The Library
University of California, Los Angeles
Kate Gordon Moore
THE AMERICAN LECTURES
ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.
I. Buddhism. The History and Literature of Bud-
dhism. By T. W. RHYS-DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D.
II. Primitive Religions. The Religions of Primitive
Peoples. By D. G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D.
III. Israel. Jewish Religions. Life after the Exile.
By Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D.
IV. Israel. Religion of Israel to the Exile. By KARL
BUDDK, D.D.
V. Ancient Egyptians. The Religion of the Ancient
Egyptians. By G. STEINDORFF, Ph.D.
VI. Religion in Japan. The Development of Re-
ligion in Japan. By GEORGE W. KNOX, D.D.
VII. The Veda. The Religion of the Veda. By
MAURICE BLOOMFIELD, Ph.D., LL.D.
VIII. Babylonia and Assyria. Aspects of Religious
Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria. By MORRIS
JASTROW, JR., Ph.D.
IX. Astrology and Religion among the Greeks
and Romans. By FRANZ CUMONT, Ph.D., LL.D.
X. Religions in China. Universism: A Key to the
Study of Taoism and Confucianism. By J. J. M. DE
G ROOT, Ph.D., LL.D.
XI. Early Christianity. By J. RANDEL HARRIS
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
AMERICAN LECTURES ON THE
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
THIRD SERIES-1 897-1 898
JEWISH RELIGIOUS LIFE
AFTER THE EXILE
BY
THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D.
Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford,
and formerly Fellow of Balliol College;
Canon of Rochester
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Gbe "Knickerbocker press
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
Ube Knickerbocker press, flew fiord
70
i
* :
ANNOUNCEMENT.
THE American Lectures on the History of Re-
ligions are delivered under the auspices of
the American Committee for Lectures on the His-
tory of Religions. This Committee was organised in
1892 for the purpose of instituting " popular courses
in the History of Religions, somewhat after the style
of the Hibbert lectures in England, to be delivered
annually by the best scholars of Europe and this
country, in various cities, such as Baltimore, Boston,
Brooklyn, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and
others."
The terms of association under which the Com-
mittee exists are as follows :
I. The object of this Association shall be to provide
courses of lectures on the history of religions,
to be delivered in various cities.
2. The Association shall be composed of delegates
from Institutions agreeing to co-operate, or
from Local Boards, organised where such co-
operation is not possible.
3. These delegates one from each Institution or
Local Board shall constitute themselves a
iii
852702
iv Announcement
Council under the name of the " American
Committee for Lectures on the History of
Religions."
4. The Council shall elect out of its number a Presi-
dent, a Secretary, and a Treasurer.
5. All matters of local detail shall be left to the In-
stitutions or Local Boards, under whose aus-
pices the lectures are to be delivered.
6. A course of lectures on some religion, or phase
of religion, from an historical point of view, or
on a subject germane to the study of reli-
gions, shall be delivered annually, or at such
intervals as may be found practicable, in the
different cities represented by this Association.
7. The Council (a) shall be charged with the selec-
tion of the lecturers, () shall have charge of
the funds, (c) shall assign the time for the
lectures in each city, and perform such other
functions as may be necessary.
8. Polemical subjects, as well as polemics in the treat-
ment of subjects, shall be positively excluded.
9. The lecturer shall be chosen by the Council at
least ten months before the date fixed for the
course of lectures.
IO. The lectures shall be delivered in the various
cities between the months of October and
June.
Announcement v
II. The copyright of the lectures shall be the prop-
erty of the Association.
12. One half of the lecturer's compensation shall be
paid at the completion of the entire course,
and the second half upon the publication of
the lectures.
13. The compensation offered to the lecturer shall
be fixed in each case by the Council.
14. The lecturer is not to deliver elsewhere any of
the lectures for which he is engaged by the
Committee, except with the sanction of the
Committee.
The Committee as now constituted is as follows :
C. H. Toy (Harvard University), Chairman.
Morris Jastrow, Jr. (University of Pa.), Secretary.
John P. Peters (New York), Treasurer.
Francis Brown (Union Theological Seminary).
Richard J. H. Gottheil (Columbia University).
Paul Haupt (Johns Hopkins University).
Franklin W. Hooper (Brooklyn Institute).
J. F. Jameson (Brown University).
George F. Moore (Andover Theological Semi-
nary).
F. K. Sanders (Yale University).
J. G. Schurman (Cornell University).
The first course of American Lectures on the His-
tory of Religions was delivered in the winter of
vi Announcement
1894-1895, by Prof. T. W. Rhys-Davids, Ph.D.,
LL.D., of London, England. His subject was the
History and Literature of Buddhism. The second
course was delivered in 1896-1897, by Prof. Daniel
G. Brinton, A.M., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D., of Philadel-
phia, on the Religions of Primitive Peoples. These
lectures were published in book form by Messrs. G.
P. Putnam's Sons, publishers to the Committee, un-
der the above titles, in 1896 and 1897 respectively.
The third course of lectures was delivered in 1897-
1898, on Jewish Religious Life after the Exile, by
the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., Oriel Profes-
sor of the Interpretation of Holy Scriptures at Ox-
ford, and Canon of Rochester, and is contained in
the present volume, the third of the series. These
lectures were delivered at the following places :
Andover (Andover Theological Seminary).
Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University).
Boston (Lowell Institute).
Brooklyn (Brooklyn Institute).
Ithaca (Cornell University).
New Haven (Yale University).
New York (Union Theological Seminary).
Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania).
Providence (Brown University Lecture Associ-
ation).
Professor Cheyne is one of the leading Biblical
Announcement vii
scholars of the day. whose contributions to the criti-
cal study of the Old Testament have profoundly in-
fluenced both scholars and laymen, and needs no
introduction to the public. His most important
publications are the following: The Prophecies of
Isaiah, Job and Solomon, The Book of Psalms, The
Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter (Bamp-
ton Lectures, 1889), The Hallowing of Criticism,
Jeremiah and his Times, Introduction to the Book of
Isaiah, and a new critical edition of the text of
Isaiah with a translation and commentary, in the Poly-
chrome Bible.
The American Lectures on the History of Reli-
gions for 1898-1899 will be delivered by Prof. Karl
Budde, Ph.D., of Strasburg, on the theme, Reli-
gious Life and Thought among the Hebrews in Pre-
Exilic Days. The lecturer for 1899-1900 will be
Edouard Naville, of Geneva, the well-known Egypt-
ologist.
JOHN P. PETERS, ^| Committee
C. H. TOY, Y on
MORRIS JASTROW, JR., J Publication.
MAY, 1898.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I. RELIGIOUS LIFE IN JUD^A BEFORE
THE ARRIVAL OF NEHEMIAH.
PAGE
The Judaean population before Ezra's time Inquiry into the tone
of their religion Haggai and Zechariah Completion of the
second temple The true commencement of the post-exilic
period Zerubbabel put forward as Messianic king At-
titude of Zechariah towards fasting His theological explan-
ation of Israel's calamity His deficiencies as a moralist
made good by " Malachi " Spiritual improvement in the
Jerusalem community ; appearance of a band of strict observ-
ers of Deuteronomy Prophetic record of an attempt, before
that of Ezra, to stir up the Babylonian Jews Contrast be-
tween Ezekiel and Isa. xlix.-lv. The former more influen-
tial at Jerusalem than the latter Fresh light on the relations
between the Jews and the Samaritans, and between the or-
thodox and the heretical Jews Nehemiah's violent conduct
towards the Samaritans ; its explanation Survey of results
The Jewish priest Manasseh ; his services to the Samari-
tans Jews and Samaritans compared Their unconscious
agreement as to the essence of religion Attitude of Jesus to
the Jewish law and to individual Samaritans . . 1-35
LECTURE II. NEHEMIAH, EZRA, AND MANASSEH ;
OR, THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE JEWISH
AND THE SAMARITAN COMMUNITIES.
The exiles in Babylonia not deficient in patriotism Their
literary occupations directed to practical objects Object of
the first appendix to the Second Isaiah (chaps, xlix.-lv.)
More directly practical spirit of the Jews who visited Nehe-
Contents
PACK
miah, a butler of Artaxerxes Longimanus (?) Neheniiah's
character and work His statements not to be accepted with-
out criticism. Quite probable that Jewish prophets had
represented Nehemiah as the Messiah Sanballat at first
sincerely desired a compromise Nehemiah probably de-
parted when the wall was ready He must have been missed ;
in fact, his work was but half done The Samaritan connec-
tion was not broken off Object of Ezra and his companions
The formation of the congregation Reappearance of
Nehemiah as governor or high commissioner His three
practical objects Ezra's law-book In what sense it can be
called new Its object, the holiness of the community Law
of the Day of Atonement ; its strange details Ezra's book
not exclusively legal Religious character of the narratives
of the introduction The new ideals of the ' ' humble ones "
in the lives of the patriarchs, rewritten in the Priestly Code,
also partly in the life of Job Sanctification must precede
deliverance ; hence a minute code was necessary . . 36-81
LECTURE III. JEWISH RELIGIOUS IDEALS; HIN.
DRANCES TO THEIR PERFECT DEVELOPMENT.
Troubles of the Jews in the post-exilic period A religious
compensation, viz., the increased prominence of the Israeli t-
ish ideal as a subject of meditation Evidence of this : (i)
A cycle of four songs on the " Servant of Jehovah " inserted
in, and interwoven with, Isa. xl.-lv. In Isa. lii., 13-liii., 13,
the " Servant " is a fusion of all martyrs and confessors ; in
xlii., 1-4, xlix., 1-6, 1., 4-9, not of all, but of those only who
preached and expounded the religious law (2) Prophecies
of the Messianic king Early history of this form of belief
(3) Psalms of the " Messianic king "or " Royal psalms "
Sternness of the foreign policy ascribed to the Messiah
Accuracy of the psalmist's descriptions wrongly denied
Heathen oppressors Division of the Jews into the wicked
rich and the righteous poor not an exhaustive classification
The latter are but the inner circle of Israel ; around them
are the great mass of less perfect Israelites, who need the
guidance of wiser men than themselves . . . 82-125
Contents xi
LECTURE IV. JEWISH WISDOM ; ITS MEANING, OB-
JECT, AND VARIETIES.
PACE
Recognition of the necessity of systematic instruction of the
young Mythical founder of the " Wisdom-Literature "
One of the chief prerequisites of wisdom, loving-kindness
The want of this makes a man a " fool " And wide as is the
influence of the wise, it does not extend to the "fool"
Wisdom and prosperity go together Religious aspect of wis-
dom Proverbs, like the Law, presupposes the theory of earth-
ly retribution Difficulty of the Proverbs respecting the king
No systematic Messianic element exists in Ecclesiasticus
or Proverbs A less severely practical view of wisdom (Prov.
viii., 22-31 ; Job xxviii., 1-27 ; xxxviii., xxxix.) If the first
part of wisdom is the fear of Jehovah, its latter part has a wider
range The inquisitive spirit finely expressed in the speeches
of Jehovah Wisdom moderates the divine power She is
herself powerful beyond expression ; it is a pastime to her to
elaborate a world Affinities of these strange new ideas
The personification of wisdom ; Egyptian and especially Per-
sian (Zoroastrian) parallels ; Greek parallels less appropriate
The true Book of Job The suggestiveness of the story only
discovered after the Exile The original book reconstructed ;
its influence on Isa. liii. ; parallelism of the two works
Considerations which led to the insertion of the dialogues
Change in the conception of Job's character The writer
refuted (as he must have thought) the old doctrine of unfail-
ing retribution But he did not solve the problem of suffer-
ing 126-172
LECTURE V. ORTHODOX AND HERETICAL WISDOM ;
CONTEMPORARY LEVITICAL PIETY.
The spirit of doubt enters Judaism from Greece A record of this
in Prov. xxx. , 1-4 The author, a Hellenising Jew, a proto-
type of Goethe's Faust Orthodox protest in Prov. xxx., 5-9
Evidence that there were other sceptical writings besides
Agur's poem Chief among these is Ecclesiastes Difficulties
of the book How much religion had the author? He is
xii Contents
MM
no atheist, but his God is too transcendental He has also
abandoned the belief in God's retributive justice Such state-
ments as Eccles. vii., 15 ; viii., 14, pained devout readers
Hence references to a present and a future judgment of the
wicked were interpolated Unfortunate consequence of this
heterodoxy God remained, but he could only fear God, not
trust Him Yet his morality is not the lowest : he recom-
mends the pleasures of the table, but with a sad irony His
social sense is weak, and his Jewish feeling almost extinct
Opinions divided about Ecclesiastes Since they could not
suppress the book, the authorities determined to mitigate its
heterodoxy and to suggest the idea that the speaker is a bias/
and penitent king Addition to the Epilogue Date of the
book : the first possible periods are those of John Hyrcanus
(135-105) and Alexander Jannseus (104-78) Objections to
these The reign of Herod, however, gives the key to the
book The author a philosophic Sadducee Strong contrast
offered by Ben Sira and the Chronicler The former is
more legal in his religion than the earlier moralists ; also
more eschatological The latter is a Levite, and takes a
special interest in some of the functions of his class His
belief in present retribution ; interest in prophets ; warm
piety .......... 173-215
LECTURE VI JUDAISM : ITS POWER OF ATTRACTING
FOREIGNERS; ITS HIGHER THEOLOGY; ITS
RELATION TO GREECE, PERSIA, AND BABYLON.
Contrast between the missionary ideal of the " Servant " songs
and the bitter expressions toward foreigners in the psalms
of the late Persian period Two classes of persons among the
" nations " Both alike are " forgetful of God," but the one
longs to be better instructed, the other breathes out threaten-
ings against God's people The ideal of the author of the
" Servant" songs was also that of the writer of Jonah Its
more practicable object, to smooth the way for the admis-
sion of proselytes at Jerusalem (Isaiah Ivi., 1-5) Book of
Ruth Circumstances favourable to an influx of foreigners be-
Contents xiii
PAGE
fore the Greek period Motives of proselytes various Hope
of a life after death for the righteous The poetical books
show that many of the most religious and cultured persons
held out against the new belief Even the Psalter, which we
might expect to find more hospitable to new beliefs, contains
no reference to Immortality or the Resurrection Down to
Simon the Maccabee, Resurrection and Immortality not be-
liefs of the majority Impressive services of the temple,
helpful to religion Superstitious formalism ; how the
best teachers guarded against it Ps. xxvi., 5-7; Ps. xv. ;
xxiv., 1-6 "Guests of Jehovah" in a new sense Lib-
eralising effect of the Dispersion Conceptions of a spiritual
temple and spiritual sacrifices Prayer and praise, the true
sacrifices ; to which add the study of the Law Growth of
veneration for the Law Reaction against Hellenism Jew-
ish religion always susceptible to influences from without
Babylonia, Persia, Greece ; their several contributions to
Judaism The Zoroastrian hymns compared with the Psalms
Connection of these inquiries with a much larger one : the
origin and nature of essential Christianity and Judaism 216-261
INDEX 263
INDEX TO BIBLICAL PASSAGES , . 266
NOTE ON THE DATES OF THE LITERA-
TURE REFERRED TO.
FOR the convenience of the reader a conspectus
is here given of the dates of ancient writings
referred to.
Haggai and Zechariah. Haggai, Sept.-Dec., 520
B.C., Zech. i., 1-6, 520; i., 7-vi., 15, 519; vii.,
viii., 518.
Lamentations. Lam. i., ii., iv., v., in their present
form from the latter part of the Persian period,
but probably based on earlier elegies.
Isaiah i,-xxxix., Micah, etc. Messianic passages of
post-Exilic origin. Pre-Exilic passages, possi-
bly Jer. xxiii., 5, 6 (xxxiii., 15, 16), and Exilic,
certainly Ezek. xvii., 22-24, xxxiv., 23 /".,
xxxvii., 24 f.
Isaiah xL-lxvi. Isa. xl.-xlviii. (mostly), the original
Prophecy of the prophetic writer, commonly,
but not very suitably, named the Second Isaiah.
Written soon after 546 (?), the year in which
Cyrus left Sardis. Chaps, xlix.-lv., an appendix
to the preceding prophecy, written (like Chaps,
xl.-xlviii.) in Babylonia, but with an eye to the
circumstances of Jerusalem. The cycle of poems
xvi Note on the Dates of Literature
on the Servant of Jehovah (xlii., 1-4; xlix.,
1-6 ; 1., 4-9 ; Hi., 13-liii., 12) probably had at first
an independent existence, but was subsequently
incorporated by an early writer into the ex-
panded Prophecy of Restoration (i. e., Chaps,
xl.-lv.). Chaps. Ivi.-lxvi. do not indeed form a
single work with a unity of its own, but (with
the probable exception of Ixiii., /-Ixiv., 12,
which is of still later date) all belong to differ-
ent parts of the age of Nehemiah and Ezra.
Malachi. Shortly before the arrival of Nehemiah
(445?)-
Genesis-Joshua. Priestly Code, provisionally com-
pleted by Ezra and his fellows in the first half
of the 5th century.
Ezra. The documents in Ezr. v., vi., based upon
genuine official records. Ezr. vii., 27-viii., 34 is
taken from the Memoirs of Ezra (5th cent.).
Nehemiah. Neh. i., i-vii., 5, xiii., 6-31, belong to
the Memoirs of Nehemiah (5th cent.).
Ruth and Jonah. Not long after Nehemiah and
Ezra.
Psalms. The hymn-book of the orthodox commu-
nity founded by Ezra, partly of the late Persian,
partly of the Greek period.
Job. A composite work of the late Persian or
(more probably) early Greek period.
Proverbs. A composite work of the Persian and
Greek periods.
Chronicles (including Ezra and Nehemiah in their
present form). About 250.
Note on the Dates of Literature xvii
Daniel. Age of Antiochus Epiphanes.
Ecclesiastes. Not improbably of the age of Herod
the Great. Further research necessary.
Enoch. Composite; 2d and 1st centuries B.C.
Psalms of Solomon. Between 63 and 45. B.C.
For further details see Driver's Introduction to the
Old Testament Literature, an excellent work,
with abundance of facts, but often not suffi-
ciently keen in its criticism ; and compare
the Polychrome Bible, edited by Haupt, and
the Encyclopaedia Biblica : A Dictionary of the
Bible (A. & C. Black, London).
NOTE ON PAGE I 5 2.
For a new translation of Job xxxviii., 29-34, by the
present writer, see Journal of Biblical Litera-
ture (Boston, U. S. A.), 1898. The names of
constellations are perhaps more correctly given.
PREFACE.
THE aim of the writer has been twofold : i, to
interest the public at large in the history of
our mother-religion, the Jewish ; and 2, to give stu-
dents of the post-Exilic period a synthesis of the
best critical results at present attainable, and so to
enable them to judge of their degree of probability.
Perhaps the peculiarity of this volume consists in its
union of these two objects. It is possible to be a
successful populariser without being an original in-
vestigator, and to be an investigator without being a
specially interesting writer. How far the author has
realised his intentions, it is for others to determine.
He has at any rate desired to follow the advice of a
French Orientalist,* " not to content ourselves with
ten learned readers when we can assemble in our
audience all those whom the past of the human
spirit charms and attracts."
Why the writer selected the period of the Persian
and Greek domination, he has explained in the first
Lecture. He is not unaware of the obscurity of the
* M. Barbier de Meynard.
xix
XX
Preface
subject, but hopes that he may have done something
to diminish it, and that before the reader arrives at
the last page he will confess that the post-Exilic
period is not so barren and monotonous as he had
supposed. The writer is of course far from claiming
finality for all his results. No historian of antiquity
can claim such finality ; least of all would this be
fitting when the material is so fragmentary and of
such doubtful interpretation as in the present case.
But that the general picture here offered is correct,
may safely be asserted, and many things to which a
student in an early stage may take most exception
are among those which can be most successfully
defended. One more assurance may be given.
Should any friends of religion suspect the writer of
a want of sympathy with them, they will be almost
more in error than those who may accuse him of
critical arbitrariness. It is indeed in order to stimu-
late a more general appreciation of Jewish piety
that these pages have been written. Such an ap-
preciation cannot be without a beneficial influence
on popular religion.
What the religious life of the Jews was previously
to the arrival of Nehemiah is set forth in Lecture I.,
which is, therefore, though abounding in new facts,
perhaps the least interesting from a novel-reader's
point of view. The noblest religious ideals and ideas
Preface x
of the early Judaism may be sought for in Lectures
III. and VI. The story of the Jewish reformation,
as a keen but (it is hoped) not too keen criticism
represents it, will be found in Lecture II. The or-
thodox and sceptical varieties of what may, in a cer-
tain sense, be called Jewish philosophy, have their
turn of consideration in Lectures IV. and V. In the
closing Lecture, besides a new treatment of the most
interesting sections of early Jewish theology, the
author has given a sketch (as accurate, perhaps, as
the comparative study of religions will as yet per-
mit) of the relations of Judaism to the other great
religions which confronted it in the post-Exilic pe-
riod. A very full syllabus will enable the reader
quickly to follow the thread of the narrative.
These six lectures were originally delivered be-
tween November, 1897, and January, 1898, at nine
places in the United States of America, under the
auspices of the American Committee. They are
now presented in a somewhat enlarged form, and
with the most necessary notes, to a wider public.
They are the provisional summing up of a series
of special researches, but it is hoped that their un-
technical form may render them interesting to those
who have no leisure for profound critical study.
T. K. C.
JEWISH RELIGIOUS LIFE
AFTER THE EXILE.
LECTURE I.
Religious Life in Judaea before the Arrival of
Nehemiah.
I BRING before you a subject which was not long
since in some danger of passing into disrepute.
Which of us does not think with pain of the weari-
some Scripture history lessons of his childhood ?
No doubt some improvement has been effected by
throwing the light of travel and archaeology on the
externals of Scripture narratives, but though I con-
gratulate the young scholars of to-day on the greater
interestingness of their lessons, I cannot profess to
be satisfied. For the unnaturalness of the prevalent
conception of Scripture history still remains, and it
is not as a collection of picturesque tales that the
narratives of the Old Testament will reconquer their
position in the educated world. What a modern
2 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
thinker most desires to learn from the Old Testa-
ment is the true history of Jewish religion, and this
can only be obtained by applying the methods of
modern criticism to the old Hebrew documents.
Could this course be adopted, not only in learned
academic works, but in popular lectures and hand-
books ; could the Old Testament be treated in a
thoroughly modern spirit, at once sympathetically
and critically, I cannot help thinking that this ven-
erable religious record would recover its old fascina-
tion. Such is the spirit in which I enter upon this
discussion. If I cannot present you with absolute
truth, I can at least be sympathetic and critical.
My readers will, I hope, pardon me if I address
three requests to them. The first is, that they will
meet confidence with confidence, and believe that I
have no other object but to tell the reconstructed
history of Jewish religion frankly and interestingly,
so far as I know it. Next I plead for a renewed study,
simultaneously with the reading of this historical
sketch, of the letter of the Bible records. And, lastly,
I ask that references should be made privately to some
good compendium * of the elementary results of mod-
* The two Dictionaries of the Bible, announced by Messrs. T. and
F. Clark and Messrs. A. and C. Black, respectively, may be suggested.
Some articles in the latter, of which the present writer is one of the
editors, are referred to elsewhere in this volume. Vol. I. of the
former has just appeared.
Religious Life in Judaea 3
ern Biblical criticism. For if I were to be perpetu-
ally turning aside to explain such phrases as the
Second Isaiah, or to discuss the problems of origin
and authorship, the unity of these lectures would be
seriously injured, and their object of worthily tra-
cing the history of some phases of a great religion
would be proportionally obscured.
I shall not, however, be surprised if some of my
readers should smile at my last requirement. I cer-
tainly hope that advanced students will expect from
me some direct furtherance of critical study, and not
merely a repetition of the contents of the handbooks.
The subject which I have chosen bristles with criti-
cal difficulties, and even a constructive historical
sketch may be expected to reveal something of the
author's critical basis. It was indeed the difficulty of
the subject which partly attracted me ; it gives such
ample scope for fresh pioneering work. At the same
time enough solid results have, as I believe, been ob-
tained to serve as a historical framework. I have also
thought that students of this period may be glad to
have before them that complex phenomenon which
can be explained more fully from the facts of the earlier
period. For that epoch a larger amount of material
will be at their disposal. They will have not only
the Biblical records but also much precious collateral
information from Oriental archaeology. But in the
4 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
study of this period I shall generally have to con-
tent myself with the post-exilic religious writings,
though I am happy in the belief that we understand
these to-day much better than we did formerly.
Criticism has produced and is still producing results
of permanent value, results which it is my hope to
weave together and elucidate for historical purposes
by the combined use of the two sister faculties
common sense and the imagination.
Let no one indulge in a cheap sarcasm on imagin-
ative criticism : the uses of the imagination are well
understood by the greatest of our scientists and his-
torians.* Even in exegesis a happy intuition often
pours a flood of light on an obscure passage, and a
similar remark is still more applicable to historical
reconstruction. These intuitions are not purely
accidental. They spring, in exegesis, from sympa-
thy with an author, and a sense of what he can and
what he cannot have said ; in history, from a sedu-
lously trained imaginative sense of antiquity sup-
ported by a large command of facts.
One point more should be frankly stated at the
outset. It is, I believe, essential to the investigator
of Hebrew antiquity that he should work upon cor-
rected texts, and even to the most modest and unas-
*" The imagination. . . . mother of all history as well as of
all poetry." Mommsen, Romische Geschichte, v. 5.
Religious Life in Judaea 5
piring of students that he should have access to
translations (more than one, if possible) of such cor-
rected texts. An American professor is now making
a brave attempt, with an army of assistants, to meet
this want of students, but not much of the result
has as yet come under my notice. I have therefore
frequently had to give a new translation of my own,
based on a corrected text of my own, which I beg
you to compare later on with that in Prof. Haupt's
Bible.* I now proceed to my subject.
Much uncertainty rests upon the beginning of the
post-exilic period. That Cyrus should have wished
to restrain members of the Jewish people from re-
turning to the home of their fathers, is against all
that we know of his character and principles. The
recently discovered cuneiform inscription of Cyrus
does not indeed throw any clear light on this matter,
but the spirit, which is there ascribed to the great con-
queror, is kindly and tolerant. That the disciples of
Ezekiel the first projector, not to say the founder,
* The Polychrome Bible, edited by Prof. Paul Haupt, of the Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore. The translations from Isaiah in
this volume generally agree with the version in the work just referred
to ; those from the Psalms, with a version, to a large extent based
upon a corrected text, which the present writer hopes shortly to pub-
lish with justificatory notes. The corrections of the text of Job and
Proverbs here adopted, will be found in the Expositor for June and
July, 1897, and in the Je-wish Quarterly Review for July and Octo-
ber, 1897, (referred to as J. Q. R.).
6 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
of the church-nation, a legislator as well as a prophet
should have had no inclination and have made no
attempt to carry out their master's legal principles
in the Holy Land itself, is scarcely credible. And
for those who were both able and willing to take the
journey, there was an opportunity presented when
Sheshbazzar, or less incorrectly, Sanabassar (as the
best Greek authorities give the name), a Babylonian
Jew of Davidic descent, was sent to Jerusalem by
Cyrus, in accordance with his conciliatory policy, as
governor of Judaea. For this high functionary would
of course be accompanied by a suite. One of those
who went with him was certainly his nephew, Zerub-
babel,and it is very possible that the other persons
who are mentioned with Zerubbabel in a certain fa-
mous list* as " heads " of the Jews in the " province "
are really historical. Of those other leaders (eleven in
number) the best known is Jeshua or Joshua, who
became the first high priest in the post-exilic sense.
We must of course suppose that the " heads " went
up with their families and dependents, so that
they would form altogether a considerable party,
though not large enough materially to affect the
character of the Judaean community. That as a fact,
the party was not in this sense influential, seems to
* Ezr. ii., 2 ; Neh. vii., 7 ; i Esdr. v., 8 (where the Greek expresses
the term ' ' heads ").
Religious Life in Judaea 7
me a necessary inference from the prophecies of
Haggai and Zechariah.
These prophets had for their aim, to stir the peo-
ple up to rebuild the ruins of the temple. The work
was accomplished, and it is plain from the records
that the builders, mostly at any rate, were not re-
turned exiles, but those inhabitants of Judah who
had not been carried away by Nebuchadrezzar to
Babylon.
Thus in a few words I have stated what I believe
to be the truth respecting much debated facts.* The
traditional account is, I regret to say, to a large extent
untrustworthy. Tradition has partly imagined facts
where there were none, partly exaggerated the really
existing facts. I must not pause to explain the
grounds on which I have made these statements, be-
cause my proper subject is not the external but the in-
ternal history of the Jews, and the facts which I have
stated, to the best of my belief correctly, are to me
just now of importance simply as providing the back-
ground for certain phases of Jewish religious life.
And I at once proceed to ask, What was the religious
tone of the unhappy remnant of the old people of
Judah ?
* Compare the article " Israel, History of," in Messrs. A. & C.
Black's expected Encyclopaedia Biblica, and the "Prologue" to
Cheyne's Introduction to the Book of Isaiah.
8 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
The answer is furnished by the prophet Haggai,
who, as we have seen, joined Zechariah in a practical
appeal to the people of Jerusalem. The response
which he met with was by no means encouraging,
and the lukewarmness of the citizens seemed to him
blameworthy. He lets us see, however, that they
reasoned on the subject, and had an excuse for their
conduct. They were agriculturists, and had had to
contend with a succession of troubles, which seemed
to show but too plainly that Jehovah was angry
with them, and they declined to take action without
a clear sign of his restored favour. " The time is not
come," they said," to build the temple of Jehovah";
Jehovah, they thought, would indicate the right
time by sending the Messiah. It was only Haggai
and Zechariah who, as they themselves believed, un-
derstood aright the signs of the times. Even Zerub-
babel (who by the year 520 B.C. had succeeded his
uncle as governor) and Jeshua, the newly-made high
priest, had to be stirred up like the rest, to undertake
the work of rebuilding the sacred house. Some sort
of house (the term is flexible in Semitic languages)
there may for a long time past have been, and this
miserable substitute for a temple may have satisfied
them. They were doubtless infected by the general
despondency, and shrank from the labour and expense
of building a true temple, till it was certain that the
Religious Life in Judaea 9
time had come. Although they had come from
Babylon, the headquarters of Jewish piety, they had
none of the religious intensity and settled enthusiasm
of the disciples of Ezekiel.
I am sorry I cannot give a more romantic story,
or gratify the reasonable expectations of students of
the Second Isaiah.* The Jews of Judaea at the be-
ginning of our period were poor specimens of relig-
ious humanity, and the events of their history are in
themselves not very interesting. But the dull periods
are necessary as transitions to the bright ones, and
surely dull people have their own allotted part, which
the historian ought somehow to make interesting.
I therefore beg the reader to notice that there was a
genuine religious spirit in the poor remnant of Judah,
though Haggai thought it very insufficient. We
can hardly doubt that, on however slender a scale
and with however much ritual irregularity, sacrifices
had been persistently offered on the sacred site al-
most throughout the sad years of the past.f Be-
sides, one of our records incidentally refers to the fact
that fasting J had been regularly practised long before
* " Second Isaiah " is the name given to the author of the Prophecy
of Restoration in Isa. xl.-xlviii.
J-The silence of our scanty documents is no evidence to the
contrary.
J Fasting was one of the most esteemed methods of renewing an
impaired connection with the Deity.
io Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
520 B.C. The reference occurs in the 7th chapter of
Zechariah. The passage well deserves attention ; it
contains some remarkable statements, and the his-
torical background (to which I shall return later) is
really exciting to the imagination.
" In the fourth year of King Darius, on the fourth
day of the ninth month Kislev, a divine oracle came to
Zechariah. This was the occasion. Bel-sarezer and
Raam-melech had sent men to propitiate Jehovah, (and)
to ask the priests of Jehovah's house and the prophets
this question, Should I weep in the fifth month abstain-
ing from food, as I have done already so many years ?
Then it was that this divine oracle came to me, Speak
thus to all the people of the land and to the priests."
I break off here in order to bring out three points
of some importance. The first is the high position
of Zechariah. The days of prophetic authority are
numbered, and yet here is a prophet whose words
are still law both to the laity and to the priests.
The second is the unanimity of the priests of Je-
hovah and the native Jewish laity as to the high
religious worth of fasting. And the third is the
fact that the senders of the deputation * (whose real
names I can show to be Bel-sarezer and Raam-
* They are two of the twelve "heads," who accompanied Sana-
bassar. See the articles " Sarezer " and " Regem-melech " in the
Encyclopaedia Bibllca. Of course, the historical character of Jeshua,
and Bilshan (Bel-sarezer), and Raamiah (Regem-melech) only con-
stitutes a presumption of the historicity of the other names.
Religious Life in Judaea n
melech) endorse the statement that up to this time
(/. e., B.C. 518) the hard lot of the Jews has had no
sensible alleviation.
The incident described by Zechariah shows plainly
enough that there was no lack of religious feeling
at Jerusalem. We may be sure, too, that the little
band of religious singers did its best to give expres-
sion to this feeling. Very possibly the so-called
Lamentations, with the exception of the third, are
based on the elegies which were chanted on the
commemorative fast-days alluded to by the deput-
ation to Zechariah.
More ancient than this, I cannot venture to make
these interesting poems. Striking as the picture of
Jeremiah seated on the ruins of Jerusalem and in-
diting monodies may be, it is too romantic to be
true. Delightful as it would be to find at least five
works of a virtually pre-exilic religious poet, we must
confess that, on internal grounds, the Lamentations
in their present form come from a not very early
part of the post-exilic period.
Thus, our only authorities for the tone of the
earliest post-exilic Judaean religion are the prophecies
of Haggai and of the first or true Zechariah. Though
devoid of literary charm, they are of much historical
importance, because they stand on the dividing line
between the exilic and the post-exilic periods. It is
12 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
a mistaken assertion that the post-exilic age begins
with the so-called " edict of Cyrus " in B.C. 537. If
there was a post-exilic age at all, it should rather be
reckoned from the completion of the second temple
in B.C. 516. For the true exile of the Jews was their
sense of banishment from their God, and this painful
consciousness began to be mitigated as soon as a
house had been prepared for Jehovah to dwell in.
" It is not time yet to build," said the people of the
land, but the prophets believed that the faith and
love which the effort of building the temple presup-
posed would exert a moral attraction upon Jehovah.
At any moment after the coping had been laid the
King of Glory might be expected to come in.
Therefore I say that Haggai and Zechariah inaugu-
rate the post-exilic period.
Nor must we underrate the prophetic gift of these
men. They are still, in virtue of their office, the
most imposing figures in the community, and they
still possess, in some degree, that consciousness of a
special relation to God which characterised the great
prophets of old. They could have said with Amos,
" The Lord Jehovah does nothing without first re-
vealing his secret to his servants the prophets." *
And that very sign of Jehovah's restored favour
which the people desiderated, the prophets Haggai
* Am. iii., 7.
Religious Life in Judaea 13
and Zechariah believed themselves to have seen
it was the sign of general unrest among the popula-
tions of the Persian empire.
Let us first of all see what Haggai, with whom
his colleague Zechariah fully agrees, has to declare.
" Yet a little while, saith Jehovah Sabaoth, and I will
shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry
land ; and I will shake all nations, and the treasures of
all nations will come, and I will fill this house with mag-
nificence, saith Jehovah Sabaoth " (Hag. ii., 6, 7).
Two months later another oracle or revelation comes
to him,
" Speak to this effect to Zerubbabel, governor of
Judah ; I will shake the heavens and the earth ; I will
overthrow royal thrones, and destroy the strength of the
kingdoms of the nations. ... In that day, saith
Jehovah Sabaoth, I will take thee, O Zerubbabel my ser-
vant, saith Jehovah, and will make thee as a signet ; for
I have chosen thee, saith Jehovah Sabaoth " (Hag. ii.,
21-23).
The meaning of Haggai is unmistakable. That
political insight, by which the prophets interpret
the impulses of the spirit, recognises in the disturb-
ances of the peoples the initial stage of the great
Judgment Day. The story of these disturbances
has been recovered for us by cuneiform research.
At the very time when Haggai and Zechariah came
forward (it was just after the accession of Darius)
14 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
revolts were breaking out in different parts of the
Persian empire.*
At Babylon, for instance, a man called Nidintu-
Bel (i. e., Gift of Bel) had in 521 seized the crown of
Nebuchadrezzar, whose name he assumed and whose
descendant he professed to be. Now in this pseudo-
Nebuchadrezzar, Haggai can hardly have felt a per-
sonal interest. But as a sign of the breaking up of
the Persian empire he may well have greeted the
pretender's appearance with enthusiasm, and when
in 519 (soon after Haggai and Zechariah had proph-
esied so blithely) the revolt of the Babylonians was
put down, and when, about 515, a second revolt, led
by another pretender, f was extinguished, the leaders
of the Jews may be excused if they felt the pangs of
disappointment. It had seemed as if a new day
were about to dawn, when the glory of Jehovah
would again fill his temple, and when Zerubbabel,
the Messianic king, would surpass the splendour
even of ancient David.
It is a remarkable fact that there is direct evidence
* Persia, Susiana, Media, and Babylonia are specially mentioned.
f This second pretender also claimed to be Nebuchadrezzar, son of
Nabu-na'id. " It is clear," as Dr. J. P. Peters remarks, "that
Nebuchadrezzar was a name to conjure by in Babylonia, so that when
a man sought to raise a revolt, he laid claim to this name as a sure
means of arousing popular sentiment in his favour." {Journal of
Biblical Literature, 1897, p. 113.)
Religious Life in Judaea 15
of this in the Bible itself. The prophet Zechariah
mentions the arrival at Jerusalem of four Jews (prob-
ably the leaders of a party) with gifts of silver and
gold from the wealthy Babylonian settlements. The
treasure was converted, in accordance with a divine
direction, into a crown for Zerubbabel.* This Davidic
prince, be it remembered, had already received the
Messianic name Branch or Sprout f which had been
coined perhaps by Jeremiah, and all that remained
was to anoint him and announce his accession to the
people. Whether the public announcement was ever
made in a form which could be called treasonable, we
know not. But it is not improbable that a later edi-
tor, who did not comprehend the passage and wished
to suggest a possible historical reference, has put the
name of Joshua instead of Zerubbabel into the text.
There is yet another historical fact which deserves
to be mentioned. It is recorded in Ezr. v. and I
see no reason here for scepticism that Tatnai or
Sisines, the satrap of Syria, endeavoured to stop the
building of the temple ; I am inclined to bring this
fact into connection with the sudden disappearance
of Zerubbabel. This prince was no doubt a Persian
* Zech. vi., 9-12, where read in ver. n, "make crowns, and set
them on the heads of Zerubbabel." The text has suffered corrup-
tion. See article "Zerubbabel" in Messrs. A. & C. Black's Ency-
clopedia Biblita, where another possible view is indicated.
f Zech. iii., 8 ; cf. vi., 12.
1 6 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
governor, but he was also by birth and religion
a Jew, and we should have expected to find him,
and not Bel-sarezer and Raam-melech, sending that
deputation to the temple which is referred to by
Zechariah. The fact that two inferior functionaries,
and not Zerubbabel, are mentioned, suggests the idea
that the latter may have been suspected of treason,
and have been recalled by Darius, and the additional
fact that the satrap Tatnai sought to stop the build-
ing of the temple is equally suggestive of a belief in
the disloyalty of the Jews. It is a further confirma-
tion of this theory that we find Sanballat warning
Nehemiah that he was in danger of being informed
against, on account of prophetic announcements
that there was a king in Judah (Neh. vi., 7).
I cannot help feeling a reverent pity for the dis-
illusionment of Zechariah, and a respect for his
truthfulness in not omitting to record his mistake.
True, it is not quite impossible that he minimised
his error. He may have considered that he had
only been mistaken as to the time of the fulfilment
of the prophecy, and have clung to his belief in
Zerubbabel's Messianic character. But the sense
of even a partial mistake must have been painful,
and we are not surprised at the want of enthusiasm
which marks his reply to the deputation. The
reported objects of the embassy are equally sug-
Religious Life in Judaea 17
gestive of mental depression. One of them was " to
propitiate Jehovah," which implies that Jehovah
was not considered altogether friendly, and another,
to ask a question about fasting, designed apparently
to extract from the prophets some word of good
cheer for the future. The laity, it seems, would
gladly have given up commemorative fast-days if
only they could have been sure that " the Lord
whom they sought " would speedily " come to his
temple." The question was asked before the fast
of the fifth month, but Zechariah delayed his oracu-
lar response till the fast of the seventh month was
over. It is evident that he felt the difficulty of the
religious situation. The inward calm required in a
recipient of the prophetic afflatus but slowly returned
to him. His reply, when it came, was twofold.
First, he assured the people, in the spirit of Isaiah,
that Jehovah cared not whether they fasted, or not.
Next, he told them that Jehovah was keenly inter-
ested in his people, and would certainly return, to
which he added an exhortation to obey the moral
precepts of the old prophets, such as Isaiah and
Jeremiah. He did not however make it sufficiently
clear that, according to the old prophets, no salva-
tion could come to an unreformed people, and
Haggai is not reported to have given any such
moral exhortation at all.
1 8 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Great prophets they certainly are not ; their liter-
ary style is miserable, and their spirit shows a
sad falling off as compared with that of the older
prophets. Zechariah is the greater of the two, but
even he is deficient in moral energy, and shows
traces of a doctrine which in the hands of a weak
moralist may be most injurious, I mean, dualism.
He thinks that the colossal calamity of Israel is due
to the agency of a heavenly being called the Satan,
whose function it is to remind God of human sins
which he might otherwise be glad to forget. This
notion might have been harmless if it had been
coupled with the belief (which we find in the great
Elihu-poem inserted in the Book of Job) that there
was also another angelic agent whose business it
was to save sinners by leading them to repentance
(Job xxxiii., 23, 24). But not being so coupled, it
led to a weakened view of moral responsibility and
of the need of moral reformation. We also find
Zechariah making a singular misuse of the poetic
faculty of personification. He regards the wicked-
ness of his countrymen as too great to be the product
of mere human nature. There must, he thinks, be
an evil principle called Wickedness, which causes all
this superabundance of iniquity. And in a vision
(Zech. v., 5-11) he actually sees this principle incar-
nate in the form of a woman, who is seated in a
Religious Life in Judaea 19
vessel of a ton weight, and is then suddenly thrown
down, while the lid is shut to. Then she is borne
by two women with storks' wings to the land of
Shinar (i. e., Babylonia) that she may dwell there,
and so bring the ruin upon Babylonia which she
now threatens to bring upon the land of the Jews.
Still from this time forward we notice a steady
expectation of the coming of Jehovah to judgment,
and the deficiencies of Zechariah as an ethical
preacher are made good by a subsequent prophet,
who has not cared for posthumous fame, and has
written anonymously. Subsequent generations,
through an odd mistake, gave him the name of
Malachi.
" Behold, the day comes," he exclaims, " burning as
an oven ; all the arrogant and all wicked-doers will
become like stubble ; the day that comes will burn them
root and branch. But upon you, the fearers of my
name, the sun of righteousness will dawn with healing
in his wings ; ye will go forth and grow fat like calves
of the stall. Ye will tread down the wicked ; they will
become ashes under the soles of your feet, in the day
when I carry out my promise, saith Jehovah Sabaoth."
Then, apparently as the condition of the preced-
ing promise, he adds, " Remember ye the law of my
servant Moses, to whom I gave in charge in Horeb
statutes and judgments for all Israel " (Mai. iv., 3).
Evidently the tide had begun to turn ; the re
2O Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
building of the temple marks a historical epoch.
However faulty the popular religion might be,
and Malachi does not stint himself in his denuncia-
tion of it there was more spiritual life in the com-
munity than in Haggai's time. There were not a
few at any rate who were strict observers of the
Deuteronomic Law, and who by their conscien-
tiousness atoned for the laxity of the multitude. All
that these men needed to make their witness effica-
cious was qualified leaders, in whom theoretical
insight and practical ability were united. Such capa-
ble men were indeed to be found, but in the lands
of the Dispersion, not in Judaea. How is this to be
accounted for ? Why did they remain in their
distant homes ? Why did not more Israelites return ?
Some, I make no doubt, did return. It is clear
from Zechariah that Babylonian Jews sometimes
came on visits to the holy city, and it is hardly
credible that none of these were induced to lay
down their pilgrim-staves, and remain in Jerusalem.
Such immigrants would naturally attach themselves
to the " fearers of Jehovah " whom they already
found there, that is, to those strict observers of
Deuteronomy who had formed themselves, as Mala-
chi tells us (Hi., 16), into an association. But the
general aspect of the population was not appreci-
ably affected by these few immigrants. The Judaeans,
Religious Life in Judaea 21
as a late prophetic writer says, were like a poor-
looking cluster of grapes, which the vintager only
spares for the sake of the few good grapes which
hang upon it (Isa. Ixv). So, again I ask, Why did
not more Israelites return ?
Three plausible answers may be given, (i) Since
the fall of the ancient state there had been a great
gulf bet ween the Babylonian and the Judaean Israel-
ites. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel use the most dis-
paraging language of the Jews who did not share
the fate of Jehoiachin, and the Second Isaiah even
ignores the Jews in Judaea altogether. (2) Strong
Jewish colonies in other parts of the empire were
important both as increasing the influence of the
race, and as providing the silver and gold for re-
ligious uses in which the scanty Judaean population
was deficient. Nor must the religious value of their
witness for ethical monotheism be forgotten. (3)
The predictions of the Second Isaiah assumed that
the powers of heaven and earth were united in
favour of Israel's restoration, whereas at present
both the heavenly and the earthly voices were, as
it seemed, obstinately silent.
In course of time, God put it into the heart of
one of the Jewish priests in Babylonia to head a
migration to Judaea. But there were men of a dif-
ferent school who, before this, had as it seems made
22 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
an effort to stimulate the Babylonian Jews. We
have, not improbably, a record of this attempt in
chaps, xlix-lv., of the Book of Isaiah, which appear
to be an appendix to the original Prophecy of
Restoration, written in Babylonia by an admirer of
the Second Isaiah, and brought to Jerusalem.
Almost throughout this section the point of view
is shifted from Babylon and the exiles to Zion and
its struggling community. Indeed, but for the
beauty of the style, and the delicacy of the art, by
which these chapters contrast with those which were
undeniably appended at Jerusalem (chaps. Ix-lxii.)
and but for the want of concreteness and I may
even say the inappropriateness in the descriptions
of the Zion community, we might bring ourselves
to suppose that they were written in Judaea. The
phenomena may be best reconciled by the theory
that the chapters were written in Babylonia, partly
to induce Babylonian Jews to go to Judaea, partly
to encourage hard-pressed workers in Jerusalem.
Allow me to quote a very familiar passage, which
however is too generally misunderstood through not
being furnished with the right historical back-
ground.*
* See Isaiah in the Polychrome Bible, and cf. Introduction to Isaiah
by the present writer ; see also article " Isaiah " in the Encyclopaedia
Biblica.
Religious Life in Judaea 23
" Ho ! all ye that are athirst, go to the waters,
And ye that have no strength, eat !
Go, buy grain without money,
Wine and milk without price.
Why do ye pay money for that which is no bread,
And take trouble for that which satisfies not?" (Isa.
lv., i, 2).
Here the "waters," the "grain," the "wine," and
the "milk," are all those blessings, both moral and
material, the reception of which can effect the re-
generation of a people. It is presupposed that an
organised community exists in the land of Israel,
and it is the pious preacher's wish to stir up devout
men in Babylonia to claim their share in the life
and work of this community. Unless, either in a
figure or, best of all, in reality, they go to Jerusalem,
they will continue, he thinks, to be like the "dry
bones " of another prophet's vision. They may
have money to spend, but there is no bread for them
to buy. They may " rise up early and late take rest," *
but they will have no satisfaction from their gains.
They are, by their own choice, " strangers to the
commonwealth of Israel." Better far were it to
join the ranks of Jehovah's confessors, for such,
the writer mistakenly assumes, the Jews of Judaea
have become ; better far were it to suffer the insult-
ing of men, which will last but for a moment, and
* Ps. cxxvii., 3. (Prayerbook version.)
24 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
to wait at Zion for that awakening of the arm of
Jehovah which will renew the wonders of the days
of old. Sore need has desolate Zion of her children ;
when will the exiles in a body depart in a holy pro-
cession from Babylon not in flight, as the Second
Isaiah had formerly said, but in grave, majestic
solemnity, with Jehovah for their protector both in
the van and in the rear? *
Of the two very different gifts for which Jerusalem
had lately been indebted to Babylon the treasure
made into a crown for Zerubbabel and the first
appendix to the Prophecy of Restoration, the former
was much more easy to make use of than the latter.
The golden crown was no doubt melted down, and
converted into some needed ornament for the temple.
But the new prophetic rhapsody was too idealistic
to be greatly appreciated at Jerusalem. Ezekiel
was at that time much more likely to influence
" church-workers." His conception of " holiness "
and his horror of profane contact with holy things
are to be found both in Zechariah and in Malachi
(Zech. iii., 7, Mai. ii., n). It is also from Ezekiel
that the distinction between priests and Levites
traceable in the ancient list of the " children of the
province " (Ezr. ii., Neh. vii.) is derived, and it is
Ezekiel who has set the tone and suggested some of
* Isa. Ii., 7-10 ; liv., i ; Hi., 12.
Religious Life in Judaea 25
the chief details of perhaps the earliest of the pro-
phecies in the third part of Isaiah (Isa. Ivi. Q-lvii.
The prophecy to which I have referred is one
which loses greatly through being read in a poor
translation of an uncorrected text. Its true meaning
and that of the related prophecies in Isa. Ixv., Ixvi.,
1-22 deserves to be better known. The persons so
angrily attacked by the prophetic writers are the
half-Jews of central Palestine commonly called Sa-
maritans, and those Jews in Judaea and Jerusalem
who had more or less religious sympathy with them.
How it is possible that the bitter feelings expressed
in these passages can ever have been imputed to the
suave and affectionate Second Isaiah, it is difficult to
conceive. Even one of the earlier post-exilic pro-
phets, such as Haggai or Zechariah, could not have
written such angry invectives. For the truth is,
that there is no evidence that in the earlier period
there was any strong religious feud between the Jews
and the Samaritans. The Samaritans were doubtless
farther of! from legal orthodoxy than the Jews, but
the standard of orthodoxy even among the Jews
cannot have been very high, especially in the coun-
try districts, where, in the absence of a strong central
authority, gross superstitions still lingered. Nor is
there any reason to think that the Samaritans ever
26 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
gave up their interest in the great sanctuary of Judah
until they were forced. It is said that not long after
the burning of the temple a party of eighty pilgrims
came from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria to Mizpah
bringing offerings for the old sanctuary there, * and
if the temple of Jerusalem had not been in ruins,
they would no doubt have preferred it to the sanc-
tuary of Mizpah. f We need not therefore doubt
that when in 520 the Jews determined to rebuild
their temple, the Samaritans felt a sympathetic in-
terest in the undertaking. They might not care to
relieve the Jews of the duty of rebuilding their
sanctuary (the story of their interfering with their
kinsmen under pretence of a wish to co-operate, is a
pure imagination,) but when by Zechariah's conta-
gious enthusiasm the work had been done, they would
naturally be eager to maintain their connection with
such a holy place. By the aid of the priestly aris-
tocracy they succeeded in doing this till Nehemiah,
armed with a Persian firman, interposed.
The course of action which this great official
adopted provoked the Samaritans to the utmost, and
radically changed their relations to the Jews. We
may be inclined to blame Nehemiah until we remem-
* Jer. xli., 5. The sad story of the pilgrims is hardly less horrible
than that of the well at Cawnpore in India.
f Many writers think that the " house of Jehovah " referred to in
Jeremiah really means the ruin-laden site of the temple of Jerusalem.
Religious Life in Judaea 27
her that the religious isolation of the Jews on a
strictly legal basis was an object of vital importance
to the higher religion, and that an attempt had al'
ready been made by orthodox Jews to convert the
Samaritans. On this attempt a few words of expla-
nation seem necessary. It is recorded, as I believe,
in the following passage from the work of a prophetic
writer of the time preceding Nehemiah, who belonged
to the orthodox school * :
" I offered admission to those who asked not after
me ; I offered my oracles to those who sought me not ;
I said, Here am I, here am I, to a class of men which
called not upon my name. I have spread out my hands
all the day to an unruly and disobedient people, who
follow the way which is not good, after their own de-
vices " (Isa. Ixv., i, 2).
This I take to mean that some of the orthodox lead-
ers of the Jews wished to make the continued ad-
mission of the Samaritans to religious privileges (and
to all that this involved) conditional on their renun-
ciation of their distinguishing peculiarities and their
adoption of the Jewish law and traditions. They
attempted, in a word, to make converts of the Sa-
maritans, but the attempt was a failure. Probably
enough, there were faults on both sides. The Jews
were deficient in suavity, like Augustine of Canter-
bury when he tried in vain to unite the English and
* It was Prof. Duhm of Basel who first pointed this out.
28 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
the Welsh in one Christian Church ; the Samaritans,
on their side, had as yet no religious receptivity.
And now a most strange phenomenon meets us,
though not more so than many which we shall en-
counter in the later literature, not more so, for
instance, than the fact that " Malachi," violently
opposed as he is to an intermingling of races in the
"Jewish territory, grasps the fundamental reforming
principle of the divine fatherhood, and asserts the
universality of a true worship of Jehovah.* The phe-
nomenon to which I refer is this, that the same
writer (probably) who has just spoken so harshly of
the Samaritans because they have refused to adopt
the Jewish law, now censures them for wishing to
build a central sanctuary of their own, and bases this
censure on a principle which, regarded logically, is
just as adverse to the claims of the temple at Jeru-
salem. He says :
Thus saith Jehovah ; Heaven is my throne and earth
my footstool. What house would ye build for me, and
what place as my habitation ? For all this has my hand
made, and mine is all this, saith Jehovah. (Isa. Ixvi., 1,2.)
The explanation is that post-exilic Jewish religion is
to a large extent a fusion of inconsistent elements,
of prophetic and priestly origin, respectively. Upon
one side of his nature this writer, like many another,
* Mai. ii., 10, n; i., n.
Religious Life in Judaea 29
sympathises with prophets like Jeremiah ; upon an-
other, with the priests. Experience proved that it
was hopeless to refound the Judaean community on
pure prophetic spiritualism ; traditional forms had to
be retained, and so far as possible rendered harmless
or symbolic of spiritual truth. And so this writer,
though he holds that not even the temple at Jeru-
salem is worthy of the Divine Creator, yet expostu-
lates with those who plan the erection of another
temple elsewhere. It is only in the temple so lately
rebuilt that the right worshippers are to be found,
viz., the humble and obedient Jewish believers. Let
the Samaritans renounce their self-chosen and often
abominable customs, and submit to the Law, and
then it will be permitted to them to worship God in
a temple made with hands.
Into the details of the customs ascribed to the op-
ponents of orthodoxy (viz., the Samaritans and the
least advanced of the old Jewish remnant) it is not
necessary to enter. (See Isa. Ixv., 3-5, II ; Ixvi., 3,4.)
But it is interesting to see how orthodox Jews at
this period expressed their aversion to those oppo-
nents in sacred song. I quote from a fragment of an
old post-exilic psalm which seems to have received
a later addition ; it is the kernel of our present i6th
psalm.*
* I translate from a corrected text.
30 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Keep watch over me, O God, for in thee I take refuge !
I profess to Jehovah, Thou art my Lord ;
To draw near to thee is my happiness,
And in thy holy seasons is all my delight.
Those who choose another (than Jehovah) give them-
selves much pain ;
Their libations of blood I will not pour out ;
Their (deity's) names I will not take on my lips,
Jehovah (alone) is my cup's portion and my lot.
(Ps. xvi., 1-5.)
To understand the allusions we must refer to differ-
ent passages in the third part of Isaiah written in
the age of Nehemiah, most probably shortly before
his arrival. The speaker is the personified associa-
tion of pious Israelites, which, however small, feels
itself the bearer of Jehovah's banner, and contrasts
its own inward happiness and assured glorification
with the present spiritual loss and future punish-
ment of those who indulge in the abominable rites
of the Samaritans.
It may perhaps be objected to the foregoing sketch
of the early dealings of the Jews and the Samaritans
that it is a reconstruction of history. It is so, and
it ought to be so. That the right moment for such
an attempt has arrived, no one who knows the course
of recent criticism can deny, and historical students
will, I believe, recognise that the results here given
have considerable probability. It has at any rate
Religious Life in Judaea 31
been shown that the feud between the Jews and the
Samaritans was probably of later and more gradual
origin than has been supposed, and that the plan of
building a Samaritan temple arose long before the
time of Alexander the Great, when, according to
Josephus, the Gerizim-sanctuary was erected. And
hence the question arises, May not Josephus have
been mistaken as to the date of this event?*
It is admitted that he places the expulsion of
Sanballat's son-in-law Manasseh (to which I shall
refer again) a hundred years too late ; why, then,
should we assume that he is more correct in a closely
related statement ? It is true, he repeats the state-
ment as to the date of the temple elsewhere; but
cannot a writer be persistently inaccurate? The
chronology of the Persian period was, in Josephus's
time, so obscure that he may well be pardoned for
such an error.
A word may be added in conclusion with regard
to Manasseh. The complete story of this Jewish
priest will be given later. He incurred the special
displeasure of Nehemiah because under aggravating
circumstances he had contracted a mixed marriage.
But we must not take too low a view of Manasseh's
* Jos. Ant., xi., 8, 2-4. The inaccuracy is of course diminished
if, as some think, it was the second and not the first Artaxerxes un-
der whose patronage Nehemiah and Ezra came to Jerusalem.
32 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
character. Belonging as he did to the old Jerusa-
lem priesthood, he had his own views of what be-
came a priest, and his own way of interpreting the
Law, and though Malachi would have said that he
had " caused many to stumble " by his interpretation
(Mai. ii., 8), yet we shall see presently that the rigor-
ous views of Ezra and Nehemiah were not the only
ones represented among faithful Jews. Certain it is
that he was very different religiously from his friends
the Samaritans, and that Nehemiah really benefited
the rival community by forcing Manasseh to take
refuge among them. Manasseh, as it would seem,
became the religious reformer of the Samaritans.
Quite possibly he took with him, on his expulsion,
not merely the Book of Deuteronomy, but the whole
Pentateuch in the form in which it then existed.
We may assume that he also obtained the erection
of the temple of Gerizim, and so achieved the cen-
tralisation of the Samaritan worship.
Thus the fugitive Jewish priest Manasseh became
the greatest benefactor of the Samaritan community.
To him alone it is indebted for its long survival.
The temple built (as I believe) through him was de-
stroyed by the Hasmonaean sovereign of Judaea, John
Hyrcanus, in B.C. 130. It was succeeded by a temple
at Shechem which no doubt perished when the town
of Shechem was laid in ruins by Vespasian. But
Religious Life in Judaea 33
the Samaritans continued to cling to the neighbour-
hood of their sacred mountain, and some of us may
even have seen the old paschal rites celebrated on a
sacred spot on Gerizim, which was perhaps within
the precincts of Manasseh's temple. The Samaritans
may, from a modern theological point of view, be
simply a Jewish sect, but, putting ourselves in their
intellectual position, we cannot be surprised if they
consider their local continuance as the strongest of
arguments in favour of their religious orthodoxy.
They may be an insignificant minority of the wor-
shippers of the God of Jacob, but a sign from the
supernatural world would in a moment change the
relative position of Jews and Samaritans, as indeed
unreformed Judaism itself teaches that a supernat-
ural interposition will one day invert the relations
of Jews and Gentiles. Jehovah Nissi (Jehovah is
my Banner) might therefore be taken as a motto not
less by the depressed community at Nablus than by
that almost oecumenical body the Jewish Church.
For after all, Jews and Samaritans alike have a
grasp of the truth : we only part from them, or from
any of our fellow-Christians, in so far as they mix up
the truth with arrogant and unspiritual assumptions.
They base their right to existence on their faith, and
faith is indeed the only rock which will uphold either
communities or individuals in the sea of change. I
34 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
venture to claim a right to say this even in a historical
discussion, because to inquire about religions without
experimental knowledge of the essence of religion
seems to me an unprofitable pastime. Faith is the
essence of religion on its heavenward side, and the
Chronicler rightly discerned the connecting link be-
tween the religion of the pre-exilic prophets and
that of the post-exilic Church when he imagined
King Jehoshaphat thus addressing the assembled
congregation in the wilderness of Tekoa :
" Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Believe Jehovah your God, so shall ye be established ;
believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper." (2 Chr. xx., 20.)
For the pre-exilic prophet Isaiah had long before in-
tuitively made the discovery which was a religious
commonplace to the Chronicler, when he said to
Ahaz and his courtiers, " If ye will not believe, then
ye shall not be established." * (Isa. vii., 9.) And it is
on this firm ground, and not on any subtle theory of
the nature of Inspiration or the interpretation of for-
mularies, that I base my own personal right to go as
deep as I can in Biblical research, and my advocacy
of a braver and a bolder policy than has yet been
common in the instruction of students. Such a pol-
icy can do no one's religion any real harm, and, in my
* Or, "If ye will not hold fast (*'. *., to the living God), then y
shall not be held fast."
Religious Life in Judaea 35
opinion, accords best with the spirit of One whom I
am not worthy to name, but who is the Master and
Leader of all who are seeking to purify the moral and
religious conceptions of the Church or the community.
It is the attitude of the Master towards the Jew-
ish Law which justifies Christian critics (for whom I
now write) in their free but reverent attitude tow-
ards the historical documents of the Church, among
which those of the Old and the New Testament
stand supreme. How much the religion of mankind
owes to the reverent but incomparably bold attitude
of the Master towards the Jewish Law, can already
be seen in part, and at a later stage of the world's
history will be discerned more fully. And the reader
will rightly suppose that my treatment of the Sa-
maritans in this historical sketch is partly suggested
by the mild reasonableness of the Master's estimate
of that people. The disparaging sentiment of the
ancient Jews respecting them is well known. But
the Master on two occasions * contrasted the moral
and religious practice of the Jews and of the Samari-
tans to the advantage of the latter. If this was just
and right in the Roman period of Jewish history, it
cannot be plausible to assume that the Samaritans
of Nehemiah's age were entirely destitute of the es-
sential qualities of human goodness.
* Luke x., 33 ; xvii., 16.
LECTURE II.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh ; or, The Re-
constitution of the Jewish and the
Samaritan Communities.
WE have, I hope, already gained some valu-
able results. That a fugitive Jewish priest
became the reformer of the Samaritan religion, is
not the least interesting of them, and accordingly I
shall endeavour to place this fact in its right setting.
First of all, however, permit me to direct your atten-
tion to some patriotic enterprises of Babylonian and
Judaean Israelites which preceded the expulsion of
Manasseh. It is certain that the Jews who remained
in Babylonia had by no means forgotten Jerusalem.
Though they did not migrate to Judaea, they must
have had such a migration in view, for the tlite of
their body devoted themselves to the difficult task
of bringing the traditional Jewish laws up to date.
To this truly patriotic enterprise I shall have to re-
fer later on. A not less important work, undertaken
in Babylonia, was that of supplementing and adapt-
ing the fragments of early prophecies to the needs
36
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 37
of the present. As I have already mentioned, the
author of the first appendix to the Second Isaiah's
prophecy (chaps, xlix.-lv.) endeavoured to stimulate
Babylonian Jews to a personal co-operation with the
Judaean reformers. This eloquent writer was evi-
dently in close touch with those faithful workers.
He knew their difficulties, and had noted with re-
gret their liability to fits of discouragement. Like
them, he longed to see a general return of the Jew-
ish exiles, but he felt that, to bring this about, Jeho-
vah himself must beckon with his mighty hand to
the nations.* To this great event he pointed his
readers with confidence.
But a far more practical idea suggested itself to a
Judaean Israelite named Hanani. Possibly he was
an official of some kind ; at any rate, he afterwards
filled an office of much consideration at Jerusalem
(Neh. vii., 2). It was his good fortune to be related
to Nehemiah, one of the butlers of King Artaxerxes,f
and he induced a party of Judaeans to accompany
him on a visit to his influential kinsman. On his
arrival at Susa (the winter residence of the Persian
kings), he told Nehemiah, in reply to a question,
how miserable a state Jerusalem was in, and he con-
nected this misery with an outrage which might
* Isa. xlix., 22.
f Artaxerxes Longimanus (466-448 B.C.), as most critics suppose.
38 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
almost appear to be a recent one, if there were any-
thing in the rest of the document to justify the sup-
position. These are the words of the question and
answer, as Nehemiah in his brief way reports them :
" I asked them respecting the Jews that had escaped,
who remained over from the captivity, and respecting
Jerusalem. And they said to me, those who remain over
from the captivity there in the province are greatly
afflicted and insulted ; the wall of Jerusalem is broken
down, and its gates are burned." (Neh. i., 2, 3.)
Nehemiah was conscious that a crisis had arrived,
and that it devolved upon him to make a supreme
effort for the good of Jerusalem. He was no mere
theorist, and could not think it sufficient to write
addresses full of a soaring but impracticable idealism.
What he did, or at least wishes us to know that he
did, is recorded in his autobiography. This docu-
ment is one of our best authorities ; its preservation
is a piece of singular good fortune. Still there are
some questions of the historical student which it
fails to answer. It does not, for instance, explain
how Artaxerxes came to be more friendly to the
Jews than either Cyrus or Darius. Evidently there
was some political motive for this king's generosity,
and it is the business of the historian to divine it.
I venture therefore to make a conjecture. In 448
B.C. there was a very serious revolt of the Syrian
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 39
satrap Megabyzos. It is more than probable that
the Jews avoided being drawn into this, and we may
presume that Artaxerxes wished to reward them for
their loyalty. I believe that Nehemiah understood
this state of things, and even suspected that he owed
his position at court, which in former times had been
filled by high-born Persian nobles, to the philo-Juda-
ism of Artaxerxes. Not improbably too some of the
chief men of Jerusalem were as well informed as
Nehemiah, so that the arrival of Hanani and his
companions was not quite so accidental as Josephus
in his romantic narrative represents it* (Jos. Ant.
xi., 5, 6).
One fact at any rate is certain, that Nehemiah
obtained leave of absence to go to Jerusalem in the
capacity of governor, with the special object of re-
pairing the walls. With firman and military escort
he hurried to the holy city. Arrived there, he at
once showed his characteristic self-reliance. He
might have called the notables together, and have
asked their opinion as to the expediency of rebuild-
ing the walls. But there were great divisions among
the citizens, some of whom, members of the priestly
class as well as laymen, were closely connected with
* The Judseans may have long desired to repair the walls of their
capital, but have not felt sure enough of their favour at court to ask
leave to do so.
4-Q Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
the Samaritan leaders. Nehemiah doubtless knew
this, and was unwilling to incur the risk of having his
own opinion rejected. So the third night after his
arrival he and a few trusty followers partly rode,
partly walked, round the walls of the city.* At such
a time as this (though, most probably, a hundred
years or more later), a psalmist wrote these words,
which well express the feelings of Nehemiah :
" For thy servants take pleasure in her stones,
And are distressed to see her in the dust."
(Ps. cii., 14.)
Stirred in his inmost depths, the governor now
called the notables together. He told them how
plainly the hand (/. ^., the providence) of God had
been over him. Opposition was impossible. Eli-
ashib, the friend of a leading Samaritan, was foremost
among Nehemiah's supporters. It was like the re-
building of the wall of Athens after the Persian in-
vasion. In fifty-two days the wall was completely
repaired.f
The truth of the story cannot be doubted. We
have indeed a partial parallel for it in the story of a
not less egotistic and not less meritorious officer in
the Persian service, the Egyptian priest Uza-hor.
Under two of the last native kings of Egypt this
*Neh. ii., 11-15.
f Neh. ii., 17, 18 ; iii., i ; vi., 15.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 41
man had been admiral of the fleet, but upon the con-
quest of Egypt by Cambyses he received the post of
a chief physician. He was more than this, however.
His father had been chief priest of the august
mother of the sun-god, the goddess Nit, whose chief
temple was at Sai's. Uza-hor took advantage of his
position at the Persian court to instil into the king
a high notion of the dignity of his goddess, and of
the duty of purifying her temple, and restoring her
cultus in its beauty. Cambyses recognised the duty,
and gave orders to restore the worship of Nit. He
himself even testified his reverence for the great
goddess, like all pious kings of Egypt before him.
" He did this," says Uza-hor, " because I had made
known to him the high importance of the holy god-
dess." So skilfully did Uza-hor reconcile his duty
as a courtier with his obligations to his religion. And
that he was no mere ritualist, is shown by his atten-
tion to those works of mercy which were so much re-
garded in ancient Egypt. " I protected the people,"
he says, " in the very sore calamity which had hap-
pened throughout the land. I sheltered the weak
from the strong. I gave to the destitute a good
burial, I nourished all their children, and built up
again all their houses." Then came the accession of
Darius, who extended the same favour to Uza-hor,
and sent him to Egypt to reappoint the holy scribes
42 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
of the temples in full numbers, and to restore every-
thing that had fallen into decay. " I did as I was
commanded," says Uza-hor. " I took children, I
confided them to expert masters in all branches of
knowledge. Those who distinguished themselves I
provided with all that they required as scribes. O
ye divinities of Sai's ! remember all the good that
Uza-hor the chief physician has done ! O Osiris, do
unto him all that is good, even as he has done it who
is the guardian of thy shrine for evermore." *
This Egyptian document is in several respects of
considerable importance. First, it exemplifies the
respectful attitude of the Persian kings towards the
religions of conquered races. The Achaemenian dy-
nasty was not religiously intolerant except towards
the end of its time, nor did it care to proselytise in
countries like Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine, which
had religions of ancient and reputable lineage. In-
deed, the monuments show that marked favour was
extended by Cyrus to the Babylonians, and by Cam-
byses and Darius to the Egyptians. For this there
were special reasons of high state policy, and I have
suggested that the favour of Artaxerxes to the Jews
should be similarly accounted for. But of course the
influence of friendly officials was an indispensable
help. It was a blessing for the Egyptians that Uza-
*Brugsch, Gesch. Ag., pp. 784^".
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 43
hor filled the post of chief physician, and no less for
the Jews that Nehemiah filled that of royal butler.
We may be sure that the latter took care to oil the
political wheels by representing the Jews as loyal sub-
jects and as akin to the Persians by the purity and
sublimity of their religion.
Next, the egotistic language of the Egyptian cour-
tier of Darius is remarkable, because it reminds us
of the egotism of the Jewish courtier of Artaxerxes.
But there is this difference between the two. Ne-
hemiah's egotism is a quality which is new among
Israelites, while Uza-hor does but carry on the tra-
dition of Egyptian courtiers of many centuries. In
fact, Egypt was far in advance of Israel in moral de-
velopment. The individualism which marks the
Hebrew Book of Proverbs, which is post-exilic,
characterised the Precepts of the Egyptian prince
Ptah-hotep long before ; no wonder, then, that the
egotism of Nehemiah should have much earlier par-
allels in the inscriptions on Egyptian statues. Nor is
it a digression to remind you that the Egyptians,
since a remote antiquity, had looked forward to a
judgment after death with rewards and punishments
for the individual. The inscriptions on the statues
(which are in tomb-chapels) are addressed chiefly to
the gods. We can hardly say the like of Nehemiah's
account of his good deeds. But he is evidently
44 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
thinking of a future reward, when he pauses in the
midst of his story to ejaculate the prayer, " Remem-
ber me, O my God, for good." * Is this merely a
" prayer for posthumous fame ? " Dean Stanley
thought so.f But surely the words are to be
explained by that touching utterance of a psalmist :
" Remember me, Jehovah, when thou showest favour
to thy people,
Take notice of me when thou workest deliverance,
That I may feast mine eyes on the felicity of thy
chosen,
May rejoice in the joy of thy nation,
May share the triumph of thine inheritance."
(Ps. cvi., 4, 5.)
Nehemiah hopes in fact to have brought the Mes-
sianic period a good deal nearer by the trouble he
has taken, and has dreams of being as prominent
then as he has been at this critical time at Jerusa-
lem.
Certainly the butler of Artaxerxes was the one
great man in Judaea. Though not quite devoid of
idealism, he showed a promptitude both in counsel
and in action which reminds us of Napoleon. That
he was impatient and masterful, is but a way of say-
ing that he was extremely able and knew his own
ability. The times demanded such a man, and any
* Neh. v., 19 ; xiii., 14, 22, 31.
f Lectures on the Jewish Church, Hi., 120.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 45
other living Jew would probably have failed. If I
add that he hated the opponents of orthodox re-
ligion with an intensity that shocks us, and that he
suspected them of meanness as well as of religious
error, that will not surprise any thoughtful student.
It was difficult if not impossible in those early
times to love God fervently without hating a large
section of God's creatures. What Nehemiah's feel-
ings were towards the races outside Palestine, we can
only conjecture, but we know that he detested three
persons, Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammon-
ite, and Geshem or Gashmu the Arabian.
This detestation was of course not peculiar to Ne-
hemiah. Shortly before his arrival prophets had
written in the most bitter terms respecting the Sa-
maritans.* The relations between the two kindred
communities were becoming more and more strained.
Sanballat and Tobiah, worshippers of the same God
as orthodox Jews, had come to feel that the differ-
ences which parted them were greater than the resem-
blances which united them. And when Nehemiah
arrived, " it grieved them exceedingly that there was
come a man " to give as it appeared a final pre-
ponderance to the orthodox party at Jerusalem, or
as Nehemiah himself expresses it, " to seek the wel-
fare of the Israelites." f And they had good reason.
* Isa. Ivii., 3-13 ; Ixv. ; Ixvi. f Neh. ii., 10.
46 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
The prophets who had written against the Samari-
tans had done so anonymously. It was Nehemiah
who made the first official declaration of war. " We
are the servants of the God of heaven ; but ye have
no portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem." *
Let me repeat. It was not originally the Samaritans
who wished to be separate from the Jews. Gladly
would they have resorted to the sanctuary at Jeru-
salem, and after death have enjoyed that shadowy
immortality which consisted in having a monument
in the holy city.f But Nehemiah and the exclusive
party knew their own mind, and emphasised their
hostility to their neighbours by repairing the wall of
Jerusalem, not so much as a protection against or-
dinary foes as to keep out the Samaritans.
The Samaritans on their side affected to be aston-
ished at Nehemiah for venturing to commit an act
of overt rebellion against Persia4 Some of the Jew-
ish prophets had in all probability given them some
excuse for this bold misrepresentation. The state-
ment comes to us from Sanballat, but there is no
sufficient reason to suppose that it was a pure fiction
of the Samaritan leader. We know that Haggai and
Zechariah had put forward Zerubbabel as the Mes-
* Neh. ii., 20.
f Cf. Isa. Ivi., 9, "a memorial and a name better than sons and
daughters." \ Neh. ii., 19.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 47
sianic king, and it is probable enough that other
prophets in Nehemiah's time declared this great
man (the one great man in Judaea, as I have said) to
be the Messiah. It is true, Nehemiah was not a de-
scendant of David. But it is not certain that Jere-
miah and Ezekiel, when they speak of David or of
a Sprout of David as the future ideal king, mean to
insist on a literal descent from the son of Jesse. If
a hero who came with the spirit and power of David
had been put before them, it is probable that they
would have recognised in him a true son of David,
just as Jesus recognised in the appearance of John
the Baptist the fulfilment of the well-known prophecy
of Malachi.* The Samaritans, then, had really a
specious pretext for setting the story about Nehe-
miah afloat. Jewish prophets had for a moment con-
nected the governor's name with the traditional
Messianic hope. But Nehemiah himself f was too
wise and too honest to permit such preaching, and
so to fan the delusive hope of Judaean independence.
And I suspect that Sanballat understood this. It is
hardly conceivable that the governor's primary ob-
ject in building the walls can have remained a secret
to Sanballat.
What that object was we have seen already. Ne-
* Matt, xi., 14 ; Mark ix., 13 ; ef. Luke i., 17.
f Neh. vi., 7.
48 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
hemiah wished to defend Jerusalem from the attack
which the Samaritans would probably make on the
city (on the pretext of Nehemiah's rebellion against
his liege lord), when the right of worshipping in the
temple and of intermarrying with the Jews had been
withdrawn from them. One point however must be
mentioned to the credit of Sanballat. Before the
doors of the city were set into the gates, he made a
final attempt to effect a compromise with Nehemiah.*
The governor, it is true, declares in his memoirs that
the Samaritans had a plot against him. But the fact
that Sanballat, undeterred by Nehemiah's first refusal,
made four more attempts to arrange a conference
speaks in his favour. The governor's rudeness was
enough to provoke any one, and goes some way to
excuse the final insult of Sanballat. That bold man
only threw a doubt publicly on Nehemiah's loyalty
in revenge for repeated and most unseemly rebuffs ;
his earlier efforts for a compromise were made in
good faith. That Nehemiah did not believe this, is
no decisive argument on his side. His acuteness was
preternatural. He scented treachery everywhere,
and would not trust his nearest neighbours. A
prophet urges him to take refuge in the sanctuary.
At once he infers that the prophet is in the pay of
Sanballat (Neh.vi., 10-14). The nobles of Jerusalem
* Neh. vi., 1-9.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 49
keep up a correspondence with their old friend and
the kinsman of some of them, Tobiah the Am-
monite. At once Nehemiah concludes that their
letters are full of malicious slanders about himself.*
Let not my reader imagine that I am siding with
the Samaritans and their Jewish friends against Ne-
hemiah. It is true, I think that the former had a
right to feel aggrieved at the prospect of being de-
prived of their civil and religious privileges at Jeru-
salem, and that the Jewish conservatives were quite
naturally drawn to the Samaritans among whom they
found a sympathetic comprehension of their inherited
prejudices. Some credit, too, is due in my opinion
to the Jewish nobles for the assistance which they
rendered to Nehemiah (whose ulterior object they
did not perhaps see directly) in repairing the wall.
But I think it quite possible that they painted Ne-
hemiah too darkly in their private letters, and that
they feed the prophet Shemaiah to induce Nehemiah
to commit a questionable action. And Nehemiah's
cause was a better one than theirs. An exclusive
policy was necessary at this juncture in order that at
a later day more catholic principles might become
possible. Besides, the terms had, as it appears, been
stated to the Samaritans on which their religious
privileges could be continued to them, and these
* Neh. vi., 17-19. For " my words " read " evil reports of me."
5O Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
terms they had rejected. They had even shown a
loathing for the best Jewish piety (Isa. Ixvi., 5), and,
now that a capable leader of orthodoxy had appeared,
they did their utmost to hinder his action. Surely this
antagonism to what Nehemiah knew to be true
righteousness might, from the governor's point of
view, be plausibly regarded as obstinate wickedness,
which deserved no courtesy or consideration.
To return to Nehemiah's personal history. The
work for which he had obtained leave of absence from
the court was finished. It is stated in our present text
of the book of Nehemiah that he remained twelve
years at Jerusalem as governor (Neh. v., 14). But
without independent corroboration of this we must
hesitate to accept it as correct. The Biblical texts
underwent many changes, especially in points affect-
ing chronology, before they reached the latest editors.
The text of Neh. v., 14 can scarcely be accurate.
Nehemiah must, it would seem, have gone back to
Artaxerxes as soon as the work to which his firman
referred was completed. The king had only given
him leave for a set time, and the queen, too, was in-
terested in his return. One pleasant thing however
I have to mention which is beyond all doubt. Before
his departure, Nehemiah showed a genuine sympathy
with the down-trodden poor. The story of their " bit-
ter cry " follows immediately on that of the building
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 51
of the wall, and it was ultimately this great public
work which caused the sad trouble of which they com-
plained. For it was not possible that the poor Jews
who laboured so continuously at the wall, should
have time to attend to their fields and vineyards.
The consequence was that the Persian tax-gatherer
pressed them on the one hand, and Famine held
them in his stern grip on the other. The only rem-
edy was to apply to the money-lenders. But those
harsh men would not be satisfied unless their clients
mortgaged their small holdings, and even let their
young sons and daughters go into slavery. " A
great cry arose among the common people and their
wives against their Jewish brethren." " We are of
the same flesh as our brethren," they exclaimed in
the anguish of their heart, " and our children have
the same lineaments as theirs." The cry reached
the governor in his palace, and passionate wrath
seized him. He had not been prepared for this
moral failure. He had hoped to find the Jews of
Judaea not inferior in brotherly love to those of the
Dispersion, who held it a sacred duty to redeem
Jewish captives out of bondage. The idea of a rich
Jew allowing a poor one to sell his child, and even
buying the child himself, was abhorrent to Nehemiah.
It was not only inhuman but irreligious, and the
guilty act exposed the whole community to insulting
52 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
taunts from the Samaritans. He called an assembly,
and with dramatic gestures, which he has actually
recorded, he made the usurers swear to cancel the
mortgages, and remit the excessive interest which
they had been exacting.
The story speaks badly for the religious life of the
community. It reminds us of an anonymous prophecy
written about this time, a specimen of which deserves
to be quoted. The writer dramatically introduces
the richer Jews expostulating with Jehovah on His
inactivity as the protector of Israel.
" Why have we fasted, and thou seest it not ? mortified
ourselves, and thou markest it not ?
Surely on your fast day ye pursue your business, and
all money lent on pledge ye exact.
Is not this the fast that I choose, saith Jehovah,
To loose the fetters of injustice, to untie the bands of
violence,
To set at liberty those who are crushed, to burst every
yoke ?
Is it not to break thy bread to the hungry, and to bring
the homeless into thy house,
When thou seest the naked to cover him, and not to
hide thyself from thine own flesh ?
Then will thy light break forth as the dawn, thy wounds
will be quickly healed over,
Thy redress will go before thee, and Jehovah's glory
will be thy rearward.
Thy sons will build up the ancient ruins, thou wilt raise
again the long-deserted foundations,
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 53
And men will call thee, Repairer of ruins, Restorer of de-
stroyed places for inhabiting."
(Isa. Iviii., 4, 6-8, 12.)
We see from this that Nehemiah was not the only
person who revolted against' the inhumanity of the
aristocrats. Had he inquired, he would have found
out this cruel conduct before. For it was not only
the rebuilding of the walls which had given occasion
to the usurers to torment the commonalty. He did
not inquire, because he was too busy with high mat-
ters to look into small details. Nor had his kinsman
Hanani warned him of the need which existed for a
thorough social reform ; Hanani was entirely ab-
sorbed in the idea of the necessity for ensuring reli-
gious isolation. And so Nehemiah, who also regarded
this object as vital, drew these poor people from their
country homes to labour on the wall without having
made due provision for their compensation. Did he
blame himself for this ? He has unfortunately left
no record in his autobiography.
Equally unrecorded are the rest of the acts of
Nehemiah during his first visit. Possibly the later
writer who edited his work has omitted some sections
which did not fit into his own plan. Nor do we know
the name and the religious tendency of the Tirshatha
(*. e. y royal representative) to whom Nehemiah re-
signed the reigns of power. It is no great matter ;
54 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
whoever the Tirshatha was, he had not the courage
to cope with the Jewish aristocrats, who are found
at a later time as intimate with the leaders of the
Samaritans as if the wall had never been repaired.
There was still a gulf between Babylonian and
Judaean orthodoxy.
Can we doubt that this caused much dissatisfac-
tion in the Jewries of Babylonia ? or hesitate to con-
nect it with the first great certain return of Jewish
exiles to Palestine under Ezra the scribe ? This great
return would naturally be preceded by a journey of
some of the leading Jews, including Ezra, to the
Persian court with a petition for royal encouragement.
And it is a fortunate circumstance that an authentic
utterance of Ezra himself places this beyond all doubt,
and enables us to infer the nature of his petition to
Artaxerxes. These are the words to which I refer :
" Blessed be Jehovah, the God of our fathers, who has
put such a thing as this into the king's mind, to beautify
Jehovah's temple at Jerusalem, and has caused me to find
favour before the king and his counsellors and before all
the king's mighty princes." (Ezr. vii., 27, 28.)
It appears then that the object of Ezra and his party
was a distinctly religious one. It was not a mere
national migration for which he desired the royal
permission, but a grand attempt to prepare the way
for the still delayed return of Jehovah to His land.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 55
To him, as to Haggai and Zechariah before him, a
beautiful temple was a necessary condition of the
restoration of Israel to the divine favour. The sup.
posed firman, however, which is inserted before the
words of Ezra which I have just quoted is much
more precise in its expressions. It declares that
Ezra the priest * and scribe is sent by the king and
his counsellors to institute an inquiry into Judaean
religion on the basis of the law which is in his hand.
It even empowers Ezra to appoint magistrates and
judges to judge the people of the province west of
the Euphrates in accordance with this law, and should
there be any who presume to disobey, or refuse to
be taught, a strict sentence is to be passed upon
them, ranging from simple imprisonment to confisca-
tion of goods, banishment, and death.f This is all
very strange. A violent interference with the re-
ligion of their Judaean subjects would have been a new
departure in the policy of the Persian kings. Ezra
makes no reference to any other object as approved
by the king but that of the decoration of the temple.
He also expressly says that he would not ask the
king for a military escort, because he had said so
much about divine providence (Ezr. viii., 22) ; this
* Some scholars doubt whether the priestly character of Ezra is
historically certain.
f Err. vii., 11-26 ; cf. 2 Chron. xv., 13.
56 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
hardly looks as if he thought of pushing his reforms
with the help of the government. That the firman
is skilfully written, I should be the last to deny, but
to defend it in its present form as a historical docu-
ment, is beyond my ingenuity.* Nor am I at all
sure that the date given in Ezra vii., 8, 9 is correct.
It is, however, quite certain that a considerable
party of Babylonian Jews arrived at Jerusalem under
Ezra. Indeed, the activity of Ezra, like that of Ne-
hemiah, is absolutely necessary to explain the course
of later Jewish history. But what he actually did
cannot in all points be ascertained. The account
transmitted by the Chronicler in the Books of Ezra
and Nehemiah may be based on contemporary nar-
ratives, but contemporary narratives are not always
strictly faithful. I know that I am touching the fringe
of a troublesome question, but it is one which the stud-
ent cannot evade considering, and on which I must
tell him my own conclusion. No one likes to set
aside the authority of an old document, but here it
appears to me quite unavoidable. Whatever view
we take of the meaning of the narrator, the story
will not stand the tests of historical criticism. One
* On this and on the other problems of the careers of Ezra and
Nehemiah, see special articles in Messrs. A. & C. Black's Encyclo-
pedia Biblica, and cf. the translation of the Books of Ezra and
Nehemiah (with notes) by Guthe in Prof. Haupt's Bible. See also
Guthe's History of Israel (German).
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 57
possible view is that Ezra, on his arrival with firman
and lawbook, found the former quite useless owing
to the temper of the people, and waited thirteen
years before he ventured publicly to introduce the
latter. Others think that the narrator meant some-
thing quite different, viz., that Ezra did not think it
important to feel his way and try his powers of per-
suasion, but at once introduced the law amidst the
rejoicings of the multitude. I think myself that the
latter view of the writer's meaning is the most nat-
ural one, but I find it not less difficult to accept as
historical than the former. How, except by an ap-
peal to force, Ezra can have won immediate accept-
ance for his lawbook, I do not understand. Did he
make such an appeal, according to the document?
No. The statement is that " all the people. . . .
spoke to Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the
Law of Moses which Jehovah had commanded Israel "
(Neh. viii., i), and that on the next day the heads of
families joined the priests and Levites in a visit to
the great legal expert, Ezra, to learn the orthodox
mode of keeping the Feast of Booths. Now I do
not deny that there was at this time a sincere at-
tachment on the part of the leading Judaeans to the
older law, and I fully recognise the moral influence
which must have been exerted by the new settlers
from Babylonia, but I doubt whether a lawbook dif-
58 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
faring so widely from the older one (I will explain
what Ezra's lawbook was presently), can have been
at once accepted by the whole people and especially
by the aristocratic class. True, the other view ap-
pears not less questionable. How can Ezra have
waited thirteen years before he obeyed, and that
most imperfectly, the plain command of Artaxerxes ?
I must confess, too, that the events which, according
to the extant records, followed this supposed publi-
cation and solemn acceptance of the law confirm me
in my sceptical attitude. I can partly understand
the story of the introduction of the older lawbook
under Josiah, but I cannot in the least comprehend
the externally parallel narrative in Neh. viii. A
small kernel of fact may not unreasonably be ad-
mitted. But the story, as it stands, is, I greatly fear,
unhistorical.
Not less full of improbability is the story of the
marriage-reforms in Ezra ix., x. Such a delicate
matter as the alteration of marriage-customs cannot
have been brought about so quickly and in such a
rough-and-ready way. That the sight of Ezra, sit-
ting with dishevelled hair in a stupor, and then the
hearing of a solemn liturgical prayer, should have
so unnerved the people who had married non-Jewish
wives that they straightway volunteered to turn away
their wives and their children, and that three days
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 59
afterwards a still larger assembly should have gathered
in cold rainy weather in the open air, and sanctioned
the appointment of a commission to compel the
offenders to carry out this resolution, is surely in-
credible. That there was anything like a general
dismissal of non-Jewish wives and their children, not
only psychological considerations, but certain impor-
tant facts recorded in our documents * forbid us to
believe.
Let no one suppose that I am trying to convert
Ezra into a model of humanity. On the contrary, I
think it likely that he was at first far too vehement in
his language and rigorous in his demands, and I must
express a fear that some too pliant persons may have
given way to him. If these surmises are correct,
the scribe Ezra was guilty of a distinct denial of the
divine fatherhood a doctrine expressed in the very
first chapter of the narrative which introduces his
lawbook. I am bound to denounce this as much as
I sympathise with and admire the very different
attitude of the apostle Paul. Nor can I help referring
in this connection to the blessings which accrued to
the English race through the union of a heathen king
of Kent with a Christian princess from France.
Gratitude for these blessings compels me to shrink
with horror from the conduct of Ezra, if he gave
*See Ezr. x., 15 ; Neh. xiii., 23-27.
60 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
sufficient occasion for a narrative like that in Ezra
ix., x.
And yet, even if Ezra was so far guilty, I must
not ignore the existence of extenuating circumstances.
This vehemence and rigour (so far as they are his-
torical) were but the excess of his religious patriotism.
They arose out of his dread of the too possible dis-
astrous consequences of mixed marriages. A child
is always affected permanently for good or for evil
by the religion of its mother. There was a time
when the religion of ancient Egypt became partly
Semitic through the intermarriage of Egyptians and
Syrians, and some of the least desirable religious
peculiarities of the early Israelites were largely due
to their intermarriage with the Canaanites. That
was chiefly why Ezra and Nehemiah were so much
opposed to mixed marriages. The religion which
they desired to promote was a book-religion, which
to a considerable extent recognised the claims of
development ; those of the Samaritans and the
other small nations of Palestine were local, unpro-
gressive religions, based on ancient custom. No
doubt Ezra's policy was opposed to the doctrine of
the divine fatherhood expressed in the first chapter
of Genesis. But we can show from the Book of
Malachi * that many of those with whom Ezra would
* Mai. ii., 10-16.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 61
fain have dealt so barbarously had offered an equally
flat contradiction to that great doctrine by turning
adrift the Jewish wives whom they had married in
their youth in order to marry foreign women.
" Have we not all one Father ? has not one God
created us?" are the words in which Malachi indig-
nantly reproves them. He also mentions the sad
divisions in families which had arisen from these
cruel divorces, the children having apparently taken
the part of their disgraced mothers. And he seems
to have painfully felt his own inability to reform this
abuse, for he (or some not much later writer) has
added this appendix to his prophecy,
" Behold, I send you the prophet Elijah before Je-
hovah's great and terrible day come. He shall turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of
the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the
land with a curse " (Mai. iv., 5, 6).
In other words, Malachi looked for a great religious
reformer, who should make the people think of their
family and social obligations, and of Jehovah's hatred
for all un-Israelitish conduct. Jehovah had made
no covenant except with Israel ; those who formed
an alliance of any kind, either with half-Jews like the
Samaritans, or with non-Jews like the Philistines,
Ammonites, and Moabites, and who, in order to do
this, had put away their Jewish wives, provoked His
62 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
displeasure. Such, too, we may presume was the
theory of marriage inculcated by Ezra.
Very little, then, remains to the critical historian
of the details of the story in Ezra ix., x. A some-
what more favourable judgment can, in my opinion,
be passed on the account of the rise of the so-called
congregation, or to borrow a more appropriate Greek
term, the Ecclesia.* This narrative seems originally
to have followed on that in Ezr. ix., x., the last
words of which, as given in the true Septuagint text,
are "and they dismissed them (/. e. t their foreign
wives) with their children." It also undoubtedly
presupposes that Ezra's lawbook had been generally
accepted and was now in force. For it speaks of a
long reading from the book of the law of Jehovah as
having preceded the liturgical confession uttered by
the Levites ; the contents of the lawbook were some-
thing quite new to the audience. Now it is quite
true that this cannot be the historical background of
the formation of the congregation. The mixed mar-
riages cannot to any great extent have been dissolved,
and the lawbook of Ezra cannot have been generally
or publicly accepted. But the scene in the fore-
ground of the picture may still be correct. The
Babylonian Jews who came up with Ezra certainly
regarded themselves as the true Israelites, and it was
* C/., Hort, The Christian Ecclesia (1896).
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 63
only natural that they should form themselves into
what claimed to be a national Ecclesia or assembly
the ideas of the church and the nation being hence-
forth inseparably fused together.* And to this as-
sembly or congregation they would naturally admit,
first, all who in the past evil days had protested
against semi-heathenism, and who, in the words of
Malachi (iii., 16), had " spoken often one to the
other,"! an d next, those who, under the influence of
the new colonists, had given up their heretical cus-
toms, or, in the language of a contemporary, ^ had
"turned from transgression in Jacob " (Isa. lix., 20).
This congregation is the " Zion " of the later chapters
of Isaiah, and its members are the "poor," the
" meek," the " mourners in Zion," the " trembling
listeners to Jehovah's word," of whom we read in
late psalms, prophecies, and narratives. This con-
gregation is also the feeble beginning of the great
Jewish church, and the contract or covenant which
its members, after a solemn reading of the new law-
book, probably subscribed, must have contained the
* According to the post-exilic list in Ezr. ii. (Neh. vii., I Esdr. v.),
the number of men in the community was 42,360, *'. t., some 125,000
souls.
f /. e. , had formed themselves into a close association.
| See Isaiah in the Polychrome Bible.
Isa. Ixi., 3 ; Ixvi., 2 ; Ezr. ix., 4 ; x., 3; Ps. ix., 12, 18 ; x., 9,
10, 12, etc.
64 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
chief obligations which were the condition of the
privileges granted to the true Israel privileges which
are summed up in these remarkable words from the
third part of Isaiah :
" And as for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith
Jehovah : My spirit which is upon thee [/. e., upon the
true Israel], and My words which I have put into thy
mouth, shall not remove from thy mouth, nor from that
of thine offspring, nor from that of thine offspring's
offspring, from henceforth unto eternity " (Isa. lix., 21).
At this historical turning-point the scribe, Ezra,
suddenly disappears. The chief place in the narra-
tive is once more occupied by Nehemiah, whom the
news of Ezra's comparative failure seems to have
drawn from his home in Susa.* Probably he came
on furlough as temporary governor or special high
commissioner. It is noticeable that even Nehemiah
does not mention Ezra in the short second part of
his memoirs. He confines himself to a business-like
description of his own doings. He had three prac-
tical objects. They are the same which are given in
the traditional account of the covenant of the con-
gregation, viz., the abolition of mixed marriages, and
of Sabbath traffic, and the provision of regular sup-
plies for the temple services and for the priests and
Levites.
* Neh. xiii. 6.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 65
Let us take the last of these points first : Nehe-
miah found that the support of the Levites had been
so sadly neglected that they had deserted their posts
and retired to their country allotments.* Strange to
say, the priest Eliashib (I suppose he was the high
priest of that name), acquiescing in the decadence
of the ecclesiastical system, had conceded the use
of a large store-chamber, formerly in the charge of
the Levites, to Tobiah the Ammonite.f Here, per-
haps, as the man of business of the temple, Tobiah
had installed himself, with his household utensils,
close to his priestly friend. Nehemiah, according to
his wont, took prompt action. He cast out all To-
biah's property, and had the chamber purified, just
as if Tobiah had been a heathen. ^ To Eliashib we
are not told that he said anything, but to the civil
rulers, who ought to have stirred up the people to
bring their offerings, he gave a short but emphatic
rebuke, " Why is the house of God forsaken " ?
The effect was immediate. The Levites were gath-
ered together, and the arrears of tithe called in.|
Thus this man of affairs, with his beneficently im-
* Neh. xiii., 10.
f Neh. xiii., 4, 5.
J Neh. xiii., 7-9.
These words have the ring of spontaneity. They are not taken
from Neh. x., 39, but were evidently copied by the framer of the
supposed covenant.
| Neh. xiii., n, 12.
5
66 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
perious manner, succeeded where prophets like Mal-
achi and priestly reformers like Ezra had failed.
It was a much harder task to get the Sabbath ob-
served in the new orthodox fashion. Deuteronomy
had only prescribed rest from the daily toil of hus-
bandry ; the priestly code required abstinence from
all secular occupation, and represented even gather-
ing sticks on the Sabbath as an offence deserving
capital punishment. * Nehemiah, a partisan of this
code, determined to press the later form of the Sab-
bath precept. He would trust no information, but,
as on his first arrival at Jerusalem, went out to
gather facts for himself, f It was a Sabbath-day, and
the villages were enlivened with the merry shouts of
those who trod the grapes in the wine-press, inno-
cently supposing that this pleasant task was no
violation of the Sabbath law. Then he looked else-
where, and saw villagers lading their asses with grain,
fruit, and wine, so as to arrive in Jerusalem on the
next market-day. Nehemiah kept his counsel, but
when the market-day came he warned the sellers not
to start from home on the Sabbath-day again. The
Sabbath trade in fish also excited his indignation,
though he found fault not so much with the Tyrians
who sold, as with the Jews who bought the fish4
* Num. xv., 32-36. f Neh. xiii., 15-22.
It was salted and dried fish from the Mediterranean.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 67
Nehemiah administered a severe rebuke to the prin-
cipal Jews, reminding them that Sabbath-breaking
had brought ruin in the past, and that more troubles
would be the consequence of such profane conduct.
He gave orders that the city gates should be closed
all through the Sabbath, and that no one bringing
any merchandise should be admitted. The traders
saw nothing for it but to pass the twenty-four hours
of the Sabbath without the walls. But even this
irritated the governor. The Jews who went out into
the country on the Sabbath might be induced to
attempt an infraction of the law. So Nehemiah
threatened the traders that unless they desisted alto-
gether, he would drive them from the neighbourhood
by force.
It is a scene from real life which we have before
us, and it helps us to understand the transition from
the gentle code of Deuteronomy to the consistently
severe code of Ezra. We have interesting utterances
of men who sympathised with Nehemiah in what I
may call the Nehemiah section of the Book of Isa-
iah I refer, of course, to the well-known sayings on
the Sabbath in Isa. Ivi., 2, 6; Iviii., 13. The passages
are not fine enough to quote ; in fact, the poetry of
the Sabbath sentiment waited many centuries for a
worthy expression.
And now conies the turn of the third great object
68 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
of the reformers, viz., the abolition of mixed mar-
riages. Two noteworthy facts come before us. The
first is Nehemiah's lenience to the common people,
whom he did not compel to send away their Philis-
tine, or Ammonite, or Moabite wives. With almost
frantic excitement he made the offenders swear not
to promote any more such marriages within their
families, and there he stopped.* The second is his
severity to the priests. A grandson of the high
priest Eliashib had married a daughter of Sanballat.
No doubt this is the Manasseh of whom, as I have
already mentioned, Josephus tells us. Nehemiah
himself relates that he made Jerusalem too hot for
the offender, who fled precipitately. " Remember
it is to them, and not to me," says Nehemiah, " that
I have attainted priestly dignitaries." " On the
other hand," he continues, " I have purged the
priesthood from all strangers, and maintained each
of the offices of the priests, and of the Levites." f
From this we may infer that Manasseh had com-
panions in his exile, and we have already seen that
Nehemiah's view of his character is not the only
one that is possible. Indeed, the governor himself
brings no other charge against him but that of hav-
ing criminally polluted a consecrated race. Manas-
* Neh. xiii., 23-27.
f Neh. xiii., 28-30 (new translation).
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 69
seh may have been a good, and was certainly in
some sense a great, man. His reconstitution of the
Samaritan community was an event of high import-
ance in the history of Jewish religion.
Scanty enough are the record's of Nehemiah's
second visit, but they suffice to show that his chief
interest at this time was ecclesiastical. Perhaps he
did not interfere with the civil government ; this
may have remained in the hands of the person whom
he found in office. His main objects were those of
Ezra, and it was his good fortune to succeed where
the priestly scribe had failed, not merely because
he had the royal authority, but because of his great
personal qualities. Still, we must not allow our-
selves to underrate Ezra. If the traditional picture
of his activity is not fully historical, it devolves upon
us to fill up the deficiencies of the narrative by rea-
sonable conjecture. We must remember that Ezra
was a theorist by education, and that he began his
practical career with an imperfect knowledge of the
situation. Under these circumstances it is intelli-
gible that he was at first too vehement and arbi-
trary. But it is psychologically probable that when
his first injudicious effort had failed, he showed him-
self in a more pleasing light. The portrait of the
Servant of Jehovah, in some beautiful songs to
which I shall refer, may not indeed have been
70 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
sketched from Ezra, but seems to embody the ideal
of the class to which Ezra belonged. I believe that
his hidden life in the years which succeeded his pub-
lic failure may have been great in the eyes of God.
I believe that he must have come to understand how
ill adapted the lawbook was in its original form to
the wants of the Judaeans, and that he devoted him-
self with considerate thoughtfulness to correcting
some of its deficiencies. Henceforth he did not
"cry, nor roar,* nor cause his voice to be heard in
the street." With old and new friends he laboured
to commend the claims of the reinterpreted law of
Jehovah to the citizens of Jerusalem. And though
I cannot venture to believe that he wrote psalms, I
can imagine that he would have joined heartily in
singing words like these :
" Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant,
And teach me Thy statutes.
Streams of water run down mine eyes
Because men keep not Thy law."
(Ps. cxix., 135, 136.)
There is yet another reason why Ezra should be
had in honour, which rests probably on a firmer
basis than the foregoing conjecture. In a docu-
ment which is, at any rate, early I mean the sup-
posed firman of Artaxerxes (Ezr. vii., 12, 21) he is
* See rendering of Isa. xlii., 2 (with note) in the Polychrome Bible.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 71
described as the " writer of the law of the God of
heaven," /. e. t of that law which Ezra brought with
him to Jerusalem, and which the firman elsewhere
calls " the law of thy God which is in thy hand." I
believe that by this title the writer meant that Ezra
was the author or editor of the lawbook referred to,
for if " scribe " merely meant " copyist," what object
would there be in giving Ezra the title ? It would
surely be no additional honour for a priest to be
called a copyist. The firman indeed, cannot be
regarded as an authority for the views of Artaxerxes,
but the phrase " writer of the law of the God of
heaven " (i. e., of Jehovah) probably represents what
Ezra said of himself when he came to Jerusalem.
We are told that when, in Josiah's time, the Deuter-
onomic Law was brought before the secretary of
state, Hilkiah the chief priest stated what he knew
of the history of the document.* Ezra, too, was
no doubt called upon to do this by the rulers
of the Jerusalem-community, and he probably said
that by the spirit of Jehovah he had reproduced the
Law of Moses more perfectly than his predecessors.!
A later writer, whose words are preserved in Ezr.
vii., 6-10, was ignorant of this. He represents Ezra
*2 Kings xxii., 8.
f Esdr. xiv. , 44, is, of course, a wild fiction. For ' ' 204 " read " 94 "
(see Ball's Variorum Apocrypha).
72 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
as merely an experienced scholar in the law of
Jehovah, who had devoted himself to teaching the
divine statutes.
The lawbook of Ezra was no doubt a smaller
work than what now passes among critics as the
Priestly Code. Nor can we admit that it was
altogether the work of Ezra. In the Babylonian, as
well as in the early Persian period, different schools
of priests appear to have occupied themselves with
recombining, recasting, and supplementing the earlier
laws and legal traditions. The state of Judaean
religion about the middle of the fifth century made
it plain that these labours needed to be brought to
a provisional close, and it was probably Ezra who
took the lead in the redaction of the material. It
was his province, I suppose, to select, arrange, and
complete the literary matter prepared by his' fellow-
priests.
You will now understand the sense in which I
have spoken of Ezra's lawbook as new. It was new
by comparison with Deuteronomy, just as Deuter-
onomy in its day (the time of Josiah) was new
by comparison with the Book of the Covenant,
which belonged perhaps to the time of Jehoshaphat.
But it professed to hand on the old Mosaic laws
and principles in a form adapted to the age of
Ezra ; and its profession was not unjustified. For
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 73
it was perfectly clear to theists of that period that
God had both the will and the power to endow
chosen men with the spirit and capacity of Moses,
just as, according to Malachi, he would at a future
time endow a chosen prophet with the spirit and
capacity of Elijah. I do not therefore mean by the
phrase, a new lawbook, a book that was produced
for the first time from the fertile brain of an
enthusiast.
To understand Ezra's lawbook it is necessary to
realise its object. This was not to cultivate a lofty
type of personal piety, but to guard against a recur-
rence of the great national calamity of the past.
The old religion of Israel, with all its attractive va-
riety of local and family rites, had proved itself inad-
equate. The presence of the Divine King among His
people had been continually interrupted. Tyrants
had often usurped the dominion, for how could a
God be said to rule in a conquered or even in a
tributary land ? and there had also been a perma-
nent obscuration of the theocracy by the institution
of a human royalty. Hence the necessity of a per-
fect divine law to which priests and laymen, rich and
poor, should be equally subject a law which should
take into account the huge difference between God
and man, and should spare no pains in determining
the points in which a supernatural God would be neces-
74 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
sarily offended /. e., in marking the limits between
the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane.
And since the primitive confusion of the material
and the ethical was not yet overcome, and since it
was vastly easier to deal with material than with
ethical violations of the divine sanctity, it came to
pass that the main subject of the Jewish, as well as
of the Zoroastrian, law, was the distinction between
clean and unclean, and the manner in which lost
ceremonial purity could be recovered. It was only
those who were technically clean who could appear
before God, and the object of the elaborate sacrifi-
cial system was not to produce peace of mind for
the individual, but to unify the community on a
sound religious basis, maintaining its consecrated
character unimpaired. The individual who volun-
tarily or involuntarily transgressed any precept of
the law injured the sanctity of the community. As
long, therefore, as his transgression was unatoned for,
he was a source of danger to that organic whole of
which he was a member. It mattered not whether
the precept were moral or ritual ; the divine holiness
had been wronged, and satisfaction had to be given,
either by ceremonial means or by the cutting off of
the offending branch from the parent stem.*
* A punishment which, owing to the virtual abolition of the clan
associations, placed him who suffered it in a truly terrible position.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 75
The most remarkable evidence that the legislation
of Ezra's school was planned in the interest of the
community, and not of the individual, is supplied by
the rites of the Day of Atonement. The object of
these was to clear away any impurity which the
atoning acts of the past year might still have left in
the community or in the sanctuary. They cannot
however be shown to have existed as early as the
time of Ezra, and probably are among the passages
which are late insertions in the Levitical legislation.*
One of the details of the ritual is so strange, and
sheds so much light on the low spiritual state of the
mass of the Jews, that I refer to it now. It has, in
fact, strong affinities to customs mentioned by Mr.
Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, as still preva-
lent in parts of India, Borneo, and other countries.
The natives of these regions firmly believe that the
demons who bring disasters and other calamities can
be driven away by means of loud cries addressed to
some quasi-sacrificial animal such as a goat, and we
know from the Mishna that just such shouts, with just
such an object, were addressed to the so-called scape-
goat on the annual Day of Atonement. This unfortu-
nate animal was driven into the wilderness bearing
away all the sins committed by the Jews during the
* To some extent they were anticipated by a very simple ceremony
enjoined by Ezekiel (Ezek. xlv., 10-20).
76 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
year, and the practice was to push it over a certain
crag not far from Jerusalem, which has been identi-
fied, upon which it was received by Azazel, one of
the fallen angels for whom this name, which is of
quite a recent type, was invented.* Certainly this
was a very strange concession to make to popular
superstition, but it had this incidental advantage,
that it counteracted the custom of sacrificing to gob-
lins of the wilderness called " satyrs." f In fact, we
must bear in mind that the Jews had not only
hereditary superstitions of their own, but lived
amidst a population still more superstitious than
themselves, and that it was practically impossible,
from a church-statesman's point of view, to avoid
making some carefully guarded concessions to the
weakness of human nature. Whether Ezra would
have sanctioned so big a concession as that which
relates to the scapegoat seems to me doubtful. And
I think that there must have been many in the sub-
sequent period who entertained a strong repugnance
to the miserable ceremony of the scapegoat.
Another reason why it is of importance to realise
the object of the lawbook, is this that Protestant
* See article "Azazel" in Messrs. A. & C. Black's Encyclopaedia
Biblica.
\ See "Satyrs" in the same Encyclopaedia. Azazel may, as the
present writer has suggested, have been substituted for some arch-
goblin of Jewish folklore.
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 77
students are naturally prone to criticise the legal
religion from a Pauline point of view. Now Judaism
as a whole is by no means devoid of spirituality,
and has true saints of its own, but the Law from
which it so largely springs cannot stand the tests
which Pauline Christians apply to it. The Law may
indeed encourage a deep awe of God, but this ser-
vice can only be rendered to those who are already
predisposed to such a habit of mind. I speak, of
course, of the effect of the Law itself, and not as
modified by the perusal of the prophetic Scriptures,
and by the influence of the sweet hymns of the
Psalter. And I regret that through unconsciously
unfair criticism some injustice should be done to one
of the most remarkable productions of the religious
spirit.
There is yet another mistake against which we have
to guard that of supposing that Ezra's book was
merely a lawbook. The legal element was indeed
predominant, but the code was introduced, or accom-
panied, by a history of the origin of the sacred peo-
ple and the sacred institutions. We are struck in
this history by a diminished, though by no means
extinct, regard for popular traditions, and an ab-
sence of the true historical interest. On the other
hand, we are impressed by the deep religious earnest-
ness of the writers, whose conception of God is
78 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
higher and purer than that of the earlier narrators,
and whose veneration for the sacred institutions is
such that they declare one of them (the Sabbath) to
have been ordained at the Creation, and another
(Circumcision) to be as old as Abraham. The pa-
triarchs, too, have put off the weaknesses with which
early tradition had invested them. They are types
of the perfect character after which each subject of
the theocracy aspires, and their meritorious lives are
among the palladia of the regenerate Israel.
It is true, there has been loss as well as gain.
There is on the one hand a chilliness in the relation
of the patriarchs to their God, and on the other an
incomprehensibleness in the character of these saintly
men, who strike a modern reader as having had no
moral development. But this chilliness is by no
means indifference ; it is only the expression of feel-
ing which is concerned. A priest is not a poet ; it
requires a poet to bring out the latent heat of Jewish
religion in Ezra's period. And the incomprehen-
sibleness of which I spoke is at once removed when
we view Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as types or ideals
of the new Israel. For the new Israel was separated
from the old by a deep gulf the gulf of national
ruin, over which the labours of Ezekiel, prophet and
lawgiver, and his successors down to the time of
Ezra had constructed a bridge. The bridge was the
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 79
reinterpreted Law, but this bridge was only open to
those who had taken to heart the lessons of the past.
Such persons are the only true Israelites. They
acknowledge that their old ideals and their old con-
fidences were false, and they find new ones in the
Law. Religion has transformed their views of char-
acter ; it has also taught them to trust, not in chariots
and horses, but in the strength vouchsafed to faithful
obedience.* The only defect which an orthodox
Jew could find in the life of Abraham was that he
had no lawbook to study. But Job, who is, apart
from some easily separable details, a poetical version
of Abraham, shows by his grand profession of inno-
cence (Job xxxi.) that all the essentials of the moral
law were known to and observed by him in a spirit
of devout obedience. The want of poetry in the
priestly authors of the lawbook was supplied by
later writers and not least by the poet of Job.
One thing, no doubt, Job lost for a time which
the priestly writer makes extremely prominent in
Abraham, and that is humility. Humility is the
dominant note of the Jewish character as transformed
by the Law. It is properly a relation to God, and it
is the root out of which not only Israel's privileges
but all its righteousness proceeds. Hence the re-
* Cf, the saying, " Everything is in need of help (from heaven)."
Midrash on Ps. xx.
8o Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
markable phenomenon that righteousness and humil-
ity in the post-exilic period are coupled together.
" Behold, thy king comes to thee ; he is righteous and
victorious ; humble is he, and he rides upon an ass "
(Zech. ix., 9). And again, in a psalm, the wars of
the Messiah are said to be waged " in behalf of
truth, righteousness, and humility " (Ps. xlv., 4).
The one colossal privilege guaranteed in the future
to the "humble" was the presence of God among His
people, or, in other words, the visible assumption by
Jehovah of His kingly dignity. When the priestly
code was originally framed, it was hoped that this
"great divine event" would speedily take place.
This is why in Leviticus we so often hear the
appeal, " Be ye holy, for I am holy " (Lev. xi., 44,
etc). This, too, is the secret of all those minute
prescriptions which strike most of us as wearisome,
but which to those who had taken upon themselves
" the yoke of the kingdom of heaven " * were de-
lightful. The too early dimmed holiness of ancient
Israel arose out of a preceding act of Jehovah (the
Exodus) ; in the future, the delivering act of God
would have to be preceded by a thorough sanctifica-
tion of His people. This it was the endeavour of
Ezra and his colleagues to secure, and judged from
* The phrase illustrates the saying of Jesus, "Take my yoke upon
you, . . . for my yoke is easy. "
Nehemiah, Ezra, and Manasseh 81
their own point of view they did their work in the
most self-denying and reverent manner.
For the number of ancient elements in the
priestly legislation forbids us, as I have said, to call
it in the strict sense of the word, a new, that is an
entirely original, lawbook. It exhibits the form
which the older legislation took under vastly
altered circumstances, and it only differs so widely
in many respects from that older legislation because
of the great outward revolution through which
Israel had passed, and which was resulting more
slowly in an equally great change in the inner man.
In that second revolution there were many other
actors besides Ezra and the legalists. Priests, pro-
phets, psalmists, and wise men, besides the humbler
confessors of common life, all had their share in
bringing about the transformation of Israel. To
some of them it will be my privilege to call the read-
er's attention, but none of them deserves such high
honour as Ezra the scribe, because without his law-
book the preliminary conditions of their activity
would have been wanting. The Jewish and the
Zoroastrian communities have survived centuries of
persecution chiefly through their possession of a
written religious Law. The known or unknown
compilers of that Law are greater men than the
founders of empires.
6
LECTURE III.
Jewish Religious Ideals; Hindrances to their
Perfect Development.
THE Jewish community in Judaea had now been
reconstituted. Come what might, it had a
bond stronger than death linking it to the God of
heaven and earth. True, it could not expect much
prosperity in the immediate future. Ezra and
Nehemiah must have known that a breathing-time
between successive afflictions was all that could be
hoped for.* But they knew also that they had pro-
vided the best of comforts for their afflicted people
by stirring up within them a sense of the true
Israelitish ideal. This ideal was not the same which
had hovered before the minds of David and Solo-
mon. It was not in the first place material prosperity,
but simply to be and to do as a community all that
* This was one unfortunate result of the policy of Cyrus, who
sought as much as possible to respect the individualities of the subject
peoples. He meant well, but he did not foresee that these individual-
ities would express themselves in a succession of revolts which it
would be troublesome to his successors to quell. Not unfrequently
these revolts took place in the neighbourhood of Judaea, and that
small and poor country suffered many inconveniences in consequence.
8a
Jewish Religious Ideals 83
a righteous God approved. A tender-hearted, zeal-
ous, and enthusiastic man placed his pen at the
service of this ideal. He depicted some of its most
beautiful aspects in a cycle of songs which some
like-minded editor inserted at different points of the
expanded prophecy of Restoration (i. e., Isaiah xl.
lv.). Those who would comprehend the sanctified
ambitions of some of the best Judaeans in the age
inaugurated by Ezra should read, and read again,
these fine poems.
Let us begin with the poem which is most con-
crete in its expressions, and is most obviously occa-
sioned by contemporary historical facts. I will give
the central portion.* May the words find reverent
and sympathetic readers.
" He grew up as a sapling before us,
And as a sprout from the root in a dry ground ;
He had no form nor majesty,
And no beauty that we should delight in him.
" Despised (was he) and forsaken of men,
A man of (many) pains, and acquainted with sickness ;
Yea, like one before whom men hide the face,
Despised, and we esteemed him not.
" But our sickness (alone) he bore,
And our pains he carried them,
* Isaiah liii. , 2-9. This and the following translations from
Isaiah are almost entirely from the Polychrome Bible, and are based
on a text which differs in some points from that in common use.
84 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Whilst we esteemed him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
" But (alone) he was humiliated because of our rebel-
lions,
(He alone was) crushed because of our iniquities ;
A chastisement, all for our peace, was upon him,
And to us came healing through his stripes.
" All we, like sheep, had gone astray,
We had turned every one to his own way,
While Jehovah made to light upon him
The guilt of us all.
" He was treated with rigour but he resigned himself,
And opened not his mouth,
Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
And like a sheep that before her shearers is dumb.
" Through an oppressive doom was he taken away,
And as for his fate, who thought thereon,
That he had been cut off out of the land of the living,
(That) for my people's rebellion he had been stricken
to death ?
" And his grave was appointed with the rebellious,
And with the wicked his tomb,
Although he had done no injustice,
Nor was there deceit in his mouth."
How very natural was the question of the Ethio-
pian eunuch in the Acts, " Of whom, pray, does the
prophet say this? of himself, or of some other
Jewish Religious Ideals 85
man ? " (Acts viii., 34). For this is obviously not a
purely imaginary description, but a deeply felt
meditation on certain melancholy facts well known
to the poet and his readers. Supposing the poem
to have been written at the end of the Exile, we
might interpret it as a description of the persecution
and death of the prophet Jeremiah, whom a plausible
tradition declares to have been put to death by his
unbelieving countrymen. It would seem, however,
that the age of Ezra is a more defensible date, and
in this case the facts to which the poet refers will
probably * be the martyrdoms commemorated in a
late prophecy of the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah Ivii., i)
in these words :
" The righteous perishes, but no man lays it to heart ;
Men of piety are taken, but none considers
That for the wickedness (of the time) the righteous is
taken."
It should not, I think, surprise us to find complaints
like these in the years preceding the arrival of Ezra.
Religious progress among the Jews was not obtained
cost-free. Most of the Judaeans in the first half of
* It is possible, however, that the traditional martyrdom of Jer-
emiah is referred to in a very late post-exilic prophecy as a great
sin of the community. InZech. xii., io,"they shall look (with long-
ing regret) to me whom they pierced," cannot be right. It is just
possible that "me" represents the first letter of "Jeremiah."
86 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
the fifth century were the children of those who had
been left behind by Nebuchadrezzar, and were by
no means faithful adherents of the Deuteronomic
Law. Neither rich nor poor could stand a very strict
scrutiny. Then, as afterwards, the rich were specially
prone to sins of violence and inhumanity, while the
poor were as much addicted to old and new super-
stitions. Exceptions, however, there certainly were.
Malachi calls such persons " fearers of Jehovah,"
and intimates that they belonged to the poorer
class. These poor but pious men appear to have
been lightly esteemed by their neighbours, who
ascribed their unprosperous and even miserable con-
dition to the judgment of God, while the tyrannical
rich men, to rid themselves of these troublesome
nonconformists, sometimes accused them falsely be-
fore the judges, and obtained their condemnation
to death. But that great religious thinker and poet
of the age of Ezra to whom I have referred, looking
back on these sad events, saw them irradiated by
the light of a divine purpose. He fused the different
nameless martyrs and confessors into a single colossal
form,* and identified this ideal personage with the
* To call a people the servant of such and such a God is per-
fectly Semitic. Robertson Smith has quoted Arabic parallels, and
passages like Deut. iv., 19; vi., 13; x., 12, 20, imply the same
usage among the Israelites, though it was not apparently as common
as the individualising application of the phrases.
Jewish Religious Ideals 87
true people of Israel. In doing so, he may very
likely have thought of the prophet Jeremiah, who
certainly regarded himself and his disciples as con-
jointly the sole representative of the true Israel.
Looking back, as I said, the poet saw the full
preciousness of such a life, and divined the fragrance
of its close in the eyes of God. This second Jeremiah
could not be inferior to the first in religious insight,
and must have known that his patiently borne suffer-
ings would be more effectual than any of the legal
sacrifices for the conversion and ultimate glorification
of his people. In a converted and regenerate Israel
he must have felt that all that was noblest in him-
self would live, and that so he would continue to
work out the all-wise purposes of the one true God.
This wonderful poem, which is the holy of holies
in the temple of the Old Testament, stands last in
the cycle of the songs on the Servant of Jehovah.
The three preceding poems describe the experiences
of this great personage prior to his martyrdom, or
rather, of those martyrs and confessors who had the
special work of teaching and preaching. All who in
any sense witnessed for Jehovah formed part of the
true Israel the "Servant of Jehovah," but there
was a special appropriateness in applying the latter
title to those who were engaged in pastoral and
missionary work. In Isaiah xlii., 1-4, xlix., 1-6, and
88 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
1., 4-9, the Servant of Jehovah is represented as
an earnest and absorbed religious teacher, who is
sometimes rewarded with success, but at other times
meets with neglect or persecution. His work for
Israel consists in "bringing back" the people to
Jehovah's land, and the means by which he strives
after this result is a skilfully varied eloquence, keen
as a sword when close appeals to the conscience are
needed (xlix., i), but soft as milk when the weary
and disconsolate have to be revived (1., 4 ; cf. xlii., 3).
This implies first a persuasive exposition of the main
principles of the Law, and next, for the benefit of
the Jews of the Dispersion, a setting forth of the
manifold blessings enjoyed by dwellers in the Holy
City. It was indeed a great and noble mission, and
the probability is that it would have satisfied the
aspirations of the scribe Ezra.* But it did not
satisfy the author of these poems, who had drunk in
the spirit of more catholic teachers. Noble as the
function was of re-establishing Jehovah's people, it
was not quite the noblest, and so he represents the
Servant of Jehovah as comforting himself for his
slight success among the people of Israel with the
thought of a still grander mission.
*It will be observed that not even the narrative introduction to
Ezra's law-book contains any hint of the world-wide mission of the
descendants of Abraham.
Jewish Religious Ideals 89
" And now, (thus) saith Jehovah,
He who formed me from the womb to be a Servant
unto him,
That I might bring back Jacob unto him,
And that Israel might be gathered,
It is too light a thing that thou shouldest raise up the
tribes of Jacob,
And restore the preserved of Irsael ;
So I set thee as a light of the nations,
That My deliverance may reach to the ends of the
earth."
(Isa. xlix., 5, 6.)
It is the mission to the other nations which forms
the theme of the very beautiful poem which opens
the series of songs on the Servant. This time it is
not the Servant who speaks, but Jehovah.
" Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold ;
My chosen, in whom My soul delights ;
I have put My spirit upon him,
He will set forth the law to the nations.
" He will not cry aloud, nor roar (as a lion),
Nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.
A cracked reed he will not break,
And a dimly burning wick he will not quench.
" Faithfully will he set forth the law ;
He will not burn dimly nor despond,
Till he have set the law in the earth,
And for his instruction the far countries wait."
(Isa. xlii., 1-4.)
90 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Can there be a finer description of the true mis-
sionary ? He is not allowed to abate one jot of the
legitimate demands of truth, which is no mere theory
to him, but a law, but he is to lay the chief stress on
the capacity of that law to satisfy the deepest wants
of human nature, bringing strength to the " cracked
reed " and light to the " dimly burning wick." Per-
suasion, not force, is to be the instrument : how un-
like the method ascribed, with some exaggeration,
to Ezra !
And who is this model pastor and missionary?
Is he a historical individual who has escaped mention
in the hagiology of Judaism ? No. In the first
three songs the Servant is still an imaginative fusion
of many individuals, and the persons who are here
combined into an organic whole are the noble
teachers and preachers of the Jewish religion in and
after the time of Ezra. These the poet evidently
supposes to form a numerous band, for, in order to
realise his description, some will have to go to Baby-
lonia, others to Egypt, and others to the Mediter-
ranean coast-lands on their apostolic mission. Nor
is there anything surprising in this. The prophetic
and missionary view of Judaism is repeatedly brought
before us in the later Scriptures (see Lecture VI.),
and must have taken its rise in some highly gifted
and illumined intellect. I can hardly think that the
Jewish Religious Ideals 91
Book of Jonah supplies us with the right starting-
point. The idea of the missionary prophet Jonah,
who is also a symbol of Israel, must surely have
been suggested by some work in which the same
idea was more directly expressed.
But is this really the idea of the songs of which
we are now speaking? Certainly. These earnest
teachers of the Law at home and abroad who are
they but the apostles or messengers of a great cen-
tral body the Jewish congregation formed by Ezra ?
It may be specially the teachers who say, " I have
laboured (as it seems) for naught, but my recompense
is with my God," yet it is the whole of faithful Israel
which will share the reward promised in Isaiah Hi.,
13-15. Without the support of the congregation
what would the teachers be able to effect? "All
the congregation," as the Priestly Record says, " are
holy, and Jehovah is among them " (Num. xvi., 3),
and it was the aspiration of Zion that all her sons
might be "disciples of Jehovah " (Isa. liv., 13), and
that all Jehovah's people might be prophets (Num.
xi., 29). Some might be called to a life of pastoral
activity ; others might simply have to witness to the
truth by " doing justly, loving mercy, and walking
humbly with their God " (Mic. vi., 8). Both modes
of life were equally fitting and necessary, if that high
utterance, " I will form thee and make thee a cov-
92 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
enant for the people,* a light of the nations " (Isa.
xlii., 6), was to be verified.
The insertion of these songs was the second en-
richment which the original Restoration-Prophecy
experienced. It is manifest that it greatly increased
the influence of the prophecy. For, when a fresh
appendix to this work in its expanded form was
thought of, the writer at three points introduced
the Servant of Jehovah soliloquising.f Here, how-
ever, the Servant is evidently regarded as a person-
ification of the company of prophets, to which, of
course, the writer himself belongs. The prophecy
opens with these inspiring words, which so finely
express the prophetic ideals of the time :
" The spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me, because
Jehovah has anointed me, and has sent me to bring
good news to the afflicted, to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and opening of the
eyes to the blind, to proclaim Jehovah's year of favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all
mourners, to give them instead of ashes a coronal, oil
of joy for the garment of mourning, a song of praise for
a failing spirit." (Isa. Ixi., 1-3.)
A psalmist, too, was kindled to enthusiasm by the
* "A covenant for the people," because the Servant of Jehovah,
who so thoroughly knows His will and is empowered to carry it out,
is like an embodiment of His promise or agreement (beritK). Cf.
2 Cor. iii., 2, "Ye are our epistle."
f Isa. Ixi., 1-3 ; Ixii., I, 6-7. See Polychrome Bibtc.
Jewish Religious Ideals 93
songs on the Servant of Jehovah. He lived in one
of those dark periods which succeeded the governor-
ship of Nehemiah, and which have left their impress
on so many of the lyrics in the first Book of the
Psalter. He is the author of the first part of Psalm
xxii., to which, as it seems, a conclusion has been ap-
pended by another hand. Into the poetical and
spiritual beauties of this fine fragment, I will not
enter. Suffice it to say that they could never have
existed but for that mine of poetry and religion
the Book of the Second Isaiah in its expanded form,
and that chief among the spiritual beauties is the
energy with which the writer expresses the solidarity
of all true Israelites. The Servant of Jehovah, as
he at least understands the phrase, is certainly not a
guild or company of prophets, but the whole con-
gregation of faithful Jews in Judaea. And hence
one notable difference between this psalm-fragment
and Isaiah liii., viz., that, while in the latter poem
the Servant of Jehovah suffers with full conscious-
ness of the object and issue of his troubles, in the
former, God seems to have given over to death His
servant, who, nevertheless, refuses to forsake his God.
In short, Psalm xxii. presents us with a perfectly
new phase of Jewish religious thought. Before, the
Exile men forsook their God when He proved unable
or unwilling to protect them. But the congregation
94 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
of faithful Israelites which was founded by Ezra was
able to trust its Father and its God even in the dark.
I now pass on to another form of the Israelitish
ideal that which centres in the person of the Mes-
siah. The origin of the Messianic hope among the
Jews is unrecorded. The first glowing expressions
of it are in Isaiah ix., 2-7, and xi., 1-8. Both these
passages are most probably post-exilic, and of a not
very early date in the post-exilic period. It would
seem as if the idea only gradually took hold of the
religious leaders. Ezekiel had it for a time (see
Ezekiel xvii., 22-24), but virtually abandoned it.
For, though he nominally includes the figure of a
second David in his later eschatological picture,* yet
he deprives this David of all that in the olden time
made the life of a king desirable. He permits him
no freedom of movement, and practically condemns
him to be simply the foster-father of the Church,
with the duty of providing the external requisites of
the temple ritual. King he will not call him ; the
second David is only to be a chief or prince. I sus-
pect, however, that Ezekiel went too far for many of
his readers. The popular Messianic hope could not
be put down by a single great teacher. There was
a deeply rooted belief that a day was at hand when
the lots of the oppressors and the oppressed would
* Ezek. xxxiv., 23, 24 ; xxxvii., 24, 25.
Jewish Religious Ideals 95
be reversed. And, however true it might be that Je-
hovah was the Goe'l, the deliverer of Israel, a king
who governed, as well as reigned, seemed to most Jews
indispensable as the apex of society. It was only a
few like Ezekiel who could rise to the thought of a
church-nation, of a people entirely absorbed in relig-
ion, whose meat and drink it was to do Jehovah's will.
And so we find the works of Isaiah and Jeremiah
interspersed, through the labours of editors who were
no mere literary craftsmen, but knew the people and
their spiritual cravings, with what may in various
degrees of strictness be called Messianic prophecies.
One of these produced a really remarkable effect.
We have it in two forms. Neither of them is quite
correct. But if we take the best readings from each
we get this version of the prophecy, which, not with-
out due recognition of what may be said on the
other side, I incline to ascribe, not to Jeremiah him-
self, but to a member of the school of that prophet :
" Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, when I will
raise up to David a sprout of the right kind ; he will
reign as a king, and will deal wisely, and execute justice
and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be
delivered, and Jerusalem will dwell securely ; and this
is the name which will be given her Jehovah is our
righteousness." * (Jer. xxiii., 5, 6 ; xxxiii., 14-16.)
* Comp. the name of Jerusalem at the end of Ezekiel (Ezek. xlviii. ,
35).
g6 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Well did an editor of Jeremiah describe this saying
as "that good word which Jehovah has spoken"
(Jer. xxxiii., 14). It may have been the earliest
written word of the kind, and certainly it had in-
creased effect through being ascribed to Jeremiah.
Did the prophetic writer really mean to attach his
hopes, for better or worse, to the Davidic family ?
or did both he and Ezekiel use " David " as a sym-
bolic term for an ideal ruler? The question has
already been raised in connection with an episode in
the life of Nehemiah. I am inclined to think that
the prophet would not have cared to answer it. In
fact, the event alone could prove who was the des-
tined Messiah, and when it appeared to be Jehovah's
will not to fulfil His " faithful oath unto David "
(Ps. cxxxii., 1 1) in the person of a chosen Israelite,
a deep silence must for a time have fallen on the
Messiah's prophets. The author of the songs on the
Servant of Jehovah refers to no Messianic king; in-
deed, he goes so far as to use expressions conven-
tionally appropriated to a Messianic conqueror in a
new, metaphorical sense. He says that the Servant
of Jehovah, the true or spiritual Israel, shall have a por-
tion allotted him with the great, and shall divide spoil
with the strong (Isa. liii., 12); and in the same spirit
the author of the first appendix to the Restoration-
Prophecy makes Jehovah say to the people of Zion :
Jewish Religious Ideals 97
" I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
The sure promise of loving-kindness to David " ;
and he adds that, as in the olden time at the call of
David, so now at the call of Israel the peoples shall
hasten to incorporate themselves in the Israelitish
empire (Isa. lv., 3-5). In other words, the idea of
personal royalty has for these religious thinkers lost
actuality ; each Israelite is a prince, and the collec-
tive church-nation is Jehovah's anointed.
The currents of thought, however, at this time
were changeable, and we must not be surprised to
find the flame of the Messianic hope burning up
again. Jeremiah was no doubt believed to have
sanctioned it, and the posthumous influence of this
prophet was great. It is to this period that we can-
not help assigning some of the Messianic passages
now extant in the Books of Isaiah and Micah. No
historian of the phases of early Jewish religion could
ignore these ; some of them at least are inshrined,
and deserve to be inshrined, in our memories and in
our hearts. We may not pin our hopes to them in
their literal meaning, but their vague magnificence
encourages a higher and a larger application.
The prophetic poems in Isaiah ix., 2-7, and xi.,
1-8, occur at the close of two collections of prophe-
cies of Isaiah in which reference is made to a sore
judgment upon Jerusalem.
98 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
To adapt these somewhat disheartening works to
post-exilic use an editor appended two new prophetic
passages breathing the spirit of the much-read con-
solatory prophecies of Jeremiah and the Second
Isaiah. It appears as if all the ancient prophecies
were felt to require such adaptation. The literary
value of the inserted matter varies considerably, but
the prophecy of the " King of the Four Names " * is
a work of no slight significance. Let me endeavour
to describe it.
It is a prophecy of comfort, addressed to those who
deeply need it. Prophets of the old style were rather
censors than comforters ; their spirit is expressed in
those words of Amos, " Can a trumpet be blown in a
city, and the people not be afraid ? " (Amos iii., 6).
But our prophet belongs to the company whose bene-
ficent program is so finely described in the words of
Isaiah Ixi., " He has sent me to bind up the broken-
hearted," and who prefer the flute to the trumpet.
Our prophet is as tender and sympathetic as the
angel of the Lord in those exquisite narratives which
open the third of our Gospels. He knows, of course,
that Israel has sinned, but he knows, too, that the task-
master has exceeded the limits of his commission.
So one night, when neither moon nor stars are shining,
he goes forth. He guesses rather than sees how early
* So Prof. G. A. Smith.
Jewish Religious Ideals 99
travellers are stumbling on the dark mountains, and
anxiously looks for the first streaks of dawn. Sud-
denly the scene is transformed. Far more quickly than
the music changes in the chorus of Handel's Messiah
the gloom disappears. The sun leaps up from the
horizon ; " the people that walked in darkness have
seen a great light." It is a spectacle such as may be
seen in Palestine any summer's morning. But this time
something warns the seer that there is a sacramental
meaning in it. It is a pledge of the long-looked-for
deliverance, an unspoken prophecy from the Eternal.
Henceforth he will wait in the patience of hope, for
the fulfilment " will surely come, it will not tarry."
He can almost welcome the deepening shades in the
last century of the Persian rule, for, as in the olden
time, it is at midnight that the divine Redeemer will
appear. The deliverance will be Jehovah's, but the
work which follows the deliverance will be the Mes-
siah's. The prophet, if I should not rather say the
poet, remembers the old prophecy of Immanuel,
whom he takes to be the Messiah,* and from a study
of the whole collection of prophecies, to which he is
providing an appendix, he concludes that, when the
oppressor (*'. <?., the Persian rule) is put down, the
Messiah will be of an age to take upon himself the
burden of government.
* On the probably true meaning of Immanuel, see Polychrome
Bible (English and Hebrew editions).
ioo Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
" For a child has been born to us, a son has been given
to us,
And dominion is laid upon his shoulder ;
His name is Counsellor of Wonders,
Strong divine being, father of glory,* prince of peace.
Dominion is increased, and to peace there is no end,
On the throne of David, and throughout his kingdom,
To establish and support it by justice and righteousness
From henceforth to eternity ; Jehovah's zeal will per-
form this." (Isa. ix., 6-7.)
Such is one of the current ideals of Israel's restor-
ation. Society is to culminate in a potent and in-
vincible but also peace-loving king, something like
the Nebuchadrezzar of the Babylonian inscriptions.
His empire, however, is to be much smaller than
Nebuchadrezzar's. At any rate our poet is only in-
terested in the restoration of a kingdom not less ex-
tensive than that ascribed to David. We find a
similar expectation in the post-exilic appendix to
Amos (ix., 11-12), but it is not expressed with the
fervour and rhythmic beauty which are so admirable
in the poem now before us.
And yet, if we can only resist the glamour with
which early associations have invested this poem, we
must confess that it cannot for a moment compare
with the description of the Servant of Jehovah in
Isaiah liii. ; its ethical are of more significance than
* /. e., glorious father of the family of Israel.
Jewish Religious Ideals 101
its religious contents. The author of the latter has,
in the most essential respects, passed beyond the ideal
of a personal Messiah, though he still feels a tender-
ness towards it, and perhaps hopes by adopting some
spiritualised features from it to win acceptance for his
own nobler vision. It was a step which the greatest
subsequent teachers could not retrace a step which,
quite independently, the early Buddhists took, when
they identified the lowly Buddha with the righteous
and mighty king who lived in the popular hopes a
step which the disciples of Jesus could not be pre-
vented from taking afresh, and which the course of
providential education has rendered harmless. For,
as Professor Rhys-Davids has well said, " the Chris-
tian Messiah is as much higher and more noble than
the previous conception of the first-century Jews, as
the Buddhist King of Righteousness is higher and
more noble than the previous Hindu conception of
the King of Kings." *
The second of the two Messianic insertions is that
which begins :
" And a rod shall come forth out of the stock of Jesse,
And a shoot shall grow out of its roots. " f
It is very possibly by the same writer as the first
portrait, which closes, as you remember, with a
* Hibbert Lectures for 1881, p. 136. f Isa. xi., I.
IO2 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
reference to the king's justice and righteousness. It
is not indeed in the same rhythm, nor is it so suffused
with emotion. But the new rhythm and the new
tone may have seemed to suit the new subject better.
And I think we may detect the same moderation in
the description of the Messiah which we found in
the first portrait a moderation which may fairly be
ascribed to the influence of Isaiah. For I confess I
cannot help believing that both these poetical de-
scriptions were written to supplement the second and
third prophetic collections of Isaiah respectively.*
And certainly one of the germs of both passages is
to be found in the saying of Isaiah, " And I will
bring back thy judges as at the first, and thy coun-
sellors as at the beginning ; thereafter thou wilt
be called, Citadel of righteousness, faithful city "
(Isa. i., 26).
The whole prophecy or poem is most interesting.
It is one of those dreams which feed the world with
moral energy, and it reflects honour on the circles
from which it proceeded. It is, however, a severe
satire on the kings of past history, which, perhaps,
accounts for the fact that the new king is called, not
a son of David, but a son of Jesse. The person of
* This may account for the singular fact that the writer of Isa. xi.,
1-8, uses neither the verb "to sprout" nor the noun "sprout."
These words would have suggested the influence of Jer. xxiii., 5.
Jewish Religious Ideals 103
the Messiah is indeed encompassed with mystery.
Somewhere doubtless he exists, all unconscious of
his future greatness, but not till the right moment
has come will the divine gifts qualifying him for his
office descend upon him. Then will that saying of
a late prophet be verified that the house of David
will be " as God " (Zech. xii., 8) ; the ideal king will
be a divinity not only in might but in wisdom. As
a judge, he will see the truth and the right at once,
and his judicial energy will enable him to extirpate
the first shoots of evil.* A limited ideal, some of
us may think. But be sure that the poet means
more than he says. For what does he tell us next ?
Like Virgil f in the Messianic Eclogue, he sings of
the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard
lying down with the kid. \ This is no mere allegory.
It means that peace will one day prevail throughout
the animal world. But can this be all ? To what
purpose would this feature in the description be un-
less it implied the extinction of the wolf-like element
in human nature? Certainly it does imply this;
and consequently this Messianic portrait also implies
* " With the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked " (Isa. xi., 4).
f In the cathedral of Zamora in Spain, Virgil is represented among
the Hebrew prophets.
\ In a great Indian epic it is said that "weasels sport with ser-
pents, and tigers with deer, through the power of saints of brilliant
austerity " (Mahabkdrala, quoted by Muir, Ancient Sanscrit Texts,
iv. 158).
iO4 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
an organised system of moral and religious instruc-
tion. For though the Messiah might put down the
wicked oppressors by violence, he could never induce
a tyrant to assume the meekness of a lamb. Jehovah
no doubt is the great teacher. But prophets, moral-
ists, and expounders of the Law are His deputies,
and our far-seeing prophetic writer presupposes their
activity as a condition of the ideal future.
But, before entering farther into this attractive
subject, we must examine some other expressions of
the hope of the Messiah. For these we naturally
turn to the Psalter, which, being a congregational
handbook, may be expected to refer to such a popu-
lar belief. What we find, however, is somewhat
surprising. The temple poets went so far as to in-
dite psalms which presuppose that a Davidic king,
strong, warlike, and righteous, is already seated
on the throne. Probably the psalmists before the
Exile had accustomed the Israelites to the use of
psalms in honour of the reigning king, and the newer
psalmists would not abandon the custom, which,
moreover, enabled them to give a striking expression
to the burning faith in God which possessed them.
Of a glorious future in store for the church-nation
they were as much convinced as of their own exist-
ence. Whenever they prayed for it, an inner voice
assured them that the answer was on its way ; all
Jewish Religious Ideals 105
that they had to do was to wait in hope. This
accounts, not only for the abrupt alternation of in-
tense supplication and exultant thanksgiving in many
psalms, but for the strange addresses to an as yet
non-existent king. I must confess that this impairs
the claim of the psalms to lyric naturalness. Any
interpreter approaching the so-called royal psalms
for the first time would suppose them to refer to a
contemporary historical king. Appearances are very
strongly in favour of this view, which at once makes
the psalms fresh and interesting even to a non-
religious reader, and yet appearances are here for
the most part illusory. Truth is truth, and even
when it makes against some one of our most cherished
desires such, for instance, as the development of a
stronger literary interest in the Psalter, we must
accept it with cordiality.
I venture, therefore, to state my opinion that it is
only in the latter part of the Psalter that we can
safely hold that a historical sovereign is spoken of,
and that in the two psalms which have to be thus ex-
plained (viz., ci. and ex.) loyal followers have so
idealised their prince that a Messianic reference
must very soon have been thought of. The probable
omission of the latter part of Psalm ex. may have
arisen from a desire to facilitate such a reference. I
would gladly pause for a few minutes on each of
io6 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
these psalms. For, however short, they are exceed-
ingly interesting when read in the light of early
Maccabaean times, and tell us things which we should
not have known, or at least should not have realised,
from the pages of history. But their religious con-
tents are meagre. The Second Psalm throws more
light on the Messianic belief ; the Fifteenth and
Twenty-fourth shed more on the best Jewish
morality.
We pass on to the unexpected phenomena which
await us. Two of the strangest Messianic psalms
are the Twentieth and the Twenty-first.* Both re-
late to the Messianic king, who is supposed to be on
the throne. In the former he is represented as just
starting to fight with the enemies of Israel. It is
perhaps his first campaign, for in Psalm xxi. the
church-nation, in praising God for the king's victory,
represents the total destruction of the enemies as
still future. But even stranger is the Forty-fifth.
The Messiah (who is modelled on the idealised Solo-
mon) has come to the throne. To complete his
happiness and to continue his line he is about to
contract a marriage with a "king's daughter," or
rather "royal maiden" (v. 13). The psalm is an
* Both these psalms have numerous points of contact with un-
deniable post-exilic psalms (see Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter).
To interpret them with reference to a pre-exilic king is therefore not
advisable.
Jewish Religious Ideals 107
encomium on the royal pair, who are supposed tc
have just met. The imaginative licence of the poet
is great. But he does not lose his hold on the main
object of the Messiah's existence, which is not mere
private happiness, but the conferring of benefits on
the church-nation.
" Gird thy sword on thy thigh, O hero,
Put on thy glory and thy state.
He leads thee, and makes thy course to prosper,
In behalf of truth, righteousness, and humility ;
Terribly will his right hand conduct thee,
While peoples fall prostrate beneath thee."*
(Ps. xlv., 3, 4.)
From a moral point of view this deserves special
attention. Here is a victorious king whose achieve-
ments are not for himself, but, like those of Arthur
in the great moralised legend of Tennyson, " in
behalf of truth, righteousness, and humility," just
those qualities, be it remarked, which pious Jews
sometimes feared were perishing out of the earth.
I think I ought to add that an approach to this con-
ception is made by Nabopolassar, Nebuchadrezzar,
and Neriglissar, kings of the later Babylonian Em-
pire, each of whom gives himself the novel epithet
of " humble." f
* The translation here, as elsewhere, is taken from the forthcom-
ing second edition of a work on the Psalms by the present writer.
f Schrader's series of translations from cuneiform texts, Hi., 2,
PP- 3, 7, 77-
io8 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Another Messianic psalm, the Seventy-second,
which is in fact the supplement of the Forty-fifth,
gives just the same character to the ideal king, only
it does not draw out the striking contrast between
the martial prowess and the inward humility of the
king a contrast which, as you will remember, a
famous Messianic prophecy in the Book of Zecha-
riah (ix., 9) puts very forcibly. What the Seventy-
second Psalm says (vv. 13, 14) is this:
" He feels for the wretched and needy,
The souls of the needy he delivers ;
From violence he redeems their souls,
Yea, costly is their blood in his sight " ;
i. e., not as a matter of mere duty, but from sympa-
thy, he places his strong arm at the service of those
who are in need. Instead of despising the poor, he
regards their blood as something too precious to be
squandered.
I must not linger on this interesting poem. But I
may point out the strangeness of the opening coup-
let, where the Messiah is represented as not only a
king but a " king's son." This agrees with a passage
in Psalm xlv. in which the " fathers," i. e., the royal
fathers, of the Messiah are spoken of. The psalmists
leap over the interval between the last king of Judah
and the accession of the Messiah, and represent the
latter as the son of all the kings who have gone before.
Jewish Religious Ideals 109
The truth is that the Messiah is but a poetic em-
bodiment of the Davidic royalty, and the Davidic
royalty, in the absence of any real political interest,
is but a representative of the Jewish people.* In
the ideal democracy, each citizen is a king; in the
idealised Jewish state, each true servant of Jehovah
is as holy as the Messiah. This accounts for the
striking fact that in the Eighty-ninth Psalm the
people of Israel actually assumes the title of Jeho-
vah's anointed.f Let me now direct your attention
to this psalm, or at least to verses 19-51, which seem
originally to have had a separate existence. This
passage begins with a poetic version of a prophecy
which attracted much attention in the Persian pe-
riod the " prophecy of Nathan " in 2 Samuel vii. :
" My covenant I will not profane,
Nor alter that which has passed My lips ;
Once for all have I sworn by My holiness,
I will never be faithless to David.
" His offspring shall endure for ever,
And his throne as the sun before Me ;
* Here we are constrained to differ from R. H. Hutton, where he
says so finely (Essays, i., 274) that the Jewish prophets began to learn
that "there must be, between the Father and human nature, some
being lowly as the latter, perfect as the former, whose kingliness
would not consist in mere righteous power, but in righteous humility."
Righteous humility and nearness to God are as characteristic of the
people as of its ideal ruler and representative.
f Cf. the same phenomenon in Ps. xxviii., 7, Ixxxiv., 10 ; Hab. iii.,
no Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
It shall be established for ever, as the moon,
(Yea,) be steadfast as the meeting-place in the sky."
The " meeting-place in the sky " (if the words are
rightly so read) is the " mountain of assembly,"
where, according to an old myth, the " sons of God "
(or supernatural beings) spoken of in Job met to-
gether ; whose top reached to the sky, and whose
foundation was in the ocean which encompasses the
earth. What better image of security could there
be?* But the psalmist, after quoting the prophecy,
falls into deep depression. He complains that the
prophetic promise is in violent contrast to facts. The
royalty of David's house is at an end, and the people
of Israel, here identified with the Messiah, is treated
with worse thsn contempt by its neighbours.
The Eighteenth Psalm is not less paradoxical. I
am afraid that it has sometimes been admired on
wrong grounds. It will not do to compare it to the
splendid triumphal ode addressed to Thutmes III.,
King of Egypt, the language of which is as vivid and
spontaneous as that of the Eighteenth Psalm is pale
and artificial. To appreciate the latter we must read
it as the expression of that " other-worldly " temper
which no people has ever possessed as fully as the
Jewish. From the very first the psalmist transports
* Precisely such an image is used by Ezekiel (xxviii., 13, 14) to ex-
press the self-confidence of the king of Tyre.
Jewish Religious Ideals in
us to the Messianic age. The judgment on the na-
tions has taken place * ; Israel, with a Davidic king
at its head, has been raised to the height of pros-
perity. It is this Davidic king who speaks in the
psalm. He has no private ambitions, and can there-
fore interpret the thoughts of the community; in-
deed, the psalmist sometimes forgets the king, and
speaks for the personified people.f All this is
psychologically most strange. If it were not sus-
ceptible of the strictest proof, we should never have
believed it possible.
A similar explanation must be given of the Second
Psalm. Like the Eighteenth it is an attempt at
a vivid realisation of the more strictly Messianic
prophecies. In the Eighteenth Psalm, the Messianic
king speaks as if he were on the throne, and, under
Jehovah, controlled the destinies of the nations. In
the Second, he speaks as if the confederate kings
were planning a revolt from Jehovah and His
anointed. There is less human nature in the Mes-
siah who speaks here than in the portrait of him in
the twin psalm. There, the work given him to do
made a strong demand on his energy ; he needed (as
all the great religious Oriental conquerors felt that
*Ps. xviii., 4-19; cf. xcvii., 1-6.
f Hence in Ps. cxliv., i-n, a highly imitative work, the words of
Ps. xviii. are plainly adopted by the personified community, which
frankly distinguishes itself from David.
H2 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
they needed) a power which came from above to make
the effort. Here, he has but to lift his sceptre of iron
to shiver the nations like potters' ware. Morally the
psalmist stands higher than his hero. He does not
wish evil to the kings of the earth. The Messianic
king cannot take steps against them till Jehovah's
anger is kindled. Till then there is time for the
kings to repent, and to renew their homage.
" Now therefore, ye kings, show your wisdom ;
Take warning, ye judges of the earth.
Serve Jehovah with fear,
And do homage with trembling,
* Lest He be angry, and your course end in ruin.
For soon His anger kindles ;
Happy all those that take refuge in Him."
(Ps. ii., 10-12.)
One reflection, I am afraid, will be forced upon
you that, if it is a benefit to the nations to be
brought under the yoke of the Messiah, the benefit
is one which requires of them the most painful sacri-
fices. The sternness of the foreign policy ascribed
to the Messiah cannot, as we should say, be morally
justified except on the theory that the nations are
*Here the ordinary versions insert " Kiss the Son," which, how-
ever, is due to a misunderstanding. "Kiss," /'. e., "do homage,"
should certainly be substituted for "Rejoice" (see the common
version) in the preceding line ; " the Son " is a supposed translation
of what is really a fragment of the word rendered " with trembling."
(See the writer's Book of Psalms, 2d ed.)
Jewish Religious Ideals 113
thoroughly bad, and that their continued independ-
ence endangers the highest human ideals. This was,
in fact, the belief of pious Jews whenever there
was much friction between them and their rulers,
and it expressed itself more particularly in the lyrics
which they chanted in the temple. We shall see,
however, that the psalmists do not always speak of
the nations outside in the same hard tone. Nor do
the prophetic writers. But we must, I think, earn the
right to luxuriate in the gentler passages by first realis-
ing, under the guidance of the psalmists, the terrible
state of tension in which the Jews too often lived.
I am aware that an eminent Jewish writer (Isidore
Loeb) has denied the objective accuracy of the
psalmists ; he regards the Psalter as merely a picture
of peculiar and abnormal states of mind. According
to him, the psalmists are idealistic poets, who have
discovered the art of turning their misery to the
best account, and who find the taste of sorrow not
wholly bitter. They are the dupes and sports of
their imagination ; they live in dreams, and have no
sentiment of reality. There is some truth in this,
but not very much. Like the prophets, the psalm-
ists have a tendency to exaggeration. Their feel-
ings are so intense that they cannot help laying on
the colours too thickly. They love the ideals com-
mitted to them so well that they cannot be quite
s
H4 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
fair to those who would trample those ideals in the
dust. And there is certainly a sweetness in their
sufferings which an outsider cannot understand ;
for, the more miserable they are, the more they
realise that one stronger than the strong cares for
them. Nor are they altogether without some faint
idea of the consolations of art, though the art may
be of a kind which baffles our comprehension I
mean the music and singing of the temple. Cer-
tainly their one great pleasure is singing the praises
of Jehovah. The mere recollection of this is a com-
fort to them in exile. One of the psalmists, when
far from Zion, finely says :
" This do I call to mind, pouring out the while my lan-
guid soul,
How I moved in converse with the noble to the house
of God,
Amid the sound of praiseful song, the music of those
who kept the feast." (Ps. xlii., 4.)
It may further be admitted that the pious were to
some extent the authors of their own misery. They
had no political insight, and were incapable of prac-
tical compromise ; they had also an absolute distaste
for commerce, and were strangers to the arts of the
market-place. The result was that both politically
and commercially they were pushed to the wall, not
only by foreigners but by men of their own race.
Jewish Religious Ideals 115
It was this indeed which made their feelings so bit-
ter that men who called themselves Jews should
associate with the heathen and adopt their worldly
principles that all the zeal and energy of Nehemiah
and Ezra should have failed to realise the noble
ideal of the church-nation. That the non-Jewish
and half-Jewish populations of Palestine should
show irritation at the religious assumptions of the
Jews, was only to be expected ; that the Persian
rulers should grow tired of the friendly indulgence
of Cyrus and Darius was at any rate not quite unin-
telligible ; but that members of the family of Israel
should despise the covenant of their God, was more
than pious Jews could bear. Against all these classes
lukewarm or faithless Jews, who cared only for
their own profit, and scrupled not to cheat and impov-
erish their brethren, irritated and malicious neigh-
bours, heartless and tyrannical rulers, the psalmists
hurled the most violent epithets, " wicked," " im-
pious," "doers of evil," "men of blood," "speakers
of lies," " proud," " braggarts," " robbers," " scorn-
ers," "enemies to Jehovah," "rebels," "causeless
enemies," " those that return evil for good." From
a religious and moral point of view they could
see no difference between them. Neither faithless
Jew nor tyrannical heathen ruler believes in the di-
vine government of the world. He forgets God,
n6 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
does not invoke Him, does not fear Him (Ps. ix., 18 ;
xiv., 4; xxxvi., 2; 1., 22); he thinks, though he does
not say, " There is no God " (Ps. xiv., I ; cf. x., 4,
xxxvi., i). He can use the most cutting words to
those who cannot venture to retaliate, for " who
hears? " (Ps. lix., 7). He can commit the greatest
outrages, for "Jehovah does not see" (Ps. x., II,
xciv., 7). He may indeed (if nominally a Jew) use
the conventional religious forms, " bowing his head
like a bulrush " (Isa. Iviii., 5) at the public litanies.
But he does so in order to circumvent God so in-
credibly mean, as the psalmist thinks, is his concep-
tion of God. He has, in fact, adapted his religious
views to his practical requirements ; he thinks that
God is even such an one as himself (Ps. 1., 21); he
has a delusive oracle in his heart which tells him
just what he wishes to hear. This false god is the
sin within him, which has taken the place of that
divine instructor who dwells in each member of the
faithful community. Listen to the psalmist:
" [ i hat God is not, is] the divine oracle of Sin
To the wicked man within his heart ;
No dread of God is before his eyes.
For he flatters Jehovah in subtlety
Jehovah will not discover the wickedness of his tongue.
The words of his mouth are mischief and guile ;
He has left off acting wisely and well."
(Ps. xxxvi., 1-3.)
Jewish Religious Ideals 117
Strangely enough, a similar portrait is given of the
righteous Job by the aged and narrow-minded
Eliphaz :
" Yea, thou destroyest religion,
And dost dismiss devout meditation.
For thine iniquity teaches thy mouth,
And thou choosest the tongue of the subtle." *
(Job xv., 4, 5.)
The only difference is that Job, according to Eli-
phaz, superadds to his wicked deeds a theoretical
justification of his impiety, whereas the wicked men
of the Psalms are not represented as at all intellec-
tual. It is only in the First Psalm the Psalm of
the Two Ways that we hear of a class of men
called " scoffers," and this shows us that we must
not look to the Psalms for a complete picture of
Jewish society.
But what are the outrages of which the party of
the wicked men has been guilty ? They consist
partly in the use of offensive expressions towards
Israel and Israel's God, alternating with hypocritical
professions of friendship, partly in slanderous mis-
representations of the righteous, addressed perhaps
to the judge or to the Persian or Greek governor,
partly in gross unfairness to the poor righteous
in business transactions, partly in acts of physical
* Cf. Lecture IV.
n8 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
violence. I will quote some passages from the
Psalms which bear out this statement.
First, as to the speeches of the wicked men. As
evidence I will quote two very sad passages. The
tone is that of many a persecuted Jew in the long
middle age :
" Pity us, Jehovah, oh, pity us !
For too long have we been sated with contempt ;
Yea, too long has our soul been sated
With the mockery of the careless,
The contempt of the proud."
(Ps. cxxiii., 3, 4.)
And now for the companion passage :
" Insult has broken my heart ;
Very grievous is the wound of my soul ;
I looked for a sympathiser, but there was none,
And for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me gall as my food,
And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
(Ps. Ixix., 20, 21.)
By the " gall " and the " vinegar " the poet means
bitter, scornful words. The speaker is faithful Israel,
who is insulted because he is the " Servant of Jeho-
vah." Hence in the same psalm we read : " The
insults of those who insulted thee fell upon me."
It appears from the context that the mockery of
the enemies was called forth partly by the mis-
erable condition of the faithful community, which
Jewish Religious Ideals 119
seemed at its last gasp, chiefly by the forms and
ceremonies of the Jewish religion. It is true the
only form expressly mentioned is fasting.* This
appears to be singled out here because it struck the
observation of a bystander more than church lita-
nies ; it was in fact the climax of the attempts of the
faithful to work upon their God. Elsewhere, how-
ever, we learn that the prayers of believers did not
escape ridicule. So futile did these prayers appear,
that the enemies could plausibly ask, " Where is thy
God?" (Ps. xlii., 3, 4), and the wicked man could
even venture to " curse at the attainment of his
desire," and the " robber " to " contemn Jehovah "
(Ps. x., 3). The favourite phrases of believers seem
also to have been ridiculed ; at least there is one
most touching passage which gives an imaginary
speech of the persecutors, and seems to imply this.
One word or two in my reading of it is open to dis-
pute, viz., in the third line, where I find a reference
to the favourite title of God in the Second Isaiah's
Prophecy of Restoration. But the received text
cannot, in my opinion, be defended.
" All that see me laugh me to scorn ;
They open wide the lips ; they shake the head.
* So far as we can see, the forms most valued by the pious Jews of
this period were the singing of praise, the recital of prayers, and fast-
ing. Sabbath and Circumcision are nowhere mentioned in the Psalms.
I2O Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
(Forsooth,) his redeemer is Jehovah ; (then) let Jeho-
vah rescue him !
Let Jehovah deliver him, seeing He has such delight in
him ! "
(Ps. xxii., 7, 8.)
Sometimes, however, the persecuted righteous stand
at bay, and meet their enemies with the poor man's
weapon of prayer, an effectual, fervent prayer, which
is confident of an answer.
" Stilled be those lying lips
Which speak against the righteous
Proud words in haughtiness and scorn."
(Ps. xxxi., 18.)
The scorn of the wicked rich for the righteous
poor shows itself in one rather singular way. It
seems as if the wicked preferred to use mean and
disgraceful methods whenever they could. They
sought to lull the righteous into a false security by
professing to be their friends. Treachery plays a
large part in the story of the Maccabees, and there is
only too much reason to believe that the dread of
it always lay in the background of the Jewish mind.
One psalmist says :
" There is nothing trustworthy in their speech,
Their inward aim is ruin ;
An open grave is their throat,
Though flattery glides from their tongue."
(Ps. v., 9.)
Jewish Religious Ideals 121
Another characterises the wicked man thus :
" His face is smoother than butter,
But war is in his heart ;
His words are softer than oil,
And yet are they javelins."
(Ps. lv., 21.)
Next, as to the slander which forms another article
in the indictment of the wicked. These are pious
Israel's ejaculations :
" Give me not over to the greed of my foes !
For against me false witnesses have risen up,
And they puff out (words of) injustice."
(Ps. xxvii., 12.)
And again :
"Witnesses who serve injustice arise,
And with tricks they despoil me."
(Ps. xxxv., ii.)
Here we have a reference to a common practice of
avaricious and powerful men to accuse innocent
persons of some crime, such as theft, with the view
of obtaining double restitution. The judges would
of course share the plunder (cf. Mic. Hi., 3). Or
the accusation might be that of treason. How plaus-
ible such a charge might be in the dark years at the
close of the Persian rule, and even at a later time,
need not be said. Well might the church-nation
pray,
122 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
" Deliver my soul, Jehovah, from the lying lip, from
the deceitful tongue " (Ps. cxx., 2),
and then, in the words of the fine psalm at the end
of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, give thanks to her
Lord and King for deliverance " from the lips that
forge lies," because " by an accusation to the king
from an unrighteous tongue her soul had drawn nigh
unto death " (Ecclus. li., 2-6).
Under these circumstances normal business rela-
tions between the two parties were impossible. Even
if the psalmists exaggerate when they deny their
opponents the least vestige of honesty (Ps. xii., i),
yet this very exaggeration bears witness to a social
injustice which is inconsistent with commerce.* The
petty details of commercial unfairness are of course
not given. But we are told that " extortion and de-
ceit depart not from the market-place " (Ps. lv., 1 1).
No doubt this extortion was largely connected with
money-lending. To lend money gratuitously to
faithful Jews was meritorious (Ps. xxxvii., 26 ; cxii.,
5), while to require usury was as bad as taking a
bribe against the innocent (Ps. xv., 5).
That acts of personal violence were also committed
by the Jewish oppressors, is not quite so easy to
prove.
* Even in Ben Sira's time the relation of a rich man to a poor man
was like that of a wolf to a lamb (Ecclus. ziii., 17-19).
Jewish Religious Ideals 123
The wicked of Jewish and those of heathen origin
are not always easy to distinguish. Probably native
officials were employed under the foreign governors,
who misused their power, and became even more
hated than the foreigners. In Proverbs xxviii., 3 (cf.
v., 15) we read that " a wicked grandee [or tyrant]
who oppresses the mean folk is like a sweeping rain
which leaves no food," and in Psalm Hi., I, a psalm-
ist thus apostrophises an unnamed offender :
" Why gloriest thou in mischief, thou grandee !
[And showest insolence] to the pious unceasingly?"
In both cases the most natural interpretation is
that a native tyrant is meant. Still more certain is
the reference in the next passage that I shall quote.
It shows that there were immoral men, Jews in name
but not in soul, who did not scruple to shed blood
when their wishes could only so be gratified. The
more pious section of the Jewish people prays to
God thus:
" Take not away my soul with sinners,
Nor my life with men of blood,
On whose hands are (the marks of) crimes,
And their right hands are full of bribes."
(Ps. xxvi., 9, 10.)
These men, as it appears, belonged to an association.
They had common principles and interests, and there-
124 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
fore formed a party. So that, when pious Israel per-
sonified says, in the same psalm (ver. 5),
" I hate the congregation of evil doers,
And will not sit in the conclave of the wicked,"
he means that he recognises the utter inconsistency
of his own principles with those of the opposite party.
He hates them, he says elsewhere (Ps. cxxxix., 21),
because they hate and oppose Jehovah, and it is the
hardest problem that he knows to reconcile their con-
tinued existence with the divine justice.
You will see that I am of opinion that the Psalter
is a historical document of a high order that I am
in no doubt either as to its date, or as to the credi-
bility of its expressed or implied statements, with
the qualifications which I have mentioned. I hold
the post-exilic date of every part of the Psalms to
have been abundantly proved, and the credibility of
their statements seems to me to be confirmed by the
historical and prophetical records already referred to.
That there was a strong tension of feeling among
pious Jews is plain, and this quite accounts for the
vehement language of the psalmists, who were truth-
ful men, even if naturally prone, like the prophets
before them, to some exaggeration.
It would, however, be unsafe to assume that the
division of the Jews into the wicked rich and the
righteous poor, which pervades so much of the later
Jewish Religious Ideals 125
literature, is an exhaustive classification. The right-
eous poor are collectively the self-sacrificing Servant
of Jehovah described in Isaiah liii. They are the
inner circle, the few really fine grapes on the cluster.
Side by side with them observers of the law like
themselves, only not so strict ; frequenters of the
temple, only not so constant are the great majority
of those who call upon the name of Jehovah. They
are not perfect in humility or in obedience, and are
liable to be carried away by the evil example of the
wicked. They need the guidance and instruction of
those who are firmer in faith, and it is to them that
the expounders of the law, the writers of prophecies,
and those wise moral teachers, some of whom have
composed psalms and others pointed sayings and
eloquent discourses, devote their ceaseless energies.
It is for their use that the noble prayer was written :
" Search me out, O God, and know my heart,
Try me, and know my thoughts,
And see if there be any practice of covetousness in me,
And lead me in the ancient road " * ;
and it was of the teachers of righteousness (whom I
shall next describe) that the author of Daniel prophe-
sied that " the teachers should shine like the splen-
dour of the firmament, and they that turn the many to
righteousness like the stars for ever and ever" (Dan.
xii., 3).
* Ps. cxxxix. , 24 ; the speaker in vv. 19-24 is personified Israel.
LECTURE IV.
Jewish Wisdom ; its Meaning, Object, and
Varieties.
IN the remaining portion of this historical sketch
I shall endeavour to complete the proof of the
rich variety of life in early Judaism. And I shall
first of all ask you to study with me the great edu-
cational movement of the period, out of which pro-
ceeded the singular phenomenon called Jewish
Wisdom. Its origin is a matter of conjecture.
Most probably, however, it originated in the con-
sciousness that, if not only individuals but whole
classes of society were to become righteous (and this
was known to be the condition of the divine favour),
there was a need of some new and attractive pre-
sentation of moral and religious truth. The ideal of
many of the noblest minds was that expressed in
the opening of the First Psalm :
" Happy is the man who delights in the fear * of Jehovah,
And meditates on His law day and night " (Ps. i., 2).
* Adopting a probable correction.
126
Jewish Wisdom 127
But it must soon have become evident that there
was a large number to whom this description would
never apply, because of the many difficulties in the
volume of Scripture, at which they were sure to
stumble.* Hence the idea appears to have arisen,
that if that volume were studied by wise men who
were in touch with the people, it might be possible
to make an abstract of such religious truths as even
men of the world (if the phrase may be used) could
recognise and live by. If this view be sound, we may
naturally expect that many patriotic teachers would
be deep students of Scripture and earnest observers
of the established forms. They would, in short, be
fervently religious men, though they might not
always think it expedient to display their fervour
before their disciples. There would, however, also
be a minority who would not be satisfied with ele-
mentary instruction, but would seek to carry on the
intellectual movement of the past. Some of them
would exhibit in their teaching a perfect fusion of
morality and religion ; they would produce works to
which after-ages would look up as, not, indeed, in the
received sense, revelation, but as not less precious,
not less truly divine, than the Law or the prophecies.
And there would be others of a sceptical turn, whose
* " He that devotes himself to the Law is filled therewith, but
the profane person stumbles thereat" (Ecclus. xxxii., 15).
128 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
writings would only escape oblivion by some happy
chance.
Thus we may expect to find, and we actually do
find, three varieties of didactic and reflective ethical
literature two representing a more or less complete
fusion of the ethical and the orthodox religious spirit,
and one expressing a distinctly heterodox or scepti-
cal tendency. We find, too, that this reflective
literature claimed a high antiquity. Just as sacred
lyric poetry attached itself to the glorious name of
David, so the new moral literature claimed as its
originator the idealised Solomon.* A post-exilic
writer has been at the pains to show in what various
forms King Solomon's wisdom expressed itself. Solo-
mon was of course a just and skilful ruler that more
than one older writer had brought out very clearly.
But he was also a much wider-minded man than most
rulers. Listen to the beautiful little narrative in
which this idea is conveyed :
" And God gave Solomon wisdom and insight and a
resourceful mind.f Solomon's wisdom was greater than
that of all the men of the east and than all the wisdom of
Egypt. He was wiser than all men, wiser than Ethan
the Ezrahite, and Heman and Calcol and Darda, the
sons of Mahol ; and his fame reached all the nations
* There may of course have been a pre-exilic Wisdom-Literature,
but how (if such existed) it stood related to the literature of the post-
exilic Jewish sages, it is impossible to say.
f A mind "seething" with new ideas (corrected text).
Jewish Wisdom 129
round about. And he spoke three thousand proverbs,
and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spoke
of trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop which
springs out of the wall ; he spoke also of beasts and birds
and reptiles and fishes. And men came from all countries
to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the
earth who had heard of his wisdom " (i Kings iv., 29-34).
No explanation of this is as reasonable as that
which finds in it a reference to our Book of Proverbs,*
to our Song of Songs, and to our Book of Job. It is
true that we have only one " song," the title of which
claims Solomonic authorship, but this title may with-
out violence be so rendered as to make Solomon the
author of an indefinite number of songs. About
twenty plants and thirteen animals are mentioned in
that fascinating poem, the Canticles, and it may
easily have been supposed that in Solomon's other
songs many more plants and animals were referred to.
Beasts and birds are also described with great fulness
in the Book of Job, and the writer of the eulogium
on Solomon probably means to imply that Solomon
outdid the author of even that poetic masterpiece.
But was there no conception of wisdom, no attempt
at the moral instruction of the young, in pre-exilic
times? Certainly. Some time in the seventh cen-
* See Ecclus. xlvii., 17, where the Hebrew text shows that the
writer is thinking of Prov. i., 6. He evidently supposes Solomon's
proverbs to be exactly analogous to those in our Book of Proverbs.
9
130 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
tury an insertion was made in Genesis xviii., to show
that the blessings promised to Abraham were condi-
tional on his instilling right religion and morality in-
to his children and household (vv. 17-19). And
whatever be the exact date of the exhortations in
Deuteronomy (e.g., iv., 10; vi., 7, 20 ff. ; xi., 19) to
instruct children in the sacred history and law, we
may presume that they are in the spirit of the fram-
ers of the earlier Deuteronomic law-book. This
new didactic movement was an indirect result of the
preaching of Isaiah, who succeeded in bringing home
to the best minds of the next age the fact of the gen-
eral moral deficiency. It was Isaiah too who, first
among the canonical writers, expressed the intuition
of Jehovah's wisdom (Isa. xxxi., 2). It is true that
some belief in the divine wisdom may have existed
before his time through Babylonian influence on the
Canaanites.* Still it is most improbable that this be-
lief was as pure and, religiously, as vital as the intui-
tion of Isaiah. With what loving reverence does this
prophet speak of the " plan " of the world's great
Governor, and how stern is his contempt for the
futile schemes of those who do not "ask at Jehovah's
mouth " (Isa. xxx., 2) ! For his own part he does
not care to be called a " wise man." Wisdom in a
religious sense is still too much identified with skill
* The god Ea was called " lord of wisdom and understanding."
Jewish Wisdom 131
in the performance of traditional rites or in the reci-
tation of magic formulae. It is better to be Jehovah's
mouthpiece, and to ascribe to Him all the honour of
that marvellous insight which has made Isaiah the
wisest of the Israelites of his time.
Let us now briefly sketch the outlines of the early
popular idea of wisdom. Great rulers, like David
and Solomon, were said to have " the wisdom of
God," or of "God's angel" (2 Sam. xiv., 17, 20;
I Kings iii., 28), because they could give rapid and
just judicial decisions. Politicians, too, could be
likened to incarnate divine oracles ; Ahithophel is an
instance of this (2 Sam. xvi., 23). Soothsayers,
priests, and prophets were revered as wise, because
they claimed to tell men the will of God, though
Jeremiah calls the pen of the scribes who wrote
down the supposed wisdom of the law-books a " lying
pen " (Jer. viii., 8), because their work threatened to
check his own more spiritual preaching. Poets,
too, to the Israelites as well as to the Arabs, must
have appeared to have more than earthly wisdom ;
they partook of the inspiration of the prophet.*
And framers of apologues or parables like those of
Jotham and the " wise woman " f of Tekoa were
* Note that Balaam the seer is said to "take up a parable," or
rather to " utter a poem " (mashal) in Num. xxiii. , xxiv.
f Judg. ix., 8-15 ; 2 Sam. xiv., 2. The phrase " wise woman " is
used in a different sense in Jer. ix., 17.
132 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
doubtless looked up to as in their degree divinely
gifted ; indeed, even the traditional skill of crafts-
men was devoutly traced to a divine gift, as the
Hebrew legends of the origin of culture prove. On
the other hand, it ought to be mentioned that there
was also a current story in which even the know-
ledge of good and evil was represented as an illegiti-
mate acquisition. It was a first attempt to account
for the mingled grandeur and poverty of human life.
Man was like the divine beings in knowledge, but
sadly unlike them in his liability to sickness and
death. It was reserved for a later age to arrive at
the conviction that true wisdom was a tree of life.
Whether any fruitful contact between the incipient
wisdom of the Israelites and that of their neighbours
took place in pre-exilic times, we know not. Jere-
miah speaks of the wisdom of Teman (Jer. xlix.,
7), and it is just conceivable that the story of Job,
partly moralised, may have come from Edom shortly
before the Exile. At any rate, such contact existed
(as we shall see) in post-exilic times. The story of
Solomon's wisdom itself suggests this. No stress
need be laid on the particular peoples mentioned by
the narrator. The point to dwell upon is that the
reputed wisdom of Solomon was cosmopolitan.
There were wise men among other nations, just
as there were true though unconscious worshippers
Jewish Wisdom 133
of Jehovah (Mai. i., 11). Solomon was superior to
them, because, as the Jews believed, he knew the
one true God better than they did, and they came
to him for stimulus and instruction. From the Pro-
logue to Proverbs we see that this entirely corre-
sponds to the temper of some of the Jewish sages-
One of these makes personified Wisdom exclaim
(Prov. viii., 4) :
" Unto you, O men, I call,
And my appeal is to the human race " ;
and later on, in the grandest of her soliloquies, she
declares that of all God's created works she delighted
most in the race of man (Prov. viii., 31).
It is true, no attempt is made in the two earlier
Books of Wisdom to make practical use of the prin-
ciple involved in these passages. But the universal
relation of Wisdom is asserted, and it only required
time for the Jewish sages to awaken to the conscious-
ness of the necessary practical inferences. The author
of the so-called Wisdom of Solomon is the bravest
and boldest of them all, for he is willing to take as
well as give instruction, and, like Philo, fervently be-
lieves in the reality of ethnic inspiration. But at
present we must be satisfied with the larger outlook
already obtained by post-exilic sages. This was not
lost even by the author of Ecclesiasticus, though he
134 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
lays more stress on forms of religion than did the
earlier wise men. To complete his education, he
says, the wise man must "travel through the land of
strange nations," must " try good things and evil
among men," and " if the great Lord will," and he
is "filled with the spirit of understanding," the
" nations " in general, as well as the congregation,
will "declare his praise" (Ecclus. xxxix., 4, 10).
For not with Jews, as Jews, but with men did Wis-
dom "lay an eternal foundation, and with their
offspring shall she be had in trust" (Ecclus. i., 15).
In fact, all the wise men have grasped the grand idea
of a human family. It may also be found in the
Psalter. But that important Book has in this re-
spect one very sad limitation. The sufferings of the
Jews, and especially of the Mite among them, were
so great towards the close of the Persian empire that,
by a pathetic fallacy, it seemed as if all mankind ex-
cept the Jews were morally worthless. Those psalms
into which a sense of something like the brotherhood
of nations begins to penetrate are for various reasons
later than 332 B.C. I call this limitation of view a
sad one. It is unfortunate that the great picture of
the missionary Servant of Jehovah should have had,
comparatively speaking, so little effect. Still a per-
fectly adequate cause has been adduced for this un-
progressiveness : psychological miracles are not to be
Jewish Wisdom 135
expected. Not till the coming of the great Mace-
donian reconciler of East and West could there be a
presentiment of the truth of the divine education,
not only of Israel, but of the human race.
One may be thankful that the Psalter does not
entirely belong to the Persian period. Among the
debts which we owe to the later psalmists, do not let
us overlook these striking words :
" He that disciplines the nations, cannot He punish
He that teaches mankind knowledge ? " (Ps. xciv., 10.)
They imply just that notion which we find in the
story of Solomon's wisdom, viz., that wisdom, di-
vinely given wisdom, is accessible to all men ; but
they add that the object of the divine instructor is
not merely theoretical but practical. A moralist of
a later date puts this in a more attractive form :
" The mercy of a man is upon his neighbour,
But the mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh ;
Reproving, disciplining, and teaching,
And bringing back, as a shepherd does his flock."
(Ecclus. xviii., 13.)
A fine saying, is it not? and it suggests one of the
chief requisites of an educator, a friendly feeling
towards his pupils. God's patient, considerate in-
struction is the result of His mercy or loving-kind-
ness, and He desires a similar loving-kindness among
136 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
fellow-citizens, that they may be educationally useful
to each other. In default of this loving-kindness, a
man deserves no better title than " fool," for
" To commit a crime is sport to a fool."
(Prov. x., 23.)
The Jewish teachers were in general very hopeless
of making anything of such persons. Once we find
the noble sentiment that
" Even a senseless man may be taught,
And a wild ass's colt may be caught."*
(Job. xi., 12.)
But more often we find nothing but prophecies of
evil for the " fool," and a recommendation not to
spare stripes for his back. That a " fool " was ever
reformed by this treatment, we do not hear. A pro-
verb assures us that
" Even if thou pound a fool in the midst of his fellows, f
Thou wilt not remove his foolishness from him "
(Prov. xxvii., 22) ;
and another that
" A rebuke penetrates into one that has understanding ;
(But) a fool, when he is smitten, makes light of it."
(Prov. xvii., 10.)
* The rhyme corresponds to the assonance in the original, according
to a very possible correction of the corrupt Hebrew text (" The
Book of Job," Expositor, June, 1897).
f Compare the Septuagint.
Jewish Wisdom 137
With this exception, however, the wise men them-
selves admit no limit to their influence. It is useless
to assert a priori that wise maxims can have done
little to keep the Jewish youth in the right paths.
Experience taught the ancients otherwise in many
different countries. To us these Hebrew proverbs
may seem at first sight to be destitute of motive
power, but a close inspection will modify this opinion.
Provisionally, the Hebrew Wisdom was of the great-
est practical service. It passed necessarily into some-
thing widely different, but not without leaving a
permanent impression on the form of the teaching
which succeeded it. How indeed could it have been
otherwise ? for the best men of the time were among
these proverbial teachers, and in reading the finest
parts of Proverbs even we can appreciate the force of
the saying that
" The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
And the wise man is a winner of souls."
(Prov. xi., 30.)
How carefully the so-called Wisdom was planned, we
see from the strong secular element in it. If the fear
of Jehovah is the first part of the instruction which it
gives, the art of getting on in the world is the second.
It is almost amusing to notice that the same writer
who says that wisdom is far better than riches also
138 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
informs us that wisdom is the best road to wealth
(Prov. iii., 14-16; viii., 18-19). In fact, one of the
most characteristic terms for wisdom means ability to
steer well, and the general spirit of the sayings of the
wise men can scarcely be called idealistic. The tone
which pervades them is that of a calm reasonableness ;
indeed, we are told in so many words that " he that
is of a cool spirit is a man of understanding " (Prov.
xvii., 27). Now and then this " coolness " even seems
to a modern to degenerate into meanness :
" A clever man sees a misfortune coming, and hides him-
self,
While those .vho are simple pass on and suffer for it."
(Prov. xxii., 3.)
This, however, is merely a relic of that old no-
madic love of craft or subtlety,* from which even
David was not exempt.
On the whole, the wise men recommended ener-
getic action, such as befits those who are conscious of
rectitude and of enjoying the divine favour.
But what of the religious aspect of this proverbial
wisdom ? We may easily be led to underrate this.
It ought, however, to be emphatically stated that the
* Even the strongly religious author of the Prologue to Proverbs
three times makes "subtlety" or " cleverness" an essential part of
wisdom (i., 4; viii., 5, 12). On the other hand, "subtlety" and
" subtle " are used with a bad connotation in Job (v., 12-13 ; xv.,
5). C/. Lecture III.
Jewish Wisdom 139
wise men presuppose more than they expressly state.
Their teaching may at first sight seem almost purely
secular, but it takes for granted the theory of earthly
retribution, which is a fundamental doctrine of the
Law, and it lays stress on precisely those moral qual-
ities which follow from the due performance of the
commandments. In recommending wisdom, those
early moralists certainly meant to recommend the
Law, or at least to show that orthodox religion was
not merely not inconsistent with, but even conducive
to, worldly success. To call their wisdom either
secular or, in a modern sense, utilitarian would be a
mistake. Its religious character indeed is not unfre-
quently affirmed. Thus we hear that
" The fear of Jehovah is a discipline for wisdom,
And before honour is humility "
(Prov. xv., 33) ;
i. e., the constant practice of religion is the right
school of wisdom, and humility (which, as the later
writers teach, is one half of righteousness) will be
finally rewarded with honour.
" The fear of Jehovah prolongs days,
But the years of the wicked will be shortened "
(Prov. x., 27) ;
" The way [/', e., procedure] of Jehovah is a stronghold to
the innocent,
But ruin to the workers of iniquity "
(x., 29) ;
140 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
" He that walks in his uprightness fears Jehovah,
But he that is perverse in his ways despises Him "
(Prov. xiv., 2) ;
i. e., religion and morality are identical.
" He that oppresses the poor despises the poor man's
Maker,
But Jehovah honours him that has pity on the needy "
( xi v., 3 1 ) 5
i. e., morality is based on the common relation of
all men to the Creator.
" Sheol and Abaddon [/'. <?., all parts of the nether world]
are before Jehovah ;
How much more then the hearts of mankind !
The eyes of Jehovah are in every place,
Observing the evil and the good "
(xv., 3, u);
two beautiful expressions for the omniscience of
Jehovah a divine attribute which became more
fully realised after the time of Jeremiah. For we
cannot doubt that the observation spoken of extends
to the heart and conscience. A psalmist of the Greek
period finely says :
" Out of heaven Jehovah looked down,
He beheld all the race of men ;
From his sure habitation He gazed
Upon all who dwell on the earth
He who formed the hearts of them all,
Who takes note of all their works."
(Ps. xxxiii., 13-15.)
Jewish Wisdom 141
Another wise man says that
" The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to
Jehovah,
But the prayer of the upright is His delight "
(Prov. xv., 8),
implying, by the way, that prayer is the best part
of the sacrificial service, and is acceptable even with-
out sacrifice. And another goes even farther, and
says :
" To do the just and right thing
Is pre-eminent with Jehovah above sacrifice."
(xxi., 3 ; cf. ver. 27.)
I will now quote one of the finest religious sayings in
Proverbs :
" Disclose what thou wouldest do to Jehovah,
And thy purposes shall be established."
(xvi., 3.)
Of course this only refers to righteous purposes.
The wise man cannot mean that we can make God
our fellow-conspirator against our enemies. On the
contrary, as another proverb says :
" Rejoice not, when thine enemy falls,*
And let not thine heart be glad when he is overthrown ;
Lest Jehovah see it, and it displease Him,
And he turn away His wrath from thine enemy."
(xxiv., 17.)
* /. e. , when a calamity overtakes him.
142 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
The idea is that a malicious joy at the misfortunes
of another is displeasing to God, even if that other
be an enemy of the righteous, and that if, knowing
God's will but doing it not, the righteous man com-
mits this sin, he will be more deserving of punish-
ment than his adversary.
And again :
" If thine enemy hunger, give him food ;
Or if he thirst, give him water to drink !
For hot coals thou takest away,*
And Jehovah will recompense thee."
(Prov. xxv., 21, 22.)
The meaning is, that the new relation created by
this unexpected hospitality will supersede the old
pernicious relation of oppressor and oppressed. The
"hot coals" of strife (see xxvi., 21) will have been
firmly grasped and removed, and the recompense due
to those who relieve the needy will be paid by
Jehovah. Here there is a chance for the righteous to
melt the hard hearts of the wicked, and save them
from the otherwise certain retribution. Or if this be
too high a flight for most minds, yet all can under-
stand that
" If a man's ways please Jehovah,
He reconciles even his enemies to him."
(xvi., 7.)
* Adopting a correction of the text, which relieves the proverb-
writer from the charge of ethical inconsistency.
Jewish Wisdom 143
Evidently the Jewish world has made some pro-
gress since personified Israel prayed :
" Put to shame and dishonour be those that seek my soul,
Turned back and abashed be those that plan my hurt ;
Be they as chaff before the wind,
And Jehovah's angel pursuing them ;
Be their way dark and slippery,
And Jehovah's angel thrusting them."
(Ps. xxxv., 4-6.)
We must remember, however, that it is not in gen-
eral of individuals but of hostile communities or fac-
tions that the psalmists speak. Individuals can more
easily be reached by kindness than bodies of men.
Also that the same collection of Jewish proverbs con-
tains this startling saying :
" Jehovah has made everything for its special end ;
Yea, even the wicked for the day of trouble."
(Prov. xvi., 4.)
This reminds us of a psalmist who, looking back on
the oppressive rule and sudden collapse of the Per-
sian empire, attributes it to a deep design of Jehovah
which a " fool " cannot understand :
" When the wicked spring as the herbage,
And all the workers of iniquity blossom,
It is (only) that they may be destroyed forever,
Whilst Thou, Jehovah, art King eternally."
(Ps. xcii, 7, 8.)
144 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Both psalmist and wise man assume that there are
human beings who are irredeemably bad, viz., those
Jews who have turned aside from truth to serve a lie,
and those heathen who have banded themselves
together to put out the one great light which God
has set in a dark world the light of the covenant
people of Israel. Such wicked men cannot repent ;
they must be wiped out of existence. Their " dis-
proportioned sin "
" Jars against nature's chime, and with harsh din
Breaks the fair music that all creatures make
To their great Lord." *
But both psalmist and wise man have learned to be
more patient than formerly seemed possible. The
"day of Jehovah " must be waited for. It is useless
to cry out, " Rouse Thee ; why sleepest Thou,
Jehovah ? " (Ps. xliv., 24.) For the present, the
Omniscient One tolerates bad as well as good ; He
lets both grow together till the harvest. As a wise
man says :
" The poor man and the exactor jostle each other ;
Jehovah lightens the eyes of both."
(Prov. xxix., 13.)
It is in fact this coexistence of good and bad, wise
and foolish, within the same community which makes
* Milton, " At a Solemn Musick."
Jewish Wisdom 145
a strong central authority indispensable. Could the
individualising method of the teachers called wise
men be universally applied, it would still be difficult
to repress the anarchic tendencies of the multitude.
For
" Without a curb * people become unruly ;
But he that keeps the law, happy is he."
(Prov. xxix., 18.)
The term " the law " means here that condensed
extract and practical application of the teaching of
the Scriptures which was prepared by the wise men
for their pupils. The misfortune was that the central
authority was in the hands of heathen rulers, who
had not the same moral standards as the wise men.
Hence the tone of the proverbs respecting the king
is somewhat surprising. Was the king in some
passages a native ruler ? Was he even sometimes the
Messiah ? These are the passages in question :
(i.) "The king's favour is for an intelligent servant,
But a base one experiences his wrath."
(*iv., 35-)
(ii.) "Jehovah" oracle is on the lips of the king ;
His mouth will not offend against justice."
(xvi., 10.)
* Here the importance of a corrected text is specially apparent.
The received text has " Without vision," which is supposed to mean
"without prophetic revelation."
146 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
(iii.) " Loving-kindness and truth guard the king ;
And by loving-kindness he supports his throne."
(Prov. xx., 28.)
(iv.) " Take away the dross from the silver,
And the whole of it comes out refined ;
Take away the wicked from before the king,
And by righteousness his throne is established."
(xxv., 4, 5.)
(v.) " My son, fear Jehovah and the king,
And meddle not with those who hate them ;
For suddenly their calamity will rise,
And the ruin of the haters will come unawares "
(XXIV., 21, 22.)
(vi,) " Three things are of stately walk,
Yea, four of stately going :
The lion the hero among the beasts,
That nothing makes to turn back,
The cock * that (proudly) lifts itself up, and the
he-goat,
And a king, the champion of his people."
(xxx., 29-31.)
There is also a curious group of counsels (xxxi., 1-9)
described as " Words of a king ; a proverb [or,
poem] with which his mother instructed him." The
sayings, however, are plainly artificial and of very
late origin ; they need not detain us now.
The sayings in the former group are much more
interesting. But not even all these have a clear note
* If this rendering is correct it favours, and indeed requires, a very
late date for the passage. See " Cock " in Encyclopedia Biblica.
Jewish Wisdom 147
of reality. A non-Jewish king might conceivably be
idealised in a more or less complimentary lyric
poem, but hardly in proverbs designed for the
popular instruction. Surely it is only the last two of
the first group which refer to contemporary kings the
first to a Grseco-Egyptian, the second probably to a
Maccabaean prince. The four preceding ones, how-
ever, are specially interesting to students of religion.
They represent a Messianic element in the Book of
Proverbs like that represented by most of the royal
hymns in the Psalter. The writers look forward with
much assurance to the speedy renewal of the native
royalty, and seek to instil into the minds of their
young disciples lofty ideas of the kingly character.
The sayings remind us of Psalms xlv. and Ixxii. No
such Messianic element exists in the Book of Eccle-
siasticus, though that interesting book does contain
a prayer of considerable beauty for the deliverance
and glorification of Israel. (Ecclus. xxxvi., 1-17).
There is no trace, however, that the wise men
had any systematised Messianic belief; they seem
completely to neglect the incipient theories of the
later prophetic writers. It is not an emperor of the
world, but a blameless, modest-minded king of Israel
whom they set before us, though, in accordance
apparently with a fixed rule, they do not once
mention the name of Israel. For this king they
148 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
patiently wait, because they trust Jehovah not to
leave them always under the rule of the Ptolemies,
however endurable this might be, compared with the
rule of the last Persian kings. They are content
that the final doomsday should be put off for a
season, because they observe that even now the
righteous are not altogether forsaken, and that
individuals at any rate receive an adequate earthly
recompense for their righteousness. Probably, too,
the majority of the wise men were limited in the
expression of their views by educational considera-
tions. " To fear Jehovah and to shun evil " was all
that the ordinary man required.
For some of the wise men, however, this severely
practical view of wisdom was not enough. There is
one passage even in the Book of Proverbs which
suggests an interest in cosmic phenomena, and there
are other passages in Job. It is true, the former
passage occurs in the Prologue of Proverbs, which
has a unity of its own, and is very distinct in many
respects from the body of the work. Here is the
description. It consists of five stanzas of four lines
each * :
" Jehovah produced me as the firstfruits of His creation,
The earliest of His primaeval works ;
*On the text, see article "On Some Obscure Passages" etc.,
Jewish Quarterly Review, Oct., 1897.
Jewish Wisdom 149
For from of old was I woven together,
From the beginning, from the first days of the world.
" When the floods were not, I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water,
Before the mountains were deeply fixed,
Before the hills was I brought forth. *
" Ere He had made the land and the grass,
And had clothed with green the clods of mother-earth ;
When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He marked out a circle over the ocean ;
" When He established the clouds above,
When He made firm the founts of the ocean,
When He appointed to the sea its bound,
That the waters should not transgress His command ;
" Then was I daily beside Him as an artificer,
Sporting continually before Him,
Sporting in the elaboration f of his earth,
And having my delight in the race of man."
(Prov. viii., 22-31.)
This is certainly one of the greatest passages in the
Wisdom-literature. It states that pre-existent Wis-
dom was the artificer of the world, one in purpose
and in act with the creative Deity, and, taken with
the context, it implies that Wisdom introduces her
disciples to the study of cosmic phenomena as well
* This resembles the description of the first man, who is primaeval
wisdom personified, in Job xv., 7, 8.
f This appears to be a certain correction of the text. It probably
decides the correctness of the rendering "artificer" in line I of the
stanza.
150 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
as of practical ethics. The beginning or first part
of wisdom is, according to the writer, the fear of
Jehovah ; or, to widen our definition without mis-
representing his meaning, it is a combination of
religion with a certain practical cleverness. But the
latter part is something of a more refined, esoteric
type. It is the contemplation of God's works in
nature, and it is just such a contemplation of the
ideals of which those works are the expression, or, in
Hebrew phraseology, of pre-existent Wisdom, which
God Himself did not disdain when He made the
world. For, as another Hebrew poet, one of the
writers of the Book of Job, finely says :
" When He made a weight for the wind,
And determined the waters by measure,
Then He beheld and studied her well,
He set her up and fathomed her depths."
(Job xxviii., 26, 27.)
In fact, the Book of Job contains more than one
passage in which the larger conception of human
wisdom is clearly expressed. For instance, the
author of the Speeches of Jehovah certainly en-
courages the observation of nature. He has not,
indeed, the modern, scientific spirit, and looks at
nature in a poetic, imaginative way, with an under-
lying didactic object. But we must not underrate
the importance of this. To be interested in nature
Jewish Wisdom 151
is the first step to seeking to comprehend her.
Gladly would I quote some of this writer's fine
pictures of animal life, but I have only space for a
series of naive questions to which there are some-
what striking parallels in the sacred Zoroastrian
literature. Hebrew affinities are not wanting, how-
ever. The first couplet, which speaks of a visit to
the divine stores of snow and hail, reminds us of the
story of Enoch as developed in the book which
bears Enoch's name.*
" Hast thou (ever) come to the store-chambers of the
snow,
And seen the store-keepers of the hail,
Which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
For the day of battle and war ?
" By what way does the mist part
That it may sprinkle cool moisture on the earth ?
Who cleft a conduit for the rain-torrent,
And a way for the flashes of the storm,
" To send rain on a land without men,
On the wilderness wherein are no people,
To satisfy the utter desolation,
And to cause the thirsty land to put forth fresh
herbage ?
" Out of whose womb came the ice ?
And the hoar-frost of heaven who begot it?
* Enoch lx., 17 ; cf. Ixix., 23.
152 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
The waters close together as if a stone,
And the surface of the deep hides itself.
" Dost thou bind the knots of the Pleiades ?
Or loose the fetters of Orion ?
Canst thou bring out the Hyades at its season ?
And guide the Bear and her offspring ? *
" Knowest thou the laws of heaven ?
Dost thou appoint its influence on the earth ?
Canst thou send up a command to the cloud
That abundance of water may cover thee ? " f
The irony of the questions is unmistakable. But
their object is not merely to humble Job by giving
him a sense of his limitations, but to encourage him
to step out of himself into the great picture-gallery
of the outer world. The poet, who is also a wise
man, agrees neither with Job and his friends, as
described in the dialogues, nor with an editor who,
in opposition to the poet whose work he manipu-
lates, asserts that the " only proper study of man-
kind " is practical religion. Let me read a part of
the last strophe of the poem referred to :
" Whence then proceeds wisdom ?
And where is the place of understanding ?
Seeing that it is hidden from the eyes of all living,
And kept close from the birds of the sky.
* The renderings of the names of the constellations are not alto-
gether certain.
f Jobxxxviii., 22-27, 29-34 (from a corrected text). See J. Q. .,
Oct., 1897.
Jewish Wisdom 153
" The abyss and the nether world say,
The report of her has reached our ears.
God has marked the way to her,
He is acquainted with her place." *
Wisdom, then, is not independent of God, who, in-
deed, was the first to find her out. This discovery
and its importance for the creative process are
explained in the last quatrain, which I have already
quoted. f And then, unexpectedly enough, comes
the following only too orthodox statement :
" And he said to man, Behold, the fear of Jehovah
that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding." J;
I do not say that the author of this addition was a
man of no ideas, but I say that he differed from the
author of the poem, who certainly did not mean by
his grand eulogy of the higher Wisdom to dis-
courage men from interesting themselves in nature.
This new writer had no poetic imagination, and, as
might be expected, he writes in prose and not in
verse.
It was remarked just now that the wise man who
wrote the Speeches of Jehovah does not agree with
all his colleagues. But on one point he and all the
greatest of the wise men are agreed there are no
breaks in the consistency of the world. There is a
place, we are told in Proverbs (xvi., 4), even for the
* Job xxviii., 20-23. t See p. 150. J Job xxviii., 28.
154 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
wicked in God's scheme of things, and there must
be a fundamental harmony between nature and
morality. To thoughtful Jewish theists God re-
vealed Himself as the All-wise. There never was a
time when the divine Wisdom was not. There was
never any combat (such as the dialogues in Job ap-
pear to presuppose) between Jehovah and the dragon
of chaos*; on chaos the eulogist of Wisdom is elo-
quently silent. Nor can he admit the idea of an
arbitrary omnipotence. " God," as Hooker, sur-
named the Judicious, said, "is a law to Himself";
" His wisdom hath stinted the effects of His power."
And so potent, so full of vitality, is this wise and
beneficent law, that it is impossible to an Oriental
thinker to regard it otherwise than as a person. And
what a person! Work is to Himf a pastime; the
elaboration of the world not a six-days' occupation
but a continual and exquisite delight ; the Creator
needs no Sabbath rest, for He cannot be fatigued.
Why, here is the saying so finely devised for the in-
carnate Logos in the spiritual Gospel, " My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work." ^ The universe is, as
* The descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan (on which see Ex-
positor, July, 1897, or Encyclopedia Biblicd) form no part of the
true Speeches of Jehovah. The author of the dialogues does, how-
ever, refer to the chaos-dragon, called Leviathan.
fit is, of course, accidental that " Wisdom " is personified as a
woman (the Hebrew word for wisdom being feminine).
$ John v., 17.
Jewish Wisdom 155
Emerson has expressed it, a " divine improvisation " ;
its architect is the " Eternal Child." Surely this is
one of the very finest conceptions in the Old Testa-
ment. It stands there quite alone ; but not less
unique is more than one conception in the spiritual
Gospel in the New Testament. The ideal thus ex-
pressed cannot safely be disregarded by those who
would have a joyous as well as a deeply thoughtful
religion.
And now we have to ask, What other forms of
thought are most nearly related to this strange new
conception of the divine Wisdom ? The inquisitive
spirit for which the varied scenes of human life are
too narrow a field is the same which pervades the
celestial physics of the Book of Enoch ; it has found
an imaginative (mythological) expression in the story
of Enoch,* who was instructed by the angels in the
secrets of the tripartite universe. Allusions to this
story in its earlier form occur in Genesis v., 21-24,
and again in a prophecy of Ezekiel (xxviii., 3), who
says, addressing the Prince of Tyre :
" Forsooth, thou art wiser than Enoch ; there is no
secret that can be hidden from thee."
I ought to explain that this rendering presupposes a
necessary and easy correction of the text. Anyone
*See article "Enoch" in Messrs. A. & C. Black's Encytlopadia
Biblica.
156 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
can see that the expression "wiser than Daniel" is
most improbable in this connection and in Ezekiel's
period. On the other hand, this prophet must have
known of Enoch as an explorer of secrets, and the
tradition which had reached him was doubtless con-
nected with some report of the natural philosophy
of the Babylonians. It is true, the authors of the
Book of Enoch far outrun Ezekiel, but so does the
description of the divine Wisdom in parts of Prov-
erbs and Job far surpass the meagre hints given by
the Second Isaiah.*
But we must look farther afield for affinities to the
personified divine Wisdom. Some scholars will, I
know, object to this. They are of opinion that
nearly all the strange new developments of the post-
exilic period can be explained as native Jewish
growths, and they think that this view harmonises
best with the self-isolating tendency of the age of
Ezra. This is, I think, a great mistake. The laws
of the human mind fought against the self-isolating
tendency which these scholars refer to. Oriental
influences of all kinds made themselves felt, first of
all by the people, and then by its religious guides.
More especially in the Greek period, to which the
Prologue of Proverbs certainly, or almost certainly,
belongs, there was a fertilisation of the intellectual
*Isa. xl., 13, 14.
Jewish Wisdom 157
soil by new ideas throughout the Jewish world.
Many Jews migrated to Egypt, especially to Alex-
andria, and we know that in ancient Egypt the
personification of divine attributes was carried to a
great extent.* It is a false assumption that ancient
Egyptian ideas could not influence Greek and Jewish
society in Alexandria. Persian influences, too, were
still more strongly felt by the Jews after the con-
quests of Alexander. In the present state of the
history of Zoroastrianism some reserve seems called
for, but it is reasonable to hold that the stress laid in
Zoroastrianism on wisdom as the chief divine attri-
bute, and on the distinction between the heavenly
wisdom f and that " acquired by the ear," had some
effect on the Jews, though it would immediately
affect only those Jews who lived in or near Persia.
I am not so bold as to assume that the conception
of the heavenly wisdom which was the earliest of
Ahura-Mazda's creations was taken over directly and
adapted by the author of the Prologue of Proverbs,
and simply hold that the more advanced religious
philosophy of Zoroastrianism stimulated the growth
of a new Jewish religious philosophy, which centred
in the belief in an all-wise and therefore not, strictly
* Wiedemann, Gesch. Aeg., p. 53; cf. Brimmer, Three Essays,
etc., p. 29.
f See Zendavesta by Darmesteter and Mills (Sacred Books of the
East) and cf. Cheyne, Expositor, v. (1892), 78, 79.
158 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
speaking, all-powerful Being, the Creator and Gov-
ernor of the world of nature and of man. To assume
Platonic and Stoic influences seems to me both
unnecessary and unsafe.
Here I might pause, but can I be expected to
leave untouched the true Book of Job to which the
two beautiful poems from which I have quoted form
appendices ? And how could I let the patriarch
Enoch be separated from the patriarch Job the one
the representative of physical, the other of moral
philosophy ? The former came into his full inherit-
ance long after the latter. Obviously the life of
Enoch did not at first take much hold on thoughtful
Jews. That after 365 years God could no longer
spare such a pious and large-minded man, but took
him into His immediate presence this early de-
parture of Enoch, in spite of its extraordinary
circumstances, and however much it stimulated
speculation, did not touch the heart. But the story
of Job, who fell from the height of happiness to the
lowest depth of misery, losing not only his property,
but his children, and being himself afflicted with the
worst sort of leprosy, but who, to the universal
astonishment, was restored by God to health and
happiness, suggested countless thoughts of the
deepest human interest.
Ezekiel, as we have seen, mentions Enoch in one
Jewish Wisdom 159
place as the privileged possessor of superhuman
wisdom. In another famous passage (Ezek. xiv., 14)
he couples him with Noah and Job as an exceptionally
righteous man, for the collocation " Noah, Daniel, and
Job " is self-evidently wrong. There is no evidence
that he perceived that greater suggestiveness in the
story of Job of which I have spoken, and this blind-
ness is not a feature in Ezekiel which draws us to the
austere prophet. What was it that at last opened
men's eyes ? It was the continued disappointments
of what is commonly called the post-exilic period.
Post-exilic, indeed ! Why, the Exile of Israel, in its
deepest sense,* has lasted from Nebuchadrezzar's
burning of Jerusalem to the present day. It is this
that makes the Jews such idealists ; it is this sense
of exile which inspired that unknown " post-exilic "
poet who gave the first adequate setting to the old
Hebrew legend of Job the patient.
The Prologue (chaps, i. and ii.) and the Epilogue
(xlii., 7-17) of the poem are both due to this writer.
The former is full of delicate psychology and inimit-
able humour; the latter, which begins :
" And Jehovah said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath
is kindled against thee and thy two friends, because ye
have not spoken of Me that which is right, as My servant
Job has,"
* " In its deepest sense," cf. Lecture I., p. 12, "If there was a
post-exilic age at all."
160 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
and ends with the statement that Job died having
had his fill of life, is dry and prosaic,* and even mor-
ally, to us at least, disappointing. It was Job's high
destiny, as we shall see, to " serve God for nought,"
and by having a tangible reward, as it were, forced
upon him, he seems to us to be lowered in the moral
scale. But to do justice to the writer we have to view
him here not as an artist, but as a teacher. He cares
for his people much more than for Job, and since
a double compensation for Israel's calamities is a
constant element in the later prophetic teaching, he
feels bound to represent Job as having been amply
compensated for his unmerited misfortunes. The
chief value of the Epilogue is, that it enables us to
reconstruct the main outlines of the omitted portion
of the story. Thanks to it we are able, in some
sense, to " call up him who left half told " (or whose
editors have transmitted to us half told, or told
amiss) the story of the most patient of men.
The result of an inquiry would probably be f that
in lieu of Job iii.-xlii., 7, there stood originally some-
thing like this, only in a style of flowing, natural
eloquence :
* Drs. Bartlett and Peters have from a literary point of view done
well to omit the Epilogue in their excellent arrangement of select
passages from the Bible (Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, part vi.,
chap. v.).
f So first Macdonald, Journal of Biblical Literature, 1895, pp. 63-71,
Jewish Wisdom 161
" And these three men, moved at the sight of Job's
grief, broke out into lamentations, and withheld not pas-
sionate complaints of the injustice of God. They said :
Is there knowledge in the Most High ? and does God
judge righteous judgment ? But Job was sore dis-
pleased, and reproved them, saying, Bitter is the pain
which racks me, but more bitter still are the words which
ye speak. Blessed be the Most High for that which He
gave, and now that I am empty, blessed still be His
name. I will call unto Him and say, Shew me wherein
I have erred ; let me not depart under the weight of
Thine anger. For God is good to all those who call upon
Him, and will not suffer the righteous to fall for ever.
And Job reasoned ofttimes with his friends, and bade
them repent, lest God should deal with them as with
trangressors. And at the end of a season, God came to
Eliphaz in a dream and said, My wrath is kindled against
thee and thy two friends, because ye have not spoken of
Me that which is right, as My servant Job has."
This, as it seems to me, is in harmony with the
early view of Job as a perfectly righteous man a
second Abraham or Noah. It will account, too, for
the severe blame which Jehovah gives to the three
friends, and their liability to some mysterious pun-
ishment from which they can only be delivered by
Job's intercession. Also for the high praise awarded
to Job, who, as the poem now stands, certainly did
not speak in all points rightly concerning God. Also
for the expressions of another important work which
appears to be based on the original Book of Job,
1 62 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
I refer to the description of the suffering Servant of
Jehovah in Isaiah lii., 13-Iiii., 12.
This noble description of the great Martyr, which
has already enchanted us,* is in fact largely modelled
on the original Book of Job. Reflecting on the
cause of Job's misery, the writer came to the conclu-
sion that God must have appointed this for the
good of those who, unlike Job, were great transgress-
ors, and that Job's consciousness of this must have
helped him to bear his sufferings uncomplainingly.
Such at any rate was his view respecting his own
hero, the Servant of Jehovah. He does not deny
that the Servant looked forward to his ultimate jus-
tification in public, but he evidently thinks that the
really influential motive with the Servant was his
ability through his sufferings to redeem his people
from sin.f His hero does in fact serve God for
nought. And this is certainly what the original
poet of Job represented as the divine object in per-
mitting the calamities which beset Job, viz., the
demonstration by facts of the possibility of disinter-
ested piety. It would be pleasant to think that the
two writers were friends. We may at least conject-
ure that they were contemporaries, and that the
writer of this Book of Job accepted the description
* See Lecture III.
f See Isa. liii., 10, II, in Polychrome Bible.
Jewish Wisdom 163
of Jehovah's Servant as a kind of commentary on
his own work.
Both these writers, I incline to think, lived after
the introduction of Ezra's law-book ; both are, at any
rate, warmly attached to all existing religious institu-
tions. Job is represented as an undoubting believer
in sacrifices, and the Servant of Jehovah as commis-
sioned to bring the true law of life to the nations.
Neither of them can be moved from his rock-like
faith in God by external privations. But by far the
greater number of the Jews were incapable of this
lofty piety. It was a fundamental tenet of the
old Israelitish religion that all suffering was caused
by some known or unknown offence against God,
and the most that the ancient pre-exilic prophets
could do was to stimulate men's consciences to dis-
cover those sins which, unrepented of, would bring
great and deserved calamities on the community. It
is true, they also preached the converse of this doc-
trine, viz., that by obeying the commands of God
the community might ensure for itself His fa-
vour and protection. Morally, this preaching was of
high value, even though it had little effect on
the majority of its hearers. Its principal achieve-
ment was the production of the Book of Deuter-
onomy, which combines with a most thoughtful
code of laws the oft-repeated assurance that
164 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
obedience to Jehovah's precepts will be rewarded by
prosperity, and deliberate disobedience punished by
adversity and ruin. But again and again events
occurred to falsify these assurances. The national
adoption of Deuteronomy (in its original, simpler
form) was followed by the disaster of Megiddo, and
ultimately by the Captivities, and the introduction
of Ezra's law-book was only an event in the domestic
history of the Jews. On Nehemiah's departure, the
rule of the Persians became less and less considerate,
and the social abuses from which the community
had always suffered so greatly, even if they were
checked for a time, soon took a new lease of life.
And, hence, that happy serenity which marks both
Job (the original Job) and the Servant of Jehovah
became as good as impossible. A Hebrew Pascal,
the author of Psalm Ixxiii., though he enriched
theists with the noblest extant expression (to which
I shall return*) of disinterested love to God, yet had
to pass through a grievous experience of scepticism,
and we need not therefore be surprised that one of
the wise men of the close of the Persian, or more
probably of the beginning of the Greek, period found
the treatment of Job's sufferings by the original
narrator inadequate for practical uses.
To this new writer it did not seem credible that
* See Lecture VI.
Jewish Wisdom 165
Job should have been unvisited by doubts respect-
ing God's righteousness. Job, as the original story
implied, was a symbol of the Jewish people, and even
the best of the Jews had moments of painful scepti-
cism, which it was as much as they could do to
repress. Would not the Book of Job be more useful
to the community if its hero were brought more into
sympathy with ordinary Jewish feeling? In this
way the patient Job became impatient. There was
also another reason why this writer thought of alter-
ing the original conception of Job. He was evidently
a cultivated man who had caught the " still sad music
of humanity " in many walks of life. His interests
were not confined to Judaea, and so, under his hands,
Job became a symbol, not only of the Jewish people,
but of humanity at large. Nor can one help seeing
that this new writer was more of an individualist
than his predecessor, i. e., that he recognised the
moral and religious rights of the individual as such,
apart from the people to which he belonged. In the
olden time, even a good man would not have ex-
pected to be as a matter of course prosperous, if he
were a mere isolated unit in a community of
bad men. But since Ezekiel had preached the doc-
trine that the son did not bear the iniquity of the
father, nor the father the iniquity of the son, the old
sense of solidarity began to give place to a new sense
1 66 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
of the moral rights of the individual. The author of
Job had, as I take it, learned to suffer and to sympa-
thise with individuals. And the problem which pre-
sented itself to him was not merely, " Why does
righteous Israel suffer? " but," Why do righteous men
everywhere suffer unjustly, and why, even if some
punishment be deserved, is it so often disproportion-
ate to the presumed moral cause?"
The consequence was that the roles of Job and his
friends were to some extent transposed. It was no
longer, as in the original book, the three friends who
spoke irreverently of the Most High, but Job him-
self. It is true, Job's hard speeches were drawn
from him under extreme provocation,, and are not to
be interpreted in a cold, logical spirit. And strangely
enough, to this bold Hebrew Prometheus comes at
length a reconciling intuition of what may almost be
called an Over-god, i. e., of a God who loves and can
be loved behind the God of pitiless and undiscrimi-
nating force. And this flash of insight comes to
him (so the poet imagines, in accordance, doubtless,
with his own experience) just when all earthly com-
fort appears to be denied him. At first, God seems
deaf to his cry, and he turns for comfort to his
friends. But the friends, under the chilling influence
of the traditional doctrine of retribution, are driven
to withhold sympathy from such a great sinner as
Jewish Wisdom 167
they assume Job to be. Then, as the language of
the friends becomes more violent, that of Job be-
comes calmer and more dignified. He begins to
recognise what appears like a dual aspect in God.
From the God of force, whom he sees in the count-
less sad phenomena of the world, he appeals to a
God of love and sympathy, who is in heaven, and
he becomes convinced that God will in some way do
him justice. Almost he can believe that God will at
length recall him from the nether world to which he
is hastening ; but he quickly dismisses the too seduc-
ing thought. This splendid passage I hope to quote
later. But even if he be condemned by the strict
laws of life and death to a perpetual imprisonment
in Sheol, yet a divine testimony to his innocence is
not impossible.
" O earth, cover not my blood,
And let my cry find no resting-place ";
**. e., let not the earth absorb my unjustly shed blood,
but, like Abel's, let it cry aloud for satisfaction. For,
he continues :
" Even now, surely, my witness is in heaven,
And He that vouches for me is on high.
My flesh is athirst for God,
Towards Eloah mine eye drops tears,
That he would arbitrate for a man contending with God,
And between a mortal and his (divine) friend." *
* Job xvi., 18-21. (See/. Q. ., Oct., 1897, pp. 14, 15.)
1 68 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Later on, he expresses the same assured hope, and
this time he connects it with the punishment of his
friends. Bildad has just been forgetting himself so
far as virtually to class Job with the wicked who
know not God. This speech it is which brings
on a crisis in Job's inward development. No longer
can he tolerate the platitudes of his friends, which as
applied to him are so cruelly unjust. He makes one
more appeal, however, to their better feelings :
" Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O my friends,
For the hand of God has touched me.
Why do ye persecute me like God,
And are never satiated with my flesh ? " *
But he sees by their looks that his words fall idly
on their ears. He longs that his words might be
recorded in some permanent form the words, that
is, in which he asserts his innocence. But no sooner
has he said this, than he bethinks himself of a far
better justification which awaits him. It is the same
idea of the divine Witness which we have already
met with. But this time Job connects the idea with
the punishment of his cruel friends. His appeal is not
from the God of force to the God of love ; for he is
able by a new moral effort to reject once and for
all the notion of a divided God. What he now de-
* Job xix., 21, 22.
Jewish Wisdom 169
sires is simply the vindication of his innocence, and
the punishment of his cruel persecutors. He does
not, indeed, understand God's treatment of him, but
he no longer accuses God of injustice. It is his
friends who are unjust, and they must be punished
that his own justification may be complete:
" But I know that my Avenger lives,
And that at last He will appear above my grave;
My Witness shall bring to pass my desire,
And a curse will take hold of my foes.
" My inner man is consumed with longing,
For ye say, How (keenly) will we persecute him !
Have terror because of the sword,
For (God's) anger falls on the unjust." *
The crisis is past. Job's intellectual perplexity
remains, but he does not doubt the existence of a
moral God, though he cannot detect His operation :
" I may go forward, but He is not there;
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him." f
The friends, however, have learned nothing, and
after hearing Job's reply to the third speech of
Zophar a reply which does not appear to have
been preserved we may presume that the earlier
work J recorded the departure of Job's false friends.
* Job xix., 25-29. (See the article in/. Q. R. already referred to.)
f Job, xxiii., 8.
\ I. e. , that form of the poem which was intermediate between the
original Book of Job and the book in its present form.
170 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
All that remained was to provide a suitable close for
this great drama a close which, if it settled nothing,
should yet affirm once more that to be a sufferer was
no proof of guilt. The poet's instinct guided him
aright. He begins by charming us with a plaintive
retrospect, by which Job seeks to cleanse his spirit
from the bitterness of controversy (chaps, xxix.,
xxx.). Oh that those delicious days could be re-
called, when the Almighty was his friend, and his
children were about him ! Then all at once he glides
into a grand affirmation of his innocence (chap,
xxxi.), which is one of the finest summaries of early
Jewish morality, and finally passes from the scene
with a marvellous piece of moral self-assertion which
is nearly the most un-Hebraic passage in the whole
of the Old Testament.
It was a truly noble specimen of didactic poetry,
suffused with emotion, that this new poet produced.
The problem of the cause of the suffering of the
innocent was too big for him, but he set forth to the
best advantage all the conflicting views of moralists
known to him. He had at any rate succeeded (so
he must have thought) in subverting the pernicious
doctrine that from great sufferings we can argue the
existence of great guilt. And he had represented Job
as arriving finally at a state of resignation and of so
much peace as was compatible with extreme perplex-
Jewish Wisdom 171
ity on the intellectual question at issue. But he did
not satisfy his fellow-philosophers any better than his
predecessor had satisfied him. Various passages
were inserted by later writers (for it is unnatural
to suppose that the author was himself always chang-
ing), with the view of qualifying or counteracting
parts of his work. These are of unequal value. The
speeches of the youthful Elihu are inexpressibly
poor, though not without value as a record of an age
of intellectual decline. But I cannot help eulogising
once more the noble Praise of Wisdom in chap,
xxviii. apart from the closing verse, which has con-
verted it into a condemnation of free discussion.
Nor can I refuse a still larger tribute of praise to
the Speeches of Jehovah, which at first sight seem
much too fine to be a later insertion. I am myself
most willing to be convinced that the author of
the Dialogues of the Friends had become discon-
tented with his work, and appended the Speeches
of Jehovah as a palinode. A purely literary
critic can hardly help indulging in such a con-
jecture, but I fear that the canons of scientific criti-
cism require us to reject it. The only safe view is,
in my opinion, that some great poet who thought
the earlier Book of Job religiously imperfect at-
tached this appendix. The idea of the section is,
that a minute criticism of the divine government
172 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
(like that of Job) is as useless as contemplation of
the wonders of nature is profitable. Job has to learn
to forget himself in the glorious creation of which he
forms a part. It is true, this is not directly stated.
All that the poet says, by the mouth of Jehovah, is
that Job had darkened the plan of the divine gov-
ernment by words devoid of insight (xxxviii., 2).
The evident delight, however, which the poet takes
in the pictures of creation justifies us in supposing
that he recommends the contemplation of nature as a
remedy against painful and futile scepticism. What-
ever we may think of his attitude towards free
thought, he has given us a splendid literary record
of one of the early stages of the love of the higher
Wisdom among the Jews, and we may be thankful
that it has found so prominent and honourable a
place in the Biblical Literature.
LECTURE V.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom ; Contem-
porary Levitical Piety.
IT will hardly be denied that Jewish religion
owes a debt of gratitude to Babylon and Persia.
Not only a wholesome religious stimulus, but some
easily assimilated ideas and beliefs came to it from
these sources. I am afraid that we cannot speak as
favourably of the first contact between Jewish and
Greek thought. A most uncongenial spirit of doubt
now begins to be traceable in Judaism. The Book
of Proverbs itself that carefully prepared hand-
book of popular religious instruction contains at
least one passage (Prov. xxx., 2-4) directly anti-
thetical to the devout eulogy of Wisdom in Prov.
viii. Here is this unique sceptical poem. It takes
us back to a time before any product of the Wisdom-
Literature was a holy Scripture, and the remarkable
thing is that it has been interwoven with a very dif-
ferent passage, which has the nature of an antidote.
It is in two stanzas of six lines each, and this, if I
read it correctly, is the heading prefixed to it : " The
174 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Words of Agur ben Jakeh the Poet." Whether
this is the author's real name or a pseudonym, I
cannot tell.
" A solemn speech of the man whose inquiry was for God:
I have inquired for God, but have had no success.
For I have less sense than other men,
And there is in me no human understanding ;
Neither have I learned wisdom,
So that I might obtain the knowledge of the holy ones.
" Who can go up to heaven and come down ?
Who can gather the wind in his fists?
Who can bind the waters in a garment ?
Who can grasp all the ends of the earth ?
(Such an one would I question thus about God),
What is His name?
And what is the name of His sons, if thou knowest it ? "
Such is my view of the poem. The speaker is a
Jew, but with a strong dash of the Greek or modern
spirit. He is a prototype of Goethe's Faust. You
know those fine lines which the German poet puts
into the mouth of his hero, and which Bayard Taylor
has so finely translated :
" Who dare express Him ?
And who profess Him ?
Saying, ' I believe in Him ! '
Who, feeling, seeing,
Deny His being,
Saying, ' I believe Him not ! '
The All-enfolding,
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 175
The All-upholding,
Folds and upholds He not
Thee, me, Himself ?
Arches not then the sky above us ?
Lies not beneath us, firm, the earth ?
And rise not, on us shining,
Friendly, the everlasting stars ?
I have no name to give it !
Feeling is all in all ;
The name is sound and smoke,
Obscuring Heaven's clear glow."*
It may be something akin to this, only with less of
sentiment and theory, that the Hebrew poet means.
He has heard fine things said about God as the Cre-
ator and Governor of the world ; and various names
and titles have been given to this great Being,
Yahvve, for instance (so the too familiar Jehovah
should be corrected), Adonai, Elohim, El Shaddai,
Yahwe Sebaoth, God the Mighty One, Shepherd of
Israel. Which of these is the right name the name
which correctly expresses the divine nature or char-
acter, and which within the compass of a few letters
sums up the Infinite One ? The poet has also heard,
in favourite narratives and in temple-hymns, of the
" sons of God " a phrase which seems to him
hardly in accordance with those transcendental views
of the divine nature which have rightly taken the
* Goethe's Faust, by Bayard Taylor, i., 19 1/.
176 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
place of the naive conceptions of antiquity. Who
are those sons of God who present themselves at
stated times before a God called Yahwe, and what
are their names ? A favourite narrative declares that
one of them is called " the Satan," i.e., " the Adver-
sary," and another document* tells us of seven
chief sons of God Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael,
Saraqael, Gabriel. Have these statements, against
which a thinking man might find something to urge,
any intellectual cogency ?
This inquisitive thinker describes himself as one
who has inquired after God. If he could only find
a competent authority, he would apply to it for the
solution of these problems, to which he can find no
clue by his own brain-work. He is aware that there
is a kind of wisdom, or theosophy, which promises
to give men the knowledge of the holy or heavenly
ones. But can this wisdom redeem its promises?
Its professors indeed talk very confidently. One of
them, in captivating verses, has described the pri-
maeval birth of Wisdom, and her early home beside
God. But, O thou accomplished theosophist, how
didst thou attain this knowledge?
" Wast thou the first man born ?
Wast thou brought forth before the hills ?
* The Book of Enoch (see Charles's translation). The Ethiopia
text gives only these six names ; a Greek version adds Remeiel.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 177
Didst thou listen in the council of God,
And (thence) fetch wisdom unto thee ? " *
For clearly no ordinary human intellect can discover
these fine things. I, the poet, may have less sense
than other men, but, even were it otherwise, unless
I could go up to heaven and come down, unless
I could gather the wind in my two fists, unless I
could bind the waters of ocean in a garment, unless I
could take hold of all the ends of the earth, unless
I were a second Enoch and could claim familiarity
with the wise " holy ones " (/. e., the angels), I would
not assert my pretensions to have found wisdom.
Are you surprised at this scepticism ? Does it re-
mind you of the Aryan rather than of the Semitic
mind ? And are you not strongly inclined to apply
a little scepticism to my explanation ? But can you
find a better explanation in the commentaries? The
older books all assume the substantial correctness of
the opening verse in the received text, and the unity
of the whole of the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs.
These assumptions are scarcely tenable, and the ex-
planations based upon them are much more strained
than mine, and leave much that is unexplained.
That you should be surprised at this Jewish poet's
* Job xv., 7, 8 ; a view of the first man, which differs widely from
that in Gen. ii. He is nothing less than wisdom incarnate, a greater
Enoch. Cf. Prov. viii., 25.
178 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
scepticism is perfectly natural. But you must re-
member that we are now in the Greek period, and if
in the Rig Veda we find such an expression of hon-
est scepticism as that which I am about to quote,
why should we be surprised that the same character-
istically Aryan spirit should have spread from the
conquering Greeks to the conquered Jews? "Who
knows ? " says the unnamed Sanscrit poet,
" Who knows, who here can declare, whence has
sprung whence, this creation ? . . . From what this
creation arose, and whether (any one) made it, or not,
he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows,
or (even) he does not know." *
At a later period (second century A.D.) the sceptical
poet Agur might seem to have risen from the dead
in the person of Elisha ben Abuyah, who became
such a deep theosophist that he fell away from re-
vealed religion, f or, as Jewish writers say, pene-
trated into Paradise, and destroyed the plants which
grow there a delightful figure, is it not ? and greatly
to be preferred to more abstract phraseology. The
Rabbis speak with pain of Elisha's apostacy, and
give their lost leader the name of Acher, " a stranger,
one who is not of us."
* Muir, Ancient Sanscrit Texts, v., 356.
f We are informed that he was strengthened in his irreligion by
observing the hard trials of those who practised the Law, and who
notwithstanding rested their hopes of happiness on their legal right-
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 179
It seems almost miraculous that this strange
sceptical poem of Agur should have been safely
conveyed to the modern world. This would cer-
tainly not have occurred but for the pious protest
in which it was embalmed. It is to this protest of
orthodoxy that I now ask your attention.
The writer of the protest begins by declaring his
faith in divine revelation. He says :
" Every saying of God is free from dross ;
He is a shield to all those who take refuge in Him."
That is, the purest wisdom is to be found in God's
Book. The proof of this is the protection enjoyed
by those who trust in God. Piety and its rewards
are, it is implied, confined to those who take every
statement in the Bible to be authoritative. Then he
continues:
" See thou add not to His words,
Lest He convict thee and thou be proved a liar."
That is, what has not been revealed is not true.
The freethinker, who puts the title " solemn speech "
at the head of his poem as if it were a prophecy,
will have to suffer some calamity.
" Two things I ask of Thee;
Withhold them not from me, before I die.
Levity and the speech (of folly
And) lying do Thou put far from me.
180 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Be my lot neither poverty nor riches,
Feed me with the bread which is my share;
Else if I were full, I might become a denier,
And say, Who is Jehovah ?
Or if I were impoverished, I might be so robbed of un-
derstanding
As to treat profanely the name of my God." *
These two petitions are in reality but one. It is
the poet Agur to whom this worthy man alludes
Agur, who had professed not to know the right name
of God, and whom the orthodox protester may per-
haps have supposed to have denied that there was
any Being, even in heaven, who could bind the waters,
and gather the wind. In short, the champion of
orthodoxy asks that he may not become like Agur.
He sees that if he were at either extreme of society
he might be tempted to deny the God of Israel, for
the rich man appears not to need God, and the
poor man seems to be forsaken by Him. He there-
fore declines riches a somewhat remarkable phenom-
enon ; the other wise men are obviously far enough
from doing so. It is true, this wise man is partly
influenced by a wish to counteract the words of
Agur-, perhaps if put to the test he might have
found riches not wholly undesirable.
The other proverbial poems of Agur, contained in
the same chapter of Proverbs, do not concern us.
* Prov. xxx., 5-9.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 181
It is enough that we have found a stray specimen of
a literature of scepticism. I do not hesitate to use
this expression, for such a poem cannot have
stood alone. Homer tells us indeed that there was
only one Thersites in the Greek army before Troy.
Fortunate Achilles and Agamemnon ! There were
certainly not a few Agurs at Jerusalem from the
third century B.C. onwards. Evidence of this is
supplied by a work of a very different school the
Book of Enoch. The passage which I shall quote
belongs to the earliest part of this book :
" And now I know this mystery, that many sinners will
alter and pervert the words of uprightness, and will speak
wicked words, and lie, and practise great deceits, and
write books concerning their words." *
The supposed speaker is one of the very persons
to whom Agur probably alludes when he says,
" Who has gone up to heaven and come down?"
the patriarch Enoch. But his words are those of a
writer of the age of John Hyrcanus, who reigned
from 135 to 105 B.C. And the statement is con-
firmed by the editorial appendix to one of the latest
writings in the Old Testament, where there seems
to be an emphatic caution against philosophical
books of a more " advanced " character than those
* Enoch civ., 10 (Charles's ed., p. 299).
1 82 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
sanctioned in the Canon. I will read a passage from
this appendix :
" The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails
firmly driven in. They were written down [/'. e., edited]
by framers of collections, but were given by another
teacher.* And as to all besides these, my son, be on thy
guard. Of making many books there is no end, and too
much reading fatigues the body." f
This short, condensed style is in the manner of the
later Jewish writers, who make large demands on the
intelligence of their readers. The passage seems to
mean this : " Sayings of wise men, like those in Pro-
verbs and Ecclesiastes, are highly to be recommended,
for they stimulate the mind and do not burden the
memory. They have no doubt been edited by au-
thorised persons, but they were originally produced,
in each case, by a teacher distinct from the editors.
They may be read with confidence ; there is no legiti-
mate requirement which they do not satisfy. But
there are also many other literary products in circula-
tion. I warn my disciples to be on their guard against
these. No good, but much useless fatigue, is to be
got from reading them." The books to which the
epilogue containing these cautions is attached are
Proverbs (which includes the fragments of the poems
* This view of the text, however, is only probable,
f Eccles. xii., n, 12.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 183
of Agur) and Ecclesiastes. These are pronounced
not too " advanced " for faithful Israelites to read.
It is Ecclesiastes which now beckons us, that
most singular book which Heinrich Heine called the
Song of Songs of Scepticism, and Franz Delitzsch,
by a doubtful correction, the Song of Songs of Reli-
gion. It is quite impossible to do justice to my sub-
ject without some reference to Ecclesiastes, though,
unfortunately, I must add that this is one of the most
difficult books to comprehend in the form in which it
has come down to us. The inconsistencies which the
book presents are much more startling than we can
readily account for on the assumption of its integrity.
The inconsistencies of Montaigne are those of an
open and a growing mind ; those of Ecclesiastes are
such as cannot exist together in a rational thinker. I
admit that very similar inconsistencies exist in the
Book of Job, and that if we have been able to con-
vince ourselves of the unity of the Book of Job we
may not find it impossible to defend the integrity of
Ecclesiastes. If, however, we have found the Book
of Job to be a monument, not of one, but of two or
three conflicting schools, we shall be prepared to find
more than one school represented in Ecclesiastes, and
if the contents of Ecclesiastes, apart from certain per-
fectly orthodox passages, are more startling than
even the hardest parts of Job, we shall be prepared
184 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
to find that still more violent means were taken to
mitigate the shock which Ecclesiastes gave to the
reader. Lastly, if in later times both Proverbs and
the Song of Songs were ascribed to Solomon, we
shall not be surprised if, after the Book of Ecclesi-
astes had been made theologically sound, another
late writer should have made it subservient to the
legend of Solomon's repentance. These three things
have, as I believe, come to pass. Ecclesiastes has
been interpolated in an orthodox interest.* Either
accident or violence has almost entirely destroyed
the connection ; and the speaker, Koheleth (our Bible
renders, " the Preacher " ; the name denotes a repre-
sentative of the class of public preachers, without
reference to any individual), has actually been iden-
tified with Solomon a step which has naturally
involved fresh interpolations. It is an extremely dif-
ficult task to recover conjecturally the original order
of the sayings. It seems to me as if passages had
been omitted as well as inserted, and I do not feel at
all sure that Gustav Bickell in his restoration has not
been rather too anxious to produce a perfect treatise
of Hebrew philosophy. According to this Roman
* This is not a new view. The objections which have been offered
to it appear to the present writer to have no cogency. To discuss
the question adequately would only be possible in a commentary on
Ecclesiastes, written from an " advanced" critical point of view, in
which the interpolations would be pointed out.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 185
Catholic scholar, the true Ecclesiastes is a carefully
thought-out answer to a question familiar enough to
ourselves, Is life worth living? He makes it fall
into two parts, a critical-speculative and a practical-
ethical part, the former showing that supposed abso-
lute goods (everything which a man has, or knows,
or can do) are resultless and unsatisfying, the latter
recommending, as at least relatively good, wisdom
and the cheerful enjoyment of life.
It would hardly be safe to adopt this theory, and
the more so as another reconstruction may soon be
hoped for from America.* All that I lay stress upon
is the great probability that the present disorder in
the contents of the book did not originally exist.
The author was certainly, considering the gloominess
of his time, not a contemptible writer. The tact
with which he introduces occasional pieces of met-
rical verse is one indication of this. It is not likely
that he would have turned out so unequal a piece of
work as our present Ecclesiastes, and done so much
injustice to his argument. Gladly would I continue
this subject, but I must not be tempted away from my
main object, which is to ascertain how much religion
the author had. I will quote his finest bit of writing
later on.
* It will form part of the Polychrome Bible ; Professor Haupt is
the author.
1 86 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
That he has warm and deep feelings is plain at a
glance, and a careful reading will show that he has
also a religion he is neither practically nor theoret-
ically an atheist. But compare the God in whom
he believes with the Jehovah of the psalmists, and
oh, the difference ! That he never names the name
Yahwe or Jehovah is a trifle ; the misery is that his
God is so far removed from the earth, and so un-
sympathetic. He is one whom it is wise to fear and
to obey, even if no reward for obedience can be
reckoned upon, but whom it is not easy to love, and
impossible in any sense to comprehend.* Long ago
this God has predestinated f all that shall happen ;
prudence therefore bids us fold our arms and acqui-
esce in the inevitable. So, then, to the most funda-
mental tenet of the earlier Judaism, the belief in
one God, the author clings ; it gives him no joy, no
rapture, but it saves him from the gulf of waters.
On the other hand, he has abandoned (and so doubt-
less has Agur, the freethinker) a tenet only less fun-
damental that of a proportionate retribution upon
earth for the righteous and the wicked, and even
refuses the sweet anodyne, accepted by most Jews,
of a great reckoning-day in the future, when there
will be a separation between the righteous and the
wicked, between him who serves God and him who
*Eccles. viii., 17. fEccles. vi., 10.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 187
serves Him not. I will not say that the author any-
where denies that God does sometimes punish the
sinner. But of anything like a principle of retribu-
tive justice in the divine government he can see no
trace. He says with much bitterness :
" There is many a righteous man who perishes in
spite of his righteousness, and many a wicked man who
lives long in spite of his wickedness." *
And again :
" There is a vanity (a disappointment or disillusion-
ment) which happens on the earth, viz., that there are
righteous men who fare according to the work of the
wicked, and that there are wicked men who fare accord-
ing to the work of the righteous. I say that this also is
vanity." f
Such statements, unsoftened by any reference to a
final judgment, gave great pain to the devout.
They feared for the young readers who might be
charmed by the boldness of the author, and led into
the devious paths of heterodoxy. Recourse was
therefore had by pious editors to the expedient of
interpolation. A considerable degree of success was
obtained. In the Epilogue the author was described
as a simply devout man, and in the body of the
work he was made to confess that the wicked were
really punished here, and would be punished here-
*Eccles. vii., 15. f Eccles. viii., 14.
1 88 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
after. Later on, the popular paraphrase called the
Targum went a great deal farther, adapting the
book to the fully developed eschatology of later
Judaism. But when you have before you an Eccle-
siastes in which the results of criticism are indicated,
you will, I think, see that there are only two un-
doubtedly original passages in which the moral prac-
tice and the outward fortunes of men are brought
into any kind of relation. I will quote and explain
these passages. One of them reads thus :
" Be not overmuch wicked, neither be thou foolish ;
why shouldest thou die before thy time ? " *
The other is:
" When thou hast vowed a vow unto God, defer not
the payment. Suffer not thy mouth to bring punishment
on thy body, neither say thou before the messenger, It
was spoken rashly ; why should God be angry at thy
voice, and destroy the work of thy hands ? " f
The first of these passages seems to say that there
are certain extremely wicked acts which exhaust the
long-suffering of God, and bring the surest punish-
ment on the offender. But this can hardly be the
true meaning, for a companion saying exists, not less
remarkably expressed :
" Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself
overwise ; why shouldest thou destroy thyself ? " J
*Eccles. vii., 17 (Authorised Version),
f Eccles. v. , 4, 6 (new translation).
J Eccles. vii. , 16 (Authorised Version).
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 189
Clearly this cannot mean that those who make right-
eousness and wisdom their chief concern are displeas-
ing to God. The two sayings must have been framed
from a practical man's point of view, and the terms
"righteous" and "wicked" must be taken as they
were commonly understood in the religious world,
i. e., in a Pharisaean sense. Righteousness, then, de-
notes the observance, and wickedness the neglect, of
the more minute details of the Law. To carry legal
obedience to the point of asceticism was not less
suicidal than to allow a sense of superiority to such
pedantry to tempt a man into sensual licence. In
both cases the punishment referred to is simply that
which arises from the transgression of natural laws.
He who is at once moderately pious and moderately
worldly will, according to Koheleth, be a truly wise
man.
The second passage seems to show that even this
rationalist thinker was not completely emancipated
from traditional scruples. One offence there was
which would not escape punishment, and that was,
to vow and not to pay the vow. If you do this, says
the author, you will have to suffer in your person,
and when you tell the priest's messenger that you
spoke the vow inconsiderately, it is not he, but God,
who will be irritated, and who will punish you with
the loss of property. So the very man who does not
igo Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
believe in the Messiah, believes in a divine vengeance
for unfulfilled vows !
One cannot help pitying our author. Of course
his conscience bade him disbelieve in the judgment,
and yet he could ill afford to do so. I do not deny
that there were Jews in that age who were as capable
as St. Bernard of disinterested love of God. For
instance, there was the great teacher Antigonus of
Soco, who said, " Be not as slaves that serve with a
view to recompense ; but be as those who serve dis-
interestedly, and let the fear of Heaven [*'. e., God]
be upon you." It is true he uses the word " fear,"
but what he means is reverent love. We must re-
member, however, that Antigonus was a disciple of
Simeon the Righteous, whose characteristic saying
he must be considered to presuppose. The saying
of Simeon the Righteous ran thus :
" The world rests on three things on the Law, on the
services of worship, and on acts of loving-kindness."
If the author of Ecclesiastes had been as devoted to
the Law and to the forms of worship as Antigonus of
Soco, if he had regarded them as absolute goods, the
following of which was its own reward, he might
have safely abandoned the Messianic hope. But this
was certainly not the case. He believed in no absolute
goods, was no enthusiast even for the Law, and
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 191
thought it necessary to deprecate excessive piety.
Less than other men, therefore, could he with im-
punity abandon the belief in God's retributive justice.
If, indeed, he had accepted a certain new doctrine,
just beginning to be popular, that of Immortality,
all might have been well. But no one could prove
to his satisfaction that the spirit of man went upward,
and that it was only the spirit of the beasts which
went downward to the earth.* The wonder is that
he could maintain such morality and such a belief in
God as he had. " Fear thou God," f he says with all
earnestness. If he recommends the pleasures of the
table, he does so with a sad irony ; enjoy at any rate
these pleasures, he says, because they have not the
painful consequences of higher pleasures, and because
the time for enjoying them is so short ; besides,
he strangely adds, they are the gift of God. For
himself, it is true, they have long lost their savour.
But youth will be youth, and he does not grudge the
young men, for whom he especially writes, a chance
of trying these pleasures before they pronounce them
mere apples of Sodom.
He also dwells strongly on the happiness of a
pure wedlock. His sincerity in this is beyond all
doubt. And here, at least, he is a true Jew ; here, at
least, he shows his aversion to one of the most
* Eccles. iii., 21. f Eccles. v., 7.
192 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
characteristic vices of Hellenism. That he has
himself had a bad experience of women,* and has
apparently missed that prize which is " above rubies,"
does not make him grudge a better fortune to oth-
ers. Enjoy life, he says, with a woman whom thou
lovest, all thy fleeting days f ; and again :
" Give no place to sorrow in thy mind,
From thy body keep trouble afar ;
Of thy cistern take good heed
In the days of youthful age."J
What " cistern " means in a Semitic poem is well
expressed by Mr. Lyall in a note to one of his
translations of old Arabic poetry : " The ' cistern '
is a man's home and family, and whatever he holds
dear."
To those of riper age our author speaks in more
subdued tones :
" Better to go to the house of mourning
Than to go to the house of feasting.
For there is the end of all,
The living will take it to heart.
Better is sorrow than laughter,
With a gloomy face the heart is cheerful."
I cannot feel sure, however, that the author practised
*Eccles. vii., 27, 28.
f Eccles. viii., 9.
\ Eccle<=. xi., loa, xii., la ; cf. Cheyne, Job and Solomon, pp. 227,
300.
Eccles. vii., 2, 3.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 193
his own advice to visit mourners. Had he done so,
we should surely have heard something of the duty
of showing practical sympathy to the distressed.
He evidently had a true sense of the misery of
mankind, but it does not appear that he troubled
himself much about the misery of individuals.
The writers of the Book of Proverbs are not open
to this criticism. For instance, one of them says,
speaking of some outrage on humanity :
" Deliver those who are being taken to death,
And those who go with tottering steps to be slain, hold
thou back."*
But I am afraid that under such circumstances our
author would have been content with looking sadly
on, and saying with a groan, " This also is vanity."
Perhaps he may be excused on account of his
advanced age, or perhaps it is his theory of life
which has weakened his benevolent impulses. For
he tells us :
" I have seen all the works that are done under the
sun ; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and
a deficit cannot be reckoned in." f
And then we meet with this remarkable confession
of ineradicable egoism :
*Prov. xxiv., II. fEccles. i., 14, 15.
194 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
" And I hated all my toil which I had performed under
the sun, because I shall have to leave the fruits of it to
one who will come after me. And who knows whether
he will be a wise man or a fool ? And he will rule over
all that I have gained with toil and wisdom under the
sun ; this also is vanity." *
No thought enters his head of lending his money
to Jehovah, as the proverb-writers said.f or of giving
all his goods to build schools and found hospitals ;
and it is characteristic of the poverty of his book
from a philanthropic point of view that a passage
which in reality is simply an exhortation to bold
business enterprise (" Send thy bread upon the
waters, for thou shalt find it after many days "), has
been converted by preachers into a recommendation
of beneficence. The truth is that the unhappy
author has but a weak social sense. From old habit
and the influence of his orthodox education he may
act in many things like any ordinary Jew, but the
bond of Jewish nationality exercises almost no in-
ward force upon him, and he has not gained that
new sense of the solidarity of mankind which is so
powerfully expressed by the great Stoic Roman em-
peror. Mankind is to him only an aggregate of
millions of worthless atoms. Happier, far happier,
were Saul and Ahab, and many another who sacri-
*Eccles. ii., 18, 19. fProv. xix., 17.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 195
ficed his life for his people, not hoping to receive it
again, than this melancholy egoist, who had in him
no doubt the germs of fine qualities, but whose
development had been rudely interrupted by an
excessive deference to the spirit of scepticism. Cer-
tainly he was not a bad man, and yet there must
have been a weakness in his moral fibre ; otherwise
his Jewish feeling would have been keener, and his
opposition to complete pessimism more effective.
There must also, one thinks, have been some defect
in his intellectual capacity ; else he would have been
drawn irresistibly either to the Hebrew-Persian doc-
trine of the Resurrection, or to the newer Greek
doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul. Either of
these tenets would have saved him from spiritual
famine, and have enabled him to carry on the work
so usefully begun by successive writers in that noble
composite poem, the Book of Job.
No wonder that opinions were much divided
about this extraordinary book. Many were repelled,
but almost as many (I suppose) were attracted by it.
Doubters are always grateful to the writer who can
give vigorous and, to some extent, artistic expres-
sion to the thoughts which stir within them. That
there was much scepticism among the Jews in the
later post-exilic period is certain, though, naturally
enough, the evidence for this is scanty. The over-
196 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
throw of the Persian Empire by Alexander was of
itself a fruitful source of religious doubt. Long had
that empire been tottering to its fall, and the Jews
had comforted themselves for their manifold miser-
ies by the thought that when the fall came the re-
stored kingdom of Israel would come too. But it
came not, and some men began to think that fortune
was on the side of Greek power, and truth on that
of Greek philosophy. Even the Maccabaean revolu-
tion did not succeed in extinguishing the sceptical
tendency. The extreme Hellenisers, who would
have substituted Zeus for Jehovah, were no doubt
swept away by it. But the improvement in Jewish
circumstances was not such as to render religious
doubt impossible. The old doctrine of retribution
and the newer Messianic hope were equally hard to
reconcile with facts, and the increasing knowledge
of the world made the narrowness of Jewish ortho-
doxy more and more unpalatable to many thinkers.
To such persons the deeply felt and vigorously ex-
pressed scepticism of Ecclesiastes appealed with
great force. To suppress the book was impossible.
All that the religious authorities could do was to
neutralise its teaching. This they effected (as we
have seen), partly by shuffling up certain sections,
and so destroying the connection, and partly by
interpolating passages referring to the future judg-
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 197
ment and to the blast and penitent King Solomon.
To us the Solomonic reference is shocking in the
extreme, but an earlier age (probably) had already
seen equally startling transformations of history in
the Books of Chronicles. The Epilogue, too, received
this remarkable appendix :
" The final result, all having been heard : Fear God,
and keep His commandments, for this is the whole (duty)
of man. For every work will God bring into the judg-
ment (which will be) upon all that is concealed and all
that is manifest, whether it be good or evil."*
Thus the author was made the preacher of a doctrine
in which he did not believe, and a pillar of an ortho-
doxy which he had tried and found wanting. He
even became idealised into a penitent, backsliding
king, and under cover of that king's name his book
made its way into the Canon.
And now as to the date of the book. We know,
of course, that it is a post-exilic work ; no critic
would hesitate to use it in a historical sketch like
the present. But to what part of the post-exilic
period does it belong? The question is of much
interest, and presses for an answer. That the spirit
and tendency of the book presuppose Greek philo-
sophical influence is sufficiently clear. Take the
first autobiographical passage ; of course I omit the
*Eccles. xii., 13, 14.
198 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
interpolated words " was [or, have been] king over
Israel in Jerusalem."
" I Koheleth (or, the Preacher) gave my mind to
making search and exploration, by wisdom, concerning
all that is done under heaven ; it is sore trouble which
God has given to the human race to undergo. I saw all
works which are done under the sun." *
This means that Koheleth is, or would like to be,
a critical inquirer into the condition of humanity.
Can there be anything more un-Hebraic, more un-
Oriental, than the idea, unless, indeed, it be the
form of expression ? And what unsophisticated
Hebrew writer could possibly have understood this
saying :
" Also He has put the world into their mind, except
that man cannot find out from beginning to end the
work which God has made"?f
Certain passages suggest the possibility that the
author had a leaning to Stoicism. Just so, the say-
ing of Antigonus of Soco (quoted elsewhere) on
disinterested obedience may seem to have Stoic
affinities. Nor is it inconceivable that the ideas of
other philosophical schools may have filtered down
to our author. It would be dangerous, however,
to speak positively on this subject, because of the
*Eccles. i., 12-14.
f Eccles. iii., II. See Cheyne, yob and Solomon, p. 210.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 199
want of undeniably technical philosophical terms in
the Hebrew text, of Ecclesiastes. Indirect Greek
philosophical influence is all that is quite certain.
It is at any rate something to know that our
author's date is subsequent to the conquests of
Alexander. On linguistic grounds he must, it would
seem, have written later than 290 B.C., the earliest
date which anyone has proposed for the Book of
Ecclesiasticus, and if so, since neither the Macca-
baean rising nor the preceding period provides a
suitable background, we cannot stop short till we
come to the time of John Hyrcanus (135-105 B.C.).
To this period Ecclesiastes has been assigned by
Renan. The objection is twofold : First, the reign
of Hyrcanus was a brilliant one, and made most
Jews feel proud of their country.* And next,
though Hyrcanus had the royal power, he contented
himself with the title of high priest. The reign
of Alexander Jannaeus (104-78 B.C.), a son of John
Hyrcanus, comes next into consideration. It was
a period of miserable civil wars, and the doings of
the King were such as to alienate all high-minded
Jews. It was also a period when Greek influence
was very strong ; Josephus tells us that the King's
brother and predecessor, Aristobulus, bore the title
* We see this from a remarkable passage in pseudo-Jonathan's
Targum on Deut. xxxiii., II.
2OO Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
of Philhellen. But how strange it would be if a
book written at this period gave no indication of
the strife which then raged between the Sadducees
and the Pharisees ! Let us go a little farther down,
and read Josephus's account of the reign of Herod,
miscalled the Great. It was a time, he tells us, of
general terror and insecurity. The citizens of Jeru-
salem dared not even walk or eat together, because
the tyrant had forbidden all social gatherings. Spies
were set everywhere, both in and near the city ;
Herod himself, it is said, mingled in disguise with
the people, not, like a famous caliph, to find out
whether they were happy,* but to catch up expres-
sions of discontent. His avowed and irreconcilable
adversaries he persecuted, and if they protested he
took their lives. A general oath of allegiance was
imposed, from which only the Essenes, to whom
Herod was partial, were excused. Above 6000
Pharisees refused the oath, and were fined ; some
of them were afterwards revengefully slain.f I
confess that I can at present find no period which
so adequately explains the allusions in Ecclesiastes
as this. Can we not see that the chief source of
the misery described in it is the general sense of
danger? Listen to this advice of the author:
* The story of Haroun-al-Rashid is legendary, however,
f Jos., Ant., xv., 10, 4 ; xvii., 2, 4.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 201
" Curse not the king, even on thy couch,
And curse not the rich in thy bedchamber,
For the birds of the air may carry the sound,
And the winged ones report the speech." *
He tells us, too, that this suspicious ruler is no high-
born personage, but has the tyrannical instincts of a
parvenu :
" Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a servant !
Happy art thou, O land, when thou hast a king who
was born free." f
Singularly enough, there is a Talmudic legend % which
makes a distinguished Rabbi, deprived of his sight
by Herod, quote these very passages in an interview
with the King. I should mention that Herod had
put on a disguise, and was seeking to tempt the Rabbi
to speak bitter words against the man who had blinded
him. The story belongs to a class of narratives which
are obviously unhistorical, but at least shows the feel-
ing of a later age that the tyranny of Herod was most
fitly illustrated by Ecclesiastes.
The whole book may be explained from this point
of view, and it will become truly alive. For in-
* Eccles. x., 20. " Bedchamber" is a necessary correction.
f Eccles. x., i6a, ija. The passage quoted reminds us of Isa.
Hi., 4; the unquoted portion, of Isa. v., II. The writer finds in
these prophetic passages an applicability to his own times.
$ Baba Bathra, 4a. Usually this story is treated as historical.
But see the remark at the close of this paragraph.
2O2 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
stance, why does the writer compassionate a land
whose king is a servant ? Because Herod belonged
to a race which had been lately subjugated by the
Jews, and even compelled to change its religion. In
the Talmud he actually receives the title " slave of
the Asmonaean house," reminding us of Ecclesiastes,
because the Idumaeans had been conquered by John
Hyrcanus. Compare this passage too :
" I saw slaves on horseback, and princes (walking) like
slaves on the ground." *
The meaning of this may be that Herod dispossessed
the Asmonaeans and their friends, and put his own
partisans {parvenus and perhaps Idumaeans) into all
the best posts. And here is another striking allusion
to politics :
" Be not involved in a bad affair ;
For he can do all that he wills ;
Because the word of the king is decisive ;
Who can ask, What doest thou ? " f
Do we not feel the heavy air of the despotism of
Herod ? Experience has warned the writer of the
fatal consequences of being involved in revolutionary
attempts. Listen again :
" The wise man observes the king's commandment
Because of the oath by God." J
* Eccles. x., 7. f Eccles. viii., 3, 4 ; cf. x., 4.
\ Eccles. viii., 2 (following Bickell).
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 203
This seems to allude to the compulsory oath of
which Josephus has told us. A similar allusion is
perhaps traceable in the following passage :
" There is one and the same fate for every one, for the
righteous and the wicked, for the clean and for the un-
clean, for the sacrificer and for the non-sacrificer. The
good man fares just like the sinner, and he that swears
as he that fears an oath." *
Here there seems to be a reference to the Essenes,
who, as Josephus asserts, refrained from the usual
sacrifices, having purer lustrations of their own, and
forbade swearing, because a man whose simple af-
firmation could not be trusted was condemned al-
ready. Fortunately for them Herod respected their
scruple about swearing. But our author evidently
depreciates the class of non-swearers. Presumably
he includes the Essenes (who also, be it remembered,
rejected matrimony) among the "ultra-religious"
people who, as he forcibly says, " destroyed them-
selves. "
There is a description of Essene asceticism in the
Book of Enoch,f which, though written from a very
different point of view, confirms the opinion here
adopted, viz., that the author of Ecclesiastes makes
allusions to the Essenes. In it these self-denying
men are represented as loving heaven more than
* Eccles. ix. f 2. f Enoch cviii. ; cf. cii.
204 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
their worldly life, and are contrasted with the sin-
ners who deny judgment and resurrection. The
antithesis between Ecclesiastes and Enoch is com-
plete.*
We need not be surprised at this wide divergence
between the writers of the two books. The one
gives us the dry light of experience and philosophy ;
the other irradiates the facts of life with the light of
visions and dreams. The one believes in the divine
guidance of the fortunes of Israel ; the other has
lost almost all sense of nationality without having
gained the greater citizenship of the world. The
writer in Enoch is in spirit, if not in fact, an Essene ;
the author of Ecclesiastes would sympathise more
with the Sadducees than with any other of the lead-
ing schools of thought. Thus we have in their
respective writings, monuments of two of the three
great tendencies of later Judaism. I do not, of
course, say that the writer of Ecclesiastes was a
typical Sadducee. Probably Ben Sira the wise
man who composed Ecclesiasticus was closer to
the ordinary Sadducaean type, alike in his sacerdotal-
ism and in his theology.f But there was, I suppose,
* Cf. Lecture VI.
f This is confirmed by the fact that the Books of the Sadducees and
the Book of Ben Sira are placed side by side on the old Jewish Index
Expurgatorius. See Sankcdrin, loob ; Taylor, Jewish Fathers, p.
129.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 205
room in the great Sadducaean party for men of
differing degrees of culture and conservatism. I
may add that in the so-called Psalms of Solomon (see
Lecture VI.) we have an undoubted record of the
religion of the Pharisees. It is well that we should
learn to know every school or party from its own
ablest representatives, and so students may be ad-
vised to read these books, which cannot fail to cor-
rect the bias with which, if their education has been
Christian, they not unnaturally approach New
Testament times.
It is possible, no doubt, that we may have less re-
ligious sympathy with Ecclesiastes than with the
other two books, and I am quite certain that looking
back on the Book of Job and even on those of
Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus, we shall feel disap-
pointed at the apparent failure of the great movement
towards Wisdom. But let us remember that the
writer with whom religiously we sympathise least
is the one with whom on other grounds we cannot
help sympathising most. His frankness and the
width of his outlook both charm us, and, when we
recollect the miserable age in which he lived, our
criticism of his religious deficiencies gives place to
the sincerest pity. He might, no doubt, have saved
his religious fervour by joining the Pharisees or the
Essenes. But to have done so he would have had to
206 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
sacrifice the conception of a broad human culture
which he had gained from Greece. It was needful
that the attempt should be made to engraft this
conception on Jewish thought, and so to combine
Jewish theism with Hellenic rationalism. The first
to make this attempt suffered for his boldness, but
we, who pity but who do not dare to censure the
atrophy of certain parts of his higher nature (similar
to that which, by his own admission, was suffered by
the illustrious Darwin), cannot withhold our appre-
ciation of the noble though unsuccessful endeavour
of the writer of Ecclesiastes.
For, after all, it would have been an immense
misfortune if Jewish theism had become absolutely
and permanently committed to Pharisaism. Later
on, the Jewish people in Palestine was indeed
virtually captured by Pharisaism, but the existence
of Ecclesiastes in the Canon, even in its manipulated
form, was a protest against this, and unless the
world were to continue divided into Jews and non-
Jews it was necessary that the attempt to Hellenise
Jewish religion should be renewed. What attitude
our philosophic Sadducee would have adopted to-
wards such a renewal, it is useless to surmise. But
one may justly suppose that his outlook would have
been far less pessimistic, and that some elementary
form of the idea of progress would have compensated
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 207
him for the renunciation of the inadequate Messi-
anic idea of the Pharisees.
It is the absence of this inspiriting idea which
makes his confessions morally so great a disappoint-
ment. A writer may be as severe as he will on the
sins and follies of the present, if only he leaves open
a door of hope for the future. Carlyle is commonly
thought a gloomy writer, but he is a truly edifying
one, because on the whole, at any rate in his time of
vigour, he believed in progress. Who is not helped
morally by that fine passage in Sartor Resartus?
" Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind ;
Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that
summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new
advancement."
Contrast this fine but most dispiriting passage in
Ecclesiastes :
" One generation goes, another comes,
But the earth abides for ever ;
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
And pants to his place where he rises ;
The wind goes to the south, and whirls about to the
north,
Whirling about continually ;
And upon his circuits the wind returns.
All streams run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full ;
Unto the place whither the streams go, thither they go
again.
208 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
All things are full of weariness ; no man can utter it ;
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with
hearing.
The day that has been is that which will be,
And that which happened is that which will happen,
And there is no new thing under the sun." *
O lame and impotent conclusion ! Why, Montaigne
can teach us something better than that ; for he de-
clares that " the human spirit is a great worker of
miracles." And it is certain that such miracles can
only be wrought through the enabling power of that
supreme Wisdom who was in the beginning with
God, and has " her delight in the race of men," who
cannot be hindered, is ready to do good, is kind to
man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power,
overseeing all things.f Such at any rate was the
belief of the greater Hebrew sages, and though this
noble idea, partly, perhaps, derived from Persia, was
now, through Greek influence, lost by a leading
writer, it was destined to be brought into fresh
prominence at no distant date on the hospitable soil
of a Hellenised corner of Egypt.
For some reasons I should be glad to pause here.
The exceptional character of the author of Ecclesi-
astes has a fascination for me, and I would rather
that the spell should remain for the present un-
broken. But historical fairness compels me, at the
*Eccles. i., 4-9. f VVisd. vii., 22, 23 ; cf. Prov. viii., 22-31.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 209
risk of weakening the effect of the preceding study,
to introduce the reader to a less interesting but
hardly less important student of wisdom. I refer to
the author of Ecclesiasticus. For I must not let you
suppose that all the wise men of the later period re-
sembled the unfortunate author of Ecclesiastes, or
that heresy had a greater vogue than orthodox
wisdom.
The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach (or Ben
Sira, as I shall call him) was probably written about
200 B.C. It is of the religious views of the author
that I have now to speak. I shall base my state-
ments as much as possible on the Hebrew portion of
the text which has lately been discovered.
And, first, I think we must observe a decided
abatement in the cosmopolitan tendency of Hebrew
Wisdom. The author of Ecclesiasticus makes fre-
quent reference to Israel, and its spiritual primacy
among the nations.* And in the Praise of Wisdom,
which, in imitation of Proverbs viii., he feels bound
to give, he goes beyond his model in the declaration
that, though in all the earth she had a possession,
yet her permanent home was in Jerusalem ; he even
says that she is identical with " the Book of the
Covenant, the law which Moses commanded us."f
*Ecclus. xvii., 17 ; xxiv., 8 ; xzxvi., 12 ; xxxvii., 25.
f Ecclus. xxiv. , 23.
14
2io Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
This is a statement which no Alexandrian Jewish
scholar would have made, and which has distinctly
Zoroastrian affinities, for Din or Daena, the imper-
sonation of the Zoroastrian Law, is called one of the
heavenly creations of " the much-knowing Lord,"
Ahura-mazda.* Later on, it became a fundamental
Jewish tenet that the pre-existent, creative Wisdom
was no other than the Law.f
Ben Sira, then, honoured the Law, and was im-
pelled to do this more openly than the moral teachers
before him. If he does not mention Ezra among
the famous men of old, it is simply because the only
public services assigned to Ezra by the record were
such as it would have equally depressed Ben Sira
to speak of, and grieved his disciples to hear4 Prac-
tically, however, his respect for the Law is tempered
by his regard for the other religious classics of his
people, from all of which he borrows phrases im-
partially. That he troubled himself much about
ritual details is not probable. It is true, he says
that sacrifices, being ordained, are not to be neglected,
but he also says that deeds of loving-kindness are the
true thank-offerings, and that to forsake unrighteous-
* See the Din-Yast, Zend-Avesta (Oxford), ii., 264^.
f Ezr. vii. , 25 , points in this direction. Cf. also the saying of Simeon
the Righteous, quoted already.
| Even of Nehemiah, Ben Sira can only report that he had restored
the walls and set up the gates (Ecclus. xlix., 13).
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 211
ness is a propitiation,* and in the temple services it
is the external pomp together with the music and
singing which attracts and delights him. Doubtless
he honours highly the priests, the sons of Aaron,
whose privileges he contrasts advantageously with
those of the family of David.f This naturally
followed from his respect for the Law. But it is
as the guardians of the visible centre of the Jewish
church-nation, much more than as sacrificers, that
he venerates the priests.
The hope of the Messiah is less real to our author
than to the older sages,;}: but his doctrine of the
latter days is more developed than theirs. Firmly
as he believes in present retribution, he cannot do
without a final judgment, and that strange prophecy
of Malachi, which is even to-day such a power in the
Jewish world, respecting the reappearance of the
prophet Elijah, is referred to with undoubting belief
by Ben Sira. When Elijah comes, the crisis in
Israel's fortunes will have arrived. All the other
eschatological prophecies will then be realised in
blissful experience :
" Happy is he who sees thee [viz., Elijah], and dies,
For he will not die, but live indeed."
* Ecclus. xxxv., 1-6.
f Ecclus. xlv., 25; David's inheritance was "only from son to
son " (so Ileb. text). | See Lecture IV. Ecclus. xlviii., n.
212 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
True, Malachi's prophecy by itself does not warrant
this, but taken in combination with another great
prophecy it does. In the Book of Isaiah we read
that, in Mount Zion, God " will annihilate death for
ever." * Therefore the righteous whom Elijah finds
alive will pass at once into the new life without
tasting death ; Ben Sira's correction in the second
line of a word in the first line has a fine rhetorical
effect.
There is no dualism and no pessimism in the
author of Ecclesiasticus. " When the wicked man
curses Satan," he says, " he curses his own soul,"f
for the tempter called Satan is identical with the
inborn tempter of the heart the weak or depraved
will. From all troublesome speculation Ben Sira
escapes into that picture-gallery of Jehovah's works
which we already know from the Book of Job.
There is no room here either for an Adversary or
for the spectre of Disillusionment. At the con-
clusion of his summary of the marvels of nature,
Ben Sira says, with devout simplicity :
" More in this style we will not add ;
The end of the discourse is, He is all.
If more were disclosed, we should (still) not search
Him out,
For greater is He than all His works.
* Isa. uv., 8. f Ecclus. xxi., 27.
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 213
What man has seen Him, that he might tell us ?
What man can magnify Him as He is ?
There are yet many things that are greater than these ;
But little of His works have I seen.
Jehovah has made all that is,
And to His pious ones He has given wisdom." *
I cannot, however, take leave of Ben Sira without
comparing him with another writer, who represents a
slightly different type of piety. The author and
compiler of Chronicles (which, by rights, should
include Ezra and Nehemiah) was by calling doubt-
less one of the Levitical musicians ; his date is fifty
or sixty years earlier than that of Ben Sira. The
man is often more interesting than his work; or
rather, the work is often most interesting as a veiled
picture of its author. The Chronicler is, of course,
more attracted by the details of the ritual than Ben
Sira, the. layman. It is a pleasure to him to give
somewhat minute descriptions of the services and
even of the vessels of the temple, nor does he betray
any depreciation of animal sacrifices; he could
hardly have gone so far towards non-sacrificial re-
ligion as Ben Sira and some of the psalmists.
It is obvious that he takes a special interest in
those functions of his own class which have no con-
nection with sacrificing. He mentions a Levitical
*Ecclus. xliii., 27-33.
214 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
scribe as early as the reign of David, and says that
Jehoshaphat sent Levitical teachers of the Law to
all the cities of Judah. These were functions which
could also be discharged by laymen, and which were
destined to overshadow those belonging properly to
the priests. Still more interest does he show in the
temple psalmody ; he assumes as a matter of course
that the existing arrangements date back to the tenth
century. His interest was fully shared by Ben Sira,
as we see from the Praise of Pious Men in Ecclesias-
ticus. Probably, however, neither of these writers
realised the vast spiritual influence of the writers of
psalms.
That Ben Sira believes in a present retribution, we
have seen already. The Chronicler, however, supplies
still stronger evidence of the renewed vitality of this
belief in the third century. I need not quote all the
astounding distortions and inventions of fact into
which the Chronicler's pious illusion has led him.
Quite enough has been said against the Chronicler
as a historian ; let an appreciative word be spoken of
the Chronicler as a man. In that age, to believe so
earnestly in the justice of God was a service to moral-
ity for which we may well condone a score of viola-
tions of historical accuracy, and the idealisation of
David is as much a prophecy of the better age to
come as the vision of the Prince of Peace and the
Orthodox and Heretical Wisdom 215
Rod from Jesse's stock. For eschatological descrip-
tions the Chronicler had no space. But the profuse-
ness with which he deals out imaginary prophets to
the earlier ages assures us of his eager desire for a
true prophet of the good old style, just as his insist-
ence on the divine justice convinces us that he must
have prayed daily for the advent of Israel's true king,
Jehovah.
One more point of contact with Ben Sira and
still more with the Psalter must in conclusion be
mentioned the tenderness of his piety. I put his
theology aside, and speak only of his feeling, as ex-
pressed in the speeches which he assigns to his per-
sonages. The words in which David blessed Jehovah
before all the congregation (i Chron. xxix., 10-19)
may be instanced. They are not indeed such as
David could possibly have uttered, but with a few
omissions, they might have been used by a pious
Levite in leading the devotions of humble-minded
Jewish believers. Here, as at other points of his
faulty historical reconstruction, the worthy Chroni-
cler opens a window in his heart. And no attain-
ments of intellectual wisdom are worth as much as
that loving reverence for God in which he lived and
moved.
LECTURE VI.
Judaism : its Power of Attracting Foreigners ;
its Higher Theology ; its Relation to
Greece, Persia, and Babylon.
IN the third Lecture we studied those exquisite
poems on the Servant of Jehovah which re-
present a perfect fusion of the legal and the pro-
phetic religion. The Servant of Jehovah, /'. e., the
company of religious teachers which formed the
kernel of the Jewish people, was to convert, first,
lukewarm or indifferent Jews, and then the other na-
tions to the true religion. The spirit of his preach-
ing was prophetic ; the basis of his message was legal.
That Jehovah (interpreted to mean " He who is,"
i. e., the ground and source of all being and all true
knowledge and power) is the God of all mankind, is
a belief which underlies the very first section of the
Priestly Record (Gen. i.), and how much in earnest
the narrator is, appears from the fact that he reports
an " everlasting covenant " between the true God on
the one hand and mankind represented by Noah and
216
Judaism 217
his three sons on the other (Gen. ix., 1-17). It is
this " everlasting covenant " which a late prophet
declares that the earth's inhabitants have broken,*
and which one of the " pillars " of the early Christian
community takes as the basis of the new elementary
law of Gentile Christianity.! The priestly narrator
in Genesis does not, of course, mean that the simple
precept of respect for life, and especially for human
life, will suffice as the sole constitutional principle of
civil society, but he is well assured that the neglect
of it will bring the wrath of God upon the offending
nations. Does not this throw a fresh light on that
otherwise startling statement in the Ninth Psalm \ :
" The wicked will depart to the nether world
All the nations that are forgetful of God " ?
It is the barbarity of the foreign oppressors of the
Jews which forces this bold announcement from the
lips of the oppressed. Israel personified knows that
God will not allow His command to be transgressed
with impunity, more especially when the very exist-
ence of His people is imperilled. At another point in
the same psalm (Ps. ix., 11, 12), the psalmist shows
the intensity of his faith by imagining himself in the
happy time when Jehovah will have already inter-
posed. He says:
* Isa. xxiv., 5. f Acts xv., 20. $ Ps. ix., 17.
218 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
" Sing praise to Jehovah, whose throne is in Zion,
Publish His deeds among the nations,
(Say) that the avenger of bloodshed has been mindful
of them
(And) has not forgotten the cry of the sufferers."
We see now that there are supposed to be two classes
of persons in the non-Jewish world. There are those
who are so "forgetful of God" and His primaeval reve-
lation as to touch the very apple of His eye * (viz., the
pious community of Israel), and there are those who,
though as yet ignorant, are by no means unsuscep-
tible of instruction.f Towards the former class no
expressions of hostility seem too strong for some of
the psalmists (see Lecture III.), but towards the latter
we have the kindest of words from the poet and
teacher who wrote the songs on the " Servant." The
latter writer had a fellow-worker in that accomplished
narrator who, partly on a basis of folk-lore, composed
the story of Jonah. Jonah, son of Amittai, was a
missionary prophet, who was at first untrue to his
vocation, but afterwards went to Nineveh, and sought,
not unsuccessfully, to move its bloodthirsty people
to repentance. He is intended as a type of the
people of Israel, which in the olden time had
neglected its missionary calling and as a punishment
had been swallowed up by the dragon Babylon, but
*Zech. ii.,8. flsa. xlii., 4.
Judaism 219
was now liberated, and summoned once more to
perform its duty.
A more practicable object, however, than that sug-
gested in Jonah occurred to the mind of another
earnestly devout man. It had reference to the
foreigners who had begun to be attracted by the
religion of Jehovah. These proselytes were above
moral or religious reproach ; they were zealous in
all legal duties known to them, and especially in the
observance of the Sabbath. Their chief desire was
that expressed so beautifully by a psalmist,* " to
dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of their
life," i. e. t to settle at Jerusalem, and to frequent the
temple. But they knew only too well the strength
of the opposition that was being raised to their re-
quest. Their unknown friend sought therefore to
help them by a prophecy,f in which God expressly
demanded the greatest liberality towards those de-
vout foreigners who were willing to comply with
legal requirements, on the ground that His house
was to be regarded as the universal house of prayer.
Though not richly gifted as a writer, this good
and wise man had at any rate a sound religious in-
sight, and the Jewish Church might well be thankful
that priests and scribes like Ezra were not its only
directors.
* Ps. xxvii., 4. f Isa. Ivi., 1-8.
22O Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
And again the tale-writer supports the prophet.
There was at Jerusalem another friend of the op-
pressed proselyte, who wrote an idyllic story to jus-
tify admitting into the community any foreign women
who heartily adopted the nationality and religion of
their Jewish husbands. On the lovely story of Ruth
I could find it in my heart to say much, were it not
that a much-respected American scholar * has already
placed the book in its true light before American
readers. The existence of this undoubtedly post-
exilic book is as important a fact as the rigourism of
Ezra. It shows that we are right in holding that
that great priest and scribe did not gain an at all com-
plete victory over the friends of mixed marriages.
Had the intermarriage of Jews and Moabites become
as a matter of fact impossible, such a story could not
have been written. But though not impossible, the
practice was doubtless frowned upon by the ortho-
dox, and our author, who sympathised with oppressed
Moabite women, as Malachi sympathised with op-
pressed Jewesses, devoted his skilful pen to their
cause. Nor is this all. A drier writer, with a turn
for genealogies, gave this popular tale a short supple-
ment,f the object of which was to introduce the
Moabitish heroine among the ancestors of David. I
* Prof. C. A. Briggs, North American Review, Jan., 1897
f Ruth iv., 18-22
Judaism 221
am sorry that so good a man as the Chronicler did
not take the hint. We look in vain in his genealogy
of David for the name of Ruth. Possibly he was
afraid to recognise this supposed Moabitish wife of
Boaz, who might be taken to have conveyed a taint
to her posterity ; for we can hardly doubt that he
ascribes the wickedness of King Rehoboam to the
Ammonitish extraction of that king's mother.*
The generosity of prophet and tale-writer must
not, however, be exaggerated. Whatever pride a
foreigner had taken in his birth or riches or wisdom
had to be laid aside when he became a proselyte.
The only nobility worth having was to be of the
Jewish religion, and the best use of riches was to
" beautify the place of God's sanctuary, and to make
His footstool glorious " f ; while, as to wisdom, what-
ever licence might be allowed to a Jew who had re-
turned to Palestine after a lengthened foreign sojourn,
the only temper befitting a proselyte, who had so
much to learn before he could be perfect in the
Scriptures, was that expressed in the words :
" Not haughty, Jehovah, is my heart,
Not lofty are my eyes ;
Neither move I amidst great matters
And things too arduous for me." \
Nor is it likely that there were many proselytes in
* 2 Chron. xii., 13, 14. f Isa. lx., 13. \ Ps. cxxxi., I.
222 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Judaea, even when the relations between Persia and
the Jews were most friendly, and at a later day the
disturbed condition of the Persian Empire must have
been adverse to any strong Judaising movement,
whether in Palestine or elsewhere. The Jews them-
selves, too, became more and more bitter towards
foreigners, and if the two controversial passages
against idolatry inserted by a post-exilic editor in
the genuine word of the Second Isaiah * belong to
the Persian period, we can hardly wonder if the
heathen retained their aversion to Judaism, for the
tone is unconciliatory and sarcastic, and there is no
positive religious teaching such as might attract
thoughtful inquirers. Circumstances were indeed
most unfavourable to the missionary ideal of the
great " Servant "-songs, though one is thankful to
record that in the Fifty-first Psalm pious Israel ac-
knowledges its obligation to teach God's ways to
sinners and apostates :
" Gladden me again with Thy deliverance,
And uphold me with a zealous spirit.
Then will I teach apostates Thy ways,
So that sinners turn back to Thee." f
By " sinners " and " apostates " the psalmist means
unfaithful Jews.
*Isa. xliv., 9-20; xlvi., 6-8 ; cf. Ps. cxv., 4-8.
f Ps. li., 12, 13.
Judaism 223
It is in the ngth Psalm (a work of the Greek
period) that we find the passages most suggestive of
missions to the non-Jewish world. They occur in
two neighbouring couplets :
" And snatch not the word of truth utterly out of my
mouth,
For I wait for Thy judgments."
" And I will speak of Thine admonitions before kings,
And will not be ashamed." *
The former couplet reminds us of the " covenant "
in Isaiah lix., 21, according to which the words put
into the mouth of the true Israel shall never depart
from it, /. e., Israel shall be preserved forever in or-
der to be the faithful preacher of Jehovah's law.f
In the latter couplet the speaker (pious Israel per-
sonified) may perhaps mean that he will venture as a
missionary into the presence of heathen kings, as
Jonah is said to have done, and this may have been
suggested by some recent attempt to place Judaism
in a favourable light before a king of Egypt or Syria.
I think myself, however, that a more modest profes-
sion is made. Israel expresses its willingness to bear
witness to revealed truth before kings under changed
circumstances. At present such an heroic venture
is impossible. At present Israel is too impatient for
* Ps. cxix., 43, 46.
f There is an allusion to the soliloquies of that great typical mis-
sionary the Servant of Jehovah.
224 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
judgment to be executed on its persecutors,* and
suffers too much from the attempts of heathen
teachers to draw away its own members to heathen-
ism, to think seriously of missionary enterprises in
heathendom. The most that it c. n do is to cultivate
faith in the perfection of the true religion.
" I have more insight than all ny teachers,
For Thine admonitions are i..y meditation."
" The law of God's mouth is better unto me
Than thousands of gold and silver." f
We find, however, distinct references to proselytes
in two psalms \ placed very close to the HQth. An
invitation to trust in God, and to declare His loving-
kindness, is addressed to three classes of persons,
viz., Israel, the house of Aaron, and the fearers of
Jehovah. " Israel " is used elsewhere as an ex-
pression for the laity ; the house of Aaron are the
priests ; the " fearers of Jehovah " must surely be
the proselytes, an identification which has later
usage in its favour, and can only be doubted by
those who regard Psalms cxv., cxviii., and cxxxv. as
works of the Persian period a very improbable
hypothesis.
It may therefore, I think, be assumed that at some
time in the Greek period, probably during the rule
*Ps. cxix., 84. f Ps. cxix., 99, 72. $Ps. cxvi., cxviii.
Judaism 225
of the Ptolemies, and again after the first victories
of the Maccabees, a number of foreigners joined the
Palestinian Jewish community. Their motives no
doubt were various. There were many who thirsted
for " living waters " which no other religion pos-
sessed * ; the comparative spirituality of Jewish
monotheism answered to a want of the age.f There
were others, perhaps, who felt still more strongly a
desire for some bond of union which would be su-
perior to the disintegrating influences of a crushing,
despotic rule. Such a bond the Jewish society with
its multiplying branches seemed, and rightly seemed,
to furnish.
But the most remarkable of all the testimonies to
the presence of foreigners in the no longer merely
national Jewish Church are those in the appendix to
Isaiah xix. (vv. 18-25) and in Psalm Ixxxvii. In both
passages the belief is expressed that not only iso-
lated individuals, but whole communities, will enter
the Jewish fold. No doubt this was a great illusion,
but it implies that numerous conversions had already
taken place, and that not only Bashan and Galilee, :
but cities and districts in the various countries men-
* Ps. Ixv., 2 : " O Thou that hearest prayer ! to Thee doth all flesh
come."
f At an earlier period we find an Ammonite (Tobiah) among the
Samaritan worshippers of Jehovah.
J Cf. Ps. Ixviii. 22 (?) ; i Mace. v. 14-54.
226 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
tioned, had become in an appreciable degree Juda-
ised. I will quote the second passage in a form
which approximates, I hope, to the writer's meaning.
It is a poem in three stanzas of five lines each.
" Thou hast founded her on the holy mountains !
Jehovah loves the gates of Zion
More than all (other) dwellings of Jacob.
Gloriously will I praise thee,
Thou city of God !
" Rahab and Babylon I will celebrate as her friends ;
Behold, Philistia and Tyre,
With the people of Cush each of these was born there.
Jehovah will note in the register of peoples,
This one (and that one) were born there.
" And Zion each one calls Mother,
Yea, each one was born therein ;
And (God) Himself establishes her.
And (this anthem) will be sung in the congregations,
All my fountains are in thee."
It is the eulogy of Zion as the metropolis of an
ideally catholic church which we have before us.
The psalmist has absorbed all the great ideas of the
Second Isaiah and the Songs of the Servant, and
finds them becoming realised in his own happy
experience. Whether by preaching, or simply by
letting its light shine, the once despised Israel is
now attracting Palestinians, Egyptians, Ethiopians,
Babylonians, in such numbers that a day seems com-
Judaism 227
ing when all mankind will be Jews, i. e., when reli-
gion will unite more than the accidental differences
of language or national character separate. The
Second Isaiah seems to anticipate that foreigners
will only be able to become Jews by sacrificing their
national peculiarities. But our poet, and the author
of the appendix to Isaiah xix., clearly anticipate
that Egypt and Babylon will remain Egypt and
Babylon,* even when their higher life and their
truest happiness are derived from Zion.
These two passages (the psalm and the prophecy)
represent the high-water mark of religious liberality
in Palestine. For a moment it seemed possible that
Jewish theology might be purged from its darker
elements. But this was not to be. It would lead
me too far to inquire into the causes of this impossi-
bility. The time warns me to turn aside to a still
more interesting subject, which takes us into the
very heart of the higher Jewish theology, and is sug-
gested by that congregational anthem in the Eighty-
seventh Psalm, " All my fountains are in thee."
What, I would ask, are the fountains in Zion which
attracted so many pious proselytes ? The image is
a speaking one. Who does not remember the beau-
tiful old Hebrew song in the early history, begin-
ning, " Spring up, O well ; sing ye to it," f as if by
* See especially Isa. xix., 24, 25. f Num. xxi., 17, 18.
228 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
song the water hidden in the ground could be
coaxed into appearing? But the water which the
gracious Mother Zion gives her children is no ordi-
nary living water. Whosoever drinks of the Abana
and the Pharpar will thirst again. But he that
drinks from Zion's fountains will never thirst ; that
precious water will be in him as a well springing up
into everlasting life.* Here is a fine passage which
expresses these ideas very clearly, and notice how in
the first couplet the spiritual privileges referred to
are thrown open to all mankind :
" (In Thee) do the race of men (put their trust),
In the shadow of Thy wings do they find refuge.
They feast upon the delicacies of Thy house,
And of the river of Thy pleasures Thou givest them
their drink.
For with Thee is the fountain of life ;
By Thy light do we see light." f
The last couplet is also important. It shows that
there are two kinds of light and life, and that only
in the temple can the higher light and life be
obtained. What this meant to the noblest Jews,
we shall see later. It is plain that the old phrase-
ology is being stretched to admit new ideas. No
doubt we must be careful not to spiritualise too
much. The blessings hoped for by pious worship-
* See John iv., 13, 14. f Ps. xxxvi., 8-10.
Judaism 229
pers are still, to a large extent, material. To some
extent to all men even now, and still more to those
who shall be alive at the great Judgment Day,
material prosperity will be granted as the reward of
faithful obedience. But the new longing for moral
oneness with God as certainly tends to become
predominant over the old longing for material hap-
piness.
But let us be more definite. Was there no dawn-
ing sense of a second life after the sleep of death
a second life which could be measured by hundreds
of years, or even perhaps not be measured at all ?
Certainly from the close of the Persian period some
men began " faintly " to " trust the larger hope."
It was at this time that the following strongly con-
trasting sentences were uttered by a prophetic or
apocalyptic writer :
" The dead will not live ; the shades will not arise ;
therefore Thou didst punish, Thou didst destroy them,
and madest all their memory to perish." (This refers to
the dead oppressors of Israel, who are no longer terrible,
because the dead (heathen) cannot live again.) " Thy
dead shall arise ; they that dwell in the dust shall awake
and sing for joy. For thy dew is a dew of lights, and
the land shall bring forth the shades." *
This second passage is addressed to Israel, and im-
plies that the belief in a resurrection of pious Jews
* Isa. xxvi., 14, 19.
230 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
had already found some acceptance. It even ap-
pears that mystical expressions had been coined to
symbolise this belief. The Resurrection is ascribed
to a dew which descends from that highest heaven,
where are those dazzling bright lights amidst which
God dwells. It is possible, indeed, that this great
boon was limited to those who had died for the
faith, but even if this were the case at first, we may
assume that the humble confessors of daily life
would soon look for the same privilege as the
martyrs.
About 170 years later, the belief was restated in
still more definite terms. The author of Daniel
says that in a time of unparalleled trouble the
Jewish people will be delivered, and also that " many
of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame
and everlasting abhorrence," and that a reward of
special splendour is reserved for the teachers of
righteousness.* After this time the evidences of the
belief in the Resurrection are abundant, though the
Sadducees, like the philosophic author of Ecclesi-
astes, still held out against this foreign-looking
innovation.
There is, however, no early evidence for a belief in
conscious communion of the soul with God between
* Dan. xii. , 1-3.
Jb
Judaism 231
r
death and the Resurrection, and it was a long time
before the abolition of death for righteous Jews in
the Messianic age became a general expectation.
The last chapter but one in the Book of Isaiah,
which dates from the age of Nehemiah, in a descrip-
tion of Messianic felicity, only states that weeping and
lamentation will be no more, and that the youngest
man who dies in Jerusalem will reach the age of a
hundred.* A little later we find another prophetic
writer expressing in choicer language the sure hope
of the abolition of sorrow. He calls sorrow " the
veil that is spread over all peoples," and adds that
" God will wipe away tears from off all faces." f
More this pious optimist does not know how to say.
But a later writer, whose faith in God is such that he
boldly hopes for the most stupendous of boons, has
inserted this short passage, which interrupts the
context indeed, but must have justified itself to
readers by its sweetness : " He will annihilate death
for ever." \ This is the logical outcome of the faith
in the Resurrection, and the Jews, as soon as they
saw this, vied with their Zoroastrian brethren in
the earnestness with which they accepted it.
We could not, therefore, be surprised if we found
in Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, and the Psalter
more or less distinct expression of the new beliefs.
* Isa. Ixv., 19, 20. f Isa. xxv., 7, 8. $ Isa. xxv. 7 (line i).
232 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
For no part of any of these books can be earlier
than the age of Nehemiah, and a great part even of
the Psalter must be later than this period. Even
Ben Sira, however, the devout-minded author of
Ecclesiasticus, though he holds theoretically that
"that which comes from heaven returns to heaven," *
yet, as a practical man, recommends cultivating
cheerfulness on the ground that there is "no coming
up again " from the grave.f
Turning next to Proverbs, we find that not one
of its supposed references to Immortality is trust-
worthy. The most striking passage, if correctly
read, would be this (I quote from the Revised
Version) :
" In the way of righteousness is life,
And in the pathway thereof there is no death." J
But there is good reason to believe that the second
line should rather be read thus :
" But the way of the abominable leads to death."
The true view of the proverb-writers is that ex-
pressed in the couplet :
* Ecclus. xl., n, 12.
f Ecclus. xxxviii., 20, 21. There is, indeed, a passage which states
that " those who do things that please the Lord will receive the fruit
of the tree of immortality." But this is not found in the best Greek
MSS., and forms part of an interpolation.
$ Prov. xii., 28.
Judaism 233
"The fear of Jehovah prolongs days,
But the years of the wicked shall be shortened." *
In spite of what is urged in the Book of Job, they
believed that religion lengthened life and irreligion
shortened it, while the final proof of the moral gov-
ernment of the world would be given at a great
crisis (the Messianic Judgment), when destruction
would come on the wicked as a whirlwind.f It is
true that this attitude of the wise men might con-
ceivably be due to educational reserve. To draw
moral arguments from an unverifiable idea of quite
recent origin might seem injudicious, as tending to
promote a too enthusiastic habit of mind. But
nothing can diminish the force of these affecting
lines from a speech of Job :
" For (hope) exists for a tree,
(And for a fig-tree there remains) a future ;
If it be cut down, it will sprout again,
And its shoots will not be wanting.
" But when man dies, he passes away,
He breathes his last, and where is he ?
Till the heavens wear out, he will not awake,
Nor arouse himself out of his sleep. " J
And even more thrilling is the denial of a second
*Prov. x., 27 ; cf. Hi., 2, 16 ; ix., II.
f Prov. i., 27.
JJobxiv., 7-12. The 6rst stanza in the received text is proba-
bly incomplete.
234 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
life which follows, because the speaker admits that
he would so gladly think otherwise. There is, in
fact, no passage in the whole Bible which more
clearly proves the congeniality of the greatest of
all hopes, at any rate to Semitic human nature, and
of course I need not say that Aryans and Semites
on this as on some other points closely resemble
each other.
" Oh that Thou wouldst put me in ward in Sheol,
That Thou wouldst hide me till Thy wrath were spent,
That Thou wouldst appoint me a time and remember
me,
(And) that a man, though dead, could live again !
" Through my long hard service then would I wait
Till my relief should come,
Till Thou shouldst call, and receive my response,
Till Thou shouldst long after the work of Thy hands.
" But now Thou countest each step that I take,
Thou wilt not pass over my sin ;
Thou hast sealed up in the bag my transgression,
Thou hast secured with wax mine iniquity."*
The beauty of this is that the longing expressed by
Job is, I will not say so impersonal, but so unself-
ish ; he craves to live again in order to enjoy the
happiness of conscious communion with God, and
would gladly wait in the drear city of Death till the
divine call came, if a second life for man were only
* Job xiv., 13-17.
Judaism 235
possible. He knows indeed (or thinks that he knows)
that the idea lacks foundation, and yet he cannot
help luxuriating in it for a moment, for it is so sweet.
But it is very significant that he never refers to it
again. The supposed reference to the Resurrection
in chapter xix. (see Lecture V.) is due partly to
corruption of the text, partly to the instinctive
belief of the later Jews that so precious a hope must
have found a place in the wise old poem of Job.
The passage being mutilated, the editor in the sim-
plicity of his heart endeavoured to fill it up in a
worthy manner. But what he produced is certainly
not worthy of the author of Job as a specimen of
Hebrew writing.
This result need not greatly surprise us. Profes-
sional students and teachers are afraid of opening
the door to religious enthusiasm. But in hymns
intended for congregational use a larger hospitality
to new beliefs may be expected, especially in the
Greek period. To decide whether this expectation
is correct, we must not rest satisfied with the form
in which the Hebrew Psalter has reached us. Fur-
ther exegetical progress is only possible as a con-
sequence of a searching revision of the text of the
psalms. Such a revision, with the assistance of my
predecessors, I have endeavoured to make, and I
shall now build on the results which I have reached.
236 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
The chief passages which have to be considered
occur in Psalms xvi., xvii., xlix., Ixxiii. These are
of extreme interest, and, as they stand in the re-
ceived text, convey the impression that the writers
had had an intuition of a second life for the individ-
ual. More especially, if we take the passages in con-
nection with parallel passages in the Psalms of
Solomon and with statements in the Book of Enoch,
the reference to a future life seems difficult indeed
to controvert.
If, however, we approach these passages in the
course of searching textual revision our confidence
in this conclusion will be considerably shaken. Take
Psalm xlix., for instance. If the text is approxi-
mately correct, this psalm is closely parallel to chap-
ters cii. and ciii. of the Book of Enoch.* These
passages are a protest against the old Hebrew no-
tion of She61, or the nether world, which encourages
the party of the wicked rich men in their oppression
of the righteous poor. And such a protest we find
in the Forty-ninth Psalm, according to the received
text. The rich man who hews out for himself a
grand sepulchre, considers that he will have a cor-
respondingly grand resting-place in She61. Of pun-
ishment for his oppression of the poor he does not
dream. In life and in death he will be equally the
* Cf. Lecture V.
Judaism 237
spoiled child of fortune, the heir of all such good
things as are to be had. To this the psalmist is
made to reply that the wicked rich man is profoundly
mistaken. The relative position of his own class
and of the righteous poor will be inverted. The
rich man will go down to join his fathers in She61,
but without his pomp, while the poor, upright man
will be rescued from the grasp of She<51, and the
company to which he belongs will trample on the
graves of the wicked when the dawn of the greatest
of days appears.
Plausible as this interpretation is, I am afraid that
it is incorrect. Textual criticism shows that the con-
trast in the foreground is not between the fate of
all rich men as individuals and that of all poor men,
but between that of all rich men without exception
and that of the community of the pious, without
special reference to this or that individual. Of the
fate of the individual poor man nothing is said.*
The community would live on, even though all its
present members should die. Spiritual self-forget-
fulness is incumbent on a pious Jew ; he is absorbed
in the welfare of the community to which he belongs ;
the community will, he is fully persuaded, enjoy
* An incidental allusion, may, however be found in v. 10. The
" wise " who are expressly said to " die " are of course righteous and
presumably poor.
238 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
eternal life. These, if I am not mistaken, are the
words of the psalmist, or rather of the pious com-
munity personified :
" This is the way to their stumbling,
And the road to their fall which they run."
With these words the poet begins a new section.
He describes how the wicked rich men run heedlessly
into the arms of ruin. Then he continues :
" Like sheep, they sink into She61 ;
Death rules them, terrors affright them ;
They go down straight into the grave,
She61 is their mansion for ever.
(But) surely my soul God will set free,
For from the hand of Sheoi will He take me." *
The Seventy-third Psalm is closely parallel to the
Forty-ninth It does not give such a graphic de-
scription of the fate of the wicked, but, judging
from the received text, it draws the same contrast
between the future of individual rich men and indi-
vidual poor men. The Jewish paraphrase (Targum)
actually finds a reference to the Resurrection, and
Christian interpreters have, by no means fantastically,
found one to a Beatific Vision of God immediately
after death. The latter view is especially attractive.
The story of Enoch, as we know, was popular in the
post-exilic period, and it would be extremely natural,
*Ps. xlix., 14-16.
Judaism 239
in an age of growing individualism, for pious theists
to claim for themselves the privilege of Enoch, who,
as the traditional story said, " disappeared, for God
had taken him." * The words :
" Thou wilt guide me according to Thy counsel,
And afterwards take me to glory," f
seem not unworthy of the poet who says a little
later that, though his outward form had wasted
away, the believer would still have God for his in-
alienable portion. And yet this attractive theory,
which has survived the attacks of exegetical oppo-
nents, has, I fear, to be abandoned on grounds of
textual criticism. I will read a translation of the
most important verses which I believe to be based
on an unassailable text. There is a contrast, as you
will see, between the fates of the righteous and of
the wicked.
" How are they [viz., the wicked] brought to desolation
in a moment,
Utterly swept away by terrors (of death) !
As a dream when one has awaked,
So, Lord, when Thou art aroused, Thou wilt despise
their phantom-like form.
" And yet I am continually with Thee ;
Thou hast taken hold of my right hand :
*Gen. v., 24.
f According to Kautzsch's new (German) translation of the Old
Testament.
240 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
According lo Thy counsel Thou wilt guide me,
And make known to me the path of glory." *
Who the speaker is, and what the " path of glory "
means, I will explain presently. But it must already
be clear that the second line of the last couplet is
parallel to the first, and that both lines refer to some
uniquely great experience upon this material earth.
We now turn to the Seventeenth Psalm, the re-
ceived text of which permits a reference to a Vision
of God after death. Indeed, I may even say that it
favours such a reference, for a contrast appears to
be drawn f between the speaker, who hopes to see
God " at the awaking," and the " men of the world,
whose portion is in this life." And yet, a strict
textual criticism compels us to abandon this theory.
What the psalmist wrote may not be in all points
certain. But the following gives, I am sure, no in-
correct view of the meaning :
" Up, Jehovah, confront him, make him bow down ;
Rescue my soul from the wicked, Jehovah !
Their portion give unto them their share of (Thy)
wrath ;
Fill their body with Thy stored-up punishments !
*Ps. Ixxiii., 19, 20, 23, 24. The rendering of Wellhausen and
Furness in the Polychrome Bible is based on a correction which hardly
touches the root of the evil.
f So, at any rate, in the English version.
Judaism 241
"As for me, in mine innocence I shall behold any face,
I shall feast mine eyes when thy zeal awakes." *
The speaker now becomes, not an individual Is-
raelite, but the Jewish people, over which Jehovah
says that He watches as the " apple of His eye." f
One more passage only remains Psalm xvi., IO,
1 1 . The received text is here quite unobjectionable ;
it may be translated thus :
" For Thou wilt not yield my soul to the nether world,
Nor wilt Thou suffer Thy pious one to see the pit.
Thou wilt make known to me the path of life ;
Before Thy face is abundance of joys,
Delights are in Thy right hand for evermore." J
Now it has always been felt that the case for what I
may call the mystic interpretation was weaker in
this passage than in those which we have been
hitherto considering. The phrase " the path of life "
in Proverbs is generally supposed to mean that
course of action which leads to a happy life; and
certainly "joy before the face of Jehovah," and
gifts from His hand, are assigned in Psalm xxi. to an
earthly king | ; while to be delivered from She61
may merely mean to escape from peril of death-
* Ps. xvii., 13-15.
f Ps. xvii., 8 ; cf. Deut. xxxii., n.
\ Ps. xvi., 10, ii.
Prov. ii., 19 ; v., 5, 6 ; cf. x., 17.
| Ps. xxi., 6.
**
242 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Hence many critics have supposed the meaning of
the passage to be this that the individual who is
taken to be the speaker will be delivered out of his
present distress, and recover the blissful conscious-
ness of the divine favour. Others have felt that
this view does injustice to the grandeur and solem-
nity of the passage, and I so fully agree with them
that, if the received text of the three other passages
were correct, I should not hesitate to find in all four
alike a reference to the hope of Immortality. It is
no objection to this view that it may involve sup-
posing that the psalmist passes over the death of
the righteous, and represents future blessedness
as the sequel of present obedience and faith.
For if death is merely being received to God's
glorious presence, according to the ordinary inter-
pretation of Psalm Ixxiii., 24, there is no reason why
death should not be passed over, and it is certain
that the idea of a foretaste of rewards and punish-
ments prior to the Judgment was familiar to the
later Jews. But we have seen that the three other
passages, correctly read, do not permit the mystic
interpretation, and consistency compels us to give it
up for the fourth. This does not, however, involve
the acceptance of the favourite critical view just
described. For the " path of life," even in Proverbs,
is not, I believe, only the course which conduces to
Judaism 243
happiness, and still less does it mean this in the Six-
teenth Psalm. " Path of life " and " path of glory "
both refer to the Messianic age, when, as another
psalmist says, " glory will abide in our land." * It
is the divine glory which is meant, and " life " is
not merely what in these dim days we call happi-
ness, but such an intense life as is described in these
words of a late prophet :
" And I will rejoice over Jerusalem, and exult over My
people ;
And the sound of weeping shall no more be heard in
her, nor the sound of crying.
They shall not build, and another inhabit ; they shall
not plant, and another eat :
For as the days of trees are the days of my people." f
It is true that phrases like those in the last two lines
of Psalm xvi. are used in Psalm xxi. of an earthly
king. But who is that earthly king? Not any
historically known king of Israel, but the expected
Messianic king, who is in fact but the leader and
representative of the community, so that what is
said of him can equally well be said of personified
Israel, and even (at least to a great extent) of each
pious Israelite. Certainly it is of a pious individual
that Jehovah is made to say by a psalmist :
" I will rescue him and make him glorious ;
I will satisfy him with length of days,
And grant him to see My deliverance,"!
*Ps. Ixxxv., 9. flsa. Ixv., 19, 22. | Ps. xci., 15, 16.
244 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
where no doubt the blessings intended are those of
the ideal or Messianic age.
So, then, in none of the passages quoted, and if
not there then certainly nowhere else, does the
Psalter contain any reference to the Resurrection or
to Immortality for the individual, which shows that
down to the time of Simon the Maccabee these
closely related beliefs were not held by the majority
of the pious. Still they must have been held by an
important minority. The ideas were, so to speak,
in the air, and they corresponded to religious needs,
which were more and more felt, especially during
the sharp persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. We
may be sure, therefore, that the glorious but vague
expressions of the four passages which have been
discussed, and of others which might also be quoted,
were very early applied to the individual, and inter-
preted in what I have called the mystic way. These
passages, and not the melancholy couplet :
" What man can live on, and not see death,
Or win escape for his soul from the hand of She61 ? " *
must have been the spiritual food of the most fer-
vent Palestinian Jews in the Greek period of those
Jews whose successors became the members of the
large and important school of the Pharisees and of
the sect of the Essenes.
* Ps. Ixxxix., 48 (probably, however, an interpolation).
Judaism 245
And now let us leap over the interval between
Simon the Maccabee and the Roman general, Pom-
pey, who put an end to the Asmonaean kingdom,
B.C. 63. The belief which was formerly that of a
minority has become generally accepted. Between
63 and (say) 45 B.C. eighteen fresh psalms were
written and collected, forming the so-called Psalter
of Solomon, in which without the least vagueness
the Resurrection and Immortality of the righteous
are described as certain.* The evidence of this is
abundant. We find this saying, for instance : " The
life of the righteous is for ever, but sinners shall be
taken away into destruction, and their memorial
shall no more be found. "f And again: "The de-
struction of the sinner is for ever ; but those that
fear the Lord shall rise unto eternal life ; their life
shall be in the light of the Lord, and shall not fail.":}:
There is also one very striking passage in this late
Psalter in which pious Israelites are described as
" trees of life." They " live for ever," not, as the
Book of Enoch says of the elect, by eating ambrosial
fruit, but by " walking in the law which God com-
manded us." So, too, the Targum of Jonathan (on
* Probably the second of the Eighteen Benedictions, which describes
God as " He that brings the dead to life," is somewhat older than
this period.
f Psalms of Solomon xiii., 9, 10.
j/J., iii., 15, 16. Il>., xiv., i, 2 ; Enoch xxv., 5.
246 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Gen. iii.) represents that the study of the Law is a
surer way to Immortality than tasting the fruit of
the tree of life, and the appendix to the Sayings of
the Fathers* says that the Wisdom which is "a
tree of life to those who lay hold on her " (Prov. iii.,
1 8) is the Law.
Thus the later writers (always excepting such
heretics as the author of the original Ecclesiastes)
infuse a fuller meaning into the old phraseology.
They do so quite simply and as a matter of course,
and I confess that their view seems to me to
give the worthiest interpretation of the consecrated
words. At the same time, I must recognise the fact
that the old psalmists themselves meant something
different, and express my admiration for these noble
thinkers, who, in Browning's language, f were much
less sure of soul than of God for the author of the
Seventy-third Psalm, for instance, who says :
" Whom have I (to care) for in heaven ?
And possessing Thee, I have pleasure in nothing upon
earth.
Though my flesh and my heart had wasted away,
God would be my rock and my portion for ever."
Could you have questioned this psalmist on his
theology, you would probably have found him on
the side of Antigonus, the Jewish preacher of disin-
*Pirge Aboth, vi., 7. f See La Saisia*.
Judaism 247
terested morality, mentioned already. But as you
read on, you see that he is on the verge of a fuller
intuition. For he continues :
" Surely those that remove from Thee shall perish ;
Thou destroyest all those who wantonly desert Thee.
But as for me, nearness to God is my happiness ;
In the Lord Jehovah I have put my trust." *
To us it may seem as if the promise of the destruc-
tion of the wicked were a guarantee of the salvation
of the righteous. But this unselfish thinker is con-
tent with the present bliss of communion with God,
nearness to whom is all the happiness that he per-
sonally desires. That Israel will be saved, he can-
not doubt. Even if the destroyer could silence the
last of God's confessors by the cold steel, the breath
of God would breathe upon the dry bones, and they
would live. God would still be Israel's rock and its
portion forever.
But what is " nearness to God," according to early
Jewish piety? Ezekiel speaks of the priests, the
" sons of Zadok," as alone competent to draw near
to God. But the psalmist's experience is one that is
not confined to priests, for, as one of the latest psalms
says, the pious, collectively, are " the people of those
who are near to Him."f From a Judaean point of
view, it is in the temple that nearness to God is
* Ps. Ixxiii., 27, 28. f Ps. cxlviii., 14.
248 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
chiefly felt, where art and religion combine to lift
the humblest believer above himself. How could
the daily routine of legal obedience be felt irksome
when it was sweetened by a real, even if mystic, vision
of God and by the grand psalmody of the temple ?
The impressiveness of the temple services can be
imagined from the descriptions of the Chronicler,
and from the glowing words of Ben Sira in Eccle-
siasticus. They would not, of course, have com-
mended themselves altogether to our taste, but they
were admirably adapted to the people who used
them. " How goodly," says one of the psalmists,
" How goodly are the processions of God,
The processions of my God, my king, in the sanctuary.
Singers go before, minstrels follow after,
In the midst are damsels playing on timbreh.
In a full choir they bless God,
(Yea) the Lord, the leader of Israel." *
And then turn to the " finale of the spiritual con-
cert " of the Psalter the i 5oth Psalm, which I do
not quote only because it is among the best known
of all the psalms. Certainly the Jews felt music and
singing to be what Western Christians are wont to
describe as " means of grace."
In an elaborate ritual system like the Jewish there
was, of course, great danger of superstition. No
* Ps. Ixviii., 24-26.
Judaism 249
doubt many Jews thought that their connection
with Jehovah could be renewed by a merely mechani-
cal performance of sacred rites. But the best teach-
ers consistently protested against this view. Only a
" righteous people " could draw near to God and
benefit by the sacramental rites, and by righteous-
ness the psalmists mean, primarily, religious morality.
Here is a passage in which the Jewish Church sol-
emnly repudiates all sympathy with the party of the
wicked :
" I hate the congregation of evil-doers,
And never sit in the conclave of the wicked ;
I wash my hands in innocence,
So will I go (in procession) round Thine altar, Je-
hovah !
That I may proclaim with loud thanksgiving,
And tell out all Thy wonders." *
We also have in Psalms xv. and xxiv. two poetic
church catechisms describing the conditions of ad-
mission to the highest of all privileges. The condi-
tions mentioned are moral ones, and the privilege
offered is absolute security under the divine protec-
tion. A special name for their privilege is Guestship.
" Who may be a guest in Thy tent, Jehovah ? " f asks
the pious community ; and at the Messianic Judg-
ment we are told that sinners in Zion will tremblingly
ask:
* Ps. xxvi., 5-7. f Ps. XT., i.
250 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
" Who can dwell as a guest beside the devouring fire?
Who can dwell as a guest beside the perpetual burn-
ings ? " *
The old conception of guestship was a very different
one. The guests of Baal and Astarte were no better
than parasites, feasting at the sacrificial meals, but
owning no extraordinary moral obligations.! But
the guests of Jehovah (the Jehovah of the psalmists)
had received from Him a new moral standard, and.
high as their aim was, always saw perfection above
them, for " Thy commandment is exceeding broad." \
Now and then the guests of Jehovah might be afraid
of being burdensome to Him ; they might think they
saw a frown upon His face, and remind Him with tears
of their Guestship. But this was in times of more
than usual national distress; the normal state of feeling
fora " guest of Jehovah " was certainly a joyous one.
The new and purified conception of a guest of Je-
hovah was one of the greatest religious consequences
of the Dispersion of the Jews. It had become im-
possible to hold that the privilege of Guestship was
confined to residents in Jerusalem. Tens of thou-
sands of pious men could only visit Jerusalem once
in their lives ; many more could never do so at all.
* Isa. xxxiii., 14.
f Renan, Histoire d' Israel, Hi., 35.
$ Ps. cxix., 96.
Ps. xxxix., 12.
Judaism 251
And yet they were conscious of no weakening of
their connection with Jehovah, because they had be-
gun to learn the secret of spiritual prayer. In their
private chamber and in the synagogue a strange new
experience had proved to them the loving care of
their Protector, radiated, as it were, from Zion to any
" dry and thirsty " * corner of God's world where they
happened to be. Even if there were a superior effi-
cacy in prayers offered in connection with the temple
sacrifices, yet the liturgical services of Zion were for
the good of Jehovah's people in all lands. It was
even commonly supposed that by simply turning in
prayer towards Jerusalem three times a day,f a Jew
in Persia or Egypt might obtain the same advantages
as a Jew who prayed in the temple. This nascent
belief in spiritual prayer certainly influenced the Jews
of Jerusalem, many of whom, indeed, must have had
occasion when away from home to prove its truth by
experience. And thus to the conception of a spirit-
ual Israel, gained from the Second Isaiah, was super-
added that of a spiritual temple. To those who, at
* Ps. Ixiii., i.
f Dan. vi., 10 ; cf. I Kings viii., 48. This was a Zoroastrian cus-
tom, except of course as regards turning towards Jerusalem. The
Zoroastrian precept was, " Three times a day one must worship,
standing opposite the sun " (Pahfaw Texts, Sacred Books of the
East, Part Hi.). The first prayer was to be at daybreak. Hence at
any rate probably came the Jewish custom of saying the first prayer
at dawn. Cf. also Koran, Sur. xvii., 80.
252 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
a distance from Jerusalem, read the Twenty-third
Psalm, the words :
" I shall dwell in Jehovah's house
For all days to come," *
must have acquired a deeper meaning than the poet
intended. The temple of which they thought was
one which no unfit worshippers could desecrate, and
which had a loftier roof and wider courts than could
be seen on Zion. Religious patriotism forbade them
to express this idea, but in their heart of hearts they
very nearly agreed with those words of Browning :
" Why, where 's the need of temple, when the walls
O' the world are that ? What use of swells and falls
From Levites' choir, priests' cries, and trumpet calls?"
The conception of a spiritual temple naturally
leads on to that of spiritual sacrifices. The origin of
this conception, which is very plainly expressed in
the Psalter, may safely be traced to Jeremiah. This
prophet, in opposition to the legalists of his day,
emphatically denies that God gave any other direc-
tions to the ancient Israelites than this : " Obey My
voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My
people." f As the context shows, he means the
* Ps. xxiii., 6.
f Jer. vii., 22, 23 ; Amos had said virtually the same thing (Am.
*., 25).
Judaism 253
moral law. Now there was a school of thinkers in
post-exilic times who were of one mind with Jere-
miah. Among its earlier members are the authors
of Psalm xl. (part i), Psalm 1., and Psalm li., 1-17.
It is not necessary to suppose that these writers were
as violently opposed as Jeremiah to the sacrificial
system ; they may very possibly have held that sac-
rifices were provisionally enjoined for the "hardness
of men's hearts." But they certainly held that the
only essential statutes were the predominantly moral
ones summed up in the Decalogue. I will quote
those passages of the Psalms which are most in
point. In the first I have been obliged to add a few
words to complete the sense.
" In sacrifice and offering Thou delightest not,
(But) ears hast Thou created for me.
Burnt offering and sin-offering Thou requirest not,
[My heart hast Thou renewed.]
To perform Thy will,
O my God, I delight ;
[Thine ordinance] and Thy law
Are within my heart." *
The closing words remind us once more of Jeremiah,
who assures us that in the latter day God will " put
His law into Israel's inward parts, and write it in their
hearts " f words which express the highest intui-
tion of pre-exilic prophecy.
* Ps. xl., 6, 8. f Jer. xxxi., 33.
254 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
In the next passage those Jews who frequent the
temple but break Jehovah's fundamental statutes re-
ceive a severe castigation. This is coupled, not with
a command to perform the usual rites in a better
frame of mind, but with this surprising injunction :
*' Sacrifice to God thanksgiving,
And pay thy vows to the Most High ;
And invoke Me in the day of trouble :
I will rescue thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." *
And the closing words of the psalm are :
" He that sacrifices thanksgiving, glorifies Me,
And to him that is of blameless life I will show the
deliverance of God." f
Here we have not only sacrifices but even vows,
which affected daily life still more than sacrifices,
abrogated by being spiritualised. The only right
vows are vows of amendment of life ; the only right
sacrifice is thanksgiving for God's innumerable
mercies to Israel. The criticism applied by the au-
thor of Ecclesiastes (see Lecture V.) to the popu-
lar sacrifices and vows of his own time illustrates and
justifies the language of the psalmist.
Last of all, listen to these lines from the Fifty-first
Psalm :
" Thou hast no pleasure in sacrifices and offerings ;
In burnt offerings (and whole burnt offerings) Thou
delightest not.
* Ps. 1., 14, 15. f Ps. L, 23.
Judaism 255
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ;
A broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou canst not
despise." *
Here we have in germ the doctrine of the later Juda-
ism that repentance is tantamount to burnt offerings.
A later writer, however, was dissatisfied with this, and
added a rather poor appendix.! He did not deny
that God was at present quite indifferent to sacrifices
the misfortunes of Israel too plainly proved this,
but he thought that when the ruined walls of
Jerusalem were rebuilt, He would once more be
pleased with the " right sacrifices " a vague expres-
sion which seems to mean sacrifices offered, not
with the view of changing God's purpose, but out of
obedience to His declared will. He belonged, that
is, to a theological school which accepted the sacri-
ficial system without criticism as of divine appoint-
ment, but gave it a new symbolic meaning. Of this
school the author of Isaiah liii., who speaks of the
self-oblation of a martyr as a true " offering for sin,"
seems to have been also a member.
So, then, there were other places besides the tem-
ple where God was felt to be near, viz., the private
chamber and the synagogue, and those who could
only find God here could perfectly well sing the
psalm, " Jehovah is my shepherd ; I want for noth-
* Ps. li., 16, 17. f 16., w. 18, 19.
256 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
ing." Prayers and praises were their sacrifices, and
one more service there was which is only not called
a sacrifice because it had no connection with the
temple the study of the Scriptures. Did Ezra
perceive that he was digging the grave of the sacri-
ficial system when he recognised the principle of a
written revelation ? At any rate such was the result
of the gradual canonisation of the Law, the Prophets,
and the Writings ; inspired books must necessarily be
vehicles of the divine spirit, and to commune with
them is equivalent to communing with God. It was
in the Greek period (to which the psalms on the
Law appear to belong) that this high view of the
Scriptures began to be prevalent. The more dan-
gerous Hellenism became, the more the pious Jews
sought an antidote to it in their Bible, and after the
Maccabaean rising the veneration for the Scriptures
became such that " in them " the Jews " thought
they had eternal life."* They felt that here was a
moral sublimity to which Greece could offer no
counterpart, and a bond which could unite the scat-
tered members of their race far more effectually
than the temple at Jerusalem. And history justified
their conviction. More and more offence was given
to all high-minded Jews by the chief ministers of the
sanctuary, and when the vengeance of implacable
* John v., 39.
Judaism 257
Rome demanded the final destruction of the already
desecrated shrine, it was a comfort to the Jews to
know that their greatest treasure was saved. The
golden candlestick might be carried away by victors,
but the sun of the spiritual firmament remained,
"and there was nothing hid from the heat thereof." *
How it came to pass that the possession of a sa-
cred volume failed to secure Jewish religion against
change, it is not for me to describe. Suffice it to
say that the changes which have passed, and which
are still passing, over Jewish religious thought are
not greater than those which passed over it within
the Biblical period. I have found it impossible to
give even this brief sketch of post-exilic religion with-
out alluding from time to time to foreign influences.
The influence of Greek thought cannot be definitely
traced in the early Greek period ; we first find it in
Ecclesiastes. But the inquisitive spirit which pro-
duced that remarkable book doubtless existed ear-
lier; the Book of Job, though Hebraic in forms of
expression, represents a new departure in Jewish
thought, which cannot be dissociated from Greek
influence. Persian influence did not begin to be
strongly felt by Palestinian Jews as early as has been
supposed. The Ahura-mazda of the Avesta has no
doubt a strong affinity to the Jehovah of the later
*Ps. xix., 6.
258 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
Jewish writers, but the old attraction to Babylon for
a long time prevented this newly discovered affinity
from producing much effect. Some effect of course
there must have been, but we are not in a position
to calculate its amount. Before the arrival of Ezra
it was probably almost confined to the large Jewish
colonies on the east of the Euphrates and the Tigris,
and even in Baby Ionian- Jewish works like the Priestly
Code, in the Cosmogony for instance (where we
might have expected something different), it is
Babylonian rather than Persian influence which is
most clearly traceable. It is true, the conception of
the pre-existent heavenly Wisdom in the Prologue
of Proverbs has Zoroastrian affinities, and at an ear-
lier date we meet with a belief in a Resurrection,
which can hardly have developed without Persian
stimulus. But the Prologue of the Book of Proverbs
is a work of the early Greek period, when Persian
influence can without difficulty be admitted, and the
belief in a Resurrection was not (as it would seem)
originally accompanied by a belief in Immortality,*
though the two beliefs go together in genuine
Zoroastrianism.
* The two beliefs were combined by the Essenes, if Josephus's ac-
count of this sect may be trusted (Jos., Ant., xviii., i, 5 ; cf. xiii., 5,
9). Their doctrine of the soul combines two elements a Babylonian
and a Persian both Hebraised (Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p.
Judaism 259
The truth is that we cannot sharply distinguish
between the two classes of influences Persian and
Babylonian. Ancient Persia and ancient Israel
were both influenced by Babylon, and the influ-
ence of Babylon upon Persia began probably at a
much earlier date than has been supposed. Baby-
lonian deeds show that Persians resided in Babylon
before the conquests of Cyrus, and the religion of
Ahura-mazda, though more akin to that of Jehovah
than to that of Marduk or Merodach, may perfectly
well have been influenced, like its Jewish sister, by
the latter. I feel sure that it was so influenced, and
that those scholars who would explain all Jewish or
all Persian ideas from unassisted internal movements
are in the wrong. The development both of Jewish
and of Persian religion is no doubt for the most part
perfectly natural ; but the development would not
have taken quite the same course but for certain at-
mospheric influences, if I may use the phrase, which
came from Babylonia. Hence it is frequently diffi-
cult to offer absolutely convincing proofs of the in-
debtedness of Judaism or Zoroastrianism to Babylon,
and, for a similar reason, of the indebtedness of Juda-
ism to Zoroastrianism. Some obviously direct loans
there are, but generally we have to be content with
showing the probability of indirect religious influ-
ence. This, however, will certainly not be difficult
260 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile
to show to those who have any familiarity with the
study of comparative religion. And not to trouble
you with further details, I maintain that, as illustra-
tions of the movement of Jewish thought indicated
by the Psalter, the ancient Zoroastrian hymns called
the Gathas* are more instructive than any of the re-
ligious utterances in either the earlier or the later
Babylonian inscriptions. They are quite as free
from superstitious ceremonialism and as uncompro-
mising in their ethical demands f as the Hebrew
Psalms, and it can hardly be denied that the commun-
ings between God and Zarathustra (who is practi-
cally the impersonation of the pious community) can
only be equalled in spirituality by the very finest
parts of the temple hymn-book.
Such are the historical results which, after divest-
ing them of troublesome technicalities, I have felt
moved to lay before you. But before I conclude,
let me urge upon you not to let these historical in-
quiries languish. If there are other voices which
sound more enticing to the men and women of this
generation, it does not follow that they are really
more important than the call to search the Script-
ures. Religious reform is a necessary condition of
* See Zend-Avesta, vol. iii. (Sacred Books of the East).
f The extension of morality to the thoughts ("good thoughts,
good words, good deeds ") is as characteristic of the Gathas as of the
Psalms. Cf. Ps. xvii., 3-5.
Judaism 261
social progress, and with a view to this the origin
and nature of essential Christianity, and shall I add ?
of essential Judaism, has to be investigated afresh.
Deeply as it stirs our feelings, none of us should re-
fuse to take his part in this grave debate. I do not
undervalue the study of the early Israelitish religion ;
indeed, I could wish to have included its records
within my survey. But it is the study of the relig-
ious formation which developed out of this which
has the most claim on our attention, because of its
close relation to the historical problems of early
Christianity. It is itself not without its thorny re-
gions, but amidst the thorns we are surprised by de-
lightful blooms, the efflorescence of the religious
spirit of Judaism. I have done what I could within
the necessary limits to dispose some of these flower-
ets to the best advantage. If the Songs of the Ser-
vant of Jehovah, the composite Poem of Job, the
Psalter, the Books of Wisdom, the narratives, at
least, of Ezra's law-book, and the narrative of the
Chronicler have in some of their aspects become
more living realities to my readers, I shall feel that
my visit to America, which has now become a treas-
ured memory, was not altogether useless.
INDEX.
Agur, sceptical poet,
Angel of repentance, 18
Antigonus of Soco, saying of,
190, 198, 246
Artaxerxes, why favourable to
the Jews, 38
Atonement, Day of, 75
Augustine of -Canterbury, 27
Aurelius, M., 194
Azazel, 76
Babylonian, influences, 130, 259 ;
kings, 107
Behemoth and Leviathan, 154 n.
Bernard, St., 190
Bickell on Ecclesiastes, 184 /.
Bildad, influence on Job's devel-
opment, 168
Branch, origin of Messianic title,
15
Briggs, Dr. C. A., 220
Browning, 246, 252
Buddhism, ideal king of, 101
Cambyses and Egyptian religion,
41
Carlyle, quoted, 207
Chaos unknown to Job, 154
Chronicler, piety of, 215 ; Leviti-
cal interest, 213 f. \ attitude
towards ritual, 213 ; attitude
towards Gentiles, 221 ; as an
historian, 197, 214
Church, Jewish Catholic, 226 /.
Congregation, the, 62-64
Cosmogony, Babylonian affini-
ties of, 258
Creation, new conception of,
154
Cyrus, policy of, 82
David, symbolic use of, 96
Ecclesiastes, a "Song of
Songs "(?), 183; unity ques-
tioned, 183 f. ; how made or-
thodox, 184 ; cool theism of,
1 86 ; attitude towards the
Law, 189 ; attitude towards
immortality, 191 ; attitude
towards marriage, 191 f,
Stoic affinities of, 198 ; char-
acter of author, 191, 194 f.,
205 ff. ; date of, 197^".
Ecclesiasticus, its devout sim-
plicity, 212 ; attitude towards
wisdom, 209 ; attitude towards
the Law, 210 /. ; attitude to-
wards future life, 232 ; atti-
tude towards Messiah-belief,
211 ; attitude towards nature,
212 ; date of, 199, 209
Egyptian, priest, a parallel to
Nehemiah, 40-43 ; religion,
60
Elihu, speeches of , 18, 171
Elisha ben Abuyah, a sceptic,
178
Emerson, quoted, 155
Enoch, 151, 155, 158 /., 177 n.,
181, 239 ; Book of, 151, 155,
176, 181, 203 /., 236
Essenes, 200, 203 /., 244, 258
n.
Ezekiel, influence of, 24/., 165
Ezra and Nehemiah, historicity
of, 56
263
264
Index
Ezra, his character and career,
59, 69 f. ; object of his migra-
tion, 54 ; his supposed firman,
55 /, 7O /. ; his attempted
marriage reforms, 56-62 ; his
relation to the congregation,
62-64; wa s he a priest? 55
Ezra's lawbook, not at once gen-
erally accepted, 57 _/"., 62 ; not
merelv legal, 77 ; not alto-
gether his work, 72 ; in what
sense new, 72 /.
Fasting, 9-11
Fatherhood, the divine, 59, 60
Frazer, author of Golden Bough,
75
Gentiles, Jewish attitude to-
wards, 134, 218 ff.
Gerizim, Mt., temple on, 28,
32 /.
Geshem, the Arabian, 45
God, names of, 175 ; dual aspect
of, 166-168 ; sons of, 175 /.
Goethe, quoted, 174
Greek thought, 158, 173, 178,
196 /., 206, 257
Guests of Jehovah, idea of, 250
Haggai, 8/., 11-13
Handel, his Messiah, 99
Haupt, Professor, 5, 185
"Heads" of the Jewish com-
munity, 6, 10, 16
Herod the Great, 200
Holiness, ceremonial, 74
Hooker, quoted, 154
Hope, the larger, 229
Humility, 80
Hyrcanus, John, 199
Ideals, Jewish religious,
Immortality, 229-244
Inspiration, Book of Wisdom
on, 133 ; Philo on, 133
Jannaeus, Alexander, 199
Jeremiah, anti-sacrificial school
of, 252 /.
Jeshua, high priest, 6
Jews, three classes of, 125 ;
number of, in the community,
65 n. ; why so few returned at
first, 21
Job, a poetical version of Abra-
ham, 79 ; original Book of,
1 60 ff. ; early legend of, 159
ff. ; and his friends, roles trans-
posed, i6s/. ; of Edomitish ori-
gin (?), 132 ; insertions in Book
of, 171 ff.\ and the Servant of
Jehovah passages, 162 ; on
future life, 17, 23/., 63
Jonah, story of, 91, 218
Josephus, cited, 39, 200, 258
" Kiss the Son," a misunder-
standing, 112
Koheleth, see Preacher
Koran, cited, 251 n.
Loeb, on the Psalms, 113
Maccabee, Simon the, 244
Macdonald, Prof. D. B., 160
Manasseh, Jewish priest, 32, 68
Messiah, the, 94^"., 243
Milton, quoted, 144
Mommsen, quoted, 4
Montaigne, 183, 208
Mountain, the divine, no
Nathan, prophecy of, 109
Nature, contemplation of , 172^".
Nehemiah, character of, 43 ff. ;
career of, 37-54, 64-69
Orthodoxy, an early protest of,
179
Pascal, a Hebrew, 164
Paul, St., 59 ; Pauline theology,
77
Persian influences, 257 ff.
Peters, Dr. J. P., 16 n.
Index
265
Pharisees and Sadducees, 200,
204 /., 244
Pirqe Aboth, quoted, 246
Pompey, 245
Prayer, discovery of, 251
Preacher, the, identified with
Solomon, 184, 197
Prophets, their activity at Baby-
lon, 21 f,
Proselytes, 219, 221, 224 /.
Proverbs, Book of, an ethical
handbook, 173, 208 ; Book of,
secular element in, 138 ;
Book of, religion of, 139 ff.
Psalter, an historical authority,
124 ; text needs revision, 235 ;
twice refers to an historical
ruler, 105 ; religious influence
of, 74, 204 ; of Solomon, 205,
245
Religion, individual, 166
Religions, historical study of,
261
Renan, his date for Ecclesiastes,
199 ; quoted, 250
Resurrection, 244 ; limitation of,
230
Retribution, doctrine of, 163 /.,
211, 214
Rhys-Davids, Professor, 101
Rig Veda, quoted, 178
Ruth, story of, 220
Sabbath, 66 /.
Sacrifices, spiritual, 252-255
Samaritans, the, 25-35, 60, 68
Sanballat, 31, 45, 47, 48, 68
Satan, 18, 212
Scepticism, Jewish, 173, 195 ff.
Servant of Jehovah, 69, 86 ff. t
223 n.; songs of, when in-
serted in 2 Isaiah, 92 ; in
Psalter, 93
Sheshbazzar, 6
Simeon, the Righteous, saying
of, 190, 210 n.
Sirach, Jesus son of, 209 (see
Ecclesiasticus)
Solomon, in legend, 128 /., 197
Stanley, Dean, on Nehemiah, 44
Talmud, cited, 201 n., 246
Targum, on Deut. xxxiii., II,
199 n. ; on Psalm Ixxiii., 238 ;
free treatment of Ecclesiastes,
1 88 ; on Gen. iii., 245
Temple, spiritual, 251 /., 255
Thutmes III., of Egypt, no
Tobiah the Ammonite, 45, 65
Virgil, a prophet, 103 n.
Vows, scruples respecting, 189,
254
Wisdom, conception of, ubff.,
153-156, 159. T 76, 209 /.,
258
Zechariah, 11-19; his disillusion.
ment, 16
Zend-Avesta, cited, 157, 2IO,
260
Zerubbabel, 6, 8,14-16
Zion, meaning of, in 2 Isaiah,
63
Zoroastrianism, 74, 81, 151, 157,
210, 251 n., 258 ff.
BIBLICAL PASSAGES.
I. OLD TESTAMENT AND APOCRYPHA.
GENESIS.
i 216
177 n.
v., 21-24 155
24 239
ix., 1-17 217
xviii., 17-19 130
LEVITICUS.
XL, 44.
80
NUMBERS.
xi., 29 ; xvi., 3 91
xv., 32-36 66
xxi., 17, 18 227
xxiii., xxiv 131 n.
DEUTERONOMY.
iv., 10 130
19 86n.
vi., 7, 20^". 130
xi., 19 130
xxxii., ii 241
JUDGES.
ix., 8-15 131
RUTH,
iv., 18-22 22O
2 SAMUEL.
xiv., 2 131
17,20 131
xvi., 23 131
1 KINGS.
iii., 28 131
iv., 29-34 129
viii., 48 251
2 KINGS.
xxii., 8 71
1 CHRONICLES.
xxix., 10-19 215
2 CHRONICLES.
xii., 13 / 231
EZRA.
V. 15
vii. , 6-10 71
11-26 55
25 210
2 7/- 54
ix., x 587.
NEHEMIAH.
vi., 7 16
viii 57/
xii., 15-22 66
xiii., 23-27 ; 28-30 68
JOB.
v., 12 /.
xi., 12
xiv., 7-12
xv., 4/
5
266
138
136
233
234
117
138
Biblical Passages
267
JOB (CONTINUED).
**-, 7/ 149 n,, i?7
xvi., 18-21 167
xix., 21 f. 168
25-29 169, 235
**i 79
xxiii., 8 169
xxviii 171
20-23 153
26 /. 150
28 153
xxix.-xxxi 170
xxxiii. , 23 f. 18
xxxviii.-xli 171
xxxviii., 22-27 152
29-34 152
PSALMS.,
i., 2 126
ii in, 112
v., 9 120
ix., n, 12, 17 218
x., 3 "9
xii., i 122
xv 249
5 122
xvi 241-244
i-5 30
xvii 240, 24 1
3-5 260
xviii no, in
xix., 6 257
xx. , xxi 1 06
xxi., 6 241
xxii 93
7, 8 120
xxiii., 6 252
xxiv 249
xxvi., 5 124
5-7 249
9/- 123
xxvii., 4 219
12 121
xxxi., 18 120
xxxv. , 4-6 143
ii 121
xxxvi. , 1-3 1 16
8-10 ." .228
PSALMS (CONTINUED).
xxxvii. , 26 122
xxxix. , 12 250
xl. (part I) 253
6-8 253
xlii., 3, 4 nq
4 114
xliv., 24 144
xlv 106 /. , 147
4 80
xlix 236-238
1 253
I4/-, 23 254
li-, i-i7 253-255
12 /. 222
i6/. 255
i8/. 255
in., i 123
lv., II 122
Ixiii. , i 251
Ixv. , 2 225
Ixviii. , 22 225
24-26 248
Ixix. , 20 f 1 1 8
Ixxii 108, 147
Ixxiii 164, 238-240
25, 26 246
27, 28 247
Ixxxv. , 9 243
Ixxxvii 225 f.
Ixxxix 109 f.
48 244
xci., 15 /. 243
xcii., If. 143
xciv., 10 135
xcvii., 1-6 in
ci. . . .
ex.. . .
cxv. . .
-4-8
105
105
224
222
CXV111 224
cxix., 43, 46. 223
72. 99 224
84 224
96 250
CXX., 2 122
cxxiii., 3/ 118
cxxvii. ,3 24
268
Biblical Passages
PSALMS (CONTINUED).
CXXXl., I 221
cxxxii. ,11 96
cxxxv 224
cxxxix., 21 124
24 125
cxliv., i-n Ill
cl 248
PROVERBS.
6 129
27 233
ii., 19 241
iii., 2, 16 233
14-16 138
18 246
v., 5/ 241
viii., 4 134
5-12 138
18 /. 138
22-31 149, 208
25 177 n.
31 134
ix., ii 233
x., I? 241
23 136
27 139. 2 33
29 139
xi., 30 137
xii., 28 232
xiv., 2, 31 140
35 145
xv. , 3, ii 140
8 141
33 139
xvi., 3 141
4 143, 153
7 142
10 145
xvii., 27 138
xix., 17 194
xx., 28 146
xxi., 3, 27 141
xxii., 3 138
xxiv. , ii 193
17 141
21 /. 146
PROVERBS (CONTINUED).
xxv. , 4 f. ................ 146
81 f. .................. 142
xxviii. ,3 ................ 123
xxix., 13 ................. 144
18 .................... 145
xxx., 2-4 .............. 173-181
5-9 ................... 180
29-31 ................. 146
xxxi., 1-9 ................ 146
xxxiii. , 13-15 ............. 140
i.,4-9
12-14
ECCLESIASTES.
207 /.
198
I4/ .................. 193
ii., i8/. ................. 194
iii., ii ................... 198
21 .................... 191
v., 4, 6 .................. 188
7 ..................... 191
vii. , 2 f .................. 192
15 .................... 187
i6/. .................. 188
27/ ................... 192
viii. , 2-4 ................. 202
9 ..................... 192
14 .................... 187
ix., 2 .................... 203
x., 7 .................. 201 /.
i6a, 173 ............... 201
20 .................... 2OI
xi., loa ; xii., la .......... 192
xii., ii / ................. 182
13 / ................. 197
ISAIAH.
i. 26 ...............
iii., 4 |
v., ii } "
ix., 2-7 ........ 94, 97, 98-101
xi., 1-8 ....... 94,97, 101-104
xix., 18-25 ............... 225
24/. .................. 227
xxiv., 5 .................. 217
xxv., 7/1 ............ 212,231
xxvi., 14-19 .............. 229
xxx., 2 ................... 131
. 102
201 n.
Biblical Passages
269
ISAIAH (CONTINUED).
xxxi., 2 ................ i3o/.
xxxiii., 14 ................ 250
xl., 13/. ................. 156
xlii., 1-4 ................ 89
4 .................... 218
6 .................... 92
xliv., 9-20 )
xlvi., 6-8 f ............ 222
xlix., 1-6 ............... 88 /.
1., 4-9 .................. 88
13-15 ................. 91
13 ; liii., 12 ............ 162
liii., 2-9 ..... ........... 83
io/. .................. 162
12 .................... 96
liv., 1 .................... 24
13 ..................... 9i
lv., i/. .................. 23
3-5 ................... 97
Ivi., 1-8 .................. 219
2-6.. ................ 67
Ivii., i ................... 85
Iviii., 5 .................. 116
13 ................... 6 7
lix., 20 ................... 63
21 .................... 223
lx., 13 ................... 221
Ixii., 1,6,7
Q2
9
Ixv., I / ................. 27
3-5," ................ 2y
19 / ............... 2 3i
19-22 ................. 243
Ixvi., if. ................ 28
3/- ................... 2 9
JEREMIAH.
vii., 22 /. ................ 252
viii., 8 ................... 131
ix., 17 ................. 131 n.
xxiii.,5/. ............... 95
xxxi. ,33 ................ 253
xxxiii., 14-16 ............. 95
xli., 5 .................... 26
xlix., 7 ................... 132
EZEKIEL.
xiv., 14 159
xvii., 22-24 }
xxxiv., 23 /. > 94
xxx vii., 24 f. )
xxviii., 3 l5
13 / no
xlv., 10-20 75
xlviii., 35 95 n.
DANIEL.
vi., io 251
xii., 1-3 230
3 125
AMOS.
iii., 6 98
-7 12
v., 25 252 n.
ix., n f. loo
MICAH.
iii., 3 121
vi., 8 91
HAGGAI.
ii.,6/.
21-23
ZECHARIAH.
218
ii.,8
iii., 8 |
vi., 12 J "
v., 5-1 1 18
vi., 9-12 15
vii., 1-5 io
ix., 9 80, 108
xii., 8 103
io 85 n.
MALACHI.
i., n 28, 133
ii., 8 32
io /. 28
10-16 60
Hi., 16 20, 63
iv., 1-4 19
-5/ i
270
Biblical Passages
ECCLESIASTICUS.
., 15 134
xvii., 17 209
xviii., 13 135
xxi., 27 212
xxiv., 8, 23 1
xxxvi ,12 > 209
xxxvii., 25 )
xxxii., 15 127
xxxv., 1-6 211
xxxvi., 1-17 147
xxxviii., 2O /. /
x i TI y J \ 232
xxxix. , 4, IO 134
xliii., 27-33 212 /.
xlv., 25 211
xlvii., 17 129
xlviii., ii 2ii
xlix., 13 210
WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
vii., 22 f 298
2 ESDRAS.
xiv., 44 71
I MACCABEES.
V., 14-54 225
II. NEW TESTAMENT.
MATTHEW.
XI., 14. .
29 /.
XV., 2O.
47
Son.
JOHN.
iv. , 13 / 228
v.,17 154
39 256
ACTS.
217
2 CORINTHIANS,
iii., 2 92
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