmann, Staerk, and others have sought to
maintain (see above, pp. 47, 81). Nor has the Old Testament
Messiah anything to do with the doctrine of ages or of aeons. He
will come in the midst of the historical process, called and equipped
by the God of history. It was not until the later period of Judaism
that this change of fate within history came to be regarded as a
change from one age to another. The Messiah and the Son of Man
have no common origin, not even in the royal ideology of the
ancient east.1
If the origin of the idea of the Son of Man is a problem for those
scholars such as Gressmann, Sellin, and Staerk who try to find as
much as possible of the later eschatological and mythical figure of
the Messiah or saviour already present in the ancient Messiah of
earlier Judaism, it is still more of a problem for a sober historical
approach, such as the preceding chapters have sought to adopt,
in which the supernatural, divine, mythical element in the older
conception of the Messiah is limited to those features which he
has simply because he is an oriental royal figure, derived from
the mythical, divine ideal of kingship in the ancient east. If, then,
we would understand the origin of the ideas about cthe Man5 in
Jewish eschatology, we must seek possible parallels and sources
in the environment of Judaism, in the world of eastern religion
as a whole.2
1 See above, p. 32. Bentzen goes too far in his concession to Engnell (Det sakrale
kongedffmme, pp. 1 16£, and S.E.A. xii, 1947, pp. 36ff.).
2 Staerk (Soter II, p. 2) is entirely right in thus limiting the field of inquiry.
Son-of-Man can be explained as a native development of Jewish religion. But that
cannot be proved by artificial, theoretical speculations. Kuppers's supposed evidence,
that the heavenly Son of Man is not the result of ideas borrowed by Judaism from
without, is without substance; and he contents himself with the contention that non-
Jewish origin * cannot be proved with certainty' (ibid., p. 245) . Perhaps not; but what
can be proved with mathematical certainty in the history of spiritual development?
It is sufficient that the alien origin of the Son of Man can be shown to be highly prob-
able, that it is the most likely explanation of the many which have been advanced, and
that, in any event, the idea cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of Jewish pre-
suppositions. Black (E.T. be, 1948/49, pp. 131!) admits the possibility that an earlier
figure from Gnostic mysticism may have provided the background for the Jewish
conception of the Son of Man, but holds that in Judaism the figure has lost all trace of
its original character. Black inclines to the view that Isaiah (i.e., Deuterolsaiah) as
well as Daniel (i.e., Dan. vii) *has been the inspiration of the Similitudes*. But echoes
of individual expressions in Deutero-Isaiah do not suffice to show that the figure is
inspired by him; these individual features may well be later accretions.
421
THE SON OF MAN
This problem has been the subject of much discussion since it
was first raised fully a generation ago. Various mythical or divine
oriental figures have been suggested; but thought has concentrated
more and more on the widespread oriental conceptions of the
divine. Primordial Man, c the god Anthropos ', a figure of varying
importance in a number of Hellenistic religions and religio-
philosophical systems. It may, in effect, be said that all attempts
at explanation reckon with some variant of the divine, wise,
Primordial Man.1
Conceptions of a more or less divine Primordial Man were
widespread in the ancient east. Apparently there is a historical
connexion between the varying figures of this type, which seem
all to be derived, directly or indirectly, from Iranian or Indo-
iranian myths.2
We must note, however, that an essential distinction must be
made between the idea of the Primordial Man and that of the
1 See the survey of theories in Staerk, Soter II, pp. 422!?., and in my article in JV. T. T.
xlv, 1944, pp. rgoflf. To the scholars there mentioned may be added the names of
Brede Kristensen (following the * Babylonian' line; see T.T. xlv, 1911, pp. iff.),
Sjoberg (Der Menschensohn, pp. igoff.), and Arvedson, Das Mysterium Christi. Eine
Studie %u Mt 1 1 , 25-30, pp. 1 156°. Reitzenstein held that a myth of the god Anthropos
could be reconstructed (see Poimandres, pp. 8 iff.); and he clearly demonstrated the
connexion of the figure with Persian ideas about the Primordial Man (see Das
manddisches Buck des Herrn der Grbsse und die Evangelien-uberlieferung}. The derivation
from Persian conceptions is opposed by E. Meyer (Ursprung undAn/dnge des Christenumst
II, pp. 345ff.) ; but his attempt to explain the thought of Philo and Paul about the first
Adam as free speculation based on Gen. if. seems unduly rationalistic. Hommel
(E.T. xi, 1899/1900, pp. 34iff.)3 Winckler (Altorientalische Forschungen III, pp. 296ff.),
and Zimmern (A.R.W. ii, 1899, pp. iS^ff.; K.A.T.*9 pp. 52off.) attempt to derive it
directly from the Adapa myth. Otto thinks that there is a connexion with the Persian
conception of the fravashi: the Son of Man is the primordial fravashi (The Kingdom of
God and the Son of Man, pp. 38gff.). Jansen thinks of a correspondence with the
Babylonian Ea-Oannes (Die Henochgestalt, pp. 86ff.). In Theologia Fennica i-ii, 1939-40,
p. 47, Yrjo Juotsi, says, 'The Son of Man is the most strongly spiritualized form of the
entirely eschatological person, the great, heavenly redeemer and judge, who will
appear in glory and power at the end of days'. If by this he means that the Son of
Man has no original connexion with the Primordial Man (as his remark, op. cit, p.
46, might imply), then he is wrong. The sentence just quoted clearly provides no
explanation of the origin of the figure; for we may go on to ask where we may find this
* entirely eschatological person', of which the Son of Man is said to be a spiritualization,
and how it arose. At all events, it is not to be found in the Old Testament. I cannot
appraise the grounds advanced by Juotsi for his contention, since I cannot read his
Finnish book, Ihmisen Poika, of which he gives an account.
2 Literature on the conception of the Primordial Man: Bousset, Hauptprobleme der
Gnosisy pp. i6off.; Abegg, Der Messiasglaube in Indien und Iran; A. Ghristensen, Les types
du premier homme et du premier roi dans I'histoire Ugendaire des Iraniens', Greed in J. T.S.
xxvi, 1925, pp. nsff.j J. Jeremias, art. av6 pwrros in T.W.JB.N.T. I, pp. 365-367;
C. H. Kraeling, Anthropos and Son of Man', Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xli, 1940, pp. 26off.,
and xlv, 1944, PP- ^ff.; Reitzenstein, Das iranische Erlosungsmysterium.', Schaeder, in
part II of Reitzenstein-Schaeder, Studien; Troje, art. *Urmensch' in R.G.G.2 V;
Scheftelowitz in A.RW. xxviii, 1930; Nyberg, Irans forntida religioner, pp, 32f., 258ff.,
338, 34iff., 437.
422
THE SON OF MAN
first created man.1 The idea of the Primordial Man is really a
cosmological idea, and arose from an attempt to explain the origin
of the world or the cosmos. The Primordial Man is the cosmos
itself, thought of in human form, the macrocosm conceived of in
terms of the microcosm. From this cosmological Primordial Man
the world is thought to have arisen in various ways: by the sacri-
fice or slaughter of the Primordial Man, and the building up of the
cosmos from the various parts of his body, or by the emanation of
the cosmos from him in one way or another. In northern Europe
this conception is most familiar in the form which it had in Norse
mythology, the story of the giant Ymir, killed by the Aesir, who
made the earth from his body, the sea, the lakes, and the rivers
from his blood, the vault of heaven from his skull, the clouds from
his brains, and so on.2 As a cosmogonic potency, the Primordial
Man is also regarded as the Primordial Soul, from which all other
souls proceed. This sometimes leads, in mythological thought, to
his being regarded as ruler over unborn and departed souls. He
may also be said to be incarnated in later heroes and saviours.
Accordingly, in Iranian mythology the Primordial Man was also
connected with eschatology. When the new world comes, it is the
Primordial Man who returns; and the eschatological saviour
Saoshyant is regarded as an incarnation, both of Zarathushtra,
the founder of the religion, and of Gayomart, the Primordial Man.3
In Indian religious speculation, the Primordial Man is connected
with the teaching about ages (see above, pp. 263). At the begin-
ning of each new age, it is the Primordial Man or god-Man
(Purusha), who is incarnated in a new figure.
Distinct from this specific conception (of Indo-Iranian origin)
of the Primordial Man are the conceptions of the first created
man, the ancestor of mankind. The idea of a first man or man and
wife is a natural one and practically universal, being derived from
the conditions of tribal society, with its relationships and outlook,
by which every association is thought of in terms of ancestry. The
first man represents not the cosmos, but the human race. In both
Babylonia and Israel, the idea of the first man was familiar. On
the other hand, all the evidence suggests that neither the Baby-
lonians nor the ancient Israelites originally knew anything about
a myth of a real Primordial Man. Neither the Adam of the Bible
1 Cf. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis\ and Mowinckel in St.Th. II, i, 1948/9* pp.
7iff.
2 See Gr0nbech, Nordiske myter og sagn, pp. 23ff,
8 See also Widengren, Religionens varld2, pp. 364^, 389^
THE SON OF MAN
nor the Babylonian sages of ancient times and founders of culture,
like Adapa1 or Cannes,2 is the cosmological Primordial Man.
In Ezek. xxviii and Job xv, 7f., the reference is really to the first
Man, and not to the Primordial Man.3 A description is given of
one who is the prototype of glory and wisdom, living as the sum
of creation, perfect in beauty, on the throne of God and the mount
of God, etc. But in this description there is no suggestion of any
cosmological significance, any more than there is in the account
of Adam in Gen. i; ii£4
But the two conceptions have many points of contact, and, on
the whole, are akin to each other; and therefore they are likely to
have influenced each other. Both are present in the thought of
'the first5 and in that of c the perfect5, the idea of the golden age.
That is why we often find, in the numerous variants of the oriental
myth of the Primordial Man or Anthropos, many elements bor-
rowed from myths and legends about the first man.5 To this must
be attributed the fact that the Primordial Man sometimes appears
as king of paradise. This is a borrowing in particular from Baby-
lonian conceptions of the first man, and of the wise culture-hero
of primordial time; later it reveals the influence of the biblical con-
ceptions of Adam and of paradise. Conversely, we note that ideas
about the Primordial Man influence and transform the conception
of the first man, as in the late Jewish and rabbinic legend about
Adam,6 where 9ddam kadmSni has all the marks of a cosmological
figure.
The oriental, Hellenistic cgod Anthropos' is of mixed Iranian
and 'Chaldean3 origin. The varying ways in which the concep-
tions are combined represent different localities and different
1 Cf. JV. T. T. xlv, 1944, P- 2 13; Jansen, Die Henochgestalt, pp. 36f. Sumerian A-DA-AP
— Accadian amelu = man; see Langdon in £".7". xliii, 1931/32, p. 45. Adapa is zer
ameluti; he represents the human race, not the cosmos.
2 Cf. Jansen, Die Henochgestalt, pp. 1051!.
3 Cf. Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos, pp. 148!?.; Genesis*, pp. 33$*.
4 See further my article in St.Th. II, i, 1948/49, pp. 7 iff.
5 Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 2 2 off.
6 See Staerk, Soter II, pp. yfF.; cf. Soter I, pp. isSff. See also the fuller evidence in.
Strack-Billerbeck I, pp. 705, 80 if.; Ill, pp. 477-8; IV, pp. 105, 1120, and Index,
s.v. 'Adam'. Cf. Murmelstein in W.g.K.M. xxxv, 1928, pp. 242ff.; xxxvi, 1929, pp.
5 iff.; Dupont-Sommer in R.H.R. cxix, 1939, pp. i82ff.; Guttmann in E.J. I, cols.
76 iff.; Horodezky, ibid., cols. 7761!; Mowinckel in JV.7". T. xlv, 1944, pp. igSff. This
cosmological version of the story of Adam occurs in the apocalyptic work, The Life of
Adam and Eve, for which see A.P.A.T. II, pp. 5o6ff.; A.P.O.T. II, pp. 123!?. On
'adorn kadmdniin later Jewish mysticism (the Kabbala), see Horodezky in E.J. I, cols.
783ff.; Ginzberg in J.E. I, pp. i8iff.; Serouya, La Kabbah ses origines, sa psychologie,
mystique, sa mitaphysiqw, pp. 35 iff. The cosmogonic idea appears in the saying that
the Holy One created the world and other creatures according to Adam's pattern
(Serouya, op. cit, p. 351).
424
THE SON OF MAN
periods; and the figure appeared in many differing forms, which
modified each other, so that they are not easy to distinguish.
In Iranian, Chaldean, and Indian religio-philosophical specula-
tion, and in many of the Gnostic systems (both pre-Christian
Jewish and Christian Gnostic) an important part was played by
the Primordial Man, the divine Anthropos.1 This is also true of
Mandaism2 and Manicheism.3 In the Gnostic systems, the Pri-
mordial Man often appears as the Primordial Soul, which des-
cends into matter, and in that way produces the visible world.
Salvation is then the redemption of the Primordial Soul from
matter, so that he is able to redeem the other souls by his plain
teaching (the idea of 'the redeemed redeemer5).
But in most of these varying forms it is an essential feature that
the Primordial Man (Anthropos) is an eschatological figure, as
well as belonging to primordial time. Even in those spiritualized
Gnostic systems which have a strongly individualistic tendency,
something of the eschatological role of the Primordial Man is still
apparent.
Recent research has made it increasingly clear that the Jewish
conception of c the Man' or cthe Son of Man' is a Jewish variant
of this oriental, cosmological, eschatological myth of Anthropos.
This follows, not only from the correspondence in the main point
(the dual role of a pre-existent, cosmological and eschatological
being), but also from a number of striking correspondences in
detail. All those features in the Son of Man, which cannot be
explained naturally in terms of Old Testament conceptions, and
which, in a measure, appear as incomprehensible, traditional
elements with no apparent connexion with the nature and work
of the Son of Man, are explained by what was narrated about the
Primordial Man in some of the oriental accounts of that figure
and of Anthropos: for instance, his coming from the sea (see above,
pp. sgoff.), or his appearance as king of paradise (see above, pp.
jjSsf.), his connexion with creation (which is not readily apparent
1 Bousset, Hauptprobkme der Gnosis is of fundamental importance here; see also
Greed's treatment of the Gnostic Primordial Man (J.T.^9. xxvi, 1925, pp. i i3ff.).
2 On Mandaism, see above, p. 418 n. 4.
8 Gf. Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. aogff,; Creed in J.T.S. xxvi, 1925, pp,
ii3fF.; Scheftelowitz inA.R.W. xxviii, 1930, pp. 2isff. (cf. above, p. 422 n. 2). On
Manicheism, see Flugel, Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriftsn; Lehmann in Illustreret
Religionshistorie1, pp. 38 iff.; Kessler, Mani (cf. Noldeke's review in %.D.M.G. xHii,
1889, pp. 535ff.), and art. 'Mani, Manichaismus* in P.R.E* xii, pp. I93ff.; Nyberg
in Illustreret Religionshistorie1, pp. 589^, and in S.T.K. xi, 1935, pp. 278*.; Schaeder,
art. 'Manichaismus' in R.G.G.2 IV, and Urform und Fortbildung des manichaischen
Systems.
425
THE SON OF MAN
in the Jewish accounts; see above, p. 372), the thought that the
souls of the departed are in him (see above, p. 377)3 and much else.
Even the essential feature in the Son of Man (the fact that he is at
once pre-existent from primordial time and an eschatological
being) becomes clear when seen against the background of the
myths about the Primordial Man or Anthropos.
Moreover, there is definite evidence that later Judaism was
familiar with the conceptions of the Primordial Man. It is not
inconceivable that the accounts of c the first man3 in Ezekiel and
Job had already been influenced by them, as when (by contrast
with Gen. i f.) he is said to have been created before the hills. It is
certain that the late Jewish legend about Adam was influenced by
the idea of the Primordial Man. There Adam is definitely a divine
being, who came into existence before creation, as a cosmogonic
principle (macrocosm), as the Primordial Soul,1 as the original
type of the godly, righteous fulfiller of the Law, and as the one
who Is reincarnated in the godly men of later times, etc.2 In-
direct testimony to Jewish speculations about the Primordial Man
is provided (with an eschatological turn) by the Mandean figures
of the Primordial Man and redeemer, Anosh or Enosh (the Man);
for there can be little doubt that Mandaism goes back to a Jewish-
Christian or Jewish sect.3 Paul's ideas about the First and the
Second Adam are also Indirect evidence of corresponding ideas in
Judaism.4 Further evidence is provided by the many Jewish, or
Jewish-Christian, Gnostic sects, where the Primordial Man
Anthropos, Protanthropos, the Soul (Psyche), or Wisdom
(Sophia), plays the part of a cosmogonic potency and of the re-
deemed redeemer.5 Thus it is established that Judaism was
familiar with many varying conceptions of the Primordial Man
and the god Anthropos.
As we have seen, the Hellenistic and oriental Anthropos myths
existed in numerous variant forms, known to us now only through
fragments and religio-philosophical survivals which have under-
gone a measure of reinterpretation. If, then, in order to make a
comparison with the Son of Man, we give an account of the most
1 The thought of the Primordial Soul survives in the Kabbala; see Serouya, op. cit.,
pp. 355fF.
2 See my survey in JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. igSfF.
3 See Schou-Pedersen, Bidrag til en analyse of de mandaeiske skrifter med henblik paa
bestemmelsen of mandaeernes forhold tilj0dedom og kristendom, resum6, and pp. 21 iff.; cf.
N*T,T. xlv, 1944, pp. 2O5rT., with fuller references to the literature.
4 Gf. N.T.T. xlv, 1944, p. 205; and above, p. 372 and n. 3.
6 See Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 167 ff.; Mowinckel in N.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. 20off.
426
THE SON OF MAN
important features in the Anthropos myth, the result will to some
extent be an abstraction, an artificial picture. There is certainly
no ground for holding that the late Jewish conceptions of the Son
of Man were directly borrowed from any simple development of
the Anthropos myth. Many intersecting influences from many
quarters were undoubtedly present; and Judaism took over much
of the material in fragmentary, disintegrated form. But the essen-
tial point is that the figure of the Son of Man, as both a primordial
and an eschatological saviour, is a form of the common oriental
conceptions of Anthropos, which at some time made their way
into Judaism, and were to some extent and in some circles equated
with the Messiah. It is clear that this could not happen without
important changes in the character of the Primordial Man taking
place within Judaism. Both monotheism and the Messianic faith
made this inevitable. But in establishing connexions in the
history of religion, the essential point is not the larger or smaller
number of differences. It is obvious that, in being adopted into
and assimilated to another religion with a different total structure,
any given conception will take on a very different appearance,
and may even undergo radical transformation. But in determining
affinity and common origin, the decisive factor is the number and
character of the similarities which exist, in spite of the differences
in the total structure into which the idea has been adopted and
with which it has been fused.1
The following may be taken as the most important features in
the figure of Anthropos. They recur with varying frequency in its
different forms.2
1. He is a divine, heavenly, pre-existent being, who came into
existence before all creation, the 'son3 of the supreme god, or
identified with one of the high gods. He has divine qualities and
characteristics, and is endued with the divine radiance or glory.
2. He is called Man, the One like a man, Anthropos, the Pri-
mordial Man, Adam, Adamus, Adamanus, Anosh, Enosh, Mortal
Immortality, etc.
3. He is in the closest relationship to creation. The cosmos and
mankind came into existence through his death, his sacrifice, his
voluntary descent, or his moral fall into the world of matter. He
is, in fact, originally a cosmogonic idea, the mystical, speculative
1 Reitzenstein rightly makes this point again and again in his works on the problem.
2 For what follows, see N.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. 225f., where the results of a survey of
the evidence are summarized. References to the sources are given, ibid., pp. 196-223,
and a fuller discussion, pp. 227-33
427
THE SON OF MAN
expression of the cosmos itself, the macrocosm regarded as a
microcosm in human form.
4. He is often thought of as king of paradise, as ruler in the
world beyond, the other land, which can be thought of as the place
where departed or unborn souls are.
5. He is the Soul, the Primordial Soul, which includes all the
individual souls, the anima generality to which, or into which, the
souls of the dead return.
6. As Primordial Man he is also the typical man, the prototype
and pattern, the ideal man, and is, therefore, sometimes called
'the right or righteous man'. He is thought of as the first, perfect,
godly one, as homo religiosus, the first adherent and preacher of the
true religion,
7. In particular, he is the typical sage, the wise man of pri-
mordial time, possessing all secrets, the source and mediator of
all understanding. Among the Mandeans he is known as cthe
Understanding of Life'.
8. His destiny is a type of the destiny of mankind and of the
individual man or soul. His imprisonment in the material, and
his redemption from it are the symbol and the realization of the
imprisonment and redemption of the individual man. To put it in
the naive language of myth: there come to him in his kingdom of
light the other c perfect' and 'elect' ones, who, through his libera-
tion and his work of redemption, have been helped to gain their
freedom from matter and evil.
9. Sometimes it is said that the Most High God has created him
for conflict with evil, darkness, and the devil, and to liberate the
light from captivity to darkness. He belongs to the hidden world
beyond; and therefore he is himself hidden, as it is said of the Man-
dean Adakas (the hidden Adam). But one day he appears, re-
vealing himself in his bright glory, as the Mandean c Envoy'.
i o. Thereby he becomes a redeemer and saviour, partly because
his own redemption is an act of creative symbolism, anticipating
and having as its consequence the redemption of the other souls,
and partly because he is regarded as the saviour who acts and
intervenes. The understanding which he conveys is the means of
redemption from matter and evil.
n. Both as the typical and ideal man and as redeemer, he is
incarnated in the godly ones or c helpers' of later times. It is his
soul or spirit which is also in the other helpers and righteous ones,
those of whom it is most natural to think when reference is made
428
THE SON OF MAN
to those who ascend to his world of light. He gathers to himself
a people in the other world, the redeemed righteous ones, or, in
the Mandean phrase, the righteous ones who have been translated.
12. As a cosmogonic potency, he is more frequently connected
with the thought of recurring ages. He reappears at the beginning
of the era of the new world. As redeemer he is, in particular, the
helper of the godly in the catastrophe brought about by the des-
truction of the old world and the genesis of the new, or by the
transition to the pure spiritual existence in the paradise of light
In most Gnostic systems he has thus acquired a certain element of
the eschatological redeemer. In a religion with a clear eschato-
logy, he must become not only a figure from primordial time, but
an eschatological figure, indeed, the eschatological figure. His
position in the Gnostic systems implies that in certain circles or
sects in Persian religion (the only eschatological religion which
can come into question), he played this part of the returning
eschatological saviour. It is natural to think of the sect of Gayo-
martians, who manifestly made confession of Gayomart as helper
in the conflict against the evil power.1 Even in the official
Zarathushtrian theology there are indications that the saviour of
the end time has assimilated important features from the Pri-
mordial Man.2 In the Gixostic systems his eschatological role is
often, considerably reduced in consequence of the strong spiritual-
izing and individualizing tendencies in Gnostic thought.
13. As a heavenly being, the Primordial Man. reveals himself
in the clouds.
14. In several contexts he is connected with the resurrection.
Of both Gayomart and Adam it is explicitly stated that they will
be the first to rise again.
For the purposes of comparison, we add a brief summary of the
most important features in the figure of the Son of Man.3
1. He is divine by nature., arrayed in the glory of the deity, in
appearance like the angels (pp. 373ff.). In some circles he may
also have been called 'Son of the Most High God3 (pp. 368ff.).
2. He is a heavenly being, who dwells on high with the Lord of
Spirits, where the elect righteous ones have their dwellings (pp.
371, 379ff.).
3. He is not merely an apotheosized man, who has been taken
1 See Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp. aoyf.; but see also Schaeder in Reitzen-
stein-Schaeder, Studim, p. 236; and cf. Mcrwinckel in JV.jT.T1. xlv, 1944, p. 218.
2 See JV.T.T". xlv, 1944, PP» 2I4> 2I^*
9 See JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, PP» X94f*
429
THE SON OF MAN
up to heaven, like Enoch or Elijah, or who has become one with
the deity in mystical cultic experiences, like the king-god of the
ancient east. He has always belonged to the heavenly plane. He
was pre-existent (pp. 37off.).
4. In spite of this he is called 'the Man' (the Son of Man), the
typical man, the prototype of mankind. Thus, he is a divine being
in human form, a 'Man5 with a divine nature (pp. sGsff., 373ff.).
5. It seems that he is in some way connected with creation. It
is strongly emphasized that he came into existence before the
creation of the world, and in order to fulfil God's purpose for
creation; and he will in the end be lord over creation (pp. 37o£f.,
388ff.).
6. He is in some way connected with the conception of paradise,
and was at one time thought of as king of paradise (pp. 38 iff.).
7. The name 'the Man' seems to have implied that he was the
ideal pattern of mankind (see above, para. 4.). He is called 'the
Righteous One' and 'the Elect One', which seems to show that
he was, or at one time had been, regarded as the prototype of the
righteous, elect (pp. 383^).
8. As such, he is even now the head of a heavenly community
of the departed of earlier times, the translated patriarchs and godly
men, the righteous elect, who surround him in heaven, and have
their dwellings with the Lord of Spirits (pp. 37gff.).
9. It seems, too, that at one stage, at least, of the history of the
idea, there was a mystic connexion between the Son of Man and
the spirits of the righteous departed, so that they were thought of as
identical with him in some way (p. 377).
10. His most characteristic qualities are wisdom and under-
standing^ (pp. 375!:.; cf. pp. 385^).
11. His connexion with the last times is much clearer than it
was at first. He is an eschatological figure, and will be the instru-
ment in the re-establishment of creation's original state of per-
fection, which is the content of eschatology (pp. 358£, 388ff.).
12. He is connected with the dualistic view of the world and of
history, with the conception of this aeon and the coming aeon, and
with the cosmic and universalistic eschatology (pp. 36ofF., 388£F.,
40i£), not with the national Messianic hope. He came into being,
and has been chosen and preserved for the final conflict against
Satan and the evil powers, over which he will be victorious (pp.
385£, 388ff., 397f.).
13. He is now hidden with the Lord of Spirits; but one day he
430
THE SON OF MAN
will be revealed, when cthe hour of his day' has come. Then he
will take his seat on his, or God's, throne of glory (pp. 385!!.).
14. He will come with the clouds of heaven (pp. 357, sSgf., 397) ;
but it is also said that he will rise up from the sea (pp. 3go£).
15. He seems to have had some connexion with the resurrection
(PP- 399f-); B
1 6. He is judge of the world, who, at his coming, will judge the
living and the dead (pp. 3936*.; cf. p. 400).
A comparison of the characteristic features in these two figures
puts it beyond doubt that they are akin to each other, or, more
precisely, that they have common roots. Anthropos and the Son
of Man both go back to the myths about the Primordial Man.
Since it is clear that the Son of Man cannot be explained in terms
of earlier Jewish and Old Testament conceptions, and is different
in character from the Old Testament Messiah^ no other conclusion
is possible. This is confirmed by the fact that the conception of
the Son of Man includes several features, which are incomprehen-
sible as long as we consider only its late Jewish form, but which
are explained when seen as vestiges of the earlier connexion with
the idea of the Primordial Man. We may instance facts such as
the coming of the Son of Man from the sea, or his connexion with
the souls of the godly departed, or the traces (admittedly very
slight) of a connexion with creation, and so on.
But as indicated above, we certainly cannot point to any single
one of the many variants of the Anthropos myth as the only source
and the direct source of the idea of the Son of Man. Everything
suggests that the Jews acquired their knowledge of these myths
and conceptions from many quarters, in many varying forms, and
at different periods. x We may instance the difference in character
between the rabbinic legend about Adam and the Son of Man in
i Enoch; and further evidence is provided by the ideas about
Metatron, a variant of the Primordial Man (see below, p. 439).
The figure of the Son of Man in later Judaism may be regarded as
a new, specifically Jewish variant of a widespread, oriental,
Hellenistic type, which readily combines in itself features from
the cgod Anthropos' and the Primordial Man as found in the
most diverse religions and systems, and which may also reflect the
1 Cf. Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. igaf.; Reitzenstein-Schaeder, Studien, p.
129. The character of the material makes it impossible to carry out a satisfactory in-
vestigation of the details. An. attempt is made by G. BL Kraeling, Anthropos and Son of
Man, pp. 74ff.; cf. Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 194 n. n.
431
THE SON OF MAN
influence of other divine or mythical figures alongside features
from the Old Testament and from genuine Jewish tradition.1
It is on other grounds natural enough to assume such influence
(ultimately Iranian and Chaldean in origin) on later Judaism. It
is a fact that it was affected in several ways from that quarter.2
First and foremost, there was the principle of dualism itself, and
the absolute eschatology, the conception of the definitive termina-
tion of the course of this world, and the replacement of it by some-
thing new of an essentially different kind. Of the numerous
specific details, we may mention the cosmological chronology (the
division of this aeon into a chronological system of ages), the ter-
mination of this aeon by a world conflagration, the seven arch-
angels, which are connected both with the seven Babylonian
planetary gods, and the seven Persian Amesha Spentas (holy
powers), much of the narrative material in the legends about Ezra.,
Ahikar, and Tobit, and the story of Darius and the three pages in
i Esdras, besides much else.
There is no question here of influences from purely Iranian
religion and culture, but from that syncretistic fusion of Iranian,
Mesopotamian, and Babylonian factors, which, adopting the
terminology of the Hellenistic age, we call c Chaldean3, after the
Chaldeans, the dominant people in the neo-Babylonian Empire,
who were regarded in the circle of Hellenistic culture as repre-
senting the Babylonians.3 The most prominent feature in Chald-
ean syncretism is Persian dualism, combined with Babylonian
astronomy and astrology, with belief in fate, and with other ele-
ments of science and mythology. In the Hellenistic age it was
regarded as the supreme wisdom, science, and revelation. It is the
basis of Gnosticism, and undoubtedly left marked traces in later
Judaism. Accordingly, in considering so un-Jewish a figure as the
Son of Man, we must from the outset allow for influence from
Iranian and Chaldean sources.
As Bousset has pointed out,4 it is not difficult to discover the meet-
1 It is, therefore, an oversimplification, when von Gall (Basileia, pp. 409!!.) would
regard the Persian. Gayomart myth as the only source of the idea of the Son of Man,
or when Widengren (Religionens vdrldz, p. 363) says that £ the Jewish conception (of
the Son of Man) is phenomenologically the Jewish counterpart of the Iranian Gayo-
mart'.
2 On what follows, see Bousset, Relig.*, pp. 555^, 3, pp. 4821!.
3 See above, p. 264 n. 10. This Chaldean syncretism was the seed-bed of the
pre-Christian oriental Gnosis and redeemer-religions, and so of the Anthropos myth
in its developed Hellenistic form. On this Gnosis, see Jonas, Gnosis und sp&tantiker
Geist I. * Bousset, Rtlig.*, p. 548.
43*
THE SON OF MAN
ing place of Judaism with the Iranian and Chaldean spirit and
religion. It was Babylonia, which, as early as the time of Ezra and
Nehemiah, was the most important spiritual centre of Judaism,
the home of the reforming movement, and later of theology and
the Talmud. Here, too, the Iranian and Iranian-Chaldean sects
spread, and were subject to influences from Babylonian and many
other sources. Here, to this very day, live the last survivors of that
syncretistic religion, the Mandeans.
It is not difficult to understand how the Jews could recognize
and approve of the conceptions of the eschatological Man, which
they found there, assimilate them to their own world of religious
ideas, and connect them with their thoughts of the Messiah. In
fact, the myths about the pre-existent, heavenly Man, included
much which could link them to Jewish ideas. In the Primordial
Man, who was like a god or an angel, it was not difficult to see
(or to read in) the earlier Jewish conceptions of paradise on the
mountain of God, and of Adam before the fall, created in the image
of God. Judaism had long awaited a saviour who was to come at
the end of the ages. The Messiah had come to be endowed with
mythical, superhuman features, derived from the myths about
paradise and primordial time, as we see in Isa. ix, iff., or in the
interpretation of Isaiah's Immanuel prophecy as a Messianic
prophecy, and the like. The future king was more and more
thought of as a divinely endowed superman, detached from the
realism of his original cultic and sacral setting, and regarded as
the one who would bring back the glory of paradise. Accordingly,
it was also natural to see him in the super-terrestrial king of para-
dise, cthe Man'. As Jewish theology began to ascribe to the most
important blessings of salvation (such as the Law) an ideal pre-
existence, and to regard the Messiah as one of these pre-existent
blessings of salvation,1 so it became natural to find the Messiah in
the figure of a pre-existent saviour, which they found in so many
quarters among neighbouring peoples and religions.
We note, too, that the figure of the Son of Man left different
impressions in different Jewish circles. The apocalyptist in Daniel
found it suitable as a symbol for the people of Israel, whereas the
world powers were symbolized by monsters who came up from the
sea. This is connected with the fact that Daniel, like so many in
1 See Strack-Billerbeck II, 324, 335, 353, 355. (34off-)> 528; III, pp. 12, 144, 145,
511, 579; IV, pp. 4, 443, 450, 985. See above, p. 334.
433
THE SON OF MAN
other circles in Judaism, was not particularly interested in the
idea of the Messiah, whom he never mentions. Other circles, from
which the later, orthodox, rabbinic theology is derived, were re-
served in their attitude to the conception of the Son of Man. It
scarcely appears in the sayings of the rabbis, though it had in-
fluenced their ideas about the Messiah (see pp. 3338*.) • But their
attitude is connected, in part with their opposition to Christianity,
in which the Son of Man was a central idea (see pp. 32g£). The
older theology, which underlies the Targurns, is not quite so
negative. For example, it interprets ethe son of man', in several
of the psalms (see p. 357), as the Messiah, undoubtedly under
the influence of the ideas about the Son of Man. The full
content of these ideas was accepted only in certain apocalyptic
circles, which are represented especially by the Apocalypse of
Enoch.
But this borrowing also involves a refashioning of the figure in
accordance with the spiritual structure of Judaism itself.
This is shown above all by the identification of the Son of Man
with the Messiah. This means that the Son of Man is associated
with the thought of the election, the covenant, and the promises
to the chosen people. cThe elect5 in i Enoch are, admittedly,
those who have been chosen, in virtue of their piety (righteousness),
to share in the coming Kingdom of God. But the conviction is
always present that they belong to Israel, the elect people. It is
for the sake of the elect that £the Elect One' exists. It is the
kingdom for the true Israel that he will establish. The nationalistic
note is quite clearly heard in the Apocalypse of Ezra. There e the
Son of Man' is used, not as a name or a title, but as a characteriza-
tion. The author applies to him the Old Testament phrases,
'the servant of the Lord', or 'Messiah, the servant of the Lord'.
The c righteousness ' of the Son of Man in i Enoch is affected by
the Jewish view of righteousness as the ideal piety, which is ex-
pressed in perfect fulfilment of the Law of the Lord. The righteous-
ness of the Son of Man is the perfection which enables him also to
secure right and salvation for the elect, righteous ones (see above,
pp. 378f., 40if.);
In late Judaism the Son of Man was God's instrument for
bringing in 'the absolute eschaton' (as Otto puts it). But since
this saviour is also the Messiah, he is inseparable from the realistic
historical, future hope, according to which God's purpose for
434
THE SON OF MAN
Israel will be fulfilled on a new earth, and not in any impersonal
world of pure spirituality and ethereal substance.
Naturally, the identification with the Messiah laid all the
emphasis on the eschatological side of the nature and work of the
Son of Man. In spite of his pre-existence, the Son of Man is in
Judaism a purely eschatological being with a purely eschatological
task.3-
The negative consequence of this is that the cosmogonic founda-
tion is almost completely removed. Only occasional traces of it
appear; and their existence can be shown only by the methods of
the scientific, comparative study of religion.2 Of course, the
Jewish belief in creation also exerted an influence. God alone is
the almighty creator (from the time of Deutero-Isaiah this was a
basic element in Jewish belief3) ; and He created the world by His
will and by His almighty word, without any intermediary.
Another consequence is that the principle of monotheism is
maintained. In late Judaism the Son of Man is not a 'second God'
(8eijT€po$ 0€o?), as so often in Gnosticism. Although pre-existent,
he was created by God according to His will and for His glory, like
all angels, powers and holy ones. The object of the genesis of the
Son of Man before all time is that all who dwell on earth may fall
down and worship, praise, laud, and extol the name of the Lord of
Spirits;4 and he attains that object by his eschatological work.
But another consequence is that what was originally the essential
characteristic has been removed. In late Judaism the Son of Man
is not regarded as the Primordial Man.5 It is only by the methods
of the scientific, comparative study of religion that we can dis-
cern that he was formerly so regarded outside Judaism, and that
we can show the feeble traces of this thought, which survive in
certain individual sayings and phrases applied to him, the original
meaning of which was no longer known in Judaism.6
It also follows that his peculiar role as redeemer, which he had
acquired in Chaldean, Hellenistic, Gnostic systems, was not taken
1 Cf. Bousset, Hauptprobleme, p. 219; G. H. Kraeling, Anthropos and Son of Man, pp.
149, 151; Otto, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, pp. sSgf.; Mowinckel in JV. T. T.
xlv, 1944, p. 236; Sjoberg, Der Mmschensohn, pp. igyf.
2 See above, pp. 372, 376, 382, 391. To this extent Juotsi is right in his contention
that in Judaism the Son of Man 'is a soteriological and not a cosmological idea'
(Theologia Fennica i-ii, 1939-40, p. 46). But this implies nothing about the earlier or
original character of the figure; cf. above, p. 422 n. i. m
8 This, of course, does not mean that it was not found much earlier, e.g., in the
Psalms.
* i En. xlviii, 3-7; cf. Ixi, gff. See above, pp. 371, 4091- , 0 ,
5 Gf. Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 193*"- See above, n. a.
435
THE SON OF MAN
over in Judaism, x In these systems we meet many varying forms of
the thought that this material and sinful world came into existence
because the heavenly Man descended into matter and was fettered
to it. Redemption takes place, in part because the redeemer him-
self is first redeemed, and in part because he wins his own freedom
from matter, and then draws the souls of light with himself back
to the eternal source of light. In Judaism all this has vanished
from the figure of the Son of Man, We hear nothing about the
fall of the Son of Man, or his conflict with darkness at the begin-
ning, or about his death and resurrection, and the like. The
redemption of the righteous does not consist in any mystic, cultic
participation in the redemption, of the redeemer; it is a result of
his eschatological appearance for judgement and for the destruc-
tion of all the evil powers.
The apocalyptists have, in fact, nothing to tell about the life
and work of the Son of Man in his pre-existence. All the emphasis
inlaid on his eschatological role. Before he assumes that role, he is
hidden and preserved beside the Lord of Spirits. It is only then
that he is revealed, coming in his glory with all his companions,
and heralding the resurrection. In this way he brings to fulfilment
the purpose for which he was created, chosen, and preserved by
God.
Judaism, then, was unaware that the Son of Man was really the
Primordial Man. What it had to say about the Primordial Man
was connected with the biblical figure of Adam as he is presented
in the rabbinic legend of Adam.2 Instead, by identifying the Son of
Man with the Messiah, Judaism made him the representative of
the living, personal God, who created the world and who reveals
Himself and is at work in the actual course of history. There
emerged a Messianic figure both eternal and transcendental, and
also historical and human, in an eschatology both historical and
also supra-historical and absolute. It is, therefore, not without
justification that Sjoberg claims that the difference between the
Primordial Man and the Son of Man is greater than the similarity.3
^In the Messiah~Son~of-Man, the continuation of revelation
history into later Judaism provided a form for the longing and
1 See Sjoberg, op. cit, pp. ig4f.
* Sec Staerlc, Sotar II, pp. yff.; cf, I, p. 158; Murmelstein in W.^.KM. xxxv, 1928,
and xxxvi, 1929; Strack-Billerbeck, Index, s.vv. 'Adam'. 'Mensch, dcr erste'.
Gf. also Bousset, Relig*, pp. 346fF.
3 Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 193. Black (in £ 7". be, 1948/49, pp. i^f.) emphasizes,
even more than Sjdberg, the complete transformation of the oriental figure, which took
place in Judaism, see above, p. 420 n. 7.
436
THE SON OF MAN
hope cherished by God's people. This was the hope of a saviour
who could be more than a this-worldly, national, political Messiah,
and who could also bring the fulfilment of the demand for the
victory of justice over injustice., and the victory of the power of
God over the world power, which was the ethical and religious
core in the national hope of restoration and of a Messiah. It was
also the hope of a saviour, who could bring victory over the power
of sin and the devil, both in men and outside them, a mediator
who could bring the transcendent and holy God near to sinful,
suffering men, and bring the kingdom of God down to earth and
into the souls of men.
Jesus was God's answer to this divinely directed longing and
expectation.
20. Is Enoch the Son of Man?
Finally, we must append here a brief consideration of a question
which has often been raised in connexion with the late Jewish con-
ceptions of the Son of Man. Was he regarded (at least, in some
Enochian circles) as an apotheosized man, or as a being who was
at some time incarnate as an ordinary human being? Several
scholars1 have maintained that there is a special, mystical con-
nexion between the Son of Man and the apocalyptic figure
Enoch, so that either Enoch is an earthly incarnation of the Son
of Man,2 or the Son of Man is Enoch after his translation to
heaven. The reason for the detailed examination of the question
here is that Otto draws from it far-reaching conclusions concerning
Jesus' view of Himself as the Son of Man.
Appeal is made first and foremost to i En. Ixxi, but also to cer-
tain passages about Enoch in 2 Enoch, < which seem to identify
him with the heavenly Man5.3
^-Dalman, Words of Jesus, p. 244; Beer., A.P.A.T. II, p. 277; Bousset, Relig*, pp.
4o6f.; Volz, Eschatologiezt pp. 21, 25, 198; and especially Otto, The Kingdom of God and
the Son of Man, pp. 20ifF.; most recently Jansen, Die Henochgestalt, pp. i24ff.; Johansson,
Parakletoi, p. 101; and, with detailed arguments, Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. I47ff.;
on the other side, Charles, The Book of Enoch translated1, pp. iSsf., and (with arguments
based on literary criticism) The Book of Enoch translated2, pp. I42ff.; Staerk, Soterl, p. 74
(following Charles, op. cit.2) ; II, p. 68 n. 3, p. 125, and Nachtrag, p. 495 (accepting the
identity of Enoch and the Son of Man in i En. Ixxi, 5ff., but holding that that chapter
is a later addition, and that the identity is not taught elsewhere in i Enoch) ; decidedly
against the identity, Mowinckel in JV. T. T. xlv, 1944, pp. 57fF.; and similarly Dillmann,
Das Buck Henoch ubersetzt und erkldrt, p. 218.
2 So Beer, A.P.A.T. II, p. 277; Arvedson, Das Mysterium Christi. Eine Studie %u Mt
u, 25-50, p. 117; Johansson, Parakletoi, pp. ioi£; and, to some extent, Odeberg, art.
'EvwxinT.^.BJV'.r. II, pp. 554, 556. This seems to be Jansen's view in Die Henoch-
gestalt, where he makes a distinction between the heavenly and the earthly Enoch;
but his observations on this point are not clear. 8 Staerk, Soter II, p. 447.
437
THE SON OF MAN
It is true, as Odeberg and Jansen have shown, that the figure of
Enoch in later Judaism had assimilated a number of character-
istics from a transcendent, heavenly being, the wise, heavenly
scribe and possessor of the divine secrets, whom the Jews combined
with the old story of Enoch who was taken up to heaven.1 In the
Enochian literature, Enoch has become the heavenly scribe and
sage, who can reveal to those on earth the secrets of the world
beyond and of the coming aeon. First, he is lifted up to heaven
in visions, sees all the secrets,2 and receives an explanation of
them.3 This is what he recorded in his "hidden3 (apocryphal)
books to enlighten, comfort, and admonish the righteous and
elect.4 He has become the great apocalyptist above all others.
Finally, he was translated to heaven bodily, while still alive, 5 and
installed as 'scribe', cthe scribe of righteousness5.6 In 2 Enoch we
hear that he is brought before God's throne; and God says to him,
'Arise and stand before my face into eternity3; i.e., he is installed
as God's Grand Vizier and is arrayed in heavenly glory, so that
he becomes as one of ethe glorious ones', in no way differing from
them in appearance (2 En. xxii, iff.). Indeed, he is given a place
beside God's throne, together with Gabriel (xxiv, i), and God
reveals to him the most sublime secrets, which He has not even
revealed to the angels (xxiv, 2; xxxiii, 4). He is made into a
heavenly being.
Sjoberg is entirely right in his contention that this is the exalta-
tion of one who has hitherto been an earthly man, not the return
to heaven of one who has been incarnated.7 It is also clear that an
alien mythology has been transferred to Enoch. Among the Baby-
lonians, the god Nabu was the heavenly scribe, who kept the books
recording the deeds of men and the destiny which the gods had
decided in their council.8 In Egypt, the god Thoth had a similar
function.9
But this conception of the heavenly scribe existed independently
of its application to Enoch, and was undoubtedly combined at an
1 Gen. v, 24. How far these conceptions had already been connected with Israelite
ideas about Enoch, and how far we have to do with foreign (presumably Babylonian)
conceptions, is a separate question, into which we need not enter here,
2 On this idea, see above, pp. 386f. 3 i En. i, sfF.; xxxvii; Ixxii, iff., etc,
4 i En, Ixxxi, iff.; Ixxxii, i; Ixxxiii, 10; xc, 20; xciii, i; xcvii, 6; c, 6; ciii, a; civ, nf.j
cvii, i; cviii, i, 7; 2 En. xxxviii, 5ff.
6 Jub. iv, asff.; i En. Ixx; 2 En. i~xxiii; 3 En. iii-xv; xlviii, G.
6 i En. xii, 3f.; xv, i; xcii, i; cf. Ixxxi, if.; Ixxxix, 62, 71; xc, 17,
7 Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. I7if. 8 See Zirnmern in JT./LT,3, pp. 40o£, 403^
9 See Erman, Die agyptische Religion2, pp. I3f.; Steindorff-Seele, When Egypt Ruled the
East, p. 137; Mowinckel in Act.Or. viii, 1930, pp. 3off.
438
THE SON OF MAN
earlier period with another, namely that of Metatron,1 'the one
who has the throne next after God5.2 The conception of Metatron
was known to the rabbis; but among them it was already of dimin-
ishing importance, being suppressed by Jewish orthodoxy, because
it was felt to be too much in conflict with the basic dogma, mono-
theism.3 But it plays an important part in the Enochian literature,
and even more so in later Jewish mysticism (the Kabbala).4 In
3 Enoch, Metatron is God's servant, 'whom I appointed prince
and ruler over all the princes of My kingdoms and all the dwellers
in heaven . . . And every angel and every prince who has a matter
to lay before Me must go to him instead, and present his case to
him. And every command that he gives in My name you shall
observe and fulfil ... I have appointed him over all the treasuries
of the palaces of the highest heaven, and over all the stores of life
that I have in the high heavens9 (3 En. x, sff.). He has a throne
which is a copy of c the throne of glory \ God's own throne (xlviii,
C3 8f.). He is God's representative, and has God's authority. As
'Prince of the Presence' who stands immediately before God and
represents Him, he is the highest heavenly being, the judge of
those who dwell in heaven and on earth. He is a copy of God
Himself, and is actually called 'the lesser Yahweh3 (xii, 5). He
rules over the stores of life, shares in God's omniscience, knows all
secrets, and is aware of men's hidden thoughts. Metatron himself
says, 'from the beginning the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed
to me all the mysteries of the Law and all the secrets of wisdom . . .
All the secrets of the universe and all the secrets of creation were
revealed to me, as they are revealed to the creator of the world*
(xi, i). God says of him, 'Every secret did I reveal to him as a
father' (xlviii, G, 7).*
This conception is clearly not Jewish in origin. It is also clear
that Metatroa's status corresponds in many ways to that of the
Son of Man. Bousset recognized that this Metatron was ultimately
a variant of the Primordial Man,8 combined with the idea of the
1 On Metatron, see Bousset, Relig.2, pp. 296, £o6f.; Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp.
I gaff. ; Odeberg, 3 Enoch, pp. 79-146, and in Kyrkohistonsk Arsskrift, xxvii, i 927, pp. i ff.
* On the probable etymology of this word, see Odeberg, 3 Enoch, pp. i25ff.
3 Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen, v, 24. Bab. Hagigahisa; Leviticus Rabbah
xxxiv 8; Bab. Sanhedrin 38b. Gf. Odeberg in Kyrkohistorisk Arsskrift, xxvii, 1927, p. 9.
* C£ Odeberg, 3 Enoch, pp. nifT,; Serouya, La Kabbah, ses origines, sa psychologic
mystique, sa mttaphysique, p. 97. From the earlier period. Bowman (E.T. lix, 1947/48,
p. 287) mentions Elisha ben Abuya, who, *when he attained the Chariot vision, saw
Metatron, and said, "Are there perhaps two first principles?"'.
6 On the above, see Odeberg, Kyrkohistorisk Arsskrift xxvii, 1927, pp. 2ff.
6 See Bousset, Hauptprobleme der GnosiSjjpp. iggff.; Odeberg, ibid., pp. 4f.
439
THE SON OF MAN
heavenly scribe and Grand Vizier. In an oriental, royal court,
the 'scribe5 is more than a recorder; he is a high official, who is in
a position to make his influence felt in the highest quarters. To
him men turn when they seek a favour from the king himself. This
is still more applicable to the heavenly scribe. The name and
nature of his office show that he is God's agent and intermediary.1
The Jewish mystics are, in a measure, aware that Metatron is the
Primordial Man incarnate in Adam ("adorn kadmdni}*
It is, however, peculiar to the Enochian literature that Enoch
is identified with Metatron.3 When Rabbi Ishmael asks Meta-
tron the reason for his name and his exalted status, the
answer is, 'Because I am Enoch, the son of Jared' (3 En. iv, 2).
To explain Enoch's name of honour 'Aleph' (9lp), the Most High
says, CI seized him, and I took him, and I appointed him:4 that is
Enoch, the son of Jared, whose name is Metatron. I took him
from among the children of men, and gave him a throne like My
own throne' (xlviii, C, if.). It is uncertain whether any of these
ideas about Metatron have left their mark on the figure of Enoch
in i and 2 Enoch. At all events, these books do not apply the name
Metatron to him. But it is clear that when Metatron is equated
with Enoch, all the original ideas about the Primordial Man
recede into the background. Enoch is then regarded as an ordin-
ary, mortal man, who, as a reward for his piety, was taken up from
earth and exalted to his position as Metatron and God's scribe.5
Thus Enoch is made Metatron, a position which, in the view of
the Enochian circle, did not exist before his translation. In this
way, the exaltation of Enoch means a lowering of the idea of
Metatron in the interests of monotheism.
The question then arises, whether i Enoch speaks only of the
exaltation of Enoch to an elevated position in heaven, similar in
many ways to that of the son of Man (which would be natural
enough^ inter alia, because the two conceptions have a common
source in the idea of the Primordial Man), or whether it also
teaches that Enoch is exalted to become the Son of Man and is made
one with him. As we have seen, this latter view is the more
widely accepted, and Sjoberg recently sought to present detailed
exegetical support for it. But it can hardly be right.
1 See Mowinckel in jV.lT.r. xlv, 1944, jp. 65. 2 See Odeberg, ibid.
a See the references above, p. 439 and n. i; Sjoberg, Der Menschensokn, pp. lyaff.;
Mowinckel in JV.T.T. xlv, 1944, pp. 65$".
4 *lp is taken as an abbreviation of the three verbs, ^fyaztiw, lekabtiw> and p'faidtiw*
s On this point, Sjoberg is entirely right (Der Menschensohn^ pp. i7aff.)j cf, also
Mowinckel in JV.T.T", xlv, 1944, p. 66.
440
THE SON OF MAN
i Enoch refers several times to Enoch's translation to heaven
and his position as 'scribe' (see above, p. 4s8f.)3 an idea which is
found elsewhere in apocalyptic (2 Esdras xiv, 9; 2 Bar. Ixxvi, 2),
Thus Enoch becomes one (the leading one) of the righteous elect,
the patriarchs and the righteous who have been in that place from
the beginning (i En. Ixx, $f.). He has become the head of the
heavenly community (pp. 3796*.). It is explicitly stated that this
means that he is taken up to the Son of Man and the Lord of
Spirits (Ixx, i). So too, in 2 Esdras xiv, 9: cFor thou shalt be
taken up from (among) men, and henceforth thou shalt remain
with my Servant1 (i.e., the Messiah, the Son of Man), and with
such as are like thee' (i.e., the heavenly community).
It is, in fact, this idea (of translation to be with the Son of Man,
not to be the Son of Man) which also occurs in i En. Ixxi. What-
ever be the literary relationship between Ixx and Ixxi (whether it
was the author of the Similitudes or a later writer who added Ixxi as
the conclusion to the Similitudes) , 2 it is at least clear that Ixxi origin-
ally formed a separate tradition, independent of Ixx. 3 Both chapters
deal with the same subject: Enoch's translation and exaltation.4
i En. Ixx describes it quite briefly. Enoch was lifted up on cthe
chariots of the spirit', and set down between two quarters of
heaven, the north and the west, where angels took cords to measure
the place for the elect and righteous. There he saw the patriarchs
and the righteous, who have dwelt in that place from time im-
memorial. Between north and west in heaven is paradise.5 There
can be no doubt that Enoch is already in heaven, where the dwel-
lings of the righteous are. It is there that he is with the Son of Man
and the Lord of Spirits. It is obvious that this is identical with his
installation as heavenly scribe, presupposed elsewhere in i Enoch.
In Ixxi, i, we read:
And it came to pass after this that my spirit was translated
And it ascended into the heavens;
1 Filius metis = 'abdf; see above, p. 294. A.P.O.T. II has £my Son'.
2 That Ixxi or Ixxi, 5ff. is a later addition has been maintained by Beer (A.P.A. T, II,
p. 228), Lagrange (Lejudalsme avant Jtsus-Christ, p. 252), Staerk (Soter II, p. 68 n. 3),
Messel (Der Menschensohn in den Bilderreden des Henoch, pp. xyf.)* and others.
8 This has also been maintained by Beer (A.P.A.T. II), Volz (Eschatologu*, p. 25),
and, at one time, by Charles (The Book of Enoch translated1, pp. 143!).
* Sjoberg (Der Menschensohn, pp. i6off.) tries to show that not only Ixxi, 1-4 and
Ixxv, 5ff., but also the whole of Ixx f. forms a unified, coherent account, describing in
three stages Enoch's translation and exaltation. But he ends (cautiously and correctly)
by stating that there is no conclusive evidence of such a unity. It is a possibility; in
SjSberg's view, the possibility for which there is most support.
5 i En. xxxii, af.j cf. Beer, A.P.A.T. II, p. 1229.
441
THE SON OF MAN
after which Enoch falls on his face before the Lord of Spirits, and
is then led into His presence in the highest heaven. Thus there
can be no doubt that 'after this' in v. i did not originally indicate
any continuation of hoc, because in Ixx Enoch is already in heaven.
Ixxi describes in greater detail what has already been briefly re-
counted in Ixx. If, then, Ixxi does have a different conception of
the position to which Enoch has been raised, namely that he him-
self actually becomes the Son of Man, it is clear that this is a special
conception within i Enoch,1 which differs from the usual view in
apocalyptic and i Enoch itself about the position of Enoch and his
relationship to the Son of Man, namely that he was exalted to be
with the Son of Man as the foremost among the righteous ones
above.2
But this interpretation of Ixxi is in itself improbable. The usual
view is based in the main on w. 14-17:
14. And He3 came to me and greeted me with His voice and said
unto me:
'Thou art the Son of Man, thou who art born unto righteous-
ness,
And righteousness abides over thee.
And the righteousness of the Head of Days forsakes thee not.5
15. And He said unto me:
'He proclaims unto thee peace in the name of the world to
come;
For from hence has proceeded peace since the creation of the
world
And so shall it be unto thee for ever and for ever and for ever.
1 6. And all shall walk in thy ways since righteousness never for-
saketh thee:
With thee will be their dwelling-places, and with thee their
heritages.
And they shall not be separated from thee for ever and ever
and ever.
1 To that extent Bultmann (in T.R. (N.F.) ix, 1937, pp. asf.) has some justification
for his view that i En. Ixxi is a scribal speculation by an individual apocalyptist— -
always assuming that the usual interpretation of the passage is sound.
p. 153, A.P.O.T. II has 'And he (i.e., the angel) '; but the speaker is undoubtedly
the Lord of Spirits Himself. See Sjoberg, op. cit., pp. 155^ In vv. 14, 1 6 the third per-
son is substituted in A.P.O.T. II for the second; but these emendations are discarded
in the translation printed above.
THE SON OF MAN
17. And so there shall be length of days with that Son of Man,
And the righteous shall have peace and an upright way
In the name of the Lord of Spirits for ever and ever.5
If we disregard for the time being the introductory words in v.
14, it is clear that Enoch's position as guide and pattern of the
righteous is on a higher plane than elsewhere in i Enoch, and re-
sembles that in 2 Enoch. In fact it has certain features in common
with the position of Metatron and the Son of Man elsewhere in
apocalyptic.1 He is the first of the righteous. They dwell with
him; and he watches over their heritage. He is the guide, in whose
righteous ways they will all walk. 2 But we may not conclude from
this that Enoch is here installed as Son of Man.3 The conclusion
is affected by the interpretation ofvv. 14 and 17, and by the extent
to which that interpretation can be reconciled with what we find
elsewhere in i Enoch. It is universally admitted that v. 14 can
also be translated:
'Thou art the son of man, who is born4 unto righteousness \
that is3 to walk righteously, and to gain salvation, the reward of
righteousness. If that is so, it is clear that 'son of man5 is used not
in the technical sense, ' that Son of Man5, but in the ordinary sense,
as a common noun, cthat man who5 etc. It then follows that Ixxi
conveys the same meaning as Ixx: the exaltation of Enoch to a
conspicuous position in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, but not
his exaltation to be the Son of Man.
That is also the meaning of the concluding words in v. i 7-5 We
read there that the righteous will have everlasting life 'with that
Son of Man', and that they will 'have peace and an upright way
in the name of the Lord of Spirits3. Sjoberg rightly paraphrases
this, 'all the righteous, not only Enoch', thus including Enoch
among the righteous, who will be with the Son of Man.6 It is
1 Cf. Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 153. But it is an exaggeration to say that Enoch
here * occupies the same central position in the heavenly world as the Son of Man does
elsewhere'. There is, for instance, no reference here to judgement or enthronement.
2 The main question is not seriously affected by differences about the text of v. 16.
See Beer, A.P.A.T. II, ad. loc., and Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 153 n. 15.
3 Pace Sjciberg, op. cit, p. 153.
4 The verb in this relative clause is in the second person. But, in accordance with
normal linguistic usage, the clause may be taken either as a more precise definition of
the predicate 'son of man', or as a clause in apposition to the subject 'thou*. See
Sjoberg, op, cit., p. 152.
6 1 admit that Sjoberg (op. cit., p. 152) is right in his interpretation of v. 1 7, as against
my>arlier view (JV.T.T. xlv, 1944), which, as he rightly suggests (op. cit., p. 153 n. 14),
I had already begun to doubt (N.T.T, xlv, 1944, p. 194 n. 22).
6 Has Sjoberg noticed the inconsistency between this paraphrase and the interpreta-
tion of the chapter which he maintains elsewhere?
443
THE SON OF MAN
exactly the same thought which is more briefly expressed in hoc,
that Enoch was exalted to the Son of Man and the Lord of Spirits
to be with them. It is certainly not by accident that in z/. 1 7, where
the expression cSon of Man' occurs in the technical sense, of the
pre-existent Messiah, the translator uses the usual technical ex-
pression, walda sabe*, whereas in v. 14 he uses walda be'esi (son of
man) . This suggests that in v. 14 the expression is not the technical
one, but the ordinary common noun, c that man who ' . . .
The view that i En. Ixxi describes the exaltation of Enoch to be
the Son of Man is, in fact, also incompatible with the ideas about
the Son of Man, which are found elsewhere in the book, i Enoch
describes the Son of Man as existing before creation. The Simili-
tudes begin with the translation of Enoch in a vision to heaven,
where he sees the Son of Man as one who has existed from the
beginning. It seems out of the question that the same author can
have thought that Enoch later became the Son of Man, for that
would mean that the Son of Man did not exist until Enoch was
finally translated to heaven, as Metatron, according to Enochian
speculation,1 also came into being as Metraton in and through the
exaltation of Enoch to that position. If the meaning of i En. Ixxi
was that in some mystical fashion Enoch was made identical with
the already existing Son of Man (e.g., fused with him in some kind
of corporeal unio mystica), surely that would have been stated or
suggested. References to ecstatic, mystical experiences are not
uncommon elsewhere in i Enoch;2 in this very chapter (Ixxi, 11)
we have the account of an ecstatic experience of this kind, in which
Enoch sees the Head of Days. But there is no suggestion in Ixxi
of a fusion with the Son of Man.3 That Enoch should thus, in a
realistic, metaphysical sense, become one with the Son of Man is
inconceivable, not only for our mode of thought,4 but also for any
reasonable mode of thought, and particularly in i En. Ixxi, where
the Son of Man does not appear at all, either actively or passively,
but where there is only a reference to an exaltation to that heaven
where the Son of Man is, in order to be with him there.5
1 But note, not in the original teaching about Metatron; see above, pp. 43 gf.
2 i En. xiv, 8f., 24!*.; xxxix, 3, 14; Hi, i; Ix, 3; Ixxi, i, n; Ixxxi, 5.
8 This is admitted by Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, p. 187.
4 As Sjoberg admits, loc. cit.
5 The parallels which Sjoberg mentions (op. cit., pp. i8yf.: the union of the dead
Pharaoh with Osiris, or the reunion of a dead Persian with his fravashi) shed no light
on the conception in i En. Ixxi.
444
THE SON OF MAN
21. c The Son of Man' as Used by Jesus
In the ideas about the Son of Man, Jesus found a form which
He could use to express His consciousness of His nature and His
vocation. His task at the coming of God's kingdom.
The discussion of the question during the past two generations
has made it quite certain that Jesus actually used this title by
preference in referring to Himself.1 Indeed, it is clear that He
even deliberately avoided other Messianic titles.
It is not our present purpose to examine the content which Jesus
found in and brought to the expression. This book is intended
only to lead up to the message of Jesus about the Son of Man, to
show the presuppositions behind it and to present the develop-
ment of the various factors, and the form in which they lay ready
to be used, transformed, and fitted into a new unity by Him. But
a few observations may be made in conclusion.
The matter may be summarily expressed thus: Jesus came to
be, not the Messiah, but the Son of Man.2 He wanted to be the
Messiah only in so far as the idea of the Messiah had been modified
by, and was compatible with, that of the Son of Man.
In spite of incidental influence from the Son of Man, the Jewish
Messiah had remained a figure who belonged to the future history
of this present world. As soon as it is admitted that he cannot find
fulfilment in the natural world, he loses his meaning. He is in-
compatible with a kingly figure, whose kingdom is not of this
world, and whose royal nature it is to bear witness to the truth and
to be crucified for the sake of the truth. Therefore a crucified
Messiah is a stumbling-block to the Jews. If this is to come to
pass, an earthly Messiah is not enough.3
It is also worth noting that Jesus did not associate Himself with
the popular ideas and expectations. The popular Messianic ex-
pectations were the national, political, and this-worldly ones, to
which His disciples so often clung. As we have seen (p. 415!?.),
the ideas which He took up were those of more esoteric circles,
Ideas which circulated in narrower, and for the most part literary
and theological circles, though they may have been to some ex-
tent familiar to a wider public.
By iising the title 'Son of Man' and some of the conceptions
1 See Hiring, Le royaume de Dieu et sa venue d'aprts Jtsus et Saint Paul', Baldensperger's
surveys of literature in T.R. iii, 1900, pp. 20 iff., 24,38". A critical survey of the most
recent research is given by McGown in The Journal of Religion xxviii, i, January 1948,
pp. iff. 2 This is frankly admitted by He"riag, op. cit., pp. nff.
z Again it is a pleasure to refer to Toynbee, A Study of History I-F7, pp. 522f., 5291*.
445
THE SON OF MAN
which were then associated with it, Jesus may be said to have
associated Himself with the varied history which had led up to the
late Jewish idea of the Messiah, with its borrowings in form and
content from Jewish and pagan sources. He laid all the emphasis
on those aspects of that idea which were represented by the title
ethe Son of Man5. In so doing He set His seal on that process of
religious development, and acknowledged its validity as revelation
history. He also hallowed those features in it which were of non-
Jewish origin, and in fact attested that He was a saviour for both
Jews and Gentiles, the fulfilment of the hope of all mankind, being
'Son of Man' in the more modern sense of the term, which is
justified by the connexion with the idea of the Primordial Man.
When Peter in his vision saw a sheet let down from heaven full of
clean and unclean animals, it was said to him, 'What God has
made clean, you must not call common3. This may be applied
to the history of the idea of the Son of Man, and to the heathen
elements associated with it, which found their way into the
Messianic belief of the people of God, and later of the new people
of God.
Something must also be added about the sense in which Jesus
uses the phrase c the Son of Man 3 . Both what has been said above,
and also the use of the phrase in the Gospels, make it plain that what
Jesus seeks to express by it is not, primarily, the idea, which most
readily occurs to the modern mind, of His connexion with us men,
of the earthly and human side of His nature. His use of the phrase
proclaims boldly the original paradox, that He, who will one day
come with the authority of God, is called cthe Man5. But with
Him the order is reversed: He, who now goes about as an ordinary
man, is also the one in whom the miraculous powers of the king-
dom of God are at work; it is He who has power over the mighty,
and is Lord of the Sabbath; and it is He who will one day be re-
vealed as 'the Son of Man5, with divine glory and authority.
This change of emphasis is important. It has been said that it is
the union of majesty and humility that is expressed in His use of
the phrase.1 For Jesus, the fact that He is the Son of Man is a para-
dox, a mystery of the kingdom of heaven, a cross for faith. Even
1 Cf. Brun, Jesu evangelium*, pp. 555f. When the idea of humility appears in Jesus*
use of the phrase, it can be explained in the light of His personal consciousness of
what it meant to be the Son of Man. But the thought is connected with a nuance
which the context sometimes gives to the expression in the Old Testament, e.g., Ps.
viii (combination of dignity and insignificance), or when the Most High addresses
Ezekiel as 'Thou man' (ben *dddm)', cf. Bowman in E.T. lix, 1947/8, pp. 283^, with
references to rabbinic interpretation.
446
THE SON OF MAN
the disciples find it hard to understand that He, who has been their
companion as a poor man, really is the one in whom the kingdom
of God is already present, and through whom it is at work. They
were amazed that cGod had given such authority to men' (Matt.
ix, 8) . It is still more amazing that the one who says that He is the
Son of Man does not appear in glory, and that He is not immedi-
ately judge with God's authority, but the preacher and mediator
of God's forgiving grace, the friend of sinners and tax-collectors,
the good shepherd, who seeks the lost and opens for them the door
to the kingdom of God and to paradise. c The Son of Man came to
seek and to save what was lost3 (Luke xix, 10). The fact that in
Jesus the Son of Man has already come, and goes about, yet is
hidden, means not judgement but God's love and grace. This is
the visible offer of salvation for sinners and for the oppressed.1
cThe atmosphere about Him is different' from that in the usual
ideas about the Son of Man.2
How Jesus reached this understanding of Himself is His own
personal secret, which cannot be penetrated by any attempt at
psychological explanation. Jesus understood and fulfilled the
thought of the unknown Messiah on earth in a manner entirely
different from its presentation in the Jewish legend (see above,
pp. sosff.).
That the earthly Jesus was Himself the Son of Man can be inter-
preted in two different ways. Jesus may have meant that He was
the heavenly Son of Man, who had come down in a mysterious
manner, and now walked the earth. Or He may have meant that
he was an elect man, who would be exalted to be what the initiated
said that the Son of Man was in heaven. On this latter view it
might be said that the Son of Man did not yet really exist in
heaven, except in the purpose and thought of God (thejcg^, but
that when Jesus was exalted to heaven, He would be endued with
all the divine nature and authority inherent in the idea of the Son
of Man. Then the Son of Man would come into existence; and as
such Jesus would come in the clouds of heaven, and enter upon
His dominion.
The former of these interpretations appears in the Fourth Gos-
pel (iii, 13; vi, 62), and is also in accord with Paul's thought of the
pre-existence of Jesus with God in heaven.3 It seems very likely
1 Of, Sjoberg, art. 'Jesus Kristus' In S.B.U. I.
2 See Sjdberg, c Manniskosonen i judendom och urkristendom' in sS:e Svenska
Lftroverkslfiraremote i Stockholm, p. 265.
8 2 Cor, viii, 9; Phil, ii, 6f. Gf. Brim, Paulus's kristelige tanker'2', pp. 8aff, The passages
447
THE SON OF MAN
that Paul's thought here is affected by familiarity with the
theology about the Son of Man. In the Fourth Gospel there is also
evidence which points to another possibility, namely the idea of
the logos in the Prologue: Christ existed before the origin of the
world as God's creating and saving 'word', 'thought', and pur-
pose'. If we confine ourselves to the sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic
Gospels, it is natural to incline to the other possibility, that the
man Jesus was selected to be, and would be, exalted to become all
that the old traditions recounted about the Son of Man. The
Synoptic tradition contains nothing which suggests that Jesus
attributed to Himself (either in general, or as Son of Man) a real
pre-existence.1 There the title refers to the earthly existence of
Jesus and His eschatological status at His exaltation. There seems
to be justification for the statement that on the lips of Jesus the
title has ' an enigmatic ring' for His hearers.2 His parting word to
the Council, 'Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the
right hand of Power, and coming in the clouds of heaven' (Matt.
xxvi, 64; cf. Markxiv, 62; Luke xxii, 69), is most naturally under-
stood in its fully paradoxical sense: He who is now an earthly
human being will be revealed as the Son of Man at God's right
hand.
But there is another great and incomprehensible innovation in
Jesus' view of Himself as the Son of Man. It is an original and
essential element in His thought, that the Son of Man will be re-
jected, and will suffer and die before He comes in His glory with
God's angels and sits down on the judgement seat. Among the
most outstanding of the sayings of Jesus about the Son of Man are
those which express this thought.3 As we have seen (pp. 325^,
4 1 off.), there is nothing corresponding to this in the Jewish con-
ceptions of the Messiah and the Son of Man. Even the idea of the
Son of Man was an inadequate expression of the self-consciousness
of Jesus. It still had about it something of the Jewish hope of an
earthly future. In the idea of the suffering, death, and resurrection
of the Son of Man, Jesus added to it a new element. This new
element is understood in the light of God's love. The death of the
1 Gf. Brun, Jesu evangelium2, pp. 543f., 559.
2 Brun, op. cit., p. 560.
8 See H6ring, Le royaume de Dieu et sa venue d'apres Jfaus et Saint Paul, pp. g8fY,
which speak of the 'sending' of Christ need not presuppose sending from one place
(heaven) to another (earth), but may be instances of the customary Semitic expression
for a special vocation; cf. von Dobschutz in J.B.L. xli, 1922, pp, aiaff.
THE SON OF MAN
Son of Man, who is also the Servant, creates a new possibility that
'the many5 may be saved.1
There can be little doubt about the source from which Jesus
derived this idea. It came from Scripture, from the suffering
Servant of the Lord. In the predictions in the book of Isaiah, He
found God's answer to the problem raised by the opposition and
obduracy of His own people.
As we have seen, no one in Judaism had really connected the
Servant with the Messiah, the mediator of the kingdom of God,
and of the new relationship between God and men. When the
Servant in Isa. liii was identified with the Messiah, the passage
was reinterpreted in such a way as to reverse the sense, and the
Servant vanished in the national, political Messiah (see above,
pp. 33off.). Jesus was the first to take this prophecy seriously in
its real meaning, and apply it to Himself.2
The essential and decisive way in which Jesus transformed the
idea of the Messiah was that He combined the thought of the
suffering, dying, and exalted Servant of the Lord with that of the
Son of Man, who will come again on the clouds of heaven. The
Son of Man will be rejected, will suffer many things, will die, be
buried, and rise again on the third day.
But even for Jesus Himself this thought can hardly have been
originally included in the idea of the Son of Man. Through adver-
sity and suffering God had to show Him that it was so. For Him,
too, it was a new realization that 'according to the Scriptures'
the Son of Man must suffer and die.
Thus this aspect of Jesus' use of the phrase has all the tension
of paradox. The Son of Man, who, as originally conceived, is the
pre-existent, heavenly one, endued with the spirit, He will be
humiliated, and will suffer and die. The thought was unheard of,
both among the adherents of the national Messianic ideal, and
still more among those who gave allegiance to the idea of the Son
of Man. The Jewish Messianic concept is thereby transformed,
and lifted up to a wholly other plane. In fact, the Jewish Messiah,
1 Gf. Sjoberg, op. cit.
2 Strom's supposed evidence that the two ideas had been combined in Judaism
before the time of Jesus (namely the textual variants in 2 Esdras xiii, 32; filius metis
and *My Servant'; see above, p. 294) is too easy and superficial: 'hence we may con-
clude that we have here a combination of the Son of Man in Dan. vii with the Ebed
Jahve of Isa. liii' (Vetekornet, p. 140). 'Here5: where? Are both the variants original?
As has been observed above, the title *My Servant* is too commonly applied to an
agent of Yahweh to justify the conclusion that it points to the influence of Isa. liii.
Unfortunately, Strdm can also cite Dahl (Das Volk GotUs> p. 91), who is dependent
here on G, Kittel (in R.G.G* III).
449
2G
THE SON OF MAN
as originally conceived, and as most of Jesus' contemporaries
thought of him, was pushed aside and replaced by a new redeemer
and mediator of salvation, 'the Man', who comes from God to
suffer and die as God's Servant, in order to save men from the
power of sin, Satan, and death. For Jesus, the Jewish Messianic
idea was the temptation of Satan, which He had to reject.1 The
new conception of a saviour, which Jesus created, unites in itself
the loftiest elements in both the Jewish and the c Aryan' spirit, and
fuses them in a true unity, which is realized in Jesus Himself.
In so far as the Son of Man (both originally and in the thought
of Jesus) is an expression for the victorious Messiah, God's repre-
sentative, who comes in His glory on the clouds of heaven, it may
be said that it is only after His exaltation, when He comes in glory,
that Jesus becomes the Son of Man, With some justification it has
been said that during His earthly life He was a prospective
Messiah; and therefore it might be said, with greater justification,
that He was a prospective Son of Man. But according to the testi-
mony of the Gospels, which we can have no valid grounds for
doubting on this point, Jesus also applied the term 'Son of Man'
to Himself as He was when He went about preaching, in every
way a man among men.2 Here, again, the tension of paradox is
apparent. This aspect of the matter is particularly evident in
Paul's Christology : the humiliation of the Son of Man began before
His rejection and suffering. The heavenly Son of Man went about
on earth as an earthly man; and although c foxes have holes and
the birds of the air have nests, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
His head'. Jesus, the poor man, the carpenter from the provincial
town in half-heathen Galilee, He is the heavenly Son of Man, who
once was on high in divine glory. This paradox, which is clearly
brought out in Paul's thought of Him who was rich and became
poor, who shared the divine glory but emptied Himself, who did
not count equality with God a thing to be snatched at, but was
born in the likeness of man (Phil, ii, 6f.) — this paradox must go
back to a similar tension in the soul and the consciousness of Jesus
Himself, which finds expression in the daring way in, which He
transforms and uses the concept of the Son of Man.
1 Mark viii, 27-33, and parallels; cf. the Temptation narrative, Matt, iv, iff; Luke
iv, iff. See Hering, Le royaume de Dieu et sa venue d'apres Jtsus et Saint Paul, pp. laaff.
2 Markii, 10, 28 and parallels; Matt, xii, 32 = Luke xii, 10; Matt, viii, 20 ~ Luke
ix, 58; Matt, xi, i8f. = Luke vii, 33!:.; Matt, xiii, 37.
450
Additional Notes
NOTE I (p. 3 n. 2)
Cf. Emmet in E.R.&. VIII, p. 570: £Much confusion is caused by the
fact that the term "Messianic" is used in a much wider range of mean-
ing than "Messiah".' Students of the history of religion, orientalists,
and even some theologians (who ought to know better) have often
applied the misleading term 'Messianic3 to all kinds of half mytho-
logical conceptions of kings and kingship. Labat (R^mte^ pp. 295!?.)
uses the term ethe Messianic king5 of the Babylonian conception of the
king as bringer of prosperity and blessing, although he is aware that the
Babylonians had no eschatology (op. cit., p. 299), and therefore no
Messiah. Widengren lays emphasis on the conception of the king as
saviour (R^B. ii, 1943, pp. 74ff.)« Engnell, too, speaks of 'Messian-
ism' in the ancient oriental royal ideology (Diving Kmgsh^ pp. isf.,
43ff., 68, 93ff.). By this expression he means 'elaborate king ideology
not " eschatological " messianism5 (op. cit., p. 43 n. 3, cf. p. 176).
Widengren (jR.£$. ii, 1943, pp. 74ff.) would lay more emphasis on the
king's position as saviour, son, and deputy of the god, upholding and
embodying the cosmic order. (This last point, at least, does not apply
to Mesopotamian kingship, though it no doubt does to Egyptian. See
above, pp. 28ff.). Engnell later explains what he means at greater
length: 'The sacral or divine kingship is the recognized term for an
institution at once religious and political . . . which implies that "by
divine grace" the king embodies the god in his own person and plays
the part of the god in the cult. But at the same time, and in a special
way, he represents the community, the people in its entirety . . . On
him depend victory, prosperity, rain and fertility, the integrity of
nature and of human life, the natural order of the cosmos, which he
maintains against the powers of chaos, above all through the part he
plays in the cult. All these circumstances are reflected in the ideology
which is associated with his person; and when that ideology is so de-
veloped that the king appears as an ideal figure with whom the hope
of salvation is bound up, a stage has been reached to which the term
"Messianism" must be applied — a term which thus need not imply
any eschatological reference5 (Gaml& T^MKSM I> pp. I4if.)« Even
apart from the fact that this account of the f ideology' is distorted and
incorrect (in Babylonia the king is not an incarnation of the god, nor
45 *
ADDITIONAL NOTES
does he uphold the cosmic order ), no adequate reason has been adduced
to show that we must use the epithet 'Messianic' of this ideology.1
Riesenfeld (Jesus tnmsfegure, p. 154) adopts the same position. Reicke
(S.E.A. xii, 1947, p. 279) at least puts the word between inverted
commas, when he tries to interpret Mark vii with reference to Matt.
x, 35f. in terms of this royal ideology. Bentzen, in his essay, 'Kan ordet
"Messiansk" anvendes om Salmernes kongeforestillinger? ' (S.E.A. xii,
1947, pp. s6ff.), takes up the question of terminology. He feels justified
in using e Messianic' of oriental kingship, since the latter always involves
an aspect akin to eschatology, an aspect which is described in the
present work as ' the unrealized elements in the ideal of kingship '. But
a clear terminology is better than one which conceals important differ-
ences. Used in Bentzen's sense, the term 'Messianic3 is misleading,
because it suggests the existence of a genuine Messianic hope, which is
realized in the empirical king and is already in existence before it is
applied to him. The word is more fittingly used of the Persian Sao-
shyant (cf. Abegg, J^r A^^^la^^inJ[ndun ugdjfran^or of the Mahdi
of Islam, who are really eschatological figures of the same phenomeno-
logical type, to some extent, as the Messiah. Against the misleading
terminology, see also Kennett, Old Testament Essays, p. 224.
NOTE II (p. 36 n, i).
Bentzen in S.E,.jL xii, 1947, p. 43 (cf. K^^and^ Messiah^ p. 17), refer-
ring to Pedersen, Israel^ III-IV, pp. 4ogff.; cf. pp. 440:6?. Pedersen,
however, is speaking not about the enthronement of the earthly king,
but about the enthronement of Yahweh and the recapitulation of the
events of primordial time (urtidsgjerninger), which takes place in the cult.
(I regret that when I wrote my remarks in StJTi. II, i, 1948/49, p. 80, 1
did not check the passage in Pedersen' s book to which Bentzen refers.)
Pedersen is right in saying that the earthly king, too, is * renewed'
through the creative power of the cult; but this is a conception which
we ought not to press as Bentzen does when he makes it a precise dogma
which explains the origin of the royal ideology, and an important ele-
ment in that ideology. Nor ought we to use it as a starting point in
trying to understand the 'consciousness of predestination' in Ham-
murabi and other kings. Pedersen rightly says that the accession of the
king is connected with the actual recreation of the world tod^i through
the festival with its repeated experience of creation and genesis. It is a
contemporary event of recreation rather than an event of primordial
time. But with Hammurabi we are concerned not with primordial
time made contemporary in the cult, but with a rational idea of creation
1 Engnell himself admits (alas!) that he is unable 'to distinguish between the cultic
[in the above sense] and the historical-eschatological Messiah' (Mm^sts^^ p. 89
a- 13). ^----u---*-*-
452
ADDITIONAL NOTES
as having taken place at a certain point in linear time. It is not his own
coming into existence, but the determination cof his fate5 which
Hammurabi dates back to the time before creation.
NOTE III (p. 40 n. i).
See Frankfort, Kingskip? pp. 28 iff.; cf. also Zimmern in %JD.M.G.
Ixxvi, 1922, pp. 52f. The reason in each case is that Marduk himself
was originally a local god of fertility and of the power of life, repre-
senting the ever-changing rhythm of the life of nature, before he be-
came the supreme god, a change which was certainly associated with
the new position of the city of Babylon as the centre of political power
in the whole country, and as 'capital of the world5. It is unnecessary
to enter here into the attempts of Engnell and Widengren to make al-
most all the great gods of the east into c high gods 5 (for this conception
see Lang, 77^ -^^^ S^-^^^sf J""^^ Soderblom, Gudstrons uj>£komst,
pp. sogff. = Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, pp. isoff.; van der Leeuw,
Religion in^ Essence and Manifestation^ pp. 1596*. with detailed references
to literature), or to regard the various fertility gods as secondary hypo-
statizations (Abspaltungen) of a particular aspect of the high god (Engnell,
Dwmi Kw£$hiJi> pp. 6f., i8ff., ssff.; G. Widengren, Ho^gpjtglaube^im
alien Iran^ pp. 5-93; Religionens varld*, pp. 54ff.)- A theory of this kind
becomes possible only if we define the idea of a high god so loosely that
it means nothing. As for the hypostatization of particular aspects of a
divine being and of his activities, it is true that this kind of thing does
sometimes happen in the realms of religion (see A. Bertholet, Gottgr^,
sfqltung und Gottewereinigung^i but that does not justify us in using this
phenomenon as a master key in the history of religion. Against the over-
rating of the high god notion (occasioned primarily by the works of
W. Schmidt, U^run^der Gottesidee^and Urs^rungund Ww^de^feligwfy
works rich in material/Sut" somewhat over-systematized), see, among
others, Sverdrup in Nor&k Tidsskn^t, 1935, pp. i8ff.; Meek in ThjRevieyy
ofReUgioji^ 1940, pp. a86ff.; Albright, From the Stone^Age to^ Chmtianitj^
pp. 133$*. A sound criticism of the theory of * hypostatizations 5 is given
by Edsman in S.TJC. xxiii, 1947, pp. 327ff.
NOTE IV (p. 45 n. 9).
Frankfort, Kumhi^ p. 311. Engnell (Div^^^Mpj^pp. s8ff.) and
Widengren (R.o^1^ 1Q^9 pp. 6off.) would interpret such statements
as evidence tKatlne king cw' the tree of life, representing Tammuz
in the cult, and represented by the sacred tree or pole. Thus the king
would be £ identical' with Tammuz, so that, for example, he would in
his own person experience the death and resurrection of the god. It is
certain that 'the Tree' was sometimes regarded as a divine being. It
symbolized the very power of life in nature. The vegetation deity may
453
ADDITIONAL NOTES
be called 'the Tree-god' or "the god-Tree' (= Gilgamesh; see Mo-
winckel in At Or. xv, 1936,, pp. I4iff.). But there is no evidence in the
sources that the king was identical with the tree of life. Engnell finds
such evidence in the saying of a devoted subject: 'King Shulgi, the
gracious lord, is a date palm, planted by a watercourse. 3 We should
be equally justified in maintaining that the righteous man in Ps. i,
who is clike a tree planted by streams of water', must be identified with
the tree of life and the god of fertility. (Engnell in fact makes this equa-
tion in Pedersenfsstskrif^,, pp. 841! Against his use of conventional
metaphors such as sdtul, see Frankfort, Kingship , p. 408 nn. 67, 69.) It
is not even necessary to suppose that so natural a metaphor, qua meta-
phor, was borrowed from the Tammuz ideology. In the cult it is the
king who, in his role as priest endowed with power, plants the tree of
life; he is 'the gardener5 who tends it. He himself receives his power
from the tree of life (cf. Gadd, Ideas of^Dwine^ Rule^ in the Ancient East,
pp. gif.) ; his royal mace may be regarded as one of its^Branches. WKen,
for instance, in need and sickness the king is described as a withered
bough or a dead tree, the reason is not that he was regarded, in actual
life or in the cult, as identical with Tammuz, the dead god of vegetation,
or that in the appropriate psalm of lamentation he was to play the part
of Tammuz, but simply that ideas from the Tammuz mythology were
used as natural metaphors and applied to the king: he is now as miser-
able as Tammuz in his degradation. See also Frankfort, op. cit., p. 408
n. 67.
NOTE V (p. 51 n. i).
Diirr (Uf sprung undAusbau, pp, 1341!,) had previously tried to connect
the Suffering Servant of the Lord in Isa. liii with the penitential ritual
for the Babylonian king at the New Year festival. From this ritual
Engnell draws the conclusion that the king, being identical with the
god, suffers, and dies, and rises again in the cult, and that even else-
where in the festival ritual he appears as Marduk, suffering and dying.
This is an incorrect interpretation of the ritual. As will be seen very
clearly from Frankfort's analysis (op. cit., pp. 3136°.), the king does not
represent Marduk in his suffering. On the contrary, he appears as
the companion and human helper of Marduk's son Nabu or Ninurta,
when the latter is 'searching5 for Marduk and setting him free. The
ceremony of humiliation on the fifth day of the festival is not intended
as the ritual death of the king in place of the god, but as a penitential
ceremony, which, at the same time, marks the turning point in the
great drama (see above, pp. 4 if.). The rising again begins with the
purification and restitution of the king (who is the representative of the
congregation and the link between gods and men), so that during the
rest of the festival he may again effectually represent both parties,
454
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Labat's view of the suffering of the king in the festival is fundamentally
sound when he says (Royautf, pp. 3238?.) that because he is 'the in-
carnation (embodiment would be a better term) of his people, he is
also in his relation to the gods responsible for any anonymous or col-
lective sin'. The material collected by Labat (ibid, pp. 324!?.) con-
cerning the king's role in the cult in atoning, confessing sin, and inter-
ceding must also form the basis of our understanding of the ritual of
humiliation at the New Year festival.
Engnell further urges that the Babylonian psalms of lamentation are
concerned in the main with the king and do not refer to historical
political calamities, but to his cultic 'suffering* as the dying god
(Divine^ Kingshipr3 pp. 45ff.). Widengren has sought to interpret Ps.
Ixxxviii as a particularly clear instance of the fact that this idea of the
'sojourn of the king in the realm of the dead' was an essential element
in the cult and the royal ideology in Israel {S.E.JL px, 1945, pp. 66ff.).
The king is certainly the speaker in most Babylonian, as well as in a
great many Israelite, psalms of lamentation. But, as we have seen, the
presupposition of EngnelPs and Widengren's interpretation (viz,, that
in the cult the king is the god) is false. This disposes of any possibility
of interpreting the psalms of lamentation as an expression of the cultic
suffering of the king- vegetation-god and of his sojourn in the realm of
the dead. See now my Oflw^^g og sangofffcy ch. VII, 6 (pp. 2438*. ).
We have therefore no valid grouncTfor maintaining that the ' aspect of
suffering' is an essential part of the royal ideology.
NOTE VI (p. 52 n. i).
Engnell quotes a great many statements by earlier scholars about the
identity of the king with the god in the vegetation drama at Ugarit
(Divm® -^fiS^-PP- i°4ff-)- These are, however, in the main, general
hypotheses and possibilities relating to some text or other, unsupported
by convincing evidence. EngnelPs own interpretation of the identity
of the king with the dying and rising vegetation god (as he puts it,
* this identity in its double aspect as referring to the high god and the
vegetation deity'; cf. op. cit., pp. 8off.) in texts other than the Karit
Epic is to be found in DwimJCingsh^^ pp. noff. Here, too, we find
much that is hypothetical, suggesting that the identity has in fact been
presupposed and read into the texts. The text V AB (op. cit., pp.
1 1 off.) speaks of the enthronement of the deity himself after the 'resur-
rection'; we hear nothing about the king. The same is true of II AB
(op, cit, pp. 1148*.), and of I AB (op. cit, pp. iiSff.). Of course,
EngnelPs words, ' I feel convinced that the king is here the actor in the
character of Ltpn 'il dp 'id9 (p. 120) prove nothing. Nor does I AB (op.
cit., pp. 1 2 iff.) or IV AB (op. cit., pp. i24f.) say anything about the
king and his role. Nor can I find in BH (op. cit., pp. isgff.) any
455
ADDITIONAL NOTES
proof of the presence of the king. The sort of basis on which Engnell's
interpretation rests is indicated by his remark, 'If I am on the right track
[i.e., in the previous interpretations] this text is of no little importance
to us in our search for the divine king in the ritual of Ugarit3 (op. cit,
p. 125; italics mine). Beyond this cif we do not find much in the text
or in Engnell's interpretation. In III AB, A (op. cit, pp. isyff.) we
still hear only of the god, even in the 'oracle' (op. cit, pp. ia8f.).
Possibly the god is represented by the king in the 'cultic marriage' in
SS (op. cit., pp. isgff.); but EngnelFs 'proof rests on his not very
probable interpretation of 9il w'lmh as a hendiadys (op. cit., p. 131).
The undoubted merit of Engnell's interpretation of these texts is that
they have shed new and clearer light on cultic ritual and cultic myth in
Ugarit; but they say nothing directly about the royal ideology. Much
the same is true of the Dan'il-Aqhat legend (op. cit., pp. 1343*.). Here
we have to do with a demigod the deified founder of a dynasty (or a
deity who has been made the human subject of a legend, like Gilga-
mesh). As the text now stands, Dan'il is a figure of the same type as
Karit. As in the Karit Epic, therefore, we have here an indirect source
for the royal ideology.
NOTE VII (p. Son. i).
Widengren's arguments (R.OJ3. ii, 1943, pp. 6off., in agreement with
Engnell, Divine Kingship, p. 28) for the view that in Israel the king was
identified with the water of life and the tree of life are quite uncon-
vincing. Consider the texts. In Isa. xi, i we have a metaphor which
might arise in the imagination of a poet anywhere and at any time
(cf. above, p. 161 n. 3 and Additional Note IV); and the prophet does
not speak of the tree of life but of the tree or family of Jesse. Isa. xiv, 19
offers no analogy to the branch of the tree of life which withers and
revives; on the contrary, the point in Isa. xiv, 19 is that when the branch
is cast away it does not revive. In T. Judah xxiv, 4 (which is not found in
the Armenian version, undoubtedly because it is a Christian interpola-
tion) there is a metaphor for the Messiah derived from a Messianic
interpretation of O. T. conceptions which originally had no Messianic
content; the following verses $L reflect interpretations of Isa. xi, i,
combined possibly with Num. xxiv, 17, certainly with Ps. xiv, yb.
Here, too, the 'stem' that arises 'from your [i.e., Judah's] root' is a
metaphor for the Messiah, as in Isa. xi, i, and has nothing to do with
the tree of life. That semah, 'the branch', in Zech. vi, 1 1-13 is a cultic,
mythological idea, not Zechariah's own pun on and interpretation of
the name Zerubbabel, remains to be proved; and that Jer. xxiii, 5 and
xxxiii, 15 depend directly (in either the traditio-historical or literary
sense) on Zech. vi, 1 1-13 seems to me to be obvious; see above, pp. igf.
and pp. 120, 164. It is possible, however, that the analogy of the
456
ADDITIONAL NOTES
sprouting symbol of fecundity and life (cf. the Adonis gardens,
Isa. xvii, i of.; see above, p. 82 n. 2) was present in the prophet's
thought and helped to suggest his interpretation of Zerubbabel's name;
see above, p. 164. In Isa. liii, 2 the metaphor is ultimately taken from
the Tammuz rituals; but the Servant is no kingly figure, and proves
nothing about the royal ideology. Against Engnell (and Hooke) see
Frankfort, Kingship p. 408 n. 67. Nor has Widengren proved that in
Israel the king's consciousness of being 'called' took the special form
ofthesense that he was a Mz%, one who is 'sent3; seeabove, p. 37. Isa.
Ixi, iff., does not speak about a king, but about a herald who brings the
good tidings of the advent and enthronement of the king Yahweh.
The Moses of the legends in Exodus-Numbers is 'sent', not as a king
or chieftain, but as a prophet. It might perhaps be objected that the king
is also a prophet; but this does not justify us in identifying the different
conceptions and in concluding by formal logical deductions from them,
e.g., that the king was also regarded as a Miah.
NOTE VIII (p. 85 n. 2).
The point is touched on by Hooke in M^th and Rteua^ p. 84, and by
T. H. Robinson, op. cit., p. 1726°., see pp. 183, 187; see also Johnson
in The^ L^rmthy pp. 73ff. Hvidberg (Den israditish Re^orn^ Histone^
pp. 70, in) holds that at least certain circles of a syncretistic
character may have adopted the custom of weeping over the god, i.e.,
celebrating funerary ritual for his death; but he also admits that the
thought of a dying Yahweh was so inconsistent with Israelite religion
that the very idea cannot really have been adopted by it. The only
passage which Hvidberg cites in support is Hos. x, 5; chis [referring to
the bull-deity] people shall mourn over him, his priests rejoice over
him'— an allusion to death and resurrection (cf. Mowinckel in
'., ad. loc.). Here we have to do with a Yahweh who has in
all essentials become like Baal. But it is also conceivable that, even in
the baalized cult of Yahweh at Bethel, it was only the custom of weeping
and rejoicing that was adopted, and not the idea of death which was
originally associated with it, and that the 'weeping ' was not looked upon
as a rite of mourning over the god, but as one of penitence and supplica-
tion (weeping also formed part of the rites of penitence and humilia-
tion; see Jcr. iii, 21). At all events we may not draw conclusions from
the wholly baalized cult of the bull-deity at Bethel about the conception
of Yahweh in Jerusalem and the cult there, or about the conception held
in those circles and that line of spiritual development of which the
reforming prophets are the representatives.
To Haldar (A^ociatioiM. and Sjudi^ the theory
of the dying andlrisinggod seems so obvious, even in Jerusalem, that
he uses it boldly as an exegetical master-key. There is, therefore,
457
ADDITIONAL NOTES
reason for considering his Arguments'. In Mai. iii, i he assumes that
the congregation is searching for the dead god, and accordingly the
prophet here announces his return to the temple (A^cwMonSy pp.
I28£). The argument is that the situation presumably corresponds to
the Accadian cultus, where the waiting cultic prophet precedes the god
in the procession which mourns the death of the god. Thus the argu-
ment is that in both passages we hear of one person preceding another!
In Amos v, i8ff.3 the reason why Yahweh abhors the festivals at Bethel,
Gilgalj and Beersheba is supposed to be that Amos is thinking of the
moment in the presumed cultic drama when Yahweh is in the under-
world and the powers of chaos have occupied His temple and are now
celebrating an impure cult there (Studies injhe Book_of Nahum, pp. 1 10,
156). The text itself suggests nothing of the kind. In Nahum i, 13 the
figure of the yoke is used to express the oppression of Judah by the
enemy (Assyria) : the same figure (which occurs frequently in the Old
Testament) is used in a Tammuz text, where his death is regarded as
imprisonment in the underworld, and deliverance is metaphorically
expressed by cthe yoke . . . shall be removed from thee'. Therefore
Yahweh's people are here supposed to be dead in the underworld (op.
cit., pp. iiyf.). It is also assumed that Pss. Ixxiv, Ixxix, and xliv are
descriptions of the misery which follows Yahweh's descent into the
underworld ( T^fie J^QJ^on^o^th^De^ m^ Sum^r^Acc^dian^ and^ J££££
Semitic ^^o?w, pp. 52ff.). But in the texts there is not a single word
tcTsuggest this. In fact they contradict it; for how can the congregation
pray to Yahweh for help if He Himself is dead? In psalms of lamenta-
tion and prophetic sayings we often hear of Yahweh's 'rising', i.e.,
ending his inactivity and hastening to the aid of His distressed people.
Haldar thinks that this shows that Yahweh is regarded as dead but is
summoned to 'rise' from the dead, or that He announces that He is
about to rise. He would also interpret Isa. xxxiii, 10; Ps. Ixviii, i, in
this sense (op. cit., pp. 39ff.). But see Num. x, 35. Did Yahweh really
rise from the dead whenever a new day's march began? In Ps. xliv, 24,
the call to 'awake' is also taken to refer to death and resurrection, for
'sleeping' does often indicate the sleep of death (op. cit., pp. 53f.)«
But see 2 Kings xviii, 27, where the thought is certainly of sleep in the
literal sense as a form of inactivity. In Ps. cvii, 16, we hear of Yahweh
'breaking the gates of brass and cutting the bars of iron asunder':
according to Haldar this refers to Yahweh's 'leaving the underworld
at the head of the cultic procession' (op. cit., p. 64.). But Ps. cvii is a
psalm of thank-offering, in which the various classes of redeemed people
(travellers who have lost their way in the wilderness but have been put
on the right track, released prisoners, sick men who have been healed,
mariners who have been brought safe to port) all come forward with
their thank-offering and thank Yahweh for the deliverance which has
been granted to them. For those in prison He has broken the gates of
458
ADDITIONAL NOTES
brass and the bars of iron. Finally we may note that by a quite arbitrary
interpretation of Nahum i-ii, Haldar makes the context refer to Yah-
weh's breaking out of the realm of death and taking up the struggle
against Chaos-Death, ascending the mountain of the gods, conquering
the enemy, partaking of the cultic meal, and so on: has-sokek in Nahum
ii, 6 (which undoubtedly refers to the testudo of charging soldiers) is
taken to indicate the cultic image of Yahweh, which is finally 'set up5
after being carried in the festal procession (Stipes injhe Book of Ndmm^
pp. 5 if.). According to Haldar this whole interpretation^ justifieol by the
fact that we hear of all these things in the cultic pattern of the Near East,
which means that Haldar' s explanation presupposes what has first to be
proved, namely that the Jerusalem cult was derived from a pattern of
this kind. Haldar' s summary of his contentions in Studies inthe Book o£
^ahmiypp. I53f. and TT^Nqtionof the Desert i^umer^AcTad^^dWest-'
Semitic Religions ^y, 5ff., 68ff., is devoi"9 of textual and exegetical support.
Even the expression £Yahweh lives5 (hay YHWH}> and the oath
formula 'by the life of Yahweh5 have been taken to show that it was
thought that Yahweh was not always 'alive5. The former expression
is used parallel to the formula of a wish, baruk THWH in Ps. xviii, 47;
cf. cxliv, i . It is quite probable that this goes back to a pre-Yahwistic
original, which hailed the resurrected god as alive again. In Ps. xviii
it is an expression of homage, which, as the context clearly shows, refers
to the signs of active and vigorous intervention manifested by Yahweh
in saving the king in war. Here no memory has survived of its back-
ground in the conception of a time when the god was not alive and
active, performing miracles and saving life. In the oath formula, hay
should certainly not be taken as an adjective, but as a substantive in the
construct, whether the correct pronunciation is he, or whether the hay,
the old form of the construct, has survived in this fixed formula. The
correct translation is cby the life of Yahweh3, as is shown by the analo-
gous beh$ ha'olam (Dan, xii, 7). The interpretation and translation, *as
sure as Yahweh lives', is a rationalistic modernism. The oath means
that either by actually touching a sacred object or by mentioning its
name a person is filled with the power of the deity or of the sacred
object, so as to make his word true. In. such expressions Yahweh's
'life* is synonymous with His 'soul'; cf. the oath by hay THWH w'he
naftPkdh (i Sam. xx, 3; xxv, 26; 2 Kings ii, 2). The expression has
therefore nothing to do with any idea that Yahweh, or the deity, can be
thought of as not being alive. When the Muslim swears *by the beard
of the prophet', he obviously does not mean, 'as sure as the prophet has
a beard'; but, cby mentioning the concrete manifestation of the holy
power (the sign of the prophet's manhood) I fill my soul with this same
power so as to make my word true, i.e., to keep and uphold it'. We may
compare also the oath by the life of the king or Pharaoh, Gen. xlii, i$L\
2 Sam* xv, 21,
459
ADDITIONAL NOTES
NOTE IX (p. 125 n. i).
The literature dealing with the problem of the Jewish future hope
and the nature and origin of eschatology is extensive. In contrast with
all far-fetched notions of eschatology as already an essential feature in
Mosaic religion (Sellin, Der alttestamentliche Prophetismus] , we must always
maintain, as the essential basis of the historical inquiry, a methodical
and sober treatment of the sources, i.e., in this instance, primarily the
prophetic books of the Old Testament. Naturally, such criticism of the
sources must not take for granted any theory of the antiquity of eschato-
logy; and it must never be forgotten that the prophetic books in their
present form are collections of short utterances relating to their own
time, assembled and arranged in larger sections (complexes of tradition),
in accordance with the outlook of the Jewish community and its
religious and cultic needs. It is therefore impossible to draw any con-
clusion whatever about the original character and essence of the future
hope and of eschatology from the stereotyped arrangement (disaster
followed by deliverance) or from the direct and abrupt transition from
one subject to another in the extant collections and revisions of the
earlier prophetic words. This is in opposition both to Gressmann and
die religionsgeschichtlicke Schule and also to the most recent tendency to
overestimate the body of tradition as such, and the pessimism about
the possibility of getting back to the ipsissima verba of the prophets (see
Engnell, Gamla Testamentet I, pp. 30, 42; cf. Mowinckel, Prophecy and
Tradition, pp. 84!!.). Still less can we follow Gressmann, the Pan-
Babylonian school, and others and infer from such characteristics of
the tradition the existence of a pre-Israelite eschatology common to the
ancient East. The literary criticism, or rather, the tradition criticism
of the prophetic books must go hand in hand with form-historical and
stylistic analysis, which can help us (inter alia] to distinguish the original
sayings from each other and also to distinguish between the earlier and
the later prophetic style. Such criticism must, of course, be constantly
combined with a comprehensive understanding of the main lines of the
religious, political, and cultural history of Israel and of Judaism. In
spite of all shades of difference between £ conservative ' and e radical s
critics, there is a considerable measure of agreement about the results
of such criticism. The majority of the genuine and unquestionable
eschatological sayings are from the age of Judaism. Broadly speaking,
what the prophets proclaimed was not eschatology, but an urgent
message from God about the immediate future. I venture to refer the
reader to G.T.M.M.M. Ill, where I have set out my view of the
criticism of the prophetic books and of the message of the prophets;
but I should now wish to maker greater reservations concerning Dr.
MessePs view of the book of Ezekiel. Cf. also my discussion of the funda-
mental problems of tradition criticism in Prophecy and Tradition.
460
ADDITIONAL NOTES
In spite of its one-sidedness and over-statement, Wellhausen's
Israelitische und judische Geschichte is of fundamental importance for the
modern view of the Israelite and Jewish future hope and eschatology;
see pp. 109-47, ^-Si, 2o6ff. The same basic view is given by Marti
(Geschichte der israelitischen Religion**, pp. 12 iff., 180-92, 254-8), Smend
(Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religions geschichte*, pp. iSyff., 23off.,
341-60, 367-75), Stade-Bertholet (Biblische Theologie des Alien Testa-
ments I, pp. 212-17, 292ff.3 302-10, 3141! ; II, pp. i35ff.), and, in general,
by the older generation of critics. Gressmann's Ursprung sought to
present a new view, which in one way was more traditional (eschatology
older than the 'writing prophets' and including from the beginning
both the eschatology of disaster and the eschatology of deliverance),
and in another was more radical (eschatology in Israel borrowed from
an ancient eschatology common to the east). The attempt has been
made to exploit Gressmann's view, on the one hand in the direction of
an extreme traditionalism (Sellin and others), and on the other hand
by a strange combination of traditionalism with a Pan-Babylonian
theory comprehending the whole history of religion (A. and J. Jeremias,
Staerk, and others). My own view of the origin and nature of eschato-
logy is set out in Ps.St. II, where, however, the chronology is not entirely
clear. A more lucid outline is given in G. T.M.M.M. Ill (see the intro-
duction to the prophetic books). Cf. also Holscher, Die Urspmnge der
judischen Eschatdogie; and see Lindblom, Profetismen i Israel, pp. sogff.,
516-26, 565-82, who adopts substantially the same view. The
outline given above in the text is no more than an outline, and does not
enter into details or supporting arguments. Further reference may be
made particularly to Ps.St. II, G.T.M.M.M. Ill, and the relevant
paragraphs in Holscher, Geschichte der israelitischen und judischen Religion.
NoTEX (p. 140 n. i).
That the thought of Yahweh's kingship in Israel was in a special
way associated with the epiphany festival (as shown by the present
writer in P^. II) has not been disproved by the objections of Eissfeldt
(in Z.A.W. xlvi, 1928, pp. 8 iff.), or of Gaspari (in Christentum und
Wissenschaft, iv, 1928, pp. 231!.), or of Porteous (The Kingship of God in
Pre-exilic Hebrew Religion). The thought cannot be explained in terms
of a historical development from the ideas contained in the message of
the prophets. It was the prophets who borrowed the thought from the
prevailing cultic conceptions, with which they were fully familiar. The
discoveries at Ugarit show that the thought of the god as king, and of
his royal epiphany in the cult is older than Israel; cf. Kapelrud in
JV.r.r. xli, 1940, pp. 38ff. The conception of the god as king was
general in the ancient east. Eissfeldt has rightly maintained this point,
and also that this is the general background for the application to Yah-
461
ADDITIONAL NOTES
weh of the title 'king'. But even in Israel the conception derived its
particular and specific content from its connexion with the epiphany
and enthronement festival; and since in Canaan this connexion goes
back to pre-Israelite times, there is every reason to believe that in Israel
it goes back to the time at which the festival was fully developed at the
sanctuaries, above all at Jerusalem. There is, however, no ground for
the distinction made by Buber (Konigtum Gottes) between the universal-
istic, religious aspect of the conception and its nationalistic, political
aspect; both are always present together. Nor is there any ground for
attributing (for etymological reasons) to the Hebrew melek, as used of
Yahweh, another meaning than that which it normally has in Hebrew,
such as 'leader', 'counsellor', 'mitgehender Berater\ as Buber would do.
In the Old Testament, the royal title as applied to Yahweh never
refers to the nomadic, tribal God, but to the 'universal' God of the
cultus, manifest, enthroned, and reigning, who also reveals Himself as
king by His activity in history, the last point being specifically Israelite.
There is, therefore, no justification for tracing the conception of Yahweh
as melek back to the wilderness period, to the time of Moses, as Buber
attempts to do. Buber cites Gideon's maintenance of the 'theocracy'
in Judges viii, zzff. But it is impossible to take a saying such as is put
into the mouth of Gideon in Judges viii, ssff., as an expression of a pre-
valent belief in the age of the Judges, as if we had there a faithful,
documentary report of the incident. We must recognize that we are
dealing with popular narratives, orally preserved for centuries; and
naturally such details may be coloured by later developments. Gideon's
rejection of human kingship in the interests of Yahweh's may be classed
with Samuel's attitude in i Sam. vii; viii; x; and in contrast with this
'theocratic' view there is clearly another which is represented by the
earlier tradition in i Sam. ix.
NOTE XI (p. 191 n. i).
In v. 3, M.T. has * Israel *, which, however, is not found in one Hebrew
MS. (Kennicott 96), and is also missing in several MSS. of G. For
metrical reasons and because it is the lectio faciliory the word is not
original. It cannot be denied th&tyisra'el in xlix, 3 disturbs the metre,
even if it is maintained that regular metre is not always found in the
prophets. That some of their oracles are in regular metrical form is
indisputable; and it is clear that xlix, 1-6, consists in the main of sym-
metrical full lines (periods, bicola), each with two parallel half lines
(members, cola), irrespective of whether we scan according to Sievers's
system (full line = 3 + 3 feet) or Hdlscher's (4 + 4, possibly truncated
iambic feet; see Buddefestschrift, pp. ggf.)- But, unlike the other full lines
in the passage, v. 3 is asymmetrical in M.T. (Sievers: 3 + 45 Holscher:
4 + 5, the final half line being very halting). The line may be read
462
ADDITIONAL NOTES
wayyomer if'abdf'attdk / (yisra'el} taf/r btklPetpd'Jr (£ represents a shewa
which has metrical value). It is plain that ytira'el here makes any
metrical reading of the half line impossible. The Hebrew form of xlii, I
presupposedjby G clearly reveals^the sanie defect.
^ hen 'abdi 'etmok-bo / b'htrfrasttdh napsih a regular, symmetrical, full
line in the mdidl metre, with truncation of the unaccented syllable in the
third foot in the first half line, and of the second footm the second half
line.^The^text presupposed by G: h/n ya'akdb cabdritmok-bo'/ yisra >/l
Vhiri rasMh napH would be 5 + 5 (or, more correctly, 5 +"6, a&jMra'fl
must have two" ictus), a quite unparalleled form in Hebrew metre. To
scan according to the system of Sievers (which is certainly wrong)
would be no better: 4 + 4 or 3 + 4 as a parallel to 3 + 3 in v. ib.
Pratorius's defence on metrical grounds of the word yisrd'el in xlix, 3
(Z.A.W. xxxvi, 1916, pp. gf.) is worthless, since his scansion of the line
conflicts both with the natural principles of rhythm (rhythm according
to sense) and with Hebrew emphasis. The attempts of both Pratorius
and Beer (in the Baudissinfestschrift, pp. sgff.) to deal with the metre of
the Servant Songs simply show that the unfortunate system of Sievers
does not really help,
The decisive factor, however, is not the metrical considerations, but
the textual evidence and conclusions. Although Kennicott 96 has in
the main little textual value (cf. Bewer in Jewish Studies (Kohut Memorial
Volume], pp. 86£), it does not follow that all its readings are worthless.
Each individual instance must be decided on its merits in accordance
with the usual principles of textual criticism. It is indisputable that
since the Servant Songs appear in a collection in which the expression
'the Servant of Yahweh' elsewhere often denotes Israel, and since the
Servant in the special sense was by Jewish exegetes often identified with
Israel (see above, p. 245 n. 5), it is much more likely that the word
* Israel ' is an interpolation than that it originally stood in the text and was
omitted. It is difficult to understand why the word should have been
omitted from Kennicott 96, if it was present in its exemplar. Engnell
(B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, p. 19) tries to dismiss the fact that the word is
missing in several MSS. of G, by asserting that G cis tendentious on this
point'. But, we may ask, in which direction? The tendency in G is
precisely the reverse, as is shown unmistakably by the addition of
'Jacob' and 'Israel' in xlii, I. G expresses the same tradition of inter-
pretation as M.T. and Jewish exegesis, both of which more or less consis-
tently try to identify 'the Servant' with 'My servant Israel' (cf. North,
The Suffering Servant, pp. 8ff.); the existence of this tendency in M.T. is
shown by xlii, 19-2^, 'Israel' in xlix, 3; xlix, 8d; li, 16; lix, 21. When,
nevertheless, ' Israel' does not occur at xlix, 3 in several MSS. of G, that
is evidence that these MSS. represent a form of the text which is the
genuine 'Septuagint', and which here is older than M.T. and the tradi-
tion which it represents, whereas other MSS. of G have been c corrected'
463
ADDITIONAL NOTES
to agree with the tradition of M.T. Thus in both xlii, i and xlix, 3 the
conclusions of textual criticism agree with those of metrical theory
based on the natural rhythm of the text (cf. Mowinckel in Bertholet-
festschnft, pp. 37gff.; St.Th. VII, i, 1953/54; Pedersenfestskrift, pp. 250!?.;
Z.A.W. Ixv, 1953, pp. i67ff.).
NOTE XII (p. 213 n. i).
The most detailed discussion of the subject, refuting the collective
interpretation, is given by Fischer in Altestamentliche Abhandlungen 6,
and most recently by North, The Suffering Servant (see the summary,
pp. sosff.).
Those who collected and transmitted the Deutero-Isaianic sayings
were the first to interpret the Servant as Israel, e.g., in the gloss * Israel*
in xlix, 3 (see Additional Note XI), and in the secondary (Trito-
Isaianic) additions, xlii, 19-23; xlix, 8boc; li, 16. The same tradition is
represented by G, e.g., in the glosses 'Israel5 and c Jacob' in xlii, i (see
Additional Note XI), and in the Apocrypha (see North, The Suffering
Servant, p. 8). It is very common in the medieval Jewish commentators
(see North, op, cit, pp. lyff,). We also find it in the Qumran Scrolls
(see Ginsberg in V.T. iii, 1953, pp. 40off.; Brownlee mB.A.S.O.R. 132,
Dec. i953? PP- 8ff.; 135, Oct. i954> PP- 33ff-)-
The starting point of the collective interpretation of the Servant is
obviously the idea that it is made necessary because the Servant poems
are included in the Deutero-Isaianic collection, where Israel is un-
doubtedly called c the servant of Yahweh ' (or ' My servant ' ) in a number
of passages. It may be confidently affirmed that if the poems had not
been included in Isa. xl-lv, no one would have thought of interpreting
them of Israel. But in fact this necessity is entirely illusory. It could
be assumed to exist as long as it was taken for granted that the prophets
were thinkers and authors who wrote connected, systematically
arranged 'books', or delivered c speeches' at length, so that the in-
terpreter was obliged to take account of the c context', i.e., the larger
context provided by the 'book' of Deutero-Isaiah. But in the study of
the prophets it has long been realized that no such context exists. The
prophetic books are collections of individual sayings, which were
originally quite independent, not connected with each other in content
or by any literary bond. It is therefore a fundamental error to interpret
in accordance with the c context', which arises from the casual methods
of arrangement (e.g., by fi catch-words ') employed by the later collectors
and custodians of tradition (see my Prophecy and Tradition, pp. 36-60,
and my discussion with Bentzen in D.T.T. ix, 1946, pp. I42ff.). The
* context' in which Engnell (B.J.R.L. xxxi, i, 1948, pp. 148*., see above,
p. 189 n. 2) puts Isa. xlii, 1-4 is an example of the kind of absurdity
into which one can lapse by appealing to such 'contexts'. The real
464
ADDITIONAL NOTES
context is the internal logic and coherence of the individual saying.
Even if the Servant poems come from Deutero-Isaiah, it is still possible
that he may have applied the term cthe Servant of Yahweh' to the
people in one saying, and to a definite individual person in others. It
would be a mistake to feel that one passage must be interpreted in accor-
dance with conceptions and expressions in another, if the former con-
tained elements which were at variance with it. I cannot but regard
it as a lapse from sound method when Eissfeldt (Der Gotteskmcht bei
Deuterojesaja-, cf. also E.T. xliv, 1932/3, pp. 261 ff.; T.L.%. Ixviii, 1943,
cols. 273ff.)j Wheeler Robinson (in Werden und Wesen des Alton Testa-
ments, pp. 4gff.; cf. The Cross of the Servant), Pedersen (Israel III-IV, pp.
603!*.), Nyberg (in S.E.A. vii, 1942, pp. 5-82), Engnell (in B.J.R.L.
xxxi, i, 1948, pp. 3-42), and others allow their interpretation of the
Servant to be determined by the fact that these passages have been trans-
mitted together with other sayings in which the title 'servant' is
applied to Israel. On this point Bentzen is much more reserved and
cautious (cf. King and Messiah, pp. 52!). It is plain that when 'servant'
is applied as a title to Israel in Deutero-Isaiah it has a quite different
content than when it is used of the special c Servant of the Lord '. Used
of Israel, it has the more passive sense of Yahweh5 s worshipper and
chosen one, who is therefore the object of His covenant care, His love,
and protection (cf. von Baudissin in Buddefestschrift, pp. iff.); whereas
when used of the Servant, it denotes a special call to a definite
and active task (see my Der Knecht Jahwas, p. 3; Bentzen, Introduction to
the Old Testament* II, pp. i iof.). Isa. xlii, 19 is not typical of Deutero-
Isaiah's application of the word to Israel (against von Baudissin, op. cit.,
p. 5), for in that passage 'Trito-Isaiah3 fuses the servant Israel and the
special 'Servant' (see Mowinckel in G.T.M.M.M. Ill, pp. 2131!.).
This in itself shows that to base the interpretation of the one servant
figure on the other is methodologically unsound. We may take it as
established that in Deutero-Isaiah (the Deutero-Isaianic collection of
prophecies) there are to be found two distinct presentations of * the
servant of Yahweh'. This means that the Servant in the Servant poems
must be interpreted in the light of these poems themselves, irrespective
of any other meaning which the term may have in Deutero-Isaiah. It
is therefore incorrect to say (as do Eissfeldt, Pedersen, Nyberg, Engnell,
and others) that the conception of the servant in Deutero-Isaiah
oscillates between the people and a representative person, who, in accord-
ance with the ancient conception of the community is also the people.
It is not a question of one servant figure with oscillating content,
but of two different conceptions.
The idea that Deutero-Isaiah as transmitted provides a context lies
behind the admittedly original form in which Lindblom seeks to revive
the interpretation of the Servant as Israel ( The Servant Songs in D enter o-
Isaiah}* The Servant is a symbolic or allegorical figure representing
465
2H
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Israel. In those poems in which the Servant speaks in the first person
he is in fact the prophet; but the prophet also symbolically represents
Israel. Lindblom holds that xlii, 5-9 is connected with xlii, 1-4 as an
interpretation of the preceding * allegory ', and that Hi, 12 if. provides
the interpretation of liii. Lindblom5 s interpretation is ruled out by two
considerations. In liii it is quite evident that it is Israel and not the
heathen nations who are the object of the Servant's work; the cwej in
liii, 2fT. cannot, as Lindblom thinks, be identified with those who are
referred to in Hi, i2ff., for, in the nature of things, a prophetic vision is
seen by an individual. Again, consideration of the form and content of
xlii, 5f. show that it is quite independent of xlii, 1-4; and in my view it
can be interpreted only of Cyrus (see above, p. 189 n. 2 ). But above all
there is nothing in the Songs to indicate that they are meant as
allegories.
But the point may be made that the interpretation of the Servant as
Israel is plainly stated in the text itself at xlix, 3; cand He said to me,
"My Servant art thou, Israel, by whom I will get myself glory". The
authenticity of the word c Israel' is discussed in Additional Note XI.
To regard it as an interpretative gloss, like 'Jacob' in G of xlii, r, is not
simply a plausible device for disposing of an inconvenient piece of
textual evidence; it is simply a text-critical solution which is at least as
acceptable as the view that the word belonged to the original text.
Indeed it would have been remarkable if a gloss of this kind had not
found its way into the text at one point or another, when the Servant
Songs were first incorporated in the collection of Deutero-Isaiah's
sayings.
NOTE XIII (p. 281 n. i).
This has been clearly recognized and proved by Bousset, Relig*> pp.
233ff., 264f, 27918*. Lagrange, too (Le messianisme chez Us juifs; Le
juddisme avant Jesus-Christ, pp. 363-87), emphasizes that there are really
two incompatible conceptions of the Messiah in later Judaism (e.g.,
Le messianisme chez Us juifs •, p. 261; Le juddisme avant J£sus»Christ, p. 385).
But the task he has set himself is too easy, because on the one hand he
distinguishes too sharply between the two different types of eschatology
(cf, above, p. 267 n. 2), and on the other he excludes all the passages
about the Son of Man in i Enoch as Christian interpolations (against
this view see Sjoberg, Der Menschensohn, pp. 148*.). In this way also he
is able to evade the religio-historical problem raised by the conception
of a transcendental Messiah, and to try to derive both tendencies
directly from an extension of Old Testament ideas. Thus in i Enoch
both the term ethe Chosen One' and its content are supposed to be
derived from Isaiah (i.e., Deutero-Isaiah), and the conception of the
Son of Man to come directly from Dan. vii. The attempts recently
466
ADDITIONAL NOTES
made to conflate the two conceptions of the Messiah, e.g., by Bonsirven
(Le judaisme palestinien au temps de Jesus-Christ, chs. VIII and IX),
Ktippers (mint. Kirchl Zeitschr., xxiii, 1933, pp. i93rT.; xxiv, 1934, pp.
47ff.;seeabove,p. 267 n. 2) and Riesenfeld (Jesus transfigure, pp, 62$.)
do no service to scholarship. Of course later Judaism had no room for
two separate Messiahs, one earthly and the other transcendental, though
a similar idea does occur in the conception of a Messiah ben Joseph and
a Messiah ben David (see above, pp. agof.). But it is undeniable that
the Messianic conceptions of certain circles produced the picture of a
Messiah who is predominantly this-worldly, national, and political,
whereas the views of other circles produced the picture of a predomi-
nantly transcendental, eternal, and universal Messiah. It is likewise a
fact that these two complexes of ideas are in part represented by different
names, c Messiah' and ' Son of Man5. Finally, it is a fact that important
features in the figure of the Son of Man are foreign, not Jewish, in origin.
The recognition of this fact underlies the assertions made about two con-
ceptions of the Messiah. It cannot be disposed of by saying, as Kuppers
does, that 'no comprehensive and systematic view3 can be constructed
out of the available sources, (op. cit, p. 251). Obviously not; it is
precisely such an artificial systematization of complexes of ideas which
are in part heterogeneous that we want to avoid by asserting: i. that
two such complexes do exist, each with its characteristic central idea;
2. that they overlap and are usually fused with each other; and 3, that
nevertheless one or the other is usually dominant in the documents
which bear witness to the fusion. Riesenfeld's position is not entirely
clear; but he appears to maintain that there are not two different com-
plexes, since one and the same central idea is always present, namely
the transcendental, divine character of the Messiah; and he holds that
all the elements which express this divinity (including that of the Son
of Man) are derived from the oriental royal ideology and always be-
longed to the Messiah. To this we may reply: i. the transcendent
nature and characteristic features of the Son of Man cannot be derived
from the royal ideology, but have a separate source in a distinct, pri-
mordial being (see above, pp. 42off.), who is not identicalin origin with
the king, but wholly different in character (see above, p. 55); and 2. all
that has been said above ought to have proved that the authentic Jewish
Messiah, though undoubtedly derived from the oriental royal ideology
(N.B., in its Israelite and Yahwistic form), always remained what he
was at the first, a political, national, this-worldly figure with eschato-
logical tendencies.
NOTE XIV (p. 341 n. 4).
Riesenfeld refers to Josephus, Antt. XV, 50-6; but the text says
nothing to suggest that the anti-Herodian demonstrations in support of
467
ADDITIONAL NOTES
the young Hasmonean high priest Aristobulus were Messianic in
character; nor was it as Messiah, but as High-priest, that Aristobulus
performed his official duties. The fact that Ps. cxviii, asf. was at this
period interpreted of the Messiah (see Strack-Billerbeck I, pp. 849, 876;
II, p. 256) proves only that the prayer that the Messiah would come was
read into this festival psalm; and that the crowd hailed Jesus with these
words shows only that they regarded Him as the coming Messiah, but
not that the Messiah as such had a part in the temple cult. Nor is any-
thing proved by the fact that the cjoys was associated with the feast of
Tabernacles, and that 2 Esdras vii, 28 expects that the Messiah, at his
coming, will 'rejoice' those who are then alive. Riesenfeld's final
argument is the wall paintings in the synagogue of Dura-Europos,
where, among other themes, an enthroned Messiah is thought to appear.
First, it must be observed that the interpretation of the enthroned
figure in the topmost field above the Torah-niche on the west wall as an
enthroned Messiah is very doubtful, du Mesnil du Buisson regards it as
an apotheosized Moses (cf. the conception of the assumption of Moses);
Grabar takes it as an enthroned David (see the survey in Parrot,
Archeologie mtsopotamienne, pp. 454!.); Sukenik as a representation of
Pharaoh (in, his Hebrew book. The Synagogue of Dura-Europos and its
Frescoes, here quoted from the review by Rachel Wischnitzer in J.B.L.
Ixvi, 1947, pp. 48sf.). Mrs. Wischnitzer rightly regards this last inter-
pretation as very questionable. In her own book (The Messianic Theme
in the Paintings of the Dura Synagogue, pp. 48ff.) she identifies the figure
with David, probably rightly. She is probably also right in her view
that the whole series of pictures is intended to give a presentation of the
eschatological hope of Judaism, symbolized by persons and events from
biblical history.
What is important for our present purpose is that there is no repre-
sentation of the Messiah. Here, as so often, the use of the term
* Messianic } instead of * eschatological 5 is misleading. Of course, no one
would deny that the eschatological hope played a part in the cult of the
synagogue, as an expression of faith and prayer. But if we are to speak
of a connexion between the Messiah and the cult, we must mean some-
thing more than this (namely that the Messiah, in some form, was an
object of worship, as Christ was in the primitive Church), or else we
mean nothing at all. Even if the Messiah was represented in the decora-
tions, this proves as little about any cultic role which he played (if such
an expression means anything) as the pictures of Moses prove that he
had a place in the cult of the synagogue. Connexion with the cult
('rapports avec le culte"} is in Riesenfeld's discussion a meaningless
phrase. In the Jewish cult the Messiah was neither worshipped nor
believed to be present. On Riesenfeld's uncritical interpretations of the
Dura pictures, see KummePs review in Symbolae Biblwae Upsalienses
ii (Supplement to S.E.A. xiii, 1948), pp. 4gff.
468
List of Abbreviations
A.A.S.F. =Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae.
Act. Or. =Acta Orientalia.
A.G. W.G. ^Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen.
A.f.O.— Archiv fur Orientforschung.
A.J.S.L.L. ^American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures.
A.N.E.T. = Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament , edited
by J. B. Pritchard, Princeton, 1950.
A.N.V.A.O. ^Avhandlinger utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo.
A.O,=Der alte Orient.
A.O.T.B. =Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum Alien Testament, edited by
H. Gressmann, Tubingen, 1909, 2I-II, 1926 (= A.Q.T.* and
A.O.B.*).
A.P.A.T.=Apokrjphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alien Testaments I-II,
edited by E. Kautzsch, Tubingen, 1900.
A.P.O.T. = The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament I— II,
edited by R. H. Charles, Oxford, 1913.
A.R. W. —Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft.
A. V. = Authorized Version of the Bible.
B.A.S.O.R. -Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
Baudissinfestschrift. =Abhandlungen zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte und
Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift filr Baudissin zum jo. Geburtstage
(B.&A.W. 33), Giessen, 1918.
B.B.K. —Berliner Beitrdge zur Keilschriftforschung.
Bertholetfestschrift. —Festschrift Alfred Bertholet zum 80. Geburtstag gewidmet
von Kollegen und Freunden, Tubingen, 1950.
B.F.Ch.Th. -Beitrage zur Forderung chnstlicher Theologie.
B.H*=*Biblia Hebraica*, edited by R. Kittel, Stuttgart, 1937.
B.J.R.L. = Bulletin of the John Ry lands Library.
B.S.G.W.^Berichte uber die Verhandlungen der Sdchsischen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften.
Buddefestschrift ^Beitrdge zur alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Karl Budde
zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet (B.g.A. W. 34), Giessen, 1920.
B. W.A.N.T. —Beitrdge zur Wissenschaft vom Alien und Neuen Testament.
B. W.A.T. = Beitrdge zur Wissenschaft vom Alien Testament
B.&A. W. =Beihefte zur ^eitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
[D.] r, T. = Theologisk Tidsskrift (Danish).
469
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
D.T.T.=Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift.
E.B. = Encyclopaedia Biblica.
E.H.Ph.R. = Etudes d*Histoire et de Philosophic religieuses.
Eissfeldtfestschrift. = Festschrift Otto Eissfeldtzum 60. Geburtstage i September
IQ4J dargebracht von Freunden und Verehren, Halle, 1947.
E.J. = Encyclopaedia Judaica.
E.R.E. = Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
E.T.= Expository Times.
Eucharisterion. = Studien zur Religion und Literatur des Alien und Neuen Testa-
ments, H. Gunkel zum 60. Geburtstage . . . dargebracht (F.R.L.A.N.T. 36)
I, Gottingen, 1923.
E.VV. = English Versions of the Bible (A.V. and R.V.).
Exp. = Expositor.
F.R.L.A.N.T. =Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments.
F.u.F. =Forschungen und Fortschntte.
G= Greek text.
Gesenius-Buhl16. =W. Gesenius, Hebrdisches und aramdisches Handworter-
buck fiber das Alte Testament . . .163 bearbeitet von F. Buhl, Leipzig,
G.T.M.M.M.=Det Garde Testament^ oversatt av S. Michelet, S.
Mowinckel og N. Messel, Oslo, I 1929, II 1935, III 1944.
H.A. T. =Handbuch zum Alten Testament.
H.D.B. = Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, Edinburgh,
1898-1904.
H.K.A.T. = Handkommentar zum Alten Testament.
.ftT.JV*. T. =Handbuch zum Neuen Testament.
H.S.A.T. =Die Heilige Schrift des Alten Testaments, edited by E. Kautzsch,
4 edited by A. Bertholet, Tubingen, 1922.
H.U.C.A. ^Hebrew Union College Annual.
LS.K.F. =*Instituttetfor Sammenlignende Kulturforskning.
jf.A.O.S. = Journal of the American Oriental Society.
J.B.L. = Journal of Biblical Literature.
J.E. = Jewish Encyclopaedia.
J.L. =Judisches Lexikon.
J.M.E.O.S. = Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society.
J.N.E.S. = Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
jf.R.A.S. = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
J.T.S. = Journal of Theological Studies.
K.A.R. —Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiosen Inhalts, edited by E. Ebeling,
Leipzig, 1915-19.
K.A.T. =-DieKeilinschriften und das Alte Testament, edited by E. Schrader,
8 edited by H. Zimmern and H. Winckler, Berlin, 1903.
IC.A.T.SI. —Kommentar turn Alten Testament^ edited by E. Sellin.
. = Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek.
470
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Kittelfestsckrift. = Alttestamentliche Studien Rudolf Kittel zum 60. Geburtstag
dargebracht (B.W.A.T. 13), Leipzig, 1913.
L.U.A. —Lunds universitets drsskrift.
M.G. W.J. = Monatshefte zur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums.
M.T, =Massoretic Text.
JV.G. W.G. =zNachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen.
N.K.%. —New Kirchliche ^eitschrift.
JV. T. T. = Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift.
O.T.S. — Qudtestamentische Studien.
Pedersenfestskrift. = Studia Orientalia loanni Pedersen septuagenario a.d. VII
id. not), anno MCMLIII a collegis discipulis amicis dicata, Copenhagen,
P.J.B. =Paldstinajahrbuch des Deutschen Evangelischen Institute jur Altertums-
wissenschaft des Heiligen Landes zu Jerusalem.
P.R.E. = Hauck-Herzog, Realencyclopddie fur protestantische Theologie und
Kirche?
Ps.St.^S. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien I-VI (S.N.V.A.O. II, 1921-24),
Christiania, 1921-24.
R.G.G. = Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Tubingen, 1903-13, 2ig27~
1932.
R.H.Ph. = Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses.
R.H.R. —Revue de VHistoire des Religions.
R.o.JB. = Religion och Bibel. Nathan Soderblom-Sallskapets Arsbok.
R,T»Ph, = Revue de Thlologie et de Philosophie.
R.V. = Revised Version of the Bible.
S=Syriac Text.
S.A.T.A. =Schriften des Alien Testaments in AuswahL
S.B.U. =Svenskt bibliskt uppslagsverk.
S.E.A. —Svensk exegetisk drsbok.
S.J. T. *= Scottish Journal of Theology.
S.N.V.A.O. = Shifter utgitt av Det Morske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo.
S.T.K. — Svensk teologisk kvartalskrift.
Strack-Billerbeck. =H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen
Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch I-IV, Munich, 1924-28.
St.Th. ^Studia theologica cura ordinum theologorum Scandinavicorum edita.
T.L.%. = Theologische Liter aturzeitung.
T.R. = Theologische Rundschau.
T.S.K. = Theologische Studien und Kritiken
T.T. = Teologisch TijdschrifL
T. W,B, JV. T. = Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament.
T.%. = Theologische %eitschrift.
U. U.A. = Uppsala universitets drsbok.
V= Vulgate Text.
V. A.B. = Vorderasiatische Bibliothek.
V. T. = Vetus Testamentum.
471
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
W.B.NT. =W. Bauer, Griechisch-deutsches Worterbuch zu den Sckriften des
Neuen Testaments und der ubrigen urchristlichen Literatur^^ Berlin, 1952.
W.£.K.M. = Wiener ^eitschrift %ur Kunde des Morgenlandes.
. - Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie und Verwandte Gebiete.
. W. = ^eitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
.M.G. = ^eitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft.
. = £eitschrift fur Indologie und Iranistik.
. W. = Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft.
T. = Zeitschrift fur systematische Theologie.
. — %eitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche.
T. = Zjeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie.
472
Bibliography
Aalen, S., Die Begriffe ' Licht" und 'Finsternis' im Alien Testament, im
Spatjudentum und im Rabbinismus (S.N.V.A.O. II, 1951, No. i), Oslo
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'Lebensbrot und Lebenswasser im Babylonischen und in der BibeP,
A.R.W. ii, 1899, pp. i6sff.
fBabylonische Vorstufen der vorderasiatischen Mysterienreligionen ',
Z.JD.M.G. ixxvi, 1932, pp. s6ff.
See also under K.A.T? in the List of Abbreviations.
498
I Reference Index
(a) OLD TESTAMENT
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Genesis
Exodus
Deuteronomy
if. .
. 426
xxiv, i , 9-1 1
. 239
i; 37
. 232
i
. 424
10 .
. 269
iii, 26
. 232
i, 2 .
• 335
i6f.
• 374
iv, 21
. 232
iif.
. 424
xxv, gff.
• 334
30
. 262
ii, 7
• 373
xxvi, 30 ,
• 334
vi, 3
. 112
iii, 5
' 77
xxvii, 8
• 334
ix, i7fF., 25fF.
• 232
15
ii, 283
xxviii, 36ff.
. 6
27
. 218
22
• 77
xxix, 21 .
. 6
x,8 . .
. 72
iv, 14
• 347
xxxii, 1-14
• 233
xi, 9
. 112
v, 24
• 438,439
13 •
. 218
xvii, 14-21
. 61
vi, 2, 4 .
• 77
30-2
• 233
xviii, 15 . 232,
299* 302
ix, 5f.
• 347
3ifF.
. 232
xxvi
. 72
xiii, 10
. 81
xxxiii, 3
, 112
xxvi, iff., 5fF.
. 72
xiv, 1 8
5
18-23
. 269
15 .
. 112
xv, 17
. 269
i8ff.
• 374
xxix, 27 ,
. 382
xviii
. 184
xxxix, 3off.
. 6
xxx, 3
. 147
xxix, 3 iff.
. in
xl, 34f.
• 374
xxxi, 29 .
. 262
xxxv, 1 6 .
. in
xxxii, 8 ,
• 77
xxxix, 2 .
. 68
xxxiii, 3 .
77, 380
xl, i
. 62
Leviticus
10
. 72
10
. 300
ii, 1 1
. 61
17
. 290
xiii, *5f.
• 459
iv, 3, 5, 16
. 6
xxxiv, 5 .
. 218
xlviii, I3ff.
. 287
viii, 9, 30
. 6
10 .
• 232
xlix
13,14,283
ix, 23
. 374
xlix, i
. 269
xvi .
• 225
Joshua
10 .
13, 102, 175,
xvi, 15
. 6
i, i .
. 218
293,301,312
xxvi, 12 .
. 1 66
X, lOf.
. 269
iob, 24
b . . 290
30 .
• 79
xxiv, 15 .
. 58
29 .
. 218
Exodus
iii, aff. .
8
. 269
. 112
Numbers
vi, 22ff. .
. 72
Judges
iii, 19
• 59
12
. Ill
viii, 4
- 334
iv, 48".
• 59
14 .
• 77
x, 35
. 458
i4f. . .
. 269
17
. 112
xii, 7
. 218
v .
. 60
xiii, 2 iff.
. 269
Xiv, IO, 22
• 374
v)4f. . .
. 132
xiv, 24 .
. 269
xvi, 19
. 374
4
. 269
xvi, 7a, 10
• 374
xxiii, 2 r .
. . 64
10
. 176
25
xxiv
. 14
20f.
. 269
xix, sf. .
1 1 66
xxiv, 7 ,
. 270
20
• *32
i8ff.
. 269
7b
. IO2
vi, i iff. .
- 59
xx, 18-20
* ^§9
14 .
. 262
14
• 58
26 .
. 01
17 -
13, 68, 102,
21
• 269
xxiii, I9b
, 61
314, 456
24
• 59
499
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Judges
i Samuel
i Kings
vi, 25-32 .
• - 58
xi, 15
64, 65
i, 45 , .
. 65
2511.
• 59
xii .
60, 79
47
• • t>4
vii f.
. 104
xii, iff.
. 61
5off.
• « 0*}
vii, 22
. 269
xiii, gf. .
. 71
iii^ff. .
. 67
viii, 1-3
22ff.
58
. 462
14 .
xiv, 15 .
. 66
. 269
viii .
viii, ii
. 72
. 374
24~7
• 59
20, 23
. 269
25 .
• 99
ix, 22ff. .
. 74
XV .
. 60
. 71
27
• 59
xv, 28
. 66
xi, 12 f., 32
. 70
X, I
• 75
xvi, iff. .
. 66
xii, 22
. 77
4
. . 176
14 .
. 74
xiii, i
. 77
xi, 4-1 1 .
xii, iff. .
: : $
xx, 3
xxiv, 6, 15
• 459
. 65
xvii, i7ff.
xix, i iff.
• 234
. 269
xiii, 2ff., 5
. 184
xxv, 26
• 459
xix, 1 6
. 6
8
- 77
29 •
• 279
xxi .
. 60
20
• 269
xxvi^g .
. . 65
22
25 -
• 77
. 184
xxviii, 13
. . 76
2 Kings
ii, iff.
. 65
xvii, 1-5 .
• 59
2 Samuel
2
• 459
i, I4ff.
. 65
Q— I ^
. i6q
/ Samuel
18
. 194
iv, 7
«j
. 77
i
i, 20-8 .
. 67, 184
. . 67
23
ii, 8ff.
. 246
• 59
i8ff. .
vi, i6f.
/ /
. 234
. 132
20
. 100
iv, iff.
• 59
ix, 6ff. .
. 63
ii, 4
. 413
9ff. -
• - 65
7
. 218
27
• 77
V,20324 •
. 269
13
. 64
iv, igff. .
vii f.
. in
• 59
vi .
vi, 5, i4ff.
• 72
. . 84
xi, 8, gf.
ii
. . 63
vii .
. 462
i4f.
. . 64
12
64, 65
vii, 10
. 269
i7f.
. 71
14
. 64
viii .
60, 79, 462
vii .
97, 100, xoi,
20
• • 65
viii, 5
. 21
117, 1 66
xiii, 2off.
. 234
viii, 5
. 21
vii, 8
. 66
xvi, 2
. 118
i off.
. 6l
ii
. 301
. IIQ
11-17
. 22
12-16.
• 99
tf i off. "
J7
. 72
ixff. ."
. 21
• 59
18 .
25-9 .
. 71
• 99
xvii, 7ff, .
xviii, 4
. 71
. 72
ix .
ix, 6ff. .
16
6, 462
• 77
65, 68
viii, gf.
x, if.
xiv, 14 .
. 109
. 109
. 69
13-16
xx, 6
' 135
. 458
. 70
*7
. 198
I7ff.
. 66
I2f.
. 109
20
22ff. .
X
: : II
60, 66, 462
17 .
XV, I Off.
10, 12
. . 67
. . 63
. 64
xxi, i off.
xxii, i6f.
i8f.
. 71
. 71
. 70
x, 1-7 .
1-6 .
iff. .
. 58
- - 65
63, 66
21
xxiii, iff.
3~5
• ' 459
. 66, 174
. 73
xxiii, 10
XXV, 27ff.
. 274
. 65
i
- 65,68
3f. -
. 68
/ Chronicles
2ff.
. 116
3b .
. 227
iii, i8f. ,
. 160
6,9 -
i7ff. .
20ff. .
, 66
. 60
• 63
xxiii, 4
24
. 227
• 75
. 24 .
XI, 12, 26
XVI, 22
334> 357, 390
• 75
. . 7
24
, . 64
/ Kings
xvii, 10
. . i
' 301
25ff.
. 22
i, 5 .
. . 63
xxviii, 5
. 389
.25
. 6l
9* *9
64
xxix, 23 .
• 389
XI .
. 65
31
• . 66
xi, 6ff. .
. 66
32-53 -
» « D^?
2 Chronicles
I2ff. .
. 60
33,38
• • 6^5
vii, i
. 374
13
• 65 39,40
• 64
ix, 8
• 389
500
REFERENCE INDEX
a Chronicles
PAGE
Psalms
PAGE
Psalms
PAGE
xxvi, i6ff.
: : 7i
xvi .
. 205
77, 380, 381
box, 1 8, 37
Ixxii
. 67
11,84,89,
xxxiv, 31 .
. 64
xviii
"*459
95, 97
xviii, i
. . 67
Ixxii, 1-9
. 90
Ezra
21-7
• - 96
2-4
. 68
iv, 21
. 364
22-5
• 73
2
. 68
v,8
. 364
28
5 -
66, 227
35
• • 7^
6,7
. 68
Esther
. 47
• 459
8-10
. 67
vi, 7-10 .
. 220
XIX, 12
• 347
8 .
' * I?o
viii, 2
. 220
XX .
11,97
ii
ix, sf.
. 220
xx, 4, 7-9
• 73
12-14
68
. 84
14
. 90
Job
8
xxi .
. 94
11,73,76
16
, ... I7
68, 90
. 227, 293
* • *vy
xxi, 5
. 66
IXXlll
• 205
.
• 77
gff. .
. 68
xxiv
. 4^8
Hi, 3
. 108
IO
. • 84
Ixxvi
TT*J^
. 145
iv, 1 711. •
v , •
Vll, 7f., 21
X, 2 if.
. 202
. 77, 380
. 162
. 162
xxii
xxvii, 9
xxviii
xxviii, 6-8
12, 235
. 67
. II
« 73
Ixxvi, 2 .
Ixxix
Ixxx, 18 .
Ixxxi
' 303
• 458
' 357,420
xii, 1 8
xiv, 7
8
10-12
12
14 .
xv, 7f.
. . 413
. 162
. 17
. 205
. 162
162, 205, 417
. 424
. 202
- 77, 380
xxix, i
XXX, IO
xxxvij i .
xxxviii, 14!
xxxix, 2, 4, 10
xlii, 5
xliv
xliv, 24 .
xiv .
• 77
. 86
. . 67
. 202
. 202
. . 84
. 458
. . 458
76, 87, ioo
Ixxxii . 77, 85, 141,
.. 147, 264, 381
Ixxxn, 6f. . , 54.
. 6 • • 77
1XXXV, 2 . . .147
, ...10- • • 374
Ixxxvm . . 86, 455
Ixxxviii, 11-13 . • 86
IXXXIX . . . THrt
xvii, 3
xviii, 5f.
. 203
. 220
xiv, 7
7b .
62, 65, 68
. 456
Ixxxix, 4 .
6-8
. 67
xix, 22
* 77
8 .
66, 78
6,8
. $80
xxi, I7f.
xxv, 4-6 ,
xxxi, 6
xxxviii, 7
. 220
. 202
. 396
• 77
17 ... '117
xlvi . 112,140,145,
298
xlvi, 5 . . 146,270
20-38
aoff.
20f.
ouw
! 66, 67!
ioo, 117, 166
. 73
Psalms
gf. .
IO .
. - 83
• 147
20
2 iff.
. 61, 76
. 97
i
ii . 7
. . 454
,11,64,67,97,
ii
xlvii
146, 270
87, 145, 270
21
29-38
. 66, 67, 78
• 99
98,
141, 190, 193,
xlvii, 2f,
. 146
. 96
293, 294
2
. 270
xc, sf.
. 66
ii, if.
6
. 140
63, 64
4,6,10
xlviii
. 146
. 140, 298
16 .
ci .
. 142
ii, 71, 91, 97
7
37, 62, 63, 66,
xlviii, 3 .
62, 269
ci, 8
. 227
67,78,117
4 *
. 303
cii .
. 84, 224
8
. 67
9f.
. 83
cii, 9
• • 85
ii, 9 .
• 75
liii, 7
. 142, 147
13*
. . 84
i if.
vi, 6
: : ll
Ivii, 7
Ixii, 6
. 202
. 202
14 .
i6ff.
. 84, 85
* 235
vii, 15-17
. 202
IO
.396
17
. . 84
viii .
77, 80, 374
bciii
. II
2lf.
- . 85
viii, 5f.
357> 374
Ixiii, 6-9
' 73
26 .
. . 84
5
• 357
12 .
. 63
civ, 30
. 184
6
• 77
bcv, 2
. 87
cv, 15
7
ix, 16
. 202
Ixvii, 5 .
146, 270
cvi, 23 .
• 233
xiv, 7
• 142, 147
kviii, i .
• 458
cvii
. 458
501
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Psalms
Isaiah
Isaiah
cvii, 1 6
. 458
ii, 20 . 146, 147,
X, 20
• 147, 268
ex . 6,62,64,
72, 74> 75,
268, 269
2lf. .
. 132
97, 98,
103, 120,
iii, ii . .146, 269
21
16, 18
124, 141,
283, 374
190, 238,
18-23 • • J46
i8ff. . . .269
27
146, 147, 268,
283
ex, iff. . . 63
i . 11,62,64,389
x8 . . 147,268
iv, 2 . 1 6, 1 8, 146,
270-34
xi, 1-9 .
<•>
. • -135
16, 17, 19, 20,
2
147, 164, 177,
155, 186, 226
3
62, 64s 67j
178, 268, 270
iff. .
20, 109, 161,
75, "7
3f. . . 146
1 86, 376, 383
4
• 5
3 • • 147,268
i
17, 1 60, 292,
5f*
. 68
4 ... 269
456
6
. 75
9 ... 147
2ff. .
. 65
7
. 64
v, 30 _ . . 147,268
2
1 75*355,376
cxv, 17 .
. 86
vi, i-viii, 19 . -109
3~5 •
- 179
cxviii, 25f.
. 468
vi, iff. ... 84
90, 176,312
cxxiii
. 202
2 . . .116
6-9
62, 81, 146
cxxvi, 1,4
. 147
13 ... H7
6-8 .
- 147, 182
cxxix, 5?.
. 142
vi, 7 . . . 245
9
137, 147, 180
cxxx, 8
. 142
vii . 20, 110-119, 120,
I Of. .
. 147, 268
cxxxi
. 202
^5, 247, 307
10
1 6, 18-20, 1 60,
cxxxii, . 83, *
*4, 86, 98,
vii, 2 , , .61
178,305
100, 141, 103
3 • • .132
i if. .
. 146
cxxxii, i-io
. 84
10-17 • - 16
ii
i off.
. 117
10-14 • • *7
i3f., i5f
146
11-18 .
• 73
13 . .61
16 ' .
. 269
nff.
%, 97,
14-17 . . 62
xii, i
• 147, 268
100, 1 66
14 . . .114
3~~6
. 147
i if.
• 99
4-6 .
TF/
• 270
12
73) 96
15 . . 81, 112
4
• 147, 268
'/ :
: es
1 8, 2of. . 147, 268
2 if. . . . 146
xiii-xxiii
xiii f.
. 146,154
. 135
cxliv, i
• 459
22 , .8l
xiii
•J^
• *47, 269
3 •
. 357
..23 . . 147,268
xiii, 1-22 .
. 136
viii, 5~8a, 8b-io , 18
6ff. .
• 147, 268
Proverbs
xiii, 9
xvi, 2
XX, 20
. 219
- 396
. 220
viii, 8b, lob . .16
16-19 . . 183
i6ff. . .251
16 . 194,205,218
xiv, i
5
19 -
25 «
. 146
. 219
• 45f
. 146
xxi, 2
. 396
17 ... 134
26 .
. 147, 269
xxiv, 12 .
- 396
18 . 134, 205, 231
27-9 .
* 135
20 .
. 22O
2ob-23a . -183
29 -
• 283, 292
xxvij 27 -
xxx, 27 .
xxxi, 26 (24)
. 202
. 171
. 301
23 ... 146
ix . . . 160, 182
ix, 1-6 . 16, 17, 102-10,
in, 120, 155, 1 66,
32 •
XV f.
xvi, 5
. 269
* *54
x6, 1 8, 160,
171, 177, 179
Isaiah
i, 9 -
• 135
170, 171, 183-5,
228
iff. . 20, 117, 173,
xvii, 4, 7
8
9 •
• 147, 268
. 146, 269
. 147, 268
10-17 .
. 132
4°73433, H4,
I Of.
. 4*7
10
18-31 .
. 218
132, H6
H7,I77,270
I .114, 147, 177,
12-14
xix, 9
r *j i
' 135
4
l8—20, 21—6, 21/
-31 132
270
XX .
ii, 2-4 .
146, 339
3 • • -146
xx, 3
• 2l8 231
2f.
. 178
4 - • .176
xxi, i-io .
*35» *3^
2
. 262
5 - 175-7, 284
i if.
4
. 146
6 . 1 60, 178, 179
xxii, 10 .
. 268
X2ff. .
• *45
x, 5-19 . . . 135
ii .
12
133, 147
210—2 * * . 269
14 .
• 195
502
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Isaiah
Isaiah
Isaiah
xxii, 1 8 .
. 62
xxxiv, iff. . . 147
xliii, 10 .
293, 3^6
20 .
• '47
xxxv, if. . 146, 270
I2f.
• 77
25 •
. 147, 268
5f. . 147, 270
14 .
• 137
xxiii, 15
. 147, 268
6f. . 146, 270
15 -
. 172
xxiv-xxvii
• *54
10 . . . 146
18 .
. 144
xxiv, 21-3
. 272
xxxvii, 3 if. . . 269
20 .
254, 365
2 if.
. 147, 269
xxxviii, i . .301
21 .
. 137
21 .
. 147, 268
xl-lxvi . . .16
22-8, 22-5
. 214
23 •
146, 172,269
xl-lv . 136, 189, 464
24 .
• 199
xxv, 6f.
. 147
xl-xlvi . . -189
xliv, iff. .
. 219
8 .
147, 205, 270,
xl, 2 . 199, 214, 243
if. .
• 137
273
3,5 • • .338
6 - 137.
172, 177
9 •
. 147, 268
9-1 1 . . 172,254
8 .
- 137
xxvi, i
. 147, 268
9 • - .338
10 .
. 254
6 .
. 270
10, 15 . . 254
18 .
. 214
19-21
• 273
2iff. . . .137
21 .
- 137
19 .
. 205, 270
24 . ,17
22 .
. 214
21 .
. 147, 269
271!. . . . 137
26 .
. 218
xxvii, i
147, 268, 269
xli, 2f. . . 244
28 .
67, 137,
2 .
147, 268
2 . . .244
244, 365
9 •
. 146, 269
4 • -77
xlv, 1-7 .
. 226
I2f.
146, 147, 268
8f. . . 137,366
1-4 .
" 3<36
xxviii-xxxi
. 269
8a 207
i
xxviii, 5f.
. 147
13,21 . , 172
3f. - -
. 214
5
. 268, 269
27 . . 218, 219
4
137, 365
i6ff.
. 132
28f. . . .137
5-7 -
• 137
16
• 135
xlii . . . .188
9f. . .
. 214
xxix, 1-8 .
xlii, 1-7 . .226
13 .
• 244
20 .
. 146, 269
1-4 . 189-91 and Ch.
• 137
23f.
. 269
VII passim, 464,
14 .
146, 270
xxx, 6
. 1x6
466
18 .
. 152
15 •
. 297
i . 137, 254, 293,
3^5? 366, 463»
21-5 -
22ff.
- i37
. 152
. 172
464, 466
22
- J49
22 .
. 146, 269
5-9 • 137, 190,
23 -
146, 270
23-5
. 146, 270
220, 466
xlvi, 9-13.
* 137
26 .
. 147, 270
5-7 . 189,226,245
9 •
- 137
27-33
• 135
6f. . . 229
13 .
. 244
xxxi.5-9-
. 135, 172
. 146, 269
6 . 229, 244, 365,
366, 414
xlvii, 14
xlviii, i-i i
* 254
137,214
xxxii, 1-8
16, 17, 174
7 , .244
1,4,8-10
. 214
iff.
. 378
7a . . 229
9-i i
. 144
i
• 179
9 . .144
9,n
. 178
2 .
. 177
ioff., 13-15, 15 141
12-15
* i37
3-8
. 179
18 . 214
12 . 77
,137,365
15 •
. 146, 270
19-23 . 214,464
14 .
67, 365
I7f.
. 147
19-22 . . 463
15 .
- 3^5
20 .
xxxiii
. 146, 270
H3, 154, 339
igf. . . 245
19 ... 465
i6b
20 .
. 146
xxxiii, 6
. 147
24-7 • -137
xlix
. 188
10-14
. 269
24f. . -214
1-13.
. 226
10
. 458
xliii, i . . .137
1-6 . 191-3 and Ch.
12
. 147, 269
4 . . .219
VII passim, 462-
14-16
. 146
5-9 . . 189
464
14
, 269
5f. . . 146,466
i
S *te
17
• 172,339
7 • • • *37
3 • 462,
463, 466
21 f.
. 172
8 . . .214
5-7 • •
. 229
22
. 172,339
10-12 . . 137
5ff. .
. 244
xxxivf. .
*54> 269, 339
xof, . . 77
6 .
366, 414
503
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Isaiah
Isaiah
Isaiah
xlix, 6b
. 229
liii . 163, 196-206 and
Ixi, ii
. 137
7-13
. 192, 229
Ch. VII passim, 290
Ixii, i
. 147, 270
7-1 1
. 245
323, 327-303 332,
3
. 172
7~9
. 192
333, 366, 367, 412,
4,6f.
. 146
Tff-
. 219
414, 449, 454, 466
ii
. 172
7
. 229, 245
liii, aff. . . .466
12,25
. 147
8-13
, 229
2 ... 457
Ixiii, 1-6
. 147
8-12
. 229
5 ... 306
l-q
. 269
8ff.
. 229
10 ... 293
iff. .
. 172,269
8
. 84, 143, 146,
ii ... 412
5 •
. 244
229
12 ... 328
7ff .
• 233
8b
. 245, 464
liv, if. ... 146
lOff.
. 243
8d
. 463
4 • -254
i if.
. 232
ga
. 229
5 • * 146,172
17
. 243
roff.
. 172
7-10 . . 137
Ixiv, 4 .
. 146
I4ff.
• 137
7f. . 243
Ixv, 1-4 .
. 269
16-29 . .146
8, 9 . . .214
iff. .
. 243
i6ff.
. 172
13 ... 244
2,gf.
. 146
i7f.,
ig, 20 146
14-17 . . 148
9
• 365
22
. 146, 172
Iv, sff. . . .339
i if.
. 243, 269
25f.
. 172
3f. . 16, 17, 146,160
15 •
• 365
26
. 137
165, 1 66, 170, 171
17 .
147, 270, 274
1, 4-1 1
. 193-6 and Ch.
3 • • 84,98,99
18 .
. 270
VII passim
4 . . .178
20
147, 168, 270
4ff.
• 188, 253
7 . . .214
22
147, 270, 365
8.
. 245
22ff. . . .178
25 •
. 147
gff.
. 249
Ivi-lxvi . 136, 188, 251,
Ixvi, 3
. 243, 269
9
• 245
254. 339
5 -
- 137, 243
ii
. 254
Ivi, 7 . . 146,270
. 172
H, Q
81, 146
9 . . .243
17 .
. 269
4-6
. 188
Ivii, iff. . . . 243
i8f.
146, 147, 270
4ff.
. 245
i . .146
20 .
• 146, 394
5
. 137, 245, 254
3ff, 13 . 146, 269
22 .
147, 270, 274
6
. 141, 254
15 ... 149
23f.
. 145, 146
7
. 243
16-19 . . 137
23 •
. 270
8
• 245, 254
Iviii, 1-7 . .146
24 .
. 277
g-i6
. . . 187
iff. . . . 243
. 274
9
. 244
12 . . . 146
i aff.
. 172
lix, iff. . . . 243
Jeremiah
13
. 245
2-8, 12-15 . . 146
ij 5 •
. 36, 218
I4f.
. 244
16 . . 244, 270
gb
. 245
I5f.
. 245
19 • . • -146
iii, i 6
. 146, 147
16
. 254, 463, 464
21 ... 463
17
146, 147, 269,
17-20
. 214
Ix, iff. . . . 245
270
i7ff.
. 137
3 . . 146,270
18 .
. 146, 147
In, 1-6
. 137
4, 8f., 10 . . 146
21
• 457
2
. 146
14 ... 172
22-5
* 233
7
. 141, 146, 172,
17 ... 147
iv, 9
. 147, 268
269, 338
igf. . , 147,270
vii, 1 6
• 233
8
. 146
21, 22 . . 146
25 •
. 218
10
. 244, 254
Ixi, 1-3. . . 255
3if. .
. 274
i if.
. 146
iff. . 219, 226, 254,
x, 7-10 .
. 269
I2ff.
. 466
255, 457
7, 10 .
. 146
12
. 172
if. ... 338
xi, 14
. 233
Hi, i3-liii,
12 . 196-206
i . . 7, 66
xiv, *3f.
• 233
and
2 . . 84, 143
21
Ch. VII passim
3 • - -379
XV, 10-21
. 196
Hi, 13
• 293
4 • - - 146
17 .
. 231
'5
. 414
6 ... 147
xvi, 1-13 .
. 231
504
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Jeremiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
xvi, 13 .
• 293
xxxi, 3 iff
. 147
xii .
. 231
xvii, 12
• 389
33 •
. 1 66, 240
6,11
. 231
igff.
. 165
34 -
. 147, 240
xm, 5
*45, 233
if ,
• *77
16,19, 160,165
35 •
xxxii
• 245
. 136
xiv, i-n .
17-22
146, 269
. 269
xix, 2, 6
. 274
xxxii, 15 .
• 135
xvi, 53 .
. 147
xx, 7-13 .
. 196
35 •
. 274
xvii, 22-4.
1 6, 171
7b .
. 231
. 1 08
37 •
38 .
. 146
. 166
xvii, 23 .
xviii, 31
177, 178
. 240
xxi, u-xxiii, o . -79
.44 •
. 147
xx, 34 .
. 146
xxii, 13-17
. 92
xxxiii, 7
. 146, 147
36-8 .
146-269
*3
61
8 .
. 146
41,42
. 146
Io •
xxiii, 1-6
. 62
. 171
. . 167
9
ii
14-18
- 147, 270
. 146, 147
. 165
xxi, 32 .
xxii
xxii, 25 .
. 174
146, 269
7Q
3 /.'
. 146, 269
14-16
. 161
3° •
/ y
• 233
4~6
4ft
• 177
I5f."
. • 165
. 16
xxiv, i6ff., 24, 27
xxv-xxxii 1 8
. 231
, 146, 154
5f.
16, 19, 161
15
147,164,177,
xxviii
. 424
5 •
160, 164, 179,
179,
286, 292, 456
xxviii, 13
. 87
286, 292, 456
16
• 179
25
, 146
6 .
147, 165, 177,
i7f.
. 16
xxix, 14 .
. 147
179
17
. 160
xxx, 3
147, 268
9 •
. 178
26
. 147
. 172
20 .
. 262
xxxiv, 5 .
. 62
xxxi, 8f.
. 81
xxiv
. 135
xxxv, 4 .
• 77
xxxiv, i iff.
. 146
xxiv, 7 .
. 1 66
..'5 •
. 218
I2ff.
. 172
XXV
. 154
xxxvii f.
. 230
17-22
. 146
xxv, 4
. 218
xliii, 10 .
. 67
22f.
. 179
9 -
. . 67
xlvi-li
. 146, 154
gqff.
. 177
29-38
. 147
xlvi, 10-12
. 147, 269
23f.
1 6, 1 60,
2gff.
. 269
10 ,
. 147, 268
163, 171
xxvi, i
. 81
xlviii, 47
. 262
25—7
. 147
5 •
. 218
xlix, 39 .
. 262
25ff.
146, 177
xxvii, 6 .
. 67
25^.
- 183
xxix
. 135, 136
Lamentations
27
. 146
xxix, 14 .
. 147
i, 21
1^6
xxxvi, iff.
. 146
19 •
xxx, 3
7f.
8 .
. 218
. 146, 147
. 147, 268
. 146
iii, 22 ff. .
iv, 20
2 if. .
• 136
69, 70
• 136
8ff.
25ff.
25 •
. 147
. 146
. 240
146, 269
9
16, 20, 160,
26 .
* 147
163, 179,286,292
EzeUel
28 .
. 146
10, 18
. 147
i
84, 116,352
29f.
. 147
2 if.
166, 179, 203,
i,4ff. .
• 374
33-8
. 146
238, 241
15
. 410
33ff.
. 146
21
16,20,71,167,
28
• 374
33 •
. 147
172, 180
iii, 8-1 o
. 231
.. 35 -
. 81
2lb .
. 238
12,23
• 374
xxxvii, 12
. 146
22 .
^24 .
. 240
. 262
iv .
v, 9-13 •
. 231
. 269
21.
15-22 .
. 172
. 146
xxxi, i
. 147
viii .
• 79
22-5
16,171
5f., 7-12 - . 146
viii, 2,4 .
- 374
22
, 178
7 '
. 269
x,4, 18 .
• 374
24-11* «
• 179
10-14
. 147, 270
xi, 17
. . 146
24"I> •
. 160
23 .
. 147
igf.
. 147
24.
163,179
27 .
. 146
*9
* ' 2S
25
. 146
29 .
. 147
20
. 166
27
. 172
31-4
. 240
22
• 374
28
1 66, 178
505
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Ezekiel
Hosea
Micah
xxxviiif. . 147, 154,
iii, 5
146, 163, 262,
iv, 1-3
. 146
272
286, 292
iff.
. 146
xxxviii, 8 . . 262
vi, if.
152
if.
26g
12 . 146,269
vi, n
. 147
i
. 262
16 . , 262
x, 5
• 457
2
. 270
xxxix, 25, 29 . . 147
xij i of.
. 146
3f.
• H7
xl-~xlviii . .169
xii, 14
. 232
3
. 270
xliii, 1-5 . . 374
xiv, 2f.
. 146
5
. 147
7-9 • • 79
6f.
. 146
7ff. . . . 61
Jcel
7
. 146, 269
xlvii . . 146, 270
xlvii, iff. . .270
ii, I
145, 147, 268
. 147, 268
8-13 .
8
< 135
1 6, 19, 165,
xlvii , 13-xlviii, 29 .146
..3 -
. 81
166, 283
iii, iff. .
. 147
iv, i4-v, 5
• 135
Daniel
3f.
147, 268, 269
v, 1—3
16, 19, 166,
ii . 269, 271, 351, 376
. 5
. 269
184, 185
ii, 22 ... 270
IV .
• *45
iff.
• 185
iv, 5**., 10, i4f., 20 . 77
iv, i
. 274
i
63,68,160,286
V, II . . .77
14
147, 268, 274
ib
. 227
27 396
15
. 147, 269
gf.
. 176, 177
vii . 269,313,336,347-9,
16,17
. 269
3
66,94,176,178
352, 353, 355, 36l>
18
. 146, 270
4
. 176
362, 389, 390, 393,
20
. 269
6f.
• 269
418, 420, 421, 449,
9~I3
. 146
466
Amos
gff
146
vii, iff. . .271
if. .
. 146
gf. •
. 94
9-12 . . .273
ii, 16
. 147
9
. 147,268
9ff- • • • 395
iii, 7
. 218
14
. 147, 269
13 • 335, 33^ 35i
v, 18-27
. 132
vii, 7
14 ... 404
i8ff. .
109, 145, 458
8-20 .
• !36
25 ... 272
18
132, 142, 147
14 •
. 146
viii .... 269
vii, 2, 5 .
• 233
18 .
. 269
viii, I3f. . .272
viii, 9
147, 268, 269
20
. 163
13 • 77,380,381
13 -
. 147, 268
ixff. . . .269
ix, 7
. 132
Nahum
ix . . . .296
8
. 146
i-iii
*35» *S6
ix, 22ff. . * .271
10
. . 269
i-ii .
• 459
24-7 . . .291
11-15 .
18
i, 2-10
. 147, 269
25ff. ... 6
ii
1 6, 147, 1 60,
13
. 458
26 ... 272
165, 268
ii, 6
• 459
x, 13 • • • 397
12
. 178
14 ... 262
13
146, 183, 270
Habbaknk
21 ... 397
I4 ,
. 147
i-iii
*35> *3^
xi, 4 iff. . . . 272
ij 5
. 301
xii, i . . 272, 397
Obadiah
i, 12
. 78, 86
2 . 205, 270, 273,
8 .
. 147, 268
iii, 3flF.
• H7, 269
274
15 •
147, 268, 269
3 • • -274
17 .
. 269
£ephaniah
7 - - -459
18 .
. 146, 290
i, 6 .
. 146, 269
13 . . 205, 273
19 .
. 146
7ff. .
• ^45
21 .
. 146, 269
8.
. 147
Hosea
gf.
. 147, 268
ii, i , 2f . . . . 146
Micah
• *47
10 . .73
I, 2-4
. 147, 269
ii
. 146
16-25, 20 • * 146
ii, 4
. 147, 268
ii, 2
• *47
23f. . . -54
I2f. .
. 146
7
, 147, 269
25 . . .166
12
. 269
9
. 269
iii,4f. . . 16,19
13
. 144
ii
• 147
4 ... 70
iv, 1-4 .
• H6> 339
13-15 ,
* 135
506
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Zjephardah
Zechariah
Qchariah
iii, 9-1 1 a
• 135
iv, 14
• 99» 1 60
xii, 10
29°> 291, 326,
10
146, 270
vi, 8
. 120, l6l
329
i if. .
146, 269
Qff- •
. 120
n
115, 147, 268
ii . 147,
268, 269
10-13
. 1 60
xiii, if.
. 147, 268
I2f. .
. 269
11-13 •
• 456
2-6
. 146, 269
I3
. 147
I2f. .
. 120, l6l
4
. 147, 268
I5 . 144,
146, 172,
12
19, 120, 164
7-9
. 146
269, 339
!3» *5
. 121
xiv .
145, 147, 269
16
147, 268
viii, 3
. 120
xiv, iff. .
• 329
igf. . .
. 146
4f. •
. 120, 146
r'4
. 147, 268
20
. 147
6
* 269
. 77, 380
7f-
. 146
6
. I47> 268
Haggai
8
. 166
7 •
• 270
ii, 6-8
. 120
10-13
. 120
8
147, 268, 270
6f.
. 160
*3 •
. 146
9
146, 172, 269,
i8f.
. 120
20-3
. 120, 146,
270
aiff. .
. 1 60
270
I Of.
. 146
a if. .
120, 121
ix .
. 146
10
. 146, 269
23
67, 120
ix, 4-7 .
. 146
ii
. 147, 270
9f- •
!6, 79, 94> 171
13 •
. 147, 268
£echariah
9
63> i77> 179)
16-19
. 146, 270
i, 15-17 •
. 120
336
i6f.
. 144, 146,
ii, $f.
. 120
10-13 •
. 146
172,339
4
. 161
10
146, 147, 176,
20f.
. 269
8f.
. 172
178,270
xiv, 20
. 147, 268
13-17 .
. 120
nf. .
. 146, 269
21
• * 47
13, 15
. 161
16
. 147, 268
iii, 8 . *9>
67, 120,
x, sf., 8-10,
10 . 146
Malachi
1 60,
164, 231
»: 4-1 7 •
. 146
ii, 10-13 •
. 146
10
. 147
xii-xiv
. 266, 339
ii, 17-iii, 5
. 146
iv .
. 291
xii .
. 145
iii, if.
. 298
iv, i-6a .
. 120
3* •
. 147
I
. 1 6, 458
6f.
. 16
3
. 268
20
• 3°9
6
150, 173
6,8f.
. 147, 268
23f. .
. 298
6ap-7
. 121
Q-I i .
. 291
iv, 22
. 218
7fF., iob~-i4
. 120
(b) APOCRYPHA AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHA
2 Esdras
2 Esdras
2 Esdras
iii, 4ff. .
402, 403
vii, I2f. .
. 271
vii, 33f. .
. 273
iv, 2, 5, 1 1
. 271
12
. 271
33 •
• 4*9
23
. 269
17 •
. 269
36ff. .
. 276
26f,. 27, s6f.
. 271
21
. 274
36f. .
. 277
iv,5i-v, 13
• 295
26ff. .
• 359, 393
36 .
. 274, 277
v, 1-5, 4-6, 8, 9
. 272
26 .
. 406
42 .
. 269
42
• 273
27 .
• 305
47 •
. 271
5°l5 •
5off. .
. 272
. 271
28-31
28ff. .
. 291
, 1 68, 326
48ff.
48 .
. 291
. 276, 270
vi, 9
. 271
a8f.
. 285
50 •
. 271
16
. 272
28 .
269, 276, 294,
61 .
. 276
i8ff. ,
• 295
303, 388, 393,
67 .
. 274
20
. 271
406, 468
70,73
• 273
2lf. .
. 272
29fF. .
. 404
75 -
. 274
23
• 399
29 •
. 360, 367
78-101
• 273
24
. 272
3I, *
- 271, 359
84 .
. 274
25
. 269
321. .
. 273
87 .
. 269, 273
26
276, 300
32 .
• 399
97 •
. 274
507
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAflTT
2 Esdras
2 Esdras
Testaments XII Patriarchs
vii, U2Jf.
. 271
xiii, 48f.
269
ii6ff.
. 402
49 •
311
Reuben
.. 125, 129, i37f. . 274
390
vi, 10-12
. 287
viii, if.
. 271
52 . 276, 294,
302,
6
. 274
305, 386,
392,
Simeon
30 .
. 269
393,
406
vi
' 273
34f.
. 402
XIV, 2 ...
274
vii .
. 287
38 .
. 276
9 .276, 294,
359,
52 -
. 269, 271
372, 381,
406,
Levi
... 59 . •
. 274
441
iii, iv
• 723
viii, 63-ix, 6
• 295
i if.
296
iv, 2f.
. 289
ix, 3
. 272
ii ...
271
v, 1-3
. 289
8
x, 35ff*, 5off
. 269
. 403
36 ...
49 ...
274
276
viii .
viii, i iff.
. 289,378
. 287
xif.
xi, iff.
. 403
Tobit
xviii
270, 273, 287,
3°9, 3l8, 322,
32-45 -
36-45 -
- 398
• 359
xiii, 6 ...
7 ...
1 06
269
xviii, 2-5
382, 404, 415
. 288
37 -
• 365
ii ...
270
7 -
• 309
44
. 271
13 -
106
8-92.
. 288
46 .
xiiff.
.' 269
xiv, 7 ...
1 06
9-12
lOf.
• 383
. 337
xii f.
• • 394
Wisdom of Solomon
12
• 397
xii, 32-4 •
• 398
iii, 7
274
32ff. .
* 359
9
269
Judah
32 •
168, 286, 291,
13, 17
273
xxii-xxiv .
. 286
359, 36o, 386,
iv, 6
273
xxii, 2f. .
. 287
387, 394, 395
V, iff., 2ff.
212
xxiv
. 309, 316
33 •
3*3, 396, 397,
15 ...
274
xxiv, 4, sf.
. 456
399
16
221
XXV
. 270, 273
34 -
269, 311, 401,
vi, 5f.
273
xxv, 3
• 397
402, 404
xvi, 19 ...
269
xiii .
272, 305, 360
xvi, 26 ..
301
fybulun
xiii, iff. .
• 313,390
xxvii, 25f.
202
x
• 273
3
360, 365, 376,
xxxv, 18 ,
219
390
xxxvi, 22 (17)
106
Dan
5f. .
• 397
xiii, 17 .
77
v
269, 272, 273
5 <* '
. 311
xlviii, 9-1 1
323
v, gf.
. 288
isff.
• 398
io£
299
10
- 397
I2f.
. 402
10
299
12
• 337,38i
Asher
13 •
• 394,395
I Maccabees
v, vi
. 270
i6ff.
• 295
xiv, 4fF. .
284
vii .
. 272
25ff. '
. 269
. 360
41 . . 302,323
viii .
. 269
25f.
• 386,387
2 Maccabees
Joseph
26 .
369, 359, 401,
v, af.
272
xix .
. 272,311
403
vi, 26 ...
273
28 .
. 315
vii, 9 . . 273,
274
Benjamin
3of.
. 401, 403
• 392
14 • 273, 274,
16 .
276
276
x .
* 273
32 -
. 294, 449
36 - • 273,274
Jubilees
35^ "
. 400
* 398
xii, 43f.
xiv, 46 .
273
273
i, 16
• 379
. 274
37**
. 311
iv, 23fF. .
. 438
37 -
• 294, 395
4 Maccabees
v, 10, 13 .
. 273
38
• 376, 397
i, 8 .
300
vii, 29
. 274
39ft-
337, 381, 402
xv, 3
270
34 «
• 379
40 .
. 382
xvii, 18 .
274
xvi3 26
• 379
508
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Jubilees
Psalms of Solomon
i Enoch
xxi, 24
• 379
xvii, 33!".
• 315
xxii, 4, ii
. 273
xxiij II
• 379
35^
310,317
xxv, 3
. 269, 393
xxiii, 1 8, 19
22ff,
. 272
• 295
35 •
36 .
. 308
. 291
4 •
5,7 •
. 273
. 269
23f.
. 269
37 •
3IO,3l6
xxvii
. 277
25
. 272
40 .
- 3"
xxvii, i .
. 270
xxiv, 28 .
. 269
41 .
309,316
2f.
• 274
xxv, 3
• 379
42 . 308,
309, 323
3 •
. 269
xxxi
. 318
43 -
. 311
xxxii, 2f.
. 441
xxxi, 13!!.
. 287
44-6
. 316
3 •
. 382
13, i4a, isa
. 287
310,316
xxxvii-cvi
• 356
17 .
• 3*2
44, .
. 316
xxxvii-lxxi
• 292, 353
20 .
. 316
45, 46
. 318
xxxvii
. 438
xxxvi, 10 .
• 273
47 .
. 292
xxxiv,4 ,
. 270, 274
!' 5 -... • •
. 274
48f.
• 318
xxxviii, iff.
- 358
Ixxxm, ii
• 273
48 . .
• 308
i .
• 273
50 .
. 316
2 .
366, 373,
Damascus Document
..51 •
. 296
377, 388
viii, 8, 10
ix,8
. 301
• 301
xviii, 5f.
. 291
295, 296
3
4
• 378,444
. 274,380,
loff. .
71.
. 291
393, 444
o 5
7 -
• 3*6
6
. 273
xviii, 8
. 30*
• 319
8-10
8 .
. 310
308,318
xxxk, iff.
i-2a
. 380
• 353
10 .
. 302
3-7
. 371
Psalms of Solomon
i, 2f. . .
• 309
2
• 393
* 379
iii, ii
. 276
i Enoch
4 •
. 380
12
270, 274
i-xxxvi .
. 280
. 377, 408
v,6 . .
- 396
i-xxxii, 6
• 356
5 •
. 402
ix, 5
. 274
i-v .
• 356
6ff.
. 372
xi, 8
xiii, ii
. 269
274, 276
i, i .
2ff.
. 438
6f.
6 .
- 370, 373
365, 366, 378
xiv, 3
. 274
3-9
. 273
7 •
. 386
9
276, 277
ii, i
. 301
xl,5 -
359, 365, 370,
10
. 274
v,4
• 301
372, 379, 386,
XV .
- 273
6ff.
. 402
387
XV, I Off.
. 276
7f. • .
• 269
xii, if. .
. 378
IO
. 277
7
274, 380
i
• 396
13 ,
. 274
vi-xxxvi .
• 356
2
• 379, 380
xvii f.
. 283
vi-ix
• 353
3ff.
. 376
xvii . 269, 286, 297,
viii, 2
. 272
9
272, 274, 386,
312,
315,323
X
. 270
394
xvii, 3
. 296
X, 6-12 .
• 273
xlii,
• 354
4f. . .
. 286
6
274, 277
xlii, 2, 5, 10
. 270
5, 8
- 297
9
. 272
xlv-4
• 394
21 . 286,
. 272
295, 296
I2f. . 272,
12
274, 277
. 271
xiv, 1-3 .
3ff.
. 273
. 412
23 -
. 286
16
• 397
3f.
• 365, 379
24-7
. 312
17
• 379
3
• 389, 395
24 .
. 269
xii, 3f.
• 438
3C
• 355
28-31
308
• 317
xiv
xiv, 6
* 270
. 272
4-6 .
4f. .
. 402
. 405, 407
28£
. 308
8f., 24f. .
. 444
4
• 374
28 .
. 310
XV, I
. 438
5
. 409
30 .
. 269
8
. 272
xlvi ff. .
• 354
31 .
. 308
xvi, 1-4 .
. 272
xlvi
. 311
32 . 291,
310, 314,
iff. .
- 397
xlvi, 1-6 .
• 362
3^5
xxi, 1-6, 10
. 272
1-3 .
• 373
509
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
i Enoch
i Enoch
i Enoch
xlvi, iff. .
. 364
li, if.
. 402
Ixi, 10
• 3%
if. .
• 372
2f.
• 399
12
276, 379. 382
i
• 375.393
2
. 401,402
bcii, i
. 412
3 •
318, 354, 365,
3-5
. 405
aff. .
• 394
373. 376, 377>
3
. 289, 309, 365,
2f. .
• 377
387
373"5. 387. 389
2
318, 373-6,
4-9 -
. 413
4
. 407
379. 389. 397>
4-6 .
• 403
5
• 365
4°3
4 .
. 412
Hi .
. 376
3~5
• 389
xlvi, 5
• 277
Hi, i
. 444
3ff- •
. 412
6
• 398> 412
3*
. 403
3
• 395
7 •
. . 386
. 360,405
5-9
. 362
8 .
. 406
6ff.
• 397
5ff. .
. 403
xlvii, iff.
• 379
6
- 3^5
. 362, 392
2 .
. 380
8f.
. 408
6f.
. 389
3 •
• 269, 383
8
. 402
6
. 386
xlviii, i .
378-380, 411
378, 380, 402,
Hiif.
• 365
. 274
7
359. 362, 365.
370, 372, 387
407
Hii, i
. 403
8
• 365
2-IO
• 359
4ff.
. 412
9-1 1
• 396
2-7
• 362
6
• 365. 366>
9f. .
. 412
2-4
. 402
379. 4°6
9
- 3^2
2f.
• 37°. 372
7
• 377. 379
I Off.
• 393
2 .
354. 374. 388,
liv>4ff.
• . «397
12
• 378, 398
393
4
• 365
13 •
. 401
3-7
* 435
#
• 272, 393
14 .
. 362, 409
3 •
354. 359, 371.
6
• 273
'5*
. 409
372> 393
liv, 7-lv,
2 • 353-4
... *5 •
• 365
4ff.
. 401
lv,4
- 373. 374. 389.
Ixiii
• 393
4 •
366, 408, 412,
394. 395. 397
Ixiii, 6
• 277
4J4
Ivi .
• 272, 355
9 •
. 409
#
• 370,372,
H3
. 274
ii
362, 409, 412
410
5-8
. 361
Ixiv
. 272
5 •
359. 374. 389.
5.7
. 272
Ixv-lxix, 25
• 354
394
Ivii ,
. 403
Ixviii
. 272
6 .
359. 3^5, 37*-
Ivii, 1-3
. 361
Ixviii, 5f.
. 270
373, 386, 404
Iviiij 3-6
• 403
8 ,
• 394
7 •
379. 387, 393
3
• 270, 274
bdx, 26-9
. 362
10 .
291, 360,408
4f.
. 402
26ff.
• 394
14 .
. 291
• 378, 397
a6f.
. 362, 403
xlix, iff. .
• 376
iff.
• 393
26 .
• 387.389
if. .
. 408
lx .
• 354
27f.
• 396
i
. 378
lx, 2
• 289, 393
27 •
. 394
2f. -
• 309,372
3
. 444
29 •
362, 388, 408
2
318, 365, 371,
6
. 273
Ixxf.
. 441
374. 377, 378
Ixi-lxiv
. 394
Ixx
355. 379. 381,
388, 404, 405,
Ixi, iff.
• 375
438, 441-3
412
4f.
• 399. 401
Ixx, i
362, 307~3>
3 •
3i 1.355.375.
4
. 365, 406
441
377. 38o, 381,
5
273, 365,
Ixx, 3f. .
. 271,441
408
400, 402
4
• 382
4 •
365. 37^ 395.
6ff.
. 389,403
Ixxi
270, 289, 355,
412
6
. 381
370, 437, 441-4
1 .
. 361, 398
7
- 389
Ixxi, 1-4 .
. 441
1, iff.
• 393. 399
8f.
• 395
i
441, 442, 444
if.
. 380
8
« 365. 373. 374.
5ff- •
. 437, 441
4
. 269, 407
389, 394-6
II
• 444
li-liii
. 311
9ff-
. 374, 410, 435
I4~I7
442-4
li, 1-3 .
• 273
9
• 374.387
I4ff.
- 3^8
510
REFERENCE INDEX
i Enoch
PAGE
i Enoch
PAGE
2 Enoch
PAGE
Ixxi, 14 .
. 362
xciii, 3 .
. 271
xlviii, 9 .
• 273
16
• 378
5> 10
• 379
1, 2 .
. 274
17 .
Ixxii, iff.
. 362
. 438
ii .
xciv, i, 6f., 10
. 362
. 276
• 273
. 271
I
< 274, 301
xcv, 6
. 276
Iviii, 5
. 271
i • 35
Ixxix, i
Ixxxi, iff.
. 301
. 301
- 438
xcvi, 6, 8 .
xcvii, i
6 .
. 276
. 276
. 438
Ixi, 2
Ixv .
• 273
. 271
273,274
Ixxxii, i
Ixxxiii, 10
Ixxxiv, 4 .
Ixxxviii .
Ixxxix
Ixxxix, i .
. 444
. 438
- 438
• 273
. 272
. 271
xcviii, 10 . 273,
14 .
XC1X, I
4, 5> 8 ,'
ii .
15 •
274, 276
274, 276
. 276
• 295
. 272
. 276
• 273
Ixv, 6
7~io .
8
10
Ixvi, 6f. .
6 .
7 •
• 273
. 271
. 269
. 274
. 271
. 274
2 73? 274
g
71
• 299
• 438
. 438
c, 4, 5 -
6
9
• 273
. 438
. 277
3 Enoch
XC-C1V
. 280
ii
. 272
iii-xv
• 438
xc, 9
• 299
ciii, 2
• 438
iv, 2
. 440
16-18
. 272
8
274, 277
X, I
• 3*9
16
. 272
civ, 11-13
• 294
, 3"-
• 439
17
271, 272, 438
i if. .
. 438
XI, I
• 439
i8f. .
. 272
cv .
. 294
xii, 5
• 439
18
20-9 •
20
. 269
• 273
• 393; 438
cv, iff. .
2
cvii, i
. 294
. 294,
379.438
xvi, i
xlviii, C
xlviii, C, if.
* 394
. 438
. 440
21-4 .
. 272
cviii
. 294
5 *
• 3^9
2lff.
• 397
cviii, i
• 438
7, 8f.
• 439
24-6 .
. 277
4-6. .
. 277
S .
- 394
24f.
. 274
7 -
. 438
s6f. .
. 277
11-14
. 274
2 Baruch
30 .
. 362
14 .
. 277
iv .
. 407
3i
. 299, 300
CX, 2
. 272
iv, 12
. 274
33
. 362
V, 2
• 273
34 •
. 270
2 Enoch
viii, 50 .
JO
- 274
37 •
. 270, 362
i~xxiii
" 438
xiv, 13 .
269, 274
38 *
. 281
vii, i
• 273
19 .
. 269
QA.fi,
. 272
viii f.
. 276
xv, 7
. 269
xci-xciii .
. 280
viii, 5f.
. 112
xx, 4
. 273
xci, 3
• 379
ix f.
. 274
xxi, i, 23, 25 .
. 269
7
. 273
XX .
. 270
xxv-xxix .
• 295
10
' 411
xxi, 3
. 289
xxv, 3
. 272
12-17
• 296, 379
xxii, iff. .
• 438
xxvii
271, 272
14 .
• 3^2
4-6, 8-10
. 289
xxviii-xxx
• 394
151, .
. 273
xxiv, 1-3 .
. 289
xxviii, 3
. 295
*5
271, 273, 274
I, 2
. 438
xxix f.
• 399
i6f. ,
. 274
XXX, I Off.
. 420
xxix
270, 291
16
xcii ff.
. 270
. 269
xxxi, i-xxxii, i
xxxi, 2
. 420
. 270
xxix, i
2
• 3Q4
• 269
xcii
• 379
xxxiii, 4
. 438
3f.
• 372
xcii, i
. 438
xxxvi, 2 .
. 289
3 • 168,
29I5 303i
3f.
. 411
xxxviii, 5ff.
. 438
360, 388
3 •
. 273
xxxix, 8 ,
• 273
4 .
. 269
...5 -
- 277
xl, 12
• 273
5E
* 407
xciii
• 379
xlii, 6
270, 274
. 405
xciii, i -io
. 296
10
• 274
xxx . 168,
I
. 438
xliv, 5 •
• 273
399
2
• 379
xlvi, 3
. 273
XXX, iff.
• 399
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
AGE
a Baruch
2 Baruch
Sibylline Oracles
xxx, I . 291,
303? 3^0,
Ixvi, 7 ... 269
II, 35f» • • -270
388, 405
bcix-lxxiv . -394
i54f., 1641". . 272
aff.
• 379
Ixx, iff . , . 295
111,46-50 . . 357
2
• 269
af., 5f. . .272
55 - 273
5 •
. 276
9 • 291,293,311,
638". . , 272
xxxi, 5 .
• 274
360, 367
73 * 273
xxxii, i
. 272
Ixxi, i ... 269
288ff. . . 312
6 .
. 274
Ixxii f. . . . 391
538f. . . 272
xxxvi-xl .
. 269
Ixxii . . .399
581 . . 270
xxxvi ff . .
. 3ii
Ixxii, 2 . 291, 360, 388,
611 . . 292
xxxvi, iff.
• 3*3
392> 394
6aoff. . . 270
xxxixf. .
. 404
Ixxii, 4-6 . .398
63aff. . .312
xxxix, i-xl, 4 .
• 3*3
Ixxiii, i . 316, 394, 404,
6331?. . . 272
xxxix, 7f.
• 403
408
633 . . 272
7 • 291,
360, 388
6ff. . . 407
652 • 303? 357
3d .
. 291
Ixxiv, 2 . . 359
653 - - 311
3d, I
291, 360
Ixxv, 5 . . .269
654 . . 314
2
. 269
k^ 2 . 359, 381, 441
659**- • • 270
v3
. 404
, .5 • • -274
663ff.,67off. . 272
Xll, II
. 274
Ixxvin, 6 . . 274
689-92 . -273
xliv, 9,11
. 271
Ixxxii, 3*f. . . 269
7o6ff. . .316
12 .
271, 274
Ixxxiii, 7 . -273
744ff. . . 270
i .J5 '
. 277
8 . 271,274
796-806 . .272
xlviii, 30—37
- 295
10-21 . . 274
IV,4off. . . 273
3af-,35 •
. 272
Ixxxv, 10 . . 270
172 . . . 275
43
• 277
Ixxxvi, laff. . . 273
i8of.3 i8sf. . 273
v ,.5°
. 269
13, 15 . 274
384 . . . 269
xlix-h
xlix, 2
- 273
. 274
Assumption of Moses
V, io8f. . . 312
i55ff., 2o6E, 247f.
1, 2 .
• 273
i, 18 . . 271, 273
275
li, iff. .
273, 274
viii f. 272
28lff. . .112
3
269, 274
ix, iff. . . 300
281 . . 270
• 274
x . . 269, 272, 273
344f. . .275
8
• 269
x, if. . . .397
4J4 • • 335)357
n
. 274
6 ... 275
429^- . -316
Hi, 3 ., -
liii-lxxii .
• 273
. 296
xn,4 . . .271
13 ... 273
447f.,5iaff. . 275
liii ff .
liii
liv, 13
. 271
• 39i
. 270
Apocalypse of Abraham
xxixf. . . .272
Odes of Solomon
ix, x, xviii, xxii, xxviii,
xxxi, xxxiii, xli, xlii 253
21
Ivii s .270
. 271
> 273> 274
Apocalypse of Elijah
vi, i if. . . 270
Life of Adam
Iviii, 13 .
. 277
vii, iff. . , 272
x . . , .273
lix, 2
. 277
xiiff. . . . 420
8
• 273
Ascension of Isaiah
xii, xxvi, xxxvii, xciii 273
bdi, 2
, 392 xi . . . 420
(c) NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew
Matthew
Matthew
a, 5o
. 286
viii, 29 .. . 368
xii, 32 . . .450
28
. 290
ix, 8 . . .447
xiii, 37 . . .450
iv, iff. .
- 45°
x, 35f. . . .452
42 ... 277
3,6 .
• 370
xi,3 . . . .3
XV, 22 . . 286, 292
V, 22
• 277
I3f. . . . 299
xvi, 2 iff. . 329,415
viii, 12
. 277
14 ... 229
28 ... 404
17 .
. 187
i8f. . . .450
xvii, ioff. . , 299
20
• 450
xii, 23 . . 286, 292
xviii, 26-8 . .364
512
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Matthew
Luke
i Corinthians
xviii, 28
. 277
xvii, 24
• 389
xv, 52
• 399
xix, 28f.
28 .
. 404
275, 389
26, 30
xix, 10
• 392
. 447
2 Corinthians
XX, 21
. 404
xx, 34-6 .
• 279
i, 14
• 392
xxi, I5f.
286, 292
xxi, 27
. 389
iv,4 . .
263, 271
xxii, 30 .
• 279
xxii, agf.
• 4°4
18
. 271
xxiv, 8
. 272
37 -
. . 187
viii, 9
. 447
27,30 •
37fT.
• 389
• 392
67-70
. 369
• 389,448
Galatians
iv, 4 .
206
51 •
. 277
xxiv, 2 of.
• 329
xxv, 31 .
34 .
389, 393
. 404
John
26
V, 1 1
. 270
• 329
xxvi, 63^
. 277
- 369
i, 21
25
. 299, 301
• 299
Ephesians
i, 21
2*71
64 .
389, 448
ii, 17
• 303
. * / *
xxvii, 40-2, 54
xxviii, igf.
- 370
. 294
m, 13
iv, 25
. 447
311, 322, 376
Philippians
i, 6, 10 .
302, 392
29
. 321
ii, 6f.
447, 450
Mark
v, 22-7 -
• 394
6
• 375
i, 24
• 370
27~9 -
. 400
7, 9 •
. 187
vi, I4f.
. 322
16
302, 392
' 10, 28
• 450
14
. 301,302
v, 7
.368
62 .
. 447
Colossians
vii .
• 452
vii, 3ff.
• 303
i, i5f.
• 372
viii, 27-33
31 .
. 450
• 329
4o .
4if.
. 301
. 286
15
u, 3
• 375
- 387
ix, i if.
12
3 if.
• 299
187, 293
* 329
...*» •
vm, 50
xii, 31
. 292
• 128,387
. 263
i Thessalonians
iii, 13
• 393
43,45,47f. .
x, 45
. 277
. 286
38 •
xiv, 22
. 187
- 303
iv, 16
v, af.
• 399
• 392
47
• 292
30 -
. 263
2 Thessalonians
XI, 10
xii, 7
286, 292
. 364
xv, 6
xvi, ii
. 161
. 263
i, 10
17
• 392
• 393
14 .
. 341
Acts
ii, i
• 392
25
. 279
286
1,6.
293, 3°3? 320
2
. 302
xiii .
xiii, 8
26 .
xiv, 62 . 352,
• 358
. 272
352, 389
448
ii, 29, 31
. 33
iii, 21
viii, 32f.
xvii, 31
. 163
. 187
• 293
. 187
• 329
3
2 Timothy
ii, 8
iv, 8
. 272
286, 292
- 378
xv, 39
TTT
. 370
Romans
i, o .
. 286, 292
Hebrews
xi .
128, 387
Luke
*> 3
IQ*7
xii, 22
. 270
i
• ^4
viii, 33f.
07
. 194
xiii, 26
• 387
i, 17
229, 299
xii, 2
. 271
i Peter
32
ii, 1-20 .
, 292
• 307
XV, 21
. 187
ii, 22, 24f.
. 187
... H -
. 270
i Corinthians
Jude
in, 38 . .
- 369
i, 8 .
. 392
7 ...
. 277
IV, iff
' 450
20
. 271
..3.9 •
vii, 20
. 370
• 3
23
ii, 6, 8 .
. 329
. 271
Revelation
i, 13
358, 398
33f- -
* 45°
iii, 1 8
. 271
iii, 12
. 270
vni, 28
• 368
v, 5
. 302, 392
iv, 7ff
• 352
ix,58 .
• 450
viii, 6
• 372
v> 5
. 286
xii, 10
• 450
xv, 24 .
• 327
vi, I2ff. . *
, 272
xvii, 22 .
- 392
45 •
• 372, 373
xi, 3f.
, 300
5*3
REFERENCE INDEX
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
Revelation
Revelation
Revelation
xi, 6 . . . 272
xix, n-xxi, 8 . . 358
xxi, i . , 275
xii . .1153 "8, 307
xix, 19 ... 272
2 ... 27O
xii, 7-9 . . .272
20 ... 277
8 . . .277
7ff- - 397
xx, 4f. . . .326
10 . 270
13 • 398
10 ... 277
xxii, if. . . .270
xiii, 17 . . 272
11-15 . . 273
2 . . 270,407
xiv, 14 . . 389.398
xx, Hf. . . .277
16 - 286
(d) RABBINIC PASSAGES
Misnah
Sifre on Leviticus
/ Chronicles
Abodah Zarah, 3b .270
Lev. xxvi, 4f. . .270
iii, 24 . . .390
Sanhedrin, 96b . 355
97b . . 297
Sifre on Deuteronomy
Psalms
g8a . 297, 335
Deut, vi, 5 . . 274
Ixxx, 15 . . . 335
g8b . . 341
xi, 14 . 270
gga . 326, 341
xxxii, 12 . 270
Ecdesiastes
Shabbat, ii8b . 297
Pesikta
vii, 24 . . .295
Babylonian Talmud
5ia . . .291
Song of Songs
Berakot, i7a . 279
i63b . . . 297
iv, 5 . . 290, 292
6ib . . 270
Hagigah, I2a . .270
Pesikta Rabbati
vii, 4 . . 290, 292
i5a . . 439
752- • * • 291
Isaiah
Ketubot, lib . .270
i6ib— i64a . . 308
xi, i . . 286, 292
Pesahim, ir8b .270
Sanhedrin, 38b 336, 439
94a . . 284
Agadat Shir Hash-Shirim
IV, ii . . .308
6 ... 270
xiv, 29 . . 292
Hi, i3-liii, 12 . 330-2
95b . .272
96b, 97a , 295
98a . 295,306,
Pirke de R. Eliezer
ii (6c) . . .315
Hi, 12 ... 312
liii . . . 318,414
liii, i, 3 . . .312
336
98b . 284, 295
99a . . 284
Seder Rab Amram
i, ga, lob, i2a . . 308
4 . . .318
7, i if. . . 312
Shabbatj 3ob . .270
Yebamot, 47a . , 269
Targums
Jeremiah
xxiii, 5 . . 286, 292
Yom Tob, I5b .270
Genesis
6 . . .308
iv, 14 ... 347
15 . . 292
Jerusalem Talmud
v,24 - - . 439
xxx, 9 . .292
Berakot, 5a . . 286
ix, 5-6 . . ,347
15 ... 308
Taanit, 6sd . . 335
xlix, 10 . . .312
xxxiii, 13 . . 270
§4a . . 297
15 . . 286
6sb . 336, 420
Exodus
xii, 42 ... 306
Lamentations
Midrash Rabbah
xx, ii ... 313
ii, 22 . . .312
Genesis Rabbah
xl, 10 . . 270, 299
1 75; 3*5, 334
12 ... 290
Daniel
Exodus Rabbah . 316
Numbers
vii, 13 . . .357
Leviticus Rabbah 334, 439
xi,26 . . .313
Numbers Rabbah . 315
xxiv, 7 . . 270
Hosea
Canticles Rabbah . 291
iii, 5 . . 286, 292
Lamentations Rabbah 286
Deuteronomy
xxv, 19 . . 312
Micah
xxx, 4 ... 270
iv, 8 . . 297, 306
Tanhuma Toledot, 20 335
xxxv, 4 . . .299
V, I . . .286
Midrash Mishle, 67C 334
Midrash Tehillim,
i Kings
gechariah
Ps. xxi, 7 . 336
v, 13 . . . 292
iv,7 . . . 334
514
II Index of Authors
Aalen, S., 274, 283, 301
Abegg, E., 422, 452
Albright, W. F., 4, 12, 13, 23, 27, 49, 52,
75> ?6, 237, 289, 453
Alt, A., 48, 58-60, 66
Anger, 213
Aptowitzer, V., 289
Arvedson, T., 422, 437
Asting, R., 380, 418
Badham, F. P., 346, 348, 354
Baethgen, F,, 7
Baldensperger, G., 445
Balla, E., 248
Barnes, W. E., 189
Barth, C., 234
von Baudissin, W. W., 52, 59, 82, 85, 218,
465
Bauer, B., 354
Bauer, H., 182
Bauer, W., 275, 418
Baumgartner, W., 82, 86, 236, 289, 296,
350, 352, 418
Beasley-Murray, G. R., 287
Beer, G., 4, 354-6, 363, 377, 379, 406,
4*3> 437> 44* > 443> 4^3
Begrich,J., n, 26, 56, 74, 75, 87, 189,
200, 219, 220, 385. See also Gunkel
Bentzen, A., xi, 16, 18, 50, 58, 63, 74, 83,
87, 121, 142, 186, 187, 190, 192, 194,
195, 200-2, 215, 2l6, 2l8~20, 223,
228, 229, 232, 248, 263, 350, 351, 42I}
452, 464, 465
Berry, G. R., 20
Bertholdt, L., 290
Bertholet, A., 4, 18, 67, 74, 300, 310, 355,
384, 396, 453, 461
Beth, J., 15
Bewer, J., 463
Bickerman, E. J., 287
Bieneck, J., 293
Billerbeck, P., 327, 411. See also Strack
Birkeland, H., n, 12, 24, 67, 86, 183,
205, 234* 235> 273
Birnbaum, S. A., 289
Black, M,, 287, 370, 421, 436
de Boer, P. A. H., 63
Bdhl, F. M. Th.} 80, 235, 236
Boklen, E., 264
Bonner, G., 294, 356
Bonsirven, J., 267, 271, 328, 360, 467
Bonwetsch, G. N., 356
Bousset, W., 1 06, 263, 264, 267-77, 282,
284, 286, 287, 290-2, 298-300, 307,
312, 314, 316, 317, 326, 347, 349, 354,
372, 381, 399. 4i 7, 4*8, 422-6, 429,
432, 435, 437, 439
Bowman, J., 334, 335, 346, 347, 439, 446,
466
Brandt, W., 396, 418
Briem, E., 31
Brockelmann, G., 364
Brownlee, W. H., 289, 301, 464
Brun, L., 346, 347, 446-8
Buber, M., 152, 153, 462
Buda,J., 164
Budde, K., 60, 183, 214
Buhl, F, 4, 7, 57, 285
du Buisson, du M., 468
von Bulmerincq, A., 114
Bultmann, R., 442
Burkitt, F. C., 300
Burrows, M., 23, 289, 301
Campbell, J. Y., 347, 348, 354, 356, 362
Ganney, M. A., 84
Gannon, W. W., 255
Caspari, W., 19, 188, 189, 461
Charles, R. H., xi, 106, 287, 288, 300,
354-6, 362, 363, 367, 411, 437, 441
Cheyne, T. K., 18,213
Christensen, A., 375, 422
Clemen, C., 300
von Colin, D. G. G., 213
Conteneau, G., 32
Cook, S. A., 4, 352
Goppcns, J., 114, 187, 219, 247
Cornill, C. H., 187
Cossmann, W., 397
Cowley, A. E., 72
Creed, J. M., 422, 425
Crook, Margaret B., 109
Dahl, N. A., 350, 381, 406, 449
Dalman, G., 112, 274, 290, 292-4, 306,
308, 327, 328, 334, 335, 346-8, 360,
363,410,411,437
Daneil, G. A., 6, 283
515
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Davies, W. D., 338,417
Delitzsch, F., 3, 4
Dietze, K., 109, 187
Dillmann, A., 355, 437
Dix, G. H., 290
von Dobschutz, E., 37, 448
Dossin, G., 74
Driver, G. R., xi, 13
Driver, S. R., 330
Drummond, S., 294, 354
Duhm, B., in, 188, 196, 201, 232
Dupont-Sommer, A., 424
Durr, L., 29, 41, 46, 63, 80, 127, 139, 153,
219,221-4,236,237,454
Ebeling, E., 130
Edsman, C. M., 215, 350, 453
Eerdmans, B. D,, 363
Eissfeldt, O., 53, 59, 62, 161, 182, 187,
198,214,215,461,465
Eisler,R., 13
Elliger, K., 248, 254
Elmgren, H., 360
Emmett, C. W., 451
Engnell, L, 6, 11,15, 24, 27-30, 32, 36-9,
44, 48-55, 60-3, 74- 75, 77. 83, 85, 86,
105, 108, 114, 170, 177, 189, 190,
194!*., 196, 198, 201, 215, 218, 219,
222, 223, 225-7, 235-7, 264, 328, 352,
414,421,451-7,460,463-5
Eppel, R., 287
Erman, A., 28, 29, 31, 82, 83, 438
Euler, K. F., 59, 61, 92, 161, 245, 284
Ewald, H., 213
Fahlgren, K. H., no
Falkenstein, A., 43
Farley, F. A., 214, 215, 232
Fiebig, P., 363
Fischer, J., 187, 191, 195, 464
Fliigel, G., 425
de Fraine, J,3 32, 48, 60
Frankfort, H., 24, 27-46, 48, 49, 57, 63,
64, 66, 74, 75, 80, 82, 86, 93, 94, 128,
182, 223, 453, 454, 457
Frazer, J. G., 23, 27, 31, 33, 279
Fridrichsen, A., 310
Friediger, M., 344
Gadd, C. J., 33, 35, 50, 63, 93, 223, 454
von Gall, A., 127, 128, 131,281,286,288,
290-2, 298-300, 302, 303, 306, 372,
375, 388, 392, 397: 399, 4°5> 420, 432
Galling, K., 151, 152
Geiger, A., 292
Gemser, B., 13
van Gennep, A,, 29
Gerleman, G., 417
Gesenius, W., 7, 115, 131, 214, 374
Gillet, L., 284, 344
Ginsberg, H. L., 52-4, 237, 289, 351, 464
Ginzberg, L., 289, 315, 424
Gotze, A., 51
Grabar, A., 468
Graham, W. G., 92
Gray, G. B., 312
Gressman, H., 4, 5, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 22,
25, 26, 46, 56, 57, 74, 95, 105, 112,
119, 123, 127, 128, 131, 133, 143, 146,
161-3, 168, 187, 191, 214, 219, 228,
230, 235, 236, 254, 262, 267, 284, 291,
292, 301, 306-8, 351, 381, 415, 421,
460, 461
Gr0nbech, V., 216, 423
Gunkel, H., 11-13, *5, 22, 25, 26, 37, 56,
62, 63, 67, 74, 75, 87, 115, 123, 139,
143, 202, 204, 234, 248, 265, 274, 305,
351,382,391,403,407,424
Guterbock, H., 48, 128
Guttmann, M., 424
Gyllenberg, R., 143, 190, 307
Haldar, A., 6, 24, 48, 57, 130, 218, 457-9
Haller, M., 189, 226, 248
Hammershaimb, E., 17, 18, no, 112,
114, 116-9
HehnJ.,65,78
Hempel, J., 74, 189, 201, 244, 246, 253
Henneke, E., 253
Hering, J., 328, 347, 445, 448, 450
Herntrich, V., 18
Hertel, 375
Hertzberg, H. W., 190
Hilgenfeld, A,, 354
Hocart,A. M., 23,31,33,49
Hoffmeyer, S., 417
von Hoffmann, 354
Hollmann, G., 267
Holmes, S., 212
Holscher, G., 6, 14, 18, 79, 126, 132, 228,
266, 268, 282, 289, 351, 417, 461, 462
Holzinger, H., 348
Hommell, F., 422
Honeyman, A. M., 66
Hooke, S. H., 23, 39, 55, 56, 61, 85, 457
Horodezky, S., 424
Horst, F., 164
Humbert, P., 40, 64
Huntress, E., 212, 294
Hvidberg, F. F., 53, 54, 62, 64, 88, 108,
1 15, 236, 289, 290, 301, 311, 315, 319,
457
Hylander, I., 67, 100
Ibn Ezra, 198
Jacobsen, Th.3 33
"ahnow, H., 200
'ames, E. O., 23
'ames, M. R., 253
ansen, H. L., 264, 275, 417, 422, 424,
437. 438
516
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Jastrow, M., 24, 62
Jaussen, A., 112
Jenni, E., 66
Jeremias, A., 25, 46, 123, 127, 461
Jeremias, Ghrl., 32, 37, 44, 45, 48, 49
Jeremias, J., 299, 327, 366, 410-2, 414,
422, 461
Johansson, N., 327, 411, 414, 437
Johnson, A. R., 6, 62, 86, 215
Jonas, H., 432
Josephus, 272, 284, 285, 318, 322, 467
Junod, A., 31
Justin, 286, 299, 304 f., 328
Juotsi, Y., 422, 435
Kahle, P., 347
Kapelrud, A. S., 54, 139, 461
Kautzsch, E., 405
Kees, H., 40
Keller, C. A., 116, 231
Kennett, R, H., 452
Kessler, K., 425, 189
Kissane, E,J., 188, 189
Kittel, G., 412,449
Kittel, R., 1 10, 185,248
Klausner, J., 290, 299, 300, 334, 410
Klostermann, E., 307
Knobel, A. W., 213
Knudtzon,J., 5, 74
Koch, R., 175
Kohler, L., 141, 197
Kosters, W. H., 213
Kraeling, C. H., 422, 431, 435
Kraeling, E. G., 17, 139
Kramer, S. N., 43, 48
Kristensen, W. B., 28, 53, 384, 422
Kummel, W. G., 468
Kuppers, W., 267, 342, 420, 421, 467
Labat, R., 32, 34-9, 41-3, 45, 46, 48-50,
93, 127, 130,223,451,455
Lagrange, M-J., 228, 267, 336, 351, 352,
354> 442) 466
Lang, A., 453
Langdon, S., 48, 49, 424
de Langhe, R., 52, 53
Lattey, G., 300
Lauha, A., 62
van der Leeuw, G., 30, 31, 33, 39, 453
de Leeuw, V., 219, 220
Lehman, E., 425
Leivestad, R., 287, 312, 378
L6rjr-Bruhl, L., 49, 70
Lewin, E., 82
Lidzbarski, M., 161, 418
Lietzmann, H., 346, 363, 364, 372
Lindblom, J., 19, 220, 289, 461, 465,
466
Linder, S., 58, 78
Lindhagen, G,, 187, 225
Lods, A., 73
Lofthouse, W. F., 212, 253
L'Orange, H. P., 88
Manson, T. W., 287, 288, 355
Manson, W., 280, 330, 347
Marmorstein, A., 201, 205, 211
Marti, K,, 461
May, H. G., 121
McCown, C. G., 57, 445
Meek, T.J., 453
Meissner, B., 32, 35, 40, 74, 227
Merx, A., 326
Messel, N., 18, 265, 274, 289, 295, 303,
305, 309> 3i5> 323> 348, 354> 355, 3^0,
3^2, 363, 37o> 377> 378, 39*> 4i8, 441,
460
Meyer, E., 6, 128, 284, 285, 289, 346, 349,
422
Meyer, R., 284, 287, 302
Michelet, S., 58
Montgomery, J. A., 77
Moore, G. F., 163, 211, 263, 267, 268,
27I-3> 377~9> 283-6, 290, 293, 296,
297. 299, 326, 335-8, 340, 341, 352,
357> 358, 3^6, 37°3 4* *
Morgenstern, J., 62, 67, 71, 77
Mosbech, H., 115, 300, 307, 357
Mowinckel, S., 6, n, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20,
21, 26, 28, 30, 36, 48, 51-6, 60, 62, 73,
75> 79> 81-3, 93-5, 97, 99-101, 108-
112, 114, 116-19, 128-32, 135, 139,
141, 142, 146, 151, 159, 174, 180, 181,
183, 187-92, 198, 202, 204, 205, 207,
215, 218, 219, 225, 226, 229, 235, 238,
242, 245, 248, 254, 266, 274, 279, 289,
300, 302, 310-2, 339, 368, 374, 385,
392, 413, 418, 422-6, 429, 431, 435,
437, 438, 440, 443, 452, 454, 455, 457,
460,461,464,465
Midler, W. E., 138
Munch, P. A., 147
Munck, J., 300
Mundle, W., 357
Murmelstein, B., 322, 337, 377, 424, 436
Musil, A., 86
Neiman, D., 79
Neubauer, A., 330
Nikolainen, A. T., 234
Noldeke, T., 425
Norden, E., 113
North, C. R., xi, 62, 187-90, 195, 197-9,
201, 219, 254, 323, 333, 366, 463,
Noth, M., 59, 60, 79, 82, 129
Ndtscher, F., 13
Nyberg, H. S., 49, 108, 187, 197-201,
203, 215, 218, 219, 222, 228, 232, 235,
236, 248, 250, 330, 332, 422, 425,
465
Nystrom, S., 60
517
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Odeberg, 410, 437-40
Oppenheim, L., 44
Otto, R., 77, 275, 276, 329, 375, 377, 386,
406, 422, 434, 435, 437
Pallis, S. A., 39, 222
Pap, L. L, 139
Parker, P., 247
Parrot, A., 468
Paton, L. B., 232
Peake, A. S., 213, 215
Pedersen, J., 17, 26, 45, 47, 52-7, 60, 62,
69, 74, 76, 80, 84, 86, 92, 94, 105, 107,
158, 165, 183, 190, 215-7, 234, 263,
299> 3*1* 35i> 378, 381, 384, 452, 465
Pfleiderer, O., 354
Philippi, 354
Philo, 280, 360, 422
Pidoux, G., 133, 151, 153
Porteous, N. W., 461
Pratorius, F., 463
Preisker, H., 273
Procksch, O., 11, 169, 420
Puukko, A. F., 62
von Rad, G., 64, 75, 95, 103, 105, no
Ranke, H., 31, 79
Ratschow, C. H., 77, 87
Ravn, O., 39
Reicke, B., 452
Reitzenstein, R., 264, 353, 372, 392, 422,
427, 431
Riesenfeld, H., 85, 142, 170, 234, 267,
273, 327, 328, 341, 346, 452, 467, 468
Rignell, L. G., 120
Robinson, H. W., 215-7, 465
Robinson, T. H., 457
Rosenthal, F., 418
Rost, L., 6, 165
Rowley, H. H., xi, 18, 66, 187, 222, 289,
300, 301, 349, 350
Rudolph, W., 187, 191, 195, 205, 219,
228-30, 248, 253
Schaeder, H. H., 422, 425, 429, 431
Scheftelowitz, J., 422, 425
Schenkel, D., 214
Schiller-Szincssy, S. M., 382
Schlier, H., 418
Schmidt, H., 84, 139, 162
Schmidt, N., 346, 363
Schmidt, W., 453
Schnabel, P., 264
Schniewind, J., 41 r
Schoeps, H.J., 306
Schofield, J. N., 23, 59
Schou-Pedersen, V., 418, 426
Schrenk, T., 379, 380
Schubert-Ghristaller, E., 297
Schtirer, E., 267, 313, 323, 328, 334, 335,
Seele,K.C.,28,3i,438
Seidelin, P., 330
Sellin, E., 13-15, 119, 123, 126, 128, 133,
153, 192, 219, 229, 247, 248, 254, 330,
421, 460, 461
Serouya, H., 424, 426, 439
Sievers, E., 334
Silver, A. H., 278
Simchowitsch, J. N., 285
Sjoberg, E., 55, 128, 130, an, 238, 279,
328, 329, 346, 347, 354, 355, 358,
360-4, 366, 370-2, 374, 375, 377, 379,
387, 388, 393-5, 398, 399, 402, 403,
411-4, 422, 431, 435-8, 440-4, 447,
449,466
Skernp, A. E., 117
Smend, R., 461
Smith, H., 290
Smith, S., 154, 188, 189, 242, 248, 254
Smith, W. R., 4, 59, 86
Snaith, N. H., 139, 215, 220
Soderblom, N,, 375, 453
Stade, B,, 4, 300, 310, 396, 461
Staerck, W., 47, 48, 102, 123, 127, 159,
162, 163, 1 68, 169, 175, 181, 186, 192,
195, 229, 254, 265, 275, 276, 283,
321-3, 327, 328, 330, 363, 366, 376,
379-81, 385, 386, 388, 389, 393, 412,
414, 415, 418, 420-2, 424, 436, 437,
441, 461
StammJ. J., no, 128, 235, 319
Stauffer, E., 342, 344
SteindorfF, G., 28, 31, 438
Stern, L., 342, 343
Stevenson, W. B., 188
Strack, H. L., and Billerbeck, P., 272,
283, 285, 286, 290, 292-9, 301, 303,
306, 309* 3". 315-175 3i& 320, 325,
326, 328, 330, 334, 335, 337, 357, 370,
390, 400, 411, 420, 424, 433, 436, 468
Streck, M., 46
Strom, A. V., 215, 349, 350, 381, 449
Stummer, F,, 48
Sukenik, E. L., 468
Sverdrup, G., 453
Swete, H. B., 356
Taylor, V., 2 r i} 355, 418
Thenius, O., 213
Thureau-Dangin, P., 46
Torrey, G. G., 18, 290, 291, 300, 356
Toynbee, A. J., 133, 149, 445
Trever J. C., 289, 356
Troje, L., 422
Umbreit, F.W.G., 214
Usener, H., 112, 113
Vatke, W., 213
Violet, B., 294
Volter, D,, 348
518
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Volz, P., 19, 20, 80, 142, 187, 193, 204,
214, 220, 232, 263, 264, 267, 269-77,
296, 298-302, 309, 311, 351, 383, 437,
441
Vriezeo, T. G., 46
Waterman, L., 215
Weber, F., 175, 263, 267, 290-2, 297, 325,
328, 329, 334, 335
Weiss,]., 41 8
Weisse, C. H., 354
Wellhausen, J., 7, 86, 346, 363, 461
Werner, M., 375
Wernle, P., 387
deWette,W. M. L.,214
Widengren, G., 24, 27, 31, 32, 37, 47, 48,
50, 56, 62-4, 72, 75, 85, 86, 121, 126,
127, 161, 164, 222, 225, 226, 235, 289,
328, 375, 423, 432, 451, 453, 455~7
Wiedemann, A., 127
Wiener, M., 214, 344
Wilson, J.A., 79
Wmckler, H., 25, 57, 85, 422
Wischnitzer, R., 74, 468
Witzel, M., 49, 222
Wolff, H. W., 13, 14, 172, 187, 248
Young, E.J., 114, 215
Ysander, T., 344
Zimmern, H., 25, 32, 39, 48, 112, 127,
128, 222, 438, 453
5*9
Ill General Index
(See also Table of Contents')
Aaron, Messiah from, 289, 292, 315
Abimelech, 59
Abodat hak-kodesh, 335
Abraham, 163, 202, 216, 328, 371
absolution, 4$, 221
Accadian, 13,48,352,424
cultus, 458
Achmim, 356
Adad, 46
Adakas, 428
Adam, 320, 337, 346, 369, 382, 391, 400,
407, 415, 420, 423^, 426ff,, 433, 436,
440
the second, 372, 426
Adamanus, 427
Adamus, 427
Adapa, 422, 424
Adonis, 52, 236f.
Adonis gardens, 82, 457
adoption, 37, 78, 162, 294, 369
aeons: see 'ages'
Aesir, 423
Africa, 31
ages, doctrine of, 127, 130, 144, 263^,
27iff., 277ff., 295, 321, 324, 326, 340,
347> 359> 4^, 4*9* 42I> 43°> 432
Agur, 171
Ahab, 60
Ahasuerus, 220
Ahaz, 61, 72, 1 1 off.
Ahikar, 432
Ahura Mazda, 368
'Am Feshkha: see 'Dead Sea Scrolls5
Akiba, 285, 313, 352
Aleph, 440
Alexander, 150
Alexandria, 185
Aleyan-Baal, 52, 54, 105, 236f.
allegory, 465^
Amalek, 13
Amarna Letters, 5, 48, 109
Aniesha Spentas, 432
Ammon, 13
Amos, 1 8, 130, 132, 134, 458
Anani, 335, 357, 390
Anath, 53, ii4f., 185
Anathyahu, 115
ancestor, 3if., 45, 59, Ggf,, 215*?.
deified, 45, 75, 86
ancestor worship, 51, 54
Ancient of Days, 313, 349, 352, 389
angel, of God, Yahweh, 95, 298
angels, 77, 122, 264, 272f., 321, 353, 364,
37iff., 387, 393!?., 407f., 410, 435,
438f., 441,448
anointing, 4ff,, 63ff., 74, 78, 89, 95, 96f.,
101
Anosh, 42 6f.
Anthropos, 422, 424]^.
Antichrist, 272f., 313
Antiochus IV, 35of.
Anu, 35
apocalyptic, 265ff., 282, 295, 320, 325^,
335> 338> 342, 345> 352fT., 361, 364,
3?63 383, 385^ 388, sgof., 393ff->
402f., 410, 411, 4i5ff., 434, 436ff.
Aram: see 'Syria'
Aramaic, Aramean, 13, 61, 92, 117, 161,
346ff., 364
Aristobulus, 468
ark, 26, 82fF., 86, 144
Armilus, 290, 313, 326
Asa, 88
Ashur (city), 42
Ashur (god), 38, 42, 94
Ashurbanipal, 35f., 46
Ashurnasirpal, 62
Asia Minor, 23, 51
Assyria, Assyrian(s), 5, 23, 34, 39, 4if.,
51, 62, 70, 75, 83, 93f., no, 115, 119,
127, isof., 136., 176, 266, 458
atonement, 205f., 209ff., 232, 2346°.,
242ff., 249, 319, 3271!,, 4ioff., 455
Day of, 224
rites of, 39, 84, aogf., 22 iff.
Atum, 3 1
Augustus, 164
Azazel, 395
Baal, 53f., 62, 64, 103, 108, 112, 457
Baba, 35
Babylon, Babylonia, Babylonian (s), 4,
10, 14, 23ff., 34fT., 52, 54ff., 61, 67,
74, 76, 78, 8if., 86, 88, gtf., 112, 127,
i3of-, 135*^ *39ff-> H3» r48, 150?.,
i6of., 164, 178, 22ifF., 230, 233, 236f.,
243, 262, 264, 276, 313, 350, 422fT.,
432f., 438,451,453, 454?.
520
GENERAL INDEX
Balaam, i2f, 102, 175, 283, 285
Barnabas, Epistle of, 143, 262
Baruch, 381, 386
Bathsheba, 100
Bedouin., 86, 103, 112
Beersheba, 458
Behemoth, 278, 372, 405
Beliar, 263, 288, 382!, 395, 397, 415
Benjamin, 283
Bethel, 72, 292, 457f.
Bethlehem, 166, 184, 286
blessing, 11, 13, 45f., 4gf., 54, GyfF., 70,
7af., 8of., 84, 8gff., g6ff., 108, 116,
120, 127, 140, 149, 163, 174, 177, 1 80,
236* 311* 3*8, 381, 451
of Jacob, 13, 102
branch, 120, 454, 456. See also £ shoot*
Bylkalein, 381
Byzantium, 88
Caesar, 75, 164, 341
Cambyses, is? of., 150, 160
Canaan, Canaanite(s), ^f., 13, 2 iff., saff.,
56fF., 74!, 78, 8 if., 8sf., 88, 99, 107,
112, 114, n6f., 124, isgf., 162, 176,
182, 185, 218, 222, 225, 234ff., 267,
369, 462
change of fortune, 104, 118, 132, 147,
185, 265, 421
chaos, 26, 32, sgffi, 47**-, 53, 83, 87, 128,
130, i4of., 152, 203, 272, 277, 307,
368, 419, 451, 4s8f.
Chaldeans, 135^, 139, 141, 150, 245
* Chaldean' speculation, 264, 282, 302,
424f., 432f«, 435
Charlemagne, 56
charter, royal, n, 91
Chasidism, 344
choice: see 'election'
Chosen One, 292f., 466.
See also ' Elect One '
comet, i2f., 68, 102
Comforter, 292
coronation ritual, 3 of., 41, 631!., 105
corporate personality, 2isff.
counsel, counsellor, i05f., 175, 309, 462
covenant, 70, 82, 89, 94f., g8f., 107, 133^,
142, i44f., 147, i52f., i58f., i6sf.,
170, i7gf., 236, 238E, 299, 340, 387,
434. See also 'David'
creation, 80, 84, 140, 334, 372, 379, 385,
410,425, 430, 435, 452f.
the new, i27f., 143^, 151, 159, 245,
272, 274, 298, 320
Creation Epic, 33
crown, 31, 35, 38, 41, 64, 120, 163,
i?4
cult, 2ff., n, 23E, 32ff., s8ff., 488"., safF.,
59ff., 7iff., 76, 79&> 97ff-> "4> ^o,
I27f., 130, 132, isSff., I5if., 218,
222E, 234ff., 252, 272, 341, 381, 451,
460, Additional Notes I, II, IV, V,
VI, VIII, X, XIV
cultic drama, 30, 4off., 48£, 53f., SafF.,
140, 163, 454f., 458
cultic pattern, Ch. Ill passim, 224, 328,
459
ids <
curds and honey, 81, 1 1 iff.
curse, 13,72,96, 104, 127, 140
Cuspius Fadus, 284
Cyrus, 6, 67, 136, isgf., 148, 150, 154,
i7of., 189, 226f., 229, 243fF.,
255, 262, 293, 365^, 414, 466
Damascus, no
Damascus Document, 289, 292, 301,
SH^ 319
Damascus sect, 273, 289, 301, 311, 315
Daniel, Book of, 125, 273, 295^, 348ff.,
3^5 J4°4?41 7f->42i , 433*"-
Dan'il, 54, 114, 1 18, 456
Dan'il-Aqhat legend, 52ff.; ii7f.} 456
Darius, 120, 136,432
Daud, 75
David, 13, i8fF., 57, 61, 66f., 73ff., 83, 86,
88, 97^, 137, 144, H6, i57f-, i6iff,,
i74f., i78f., 239, 261, 270, 286, 292f.,
297, siaf., 332, 352, 3^5} 3^7^ 4^8
covenant with, gSf., 158!, 165^, 170,
239
house of, 5, 11, igf., 60, 75, 97, 99, 117,
iigf., 146, i57f., 163, i6sff., 170, 183,
239f., 255, 286, 288, 290, 305, 311,
3*3> 335> 357, S^of., 370
son or scion of, io6fF., 120,
1591!., Ch. VI passim, 228, 243, 247,
280, 283, 286j 28gff., 295, so6f., 317,
320, 329, 336, 343, 369, 467
dawn goddess: see 'Shahar'
day of Yahweh, 109, 132^, 142, 145, 147,
152, 26 iff., 295fF., 298f., 302, 320, 392
dead, divinity of, 86
realm of, 86, 102, 226, 234, 277, 455,
458f. See also 'Hades', 'SheoP
Dead Sea Scrolls, 201, 289, 301, 356, 417
death, cultic, 41, 86f., 222ff., 453f.
of the Messiah, 168, 285^, agof., 325^,
367, 4ioff.
of the Son of Man, 41 off., 448f.
deluge, new, 275
democratization, 24, 72, 226
demonstratives, Aramaic, 364
Deutero-Isaiah, 6, 9, i6f., 77, no, i36f.,
I38E, 144, i47ff., i53f., is6f,, 165,
I7off., Gh. VII passim, a6iff., 283,
2g2f., 299, 323, 339, 365^, 411, 421,
435, 449, 466, Additional Notes XI,
XII
Deuteronornic history, 70, 129
Deutero-Zechariah, 266
devil, n, 263!"., 428. See also 'Satan'
Dew, 75
521
GENERAL INDEX
Diaspora, 10, 146, 156, 271, 394, 402
disintegration of cultic pattern, 24, 86,
218, 328
Dispersion: see Diaspora
divine ideogram, 34, 43f.
Dod, 75
Dodijah, 75
Domitian, 273
dragon, 83, 307, 372
dualism, 144, 2631!., 320, 34o£, 41 6f.,
43°> 432
Dungi, 44
Dunshagar, 35
Dura-Europos, 74, 468
dying and rising god, 2 if., 28, 40, 48,
5°> 52f-5 8sff., 114, 164, 222f.3 234ff.,
273, Additional Notes IV, V, VIII
Ea, 46
Eannatum, 43
Ea-Oannes, 422, 424
Eden, 279
Edom, 13, 150, agof., 313
Egypt, Egyptian(s), 5, 14, 23, 27, a8ff.,
37, 3gf., 46, 48, sif., 53, 55, 61, 65,
74ff., 78, 8af., 86, 93, xoof., io4f., 115,
127, 227, 230, 236, 356, 396, 438, 451
Ehud, 59
Eighteen Benedictions or Prayers: see
'Shemoneh Esreh'
Ekur, 41
El, 54> 105* l6l> l8s> 237
El Elyon, 72
Eleazar, 300
election, 35ff., 49, 658., 6gf., 82, 95, i^L,
137, i52f., 159, 170, i8of., 192, 207,
262, 294, 3651!., 434
Elect One, 354^, 365^, 371, 373^, 376ff.
384, 392f., 394ff., sggf., 404^., 412,
430
Elephantine, 115
Elijah, 60, 163, 229, 278, agSff., 305^,
322f., 325, 335, 393
Apocalypse of, 300
Elisabeth, 184
Elisha, 163
Eninnu, 46
Enlil, 35
Enoch, 275, 289, 300, 323, 325, 342, 364,
37QrT., 38of,, 386, 411, 437ff.
Enosh, 42 6f.
enthronement of the god, 455
of the king, 36, 64f., 8oE, 91, g6f., 105,
121, 130,452,468
of the Son of Man, 375, 385, 3886°.,
392, 399, 402, 403
of Yahweh (ritual and mythology),
8off., 97> ni, isgf., i42fF., 151, 153,
163, i72f., 261, 266, 270, 289, 298,
339> 452, 457, 462
Envoy, 428
Ephraim: see 'Israel (Northern King-
dom)5
Ephraim, Messiah from, 29of., 327, 333.
See also 'Joseph'
epiphany of Yahweh, 82, 84, inf., 139,
I45ff., 157,261, 269,303,461
of the Son of Man, 388ff.
epiphany style, 48
cschatology, 3, ;£., 14!, 21, 46, 55, 99,
1 01, 1 2 iff., Ch. V passim, 159, 173,
245, Chs. VIII-X passim, Additional
Notes I, IX, XIII, XIV
Eshnunna, 44
Essenes, 266
Etana, 35
eternity, I05f., i82f.
Prince of, 105
Ethiopians, 230
Ethiopic New Testament, 362f.
Euphrates, 32, 57, 164, 178, 381 f.
Exile, 10
Exodus, 151, 192, 229
expiation, rites of, 38f.
Ezekiel, i7f., 61, 79, 136, i68f., 175, an,
231, 240, 272, 313, 348f., 410, 420,
426, 460
Ezra, 381, 386, 397, 403, 432f.
Father for ever, of Eternity, of Years,
1041!., 175, i82f.
Felix, 285
fertility deity, 28, 40, 52f., 80, 103, 114,
140, 307, 453f.
Festus, 285
fix the fate, 39, 46
Fourth Gospel, 448
Franks, 56
fravashij 422, 444
Fuller's Field, 117
funeral dirge, 200, 2O2f., 2O5f., an, 236,
246, 248
Gabriel, 397, 438
Galilee, 284, 291, 417/1, 450
garden of God, of the gods, 47, 62, 81,
276, 382
Gatumdug, 35
Gayomart, 423, 429, 432
Gayomartians, 429
Gehenna, Gehinnom, 244, 274, 277f.,
279, 33 if-
Geniza fragments, 347
Gergesene district, 369
Gideon, 58f., 104, 462
Gihon, 63
Gilgal, 60, 458
Gilgamesh, 35, saf., 382, 454, 456
Epic, 33, 47
glory, 48, 373fT., 388f., 409^, 413, 450
Gnosticism, 253, 275, 302, 330, 421, 4-25f.,
429, 432,
522
GENERAL INDEX
god, Hebrew idea of, 76fF.
God, the living, 85^, 88, 116, 152^, 234,
459
god: see also 'dying and rising god', 'fer-
tility deity', "high god5, * vegetation
deity'
Gog, 147, 266, 272, 284, 29of.} 313, 326
Greek Old Testament, 113, 185, aSsf.,
356, 417, 46af., 464, 466
Greek religion, 53, 151
Gudea, 35!"., 44, 46, 75
guilt-offering, 198, 203, 2ogf., 216
Habakkuk, 136
Hadad, 92
Hadad-Ramman, 115
Hades, 183, 235, 277. See also 'dead,
realm of, 'Sheol'
Haggai, iigff., 137, 148, 150, 155, i6of.,
243, 284
Hamitic, 31
Hammurabi, 34, 441, 47, 93, 227, 452f.
Code of, 35f., 45, 47, 93, 227
Haninah, 293
Hannah, 184
Hasmoneans, 284, 286fT., 294, 300, 3i2f.,
322, 468
Hebrews, Epistle to, 128, 387
hero, 51, 53f., 65, 78, i<>4ff., 114, 175,
377, 423
Herod, 284
Hezeldah, 72, 118, 135, 284, 286, 332,
34*
(false Messiah) , 284
high god, 28, 106, 427, 452, 455
High-priest, 6, 225, 302, 32 2f., 369, 468
Hillel, 284, 341
Hinnom, valley of, 145, 277
historical element in Hebrew religion,
8af., isiff.
Hittite(s), 23, 5if., 55, 227
Hofstil, 26, 56, 95
holy, holiness, 4f., 40, 65, 76, 38of.
Horus, 28ff., 51
Hosea, 19, 130, 134
Hurrian-Mitannian, 23
Hurrians, 51
Hurriya, Lady, 54
hypostatization, 453
ideal Israel, 213
identity of king with god, 28ff., 37, 42f.,
48fF., 55f., 62, 80, 83, 87£, 222f.,
Additional Notes IV, V, VI
Idin-Dagan, 43
Ig-alima, 35
Imrnanuel, 18, uofl,, 183$",, 307, 433
Indian mythology and speculation, 383,
infinity, lord of, 105
insignia: see 'regalia'
intercession, 11, 84, 89, 223, 232f., 238ff.,
3 1 8f., 332, 455
interim kingdom: see 'Millennium'
Iranian: see 'Persian5
Isaac, 184, 287, 328
Isaiah, i6ff., logff., 130, 132, I34ff., 138,
142, 174, i83ff., 230, 247, 250, 310,
433
Ishbaal, 59
Ishrnael (Rabbi) , 440
Ishtar, 36
Isin, 34, 43
Isis, 29
Islam, 452
Israel (Northern Kingdom), 67, 88, 97,
1 10, 119, 123, 126, 134, 137, 165, 167,
i76f., 231, 263, 270
Ituria, 44
Jacob, 134, 163, 167, 175, 179, igif., 208,
214$% 238, 285, 287. See also * Bless-
ing'
Jared, 440
Jedidiah, 100
Jehoiachin, 160, 215, 247
Jehoiakim, 92
Jehoshaphat, 286
Jehoshaphat, valley of: see 'Hinnom'
Jeremiah, igf., 36, 92, 132, 135^, 138,
179, 190, 193, 196, 202, 2ii,23off.,
247, 296
Jerusalem, 5, 10, 19, 60, 63, 676, 72, 75,
8aff., 87, 97, 99, 101, 109, 117, i2o£,
135^ *39f-> i44ff-» 158, 1 66, 170,
176, 223f., 229, 231, 266, 26gf., 274,
276ff., 283, 297, 312, 315, 317, 339,
343, 360, 407, 457, 459, 462
Jesse, 17, i6of., 168, 178, 186, 283, 456
Jesus Christ, 3!!, i if., 14, 109, in, 119,
126, 129, 150, 154, 187, 229, 247, 253,
256f., 280, 297, 300, 302ff., 319, 322,
f., 3576, 362, 3686,
420, 437, 445JT., 468
Joash, 109
Job, 94, 20if., 205, 209, 238, 417, 426
Johanan, ben Zakkai, 297, 300
John the Baptist, 229
Jonathan, 200
ordan, 59, 369, 418
oshua, 218, 229
oshua ben Levi, 336
osiah, 228
Joseph, 287, 290
Messiah from, 285^, 2901!., 3i4f., 325f.,
328, 467. See also 'Bphraim'
Judah, 6, 13, 19, 67, 79f., 97, 102, xogf.,
119, 123, 126, 134, 137, 165, i67ff.,
174, 179, 23of., 263, 270, 287, 290
Judah ben Shallum, 283
Judas the Maccabee, 286
523
GENERAL INDEX
Judas (false Messiah), 284
Judea, io, 18, 120, 137, 243
judgement, justice, 48f., 54, 58, 68, 72,
85, Sgff., 97, io6ff., 140, 145, 158,
164, xySff., 189, 195, aigf., 227, 313,
3*9^ 378
(Bright religion), iSgf., 219, 243
the last, the day of, 3, 145, 212, 221,
244f., aysff., 277fF., 299, 313, 336,
349, 352, 358f., 360, 373f., 380, 389,
393ff-5 399f-> 4°9f-3 4I3> 4l6> 4r9> 431*
436
Judges, 57fF.} 65, 78, 462
Ka, 29
Kabbala, 424, 426, 439
Kaiser, 75
Kansaoya, 392
Karatepe, 77
Karit, 52ff., 55, 99, 114, 117, 161, 237,
Karit Epic, 52ft, 55, 99, 107, 114, n6f.,
237> 455
Kassites, 34, 48
Kennicott, 96, 462^
kerygma, 200
Kidron, 63
Kings, Book of, 97
kingship, ideal, ideology of, 5f., 20, Ch.
Ill passim, 976°., ii6f£, i2ifT., 1561!.,
162, 164, 1741!., i8ifF., 190, 195, 219,
22iE, 241, 286, 289, 321, 332, 415,
42of., Additional Notes I, II, IV, V,
VI, VII, XIII
of Yahweh: see 'Yahweh'
knowledge of God, of Yahweh, 92, 94,
i8of., 322
Labarnash, 51
Lagash, 35, 43, 75
Lamech Apocalypse, 356
Larsa, 34
Law, 10, 7iff., 89, 93, 95, 190, 240, 243,
268, 271, 278, 295, 297, 299, 301,
3o8£, 311, 318, 322, 33if., 334, 3406,
342f., 380,426,433^,439
(ass direction, instruction), iSgf., 218,
244f.
Lazarus, 212
Lebanon, 68, 90
leprosy, 6, 201, 213, 306, 329
Levi, 28yf., 290
Messiah from, aSyff., 318, 322f., 382,
395, 397
Levites, Levitical priesthood, 6, 71, 165,
287
Leviathan, 278, 372, 405
life of Yahweh: see4 God'
Lutheranisra, 161
Ma'at, 93
ma'at, 28f., 93
Magog, 147, 266, 272, 291, 313
Mahdi, 452
Maimonides, 343
Malachi, 136, 298f., 322
Man, the heavenly, 353, 365, 377, 383,
418, 42ofF., 430, 433,437
Mana, 391
mana, 5, 15
mana-filled chief, 31, 33, 39, 43, 51, $$.,
65
Manasseh, 109
Messiah from, 291
Mandeans, 6, 266, 391, 418, 425^, 428f.,
433
Manicheism, 419, 425
manna, 320, 405
Manoah, 184
Marduk, 25, 33, sgff., 221, 236, 453^
Mari, 74, 164
Mastema, 263
Mattathias, 300
Medes, 135, 350, 361
mediator, 160, 179f., 203, 223, 233, 238*?*.,
242, 244, 250, 255^, 318, 321, 332,
347, 45°
Melchizedek, 5, 72, 75, 101
Menahem ben Hezekiah, 284, 290, 292,
306
Merneptah, 29
Mesopotamia, 23, 27, 32ff., 5 if., 73, 75,
128, 164,369,432,451
Messiah, Messianic (use of the terms), 3f.,
Additional Note I. For * Messiah', see
Table of Contents, and also under
* Servant ' and * Son of Man'
Metatron, 289, 370, 389, 394, 431, 439^,
.443?-
Michael, 397
Midian, 104
Millennium (interim kingdom), 168, 277,
285, 321, 324ff., sSyf., 399, 403^, 410,
4^9
Min, 29
Mizpah, 60
Moab, 13, 216
Molech, 145
Mons Gasius, 62
Mordecai, 220
Mortal Immortality, 427
Mosaic religion, 126, 460
Moses, 21, 59f., 72, 126, 151, 157, 192,
2isf,, 218, 228f., 232f,, 238f., 247,
299ff., 322, 393, 457, 462, 468
Mot, 53
mountain of the gods, of God, 62, 64, 74,
115,269,276,459
Muslim oath, 459
muthos, 40
Mystery Play of the Succession, 30
mystery religions, 222
524
GENERAL INDEX
myth, mythical traits, 14?., 23, 26, 37, 53,
55, 62, 67, 76, 78, 81, io7f., naff.,
148, 150, 153, 157, 162, 172, x8iff.,
223, 225, 235ff., 250, 262, 281, 307,
33^ 352f-, 3&*f., 396£> 407, 4I5>
42 iff., 432f., 438, 451, 454, 456
myth and ritual school, 23ff.
Nabateans, 150
Nabonidus, 35
Naboth, 60
Nabu, 41,438, 454
Nahum, 136
Na'man, 237
name, new, 36, 38, 66
Nanshe, 35
Naram-sin, 34
Nathan, loof.
Nebuchadrezzar, 294, 367
Nehemiah, 146, 433
Nergal, 35
Nero, 273, 356
neter, 29
New Year festival, 23f., 26, 29!, sgff., 50,
72, Soff., 97ff., 103, 109, HI, 114,
132, i39ff-> H4ff-> i5°ff-» *9o> 22 iff.,
234, 262, 272, 303, 454f.
Nile, 29, 32, 57
Nindar, 35
Ningirsu, 35, 46
Ningishzida, 35
Ninmenna, 38
Ninpa, 38
Ninurta, 4 if., 454
Noah Apocalypse, 356
Norse mythology, 42, 423
Northmen, 39, 56
Nu'nian, 52, 237
oath, 45, 459
Oannes, 422, 424
Odes of Solomon, 253
Olives, Mount of, 285
Omri, 70
ophannim, 410
oracle, 38, 43, 59, 6sf., 82, 84, 96, 98,
100, 121, 181, 190, 193, 196, 199,204,
206
Osiris, 28ff., 82, 236, 444
Palestine, 250, 270, 276. See also
* Canaan '
Pan-Babylonian school, 25, 85
Paraclete, 292
paradise, 46!, 8of., 112, 114, 144, 146,
161, 182, 263, 270, 276, 279, 300,
3o6£, 320, 325, 337, 382f., 407, 416,
421, 424, 430, 433, 441, 447
king of, 47, 81, 182, 379^, 415, 421,
425, 428, 430
Parthians, 355, 361
Patriarch (=the Servant), 215
patriarchs, 7, 128, 218, 377, 380, 382,
430, 441
Paul, 292, 300, 319, 327, 372, 387, 392,
418, 422, 447f., 450
peace, 6gf., 8gfF., 98, rosff., 147, I'jBS.,
182,203, 209, 407f.,
Prince of, I04ff., 176, 316
penitence, 205, 207, an, 231, 297
rites of, s8f., 41, no, 22 iff., 235^, 249,
278, 308, 454, 457. See also 'Psalms'
Persia, Persian (s), I2of., 123, 135, 148,
150, 154, 175, 216, 350, 444
Persian religion, 46, 123, 131, 264^, 271,
273, 27sff., 298, 302, 396
Pesikta Rabbati, 329^, 335
Peter, 300, 415, 446
Pharaoh, *8ff., 34, 45, 444, 459, 468
Pharisaism, Pharisees, 268, 337
Philistines, 22, 83, 283
Phoenicia, Phoenician (s), 5, 77, 114, 161,
236
Phreoras, 284
Platonic thought, 213, 216, 334
pledge, 198, 203, 209
Poland, 344
Pompey, 289, 312
predestination, 35f., 66, 452
pre-existence, 36, 427, 433
of the Messiah, 162, 168, 285, 324^,
327> 333ff-> 4*5> 433
of the Son of Man, 37off., 383, 386,
388, 435f.
priest(s), priestly office, 5f., 34, 37f., 42,
50, 64, 7if., 80, 89, 98, xvgff., 203,
238E, 248, 2871?., 454
Priestly Code, 225, 240, 375
Primordial Man, 368, 372, 377, 381, 384,
39if., 415, 420, 422ff., 435f., 439f.,
446, 467. See also 'Urmensch'
Soul, 377, 423, 425f., 428
Prophet (forerunner of the Messiah),
30if., 32if.
as Messiah, 322
prophet(s), 5£, I5ff., 37, 58, 65, 78£, 84,
92, 96f., no, i26ff., isiff., i6sf.,
i8of., 214, 225, 23off., 241, 248£,
25i£, 266, 321, 338, 377, 396> 457,
458, Additional Note IX, 461, 464
books of, i5f., i28ff., 189, 297f., 417,
Additional Note IX, 461, 464
prophetic pattern, I27f.
symbolism, 23of£
Protanthropos, 426
Psalms, 7, n£, 14, 2s£, 87, 124, 163, 341,
434f., 468
enthronement, n, 13911., 190
of lamentation, 1 1, 86£, 193, 195, aoaf,,
2341!., 454f., 458
of penitence, 203£, 252
royal, n, i4f., 16, 26, 71, 95, 122, 158,
168, 174!:, 283
525
GENERAL INDEX
Psalms - cont.
of thanksgiving, 11, 102, 193, 300,
234fL, 458
Sumerian and Accadian, 237
Psyche, 426
Ptah, 182
Purusha, 423
Qumran; see 'Dead Sea Scrolls'
rabbinic teaching, 2771!., 282f., 285!".,
289, agsf., 2958!, 299*1, 303!?., 309,
31 5f., 3igf., 322ff., 334^, 3408!, 351,
353? 357> 361, 3668!, 381, 400, 41 if.,
415, 417, 41 gf., 434, 436, 439, 446
ragnarok, 42
rainmaker-king, 31
Ras Shamra: see Ugarit(ic)
Re, 288!, 51
redeemer (kinsman), 210
the redeemed, 425^, 436
regalia, 35, 38, 41, 22 iff., 288
die religionsgeschichtliche Schule, 25, 123,
127, 1 86, 460
remnant, 19, 132, 134^, 138, 269, 406
report (as in Isa. liii, i), 20ofF.
Resh Lakish, 335
restoration, hope of, Gh. V passim, 2o8f.,
228f., 2428!, 249!?,, 26 iff., 341, 380,
3963 437
resurrection, 24, 40, 42, 163, 204E, 21 if.,
222fF.3 234E, 245, 248*1, 2738!, 277,
279? 303> 3*9f-3 324, 326, 337, 343,
3998!, 410, 4i6f., 419, 431, 436, 448,
455, Additional Note VIII
Revelation, Book of, 122, 357f.
righteousness, 58, 678., 73, 8grT., 96, 101,
io6ff.5 148, 164?., 174, 1768!, 20 iff.,
210, 233, 2438!, 292, so8f., 31 7f., 359,
366, 373, 377^ 383^-, 4°8> 412, 434
Messiah of, 292, 3o8f., 317
Teacher of, 301
Righteous One, 366f., 373, 3778!, 383,
388, 406, 412, 430
Rim-sin, 34, 44
Rod, 120. See also 'Shoot'
Roman emperor, 56
Romans, Rome, 150, 29of., 306, 3i3f.,
3«5» 333, 365
Romulus, 290, 313
Sabbath, 19, 297, 446
sacred marriage, 24, 42f., 48, 506, 528!,
45$
Sadducees, 273, 337
sagn> sagnaktig, 58
salvation, 47, 50, 68f., 95, loifT., 109,
i37f., 145, 149, 152, 165, 1778,, igif.,
194.5 205!!, 2078!, 219, 228, 2318!,
236, 244f.? 249f., 253, 255, 267, ayoE,
292, 298, 303, soSf., 311, 3i7f., 334,
341, 366, 373, 378ff., 396, 4oiff., 408,
425;433>447> 450>45i
Samaritan ritual, 72
Samaritans, 285^, 290, 311
Samson, 184
Samsu-iluna, 34
Samuel, 6, 2 if., 60, 67, 76, 100, 184, 462
Saoshyant, 298, 302, 392, 423, 452
Sarah, 184
Satan, 263^ 266, 27211, 330, 347, 370,
3B5, 395> 397f-> 430, 450
Saul, 57, 59f., 65^!, 76, 96, 100, 200, 283
saviour, 32, 55, 108, 160, 165, 186, 298,
302, 423, 428, 433. See also 'Soter'
Saxons, 56
sceptre, i2fl, 35, 38, 42, 65, 68, 178
scion: see 'David'
scribe, heavenly, 289, 4381!
W-festival, 29
seer, 6, 13, 59, 101
Seleucids, 150
Semites, 34, 37, 49
Sennacherib, 42, 135, 284
Septuagint: see Greek Old Testament
serpent, 11
servant of the god(s), 38, 55, 225, 2371*.
servant of God, Yahweh, 67, 73, 84, 120,
160, 163, 169, 288, 293fl, 325f., 360,
366f.5 412, 434, 441
(application of the term), 218, 225
Servant of Yahweh (in the Servant
Songs), 9, Ch. VII passim, 293, 304,
322fl, 328, 3651?., 449, 454, 457, Addi-
tional Notes XI, XII
(individual and collective interpreta-
tions), 2i3ff., 245, 246ff., Additional
Notes XI, XII
and the Messiah, 228E, 2388!, 244^,
247, 25581, 293, 33off.} s68f.
and the Son of Man, 41 iff., 449
Servant Songs, Gh. VII passim, 366f.,
41 if., Additional Notes XI, XII
Seth, 28ff.
shadow of the god or king, 44, 68, 70
Shahar, 75, 103, 117
Shamash, 227
sham fight, 83
Shamshi-adad, 36
Shcaltiel, 160, 386
Shealtiel Apocalypse, 356f.
Shekinah, 279, 331
Shemoneh Esreh, 297, 317, 399
Sheol, 87, iosf,, 234, 409. See also Mead*,
'Hades'
shepherd, 36, 47, 69, 167, 177, 179, 316,
Sheth, 13, 314
Shiloh, 13, 175, 283, 293, 300
shoot, 19, 120, i6ofF., 17711, 226, 297,
Additional Note VII
Shulgi, 454
526
GENERAL INDEX
Shu-Sin, 43f.
sign, 1 1 off., 23 1
(in Hebrew), 116
silence, 2O2f., 279, 326, 368, 410
Simon bar Cochba, 285
Simon the Maccabee, 284, 286, 302, 323
Sin, 35
sin, 41, 79, 202, 204!*., 2o8ff., 214, 23 iff.,
238ff., 243, 297, 308, 3 1 9, 329, 332, 402
Sinai, 85, 98, 126, 133, 144, 153, 166, 179,
238
Solomon, 57, 60, 67, 72, 74, 88, 92, 100,
1 10, 158, 288, 332
Song of Songs, 283
son of God, the god, 30, 36£, 54, 61, 62,
67, 69, 76ff., g6ff., 116, 172, 1 86, 288,
293*"-, 36?£> 427. 429
Son of Man, 9, 168, 281, 285, 293f., 304^,
3I3f-> 3i9> 324f-> 327, 333> 335^> 342,
345, Ch. X passim
in Aramaic and Hebrew, 3461!., 362f.
in Ethiopic, 362^, 384, 444
Sophia, 426
Soter, 47
soter-muthos, 101
spirit, 58, 65f., 69, 73, 78£, 89, 121, 129,
160, 163, 173, 175, 184, 189, 195, 207,
218, 254, 3o8ff., 335, 343> 375^-, 44J>
449
star, i2f,, 68, 102
statues, worship of, 44f., 52
stone, holy, 4
substitute king, 24, 39, 223
Succoth, 72, 468. See also 'New Year
festival'
suffering, cultic, 85$",, 22 iff., 227, 2351!.,
328, 454f.
of Israel, 214
of the Messiah, 300, 325*?"., 4ioff.
of the prophets, 23 if,
of the Servant, Ch, VII passim, 33ofT.,
449> 454
of the Son of Man, 41 off., 448
Sumer, Sumerian(s), 38, 43, 46ff., 66,
124, 424
Sumero-Accadian religion, 27, saff., 458
sun god, sSE, i02ff., 183, 227, 307
Swedish surnames, 161
Symmachus, 306
Syncellus, 356
Syria, Syrian(s), 23, 61, 119, 161, 230,
350, 369
Tabeel, 117
Tabernacles: see Succoth
Taheb, 286, 293, 300, 320, 326
Td, 75, 103
Talmud, 72, 284, 433
Tammuz, 25, 35, 40, 43, 50, 190, 201,
222, 227, 23&f., Additional Notes IV,
VII, VIII
Targums, a8af., agiff., 303, 312, 330,
347, 357) 366f., 4*2, 414, 434
Taxo, 290, soof.
tenses, Hebrew, 108, 200, 204, 206, 249
temple, 4, 1 1, 33, 38, 42, 44, 53, 6of., 63^,
72, 74, 79, 8af., 108, 120, 137, 139,
143, 161, 255, 269, 278, 303, 3o6f.,
3363 34i) 343
Teshub, 51
testimony, 64
testudo, 459
Teutons, 56
Theudas, 284
Thor, 53
Thoth, 438
throne, 41, 48*"., 62, 74, 77, 84, 269, 334,
336) 349) 352, 373^, 3^7) 388f., 393ff.
405, 409, 419, 424, 431, 438ff.
Tiamat, 42
Tigris, 32,57, 38 if.
time, Hebrew conception of, iO5f., i82f.
Tishri, 224
Tobit, 432
Torah: see 'Law'
tree of life, 45, 80, 161, 225f., Additional
Notes IV, VII
Trito-Isaiah, Trito-Isaianic circle, 136,
150, 188, 219, 254,465
Trypho, 286, 299, 305, 328
type, primitive and Platonic, 216
typology, I2f.
Ugarit(ic), 51, saff., 62, 64, 76*, ggf.,
105, 108, no, 112, 114, 117, 139, 161,
176, 185, 198, 218, 222, 235ff., Addi-
tional Note VI, 461
Understanding of Life, 428
Upwaut, 30
Ur, 34, 43f., 48
Urmensch, 37, 51, 55, 81, 175, i8i£, 186.
See also ' Primordial Man5
Uzziah, 6, 187, 247
vatidnium ex eventu, 13, 101, 127
vegetation deity, 40, 53, 87, 120, 164,
223, 226, 246, Additional Notes IV,
V, VI
Virgin* (young woman), noff., i84f.
in Hebrew and Ugaritic, 1 1 3f.
Virgin's Fount, 63
War-Messiah, 291,
water of life, 456
Wisdom, 426
wisdom, the wise, 66, 175, 186, 194, 196,
204, 212, 238, 266, 282, 295, 338f.,
343, 408, 417
wisdom of Enoch, 438f.
of the Messiah, 309, 32 if.
and Metatron, 439
of the Son of Man, 374ff., 3848"., 430
woman, the young, noff., 184!".
527
GENERAL INDEX
Xerxes, 220
Yahweh, Book of the Wars of, 83
(meaning of the name), 77
kingship, kingdom, kingly rule of, 1 28,
I43ff., 154, 159, iGgff., 265, 278f.,
280, 320, 327, 3s8f., 341, 343f-, 3^
419, 437, 445, 447, Additional Note
the lesser, 439
Yahwist (J), 129
Yinnon, 293
Ymir, 423
Zacharias, 229
Zadokite priesthood, 288
Zarathushtra, 392, 423
Zealot, Messiah as, 314
Zechariah, 19, iigff., 137, 148, 150, 155,
i6of., 164, 167, 173, 243, 284, 456
Zedekiah, 179, 247
Zerubbabel, igf., 67, ngfF., 137, 148,
i55ff., i6of., 167, 173, 247, 255, 284,
. 335, 45f- , ,
Zion: see Jerusalem
Zion, Mount, 62
Zionism, 343?.
528
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